Margaret on the Guillotine

"Why Would Anyone Celebrate the Death of Margaret Thatcher? Ask a Chilean"
Dave Zirin
Article from The Nation

Never have I witnessed a gap between the mainstream media and the public quite like the last twenty-four hours since the death of Margaret Thatcher. While both the press and President Obama were uttering tearful remembrances, thousands took to the streets of the UK and beyond to celebrate. Immediately this drew strong condemnation of what were called "death parties," described as “tasteless”, “horrible” and “beneath all human decency.” Yet if the same media praising Thatcher and appalled by the popular response would bother to ask one of the people celebrating, they might get a story that doesn't fit into their narrative, which is probably why they aren't asking at all.

 

I received a note this morning from a friend of a friend. She lives in the UK, although her family didn't arrive there by choice. They had to flee Chile, like thousands of others, when it was under the thumb of General Augusto Pinochet. If you don't know the details about Pinochet's blood-soaked two-decade reign, you should read about them but take care not to eat beforehand. He was a merciless overseer of torture, rapes and thousands of political executions. He had the hands and wrists of the country's greatest folk singer Victor Jara broken in front of a crowd of prisoners before killing him. He had democratically elected Socialist President Salvador Allende shot dead at his desk. His specialty was torturing people in front of their families.

As Naomi Klein has written so expertly, he then used this period of shock and slaughter to install a nationwide laboratory for neoliberal economics. If Pincohet's friend Milton Friedman had a theory about cutting food subsidies, privatizing social security, slashing wages or outlawing unions, Pinochet would apply it. The results of these experiments became political ammunition for neoliberal economists throughout the world. Seeing Chile-applied economic theory in textbooks always boggles my mind. It would be like if the American Medical Association published a textbook on the results of Dr. Josef Mengele's work in the concentration camps, without any moral judgment about how he accrued his patients.

Pinochet was the General in charge of this human rights catastrophe. He also was someone who Margaret Thatcher called a friend. She stood by the General even when he was in exile, attempting to escape justice for his crimes. As she said to Pinochet, "[Thank you] for bringing democracy to Chile."

Therefore, if I want to know why someone would celebrate the death of Baroness Thatcher, I think asking a Chilean in exile would be a great place to start. My friend of a friend took to the streets of the UK when she heard that the Iron Lady had left her mortal coil. Here is why:

I'm telling [my daughter] all about the Thatcher legacy through her mother's experience, not the media's; especially how the Thatcher government directly supported Pinochet's murderous regime, financially, via military support, even military training (which we know now, took place in Dundee University). Thousands of my people (and members of my family) were tortured and murdered under Pinochet's regime—the fascist beast who was one of Thatcher's closest allies and friend. So all you apologists/those offended [by my celebration]—you can take your moral high ground & shove it. YOU are the ones who don't understand. Those of us celebrating are the ones who suffered deeply under her dictatorship and WE are the ones who cared. We are the ones who protested. We are the humanitarians who bothered to lift a finger to help all those who suffered under her regime. I am lifting a glass of champagne to mourn, to remember and to honour all the victims of her brutal regime, here AND abroad. And to all those heroes who gave a shit enough to try to do something about it.

I should add here that I lived in Chile in 1995, when Pinochet had been deposed but was still in charge of the armed forces. I became friends with those who were tortured or had their families disappeared, so Thatcher's connection to Chile strikes a personal note with me. I also understand, however, that similar explanations for "why people are celebrating" could be made by those with connections to Argentina, apartheid South Africa, Indonesia, Belfast, Gaza or Baghdad. The case could also be made by those in the UK affected by Thatcher's Pinochet-tested economic dictates who choose not to mourn.

It also matters because the forty-eight hours after a powerful public figure dies is when the halo becomes permanently affixed to their head. When Ronald Reagan passed away, a massive right wing machine went into motion aimed at removing him from all criticism. The Democrats certainly didn't challenge this interpretation of history and now according to polls, people under 25 would elect Reagan over President Obama, even though Reagan's ideas remain deeply unpopular. To put it crudely, the political battle over someone's memory is a political battle over policy. In Thatcher's case, if we gloss over her history of supporting tyrants, we are doomed to repeat them.

 

As Glenn Greenwald wrote in The Guardian,

There is absolutely nothing wrong with loathing Margaret Thatcher or any other person with political influence and power based upon perceived bad acts, and that doesn't change simply because they die. If anything, it becomes more compelling to commemorate those bad acts upon death as the only antidote against a society erecting a false and jingoistically self-serving history.

Or to put it even more simply, in the words, of David Wearing, "People praising Thatcher's legacy should show some respect for her victims." That would be nice, wouldn't it? Let's please show some respect for Margaret Thatcher's victims. Let's respect those who mourn everyday because of her policies, but choose this one day to wipe away the tears. Then let's organize to make sure that the history she authored does not repeat.

