Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Male Feminists: Men Should Wise Up

Men should be feminists. 'nuff said.

==========================

from: The Independent Online Edition

Thirty years on, women still face discrimination in the workplace

On this day in 1975, campaigners celebrated as the Equal Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act came into force. Thirty years on, what has changed?

By Robert Verkaik, Legal Affairs Correspondent

Published: 29 December 2005

Thirty years after Harold Wilson's Labour government put in place the country's first Sex Discrimination Act, Britain's women are still suffering from unequal pay and, increasingly, sexual harassment in the workplace.

A substantial pay gap between women and men performing equivalent work still exists three decades later, while figures also show a disturbing rise in complaints of gender-related abuse and ill-treatment of female staff.

Today's anniversary of the groundbreaking 1975 legislation, intended to herald a new era of equality between the sexes, will be celebrated by women's organisations throughout the UK. But although the gap between salaries paid to men and women in full-time work has closed, in other areas progress has been far slower, and in some cases negligible. According to Jenny Watson, the new chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), "some issues, like unequal pay and sexual harassment, remain far too common".

Women working part time today earn nearly 38.4 per cent less than men performing equivalent work. In 1975 the figure was 42 per cent. For full-time workers the gap is 17.2 per cent compared to 42 per cent 30 years ago.

Women are also bringing more complaints for sexual harassment. According to the EOC, half of women in the workplace have complained of some form of sexual harassment. In a landmark case in 1985, Jean Porcelli established that cases of harassment were covered by the Sex Discrimination Act. She represented herself in an Edinburgh tribunal, losing twice, before finally winning the legal argument. But latest research released by the EOC suggests the sexual harassment cases that actually reach an employment tribunal are only the tip of the iceberg.

The EOC helpline received 647 calls on sexual harassment between 1 April and 25 November, a rise of 10 per cent on last year. It was the fourth most common cause of complaint, after pregnancy and maternity, equal pay and work-life balance.

The rise in discrimination is confirmed by the EOC's decision to launch investigations into the harassment of women in the armed forces and the Post Office. One in five servicewomen in the Navy, one in eight in the Army and one in 10 in the RAF has suffered sexual harassment. Recent cases taken to employment tribunals included that of Padraigin Byard, a navy pilot, who said she was constantly subjected to sexist, derogatory and rude remarks, which were dismissed as being part of the "maritime tradition".

In another case, Catherine Brumfitt won £30,000 after complaining about the behaviour of a male sergeant. The tribunal said there had been undue concentration on sexual matters and crude and offensive language.

The harassment of women at work may not be as visible as it was 30 years ago but it has not gone away. Cases over the past few years show that harassment has become more sophisticated and more subtle. While women must still endure verbal sexual abuse they now also face sexual harassment by text and e-mail.

On top of this, each year about 30,000 working women are sacked, made redundant or leave their jobs due to pregnancy discrimination. Ms Watson said Britain's 30-year gender equality laws were failing to tackle the different causes of the pay gap and sexual harassment.

Earlier this year, Linda Weightman was one of more than 1,500 women health workers who won up to £200,000 each after an eight-year struggle for equal pay with male colleagues. She will share a £300m payout from an NHS trust in Cumbria in the biggest equal pay award on record.

Ms Watson said the current laws placed too much onus on individual women to fight for rights which should be guaranteed. "The existing laws rely on individuals to take their case to an employment tribunal," she said.

"It's time for employers to share more of the responsibility to bring about change by taking proactive steps to address inequality. Unless action is taken, individuals and employers will continue to suffer the damaging effects of the gender pay gap for at least another generation." She added: "Thirty years after the Sex Discrimination Act, we have made some real progress. We recently considered what a day without the Act would be like, and some of the situations women might typically face were truly shocking, like being forced to resign when they got engaged, being sacked as soon as they became pregnant, or working in environments where they were regularly subjected to blatant sexual harassment. It's a real victory that such behaviour is now clearly illegal, and women can appeal to tribunals for justice. But it's unfortunate that the onus of responsibility to bring about change has remained largely with individuals to bring cases."

The Department for Trade and Industry is working with Britain's unions to identify companies with the worst records.

Ministers have also begun a wide-ranging review into equality which include proposals to impose massive fines on employers who fail to protect women workers from discrimination.

