WHAT ON EARTH IS GODHAVEN AND WHY?

What On Earth Is Godhaven? And Why? 

 Godhaven Ink started out as four of us: Gyrus, Mahalia, Phagus and Merrick. We found we’d had and were having the same kind of ideas, motivations, heroes and villains. We’d been finding incredible, beautiful righteous stuff that all seemed to link up, although it never got mentioned anywhere Out There. There was something about the writers, the music, the films and comedy that didn’t merely amuse but really spoke to us and affirmed our spirit. But Out There our morality and politics and motivation seemed dismissed or misunderstood if not completely ignored.    
Elsewhere we knew others from totally different backgrounds and circles
who felt the same; people we’d meet at gigs liked the same books; people
we knew as activists liked the same music. We knew there must be more people
who felt the same but who were isolated and doubting themselves cos they
were surrounded by people who ridiculed and ostracised them for not eating
meat, not watching The Bodyguard, or displaying some other trait of humane
intelligence. We knew there was a whole subculture that needed to affirm
itself by declaring itself.

    It was
the middle of 1994, a very active and charged time in Britain for the counterculture,
and indeed for the culturally aware in general. After 15 years of increasingly
fascistic government, there was a new law proposed; the Criminal Justice
Bill (becoming the Criminal Justice Act when it was made law). It was a
massively broad-ranging attack on civil liberties and marginalised groups:
it criminalised – at least partially – access to private land, picketing
and peaceful protest, it tampered with an accused person’s right to silence,
gave police sweeping new powers to search people without any suspicion
of a crime, and the power to set up a five mile exclusion zone around a
rave party, and made a crime of even being suspected by police of getting
ready to go to such a party!

    The actual
effect of the Criminal Justice Bill was the opposite of what the government
intended. In fact, it did what so many radical groups have struggled and
hoped for in vain for years; it created – by way of opposition to it –
a solid collective network of diverse groups, a true unity of oppression.
It was hunt saboteurs and trade unionists, it was the Socialist Workers
Party and Druids, it was hill-walking ramblers and the Lesbian Avengers,
it was environmental activists and Labour MPs. And above all, it was colourful
and joyous: a celebration of our vitality and diversity. At all times it
was a clear contrast to the homogenising repressed repressive dull greyness
of those who designed the Bill.

    The Bill, inevitably, did become law, but only after a summer of carnivals and rallies
numbering tens of thousands, only after connecting people who are still
working together now, only after kicking thousands of people out of apathy
or complacency and into a life of action.

    The four of us realised that it was no good just talking about our visions, our
truths. We found so much coming from and to us that really needed to be
heard louder and further. As Ghandi said, you must be the change you
want to see.

   So we did a zine in September 94 called Godhaven A-Z. It was 44 A5 pages photocopied
illicitly by Merrick on the copiers at the bank where he worked. It had
articles and collages that we’d done (some collectively, some separately,
all of it discussed, tinkered with and approved by all four of us), and
numerous quotes, articles and pictures that were nicked from other places
too.

    If you have a head full of ideas you need to get Out There, a zine is the quickest,
easiest and most direct way. To make music or paint or whatever you need
to learn technique; with a zine you just write it down and photocopy it.
No technical skill, no interpretive power beyond basic literacy, no mediation
required.

    And we
needed to do it not only because we were not seeing our concerns and truths
addressed Out There, but the stuff that was Out There was so insulting,
so deadening, so stay-sat-there, consume-and-die. We needed not only to
say our points but also to counter the McDonalds-ising stuff that was welling
up in our culture.

    Our publishing
policy is that if there’s an issue worthy of more discussion or a point
of view that speaks a Big Truth or a keen wit that’s seldom expressed and
we can say it well, we put it out. Although it’d make us wads of cash to
give the world more junk like another Diana memorial book or whatever,
there’s no point, no real worth, no integrity, and no dignity. There’s
already enough cultural pollution. Right now, with just a few clicks of
your mouse, you have unimaginable amounts of information at your disposal.
Understanding is no longer about the gathering of information so much as
the making sense of it, finding real use for it. And keeping the bullshit
at arms length.

    We swiftly
did a second Godhaven, which came out in spring 95, and a third in June
95. We had always intended to do no more than three, we wanted to be absolutely
certain that it’d always be vibrant, fresh, and buzzing, never formulaic,
tired or putting in any filler. We did it collectively under pseudonyms
so there could be no ego glory; we put them out at 7p, 8p and 9p so there
was no money to be made; we had no advertisers or paid employees so there
was no commercial tempering; no deadlines so that we didn’t rush anything
or put in filler if there wasn’t enough. We wanted it to be absolutely
clear that the only reason the zines existed was because we thought they
should.

   And we wanted
to make them look good. The zine format is an inherently scrappy thing,
full of extreme points of view (which is fair enough ˆ people are obviously
going to write about what moves them the most). We wanted to do something
a little different; to make something good not just within a piece of writing,
but in the way it’s presented, in the way it’s set among the rest of the
zine. We know that populism and intelligence need not exclude each other.
We’re not afraid of specialisation where required, but we wanted to make
everything as accessible and straightforward as possible. As George Orwell
said, “never use a long word where a short one will do.”

