Radiohead's 7th album is released today!

There's not too much I can add to the hype enveloping Radiohead's new LP so this'll be brief. Last night my brother and I had an In Rainbows listening party, and after a cursory listen I've got to say this is a merciful departure from the frusturating gray-ness of Hail to the Theif, implementing more snarling rock guitar and showcasing the majestic sweep of Yorke's voice. If a group even makes it to the 7th album their material is usually reheated and uninspiring, which was the downward sprial I was afraid Radiohead couldn't free itself from, but as this album proves the band has returned to the fold.

Be sure to "BUY" In Rainbows

Also, Pitchfork has a detailed "guide" to the new album.

Stephen Hawking interviewed on "Yair Lapid"

Rock Hard Review: "Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad During the Surge" by Pepe Escobar; Buried Alive

Self-deception is one of the necessary features of life during wartime. The smoke-and-mirrors charade of faultless good vs. bottomless evil becomes a tautology and all humanizing nuances of the enemy are discarded to maintain the gruesome volley. When somebody speaks truth to power it's akin to a surprise gut-punch. Nobody wants to see the receipt to the Emperor's new clothes - not even the Emperor. However, Pepe Escobar's pitch perfect "Red Zone Blues" is a sucker-punch we need to our collective, doughy mid-sections.

"Blues" is Mr. Escobar's first person account of how the "surge" reshaped Iraq and its neighboring countries. The increase in violence pushed anyone with a semblance of money or connections out of the country. They now float in limbo, waiting in Syria and Jordan until the killing subsides or until they elect to roll the dice and request admission to a Western country. This state of suspended animation is astutely portrayed by a description of an Iraqi mother escaping Baghdad:

"Only her eyelashes can be seen in profile, fluttering obsessively like the wings of a butterfly. She is like her own striking, svelte Kaaba, surrounded by an ocean of pilgrims -- full black elegantly draped chador over jeans and a discreet mauve pair of pointy shoes, full hijab, only the heavily kohl-rimmed eyelashes trying to decode the torn-down messages in Arabic script and then the official's request for a pile of abstruse documents. Inevitably she has to sit down, like everyone else, in the antechamber of purgatory -- the cramped, dingy room of the consular section of the Iraqi Embassy in Damascus."

In these extreme conditions skilled technicians are reduced to selling baked goods, earning less than the cost of living for their families. "Little Fallujahs" and "Little Baghdads" follow the refugees to their new homesteads, weak echoes of their homeland.

Much of "Blues" centers around Baghdad and its American made "gulag", Pentagon-mandated walls inside the city. These gated communities were intended for privileged buyers and defy the will of the Iraqis who unambiguously opposed its construction. The idea of divide and control through artificial barriers is a motif Mr. Escobar frequently touches upon.

The most secure area of Baghdad is known as the "Green Zone" and the unsecured segments of the city, everywhere else, has been labeled the "Red Zone". When observing what goes on inside the former it is easy to understand why the latter is a mess. It is from inside the Green Zone where the Iraqis lost control of their oil fields which were privatized, not nationalized as the Iraqis desired. This type of crude strategizing -- forgive the pun -- only serves to roil the tension in the air.

Yet, this tension isn't a recent creation. It has been bubbling beneath the surface throughout the 1990s with the "Sanctions Generation". The average annual income nosedived as a result of U.N. sanctions effectively annihilating the middle class. Only Saddam Hussein and his sycophants retained the lion's share of Iraqi wealth while traditionally high wage earning professions like physicians struggled to survive. People jockeyed to charm the governing coterie to feed their families. Children would try to befriend classmates who belonged to the powerful clique so their parents could eat. As ruinous as the sanctions were on the Iraqi population they successfully partitioned and stratified the society into an American wet dream.

Remarkably, throughout this dark period there was no sectarian rivalry. One of Mr. Escobar's primary strengths is his doctorly dissection of the motivation behind the violence in Iraq. He presents the various tribes without the expected sterility that would typically accompany such a litany. To say Shiites are seeking revenge against the Sunnis is an oversimplification. For example, some of the more promising news from Iraq is how Sheikh Abu Risha, a Sunni tribal leader, joined forces with the Iraqi government, largely Shiite, to combat Salafi-jihadists. Also, Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army in Sadr City favors national unity, reviles Iranian power grabs and finds no comfort in an extended American presence. Muqtada al-Sadr's opinions are held by the majority of Iraqis, regardless of tribal or party affiliation, making him one of the most popular public figures in the region. Can't exactly wedge that into a 15 second sound bite, can you?