We always set aflame those we fear the most

Hail the new American Villain!

http://www.policemisconduct.net/
 

Christopher Dorner: Uncensored Manifesto

From: Christopher Jordan Dorner/7648

To: America

Sub: Last resort

Regarding CF# 07-004281

I know most of you who personally know me are in disbelief to hear from media reports that I am suspected of committing such horrendous murders and have taken drastic and shocking actions in the last couple of days. You are saying to yourself that this is completely out of character of the man you knew who always wore a smile wherever he was seen. I know I will be villified by the LAPD and the media.

Unfortunately, this is a necessary evil that I do not enjoy but must partake and complete for substantial change to occur within the LAPD and reclaim my name. The department has not changed since the Rampart and Rodney King days. It has gotten worse. The consent decree should never have been lifted. The only thing that has evolved from the consent decree is those officers involved in the Rampart scandal and Rodney King incidents have since promoted to supervisor, commanders, and command staff, and executive positions.

The question is, what would you do to clear your name?

Name;

A word or set of words by which a person, animal, place, or thing is known, addressed, or referred to.

Name Synonyms;

reputation, title, appellation, denomination, repute.

A name is more than just a noun, verb, or adjective. It’s your life, your legacy, your journey, sacrifices, and everything you’ve worked hard for every day of your life as and adolescent, young adult and adult. Don’t let anybody tarnish it when you know you’ve live up to your own set of ethics and personal ethos.

In 8/07 I reported an officer (Ofcr. Teresa Evans/now a Sergeant), for kicking a suspect (excessive force) during a Use of Force while I was assigned as a patrol officer at LAPD’s Harbor Division. While cuffing the suspect, (Christopher Gettler), Evans kicked the suspect twice in the chest and once in the face. The kick to the face left a visible injury on the left cheek below the eye. Unfortunately after reporting it to supervisors and investigated by PSB (internal affairs investigator Det. Villanueva/Gallegos), nothing was done. I had broken their supposed “Blue Line”.

Unfortunately, It’s not JUST US, it’s JUSTICE!!! In fact, 10 months later on 6/25/08, after already successfully completing probation, acquiring a basic Post Certificate, and Intermediate Post Certificate, I was relieved of duty by the LAPD while assigned to patrol at Southwest division. It is clear as day that the department retaliated toward me for reporting Evans for kicking Mr. Christopher Gettler. The department stated that I had lied and made up the report that Evans had kicked the suspect.

I later went to a Board of Rights (department hearing for decision of continued employment) from 10/08 to 1/09. During this BOR hearing a video was played for the BOR panel where Christopher Gettler stated that he was indeed kicked by Officer Evans (video sent to multiple news agencies). In addition to Christopher Gettler stating he was kicked, his father Richard Gettler, also stated that his son had stated he was kicked by an officer when he was arrested after being released from custody. This was all presented for the department at the BOR hearing. They still found me guilty and terminated me.

What they didn’t mention was that the BOR panel made up of Capt. Phil Tingirides, Capt. Justin Eisenberg, and City Attorney Martella had a signigicant problem from the time the board was assembled. Capt. Phil Tingirides was a personal friend of Teresa Evans from when he was her supervisor at Harbor station. That is a clear conflict of interest and I made my argument for his removal early and was denied. The advocate for the LAPD BOR was Sgt. Anderson. Anderson also had a conflict of interest as she was Evans friend and former partner from Harbor division where they both worked patrol together. I made my argument for her removal when I discovered her relation to Evans and it was denied.

 During the BOR, the department attempted to label me unsuccessfully as a bully. They stated that I had bullied a recruit, Abraham Schefres, in the academy when in reality and unfounded disposition from the official 1.28 formal complaint investigation found that I was the one who stood up for Abraham Schefres when other recruits sang nazi hitler youth songs about burning Jewish ghettos in WWII Germany where his father was a survivor of a concentration camp. How fucking dare you attempt to label me with such a nasty vile word. I ask that all earnest journalist investigating this story ask Ofcr. Abraham Schefres about the incident when Ofcr. Burdios began singing a nazi youth song about burning jewish ghettos.

The internal affairs investigation in the academy involving Schefres was spurned by a complaint that I had initiated toward two fellow recruit/offifcers. While on a assigned patrol footbeat in Hollywood Division, Officers Hermilio Buridios IV and Marlon Magana (both current LAPD officers) decided that they would voice their personal feelings about the black community. While traveling back to the station in a 12 passenger van I heard Magana refer to another individual as a nigger. I wasn’t sure if I heard correctly as there were many conversations in the van that was compiled of at least 8 officers and he was sitting in the very rear and me in the very front.