    
We got quite into the swing of the zine lark, and as well as the Godhaven
zine trilogy we put out a few leaflets and mini-zines on a few things (beginners
guides to hitch-hiking and self-publishing, as well as stuff against the
Criminal Justice Bill). But after Godhaven The Third, we went off to other
things. Gyrus, (who wrote in the Godhaven zines under the name T), continued
his other publishing thing, The Unlimited Dream Company, launching the
frankly breath-taking Towards 2012 magazine. He’s currently working with
renowned Yorkshire pagan historian Paul Bennett on turning Paul’s 20 years
of research into a series of books in the Fylfot imprint.

    Mahalia
(whose Godhaven zine name was Harper) is also a painter and a songwriter,
and with Phagus (a multi-instrumentalist musician of an outrageously high
level of effortless talent), they are a band called Slumberwall. Both of
them have spent a lot of time being ill and making music (separately and
together on both counts), but the music is reaching the end of its long
gestation and the first CD, The Spacecat Concert, has been released. Mahalia’s
songwriting shows the same intimacy, fearlessness and precision of Leonard
Cohen or Nick Drake, but as Slumberwall it is played with a shimmering
fluid effervescence reminiscent of Jeff Buckley, Sly Stone or Nusrat Fateh
Ali Khan.

    Mahalia’s
writing is consistent whether it be a lyric or a poem; several of the works
in his books Doubting and Surrender have started life as one and become
the other. His consistency also applies whether he’s writing of internal,
intensely personal-yet-universal matters or external things like the captivating
writing from tree protests in his book Surrender.

    Merrick
got The Call and quit banking in 1995 on the same day he quit wearing underpants.
Like Mahalia, he got into environmental direct action, spending months
at the Newbury Bypass tree protest in 96 and at Manchester Airport’s Runway
2 protest in 97, as well as a variety of other actions and things.

    None
of us could quite kick the writing thing. Merrick says, “I do try not to
write stuff, I’d rather DO things, but sometimes I just can’t help it.”
Battle For The Trees, his book about the Newbury campaign, started life
as a letter then grew into an article, then a long article, then a book
manuscript. Because we are our own editors and publishers, it would’ve
been fine to put it out in whatever form was best.

    Not being
tied to any contract, or indeed anyone’s expectations but your own, grants
tremendous freedom to let you do and present your work in whatever way
you see fit. We all work in several media, and knowing that the area you’re
working in is not the be- all and end-all takes away a lot of pressure
and lets creativity flow and play much more easily.

    
As well as the writing and the songs, we’ve done radio shows too. Named
Radio Savage Houndy Beastie, they’re a mix of treasured tracks, oddities,
and a lot of our own creativity in scripted comedy and spontaneous soundscapes.
The soundscapes can mix, say, Gregorian monks chanting with bits from albums
like Outstanding Recordings of British Mammals & Amphibians and snatches
of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The shows are on Leeds Student Radio, which
broadcasts twice a year for a month at a time, and hopefully they’ll be
webcasting them in future. Each show moves between a number of extremes
and styles, and between the political rants and the Bruce Forsyth albums,
the records of great stuff by obscure people and obscure stuff by great
people, the comedy sketches and the way we fuck about with the adverts,
there’s a cohesive collage effect that’s very much in keeping with the
Godhaven zines.

   It’s so important
that we act whenever the spirit moves us, no matter what the action or
the medium, and no matter how small the deed. We mustn’t let the big boy
corporate media make us feel impotent. Yes, today’s Daily Mail has sold
more than everything we’ve ever done combined, but we know the impact of
our stuff on those who do read it will be greater. It only takes one voice
of truth to show up a whole crowd of liars. As Morrissey said in a very
early Smiths interview, “I’d rather sell ten records and change ten lives
than sell a million records and change nothing.”

    See,
just because they shout louder doesn’t mean they actually get listened
to. People know the corporate stuff is there for the wrong reasons, to
patronise us with lowest-common-denominator nonsense in order to sell advertising
space. Whereas with the small press publishers there are no advertisers,
deadlines, editors, and certainly no profits or wages. So before you’ve
read a word of it, you know you’re dealing with something more real, more
true, something heartfelt. And it’s not just zines and publishing, it’s
all media, all art, all creative output.

    And we
mustn’t be worried if we don’t make a living out of it; it’s those who
do get paid who are under suspicion of just being in it for the money.
Here’s two lists:

   People who
know they’re getting paid before they start

All Saints 

Hello! magazine 

Barbara Cartland 

the police force 

People who never got properly
paid 

Van Gogh 

Reclaim The Streets 

Franz Kafka 

Godhaven Ink 

Which team do you want to
be with?