It all comes down to walls. In the preface, the author quotes a passage from Poe's Masque of the Red Death, a Gothic short story describing a man being buried alive, which proves to be worrisomely pertinent. Be it draconian sanctions blocking citizens from their wealth or an American satellite regime denying Iraqis a political voice or even literal barriers fortified without irony in "strategic" areas, our intentions are clear. We will keep cordoning off Iraq brick by brick until the country is fully entombed.

"Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad During the Surge" by Pepe Escobar

Friday Flashback: Devo - "Whip it" & "Uncontrollable Urge" ("Fridays") and "Mongoloid" (French T.V.)

The People of Burma are Punished for Dissenting

What does the Bush administration really think about the military junta in Myanmar? Publicly, it condemns the government's actions but privately I suspect our handlers are moving us closer toward a military junta of our own. In Myanmar the internet is strictly monitored going as far as taking screen captures inside internet cafes every five minutes, the rulers live lavishly while the poor is largely ignored and a substantial portion of their income is devoted to a massive standing army. The parallels are frightening.

If this administration was serious about promoting Burmese democracy they wouldn't sanction the brutal regime. We've learned from Iraq that sanctions effect the people, not the government. We need to fund the pro-democracy resistance by providing proxy servers to help organize the counter-movement and by smuggling aid into the country.

SOURCE


Soldiers Hunt Dissidents in Myanmar

YANGON, Myanmar — Soldiers announced that they were hunting pro-democracy protesters in Myanmar’s largest city Wednesday and the top U.S. diplomat in the country said military police were pulling people out of their homes during the night.

Military vehicles patrolled the streets before dawn with loudspeakers blaring that: “We have photographs. We are going to make arrests!”

Shari Villarosa, the acting U.S. ambassador in Myanmar, said in a telephone interview that people in Yangon were terrified.

“From what we understand, military police … are traveling around the city in the middle of the night, going into homes and picking up people,” she said.

Residents living near the Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar’s most revered shrine and a flashpoint of unrest, reported that police swept through several dozen homes in the middle of the night, dragging away several men for questioning. The homes were located above shops at a marketplace that caters to the nearby pagoda, selling monks robes and begging bowls.

Meanwhile, the junta pursued other means of intimidation. An employee from the Ministry of Transport, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that he was told to sign a statement saying he and his family would not take part in any political activity and would not listen to foreign radio reports. Many in Myanmar use short-wave radios to pick up foreign English-language stations - a main source for news about their tightly controlled country.

The U.N.’s special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, declined to comment on his four-day mission to Myanmar, where the military junta last month crushed mass pro-democracy demonstrations led by the nation’s revered Buddhist monks.

Villarosa said embassy staff had gone to some monasteries in recent days and found them completely empty. Others were barricaded by the military and declared off-limits to outsiders.

“There is a significantly reduced number of monks on the streets. Where are the monks? What has happened to them?” she said. The Democratic Voice of Burma, a dissident radio station based in Norway, said authorities have released 90 of 400 monks detained in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin state, during a midnight raid on monasteries on Sept. 25.

A semblance of normality returned to Yangon after daybreak, with some shops opening and light traffic on roads.

However, “people are terrified, and the underlying forces of discontent have not been addressed,” Villarosa said. “People have been unhappy for a long time … Since the events of last week, there’s now the unhappiness combined with anger, and fear.”

Some people remained hopeful that democracy would come.

“I don’t believe the protests have been totally crushed,” said Kin, a 29-year-old language teacher in Yangon, whose father and brother had joined a 1988 pro-democracy movement that ended in a crackdown in which at least 3,000 people were killed.

“There is hope, but we fear to hope,” she said. “We still dream of rearing our children in a country where everybody would have equal chances at opportunities.”

The military has ruled Myanmar since 1962, and the current junta came to power after snuffing out the 1988 pro-democracy movement. The generals called elections in 1990 but refused to give up power when Suu Kyi’s party won.

The military crushed the protests on Sept. 26 and 27 with live ammunition, tear gas and beatings. Hundreds of monks and civilians were carted off to detention camps. The government says 10 people were killed in the violence. But dissident groups put the death toll at up to 200 and say 6,000 people were detained.

Among those killed was Japanese television cameraman Kenji Nagai of the APF news agency. His body was flown from Myanmar to Tokyo on Wednesday.

