FrontPageMagazine.com – April 18, 2006

Funding Anarchism as “Performance Art”
By Lee Kaplan

The Hallmark Corporation may seem like an unlikely sponsor of anarchist performance art, but it has done just that by providing the income for a member of the Hallmark family to patronize an anarchist ice cream truck.

What is the anarchist ice cream truck? It is the brainchild of Aaron Gach, a San Francisco Bay Area Ôø?artistÔø? and anarchist activist. Gach calls his vehicle the TICU, or Tactical Ice Cream Unit. Gach describes his truck in this way:

Ôø?equal parts SWAT van and ice cream truck (with functional and aesthetic flourishes borrowed from the apparatus of armored cars, military transport vehicles, urban hot-rods, and 1950Ôø?s-style milk trucks), the Tactical Ice Cream Unit is designed to attract, unsettle, amuse, disarm and engage the public with its strange brew of Good Humor gentility, Willy-Wonka wizardry, and Big Brother bravado. For many, a chance encounter with the TICU will feel like being chocolate-dipped in a sea of sugarcoated doubt. Ôø?

Not an everyday ice cream truck, the TICU doubles as a weapon, according to Gach. He describes it as Ôø?part ice cream truck and part urban assault vehicle.Ôø? It is also a propaganda machine. Gach uses it to distribute free ice cream as a lure to attract children and young people so that he can disseminate Ôø?literature from progressive organizations.Ôø?

TICUÔø?s treats include ice cream bars in flavors like honey vanilla, hibiscus and chili mango, GachÔø?s idea of anarchist flavors. Gach maintains that he only hands out pamphlets about effective anarchist activities that are peaceful, such as brochures for town hall meetings and political summits. But in fact he also hands out to children and students information for organizations such as the Black Panther Party, PROMO and the International Solidarity Movement, all anarchist-related groups that promote violent revolution of one kind or another, even terrorism against capitalist governments.

Inside the TICU is even more suspicious. One can find gas masks, police uniforms, video surveillance equipment and even military-grade armor. The front end of the ice cream truck has a built-in battering ram that can be used to take down police barricades or break down locked fences, tactics commonly associated with the more extreme elements of the anarchist movement.

TICU also boasts communications equipment inside and surveillance cameras Ôø? the TICU has 24/7 360 degrees video coverage and 16-channel video surveillance system and a remote control dish microphone, plus more than 1,000 GB of onboard data storage, a Global Positioning System and Wi-Fi.

Gach says he hopes to have a Ôø?fleetÔø? of such vehicles in the near future. The TICU is also equipped with first aid kits, sidewalk chalk, batteries and flashlights, toilet paper, towels, hand warmers and a disguise kit. (Volunteers from Stop the ISM obtained photographs from inside the vehicle.) In addition, documents from the San Francisco chapter of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) were found inside during a Midwest tour. The ADC is active in funding and training the International Solidarity Movement, whose leadership has admitted to working in cooperation with Palestinian terrorist groups. Other organizations mentioned in the literature include CAIR, which terrorism expert Steve Emerson testified before congress is a Hamas front. The ACLU is listed, along with the Muslim Lawyers Association. A document written in Arabic was also found, which tells Muslims not to cooperate with the FBI if they are questioned.

Ironically, this piece of putative Ôø?artÔø? is being funded by an heir to the Hallmark Card fortune, Margaret Hall Silva, thanks to generous funding from her Margaret Hall Silva Foundation. (Hallmark, of course, is a corporation that Gach and his anarchist cronies would probably like to see destroyed as part of their movementÔø?s goals.) The TICU was chosen for funding and realization by the not-for-profit art gallery Grand Arts in Kansas City, Missouri, as an example of Ôø?performance art.Ôø? It is not clear whether Margaret Hall Silva, the director of Grand Arts, was personally involved in choosing the project because the Grand Arts artistic director, Stacy Switzer, isnÔø?t talking.

Given all this information, the idea that Aaron Gach is merely a Ôø?performance artistÔø? is ludicrous. A review of GachÔø?s past activities, for instance, turns up several links to extremist groups. He was formerly involved with American groups that have been linked to terrorism, like Earth First! and the Black Panther Party, and has been active in the past with other American anarchist groups. Gach has even spent some time in Germany with European anarchists learning their radical trade. Gach is also a high-school classmate and a life-long friend of Joseph Smith, a.k.a. Joseph Carr, another anarchist from Kansas City, Missouri. Smith was involved in spinning the death of fellow anarchist and ISM activist Rachel Corrie, and once declared her death as well worth the price of Ôø?the revolution.Ôø?