    Allen
Ginsberg once said that every day the New York Times is read by more people
than any of his poetry ever is, but that a day later the New York Times
is in the bin, whereas his writing stays relevant and true, that poetry
broadcasts across thousands of years. It’s easier to claim people’s
attention by not challenging or moving them in any way; it also makes it
easy for them to move on and forget. The meaningless stuff rarely lasts.
When Patti Smith released Horses it was being outsold hundreds of times
over by the Osmonds. History does a fairly thorough job of bringing much
of the worthy work to the fore and consigning talent-free buffoons to obscurity.

    We have
to leave truth and beauty all around to inspire others and show up the
lie of McDonaldsocracy that tells us we can’t have it and we don’t deserve
it, as it takes our money and treats us as morons and tells us there can
be no other way.

    It’s
OK to think and feel. Not only is it OK, it’s essential, and it’s just
as essential we affirm it by expressing it. We must make clear our denial
of the popular culture that tells you that passion and integrity are just
another superficial style choice.

    Godhaven
have no grand schemes in mind, and we know there are no Final Answers.
What Godhaven affirms and promotes is a process, an attitude that encourages
a more humane world and brings us closer to being a species to be proud
of. If we are to head towards this it has to be by establishing a culture
of a broad network of compassion, tolerance, understanding and mutual help,
and realising that we’ve all been duped into participating in and depending
upon the stuff that ruins us.

    The prime
motivation of Godhaven and the lesson we pass on to others is; if it’s
what you feel and you’re not seeing it Out There, then put it out there
yourself. There will be others who feel the same as you, and will be affirmed
and inspired by what you do, like when a hitch-hiker watches hundreds and
hundreds of cars pass by without being picked up, then you can be the thing
that stops and carries them forward.

   Mahalia’s only
line on this right now is “Godhaven is whatever human heart still beats
at the start of the 21st century”. It is that which makes us special, if
anything, and the only thing important for us to be judged against, for
anything to be judged against. Whatever we count for is not due to marketing,
academic waffle, or recommendations from the Observer colour supplements,
but that innate human desire for something more, for something better and
something true. We hold on to what Patti Smith calls “the right to create,
without apology, from a stance beyond gender or social definition, but
not beyond the responsibility to create something of worth”. It is that
which makes us worth anything at all, and it’s that which resonates with
the people who’ve read the things we write and have been moved by them.
Zines that Godhaven Ink did a couple of hundred copies of over three years
ago still bring in the most beautiful and wonderful letters, and of course
they’re working their magic on so many more people who don’t write to us.
As Ginsberg said, we broadcast across the years. Get it together and get
out there. The only measure of your words and deeds will be the love you
leave when you’re gone.

“Finally she begins to realize that she is either reality’s only hope, or its worst enemy.”

Amazon.com:

Disturbing, perplexing, sometimes infuriating, Ryutaro Nakamura’s serial experiments lain
covers some of the same themes as The X-Files and the films of David Lynch. When introverted 13-year-old Lain receives an e-mail from a dead classmate, she gains access to “the Wired,” a virtual world that promises unlimited power to those who can exploit it. Gradually the borders between the real and the virtual blur, and Lain’s own identity begins to fade and fragment. Her parents tell her that she is not really their child, her online self grows in power and independence, and shadowy organizations pursue her in
both worlds. Finally she begins to realize that she is either reality’s only hope, or its worst enemy.

    Nakamura keeps the pace of serial experiments lain deliberately slow, imbuing
the early episodes with a sense of mounting dread that pays off as the
plot develops. The anime technique of panning across static images creates
a meditative stillness that works perfectly, and the repetition of certain
key images gives them a dreamlike significance. Viewers will either love
or hate the complex plot, which seems intent on incorporating every possible
paranoid conspiracy, from sinister nanotechnology to alien plots. However–unlike
many other anime–it somehow hangs together, and frankly not understanding
everything is part of the pleasure of this kind of story. Fans of action-heavy
anime and people who like every loose end tied up should steer clear, but
those who surrender themselves to the slowly unfolding mysteries of the
plot will be amply rewarded. –Simon Leake 

ROBERT FRIPP: “My four criteria for professional work, applied over many years”

From Robert Fripp’s online diary for March 4, 2004:

  My four criteria for professional work, applied over many years, have been these: 

Can I learn from this? 

Is this serving a useful social aim (however we might understand that)? 

Can I earn a living doing this? 

Is this fun? …

Is this serving a useful social aim?

For my generation, there was no doubt that music (and specifically rock music) could “change the
world” for the better; and listening to music, was itself, a significant contribution. There was a spirit of the time, a zeitgeist, and a passion. So the answer, historically, is yes. 

    But the spirit has moved. Music remains available, but subtleties are involved – are we available to music? – and these subtleties are vulnerable to gross action. Conventional rock performance is now increasingly a business operation & audients claim consumer rights. Where the communion between music, performer & audience? 

    Overall, my current answer is I don’t know.

The New American Century by ARUNDHATI ROY

The New American Century

by ARUNDHATI ROY

 [from the February 9, 2004 issue of TheNation]

Adapted from Ms. Roy’s
Jan 16, 2004 speech to the opening plenary at the World Social Forum in
Mumbai:

In January 2003 thousands
of us from across the world gathered in Porto Alegre in Brazil and declared–reiterated–that
“Another World Is Possible.” A few thousand miles north, in Washington,
George W. Bush and his aides were thinking the same thing. 