Even with the multiple conversations and ambient noise I heard Officer Magana call an indivdual a nigger again. Now that I had confirmed it, I told Magana not to use that word again. I explained that it was a well known offensive word that should not be used by anyone. He replied, “I’ll say it when I want”. Officer Burdios, a friend of his, also stated that he would say nigger when he wanted. At that point I jumped over my front passenger seat and two other officers where I placed my hands around Burdios’ neck and squeezed. I stated to Burdios, “Don’t fucking say that”. At that point there was pushing and shoving and we were separated by several other officers. What I should have done, was put a Winchester Ranger SXT 9mm 147 grain bullet in his skull and Officer Magana’s skull.

The Situation would have been resolved effective, immediately. The sad thing about this incident was that when Detective Ty from internal affairs investigated this incident only (1) officer (unknown) in the van other than myself had statements constistent with what actually happened. The other six officers (John Carey, Gary Parker, Jacob Waks, Abraham Schefres and names I have forgotten) all stated they heard nothing and saw nothing. Shame on every one of you. Shame on Detective Ty (same ethnicity as Burdios) for creating a separate 1.28 formal complaint against me (Schefres complaint) in retaliation for initiating the complaint against Burdios and Magana. Don’t retaliate against honest officers for breaking your so called blue line.

I hope your son Ryan Ty, who I knew, is a better officer than you, Detective Ty.The saddest part of this ordeal was that Officer Burdios and Magana were only given 22 day suspensions and are still LAPD officers to this day. That day, the LAPD stated that it is acceptable for fellow officers to call black officers niggers to their face and you will receive a slap on the wrist. Even sadder is that during that 22 day suspension Buridios and Magana received is that the LAPPL (Los Angeles Police Protective League) paid the officers their salaries while they were suspended. When I took a two day suspension for an accidental discharge, I took my suspension and never applied for a league salary. Its called integrity.

Journalist, I want you to investigate every location I resided in growing up. Find any incidents where I was ever accused of being a bully. You won’t, because it doesn’t exist. It’s not in my DNA. Never was. I was the only black kid in each of my elementary school classes from first grade to seventh grade in junior high and any instances where I was disciplined for fighting was in response to fellow students provoking common childhood schoolyard fights, or calling me a nigger or other derogatory racial names. I grew up in neighborhoods where blacks make up less than 1%. My first recollection of racism was in the first grade at Norwalk Christian elementary school in Norwalk, CA. A fellow student, Jim Armstrong if I can recall, called me a nigger on the playground. My response was swift and non-lethal. I struck him fast and hard with a punch an kick. He cried and reported it to a teacher. The teacher reported it to the principal. The principal swatted Jim for using a derogatory word toward me. He then for some unknown reason swatted me for striking Jim in response to him calling me a nigger. He stated as good Christians we are to turn the other cheek as Jesus did. Problem is, I’m not a fucking Christian and that old book, made of fiction and limited non-fiction, called the bible, never once stated Jesus was called a nigger. How dare you swat me for standing up for my rights for demanding that I be treated as a equal human being. That day I made a life decision that i will not tolerate racial derogatory terms spoken to me. Unfortunately I was swatted multiple times for the same exact reason up until junior high. Terminating me for telling the truth of a caucasian officer kicking a mentally ill man is disgusting. Don’t ever call me a fucking bully. I want all journalist to utilize every source you have that specializes in collections for your reports. With the discovery and evidence available you will see the truth. Unfortunately, I will not be alive to see my name cleared. That’s what this is about, my name. A man is nothing without his name. Below is a list of locations where I resided from childhood to adulthood.

Cerritos, CA.

Pico Rivera, CA.

La Palma, CA.

Thousand Oaks, CA.

Cedar City, UT.

Pensacola, FL.

Enid, OK.

Yorba Linda, CA.

Las Vegas, NV.

During the BOR an officer named, Sgt. Hernandez, from Los Angeles Port Police testified on behalf of the LAPD. Hernandez stated for the BOR that he arrived at the location of the UOF shortly before I cuffed the suspect. He also stated that he assisted in cuffing the suspect and that’s old the BOR he told me to fix my tie. All of those statements were LIES!!! Hernandez, you arrived at the UOF location up to 30 seconds after I had cuffed Mr. Gettler. All you did was help me lift the suspect to his feet as it was difficult for me to do by myself because of his heavy weight. You did not tell me to fix my tie as the BOR members and everyone else in the room know you lied because the photographic evidence from the UOF scene where Gettler’s injuries were photographed clearly shows me wearing a class B uniform on that day. A class B uniform is a short sleeved uniform blouse. A short sleeved uniform blouse for the LAPD does not have a tie included. This is not Super Troopers uniform, you jackass. Why did you feel the need to embellish and lie about your involvement in the UOF? Are you ashamed that you could not get hired on by any other department other than port police? Do you have delusions of grandeur? What you did was perjury, exactly what Evans did when she stated she did not kick Christopher Gettler.