Another clue to GachÔø?s extremist agenda comes from GachÔø?s own website. Gach writes of successful military deceptions throughout history. He also describes the destruction of corporate buildings and property (such as smashing the windows of chain stores or banks as was done by anarchists in Seattle in 1999) in euphemistic terms such as Ôø?putting a hexÔø? on a corporation.

Gach has been touring U.S. college campuses and high schools and is now on a West Coast tour starting with UCLA and branching out to other locations to spread anarchy and revolutionÔø?though he doesnÔø?t say so directly.

GachÔø?s organization, the so-called Center for Tactical Magic (CTM), has an equally radical mission. According to Gach, Ôø?CTM emphasizes nine key tactics used throughout history by ninjas and noblemen, magicians and magistrates, PIÔø?s and MPÔø?s alike. They are: stealth, surveillance, surprise, sabotage, infiltration, evasion, misdirection, subterfuge, and, of course, disguise.Ôø?

When asked whether Margaret Hall Silva was aware that Aaron Gach was heavily involved in the American anarchist movement, Grand Arts artistic director Stacy Switzer merely scoffed. When asked if she was aware the interior of the ice cream truck contained gear that had military applications, she abruptly hung up. Earlier, Switzer had told a reporter that, Ôø?For us, and this has always been the mission of Grand Arts, projects begin here and we know that the TICU has a life well beyond Grand Arts. IÔø?m excited to see where it goes after this.Ôø? No doubt she means other art galleries, and Gach is already scheduled at UC Riverside and other college campuses and private art galleries on the West Coast. But knowing GachÔø?s anarchist credentials, itÔø?s hard not to suspect that he may have other intentions for his controversial truck.

…

VH1.com

A track called “Eyes of the Insane,” [Tom] Araya said, is perhaps the most political song on the new Slayer album. The song was inspired by an article he’d read in an issue of Texas Monthly magazine.

“The song’s about the effects of war on some of these soldiers,” he said. “This article — and it was a pretty trippy article — it really affected me. The entire magazine was devoted to soldiers of this new Iraq conflict that’s going on. The effect that the war has had on some of these kids who’re coming home and having a tough time dealing with what they’ve seen — I mean, some of these kids are traumatized and mentally destroyed by what they’ve seen. The magazine also ran an entire list of the soldiers from Texas who’ve died. It was several pages with pictures of these kids. It blew my mind.”

“Shamans of the Amazon is a personal account of Film-maker Dean Jefferys returning to the Amazon with his partner and one year old daughter. They journey deep into the heart of the Ecuadorian rainforest to meet two Amazon Shamans, to learn about and experience the ancient ayahuasca ritual. The film will also show how this hallucinogenic ritual is being adapted and used in western cultures. You find the cd/dvd with a good quality original at: http://www.shamansoftheamazon. com/”

New York Times

April 19, 2006
MOVIE REVIEW
‘Sir! No Sir!’ Salutes Vietnam’s Dissenters in Uniform

By MANOHLA DARGIS
In March 1964 Robert S. McNamara opened a speech about South Vietnam with the statement that “the independence of a nation and the freedom of its people are being threatened by Communist aggression and terrorism.” Many words later, Mr. McNamara, the secretary of defense, concluded, in rosy terms that sound eerily similar to contemporary dispatches, that “when the day comes that we can safely withdraw, we expect to leave an independent and stable South Vietnam, rich with resources and bright with prospects for contributing to the peace and prosperity of Southeast Asia and of the world.”

Much happened in the bloody decade that followed, but one of the most memorable chapters of the Vietnam War has also long been one of the least revisited: the antiwar movement inside the military. Called the G.I. Movement, this resistance manifested itself in countless ways: in organized protests, in desertions and in the coffeehouses that sprang up across the country near military bases. In the early 1970’s the documentary filmmaker David Zeiger worked in one such coffeehouse, the Oleo Strut in Killeen, Tex., not far from Fort Hood. Named for a helicopter shock absorber, the Oleo Strut was where off-duty soldiers went to decompress and to check out the latest issue of one of the many underground military publications, like The Fatigue Press, that gave powerful voice to their dissent.