    Our project
was the World Social Forum. Theirs–to further what many call the Project
for the New American Century. 

    In
the great cities of Europe and America, where a few years ago these things
would only have been whispered, now people are openly talking about the
good side of imperialism and the need for a strong empire to police an
unruly world. The new missionaries want order at
the cost of justice. Discipline at the cost of dignity. And ascendancy
at any price. Occasionally some of us are invited to “debate” the issue
on “neutral” platforms provided by the corporate media. Debating imperialism
is a bit like debating the pros and cons of rape. What can we say? That
we really miss it? 

    In any
case, New Imperialism is already upon us. It’s a remodeled, streamlined
version of what we once knew. For the first time in history, a single
empire with an arsenal of weapons that could obliterate the world in an
afternoon has complete, unipolar, economic and military hegemony. It uses
different weapons to break open different markets. There isn’t a country
on God’s earth that is not caught in the cross-hairs of the American cruise
missile and the IMF checkbook. Argentina’s the model if you want to
be the poster boy of neoliberal capitalism, Iraq if you’re the black sheep.
Poor countries that are geopolitically of strategic value to Empire, or
have a “market” of any size, or infrastructure that can be privatized,
or, God forbid, natural resources of value–oil, gold, diamonds, cobalt,
coal–must do as they’re told or become military targets. Those with the
greatest reserves of natural wealth are most at risk. Unless they surrender
their resources willingly to the corporate machine, civil unrest will be
fomented or war will be waged. 

    
In this new age of empire, when nothing is as it appears to be, executives
of concerned companies are allowed to influence foreign policy decisions.
The
Center for Public Integrity in Washington found that at least nine out
of the thirty members of the Bush Administration’s Defense Policy Board
were connected to companies that were awarded military contracts for $76
billion between 2001 and 2002. George Shultz, former Secretary
of State, was chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. He
is also on the board of directors of the Bechtel Group. When asked about
a conflict of interest in the case of war in Iraq he said, “I don’t know
that Bechtel would particularly benefit from it. But if there’s work to
be done, Bechtel is the type of company that could do it. But nobody looks
at it as something you benefit from.” In April 2003, Bechtel signed a $680
million contract for reconstruction. 

    

This brutal blueprint has been used over and over again across Latin America,
in Africa and in Central and Southeast Asia. It has cost millions of
lives. It goes without saying that every war Empire wages becomes a Just
War. This, in large part, is due to the role of the corporate media. It’s
important to understand that the corporate media don’t just support the
neoliberal project. They are the neoliberal project. This is not a
moral position they have chosen to take; it’s structural. It’s intrinsic
to the economics of how the mass media work. 

    
Most nations have adequately hideous family secrets. So it isn’t often
necessary for the media to lie. It’s all in the editing–what’s emphasized
and what’s ignored. Say, for example, India was chosen as the target for
a righteous war. The fact that about 80,000 people have been killed in
Kashmir since 1989, most of them Muslim, most of them by Indian security
forces (making the average death toll about 6,000 a year); the fact that
in February and March of 2002 more than 2,000 Muslims were murdered on
the streets of Gujarat, that women were gang-raped and children were burned
alive and 150,000 driven from their homes while the police and administration
watched and sometimes actively participated; the fact that no one has been
punished for these crimes and the government that oversaw them was re-elected…all
of this would make perfect headlines in international newspapers in the
run-up to war. 

     
Next thing we know, our cities will be leveled by cruise missiles, our
villages fenced in with razor wire, US soldiers will patrol our streets,
and Narendra Modi, Pravin Togadia or any of our popular bigots will, like
Saddam Hussein, be in US custody having their hair checked for lice and
the fillings in their teeth examined on prime-time TV. 

    But as
long as our “markets” are open, as long as corporations like Enron, Bechtel,
Halliburton and Arthur Andersen are given a free hand to take over our
infrastructure and take away our jobs, our “democratically elected” leaders
can fearlessly blur the lines between democracy, majoritarianism and fascism. 

     
Our government’s craven willingness to abandon India’s proud tradition
of being non-aligned, its rush to fight its way to the head of the queue
of the Completely Aligned (the fashionable phrase is “natural ally”–India,
Israel and the United States are “natural allies”), has given it the leg
room to turn into a repressive regime without compromising its legitimacy. 

    
A government’s victims are not only those it kills and imprisons. Those
who are displaced and dispossessed and sentenced to a lifetime of starvation
and deprivation must count among them too. Millions of people have been
dispossessed by “development” projects. In the past fifty-five years,
big dams alone have displaced between 33 million and 55 million in India.
They have no recourse to justice. In the past two years there have been
a series of incidents in which police have opened fire on peaceful protesters,
most of them Adivasi and Dalit. When it comes to the poor, and in particular
Dalit and Adivasi communities, they get killed for encroaching on forest
land, and killed when they’re trying to protect forest land from encroachments–by
dams, mines, steel plants and other “development” projects. In almost every
instance in which the police opened fire, the government’s strategy has
been to say the firing was provoked by an act of violence. Those who
have been fired upon are immediately called militants. 