What they failed to mention in the BOR was Teresa Evans own use of force history during her career on the LAPD. She has admitted that she has a lengthy use of force record and has been flagged several times by risk management. She has a very well known nickname, Chupacabra, which she was very proud to flaunt around the division. She found it very funny and entertaining to draw blood from suspects and arrestees. At one point she even intentionally ripped the flesh off the arm of a woman we had arrested for battery (sprayed her neighbor with a garden water hose). Knowing the woman had thin elastic skin, she performed and Indian burn to the woman’s arm after cuffing her. That woman was in her mid-70′s, a mother and grandmother, and was angry at her tenants who failed to pay rent on time. Something I can completely understand and I am sure many have wanted to do toward tenants who do not pay their rent. Teresa Evans was also demoted from a senior lead officer rank/position for performance issues. During my two months of working patrol with Teresa Evans, I found her as a woman who was very angry that she had been pulled from patrol for a short time because of a domestic violence report made by Long Beach Police Department because of an incident involving her active LAPD officer boyfriend, Dominick Fuentes, and herself. Dominick Fuentes is the same officer investigated for witness tampering. She also was visibly angry on a daily basis that she was going to have to file for bankruptcy because her ex-husband, a former LAPD officer and not Dominick Fuentes, who had left the department, state, and was nowhere to be found had left her with a tax bill and debt that she was unable to pay because of a lack of financial means. Evans, you are a POS and you lied right to the BOR panel when Randy Quan asked you if you kicked Christopher Gettler. You destroyed my life and name because of your actions. Time is up. The time is now to confess to Chief Beck.

I ask that all journalist investigating this story submit request for FOIA with the LAPD to gain access to the BOR transcripts which occurred from 10/08 to 2/09. There, you will see that a video was played for the BOR members of Mr. Christopher Gettler who suffers from Schizophrenia and Dementia stating that he was kicked by a female officer. That video evidence supports my claim that Evans kicked him twice in the upper body and once in the face. I would like all journalist to also request copies of all reports that I had written while employed by LAPD. Whether in the academy, or during my 3 years as a police officer. There are DR#’s attached to each report (investigative report) that I have ever written so they all exist. A FOIA request will most likely be needed to access these at Parker center or at the Personnel/Records. Judge my writin/grammar skills for yourself. The department attempted to paint me as an officer who could not write reports. Even though Sgt. Joel Sydanmaa a training officer who trained me stated for the BOR panel that there was nothing wrong with my report writing and that I was better than all rookie/probationer officers he has ever trained. Officer David Drew stated the same but refused to testify as he did not want to “get involved” with the BOR’s. Contact Sgt. Donald Deming ,(now a Captain at Lompoc PD), Sgt. Thaddeus Faulk, and Sgt. Ed Clark. All will state that my report writing was impeccable. I will tell you this, I always type my reports because I have messy handwriting/penmanship. I never had a single kickback/redlined report at Southwest division and Sgt. Faulk and Sgt. Clark can testify to that. I never received an UNSATISFACTORY on any day or week. The same can be said within the U.S. Naval Reserves. All commanders will state that my report writing was always clear, concise, and impeccable. Even search my AAR (after action reports),chits, Memorandum’s, IIR’s (Intelligence Information Reports) which were written in the Navy. All were pristine.

I had worked patrol at LAPD’s Harbor Division from 2/06 until 7/06 when I was involuntarily recalled back to active duty (US Navy) for a 12 month mobilization/deployment to Centcom in support of OIF/OEF. I returned back to LAPD’s Harbor division on 7/07 and immediately returned to patrol. I worked

at Harbor division until 11/07 where I then transferred to Southwest Division. I worked At Southwest division until 6/25/08 when I was relieved of duty.

I have exhausted all available means at obtaining my name back. I have attempted all legal court efforts within appeals at the Superior Courts and California Appellate courts. This is my last resort. The LAPD has suppressed the truth and it has now lead to deadly consequences. The LAPD’s actions have cost me my law enforcement career that began on 2/7/05 and ended on 1/2/09. They cost me my Naval career which started on 4/02 and ends on 2/13. I had a TS/SCI clearance(Top Secret Sensitive Compartmentalized Information clearance) up until shortly after my termination with LAPD. This is the highest clearance a service member can attain other than a Yankee White TS/SCI which is only granted for those working with and around the President/Vice President of the United States. I lost my position as a Commanding Officer of a Naval Security Forces reserve unit at NAS Fallon because of the LAPD. I’ve lost a relationship with my mother and sister because of the LAPD. I’ve lost a relationship with close friends because of the LAPD. In essence, I’ve lost everything because the LAPD took my name and new I was INNOCENT!!! Capt Phil Tingirides, Justin Eisenberg, Martella, Randy Quan, and Sgt. Anderson all new I was innocent but decided to terminate me so they could continue Ofcr. Teresa Evans career. I know about the meeting between all of you where Evans attorney, Rico, confessed that she kicked Christopher Gettler (excessive force). Your day has come.

