Beatlick Travel Report: Jerome AZ

Date: Mar 18, 2009 9:27 AM

We pulled out of Quartzsite onto I-10 and picked up Highway 60 in just a few miles. It was a beautiful day, a beautiful road, I was feeling beautiful as we glided along. I have spent a lot of time reflecting on myself, I want to be more gracious, less nervous. I try to visualize myself as the happy, serene person I really want to be. So with that good attitude off we went.

I need to say here I still haven't used a full quart of oil yet and I've gone over 1,500 miles. I can't believe it and I guess that is just a tribute to my mechanic Micahel Elliott. I keep checking but the levels are still good.

From 60 we picked up Highway 71 and Joe began looking for Stanton. Maps can be so decieving. What seems obvious on a map is so hard to discern on the road. We never found the turnoff for Stanton and I started having misgivings as we began ascending higher and higher into mountain ranges.

By the time we got to Jerome I had become a horrible nagging monster, a million miles from the beauty I had been envisioning in my mind for the last few days. Joe didn't bother to notice any elevation notes on the road maps he was studying and the ascent only got worse, curvier, steeper, harder to manage. There is only one thing I hate more than trekking down washboard dirt roads that dislodge every screw and bolt in my van and that is heading up and down mountain grades of eight to twelve percent that require endless braking and gear shifting.

I had to go to first gear on some bends and couldn't make more than 20 mph. Of course this endears me greatly to the string of drivers behind me and my stress mounts with every second. Where the hell is Julie Andrews singing "The hills are alive with the sound of music," And where the heck are we - Bavaria?

I bitch, bitch, bitch. Poor Joe. I have manifested every ugly wart of bad habit that I hate in myself. I have really tried to stop complaining as best I can. And it's amazing how little I have to say if I'm not complaining. I kept my mouth shut for as long as I could stand it and then the frustrations and arguments running around in my mind get so great I have to release them or I think my head is going to pop. Poor Joe. I don't know how he stands me sometimes.

It was an entire afternoon of 20 and 30 mph, first and second gear driving but finally we made it to Jerome. I didn't even care. I wasn't even going to get out of the van, I just wanted to calm myself down. But that was before I realized what a special place Jerome, AZ, is.

A lot like Bisbee, it's a100-year-old gold mining town abandoned by Phelps-Dodge, just like Bisbee. What is called the Gold King Mine today was originally Haynes, AZ, in 1890, a small suburb of Jerome, one mile north. The Haynes Copper Company dug a 1200 foot deep shaft in search of copper. They missed the copper, but hit gold instead.

When the Gold King Mine ended its run the area was reinhabited by a lot of artists and small business people. The town is filled with antique trucks, tractors, construction and mining equipment dating back to the turn of the century. You can enter a walk-in mine, see the world's largest gas engines, and enjoy all the shops as well.

It's smaller than Bisbee, clinging to the side of a mountain, and butressed up with long stairsteps and landings that offer views that go on for what seems like hundreds of miles. Looking towards Cottonwood and Sedona, far far down the mountain range, you can follow the little two lane highway past the desert floor and into the infinity of enormous red rock mountains. They call this red rock country.

When we arrive in the late afternoon the town is teeming with bikers, antique cars, and lots of tourists and shoppers. I guess the big rigs aren't as interested in trekking up the mountain sides as I see few of their ilk here. Obviously it is a destination place for people out on an adventurous motorcycle or sports car ride.

I washed my hair inside the van and cleaned up. I told Joe to come back in an hour and I would be a different person. We hugged and I apologized. He felt bad for me too for all the stress and we got on with it and hit the streets.

One of the most interesting features to me was the state park which was the old Douglas Mansion. You see it off in the distance, it's a small mountain completely terraced and landscaped with this enormous mansion ala the Biltmore in North Carolina. But alas as is so common now, it was closed by the state one week before we arrived - budget cuts.

We enjoyed peering into the multiple art galleries and craft shops and had dinner at the wine bar. The day ended on a great note. We found an open mic at the Spirit Bar next to a small hotel. The gig was hosted by a Jerome resident who calls himself DL Harrison. Gosh he was great, haven't heard such good music since Catdaddy played back there in Bisbee.

DL sang Otis Redding, old blues songs, southern rock. I had enough of a buzz on to sing along, probably a little too loud. Plus he writes his own music. I loved his line, "Tell your story walking, your truth won't set me free." Great lines, and he was joined by a beautiful young woman, Nancy McDonald, who accompanied him on a cello. She later came back and did a solo gig on her ukelele. It was a great night. Joe and I got up and did two poems. The crowd was kind. DL's my space address: www.myspace.com/dloveharrison

After being so upset all day long it was a great way to end the evening. We took a stroll around the town, which was definitely a lot quieter at night, and headed back to our urban campsite, right in the middle of the action across from the Conner Hotel.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

Jake's Word Re: The Real Economy & the Zero Solution

[A response to The Real Economy & the Zero Solution, reposted below.]

You've been on a roll lately and I've been so tied up with various projects all I have had time to do is read the essays. This essay is exceptional even for your high level of engagement, erudition and intelligence. The first paragraph is a shining example of how well you write. It kicks open the doors so that there is no way to ignore what is coming. The Zero Solution demands a response from people who are widely and deeply studied in economics (though not so much that they can't see the forest for the trees). The conversion of debt to credit sounds Hamiltonian to my ears and I think it might just work. I'm going to send this on to several people, including my nephew, with whom I was discussing economics a few days ago. He's a supporter of the Austrian School, which is a form of laissez-faire (which works as long as we are talking about a real and not a virtual economy and as long as there is transparency and rigid penalty for abuse of the system).

This essay affirms what your political essays always affirm, that we are more than consumers, more than taxpayers, we are citizens. As such we are obligated to participate in government to the extent provided (even demanded) by the constitution and our history as a democratic republic (demos and res publica - of, by, and for the people, all of them).

Keep it coming. I'm listening.

Jake


JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

THE REAL ECONOMY & THE ZERO SOLUTION

By Jack Random


“Looking backwards and with hindsight…if I’d have known exactly the forces that were coming, what actions could we have taken …to avoid this situation? And I just simply have not been able to come up with anything…that would have made a difference to the situation that we faced.”

Alan Schwartz, Former Chief Executive of Bear Stearns


Alan Schwartz is either delusional or a bald faced liar. Under his leadership a once powerful and respected institution of finance leveraged its diminishing wealth on a mountain of worthless mortgage based assets, covered their trail with accounting tricks and took risks with other people’s money that not even a compulsive gambler would take on his last dime.

When Bear Stearns collapsed a lot of real people took the hit but Schwartz escaped with his personal fortune intact. He was insulated from harm and a government that preferred to look the other way rather than perform their duty to regulate financial practices in the interest of stockholders and the public at large.

This week in what can only be characterized as the essence of audacity, the very same bankers who led the way to financial ruin and then lined up to receive their share of the public dole cried foul over the conditions imposed on them by a wary government.

Reminiscent of a scene in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, where a black sheriff holds a gun to his head and threatens to shoot unless the crowd lets him escape, the bankers threatened to give the money back unless the government loosens its restrictions.

The conditions these bankers found unbearable included limits on executive bonuses, the purchase of luxury jets, a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions, mortgage modifications and restructured home loans.

Like a spoiled child who cannot have his pudding until he eats his vegetables, the bankers protest too much. Some announced their intention to return the money at the earliest convenience. Let them do so without delay. Any bank or financier who took government money unnecessarily on the pretense of imminent collapse is already guilty of betraying the public trust.

Any institution that actually believes trillions of dollars of public money should be handed over without strict conditions of accountability and oversight should be summarily denied funding on the basis of gross professional incompetence.

The numbers we have been hearing to describe the state of our economy (a rise in the stock market notwithstanding) are mind bending and unimaginable to the point of unreal. The stock market decline represented a staggering loss of $23 trillion in net worth and home values have lost a stunning eleven trillion. These are truly unreal amounts of money and they begin to put a new light on trillion dollar bailouts and stimulus plans. The amounts of money being floated around distort our quaint notions of economy beyond belief. It is doubtful that home values ever exceeded eleven trillion in real value at any given time so what are we to make of these numbers?

A clue is revealed by noted flat world and global free trade advocate Thomas Friedman in the New York Times: “Our heart – our banking system that pumps blood to our industrial muscles – is clogged and functioning far below capacity.”

While offering up an easy metaphor, Friedman reveals that in his conceptualization the heart, the core, the center of our economy is not industry, not the worker driven enterprises that construct homes, build bridges and invent useful products, but the bankers and financiers that spin numbers and create illusions of wealth.

The flaw is in the design. The heart of any healthy economy should be the industries – mechanical, chemical and technological – that create products of intrinsic value. The heart of any functioning economy should never be the money changers – the brokers and schemers and middle men who devise systems of finance that shield debts and create value where none in fact exists. Yet that is exactly what we have done.

We have placed our economy in the hands of individuals who worked tirelessly to export the real economy to nations that do not recognize labor rights and therefore do not pay living wages and erected in its place an artificial economy of formulae and financial derivatives that inevitably drifted away from its foundation.

These individuals are not substantially different in principle or moral grounding than Bernie Madoff or Ken Lay and his gang of thieves at Enron. The former defrauded innocent individual investors while the latter defrauded the west coast and transferred the wealth to Texas oil and gas industries. The executives of Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and American International Group defrauded all of us on a scale that makes Enron look like a two-bit hustler.

The leaders of the new economy were the designers and creators of the global free trade exploitation scheme and they were convinced that they could spin a virtual economy that would ascend forever and never be dependent on this year’s crops or production quotas or the financial well being of the very consumers that sustain the whole. Like Madoff, they believed they could run their Ponzi scheme to the end of time.

