I talked about those last year. If you saw last week's news, you know that human rights are more than ever in the news. The WTO, "Wealthy Take Over," an undemocratic organization solely representing Corporate Capital, the province of less than one percent of Americans, and a miniscule fraction of the world, are dead set on preserving and extending slave, sweatshop, or child labor in China or Malaysia or Bangladesh, and soon to the United States and Europe.
Standard operating procedure for Big Business. Jack Welch, the $50M-per-annum president of GE (Greed Electric) openly wishes that he could put "his" factories on barges, ' so he could immediately go where labor is cheapest! This after taking tens of $billions in subsidies from the U.S. Government, not to mention the life's work of hundreds of thousands of American workers, as his and stockholders own "private property." Such "property" is the instrument of exploitation, and should be returrned to the workers who created it.
Environmental protection? The WTO claims that they, operating in secret, can overturn democratically enacted laws like the Endangered Species Act, if they interefere with "free trade," which in their bizarre lexicon is synonymous with "corporate profit." Do you want to know if there are genetically engineered hormones in your food. Excessive lead in your gasoline? The WTO won't let the labels tell you. Object to "terminator" seeds? To prducts made by forced labor? To farming practices that destroy whole species? The WTO is there to prevent you, the consumer, from finding out or doing anything about it. Genetically engineered food does not enhance human health, only corporate bottom lines. Who let them get away with this? George Bush and Bill Clinton both pushed for these, as well as MAI and "fast track," even less oversight.
I had a good time at the "Big March" organized by the AFL-CIO. . It was completely peaceful, and even festive. The unions did a good job in bringing to the meeting workers from Barbados, Italy, Indonesia, China, and Mexico, whom our cheap-labor policies are supposedly helping. A Chinese dissident said in plain language: "the corporate elite are no better than those murderers in Beijing." I felt empowered to represent a hundred thousand workers who were with me in spirit, but couldn't afford the plane fare. If there is a silver lining to all this, it is at least that the World Congress of Corporate Greed has now galvanized a common enemy in labor, environmental, and human rights groups, demonstrating together. I sincerely hope this new coalition holds together and grows dramatically!
The big peaceful demonstrations numbering 30 to 50 thousands, and representing MILLIONS (of people, not dollars) didn't get the headlines, nor the nonviolent direct actions which \ sucessfully shut down the ceremonial opening session. Predictably, opportunists numbering less than a hundred, and much fewer in number than the armed police, who broke a few windows of Sweatshop Nike and Rainforest-destroying Starbuck's, got all the press. Seattle residents got a small taste of the corporate-sponsored violence, not even the deadly kind, that is dealt out on a daily basis to people who struggle for fair wages in the Third World. No doubt the next WTO will be held in Singabore, where a police state operates daily, and doesn't have to be conducted on a callup basis.
A "no protest zone?" in a DEMOCRACY? It was the Seattle Police, bolstered by the National Guard, that injured human beings, rubber bullets ripping off the jaws and smashing the teeth of ordinary citizens, police helicopters thrumming ominously overhead, the hallmarks of fascism, recalling of the atrocities US Business Interests inflicted on Vietnam in the 60's and 70's. Those whom the out-of-control police injured were generally neighborhood residents who weren't even part of the demonstrations. A few tactical errors: the police gassed at least four City Council Members, and dragged one, who happened to be black, out of his car and started beating him. There is a hearing this week, and the police chief and two assistant chiefs have rightly resigned, but individual officers who gassed pepper-sprayed innocent people full in the eyes or kicked them in the crotch, should be identified and fired.
Dropping the word "overweight" from the lexicon. It's pejorative. We don't call tall people "overheight."
In London, I had more dates in a week than I have in a year in Seattle! Maybe I should mover there, but that may just be the grass being greener, etc. I enjoyed a trip to Greenwich Observatory, and looked at the chronometer that won the "longitude prize," but only after thirty years, and with George III personally intervening.