I’m not an aspiring rapper, I’m not a gang member, I’m not a dope dealer, I don’t have multiple babies momma’s. I am an American by choice, I am a son, I am a brother, I am a military service member, I am a man who has lost complete faith in the system, when the system betrayed, slandered, and libeled me. I lived a good life and though not a religious man I always stuck to my own personal code of ethics, ethos and always stuck to my shoreline and true North. I didn’t need the US Navy to instill Honor, Courage, and Commitment in me but I thank them for re-enforcing it. It’s in my DNA.

Luckily I don’t have to live everyday like most of you. Concerned if the misconduct you were apart of is going to be discovered. Looking over your shoulder, scurrying at every phone call from internal affairs or from the Captains office wondering if that is the day PSB comes after you for the suspects you struck when they were cuffed months/years ago or that $500 you pocketed from the narcotics dealer, or when the other guys on your watch beat a transient nearly to death and you never reported the UOF to the supervisor. No, I don’t have that concern, I stood up for what was right but unfortunately have dealt with the reprocussions of doing the right thing and now losing my name and everything I ever stood for. You fuckers knew Evans was guilty of kicking (excessive force) Gettler and you did nothing but get rid of what you saw as the problem, the whistleblower. Gettler himself stated on video tape ( provided for the BOR and in transcripts) he was kicked and even his father stated that his son said he was kicked by Evans when he was released from custody. The video was played for the entire BOR to hear. Tingirides, Eisenberg, and Martella all heard it. You’re going to see what a whistleblower can do when you take everything from him especially his NAME!!!

Look what you did to Sgt. Gavin (now lieutenant) when he exposed the truth of your lying, racism, and PSB cover-ups to frame and convict an innocent man. You can not police yourselves and the consent decree was unsuccessful. Sgt. Gavin, I met you on the range several times as a recruit and as an officer. You’re a good man and I saw it in your eyes an actions.

Self Preservation is no longer important to me. I do not fear death as I died long ago on 1/2/09. I was told by my mother that sometimes bad things happen to good people. I refuse to accept that.

From 2/05 to 1/09 I saw some of the most vile things humans can inflict on others as a police officer in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in the streets of LA. It was in the confounds of LAPD police stations and shops (cruisers). The enemy combatants in LA are not the citizens and suspects, it’s the police officers.

People who live in glass houses should not throw stones. How ironic that you utilize a fixed glass structure as your command HQ. You use as a luminous building to symbolize that you are transparent, have nothing to hide, or suppress when in essence, concealing, omitting, and obscuring is your forte.

Chief Beck, this is when you need to have that come to Jesus talk with Sgt. Teresa Evans and everyone else who was involved in the conspiracy to have me terminated for doing the right thing. you also need to speak with her attorney, Rico, and his conversation with the BOR members and her confession of guilt in kicking Mr. Gettler. I’ll be waiting for a PUBLIC response at a press conference. When the truth comes out, the killing stops.

*a glossary of terms and the rest of the manifesto after the jump

The Blood of a Poet // Le sang d'un poète

The Blood of a Poet // Le sang d'un poète (1930)

The Blood of a Poet (French: Le Sang d'un Poete) (1930) is an avant-garde film directed by Jean Cocteau and financed by Charles, Vicomte de Noailles. Photographer Lee Miller made her only film appearance in this movie, and it also features an appearance by the famed aerialist Barbette.[1] It is the first part of the Orphic Trilogy, which is continued in Orphée (1950) and was concluded with Testament of Orpheus (1960).

Director: Jean Cocteau
Writer: Jean Cocteau
Stars: Enrique Rivero, Elizabeth Lee Miller and Pauline Carton

Cannibal Manifesto by Oswaldro de Andrade

Cannibalism: An Introduction to Oswaldo de Andrade’s “Cannibal Manifesto”

The starting date for the Brazilian modernist movement, which advocated a return to the soil, is usually given as 1922, when the major impulse was given by the Week of Modern Art. This revolutionary approach was announced by a woman painter, Anita Malfatti, “the protomartyr of modernism,”whose forward-looking paintings in her second exhibition, in 1917, were derided by Monteiro Lobato (He claimed that she simply contributed her own “-ism” in her paintings where a horse and rider fall over: “I call this genre topple-ism”).