In a word, they were wrong.

The difficulty we now confront is that the collapse of their artificial economy has sent shock waves through the real world. It has released a poison that quickly spread to every corner of the globe. It is a tidal wave of toxicity that lays waste to everything it touches.

We have empowered the crooks and schemers by investing in them not only our retirement funds but also our faith and while it would serve justice to send them to jail or banish them to permanent unemployment it would do little to remedy the harm.

The remedy lies in recognizing the artificial nature of the economic beast they created to maximize profit at our expense. For while they have done great harm in eroding the savings and wages of the working consumers, the real economy remains capable of employing its people in useful enterprise and reestablishing the balance between a working middle class and the nonproductive elite.

Once we recognize that the model of economics they have handed us is by no means synonymous with the real world economy, a new world of possibilities opens up. We can essentially solve the problem of insolvent home ownership by hitting the reset button. By government decree, we can calculate the difference between mortgage values and home values and zero them out.

I call it the zero solution and it would work because it benefits all parties. It benefits the homeowner who has behaved responsibly, kept up with payments, yet watched depreciating home values threaten long-term security. It benefits homeowners who are the victims of unscrupulous loans and their own admittedly irrational dreams. Finally, it benefits the bankers and mortgage holders by converting bad debt to good.

Though the implications would have to be studied, preferably by a team of experts without a vested or ideological interest, and the details worked out, variations of the zero solution could be applied to personal and national-international debt as well, converting debt to credits by means of a central debt conversion fund.

It is admittedly a radical solution and one that could only be applied in extreme emergencies such as the crisis we face today. When we have survived the current crisis, it is imperative that we take all measures to ensure that the new and emerging economy is tied directly to the real economy, that it is calibrated to benefit workers as well as the financial elite, that it is transparent and subject to rigorous regulation, and that the working and consuming middle class is at its heart and core.

To some extent we all share responsibility for this crisis. We placed our faith in institutions that were solely motivated by the profit margin. We gave them free reign by protecting them from government oversight. What they did is what we should have expected them to do: They gamed the system and made off like bandits.

To a large extent we are paying the price of forgetting the lessons of the past. Whenever bankers and moneychangers are allowed to run wild, they inevitably drive the economy over a cliff. If we are to spare future generations the same fate, we must take those lessons to heart, including breaking up the monopolies and merger manias that have created monsters “too big to fail.”

The road ahead will be hard. The financial monsters will fight meaningful reform every step of the way and the Supreme Court is their corner. Nevertheless, we must work tirelessly to right the balance, to elect officials that represent the people over the money interests, and to pry the real economy out the hands of greed and avarice.

That is the road ahead. To get there, we must survive.

Jazz.

[This chronicle posted on the National Free Press -- World Edition.]

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). HE IS A COLUMNIST FOR THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS – WORLD EDITION. THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE DAILY SCARE, PACIFIC FREE PRESS AND CANADA NEWSDAILY. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

Mind of Mansel: When Does A Body Become A Corpse

(for Pete Seeger)

when does a body become a corpse
when the bones are ground into meal
the devil says of course
well it was one april as I was caught
the twister was raging so I was brought
to my knees and I couldn't pray
so I laid into the wind and this I did say
when does a body become a corpse
when the bones are ground into meal
the devil says of course

when does a body become a corpse
when the bones are ground into meal
the devil says of course
now I fly my flag upside down
and it doesn't make a different sound
but you can hear it lappin at the truth
about the murder of innocent youth
when does a body become a corpse
when the bones are ground into meal
the devil says of course

when does a body become a corpse
when the bones are ground into meal
the devil says of course
eighteen years old I registered for the draft
and it was at eighteen that I was sitting at
the table with other young men told to stand
we were leaning into the wind boys into man
when does a body become a corpse
when the bones are ground into meal
the devil says of course

chorus:

so if your eaten by the ghost here's what you say
I was young once but I'll never again be that way
so eat me devil if you will I've already seen hell

- Chris Mansel

(christophermansel@hotmail.com)

Beatlick Travel Report: Happy Trails in San Diego

Date: Mar 13, 2009 9:32 AM

The approach to San Diego was well planned out. Referring to our national Wal-Mart location map we zeroed in on El Cajon, CA, as our urban campsite for the weekend. We wanted to approach San Diego on a Sunday morning. The Wal-Mart wasn't a supercenter but our two day stay went unnoticed by any authorities. We took in a movie: Slum Dog Millionaire - great.

We headed out bright and early Sunday morning only to find out we weren't more than 15 minutes from Holly Wilson's home, our destination. We had imagined we were much further out, we could have practically walked there.

After six years we saw Holly again, an old friend of Joe's from Albuquerque. They used to do poetry together in that town long before I came on the scene, probably thirty years ago. I know Holly as a poet, dancer, UNM doctoral student, and master gardener, but today she is Dr. Holly Wilson, a professor who specializes in teaching other educators how to teach English as a second language and a few other titles I can't remember.

She's been gone from Albuquerque for ten years and she and Joe had a good time reminiscing. We ran an electric cord out of her garage into the van and set up our urban campsite. This is beyond our wildest expectations. We imagined ourselves slinking into San Diego Pier, putting a toe in the Pacific, and running back east. But thanks to Holly we had a full week to enjoy the beauty of San Diego. What a town.

Great bus service, an abundance of palm trees, a fabulous grocery store named Pancho Villa's. I bought red bell peppers for sixty cents, mangoes three for a dollar, and oh so delicious. Why is the food so much cheaper here, and better? Is it because it's a port city? So close to the border? Las Cruces and El Paso are close to the border but they haven't got anything like this.

And there is nothing wrong with palm trees. I love them, crave them, I don't care if I never see Tennessee again. I want palm trees in my life. This area is so beautiful, so lush with plants and vegetation, and the ocean breezes from the bay are enchanting somehow. The land rushes down to the sea cascading and falling all over itself in its abundance.

I do call it menopausal weather because it blows so hot and cold. The sun is hot, radioactive feeling, and the breeze is cold, you don't want it blowing up your back cold. You have to dress for all seasons every day as Holly explained.

We rode the bus to Presidio Park one day, hiked all over the Gas Lamp District the next day, averaging about five miles a day on foot. From Holly's we could walk a few blocks over to University Ave., hang a right and walk to the North Park District. I liked all the little hand-lettered signs on all the small beauty salons, neighborhood markets, and tire stores. The bus ride down University passed along one little neighborhood after another, each one independent of the other and a small city unto itself.

The bustling sidewalks were jammed with cafes, gyms, thrift stores, bakeries, barber shops, hardware stores, carpet stores, neighborhood libraries and all the facilities that keep life humming along and all so conveniently located. I revamped my van while I was there getting new flooring, lights, all the little particulars I have been needing to give the van a little more spruced up look.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

Beatlick Travel Reports #19-21: Slab City to the Salton Sea

Report #19 (Feb 26, 2009 1:37 PM)

Well into our visit at the Slabs I wonder at the conversations around the firepits at the Oasis Club and Michael Bright’s trailer. There’s the big-hearted laugh of Bill, the Slab’s biggest promoter and resident of twenty years, and the mischievousness and sprightliness of Sterling the playwright. Jim quotes Shakespeare and discusses Civil War generals. John shows slide shows of his artwork on a laptop. The discussions fluctuate between the Fascism of Bill Gates and William Randolph Hearst to movies.

“Who was the female in ‘The Third Man’ with Joseph Cotton and Orsen Wells?” asks Michael B. Beatlick Joe is in heaven with all these film buffs and he waxes philosophical long into the night.

About the fifth day we begin to notice some aromas associated with excrement and ever-present hum of generators. I begin to worry that we hadn’t dug our own holes deep enough. But a little stroll convinced me the aroma was on the wind. I don’t know if it is the cows five miles out or the Slabs. Most of these big rigs are self contained but some of the smaller set ups and the locals just dig holes.

It was a bonding experience over at Michael B.’s firepit as the wind wafted across his recently filled hole and we all maneuvered to get upwind of the creosote-soaked firewood.

There’s a big party also over at one of the big abandoned tanks. A young cyclist moved into a giant tank and turned it into a comfortable home. He hosts biking festivals apparently and the “Midnight Riders” out of L.A. have been arriving all weekend. I happened to be cleaning a big skillet over at the community kitchen when a young man in spandex and bleached blond hair, weighing in at about 120 pounds, asked me with the inquisitiveness of an investigative journalist, “What is this place all about? Do you live here all the time?” There’s a big party at the “Range” tonight and they’re all invited.

Over at the Range the campers and RVs started lining up before sunset. On the big slab and stage area dozens of old chairs, couches, theater seats, and barco loungers of all states of disrepair were arranged theater style to seat at least fifty people.

The sign said “All dogs must be leashed” but no one bothered and as usual, the dogs behaved admirably. The bikers showed up in costumes they apparently ride around L.A. in. One male wore a bunny costume complete with enormous ears, there were tinsel boas around one guy’s neck and most were adorned in iridescent rings that glow in the dark. All the better to be seen by oncoming traffic I assume.

There were hot dogs for a dollar, burritos for two, and some cookies made from somebody’s legal pot prescription. I waited all night for Michael B. to show up with the free beer that requires a dollar donation but he never showed up in his beer cooler go cart.

The community feeling here is palpable. I like Deiter especially. He is German, drives an old Bluebird school bus with “Cool Bus” written on the front, and a peace sign in the back. For all the world he looks like Las Crucen poet Dick Thomas in blond braids!