     
Across the country, thousands of innocent people, including minors, have
been arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and are being held
in jail indefinitely and without trial. In the era of the War against Terror,
poverty is being slyly conflated with terrorism. In the era of corporate
globalization, poverty is a crime. Protesting against further impoverishment
is terrorism. And now our Supreme Court says that going on strike is a
crime. Criticizing the court is a crime too, of course. They’re sealing
the exits. 

    
Like Old Imperialism, New Imperialism relies for its success on a network
of agents–corrupt local elites who service Empire. We all know the
sordid story of Enron in India. The then-Maharashtra government signed
a power purchase agreement that gave Enron profits that amounted to 60
percent of India’s entire rural development budget. A single American company
was guaranteed a profit equivalent to funds for infrastructural development
for about 500 million people! 

    Unlike
in the old days, the New Imperialist doesn’t need to trudge around the
tropics risking malaria or diarrhea or early death. New
Imperialism can be conducted on e-mail. The vulgar, hands-on
racism of Old Imperialism is outdated. The cornerstone of New Imperialism
is New Racism. 

    
The best allegory for New Racism is the tradition of “turkey pardoning”
in the United States. Every year since 1947, the National Turkey Federation
has presented the US President with a turkey for Thanksgiving. Every year,
in a show of ceremonial magnanimity, the President spares that particular
bird (and eats another one). After receiving the presidential pardon, the
Chosen One is sent to Frying Pan Park in Virginia to live out its natural
life. The rest of the 50 million turkeys raised for Thanksgiving are slaughtered
and eaten on Thanksgiving Day. ConAgra Foods, the company that has won
the Presidential Turkey contract, says it trains the lucky birds to be
sociable, to interact with dignitaries, school children and the press.
(Soon they’ll even speak English!) 

    
That’s how New Racism in the corporate era works. A few carefully bred
turkeys–the local elites of various countries, a community of wealthy
immigrants, investment bankers, the occasional Colin Powell or Condoleezza
Rice, some singers, some writers (like myself)–are given absolution and
a pass to Frying Pan Park. The remaining millions lose their jobs, are
evicted from their homes, have their water and electricity connections
cut, and die of AIDS. Basically they’re for the pot. But the Fortunate
Fowls in Frying Pan Park are doing fine. Some of them even work for the
IMF and the WTO–so who can accuse those organizations of being antiturkey?
Some serve as board members on the Turkey Choosing Committee–so who can
say that turkeys are against Thanksgiving? They participate in it! Who
can say the poor are anti-corporate globalization? There’s a stampede to
get into Frying Pan Park. So what if most perish on the way? 

    
As part of the project of New Racism we also have New Genocide. New Genocide
in this new era of economic interdependence can be facilitated by economic
sanctions. New Genocide means creating conditions
that lead to mass death without actually going out and killing people.
Denis
Halliday, who was the UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq between 1997
and 1998 (after which he resigned in disgust), used the term genocide to
describe the sanctions in Iraq. In Iraq the sanctions
outdid Saddam Hussein’s best efforts by claiming more than half a million
children’s lives. 

     
In the new era, apartheid as formal policy is antiquated and unnecessary.
International instruments of trade and finance oversee a complex system
of multilateral trade laws and financial agreements that keep the poor
in their bantustans anyway. Its whole purpose is
to institutionalize inequity. Why else would it be that the
US taxes a garment made by a Bangladeshi manufacturer twenty times more
than a garment made in Britain? Why else would it be that countries that
grow cocoa beans, like the Ivory Coast and Ghana, are taxed out of the
market if they try to turn it into chocolate? Why else would it be that
countries that grow 90 percent of the world’s cocoa beans produce only
5 percent of the world’s chocolate? Why else would it be that rich countries
that spend over a billion dollars a day on subsidies to farmers demand
that poor countries like India withdraw all agricultural subsidies, including
subsidized electricity? Why else would it be that after having been plundered
by colonizing regimes for more than half a century, former colonies are
steeped in debt to those same regimes and repay them some $382 billion
a year? 

    For all
these reasons, the derailing of trade agreements at Cancún was crucial
for us. Though our governments try to take the credit, we know that it
was the result of years of struggle by many millions of people in many,
many countries. What Cancún taught us is that in order to inflict
real damage and force radical change, it is vital for local resistance
movements to make international alliances. From Cancún we learned
the importance of globalizing resistance. 

    No individual
nation can stand up to the project of corporate globalization on its own.
Time and again we have seen that when it comes to the neoliberal project,
the heroes of our times are suddenly diminished. Extraordinary,
charismatic men, giants in the opposition, when they seize power and become
heads of state, are rendered powerless on the global stage. I‘m
thinking here of President Lula of Brazil. Lula was the hero of the World
Social Forum last year. This year he’s busy implementing IMF guidelines,
reducing pension benefits and purging radicals from the Workers’ Party.
I’m thinking also of the former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela.
Within two years of taking office in 1994, his government genuflected with
hardly a caveat to the Market God. It instituted a massive program
of privatization and structural adjustment that has left millions of people
homeless, jobless and without water and electricity. 