But he himself had a great influence on Brazilian modernism’s most celebrated text, Oswald de Andrade’s “Cannibal Manifesto” of 1928. Also called the “Brazilwood Manifesto,”because it champions the use of native material and turns against artifice, this manifesto takes its name from the cannibalistic Tupi Indians of Brazil who disposed gastronomically of an unloved Bishop. It is outrageously satirical, reading in part: “Only cannibalism unites us... Tupi or not tupi, that is the question.”

The manifesto shares the title of a Dada publication of two issues, Cannibale, whose lively primitivistic spirit is joined to the Russian Rayonists, with their Why-We-Paint-Our-Faces manifesto against the sophisticated and over-civilized society.

Andrade’s preface to Seraphim Ponte Grande is another modernist manifesto that repudiates Modernism: “The Modernist Movement, culminating in anthropophagous measles, seemed to indicate an advanced phenomenon.” Elsewhere, he distinguishes between the two: “Simultaneity is the coexistence of things and events at a given moment. Polyphony is the simultaneous artistic union of two or more melodies which have the fleeting effect of clashing sounds as they contribute to a total final effect.”

Cannibal Manifesto
by Oswaldro de Andrade
translated from the Portuguese by Mary Ann Caws and Claudia Caliman  

Only Cannibalism unites us. Socially. Economically. Philosophically.
The unique law of the world. The disguised expression of all individualisms, all collectivisms. Of all religions. Of all peace treaties.

Tupi or not tupi that is the question.

Against all catechisms. And against the mother of the Gracos.

I am only interested in what’s not mine. The law of men. The law of the cannibal.

We are tired of all those suspicious Catholic husbands in plays. Freud finished off the enigma of woman and the other recent psychological seers.

What dominated over truth was clothing, an impermeable layer between the interior world and the exterior world. Reaction against people in clothes. The American cinema will tell us about this.

Sons of the sun, mother of living creatures. Fiercely met and loved, with all the hypocrisy of longing: importation, exchange, and tourists. In the country of the big snake.

It’s because we never had grammatical structures or collections of old vegetables. And we never knew urban from suburban, frontier country from continental. Lazy on the world map of Brazil.

One participating consciousness, one religious rhythm.

Against all the importers of canned conscience. For the palpable existence of life. And let Levy-Bruhl go study prelogical mentality.

We want the Cariba Revolution. Bigger than the French Revolution. For the unification of all the efficient revolutions for the sake of human beings. Without us, Europe would not even have had its paltry declaration of the rights of men.

The golden age proclaimed by America. The golden age. And all the girls.

Filiation. The contact with the Brazilian Cariba Indians. Ou Villegaignon print terre. Montaigne. Natural man. Rousseau. From the French Revolution to Romanticism, to the Bolshevik Revolution, to the Surrealist Revolution and the technological barbarity of Keyserling. We’re moving right along.

We were never baptized. We live with the right to be asleep. We had Christ born in Bahia. Or in Belem do Pata.

But for ourselves, we never admitted the birth of logic.

Against Father Vieira, the Priest. Who made our first loan, to get a commission. The illiterate king told him: put this on paper but without too much talk. So the loan was made. Brazilian sugar was accounted for. Father Vieira left the money in Portugal and just brought us the talk.

The spirit refuses to conceive spirit without body. Anthropomorphism. Necessity of cannibalistic vaccine. For proper balance against the religions of the meridian. And exterior inquisitions.

We can only be present to the hearing world.

We had the right codification of vengeance. The codified science of Magic. Cannibalism. For the permanent transformation of taboo into totem.

Against the reversible world and objectified ideas. Made into cadavers. The halt of dynamic thinking. The individual a victim of the system. Source of classic injustices. Of romantic injustices. And the forgetfulness of interior conquests.

Screenplays. Screenplays. Screenplays. Screenplays. Screenplays. Screenplays. Screenplays.

Cariba instinct.

Death and life of hypotheses. From the equation I coming from the Cosmos to the axiom Cosmos coming from the I. Subsistence. Knowledge. Cannibalism.

Against the vegetable elites. In communication with solitude.

We were never baptized. We had the Carnival. The Indian dressed as a Senator of the Empire. Acting the part of Pitt. Or playing in the operas of Alencar with many good Portuguese feelings.

We already had communism. We already had a surrealist language. The golden age.

Catiti Catiti
Imara Notia
Notia Imara
Ipeju*

Magic and life. We had relations and distribution of fiscal property, moral property, and honorific property. And we knew how to transport mystery and death with the help of a few grammatical forms.

I asked a man what was Right. He answered me that it was the assurance of the full exercise of possibilities. That man was called Galli Mathias. I ate him.

The only place there is no determinism is where there is mystery. But what has that to do with us?