A few solo acts opened for “Drop 7,” an awesome local band named after the drops in the old canal around Slab City. The first couple up danced ballroom style like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. He was extremely clean cut for the Slabs with a black-and-white Fedora and black-and-white shoes (are those spats?) which almost reached the spot lights of recycled paint cans as he kicked his right leg into the air and over his head. He was dancing with a red head in high-heeled red boots. They were no spring chickens but they danced like kids all night.

The slender woman with the long grey hair and lithe body who was asked to dance the most and did a beautiful job of it didn't have a tooth in her head. The creosote logs burned bright in the trash bins all around the dance floor. The marijuana cookies kicked in on a lucky few in the bike club and the night was full of limbo dancers.

Great fun at the Range. I scored big the next morning at the Swap Meet in Niland. I hitchhiked into town. At the swap I found gas canisters! – four for $5.50 – an outrageous steal. I nabbed them fast. Then I found a potato masher, I left mine in Albuquerque I guess, and an allen wrench to tighten up the back window.

We also found the hot springs or hot pond as it sometimes called, with a clay bottom. That makes it a bit murky and I declined to jump in this day, but next time.

Travel Report #20 (Feb 28, 2009 1:01 PM)

There’s a growing community around our little VW as the big rigs keep pulling in. I noticed a lady giving her husband a haircut yesterday. I wonder if she has set the same course I have.

I don’t like to see Joe in his scraggly now graying beard. And the more he looks like an old codger the more he acts like an old codger. I like Joe “elegant.” But he doesn’t enjoy shaving – especially every day – and he will intentionally do a patchy job.

So I have taken it upon myself to shave him myself about twice a week. We have real fun. I get a lot of hot steamy washrags and steam up his whiskers. I use a lot of shaving cream. It’s important to make the razor glide easily over the whiskers and get a smooth shave. Sometimes I have to keep going back and forth. I never knew how hard it was for a man to shave. I feel bad about the times I criticized him.

Now this leads me to another thought. When I was little, around six, I had a doll I named Bobby. He had red pajamas and I played with him all day and dreamed about him all night. In my dreams I would play with his brown curly hair. Now in reality Bobby was all plastic but at night he had soft brown curls. I would fuss over him in so many ways and I can remember the closeness and contentment I experience with that doll in my dreams.

That is the exact feeling of joy and peace I feel these days with Joe. It’s a feeling and a dream I have recaptured from my childhood. I don’t know what it means but even in my maturity as a struggling single parent I dreamed about him.

In the dream I saw the image of someone I would love. He had curly brown hair, a few acne scars, and soulful brown eyes. So my soul knew Joe long before I did.

All this would be impossible without him. Joe paid for the van and all the modifications. He bought the tires and the equipment for the trip. We are playing house just like two children in the van and he gives me all the strength and love I need. The man of my dreams.

Report #21 (Feb 28, 2009 1:07 PM)

Hundreds of white pelicans float on the Salton Sea. It’s Tuesday morning, yesterday was Mother’s birthday – she would have been 97 today. We left the Slabs on Monday, said goodbye to Michael Bright and all of our new friends in Slab City amid promises to return soon, to relocate here at this fee-area recreation site.

Honestly I think they have had better days. There were nowhere near 5,000 people on the Slabs and I think it is definitely the high season now for Slabbers. Those are the kinds of numbers I read about in magazine and newspaper articles. Many of these people look pretty desperate now and it saddens me, because I found true friends there.

I really like Carol W. She gave me a ride into Niland as she pulled out of town in her modest camper. She has the most marvelous laugh – aaah-ha-ha-ha. She has returned for the first time in five years and she tells me about a much more pristine Slab City than what is apparent today.

Now a widow she has been traveling around in her camper with her little dog for twelve years now. She raised seven children. She said her husband was in show business, first radio and then television. They lived in New Jersey where her husband commuted to the Big Apple and then moved on to California where they lived in Malibu Beach during the 60s. She’s a Canadian originally and returned there when her children became teenagers.

And like me I guess she isn’t on best terms with all her children so she inspires me because she is living a great life despite her children. “Well, if they don’t need me I don’t need them. Aaaaah-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Here at the campground for almost thirty dollars we got a great seaside view, cold showers because they are heated by solar panel, electricity and a water spigot. I got out my big white bucket and got a few clothes washed just before the rain set in.

We strung our electric cords outside, one for the heater and one to charge batteries and play the boom box and DVD. The clothes are hung all over the inside of the van. The rain has set in.

On Tuesday it was daylight by 6:30 a.m. I like that. And it looks like the clouds are moving on. I am reclining on my bed, drinking decaf coffee and looking out the window, past the beach to the pelicans and the sea. I can’t get the Slabs off my mind. I worry about them like family.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

Beatlick Travel Report #17: This Moment is Perfect

Date: Feb 20, 2009 12:17 PM

Report #17

I’ve got some folks to look up here on the Slabs. Jamie Givens a good friend of ours back in Nashville gave us some names of some of her old friends out on the slabs. In the years we’ve known her there has never been a remote ghost town, hot springs, or lake side that she hadn’t already been to first. She is a true world class traveler, a wandering Sadhu, before she hit Nashville back in the 90s.

We left the Slabs this morning to foray around and found a good library in the adjacent town of Calipatria. I pulled to the curb where there was an incline that put my van at an odd pitch. I thought twice about parking there – a wispy memory of an earlier bad experience in my old van passed through my mind - but I ignored it and turned off the key.

Sure enough when I returned from the library I couldn’t get the van started. It took all of my and Joe’s strength to kind of bounce it up and down till we could maneuver it and push it out onto the street. But we did. He pushed, I jumped in and popped it into secand, and off we went. That problem hasn’t happened again. Next I found butane canisters and life was rosy again.

I do fight to stay calm sometimes and try not to worry. I can ruin my best endeavors by fretting over things that might happen – could happen, should happen. Like losing half our operating capital because the renters moved out of my mother’s house. That has happened, but I know more will come along.

So I struggle to not negate these beautiful moments with negative thoughts because THIS MOMENT is perfect. We are so lucky to be following a dream like this – unencumbered – we are eagerly awaiting the mail which I had forwarded to Niland.

Almost two months worth of mail – not expecting bills – I do all banking and billing on line. A lot of expenses like storage and mailbox rental I paid for one year in advance.

I’ve learned you can get mail forwarded to any post office, general delivery, once without filling out paper work or being charged. It will take four days for the mail to get to Niland from Las Cruces .

Happy Trails

Beatlick Pamela

Beatlick Travel Reports 15-16: Life on the Slabs

Feb 18, 2009 11:07 AM


Report #15

Second day on the Slabs. Thank God – sun – no clouds. It has rained off and on since we got here and it’s cold again. We can see our breath inside the van early in the morning.

I laugh at myself. At one point yesterday when it looked like it looked like the rain was setting in I panicked and wanted to get a motel room. Cheap I hoped. At one point I broke up the camp and drove back through Calipatria all the way to Brawley looking for a room. Sixty dollars a night was the best I could do. I had rejected the seedy motel back in Niland for $35 because some of the occupants looked pretty seedy.

I need to preface this by saying I have absolutely no cash to pay for a room. No cash until Friday and today is Tuesday. Honestly I have no intention of charging $120 on American Express but still I’m over there at the motel.

I looked at three rooms and finally came to my senses. The sun came out, the atmosphere dried out, and we decided to hit some of Joe’s money stash. We bought $30 worth of groceries, half of that went for an 18-pack of Tecate.

We went back to find our own little campsite still there in Slab City . So we hunkered down as the rain set in once more.


Report #16

Third day on the Slabs. The sun is out; the clouds are gone and it looks like things will dry out although the San Diego NPR station claims a cold front is coming in from the Pacific.

Well we are locked down here. It is really tight quarters in the van. Joe is such a unique and wonderful person. I never get too tired of his humor – he is so steady – so even and happy, so he is easy to spend time with. He spends his time reading and writing letters.

I spend my time writing my travel journals, listening to NPR on our hand cranked short wave radio and reading.

At night we amuse ourselves with a DVD player that we plug into one of the two portable batteries that we carry. When they run down we have to plug them into electricity for twelve hours. That usually requires a motel or campsite.

I’m pouring over the journals of Anais Nin 1931-1934. It’s all about her times in Paris with Henry Miller and June. Her diary has inspired me to write more in length journal style, not so much reporter style.

I found butane gas canisters for $3 yesterday at a True Value Hardware Store. That’s a dollar cheaper than Ace. I bought all they had. Coleman brand. It was still more than double what I paid in Las Cruces but I’m grateful to have them. We can cook in the van.

Beatlick Travel Report #14: The Dead Fill My Dreams

Date: Feb 12, 2009 3:08 PM

Report #14


Here on the Slabs today, I feel content. But I want to dwell for a while on my mental state. Otherwise I don’t feel like this is a true representation of my experience.

The dead fill my dreams. Now I’m about six weeks into the trip so this was more pronounced earlier. It all started on about the third week.

Many, many times in my now protracted life I have been either sustained or tormented by my dreams And I give them a lot of weight and consideration.

So my dreams haven’t caused me any issues in months, if not years, but suddenly after the true realization that I had slashed all my moorings so to speak the dreams began. My dead loved ones, one after another night after night, came to call.

I dreamed of my father, who died when I was ten. This is the third time in my entire life that I have dreamed of him:

We are in the old 30s-something Chevy with a running board that my father was driving the night he collided with an 18-wheeler and died on site. It was a summer, sunny and mild. In the space of this small quiet little dream I recovered that feeling of an endless summer day, gently passing time together with my dad.

In the dream I remember wondering, maybe worrying, would he say something about getting a drink. He was an alcoholic and the subject was always fodder for an argument at home. But it wasn’t that way. He was mellow; just wanted to know what I thought, what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go next.