In his smart, timely documentary about the G.I. Movement, “Sir! No Sir!,” Mr. Zeiger takes a look at how the movement changed and occasionally even rocked the military from the ground troops on up. On one level the film serves as a corrective to the rah-rah rhetoric about Vietnam in such schlock entertainments as the 1980’s “Rambo” franchise, in which Sylvester Stallone’s veteran turned mercenary ritualistically wipes away the spit lobbed at him by a phantom antiwar protester. The image of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran, explains Jerry Lembcke, himself a Vietnam veteran and one of the persuasive talking heads who appears in the new film, helped maintain the important fiction that opposition to the war came strictly from outside the military.

During the 1960’s and 70’s American newspapers routinely reported a significantly different story than the one later cooked up by Hollywood and other revisionists. This film shows that as antiwar sentiment gathered strength in American streets, a parallel movement seized the armed forces. By September 1971 dissent among the ranks had become a front-page subject in this newspaper, with a headline that read “Army Is Shaken by Crisis in Morale and Discipline.” Soldiers were fed up and up in arms, and not always against the Vietcong. Desertions were on the rise, as were fraggings, named for the fragmentation grenades lobbed at superiors by their own men. By 1974 the Defense Department would record more than half a million incidents of desertion since the mid-60’s.

Mr. Zeiger fits so much into his 84-minute film that it’s hard not to wish he had spent more time on what happens when American soldiers break ranks with their leaders. John Kerry’s bid for president proved that long after fighting in Vietnam came to an end, a war of words continues to rage. It’s a war of words that finds Jane Fonda ó who performed for tens of thousands of troops in an antiwar revue, “Free the Army,” and makes a passionate appearance in the film ó still labeled Hanoi Jane. “Remembered as a war that was lost because of betrayal at home,” Mr. Lembcke has written, “Vietnam becomes a modern-day Alamo that must be avenged, a pretext for more war and generations of more veterans.” In “Sir! No Sir!,” Mr. Zeiger remembers that war and the veterans whose struggles against it are too often forgotten.

Sir! No Sir!

Opens today in Manhattan.

Written and directed by David Zeiger; directors of photography, May Rigler and Mr. Zeiger; edited by Ms. Rigler and Lindsay Mofford; music by Buddy Judge; produced by Mr. Zeiger, Evangeline Griego and Aaron Zarrow; narrated by Troy Garity; released by Balcony Releasing. At the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas at Third Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 84 minutes. This film is not rated.

General Defends Army Chief Who Spoke Out – New York Times

By JIM RUTENBERG
Published: April 16, 2006
WASHINGTON, April 16 ó Gen. Richard B. Myers, who retired six months ago as the nation’s top military officer, said today that senior administration officials had been wrong to publicly criticize the former Army chief just before the invasion of Iraq for saying the mission could require a much larger force than was ultimately committed.

“He was inappropriately criticized, I believe, for speaking out,” General Myers said during an interview on the ABC News program “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.”

…

General Myers, who has emerged as one of Mr. Rumsfeld’s chief defenders, repeated his comments from late last week that generals speaking out against the defense secretary are inappropriately breaching military etiquette that dictates officers only air complaints with the civilian leadership privately.

But his comments also marked the first time since his retirement that General Myers, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has weighed in on the administration’s handling of the 2003 troop estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, who was then the Army chief of staff. General Myers’s remarks today were focused on the criticism of General Shinseki, and not on the substance of his comments about troop levels in Iraq.

The clash three years ago between General Shinseki and the civilian Pentagon leadership still rankles some of his former military colleagues and goes to the heart of the complaints that Mr. Rumsfeld and his top aides ó who are philosophically in favor of a smaller, faster military disregarded calls for more troops to secure Iraq that came even before the invasion began.

In February 2003 General Shinseki, who had commanded the NATO peacekeeping force in Iraq, testified in Congress that peacekeeping operations in Iraq could require several hundred thousand troops, in part because it was a country with “the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems.”

Mr. Wolfowitz told Congress then that the American force could be sufficiently smaller than Mr. Shinseki had estimated because the Iraqis would welcome the Americans and because the country had no history of ethnic strife and was unlike Bosnia. Just this week, commanders on the ground in Iraq have said the current sectarian strife there reminded them of the situation in the former Yugoslavia.