Against the stories of men that begin in Cape Finisterre. The world without dates. Without rubrics. Without Napoleon. Without Caesar.

The fixation of progress by means of catalogues and television sets. Only with machinery. And blood transfusions.

Against antagonistic sublimations brought over in sailing ships.

Against the truth of the poor missionaries, defined through the wisdom of a cannibal, the Viscount of Cairo – It is a lie repeated many times.

But no crusaders came to us. They were fugitives from a civilization that we are eating up, because we are strong and as vindictive as the land turtles.

Only God is the conscience of the Uncreated Universe, Guaraci is the mother of all living creatures. Jaci is the mother of vegetables.

We never had any speculation. But we believed in divination. We had Politics, that is, the science of distribution. And a socio-planetary system.

Migrations. The flight from tedious states. Against urban scleroses. Against Conservatives and speculative boredom.

From William James and Voronoff. Transfiguration of taboo into totem. Cannibalism.

The pater familias is the creation of the stork fable: a real ignorance of things, a tale of imagination and a feeling of authority in front of curious crowds.

We have to start from a profound atheism in order to reach the idea of God. But the Cariba did not have to make anything precise. Because they had Guaraci.

The created object reacts like the Fallen Angel. Ever since, Moses has been wandering about. What is that to us?

Before two Portuguese discovered Brazil, Brazil discovered happiness.

Against the Indian de tocheiro. The Indian son of Mary, the godson of Catherine of Médicis and the son-in-law of Don Antonio de Mariz.

Happiness is the real proof.

No Pindorama matriarchy.

Against Memory the source of habit. Renewed for personal experience.

We are concrete. We take account of ideas, we react, we burn people in the public squares. We suppress ideas and other kinds of paralysis. Through screenplays. To believe in our signs, to believe in our instruments and our stars.

Against Goethe, against the mother of the Gracos, and the Court of Don Juan VI.

Happiness is the real proof.

The struggle between what we might call the Uncreated and the Created – illustrated by the permanent contradiction of man and his taboo. Daily love and the capitalist modus vivendi. Cannibalism. Absorption of the sacred enemy. To transform him into a totem. The human adventure. Earthly finality. However, only the pure elite manage to realize carnal cannibalism within, some sense of life, avoiding all the evils Freud identified, those religious evils. What yields nothing is a sublimation of the sexual instinct. It is a thermometric scale of cannibalist instinct. Once carnal, it turns elective and creates friendship. Affectivity, or love. Speculative, science. It deviates and transfers. We arrive at utter vilification. In base cannibalism, our baptized sins agglomerate – envy, usury, calumny, or murder. A plague from the so-called cultured and Christianized, it’s what we are acting against. Cannibals.

Against Anchieta singing the eleven thousand virgins in the land of Iracema – the patriarch Joa Ramalho the founder of Sao Paulo.

Our independence was never proclaimed. A typical phrase of Don Juan VI – My son, put this crown on your head, before some adventurer does it! We expel the dynasty. We have to get rid of the Braganza spirit, the ordinations and snuff of Maria da Fonte.

Against social reality, dressed and oppressive, defined by Freud – in reality we are complex, we are crazy, we are prostitutes and without prisons of the Pindorama matriarchy.


Endnote

*“The New Moon, or the Lua Nova, blows in Everyman remembrances of me” in The Savages, by Couto Magalhaes.

Translator

Mary Ann Caws
www.gc.cuny.edu

 

 

 

LES KRIMS: Sex and Outrage

 Fall, Fargo Avenue, Buffalo, New York

 The Static Electric Effect of Minnie Mouse on Mickey Mouse Ballons

Les Krims is a conceptual photographer that's been conjuring outrage and and titillating the rest of us since the 1960's. He's been denounced by the ethically righteous, feminist elites and anti-porn groups.  Occupying some awkward place between fantasy and hallucination, his photographs seemingly expose something almost more-real or perhaps, more-honest than the immediately perceptible world, despite being called 'fictions'.  Either way, Krims has been pretty damn good at pissing people off - in 1971 a Memphis man kidnapped a boy, demanding that four Les Krims photographs be removed from a local exhibition (the kidnapper was successful) and in 1980 feminist Nikki Craft destroyed a series of his prints and poured chocolate syrup on them (you can read her reasoning here).  

The 4 manipulated Polaroids above (X-70 photographs, altered while they're still wet) were originally published in his 1975 book, Fictcryptokrimsographs: A Book-Work, (Humpy Press).   He's additionally published  numerous books of photography, which I highly recommend looking up if these images get you hot, or at least curious.

For more of Les Krims photographs and text written by the artist visit his website

All images are copyright of their respective owners, assignees or others.