Companies with the worst records would face investigation by the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article335480.ece

Friday, December 23, 2005

The Skies of the 60's: Homage to Bill Graham

Bill Graham cast a large shadow on the music scene during the halcyon days of the 60's and 70's. The master cylinder of live events on both coasts, he brought top notch rock, blues, jazz and even gospel musicians to audiences that were broad-minded and into more than the crass commericalism that incessantly spams us these days.

His story is incredible on many levels: Entrepreneurial, supremely human (he literally walked across Europe to escape the Nazis) and visionary.

Today, the Bill Graham's of the world are relegated to the back rooms of history, replaced by blue suits in the board rooms of the mega corps, replete with hip haircuts and "attitude". They couldn't hold Graham's jock strap and are in no way deserving of even knowing who Graham was.

Perhaps above all, he had an ear and the guts to develop artists in his own unique way. That's completely missing in this formula driven, crass, treat-consumers-like-the-default-ipso-facto-
mindless-drones-wall-street-sees-us-as music era.

Last, a favorite Graham story. Before the legendary Band of Gypsies (BoG) Fillmore East concert, Graham told Jimi that he was tired of all the stage antics and wanted to just see him play his ass off.

Jimi's answer was to go out, put his head down, and overwhelm the audience with his axe on cuts like "Machine Gun," in my opinion, one of the greatest electric guitar performances ever.

At concert's end, as the legend goes, Jimi walked off the stage, past Graham, and said, "How's that, muthafucker?"

Of the BoG performances (there were two) Graham would say that they were, "the most brilliant, emotional display of virtuosic electric guitar playing I have ever heard."

Jews say, "he's a mensch" to denote someone of admirable characteristics, but on the street it has a "hidden dimension," connoting something more. Bill Graham had "it."

Sadly, Graham died in a helicopter crash in 1991, leaving us to the soul-less drivel of today's music industry.

But what a vision, what a life.

What a mensch.




Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Entrepreneurs vs. King Kong Corporations

Some of you know that I serve as an elected board member on a neighborhood council. Right now, there's a debate over corporate presence in the form of bus stop kiosks, billboards, etc.

This argument really goes to the heart of the "Small is Beautiful" point of view of EF Schumacher vs. the mega corporations that have tons of lobbying moolah, politicians in their back pockets, and stampede through communities obliterating entrepreneurs.

Here is my recent message to the board:

Hi All-

1) At the heart of this debate is the fundamental question of property and ownership, and the right to do what one wants with one's property. If Viacom (or Clear Channel, or...) pay the money, then they have the right to do what they want with their real estate. The counter to that is that that's an abstract argument, devoid of context.

2) As we can easily see with, to take a gross example, Walmart, these giant corporations come into communities and don't give a fig about local entrepreneurs. Case study after case study has shown the degradation to local entrepreneurs. The question then becomes - do communities REALLY want to live in a world where, no matter where one travels, there'll always be commercial entities like a thousand others?

3) Think about the xxxxxx Corridor right here in our own neighborhood council (NC) district. Who in their right mind would want to change this charming, personal and unique part of the country for, say, a Starbucks, a McDonalds, a Cingular/Verizon/Sprint... and yet, we see the encroaching presence of corporate America clamping down just across the street south of Olympic and on the north side as represented by Public Storage.

4) Entrepreneurs provide more jobs than corporations but lack the political clout of the mega corps. I see NCs as being at least a body that can offer up some voice for local entrepreneurs, and even perhaps organize them. The fact that entrepreneurs provide more jobs than corporations is an un-leveraged point in politics, because they have no lobby, no PAC and essentially no (organized and managed) money. Mega corps, on the other hand, funnel huge sums of money into campaigns and thus can have a politician in their back pocket. That's an unfair advantage and, I think, not only highly unethical but un-American.

5) So, if Viacom wants to come into bus stop kiosks (and wherever else) and bludgeon us with their spam, then at the very least local entrepreneurs should be allotted some kind of a fighting chance. But that's an ideal world that doesn't answer only to money. The sad fact is, if I'm Clear Channel, my billboard goes to the highest bidder.

At the very least, the community should be made aware of these points, among others. And I think the NC could do its part in disseminating this information.