Gambari went to Myanmar on Saturday to convey the international community’s outrage at the junta’s actions. He also hoped to persuade the junta to take the people’s aspirations seriously.

He met junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe and his deputies and talked to detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi twice.

Gambari avoided the media in Singapore, where he arrived Tuesday night en route to New York. He was not expected to issue any statement before briefing U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday.

The junta has not commented on Gambari’s visit and the United Nations has only released photos of Gambari and a somber, haggard-looking Suu Kyi - who has spent nearly 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest - shaking hands during their meeting in a state guest house in Yangon.

In Singapore, Gambari met with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, the chairman of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations bloc of which Myanmar is a member.

A Singapore government statement said Lee told Gambari that ASEAN “is fully behind his mission” to bring about “a political solution for national reconciliation and a peaceful transition to democracy.”

© 2007 The Associated Press

Brainwashing is easy

Bolivia’s Evo Morales Wins Hearts and Minds in US

Bolivia’s Evo Morales Wins Hearts and Minds in US
by Deborah James and Medea Benjamin

While Iranian President Ahmedinejad stole the headlines during the United Nations meeting last week in New York, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales - a humble coca farmer, former llama herder and union organizer - stole the hearts of the American people. At public events and media appearances, Bolivia’s first-ever indigenous president reached out to the American people to dialogue directly on issues of democracy, environmental sustainability, and social and economic justice.

Morales appeared at a public event packed with representatives of New York’s Latino, labor, and other communities, speaking for 90 minutes - without notes - about how he came to power, and about his government’s efforts to de-colonize the nation, the poorest in South America. At first, he said, community organizations did not want to enter the cesspool of politics. But they realized that if they wanted the government to act in the interest of the poor Indigenous majority, they were going to have to make alliances with other social movements, win political representation democratically, and then transform the government.

Now having been elected to office, they have a clear mandate based on the urgent needs of the majority: to organize a Constitutional Assembly to rewrite the Constitution (controversial with the traditional elites, but well on its way), engage in a comprehensive program of land reform and decriminalize the production of coca for domestic use (in progress), and reclaim control over the oil and gas industries (mission accomplished.)

While other heads of state were meeting with bankers and billionaires, Morales asked his staff to set up a meeting with U.S. grassroots leaders so he could learn about our struggles and how we could work together. The meeting included high-ranking labor leaders, immigrant organizers, Indigenous leaders, peace activists and environmentalists. “I’ve lived in New York during a lot of UN meetings, and I’ve never seen a president reach out to the labor community like Evo did today,” remarked Ed Ott, Executive Director of the New York City Central Labor Council.

The President listened patiently while U.S. organizers talked about efforts to stop the war in Iraq, injustices in the prison system, organizing efforts of low-wage immigrant workers, struggles for Indigenous rights and the difficulties of getting the Bush administration to seriously address the crisis of climate change. “For a farmer to become President, that is a dream come true!” commented Niel Ritchie, president of the League of Rural Voters. “Listening to President Morales, it’s so easy to see how our current trade model has wreaked havoc on farmers in the U.S. as well as in Bolivia.”

His most widespread outreach, however, was on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, who also seemed captivated by this Indigenous farmer-turned-president. Speaking through an interpreter, Morales told millions of Americans how his government’s policies have brought hundreds of millions of dollars for the nation’s poor - that would have gone to foreign corporate coffers - through the nationalization of oil and gas. Revenues from hydrocarbons, mostly natural gas, have increased from $440 million in 2004 to over $1.5 billion in 2006 - a significant amount in Bolivia’s economy, as it is an increase from 5 percent of GDP to over 13 percent of GDP. This year revenues will likely top $2 billion, he said. With a twinkle in his eye as he made a measured critique of the Bush administration’s policies, he said that in this new century, armies should save lives through humanitarian aid, not take lives.

Throughout Morales’ media appearances (including a lengthy segment on Democracy Now!), official speeches at the United Nations, and public meetings, he focused on three main points. The most salient was on the urgency of the need for comprehensive solutions to climate change while simultaneously improving the lives of the poor. “We have to be honest about the causes of this global warming. Overconsumption in the developed countries. Overpollution in the developed countries.” At the same time, he argued that the poor still need more access to energy: “Just like we fought to make water a human right, we need an international campaign to make access to energy a human right.”

These sentiments resonated with Brent Blackwelder, President of Friends of the Earth US, who participated in the meeting with Morales. “We need to find solutions that will reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the countries of the global north, while fighting for clean energy and poverty reduction in the global south.” Van Jones, Founder of Green for All agreed. “We’re fighting for social justice and climate solutions within the U.S., and we can join forces with and learn from our allies, like President Morales, with the same vision globally.”