    
Why does this happen? There’s little point in beating our breasts and feeling
betrayed. Lula and Mandela are, by any reckoning, magnificent men. But
the
moment they cross the floor from the opposition into government they become
hostage to a spectrum of threats–most malevolent among them the threat
of capital flight, which can destroy any government overnight.

To
imagine that a leader’s personal charisma and a c.v. of struggle will dent
the corporate cartel is to have no understanding of how capitalism works
or, for that matter, how power works. Radical change cannot be negotiated
by governments; it can only be enforced by people. 

    
At the World Social Forum some of the best minds in the world come together
to exchange ideas about what is happening around us. These conversations
refine our vision of the kind of world we’re fighting for. It is a vital
process that must not be undermined. However, if all our energies are diverted
into this process at the cost of real political action, then the WSF, which
has played such a crucial role in the movement for global justice, runs
the risk of becoming an asset to our enemies. What we need to discuss urgently
is strategies of resistance. We need to aim at real targets, wage real
battles and inflict real damage. Gandhi’s salt march was not just political
theater. When, in a simple act of defiance, thousands of Indians marched
to the sea and made their own salt, they broke the salt tax laws. It was
a direct strike at the economic underpinning of the British Empire. It
was real. While our movement has won some important victories, we must
not allow nonviolent resistance to atrophy into ineffectual, feel-good,
political theater. It is a very precious weapon that must be constantly
honed and reimagined. It cannot be allowed to become a mere spectacle,
a photo opportunity for the media. 

    It was
wonderful
that on February 15 last year, in a spectacular display of public morality,
10 million people on five continents marched against the war on Iraq. It
was wonderful, but it was not enough. February 15 was a weekend. Nobody
had to so much as miss a day of work. Holiday protests
don’t stop wars. George Bush knows that. The confidence with which
he disregarded overwhelming public opinion should be a lesson to us all.
Bush believes that Iraq can be occupied and colonized as Afghanistan has
been, as Tibet has been, as Chechnya is being, as East Timor once was and
Palestine still is. He thinks that all he has to do is hunker down and
wait until a crisis-driven media, having picked this crisis to the bone,
drops it and moves on. Soon the carcass will slip off the bestseller
charts, and all of us outraged folks will lose interest. Or so he hopes. 

    
This movement of ours needs a major, global victory. It’s not good enough
to be right. Sometimes, if only in order to test our resolve, it’s important
to win something. In order to win something, we need to agree on something.
That something does not need to be an overarching preordained ideology
into which we force-fit our delightfully factious, argumentative selves.
It does not need to be an unquestioning allegiance to one or another form
of resistance to the exclusion of everything else. It could be a minimum
agenda. 

    
If all of us are indeed against imperialism and against the project of
neoliberalism, then let’s turn our gaze on Iraq. Iraq is the inevitable
culmination of both. Plenty of antiwar activists have retreated in confusion
since the capture of Saddam Hussein. Isn’t the world better off without
Saddam Hussein? they ask timidly. 

    
Let’s look this thing in the eye once and for all. To applaud the US Army’s
capture of Saddam Hussein, and therefore in retrospect justify its invasion
and occupation of Iraq, is like deifying Jack the Ripper for disemboweling
the Boston Strangler. And that after a quarter-century partnership in which
the Ripping and Strangling was a joint enterprise. It’s an in-house quarrel.
They’re business partners who fell out over a dirty deal. Jack’s the CEO. 

     
So if we are against imperialism, shall we agree that we are against the
US occupation and that we believe the United States must withdraw from
Iraq and pay reparations to the Iraqi people for the damage that the war
has inflicted? 

    
How do we begin to mount our resistance? Let’s start with something really
small. The issue is not about supporting the resistance in Iraq against
the occupation or discussing who exactly constitutes the resistance. (Are
they old killer Baathists, are they Islamic fundamentalists?) 

     
We have to become the global resistance to the occupation. 

    Our
resistance has to begin with a refusal to accept the legitimacy of the
US occupation of Iraq. It means acting to make it materially impossible
for Empire to achieve its aims. It means soldiers
should refuse to fight, reservists should refuse to serve, workers should
refuse to load ships and aircraft with weapons.It certainly
means that in countries like India and Pakistan we must block the US government’s
plans to have Indian and Pakistani soldiers sent to Iraq to clean up after
them. 

    
I suggest we choose by some means two of the major corporations that are
profiting from the destruction of Iraq. We could then list every project
they are involved in. We could locate their offices in every city and every
country across the world. We could go after them. We could shut them down.
It’s a question of bringing our collective wisdom and experience of past
struggles to bear on a single target. It’s a question of the desire to
win. 

     
The Project for the New American Century seeks to perpetuate inequity and
establish American hegemony at any price, even if it’s apocalyptic. The
World Social Forum demands justice and survival. 