-jp

Thursday, December 15, 2005

In Homage: KOAM & Gang - A Fan's Appreciation

I've been watching Howard Stern and posse for over 20 years. I began listening - regularly - for about 10 years, and now we're on the horizon of a new dawn, because tomorrow marks the end of an era: Howard Stern, the King of All Media, makes his historic move to Sirius, and with it, closes a chapter on one of the most remarkable careers in ANY medium.

This week was nostalgic: KC came back yesterday and Jackie came back today. The walk down memory lane was really something... you think back to all those mornings when you didn't want to wake up, drag your ass out of bed... and then you'd put the show on, and one minute it's the Wack Pack, the next it's a leader of the KKK, the next Jose Canseco's talking about players he's juiced - and naming names!!! - the next Howard and Gary are fighting, REALLY going at it, for 15 or 20 minutes, and the bottom line is it's all compelling and super entertaining.

There's a famous commercial that KLSX in LA used to run - and I assume Inifinity ran it nationwide - where the announcer would say that the average Howard Stern fan listens for 2 hours. The reason? They want to see what happens next.

Today, late in the second to the last day on terrestrial radio, they played the "What a Wonderful Guy" parody song based on Pops' rendition of "What a Wonderful World." Robin, Gary, Artie... all had stanzas. And there I was sitting at a desk, overlooking the Pacific, and I'm getting ... choked up. MAN!!!

It's hard to convey to non-fans what this show means to me and millions of others familiar with the gang.

This is one fan's heartfelt appreciation.

Howard and gang - thanks for all the times when you brought life into drudgery, and light into the darkness that is the everyday workplace we working stiffs inhabit. You exist for us, not the hoity toity. I can't even convey how many times I've looked up at fellow workers and watched them while they toiled, while you and the gang were there inside my head, entertaining me to bits.

That is priceless stuff.

Some - perhaps many - of my relatives and friends will question this post. Even with my heartfelt sentiments. That's okay, because this isn't about them.

Tomorrow the terrestrial door closes, and the one on the final frontier opens - what a fitting metaphor. And I'm sure greater times await, but oh man, what memories we have.

One never forgets the skies of one's youth...

See you on the other side, Howard. And Robin, and Gary, and Artie, and Fred, and Benjy, and Scott the Engineer, and Blue Iris, and BEETLEJUICE, and High pitch, and ...

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

"Responsibility" with no Repurcussions

Bush Jr. says that as president, he's "responsible" for making the decision to invade Iraq.

Wait a second.

If I am a suspect in a crime, and I admit to being responsible, aren't there then repurcussions?

Some would argue that his approval rating is his penalty. Whoopee doo.

He's a lame duck, and he and his administration simultaneously thumb their noses at us and, secretly laugh, have disdain for our popularity polls. He says that he wants to go down in history as a great president. Joe Biden, a guy I used to sorta respect, goes on Charlie Rose and said that he hopes Duhbya turns out to be a great president because it's in the interest of the country.

Bullshit.

In fact, I think it can be persuasively argued the complete opposite, because then maybe (enough) people will wake up!

But then again, so much crap has gone down and nothing has stirred beyond a threshold yet...

Friday, December 09, 2005

Bad Sista: An African Fem

Note: I've cleaned up and done some editing of this, one of the best if not the best writing on the way crazy white liberals "help" poor mudpeeps, in this case Africa, but it could just as easily have been Asian, Pacific, Latino, or Native mudpeeps. How she echoes my thoughts and feelings... Some of the links may be dead, but this writing, so intelligent, vibrant and alive, is a testament to the no horseshit attitude I admire and wish were the norm amongst so-called progressives.

Here then, in all her glory (save for the first line about crazy liberals - that's from my original posting), is "Blacklooks," a Bad OG - how I wish her blog were still in play!

-jp, November 7, 2007



Crazy liberals... it's about time someone called them out!


We are not whales!


The response from the liberal blogosphere to any criticism of the Live 8 concert and the ideology of paternalistic simplicity espoused by Geldof et al has been "at least they are doing something" or "its better than nothing" or a comment I read on African Bullets & Honey [note: Just re-checked for dead links; this is a defunct blog as of 11/07] "Pennies on the dollar are better than no pennies at all" or some other naïve variant. Statements such as these contain a loosely concealed self-congratulatory, paternalist and arrogant attitude towards Africa and Africans.