… He added, “Now, there were some mistakes made by, I think, some of the senior civilian leadership in taking General Shinseki on about that comment. I think that was wrong, and I’ve expressed those views, as a matter of fact.”

Group show opening this weekend.
It’s curated by Nathaniel Russell and will be groovy.

featuring work from Erik Bluhm, Kyle Field, Sam Keefner, Devendra Banhart, Lisa Choinacky, Jason Pierce, and John Minardi.

Opening Saturday April 15th 8pm
Lobot Gallery 1800 Campbell St.
Oakland, Calif. 94608

DIRELAND: VILLAGE VOICE FIRES JAMES RIDGEWAY; SYDNEY SCHANBERG QUITS
April 13, 2006

VILLAGE VOICE FIRES JAMES RIDGEWAY; SYDNEY SCHANBERG QUITS

The firing of Washington columnist James Ridgeway by the new management of the Village Voice, and the resignation of the distinguished Pulitizer Prize winner Sydney Schanberg from the paper, represent a sad moment in the history of the New York weekly. I was a columnist for the Voice for some seven years. Jim Ridgeway was not only a colleague but someone I had considered a comrade in the pursuit of truth for many years. Syd Schanberg (right), whom I also have known for years and whose work I have long admired, is the former New York Times reporter and Newsday columnist who is known to the larger public through the movie “The Killing Fields,” describing his intrepid reportorial work for the Times in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge takeover and his indefatigable and devoted search for his Cambodian colleague Dith Pran. Syd is one of the most distinguished names in Americn journalism. That these two superb journalists — Schanberg and Ridgeway — have now vanished from the Voice is a symbol of what is happening to that paper, and of what will most likely happen to all the other alternative weekly papers in the Voice chain (including the L.A. Weekly, for which I have also long written) under the new ownership and management of Michael Lacey’s New Times corporation.

“Democracy Now” this morning had an informative discussion with Ridgeway, Schanberg, and other Voice writers that I urge you to listen to or read. Among other things, Schanberg — explaining why he left the Voice — quotes a definition of the new editorial line given by the new owner, Mike Lacey, to an editorial staff meeting: “He said, ‘If I want to read regular criticism or bashing of the Bush administration, I’ll read the New York Times. I don’t want it in this paper.’î You can both read a transcript of, and listen to, the archived “Democracy Now” broadcast on what’s happening to the Voice, by clicking here.

The letter of protest below is signed by Village Voice writers and staffers, including some of the most able and valuable people still at the weekly, many of whom I’m proud to call friends. I associate myself entirely with their sentiments:

Ridgeway’s track record

For 30 years, James Ridgeway has, in his person, his politics, and his writing, defined what makes the Voice a special publication. From Three Mile Island to 9-11, Ridgeway has provided some of the nation’s most incisive and insightful coverage of government misfeasance and malfeasance. He was one of the first journalists in America to spotlight the threat posed by a resurgent racist and neo-Nazi movement, an issue he hammered away at in the pages of the Voice years before anyone ever heard of Ruby Ridge or Timothy McVeigh. His reports on escalating environmental abuses exposed corporate lawbreakers and bureaucratic indifference. Ridgeway’s writings on conflicts from Bosnia to Baghdad to Haiti have always provided the otherwise unreported flip side of the world according to the mainstream media, in short reporting that jibes precisely with the exact mission of the Voice. Over the past few years, Ridgeway expanded onto the Web, filing regular nuggets of breaking news and even posting video reports on the 2004 elections. In light of this distinguished track record, the decision last week by the Voice’s new ownership to terminate Ridgeway is shameful. It also sends a terrible message as to the sort of coverage that the new ownership portends. We call on Voice Media executive editor Michael Lacey and chairman and CEO Jim Larkin to reverse his discharge.

Tom Robbins
J. Hoberman
Lynn Yaeger
Nat Hentoff
Jarrett Murphy
Kristen Lombardi
Ed Park
Chuck Eddy
Robert Christgau
Nina Lalli
Elizabeth Zimmer
Dennis Lim
Tricia Romano
Aina Hunter
Corina Zappia
Jorge Morales
Wayne Barrett
Michael Musto
Jennifer Gonnerman
Darren Reidy