Then I dreamed of Mother. I held a locket in my hand. It held a charm. When I held the charm up to my eyes to get a better look at it I saw a hologram. It was my mother all young and beautiful, just a cameo shot of her head and shoulders. She was laughing out loud (something I rarely ever saw) with her head thrown back and her blond bobbed hair bouncing. She was so happy.

And then I dreamed of Gloria, my friend of over 50 years who died last year – suddenly and tragically – in France . She was young, leading the show, driving the car and telling me what to do. Then came a procession of old neighbors, childhood friends, people I haven’t thought of in decades.


These dreams were wrenching at first, not traumatic or bad, but so strong, impactful… I call them “abiding” dreams… because that’s what it was like in my dream of my father. He was simply abiding with me, going along for the ride.

So Mother, Gloria, and all of them I believe have let me know that they abide with me. It has been profoundly comforting.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

Beatlick Travel Report #13: Slab City

Date: Feb 12, 2009 2:33 PM

Report #13

Beatlick Joe had directions from an internet site for Slab City . Well they are not on Highway 111. If you come from the south as we did, you have to turn in Niland on Main Street , by the liquor/grocery store. Then it’s three miles on out of town.

After seeing the glut of RVs in Tucson I began imaging this place all compacted roofline to roofline with giant big rigs. But it’s not like that at all. It’s all spread out.

So you come up the road and there’s a concrete graffiti rock “Slab City – You’re almost there.” Another mile down the road you see a home made sign “Slab City : the last free place in America.”

To the right is a big hill painted with colorful tributes to Jesus, decorated cars glorifying God and the value of repentance, etc… This is an abandoned military project. There are remnants of roads, and of course lots of concrete slabs. The road is two-laned and asphalt up to the slabs then gravel roads create a grid of I can’t say how many square miles of plots.

The landscape encompasses exquisite mountain ranges in an almost 360-degree panorama and mesquite bushes spread out flat and wide by the wind. So you have plenty of room to spread out, like the trees.

The catch is the trash left behind by decades of desert squatters. All is beautiful from the bilious sky to the crisp green line of brush along with a smattering of some large shady trees. Before your eye can settle to the bottom of the canvas to the sand and slab line of this perfect desert picture you have to see a wide swath of dark copper-colored trash.

Everywhere. As people moved on they left behind the swing set, couches, water jugs by the dozen, propane tanks by the crateful, wheelchairs, portable potties, office chairs, wheelchairs, and abandoned, burned out, blown over trailers. It’s just a site to see. You can’t describe it in one sentence; you can’t visualize it in one picture. The further out you go the cleaner it gets.

Where we are parked today, we got here by noon, Slabbers pass us by on bikes, golf carts, and scooters. Most of the men look like Santa Claus.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

Beatlick Travel Report #12: Yuma to Slab City

Date: Feb 9, 2009 10:46 AM

I want to say a few more disparaging words about Yuma. The bus system was impossible to comprehend, the buses ran 30 minutes late or didn't show at all. We walked six miles one day because I got frustrated just sitting at a stop waiting for the bus that never came. So I won't be passing by this way again, but I did get my revenge on Yuma. I managed to camp in the WalMart parking lot illegally for two days and didn't get caught. So Yuma, you're my worst nightmare. But I understand why they are like that, the enormous rigs that go through here are just unimaginable to Joe and I.

We finally learned after much prodding from the Visitor Center people that there are free places, beautiful places to park outside Yuma. We drove out Highway 95 north I think to 7E, took a left and went about 8 miles on a good road to a place called Mitry Lake. We stayed four days, camped by a beautiful big palm tree with two more little ones for accompaniment. Blue teal ducks kept us company all day plus a good sized white egret came in every morning and afternoon, plus on our last day there a huge blue heron was running off the egret when we woke up.

The fellow camper Jeff who told us all about Mexico had a small rig, but he was bragging about his 55 gallon water tank. He only got 7 miles to the gallon. No wonder. I just can't imagine hauling all that water around. The rigs all up and down Mitry Lake are so big, then folks have their vehicles towed along behind them. I even read in Jeff's book on camping Mexico that these rigs go to Mexico in caravans of 15-25 vehicles. How would you like to drive behind one of those caravans on a Mexican highway? Unbelievable.

We didn't leave until it rained. There was some great hiking as well. So this was payback for all that misery in Yuma.

Now we made it to the Slabs. I became intimidated thinking the slabs would look like those RV camps back in Yuma, but not at all. There was a good road out there and an enormous place, many square miles to camp, and lots of room to spread out. Lots of mountains in the background and mesquite bushes for shade, no palm trees out here. I think all those palm trees in Yuma were just a preponderance of imported palms from way back when, when they were trying to market the place to RVers.

But Yuma is a memory now. We met a guy at Mitry Lake that has just about convinced us to go straight on down to Mexico and forget San Diego. We're still considering a change. It would be a lot less complicated hanging out on the Pacific Ocean in Mexico than San Diego.

Right now it is raining on the slabs. I decided to look for a cheap hotel room for a few days so we can charge up all the batteries and clean up. My gas stove uses butane canisters. I paid $1.29 in Las Cruces, up from $.99 at the dollar store there. At Ace Hardware iun Yuma they cost $3.99! So I didn't buy any and I'm down to my last four. We are saving them to make coffee in the morning and are trying to cook outside with fire pits or charcoal. But that doesn't work if it's raining.

And it's cold again with all the rain. So we hope to find a cheap room today. We'll go back to the slabs in a day or two as I have to kill time because I got my mail forwarded and it won't get to Niland, where the slabs are, until Thursday.

Love to all, Happy Trails

Beatlick Pamela

Mansel: Besudi (to feel, to touch)

...


soul of a dead person
bringing on the ghost
vertical boat even with the sky
(a wuroke spirit)
shamanic cuisine/ epileptic/ ceremonial
archaic/ pathogenic state
shooting initiate's clear
awake/ back/ bathe
recordings show motionless
possession/ translation
(precarious diagnosis)
ladder make from stag horns
illuminates the body, precincts (motifs)
leave the consecration (heat)
opening fingers at the knuckles
ecstasy/ intoxication/ mushrooms
seclusion


criminal nectar, himself, guilt of america
succuumb to the dye, pigment multiplicity
downstream/ angry imaging/ simultaneously
Mephistopheles/ dismantling/ laboured
habitat, disassembled/ readings spread
biologically/ restraints are species to species
cell size is based on behaviour
molar variation, manuscript genus
erotic microevolutionary sediment shift
resoluable moments, yage
the species duration is exhibited (tree graveyard)
by a few isolates, Darwin, Oceanic
ethnographic resin, paintings by Nepalese tribes
sacrifices found in meat/ axis mundi
ascent to the underworld/ theory/ thirsty
regions employed to the trees/ storms/ smoke holes
exhaustive/ fauna of the horse/ divinities


beginning with the coyote/ the dead mother (their language)
paradisal, bleating like a lamb/ a seance over covered fire
animal language/ terrible messengers/ herbs/ seven days
serpent effigies/ reddened feathers/ mud murals


poisonous arachnids


experimental assaults


wither catharsis, the sin of despair, habit
chemical, between the eyes/ mandibles
audible/ stimulated/ death-feign
sun/ in the twilight/ being black
predator/ striking longhorn/ deterrent
dark/ depths/ suddenly/ biting rain/ exile


white horse/ exile/ ships, cargo net
casket cleared the sea wall
wiry painful warning, climax
shoulders for burial/ detachment
isolation quickened/ infection
headless missionaries/ dropped from the trees
laborers ascended/ anointed with oil
ships evidence/ flesh of a whale
bloody platform/ nausea/ disinfectant
handcuffs and stigma of storms/ leather masks
symptoms/leprosy/ pieces of the head/ historian
a genealogy of every departure
breaths/ deaths/ caregivers
cinder black neighborhoods
crowded atop open wells
hallways poured square
like a spine, several winter age
remains separated, slowly moving
concerning beauty, ill effect
corrupted/ the intensity of the habit
every species slaughtering monstrous views


the violence of Job acquiring leviathans/ publishing cycles
insects of sulfur tents, talks of the inanimate/ orbital Pangaea
reptiles spitting hydrochloric acid, a disheveled placid flood
ferocity/ presence/ pictures underdeveloped
of a carcinogenic haze, exposed synthetics
such deaths isolation the secret ingredient
covers until cycles revert, imprisoned ecology


- Chris Mansel

Mansel: Moliere, Said The Wolf

....

breeding behavior
embodied, in the closing
cathedral, commentary
disparate-expanded
diffident, gothic and flame shaped
(loner in the facade)


exigent/default/accidental
paraphernalia, illustrated brotherhood
anatomical definition (reading / down hearing)
Darwin's long argument


sharpness of oblivion/ exegesis
casual environmental floor
genuine-rigor/ construed
descriptive irony/ surgical soap
autobiography/ barbarism/ exhumation
anomalous/ graffitti to nomad
innumerable possessor
evolution of night/ postulate


sensitivity/ salient depth
originated/ worms/ readers
variation/ veneration
ancestral/ conspecifics
creationist/ bare premise
orchids/ adaptation/ unconsciously
castrated animals/ hybrid
thickness of the variation
strigent/ denial/ elaborated
reptiles of full seperation/ edition


deterioration/ striking/ struggling
anti-biotic reasonings (chalk steak)/ omnivore
breeders/ blue smoke/ origin of the species
intending and perceived/ without design


I am very much the matter, manifest a consolatory difficulty,
species whose edition is substituting breath for stability...