My argument is that No It is not better than nothing and that what they are doing is actually damaging to African countries. Furthermore the Live 8 concert reinforces racist stereotypes and like most liberal projects fails to challenge the status quo or address the real issues. It is as if people so much want to believe that Geldof's agenda for Africa has and will make a difference that they cannot see the wood for the trees. There is a desperateness about their rush to believe the superficial explanations offered to them. I can only conclude that the truth is just too much for people to bear. The bleeding hearts of liberalism cannot face the reality that their liberalism will solve nothing, that it colludes with the maintenance of the status quo and actually will cause more harm than good.

One of the pro-Geldof copouts is that Westerners are deprived of information about African countries and therefore something like Live 8 will give them the missing information. Rubbish. Westerners and other non-Africans do not need to live in Africa or live in any other part of the world to understand what is happening there. The information is available; Americans and Europeans have much more access to information than the rest of the world; if they choose not to read the available information that is because they have no desire or interest in doing so.

My prediction [note: ibid] that the presentation of African countries during Saturday's concerts would be a negative pitiful one was correct. We were presented with Africa as the scar of the world; passive, starving, diseased, dying and helpless. This was a conscious decision by the organisers of the concert to make the crowd sympathetic to their cause and at the same time make them feel good, make them feel as if they had made a contribution to saving Africa. I am reminded of an American TV programme we watched as children in Nigeria: The Lone Ranger. At the end of each programme after the Lone Ranger had fought off the baddies and saved the poor defenseless people his horse would rear up and he would shout "hiooooooo Silver"; and then ride into the wilderness till the following week. And so to we are all asked to give "thanks and praises to the great white chief Geldof on his shining white horse.

Madeleine Bunting writing in today's Guardian quotes Cambridge historian, John Lonsdale's description of Blair's Agenda for Africa as

a construction that infantilises not only Africans, unable to fend for themselves, but us too, like babies demanding the instant gratification of self-importance.


Not only does it infantilise Africans and Europeans, it also facilitates the continued appropriation of all things African and all things in Africa including our problems [note: yet another dead link] and reduces the issues to cheap sound bites and meaningless nauseating rhetoric that go down well in the kindergarden playground of liberal politics. She goes on to say

It is almost as if the west can't accept African agency: we want the simplification of the four Ps (picturesque, pitiful, psychopathic, and above, all passive) because it so neatly caters for our fears, derived from the colonial history of the "dark continent" of Joseph Conrad fame. Is this the price that has to be paid for an instant of western attention?

I would add that the Blair/Geldof agendas aim to reduce western guilt, fulfill the chronic need to "feel good" and reinforce western feelings of superiority towards the other all of which are underpinned by an insidious racism. A prime of this example is the lack of any "visible participation of Africans" in this whole enterprise which Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem describes as "trying to shave someone's head in their absence". http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/28386

As I have said, the Live 8 crusade and the response that "at least they are doing something" will damage African countries in a number of ways. Firstly Live8 and its accompanying ideology has served to undermine the anti-globalisation movement and any real challenge to changing the status quo. John Pilger critiquing the "unrelenting sophistry of Geldof, Bono and Blair" explains how the spin works:

The illusion of an anti-establishment crusade led by pop stars," which is in reality, "a cultivated, controlling image of rebellion - serves to dilute a great political movement of anger.

Secondly the crusade has managed to completely ignore the realities of the recent so called "debt relief" to the 30 countries in the world. Geldof and Bono both hailed the announcement as, a victory for millions.

An historic deal to free more than 30 countries from the crippling shackles of debt to the West was hailed by Bob Geldof yesterday as a "victory for millions"..... The $55billion settlement, which will immediately benefit countries from Ethiopia and Uganda to Rwanda and Mozambique, was the beginning rather than the end, the campaigning rock star said......The Observer.

...a little piece of history...

What we have here today is a little piece of history," the U2 frontman told Britain's Sky News television after the G8 agreed to wipe away $40 billion ($52 billion) of debt owed by 18 of the world's poorest nations, most of them in Africa.


The truth is however very different.

First of all only 18 countries are covered of which 16 are in Africa when in fact there are some 60 plus countries that should be relieved of their debt.

The IMF and World bank will "monitor the indebted countries progress and decide if they are to be relieved of the debt burden". In other words the debt is dependent on the IMF/World Bank and it is in their interest for the debt relief to take place as slowly as possible.