     
For these reasons, we must consider ourselves at war. 

LET THEM EAT GRASS

The
Atlantic Monthly | May 2003 

 Back To Grass 
The old way of raising cattle is now the new way˜better for the animals and better for your table

by Corby Kummer 

Beef has come to seem a hazardous
substance. If years of warnings about the dangers of saturated fat and
heart disease weren’t enough, Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation (2001)˜with
its graphic and disturbing picture of the inhumane working conditions of
meatpackers and the contamination from criminally rushed slaughtering and
processing˜made clear that it is unwise if not foolhardy to eat beef ground
by anyone but yourself. Then an article last year by Michael Pollan, in
The New York Times Magazine, told us that corn-fed beef, the presumed gold
standard for tender, luxurious steak, is far from wholesome. It isn’t very
good for the people who eat the fat-streaked meat that corn produces, and
eating corn is terrible for cattle, which are ruminants meant to chew grass.
Corn leaves their digestive tracts susceptible to E. coli and other pathogenic
bacteria. Almost all cattle raised for beef are force-fed corn (which costs
less to buy than it does to grow, thanks to federal farm subsidies), and
the resulting stress makes it necessary to keep them on high doses of antibiotics.
“Finishing” for corn-fed beef takes place on vast feedlots, where cattle
raised in many parts of the West are trucked to a miserable end. This force-feeding
provokes moral hesitations like those raised by that notorious product
of force-feeding, foie gras. At least geese are designed to eat corn.

    
Whatever the current troubles of McDonald’s and other burger purveyors,
beef remains America’s most popular meat. Many meat lovers, alarmed by
Schlosser’s book and Pollan’s article, have decided to go organic˜a choice
always to be applauded, for the benefits that chemical-free farming brings
to the environment and the health of farm workers, and a choice made easier
by the adoption last October of a national organic standard. But organic,
vexingly, will not necessarily satisfy people who care about flavor and
freshness. Once the food industry saw there was a profit to be made, “organic”
stopped being a guarantee of attention to flavor or individual care. In
the case of beef, “organic” can mean “raised in confinement and given organic
corn.” And a last-minute legislative provision passed in February, allowing
farmers to give livestock non-organic feed and still certify their meat
as “organic,” threatens to rob the term of all credibility.

    There
is an alternative: grass-fed beef. Ideally this refers to animals raised
in open pastures and fed grass and silage all their lives after weaning.
Grass feeding results in far lower levels of saturated fat and high levels
of both omega-3 fatty acids (more commonly found in fish, and thought to
help prevent heart disease) and the newest darling of the nutritional world˜CLA
(conjugated linoleic acid), polyunsaturated fat that may help prevent cancer.
These benefits, and also higher levels of antioxidants, appear in all food
from all animals that eat grass, milk and cheese as well as meat.
  

As with “organic,” though, the lure of a new market willing to pay a premium
has led to fudged definitions. Some meat producers use “grass-fed” to describe
animals that are raised in pens on industrial feed, including corn, and
finished on rations of grass in feedlots far from home. A similar confusion
still surrounds “free-range,” which can refer to animals that roam where
they please or to animals kept in barns and allowed to range in circumscribed
yards. No one regulates the use of these terms, and given how many years
it took to achieve a national definition of “organic,” it may be a long
time before anyone does. Determined beef lovers in search of true grass-fed
beef have encountered uneven availability and, occasionally, the necessity
of buying an entire side of beef at a time (which requires both a very
large freezer and the skill to cook lesser cuts). Economic inefficiency
and shipping costs lead to higher prices˜the usual tariff for more healthful,
less industrial food. 

    The search
is worth it. Grass-fed beef tastes better than corn-fed beef: meatier,
purer, far less fatty, the way we imagine beef tasted before feedlots and
farm subsidies changed ranchers and cattle. I recently visited two ranchers
and the founder of a cooperative, all of whom have taken the purist approach
to grass-fed beef. Each has managed to meet three big challenges facing
ranchers who want to avoid sending their animals to a feedlot: finding
slaughterhouses that will accept and process just a few animals at a time
and treat them humanely; supplying meat year-round, although grass is seasonal;
and selling both prime and secondary cuts. Each offers an easy way to order
true grass-fed beef, a step that should lead to a conversion experience.
To ensure satisfaction I offer a foolproof recipe for brisket˜my mother’s.

    Any
reservations I have about the ethics of eating meat recede when I visit
a farm or ranch run by someone who cares deeply about animals and how they
live. Culling and, yes, killing a portion of a herd seems a natural
way of helping a group of animals and their habitat to thrive. This paradox
struck me when I rode last summer in the old tan Suburban of Dale Lasater,
a rancher in Matheson, Colorado, an hour or so southeast of Denver. Lasater,
a gentle, witty, contemplative man, appears briefly in Fast Food Nation
as a corrective model for the beef industry. His father, Tom, himself a
third-generation rancher, moved from Texas to Colorado in search of affordable
land, and in the 1950s took the heretical step of making his ranch a wildlife
sanctuary, refusing to kill predators and pests or, later, to use fertilizers
and herbicides. This, he hoped, would allow him to restore nutritive grasses
and water reserves to the parched, depleted land he had bought, and to
protect the ranch from developers in Denver and Colorado Springs. The Lasaters
were influenced by the ideas of Allan Savory, a guru of grasslands management,
who advocated a careful rotation of pastures to allow the natural regrowth
of grasses.