Confucius in a garden with a bird in his teeth
his eyelids reflecting the sun
a harvest of still fresh earth
(a photo of Diane di Prima)
both a child's world
hedonist and piercing
the nature of the immigrant skeleton
is a dark version, blood dipped
(raped) (the assertion being ritual)


our seasons discover/conceived/snow drying/dying/King Lear/monologues


regarding composition/ obsession/ communal
the madness that is anthologized
fetal narrative/ illustration/ reflection
Oedipus/ irriational savage/ exhaustive
totem/ sonnets/ Aquinas in the face of aggression
inward death/ literature encased in cement/ Buddha
mythology/ cruel/ ordinary/ neverthless
a decapitated horse/ falling lion/ juxtaposed
Yahweh/ sound covered in veils/ sunlight


- Chris Mansel

(christophermansel@hotmail.com)

CURSE OF THE RULING CLASS: Paralysis at a Time of Action

JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

By Jack Random


“House Republicans said we would stand up for American taxpayers at this time of economic hardship for our nation. And last night, standing together, that’s exactly what we did.”

House Minority Leader John Boehner (OH)


At a time of economic meltdown – the word “crisis” is no longer adequate to describe it – posturing Republicans claim victory in toeing the party line, former Senate minority leader Tom Daschle – the man who would lead health care reform – believes his colleagues will overlook his indiscretions, and Blue Dog Democrats read from the same script they held eight years ago as if nothing had changed.

The curse of the ruling class is that the longer they stay in office, the further removed they become from the lives of the citizens they represent.

Let it be clear: We are on the brink of a global depression. We are staring at the prospect of millions out of work, millions more desperately underpaid, millions of retirees without health insurance, millions more without adequate retirement. We are looking at masses of people without homes lining up for daily rations of bread and soup. We are facing the collapse of financial institutions, industries, international corporations and small businesses.

Let it be clear: We know how we got to this point. We followed the lead of trickle down tax cuts, corporate deregulation and global free trade economists. We dismantled government agencies charged with controlling the excesses of profit motivated corporations and allowed them to play out their hand in the free market. We decimated what remains of domestic industry and organized labor. We watched the rich grow richer, the poor grow poorer and the working class transformed into the working poor. We imported goods from nations without labor standards or living wages knowing that our workers, no matter how efficient, could never compete with state sanctioned slavery. We encouraged our citizens to buy homes they could not afford, take out loans on their mortgages, and run up debt on their credit cards.

It is time we put a rest to this idea that no one saw it coming. The ruling class saw it coming well enough to make it harder for ordinary people to declare bankruptcy and still save their homes, cars and essential belongings (The Bankruptcy Act of 2005). They knew where we were headed and they came down on the side of the bankers that would later be rescued with trillions of dollars of taxpayer money.

Tom Daschle should be ashamed. Over and above his tax indiscretions, he was paid millions by the health care giants he would have been charged with regulating and reforming as Secretary of Health and Human Services. President Obama should be ashamed for not recognizing the hypocrisy when he nominated Daschle for the job.

House Republicans should be ashamed for gloating over their unanimous No vote on Obama’s $850 billion dollar stimulus package. Where was their collective courage when it came to the $850 billion dollar bailout plan for bankers and financiers? What was their reasoning? We need tax cuts, not public works! If tax cuts were the answer, we would not be in the mess we are. They got all the tax cuts they ever dreamed of in the Bush administration and it did nothing to stem the tide.

The eleven Blue Dog Democrats who empowered Republicans to call their obstructionism bipartisan should be even more ashamed. There comes a time when the adjective outweighs the noun it describes. If the Blue Dogs cannot support the president at a time of the greatest economic threat since the Great Depression, then they are not entitled to be Democrats. The party should be ashamed for allowing them to continue under the party banner.

It now comes down to the Senate and what a show it promises to be. No one is further removed from the people of this nation than the aristocracy of the United States Senate. All eyes now turn to that endangered species known as the moderate Republican, a dwindling cast that may include Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and the newly appointed Bonnie Newman of New Hampshire. If those three can be tempted to either side (Snowe has already indicated she favors the package) the game is over.

The game is over but the show goes on. That is what it really is all about. The problem is the show takes time and we don’t have time to give. It provides corporate media coal for the fire. As they obsess with one distraction after another, thousands of citizens lose their jobs every day.

When you don’t have a job you’re not worried about tax cuts. When you don’t know if you can pay the rent or make the next mortgage payment there is a limit to how much you care about Tom Daschle’s tax problems. When you’re one visit to the hospital away from bankruptcy or foreclosure you get a little tired of the same old lines from Republican leaders.

Barack Obama made an effort to bring Republicans on board. He was willing to share the responsibility in attempting to rescue a failing economy. He gave more than he should have, laying the grounds for progressive opposition, and what did he gain?

The stimulus package will pass. It will pass because the people are desperately in need. It will pass because that desperation will turn to rage as the economy continues to worsen. It will pass because when it comes to crunch the Republicans do not have the guts to stand in the way. To them it is all about the show.

It is my hope that among the lessons Obama takes from this experience is that presidential politics is hardball. He extended an open hand and the Republicans spit in his face. Now it is time for the clenched fist.

Let us hope we have seen the end of Obama’s right leaning “clean coal” and nuclear power initiatives. Let us hope he comes out strong for organized labor and fair trade. Let us hope we have seen the end of delaying the repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the privileged. Let us hope we see billions pulled from tax cuts he does not truly believe in and delivered to the green economy – beginning with an interstate mass transit system, a modern power grid and an unprecedented program of renewable energy installation.

We need jobs plain and simple. The most direct and cost effective means to that end is for the government to employ the people. Now is not the time to worry about the ideological taboos of the past. Put the people to work now and worry about transferring those jobs to the private sector later.

The one thing we should have learned from both the financial meltdown and subsequent trillion-dollar bailout is that corporations require strict regulation. We had little choice at the time. A collapse was imminent and immediate action was required. But had we known that the financial elite, those who finance political campaigns, would use our money to consolidate wealth and provide extravagant bonus payments for the chosen few, we would surely have acted differently. Rather than witness our money squandered in a reckless display of greed and self-centered elitism we should have considered nationalization.

We are where we are. We know how to proceed and we know there is no time for delay. Now is the time to act.

Those who fail to stand for action now at this critical juncture, clinging to their old ideologies or standard political lines while the economy continues its steep and tortured decline, deserve to be recorded in history for their blind ineptitude.

They have suffered the curse of the ruling class and deserve nothing more than to be relieved of their infirmity.

Jazz.


JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE DAILY SCARE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS, PACIFIC FREE PRESS AND CANADA NEWSDAILY.

Beatlick Travel Report #10, #11: Alamo Canyon to Yuma, AZ

We spent five days camped in Alamo Canyon in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument near Why and Ayo AZ. The Sonoran Desert is so much different from the Chihuahuan Desert we are so familiar with in Las Cruces and environs.

The Saguaro cacti were so numerous, huge, and endearing. They stand tall as two and three story buildings. Their outstretched arms are so expressive. They plead, beguile, admonish, point, pray all with their expressive arms. I walked ten miles in the desert yesterday, six in the morning sun and four more at night watching the stars emerge.

I couldn't believe the campground would be so full on Superbowl weekend but their must have been at least 20 plus people within the four sites at the campground. Peaceful, beautiful, and we got to get our tent out and attach it to the van.

It works beautifully, held tight through the night time wind storms. And that will go even better when we get some stakes to hold down the tent. We had to line it with rocks.

Caught the Superbowl at Netto's Bar in Giila Bend, AZ. Got an insult on the way out the door when we didn't tip the rude bartender. Guess she was having a bad day.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

Yuma - 15 minutes to write a report and get it sent out!

We overnighted in Gila Bend at the Love Truck Stop hoping to set out for a campsite on the Gila River, exit 102 off of Interstate 8. We did take in the petroglyphs nearby but camping wasn't really an option and everything has been closed off from the river, I assume by "Homeland Security." I don't know but all this land used to be accessible to people and now it is not. Shut down.

So the road was the road was more inviting and we made it all the way to Yuma on the interstate. Once you get the big incline into the mountains near Dome Valley there is a big descent into the Yuma Territory.

Twenty miles out of town we started passing RV park suburbs. I have never seen anything like it, my and Joe's jaws dropped open. There is a vast population of mobil "Snow Birds" in the enormous RVs EVERYWHERE. I can't imagine what the population would be if all the temporary homes moved out. It would drop by half I'm sure.

Worst of all, traffic, and the Loves Truck Stop was like swirling bacteria in a Petri dish. Three was no place to park, we hardly got back out, at least 200 trucks there. So off we go stuck in the afternoon traffic. Finally Wal-Mart. And it's the worst of situations - no overnight camping - city ordinance.

But we managed to find a spot and no one hassled us last night. We spent the whole day on the bus trying to find a good post office to forward our mail. Another failure. This town is so spread out, so full of traffic, so different from our gentle experience in Tucson, we are just throwing in the towel and leaving. The Beatlicks can't operate in Yuma.

So we are close to Slab City and we're just going to head on out to the big adventure: Into the Wild of Slab City, California here we come.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

MORAL BANKRUPTCY IN THE NAME OF COMPASSION

RANDOM JACK. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

A RESPONSE TO NICOLAS KRISTOF’S DEFENSE OF SWEATSHOP LABOR

By Jack Random


“Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don’t exploit enough.”

Nicolas Kristof, NY Times, “Where Sweatshops are a Dream,” January 14, 2009.


Nicolas Kristof’s support of sweatshops in a recent Times commentary smacks of the same moral compromise that has historically been employed to justify a vast array of exploitations, indignities and inhuman treatment of the common laborer by the ruling elite.

Beneath the reputation of the Times and the writer, himself, echoes of past rationalizations of apartheid, slavery and even genocide are masked but distinct.