For each 1$ of debt relief, each country will loose 1$ in new aid from the International Development Association/World Bank. So what they give with one hand they take away with the other.

The worst aspect of the debt cancellation are the conditionalities imposed on those selected countries. "the reality is that the finance minister's proposal has the potential to deliver to the wealthy nations more money than they have written off" What is presented as "charity" is in fact more money for the West:

By a) boosting private sector development and b) good governance meaning privatising the public sector such as electricity and power, health and education; allowing foreign investment; removing obstacles to foreign investment (eg be less stringent on pollution requirements than in the west, allow foreign companies to bring in their own staff or staff from outside the local community in which they operate.); cooperation with the "war on terror"; purchase of Western goods (nearly 70% of US aid money is tied to the purchase of US products and in Italy 100% of aid is tied to the purchase of Italian goods).

These are the same IMF/World Bank/G8 policies that have been killing Africa in the past. Arms sales from Britain to Africa amount to more than $1 billion. So on the one hand Blair is advocating cancellation of debt WITH conditionalities that benefit Britain and on the other he is selling $1 billion worth of arms to African countries. How do policies such as these alleviate poverty and where is the justice? Whose victory are we celebrating here?

The new deal for Africa is the same as the old deal - nothing has changed. "The G8's interest in Africa is summed up in a 2003 World Bank report that identifies sub-Saharan Africa as the most profitable place in the world for direct foreign investment" - that is where the truth lies.

For a fuller explanation of the impact of debt relief on the 18 countries see:

Africa: repudiate foreign debt (no link)
Raised Voices www.raisedvoices.net
Vivelecanada www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20050624095334717

Bad Dude: Pinter wins NPP, Asswhups Uncle Scam

Good ole Harry. Thank gawd there are sober peeps in these times not afraid to tell it like it is. Next up: The collected lectures of Hugo Chavez. Stay UP!!!


The Nobel lecture

Art, truth and politics

In his video-taped Nobel acceptance speech, Harold Pinter excoriated a 'brutal, scornful and ruthless' United States. This is the full text of his address

Harold Pinter
Thursday December 8, 2005

Guardian Unlimited

In 1958 I wrote the following:

'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.'

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.

Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word or an image. The given word is often shortly followed by the image. I shall give two examples of two lines which came right out of the blue into my head, followed by an image, followed by me.

The plays are The Homecoming and Old Times. The first line of The Homecoming is 'What have you done with the scissors?' The first line of Old Times is 'Dark.'

In each case I had no further information.

In the first case someone was obviously looking for a pair of scissors and was demanding their whereabouts of someone else he suspected had probably stolen them. But I somehow knew that the person addressed didn't give a damn about the scissors or about the questioner either, for that matter.

'Dark' I took to be a description of someone's hair, the hair of a woman, and was the answer to a question. In each case I found myself compelled to pursue the matter. This happened visually, a very slow fade, through shadow into light.

I always start a play by calling the characters A, B and C.

In the play that became The Homecoming I saw a man enter a stark room and ask his question of a younger man sitting on an ugly sofa reading a racing paper. I somehow suspected that A was a father and that B was his son, but I had no proof. This was however confirmed a short time later when B (later to become Lenny) says to A (later to become Max), 'Dad, do you mind if I change the subject? I want to ask you something. The dinner we had before, what was the name of it? What do you call it? Why don't you buy a dog? You're a dog cook. Honest. You think you're cooking for a lot of dogs.' So since B calls A 'Dad' it seemed to me reasonable to assume that they were father and son. A was also clearly the cook and his cooking did not seem to be held in high regard. Did this mean that there was no mother? I didn't know. But, as I told myself at the time, our beginnings never know our ends.

'Dark.' A large window. Evening sky. A man, A (later to become Deeley), and a woman, B (later to become Kate), sitting with drinks. 'Fat or thin?' the man asks. Who are they talking about? But I then see, standing at the window, a woman, C (later to become Anna), in another condition of light, her back to them, her hair dark.

It's a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche. The author's position is an odd one. In a sense he is not welcomed by the characters. The characters resist him, they are not easy to live with, they are impossible to define. You certainly can't dictate to them. To a certain extent you play a never-ending game with them, cat and mouse, blind man's buff, hide and seek. But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort.

So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time.

But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot.