I visited my closest living relatives on my father's side of the family in Subcarpathia, Ukraine. My card photo this year was taken in the house that great-uncle Petro (1909-1996) built after escaping from the Russians in 1937. He was evidently a Renaissance Man who could build a house from scratch, including facilities for milling grain and smoking meat, so he could barter with neighbors for food, and his own wooden flute. He was featured in a segment on Ukrainian TV before his death. I stayed with his grandson, also named Petro. These folks work full time, but have to wait months for pay. In order to eat, they keep livestock on their suburban lots. Tremendous hospitality, and plenteous food and beer!
After an interlude hiking in the High Tatras of Slovakia, and taking in some "black light theater" in Prague, I headed for Istanbul.
After you can tune out the obnoxious carpet touts, and learn now to handle crooked cabbies, one can have wonderful architectural experiences. The Hagia Sophia, the main church of Christendom for 1000 years, twice as long as St. Peter's, built in 532 and ever impressive, filled a morning. I also toured the Topkapi Palace and Harem, plus the Mosques, the Spice Market, and ate good food everywhere. The Turkish bath built for Suleyman the Magnificent by hiis gifted architect Sinan (they were maybe both "family") was still in operation. I don't much care for Turkish massages, though. They're fairly rough-and-tumble.
I spent a good day in Bursa, which reminds me of the Santa Clara Velley in California before Silicon: olives, chestnuts, fruit and nut orchards, the old Kingdom of Bythina, with whose king Julius Caesar is said to have had an affair, giving him the epithet "Queen of Bithynia."
I then took a bus to modern Ankara, more good food including "Iskender Kebap," and a package tour to view the Total Eclipse of the Sun in Osmancik. We had good seeing and clear skies. The light near eclipse is strange, since it is dark but not the orange of sunset (the latter caused by greater atmosphereic absorption). We had 2min 16sec of totality. We also met some local high schooloers during their town's 15 min of fame, and also kindred spirits from Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Japan.
Following on this, I spent the rest of the trip in the Mediterranean parts of Turkey and the Greek Islands, with two old friends from Bay Area Days. We were about 1000 km from the Great Earthquake of 17 August, and did not even find out about it until the extent of the damage became apparent a couple of days later in the papers. The TV only showed one damaged building, so we thought a gas line had exploded. Alas, greed here too accounted for loss of life. Contractors had shaved on the building codes to increase profit.
The Goddess still lives in subdued circumstances, in museums, and in the remains of the Temple of Cyble/Artemis/Diana at Ephesus, whose hundred ninety-two columns are reduced to one and a half, a stork's nest and some frogs in ponds. To these Goddesses, we can add the Virgin Mary, who somehow ended up living in the same "female Goddess" district. We also toured Aphrodisias and Heiropolis, the latter featuring Antony and Cleopatra's honeymoon hotel with pool.
On Crete, I also found a skinny young man to my liking in Knossos. Too bad he's an image, "the Flower Prince" on a fresco and 3400 years old!
One tip: August is too hot for the Mediterranean! Without an air-conditioned car and hotels, and 3 liters of water a day, we would have expired!
The senseless violence in high school killings. There have always been screwed-up teenagers, but they did not always have access to semiautomatic weapons. Blame this one on the National Rifle Association, who a week after the killings, convince the Senate Klan, I mean Republicans, to make it easier to get guns at shows.
I personally wish for an end to patriarchal angry-damning-god religion and corporate capitalism, and a return to convivial values and deep ecology. I've just been reading Ivan Illich's classic " Tools for Conviviality" that gives as good an analysis as any of our contemporay crisis in human economy and ecology.
Fifty years is a more reasonable time frame to expect:
Next Year is my time frame to try to find socially useful work that I feel good about. Though I like my technical colleagues at Boeing, their upper management is gung-ho for China, who cares about a few hundred political murders or torture or genocide against Tibet when there's MONEY to be made! They're big WTO backers, of course.
BE THAT AS IT MAY, here is my personal wish that we may all make The Best of the Next Year or Fifty or Thousand, and have some Victories to report in the near future.
Your Annual Anarchist, D. K.