It was once accepted in polite company for a gentleperson to suggest that tribal Africans abducted from their homes and villages were better off as slaves in America than they would have been as free men and women in Africa.

It was once common for the defenders of South African apartheid to argue with shocking conviction that native blacks owed a debt of eternal gratitude to the white ruling elite for lifting that nation out of dire poverty.

It was white liberal legislators who perpetrated the greatest act of cultural genocide in American history with the Dawes General Allotment Act resulting in the Oklahoma Land Rush and the decimation of tribal communities. Further, I have heard liberal minded and otherwise thoughtful beings suggest that the slaughter of the buffalo and the policies of extermination were essentially inconsequential because the indigenous peoples would have died in any case owing to the white man’s disease.

They were wrong then and Nicolas Kristof is wrong now.

In Kristof’s world, “sweatshop” becomes a euphemism for slave labor and yes the slave would tell the master he or she preferred slavery to starvation but the greater truth is there is always a better way.

Developing micro-economies has shown great promise and success in third world nations without the indignity of slave labor. A garden based subsistence with a bartering economy is infinitely preferable to slave labor. Direct aid for government subsidies to create art and crafts colonies, green communities and other experiments in sustainable living is preferable and ultimately less costly than corporate exploitation.

Never mind the rape of the land, the loss of natural resources, the environmental degradation and toxic pools of waste left behind, anyone who cannot think beyond a rationalization of labor exploitation as a model for developing economies is both morally and intellectually challenged. It is the kind of foggy thinking we grew accustomed to in the days of Clinton (all those deliberations over the term “genocide” to justify action in Kosovo and inaction in Rwanda).

A nation welcomes a labor exploitation model only because its leaders are corrupt and seek personal gain. Take away corruption and no nation on earth would accede to such an indignity imposed on its people in the name of hope. Better to be isolated from the world than to volunteer as its perpetual victim.

Nations throughout Latin America have already rejected the exploitation model served up by the Neocon brain trusts of the Bush administration (the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, etc.). They learned that it is a deception and a trap. Far from rescuing the people from poverty, it is a self-perpetuating form of permanent poverty. It is a road to debt and a scheme of the master nations to enslave the underdeveloped world.

It is frankly shocking that a voice known for its compassion and worldview should stoop so low as to justify global exploitation at its most basic level.

Come out with it then. Say it clearly and without compromise: There is no principle or moral ground that cannot be sacrificed to expediency.

Jazz.

Beatlick Travel #9: Revolutionary Grounds

Inaugural Day, Tucson AZ

The transition to warm Tucson has been great, the cold nights gone for the season hopefully, although it has rained here for the last two days and there’s a quiver of a wet chill in the air. I sit and write here now at the Revolutionary Grounds Coffeehouse and Bookstore on 4th Ave. The shelves hold titles like “The Marxism of Guevara,” “Emiliano Zapata,” “The Urban Homestead,” “ The Anarchist Cookbook,” and “dominKNITrix.” The store hosts groups from poets to knitters to moveon.org. There are brochures for Independent Booksellers: Doing Our Part to Keep America Interesting (www.indiebound.org).

It was here Beatlick Joe and I came on inaugural day to watch an especially installed television for the proceedings. “Anna” a social services student was first one in with a bottle of champagne chilling in her cooler. We got there about 9 a.m. The coffeehouse owner joined us with sparkling cider soon and a roving reporter from the Arizona Daily Star came in and interviewed our growing ranks.

I feel like the earth has shifted under my feet – we were not kind to Bush there in the coffeehouse as we enthusiastically hooted him out of office. One young man at Anna’s table wore a black t-shirt with white lettering: 1/20/09 …end of an error…

It was a really memorable social scene and we all enjoyed the camaraderie as we collectively stood up as President Obama was sworn in. We bonded there in a fun and unique fashion over the high hopes and champagne. I had three glasses. I haven’t been so gleeful that early in the morning since I took the 9 a.m. tour of the Heineken Brewery in Amsterdam.

Tucson has provided a great urban campsite. We are parked in a well-established neighborhood amidst the 4th Ave. Historical Business District. We buy groceries and fresh water at the co-op. In the mornings we get coffee at one of the cafes in exchange for bathroom privileges. There’s the Epic Coffeehouse, the Chocolate Iguana, Revolutionary Grounds, of course, and the Metro Market. They have the best bathroom, plus lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, the cheapest bagels, and the only café I have found with the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Love it!

We also collect what we call our gray water, not drinking water but washing water, from the local bathrooms. We discreetly enter with our jugs in our designer recycling tote bags. Slowly our little ban reveals itself – where’s the best place to keep the candle altar, the cookstove, the water bucket.

Moving around in the bus is like a dance. You have to move five things to get to one thing – every time! We are quite content in the van on a rainy day. We have a crank radio, DVDs that we can play with portable deep-cell batteries that are rechargeable.

Ever so often we pop for a hotel room or campground so we can wash up and recharge the batteries, they take over 12 hours to recharge. I even recharged my phone on one yesterday, plus watched a movie, and still have juice. We have one box dedicated to CDs, DVDs and one box for dictionaries and books. So we’re getting there.

The worst thing that has happened: One night as Joe was crawling into the bed, in the dark, I reached out for something and the smallest, tiniest little corner of my not even long fingernail caught his eyeball. It was a nauseating experience, I missed the cornea by about one-fourth of an inch. It was bloody for five days. Horrible experience.

So that was the initiation. Movements have to be slow and measured – the way my mother used to operate.

Happy Trails
Indian Country next, into the wild!

Beatlick Travel #7-8: Along the San Pedro

Beatlick Travel Report #7
A Slash in Mother Earth

I want to say something about the Lavender Pit in Bisbee to balance some of my glowing remarks about the town. It was great, but the reason for the town isn’t, or wasn’t. Mining operations are shut down now but Phelps-Dodge can start the copper mine up again at any minute if the price is right.

As one enters Bisbee east you can’t miss the awful yawl of the enormous pit, now fenced off and offered up as a “Scenic Overlook.” Deep, deep down at the bottom of this pit lies a liquid a color I find hard to describe beyond the word “bloody.” It is a slash so deep into Mother Earth, a color of blood so emphatic, that marks the last scrape of the blade in that mine. And if you ever had any doubts about what we do to the earth and how we rob it of its bounties with no regard to renewal, just look at the fresh leeching wound called Lavender Pit in Bisbee.

We pulled out of that town and headed for a string of ghost towns Beatlick Joe has been researching for years. We drove about forty miles over to Sierra Vista to stock up at Wal-Mart and then headed to the old Charleston Highway. There we set up for a few days of rustic camping along the San Pedro River.

Most locals told us “there’s nothing left there now” when we inquired about Charleston, the old ghost town. We headed north on foot up the San Pedro River about a mile past the bridge looking for the site. A fellow hiker had suggested we look for trees downed by beavers and a huge cottonwood tree in the middle of a big dry wash and climb to a ridge above the river.

We followed as he mentioned but found an even more spectacular entrance to the old town. After we passed evidence of chucked backpacks by Mexicans crossing the border illegally we walked just a bit farther and both Joe and I spied some stairs along the riverbank. They were so old and indistinguishable at first but those straight lines suggested something man made. So it was there we found the true entrance to old Charleston.

Next day we walked to the south of the river. It’s a beautiful walk here but it was so cold at night. I can only imagine the poor souls who are trekking through this river and up these trails trying to get to America. Mexico is approximately twenty miles downriver from where we camped. The backpack we saw had a toothbrush, toothpaste, and Ace bandages in it.

And we are encountering plenty of Border Patrol. I had wondered about this aspect of our journey, would we be encountering surly agents of Homeland Security all along our path as we head to San Diego?

But all the guards we have met were fresh faced young men, kind, friendly, and to tell the truth I guess a little bit bored as the make their patrol. The young man we encountered in Old Hachita, that vast windy emptiness, drives around 12 hours a day in his truck. I told him it looked like a lonely job. He shrugged good naturedly and said he listened to football games on the radio.

Later in the month when we asked the border patrol if we were nearing Keller Road and the Presidio Terrenate by the San Pedro River, an old fort from the 1770s, he didn’t know a thing about it. As it turned out we were within a quarter of a mile of the place and this young guard didn’t even have a clue it was out there.

So they all seem fresh-faced, earnest, and to tell the truth a little fresh on the job. It’s obvious plenty of money has been thrown at these guys as evidenced by their pristinely new and expensive equipment by way of trucks and all terrain vehicles.

Beatlick Travel Report #8

So we followed the San Pedro River exploring one old mining town after another. The days have been beautiful but the nights were cold. You don’t feel much like you’re living a dream when you are cold at night. We are sleeping under two down comforters and have a battery of appliances for heat. Sometimes I just make a little fireplace with a bunch of fat candles at night, then I have a Coleman stadium heater, a little heater that runs off of a canister. We aren’t sleeping uptop yet, there’s another bed up there, we use the fold out bed below. Then I take a blanket and tuck it in along the ceiling and our bed is like a little couchette on a European train. I get all that heated up and we go to bed really warm and cozy. It’s when we have to get up to pee about four or five in the morning that it gets tough.

After that I usually can’t go back to sleep so I just wait. I keep the stove by the bed so I can just turn it on to start the coffee and not get out of the warm covers. We drink the coffee and watch our breath freeze in the morning air as we wait for the hot Arizona sun. Once it does come over the mountain tops it will warm the van within thirty minutes.

We keep our crank radio in the bed and really enjoy listening to it at night. I heard so many weather reports about Tucson being in the forties at night that I finally insisted we go there. Joe didn’t really want to hit any big cities but now that we are here we love it. And we are warm all night!