CASTRATION SQUAD

1980-81, Castration Squad on Peter Ivers's New Wave Theatre.
L-R: Tiffany Kennedy (Cambridge Apostles), Elissa Bello (Go-Go's), Shannon Wilhelm, Mary Bat Thing (aka Dinah Cancer),  Tracy Lea (who was also in Red Cross and appeared as Tanya Hearst in the cult movie'Desperate Teenage Lovedolls') and Alice Bag. The band played a JFK memorial show each year on the anniversary of his assassination. 

Read more HERE

The Terror of Belief

Reading political commentary authored by average americans is repulsive.

An excerpt from Noam Chomsky: "The Disconnect in US Democracy"

Americans may be encouraged to vote, but not to participate more meaningfully in the political arena. Essentially the election is a method of marginalising the population. A huge propaganda campaign is mounted to get people to focus on these personalised quadrennial extravaganzas and to think, "That’s politics." But it isn’t. It’s only a small part of politics. The population has been carefully excluded from political activity, and not by accident. An enormous amount of work has gone into that disenfranchisement. During the 1960s the outburst of popular participation in democracy terrified the forces of convention, which mounted a fierce counter-campaign. Manifestations show up today on the left as well as the right in the effort to drive democracy back into the hole where it belongs. Excerpted from: "The Disconnect in US Democracy", Khaleej Times, October 29, 2004 Read the whole article here “If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.” Emma Goldman

RESURRECT THE OCCULT

LET US RESURRECT THE OCCULT!   

LET US STRIKE FEAR IN THE HEARTS OF THE BLIND AND SELF-RIGHTOUS!  

LET US MAKES FOOLS OUT OF THE GODLY AND PERJURERS OF THE MINISTERS OF SHAME.

LET US EXPLOIT THE BENIGHTED, PROVOKE THE MORAL AND SICKEN THOSE WHO SLANDER THE NATURE OF MAN.

THE GLORY OF GOD IS THE BONDAGE OF HUMANITY!

THE CRISIS OF FREEDOM SHALL BE OUR BURDEN AND OUR SALVATION.

RISE UP APOSTATES! UNNERVE THE RATS! 

WHERE THERE IS NO REASON, ONLY THE ABSURD CAN COMBAT THE ABSURD. 

 June 19, 1972

April 8, 1966

July 2008

THE GOD IS DEAD MOVEMENT                                                            

The cover of the April 8, 1966 edition of Time magazine asked the question "Is God Dead?" and the accompanying article addressed growing atheism in America at the time.At the time, a movement called "death of God" was arising in American theology. The death of God movement is sometimes technically referred to as "theothanatology." (In Greek, Theos means God and Thanatos means death.) 

The main proponents of this theology included the Christian theologians Gabriel Vahanian, Paul Van Buren, William Hamilton, John A.T. Robinson, Thomas J. J. Altizer, John D. Caputo, and the rabbi Richard L. Rubenstein.

In 1961, Vahanian's book The Death of God was published. Vahanian argued that modern secular culture had lost all sense of the sacred, lacking any sacramental meaning, no transcendental purpose or sense of providence. He concluded that for the modern mind "God is dead". In Vahanian's vision a transformed post-Christian and post-modern culture was needed to create a renewed experience of deity.

Both Van Buren and Hamilton agreed that the concept of transcendence had lost any meaningful place in modern thought. According to the norms of contemporary modern thought, God is dead. In responding to this collapse in transcendence Van Buren and Hamilton offered secular people the option of Jesus as the model human who acted in love. The encounter with the Christ of faith would be open in a church-community.

Altizer offered a radical theology of the death of God that drew upon William Blake, Hegelian thought and Nietzschean ideas. He conceived of theology as a form of poetry in which the immanence (presence) of God could be encountered in faith communities. However, he no longer accepted the possibility of affirming belief in a transcendent God. Altizer concluded that God had incarnated in Christ and imparted his immanent spirit which remained in the world even though Jesus was dead.  Unlike Nietzsche, Altizer believed that God truly died. He is considered to be the leading exponent of the Death of God movement.

Rubenstein represented that radical edge of Jewish thought working through the impact of the Holocaust. In a technical sense he maintained, based on the Kabbalah, that God had "died" in creating the world. However, for modern Jewish culture he argued that the death of God occurred in Auschwitz. Although the literal death of God did not occur at this point, this was the moment in time in which humanity was awakened to the idea that a theistic God may not exist. In Rubenstein's work, it was no longer possible to believe in an orthodox/traditional theistic God of the Abrahamic covenant; rather, God is a historical process.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Parable of the Madman (1882)                          

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" -- As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? -- Thus they yelled and laughed.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him -- you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us -- for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars -- and yet they have done it themselves.

It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"

[Source: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) para. 125; Walter Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82.]