Political theatre presents an entirely different set of problems. Sermonising has to be avoided at all cost. Objectivity is essential. The characters must be allowed to breathe their own air. The author cannot confine and constrict them to satisfy his own taste or disposition or prejudice. He must be prepared to approach them from a variety of angles, from a full and uninhibited range of perspectives, take them by surprise, perhaps, occasionally, but nevertheless give them the freedom to go which way they will. This does not always work. And political satire, of course, adheres to none of these precepts, in fact does precisely the opposite, which is its proper function.

In my play The Birthday Party I think I allow a whole range of options to operate in a dense forest of possibility before finally focussing on an act of subjugation.

Mountain Language pretends to no such range of operation. It remains brutal, short and ugly. But the soldiers in the play do get some fun out of it. One sometimes forgets that torturers become easily bored. They need a bit of a laugh to keep their spirits up. This has been confirmed of course by the events at Abu Ghraib in Baghdad. Mountain Language lasts only 20 minutes, but it could go on for hour after hour, on and on and on, the same pattern repeated over and over again, on and on, hour after hour.

Ashes to Ashes, on the other hand, seems to me to be taking place under water. A drowning woman, her hand reaching up through the waves, dropping down out of sight, reaching for others, but finding nobody there, either above or under the water, finding only shadows, reflections, floating; the woman a lost figure in a drowning landscape, a woman unable to escape the doom that seemed to belong only to others.

But as they died, she must die too.

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past, by which I mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. I believe it is obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some kind of even limited scrutiny, which is all that time will allow here.

Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.

The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a potent example of America's view of its role in the world, both then and now.

I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s.

The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: 'Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity.'

Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravity. 'Father,' he said, 'let me tell you something. In war, innocent people always suffer.' There was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did not flinch.

Innocent people, indeed, always suffer.

Finally somebody said: 'But in this case "innocent people" were the victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidised by your government, one among many. If Congress allows the Contras more money further atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the case? Is your government not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign state?'

Seitz was imperturbable. 'I don't agree that the facts as presented support your assertions,' he said.

As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he enjoyed my plays. I did not reply.

I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the following statement: 'The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.'

The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.

The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilised. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.

The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighbouring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.

I spoke earlier about 'a tapestry of lies' which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a 'totalitarian dungeon'. This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships.

Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. 'Democracy' had prevailed.

But this 'policy' was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.

The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.'

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.

The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.

What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days - conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the 'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally - a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anaesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticise our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You're either with us or against us. So Blair shuts up.

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading - as a last resort - all other justifications having failed to justify themselves - as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'.

How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if they're interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London.

Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don't exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. 'We don't do body counts,' said the American general Tommy Franks.

Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. 'A grateful child,' said the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the only survivor. 'When do I get my arms back?' he asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn't holding him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when you're making a sincere speech on television.

The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm's way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves.

Here is an extract from a poem by Pablo Neruda, 'I'm Explaining a Few Things':

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate.

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives.

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land.

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets! *

Let me make it quite clear that in quoting from Neruda's poem I am in no way comparing Republican Spain to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. I quote Neruda because nowhere in contemporary poetry have I read such a powerful visceral description of the bombing of civilians.

I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.

The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they got there but they are there all right.

The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity - the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons - is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.

Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government's actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force - yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.

I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man's man.

'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'

A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection - unless you lie - in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.

I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I shall now quote a poem of my own called 'Death'.

Where was the dead body found?
Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?

Who was the dead body?

Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?

Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?

Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?

What made you declare the dead body dead?
Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the dead body was dead?

Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror - for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man.

* Extract from "I'm Explaining a Few Things" translated by Nathaniel Tarn, from Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems, published by Jonathan Cape, London 1970. Used by permission of The Random House Group Limited.

© The Nobel Foundation 2005

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Today I Guested on a Show...

...that's hosted by a friend, Shane Snipes. Shane and I met up about a yea and a half ago in the Big Apple when we were both participating in a conference as speakers. We hit it off, and he was cool enough to publish my article, "Small is Beautiful: Making Movies as if Filmmakers Matered," on his site, Indieville, at: http://indieville.net. Long story short, Shane's since moved to LA, and he's hosting, "Indie Fresh," which VOD casts over the net at http://musicplustv.com

It went well, and we're now talking about how to ramp up some ideas along with the studio we shot at. Stay tuned.