Happy Trails

Beatlick Pamela

Beatlick Travel #6: Open Mic in Bisbee

Beatlick Travel Report #6

It takes a lot of adjectives to describe the Old Historic Bisbee mining town in Southeastern Arizona. The labyrinth of roads, sidewalks and roundabout that create Bisbee were a total turnoff when we first tried to drive into town. But once we found our urban campsite in a parking lot in front of Saint John’s Episcopalian Church, we hit the streets and the charm of the district unfolded.

Bisbee cleaves to the Mule Mountains with terraced landscaping and stairways bustling up the sides of the hills like so many stays in a dance hall girl’s corset. The Copper Queen Lode put the town on the international financial map in the 1880s. The Stock Exchange Bar and Brewery still holds the only stock exchange board existing at the time between Chicago and San Francisco.

The old miner shacks troop down the mountain sides in a Byzantine hodgepodge. Each street follows the lay of the mountain edges as best it can. The slopes are steep, the churches are plentiful, so are the bars, with a great public library. Arresting vintage clothing, an unbelievable milliner’s shop, artists galore up and down every little byway and alley in every charmingly scruffy old building, are augmented with some genuine characters sitting on the benches and in the coffeehouses.

Open mic every Thursday was at the Stock Exchange Bar. I only got first names, but the event was hosted by drummer David. One guitarist was named Mike, from north of the Bay Area originally. We got there early and waited as folks came in carrying equipment and instruments. The sign up sheet was passed around.

The concept was the loosely formed band played a few songs then offered to back up anyone who wanted to come up, either another musician or spoken word folks such as ourselves. Well what grew to be about a six piece ensemble turned out to be a kick ass band. I just can’t find a better word for this group of guys who were so generous with their time and talent.

“Catdaddy” was on the sign up sheet, a most innocuous looking kind of guy, we had watched him earlier as he unceremoniously helped lug in the sound equipment. But when he got up to play he smoked the crowd with his “Mojo Working” and “Standing on Shaky Ground” I started to believe I was standing on shaky ground too. The Beatlicks had to follow “Catdaddy!”

But it was as I say a generous group of people. At the bar was a splash of what appeared to be second tier hairdressers and wardrobe staff clad “a la Euro trash” and sipping on beers and Cosmopolitans. Along the shuffle board table was the Paris Hilton lookalike (western-style) and her smaller entourage. At the table closest to the stage was our group, the folks who grew up with Bill Haley and the Comets.

The bartender was a phenomenal one. Dressed in vintage clothing with long hair she would flip around, our put up, or put in a hat, she danced on the dance floor, made small talk as she poured out the suds, and was absolutely charming even when the crowd swelled. Great lady with a lot of personality, I didn’t catch her name.

The old town is full of characters like the Buffalo Bill Cody clone, reeking of Pachouli and offering walking tours, and “Food Not Bombs” Bob who feeds the hungry at 4 p.m. every Sunday afternoon in Goar Park. He says the organization feeds people in over 200 cities around the world. We enjoyed his beans and rice, salad, and loaves of bread.

They were all great folks and when you see all the locals greet each other it’s with genuine affection, their eyes light up when they great each other. Their camaraderie gives the onlooker a sense of the bond that must have existed between townfolks back in the old hardscrabble days when the mine was first founded. We stayed a week.

Happy Trails!

Beatlick Pamela

Beatlick Travel #5: Urban Camping in AZ

Beatlick Travel Report #5 2009 Series

Third day out of Las Cruces, on a Monday, we woke up to snow so we curtailed our plans to linger any longer at the Old Hachita ghost town. We headed for Douglas, AZ , less than 30 miles away, and hit the Visitors Center before noon. I was surprised to find out we were only 15 blocks from the border of Mexico. Across the border lies Aqua Prieta, Sonoma.

The ladies at the Visitors Center claimed this border town has not been subjected to violence. I’m too intimidated to go to Juarez now for dental work because of the violence there. But “PR” says all is peaceful and calm over there and shopping opportunities abound. We declined shopping in order to explore our opportunities for “urban camping.”

We found our urban campsite in the city’s downtown parking lot behind the grand old Gadsden Hotel. From there I took a two-mile stroll east of the Pan American Highway encountering modest homes with charming yard art and quite a few elegant old homes closed and falling into decay. There was an enormous fountain, just beautiful, that reminded me of the grand fountain of Catalan Plaza in Barcelona.

I liked it there, looked a little like the Ninth Ward in New Orleans BK (before Katrina). The town was small and unintimidating, slow traffic, my kind of place. We passed the night in the parking lot outside the hotel and went in for breakfast the next morning. It’s an historical building with original Tiffany windows and is quite enjoyable to just look at. Lots of old furnishings give a visitor the genuine effect of the era. That made a good segue for us as we paid for breakfast, left a generous tip for some generous supplies of coffee, and headed to the old mining town of Bisbee, once the financial hub between Chicago and San Francisco.

Happy Trails!

Beatlick Pamela

DEEPAK CHOPRA’S NINE STEPS TO PEACE

Spiritual adviser and healer turned celebrity spiritualist by his appearances on Oprah Winfrey has offered nine measures to convert the American economy from war to peace. Pointing out that we are the world’s leading supplier of deadly weapons, spending more on military expenditures than the next sixteen nations combined, he offers nine steps of transformation. While they may fall under the category of fanciful (along with John Lennon’s “Imagine”) under the prevailing militaristic mindset, I find them both appealing and ultimately inevitable. Here they are as they appear in the January 11, 2009 issue of Tikkun Magazine (“Memo to Obama: How to Convert to a Peace Economy”):

1. Scale out arms dealing and make it illegal by the year 2020.

2. Write into every defense contract a requirement for a peacetime project.

3. Subsidize conversion of military companies to peaceful uses with tax incentives and direct funding.

4. Convert military bases to housing for the poor.

5. Phase out all foreign military bases.

6. Require military personnel to devote part of their time to rebuilding infrastructure.

7. Call a moratorium on future weapons technologies.

8. Reduce armaments like destroyers and submarines that have no use against terrorism and were intended to defend against a superpower enemy that no longer exists.

9. Fully fund social services and take the balance out of the defense and homeland security budgets.

Jazz.

Re: Gaza & the Silence of Obama‏

[Note: "The Gaza Assault: Last Ploy of the Neocons" by Jack Random was posted 1/8/09 on Peace-Earth-Justice (www.pej.org) and the National Free Press - World Edition.]

Thanks for all the recent articles. Sorry I have been unable to respond or even say thanks for the time and effort you put into each one, not to mention the wide array of insights and provocations that we behave as rational,compassionate creatures.

Now that we have finished the election (well, almost) and the settling of debris that follows each one, we can begin to see through the haze. The neocons obviously fear that an Obama administration will be fundamentally different in both foreign and domestic policy. The bailout was/is nothing more than paying the bills to the real masters of the game. Israel's sudden turn to all out war is an attempt to settle the score in Gaza just in case they lose U.S. support once the neocons leave office.

You are right. This is bait. Will Obama toe the line and support Israel unconditionally? Nothing he says right now can change Israel's assault so he is saying nothing. If he is nothing else Obama is careful when speaking officially about policy of any kind. He will be difficult to pin down.

I also remember the the last time this same group of thugs were departing the White House and a hopeful young man was moving in. They left impending disasters in Somalia and Waco. Even then one could not help but wonder if it was a set up. If it was Clinton fell for it and botched both situations. We are still suffering the consequences.

Neoconservatism is not a nationalism, even though that is precisely what it pretends to be under the name of patriotism. The neocons are capitalists first. They are a perfect fit for a Republican party that has been the party of big capital virtually from the start. After Jackson the country had swung hard in the direction of democracy (at least for qualified citizens - white men). Republicanism was in part an attempt to correct that shift and place power securely in the hands of the wealthy. That is what it is today and it is what neoconservatism attempts to enforce globally.

Will Obama make some adjustment in the other direction? He has the opportunity since at the moment capitalism is choking on its own excess. There's nothing but hard road ahead of him. We must wait and see.

Twelve days. How much more damage can be done. I am sure we're about to find out.

Take care brother. Keep us awake.

Peace,
Jake

Jake Berry (jakebridget@bellsouth.net)

Beatlick Travel Report #4: Highway 9 & The Border Patrol

It took a while to really hit the open road. We left Albuquerque to return to Las Cruces for our house sitting gig. Then one more tune up from Michael Elliott, our VW mechanic in Organ, before he gave us his blessing to head for California.

So Saturday we stopped off to share a meal and say goodbye to Mary E, Phillips, my peace activist sister-at-arms, then topped off our tank at $1.22 a gallon, up from $1.16 just three days before, and off we went.

There was no transition from all the hurly-burly of last minute details to our first destination hardly. We pulled out of town and within the hour there we were at Exit #49 off of I-10 and onto Highway 146. Bam, we were there, the black ribbon of a two-lane road, a complete circumference of mountain ridges all around us. It was almost too sudden. The sun was setting, the temperature was perfect, and after all this planning we were living our fantasy.

We turned onto Highway 9 and went a few miles past Hachita. There we camped and walked into the old ghost town of Old Hachita. We spent about four hours walking about. Beatlick Joe snatched his binoculars from his back pocket to survey the landscape. He looked in every mine shaft, every abandoned adobe structure, hop, skip, and jumping all over the place. He has planned this particular ghost town search for over two years.

So we encountered our first Border Patrol guard at the first juncture of our trip. We were in such a remote area on Highway 9, on the other side of a fence, and during the night a huge Hummer Border Patrol vehicle past us about 9 p.m. They were all over this place, some pulling a trailer with four-wheelers behind them.