Morales also emphasized the importance of the struggle for the right to life, which in Bolivia refers to the fight against corporate globalization and for access to water, food, education, and health care. Specifically, before Morales was elected, Bolivia suffered tremendously under two decades of programs of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, including the privatizations of water services and the hydrocarbon industry. Bolivia has now had much of its debt cancelled and is no longer bound by an IMF agreement, thanks to the anti-debt movement and a lot of help from Venezuela.

Although Bolivia is rich in natural resources, the Indigenous majority has rarely benefited from their exploitation, and the country remains vastly unequal and majority poor. The Bolivian government’s efforts to ensure a more fair distribution of the natural resource wealth has resulted in their being sued by foreign multinational corporations for “future expected profits” from their investments.

Under international trade and investment agreements, these cases are adjudicated - not in Bolivian national courts, as would be the case for national companies - but through the World Bank’s International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, ICSID. (This is similar to the “rights” given to foreign investors to sue sovereign governments in bilateral and regional trade agreements, called “Chapter 11″ investor-to-state provisions in the North American Free Trade Agreement.) ICSID does not have the transparency, checks and balances, or openness of a real judicial system, yet its findings are binding.

This past May, the Bolivian government announced it would withdraw from ICSID. Although most Americans are unaware of ICSID, it is regularly used by U.S. and European corporations to counter efforts by developing countries to re-nationalize natural resources and the provision of public services like water, according to a major report by the Institute for Policy Studies and Food and Water Watch. During his talks, Morales called on the international community to support their efforts for “an ongoing global campaign against this type of investor rule.”

The third point highlighted by Morales relates to bilateral relations with the United States. The U.S. government, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) currently operates an Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) in Bolivia. (OTI offices are usually designed to help enable Washington-favored regime change; the only other one in Latin America is in Venezuela.) The Bolivian government has accused the United States of using USAID money to build opposition to the new government and its political party, the MAS, something the U.S. had done in the past. According to the Associated Press, “A declassified 2002 cable from the U.S. Embassy in La Paz described a USAID-sponsored ‘political party reform project’ to ‘help build moderate, pro-democracy political parties that can serve as a counterweight to the radical MAS or its successors.’”

But Evo’s main argument was regarding the former president, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, commonly known as Goni. During the “gas wars” of 2003, troops fired on protesters, killing 67 and wounding over 300 people. Days later, Goni abdicated the presidency and flew to Washington, DC, where he now resides. The Bolivian Supreme Court is seeking extradition of Goni, and two of his former ministers, not for revenge, according to Evo, but “so that they can be held accountable for their crimes by standing trial in Bolivia.”

While it seems unlikely that the United States would consent to the extradition, considering their lack of cooperation with the Venezuelan government’s request for the extradition of terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, the recent agreement of the Chilean government to extradite former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori to face trial in Peru does set a precedent that will be hard for the United States to ignore. The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns has worked to educate the public about this issue, and the Center for Constitutional Rights just announced a new major lawsuit against Goni and former Minister of Defense Jose Carlos Sánchez Berzaín for compensatory and punitive damages under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) and the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA) on behalf of families of the victims.

After decades of politicians who robbed the country’s coffers and left the people in poverty and despair, Bolivia now has a leader who is known to be honest, sincere and trustworthy. Bolivia also has a leader who inspires hope in the Indigenous population. This hope is now embodied, worldwide, in the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a brand-new declaration approved in the United Nations this September, after a 25-year struggle. At the grassroots meeting with Morales, Tonya Gonella Frichner, President and Founder of the American Indian Law Alliance, highlighted Bolivia’s helpful role in the passage of the declaration, and both she and Morales agreed that “the next step is ensuring that the declaration is implemented.”

Morales, anxious to apply Indigenous wisdom to solve the global climate crisis, is calling for the United Nations to convene a world indigenous forum to “foster a new approach to economic relations based on an appreciation of natural resources and not their exploitation.”

The world has much to learn from the sustainable lifestyles of Indigenous people and from the grassroots movement that has come to power in Bolivia. At a time when our planet is crying out for leadership with vision and integrity, Evo Morales and the Bolivian example should give hope to us all.

Deborah James is the Director of International Programs at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Medea Benjamin is a Co-Founder of Global Exchange and CodePink: Women for Peace.