There was a border patrolman in Old Hachita, out there in that lonely stretch. We stopped to chat. I had some trepidation about what kind of person he would be, stern perhaps, and authoritarian. But he turned out to be friendly, with a kind face, and young looking. He said he stays out there 10 hours a day, all alone. I asked if he could read books but he said no. Guess he is supposed to keep his eyes open. But he can listen to football games on the radio. I told him it looked like a lonely existence, but he just shrugged and gave us a smile. So our first encounter with the border patrol went well enough.

We stayed out there two days, getting more acquainted with the van, where to best store everything and all. We had anticipated a leisurely breakfast enjoying our little table and chairs outside, but we woke up to snow on the ground. We packed up fast and headed for Douglas, AZ. We put a towel across the passenger and drivers seat and placed the little stadium heater between us. Finally, we got warm.

Happy Trails
Beatlick Pamela

Three Poems by Chris Mansel

****


Bare Outline


Bi-polar Anti-psychotic
existing in poverty
ability baptized in a manic state
(it reverberates in the ears) epileptic, a downward spiral,
like holy orders, piety
vigorous, mutilation, constraint

ah, the dialogue of a primitive
whose horror is immersion
a mosque so laminated
as to catalog the shakes and screams
the embroidered eyes of dreams

savage is the water in the abyss
adultery schemes for eternity
descending the skin by petal
communion by physical means

Zarathustra as a tarantula
hanging over a hospital bed.

****

Death Disliked Changed

the crime was violent - rough violets/ apocryphal
and often became ill - eating humanity/ execution
delirium, improbable that - nature desires/ illumination
the dead - ancient outside of the following scene/ snakes
were so spontaneous- cancer conscious/ adept
were torn to pieces-curtain of bats/ readings
ailments with the deceased- touch belief/ earth

a hunter where ideas, even death theory, nature
of our moon, no more giants as still as an eye

help him who he was...
a woman, afraid/ lion/Rousseau
produce/without exception
reducing, practiced/birds
pressure/reaches purpose

a flower in a fire, devourers....

****

Bush Shelter

a graying image (menacing like crows)
switching perennially (distraught, grisly)
of a sequential humid ligament
becomes the follicles arbiter
a natural impedance (village wisdom)
for skunk-like wasps splattering
submerged alibis (produce blackened)
slit through the pupil/ effects more stiffening
a curriculum vitae.

chris mansel (christophermansel@hotmail.com)

PRINCIPLES OF FOREIGN POLICY:

In the interest of justice, human rights and democracy, in order to fulfill the greater promise of our founding, recognizing that our intention should not be to dominate the world but rather to improve the welfare of humankind, we propose the following principles of foreign policy.

I. This nation will not engage in interventions that support non-democratic governments or those that violate the inalienable rights of its citizens.

II. This nation will take necessary and appropriate measures to prevent, inhibit or halt genocide and other crimes against humanity.

III. This nation will not act as the police force of the world but work in concert with other nations with respect to international law.

IV. This nation will take appropriate measures, including debt relief and forgiveness, to reduce and eliminate third-world debt. We will no longer sponsor or support the policies of exploitation by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. IMF loans will be based on humanitarian concerns without regard to economic policies.

V. This nation will not sacrifice the lives of soldiers or civilians for economic or strategic gains.

VI. This nation will practice a policy of restraint with regard to civil wars and civil conflicts.

VII. The United States will actively engage in diplomacy and negotiations to resolve international conflicts that threaten regional stability in the Middle East and elsewhere.

VIII. The United States will support the United Nations, the International Criminal Court and other international institutions as the appropriate venue for resolving international disputes.

IX. This nation will recognize its leadership responsibility with regard to the global problems of hunger, poverty, disease, human rights, water shortage, disaster relief and climate change.

X. The intelligence agencies of the United States will cease all covert operations not in compliance with these principles and will report all operations to congress and the American people within two years.

[Adapted from The Jazzman Chronicles, Volume One by Jack Random. Crow Dog Press 2003.]

RIP Master Harold

Born 10 October 1930, died 24 December 2008, Harold Pinter is the extraordinary playwright whose pen laid down the words for The Birthday Party (1957), The Caretaker (1959), The Homecoming (1964) Betrayal (1978) and countless other works for the stage and screen. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005.

Here are excerpts from his Noble Lecture "Art, Truth and Politics”:

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?

….

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.

….

Pinter’s activism began as a conscientious objector in 1946. He campaigned for nuclear disarmament and against apartheid before speaking out powerfully against the first Gulf War, the bombing of Kosovo, the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the moral bankruptcy of the Bush administration. He is believed to be the only Nobel Award winner to label the American president a “mass murderer.”

Truly, we may never see his like again. RIP.

Jazz.

KILLING LABOR: The Columbia Free Trade Pact & Beyond

By Jack Random


In the last presidential debate, with his life’s ambition slipping away and with it the dream of free market fundamentalism, John McCain boldly asserted that the Columbia Free Trade pact was a “no brainer.”

He was right.

In Columbia they kill labor leaders. In the first eight months of 2008 alone they killed 41 labor union members (more than in all of 2007). Free Trade advocates, including the corporate media giants, argue that Columbia’s record on labor and human rights has improved. Their reasoning: They kill fewer labor leaders than they used to kill.

Let’s think about that. If you killed a dozen labor leaders in the US – a larger and more populous nation with at least some established labor tradition – it would take at least a decade to replace them. In other words, you don’t have to behead the snake twice. Once is enough.

In Guatemala the killing of labor increased decisively after the passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). So it seems signing a free trade agreement with the US is equivalent to a free pass for human rights and labor abuse.

We should not be surprised. For while we are world’s loudest advocate of human rights, we have long been labor’s most powerful enemy. It does not stand to reason that any functioning democracy should be anti-labor but we are just that. The anti-labor propaganda campaign has been so persistent, permeating all levels of mainstream media, that it has turned the world on its head, convincing a majority of working people that labor is actually against their interests – or conversely, that corporations have the interests of workers at heart.

Even now, when it is resoundingly clear that the dominant international corporations are unfeeling monsters that would march us all off a cliff for a short term profit, the media are holding out for a continuing Free Trade mandate and the continued evisceration of labor.

If the new congress even considers the Columbia Free Trade Agreement, it will signal that they have failed to comprehend the nature and depth of the current global economic crisis.

As Congressman Barney Frank commented, people are not buying cars because they have no money. They have no money because the only jobs that are available must compete with the labor forces of other nations where organized labor does not exist. Now, having sacrificed benefits and decent wages, they are losing jobs because a consumer-based economy cannot be sustained in a society that pays substandard wages to its working people.

It is a vicious cycle that can only be broken by rebuilding the economy from the ground up – that means labor.

Fair trade is not only the alternative it is the only alternative. It is not sufficient to have the language of labor rights in trade agreements if there is no means of enforcement. Further, the practice of approving trade agreements now and expecting improvement in labor practices and human rights later is laughable. Once approved, it requires a level of outrage rarely sounded in the corporate media even to review no less repeal such agreements.

We are in a bold new world and if the Obama administration does not wake up to the realities of this world, he will at best soften the blow by offering compromise measures such as tax incentives to keep jobs home. Worst-case scenario: He adopts wholeheartedly the Free Trade policies of the Clinton administration.

The Columbia agreement is of course intertwined with other interests that have their roots in the wars of the past. The drug war is another we can no longer afford. Like the war on terror it was always an oxymoron. To the extent that illegal drugs are the enemy, we can no more fight a war against drugs than we can wage war against terror. Both are multibillion-dollar boondoggles employed by politicians to secure and influence power. In the Cold War era we routinely supported rightwing military dictatorships under the guise of fighting drugs. Now we use the war on terror to affect the same end.

If Obama is serious about breaking with the past, he would do well to reject the trade agreement with Columbia. He would do well to cut off support for ruthless leaders like Columbia’s Alvaro Uribe Velez. He would do well to adopt a new Latin America policy that acknowledges the failures of Free Trade. For while they have enabled international corporations to rape the land and steal the natural resources of underdeveloped nations, they have done nothing to improve standards of living for the people of those nations.

It is a system built on corporate exploitation and corruption. It has enriched the privileged few who use positions of power to skim money off the top but it has done nothing to lift the people out of poverty or to build sustainable economies.

The people of Columbia and throughout Latin America have experienced firsthand the failures of Free Trade. That is why they have turned to more progressive leaders – even avowed socialists and Marxists. If America continues to turn its back on these realities, insisting on a pledge of allegiance to the failed policies of Free Market fundamentalism, we will continue to lose ground throughout the hemisphere.

There is no inherent reason why we cannot be friends and allies with the democratically elected governments of Bolivia and Venezuela. There is in fact nothing anti-democratic about socialist economic theory and democracy, not capitalism, is the heart of the American ideal. Indeed, there is not a democracy in the world that does not incorporate elements of both socialism and free enterprise; it is a question of balance.

What history strives to teach us is that economies are evolving systems that must constantly adapt to the parameters of an evolving world. In a globalized world any economic system that is constrained by ideology, that fails to balance individual initiative and the common good, that rejects needed reforms on ideological grounds, is bound to fail.

We have inherited a world badly out of balance. The experiment of corporate dominance has reached an end. We are charged with restoring balance. That requires not only a government that will counter the excesses of corporate greed with diligent regulation; it requires rebuilding labor both domestically and internationally to achieve an equitable balance of economic power.

It will not be easy overcoming the irrational prejudice acquired across generations but that is the challenge we face. If we fail to achieve economic stability we will soon be overwhelmed even greater challenges: global climate change and nuclear genocide.

Rejecting the Columbia Free Trade Agreement is only a modest first step but it is, as John McCain suggested, a “no brainer.”

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE DAILY SCARE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS, PACIFIC FREE PRESS AND NEWS DAILY OF CANADA.