    Tom Lasater’s
unconventional methods worked. Even if his fellow ranchers couldn’t bring
themselves to copy them, let alone to install the miles of electric fence
necessary to keep animals in a land-preserving rotation, they respected
the health of his livestock, which they bought for breeding.

   Since Fast
Food Nation was published, Dale Lasater has built his mail-order meat business,
now in its sixth year, to the point where he can sell most of his animals
directly, either for breeding or as meat. The idea of selling meat,
something his family had never done (though they had sold dairy products),
was inspired by his memories of working on a cattle ranch in Argentina
while on a Fulbright scholarship, when twice a day he ate what he remembers
as the best beef he ever tasted. Argentine beef, still thought by many
to be the world’s best, is all grass-fed in the high Pampas. Now that the
ranch was raising grass-fed cattle, he reasoned, their meat should be just
as good to eat. Lasater and his partner, Duke Phillips, a former manager
of the ranch, had to find careful slaughterhouses, and also refrigerators
where they could dry-age meat for fourteen to twenty-one days. Dry-aging,
a step that was long a luxury reserved to the wholesalers and customers
who could pay the added costs of storage and surveillance, enhances flavor
and is a necessity to tenderize grass-fed beef.

    After
we toured the miles of his ranch, where heifers and young bulls surrounded
the Suburban as if magnetically drawn, Lasater gave me cooked samples of
several cuts of meat, including the first ground beef I’d had in a long
time. It was so lean that it tasted like some other kind of meat, perhaps
game (wild animals are naturally lean and of course grass-fed, too, if
they are herbivores). But I quickly became accustomed to the more intense
flavors, and began to appreciate what I had been missing. I found that
the brisket˜a secondary cut that has more fat and lots of collagen fibers,
which turn gelatinous and tender when cooked˜had the deepest and most rounded
flavor of everything we tasted. Lasater wasn’t surprised: it’s his favorite
cut too.

    Tom Gamble
has much in common with Dale Lasater. His grandfather went into cattle
ranching in the early 1900s, near Napa, California, and one of his father’s
goals in continuing the business was to preserve the land from encroaching
urban development. When I met Gamble at his house in Napa last fall, he
described stumbling through many of the difficulties that Lasater and Phillips
faced five years ago: where to process the meat, how long to dry-age, which
cuts to offer, how to distribute. A slaughterhouse that would treat the
animals with the care Gamble wanted proved very hard to find; when we spoke,
Gamble was preparing to spend the next day trucking several steers to one
in Chico˜nearly three hours away. 

   His partner
in the meat business is Bill Davies, the scion of a highly regarded winemaking
family. Gamble compared the nascent grass-fed-beef business to the Napa
wine industry in the 1960s. “There’s no infrastructure for the little guys,”
he said. He is optimistic that the market will flourish once consumers
understand how grass feeding contributes to the environment and to flavor,
and he looks forward to changes that will help small ranchers. Mobile bottling
lines have saved small wineries from having to buy and maintain expensive,
hard-to-clean, space-hogging machinery; Gamble dreams of mobile slaughtering
facilities that will go from ranch to ranch. He himself went door to door
to the area’s nationally known restaurants, which were more accustomed
to calls from neophyte winemakers. He was proud to have created an enthusiastic
local market for secondary cuts such as skirt steak, sirloin tips, and
even fajita strips. (“Go next door,” he said of one local restaurant, “and
have an enchilada with beef in it˜it’s an incredible thing.”) Speaking
in a vocabulary familiar to his winemaking peers, Gamble described the
shift from corn-fed to grass-fed beef as being “like going from insipid
hearty burgundy to a Cab that maybe needs more age but has more complexity.”

    Ridge
Shinn, the founder of the New England Livestock Alliance, in central Massachusetts,
has big ambitions: to show New England dairy farmers who join his cooperative
that by switching from milk to meat they can survive in a steadily more
difficult economy. He scoffs at the idea that freezing winters like this
past one are an obstacle: “Deer don’t live in barns,” he says, “and cattle
have much thicker layers of fat.” While working as a farmer at Old Sturbridge
Village, in central Massachusetts, Shinn learned nineteenth-century agricultural
practices and became a believer in the superiority of New England grass
to any other grass in the country˜a superiority, he told me recently, that
ranchers visiting from elsewhere enviously confirm. As for the short grazing
season, Shinn advocates “long-cut silage,” meaning hay baled as soon as
the grass is cut rather than after it has been allowed to dry.

   Shinn found
a slaughterhouse that was willing to follow techniques recommended by Temple
Grandin, the autistic woman who has pioneered humane treatment in the country’s
livestock-handling industry. The slaughterhouse, in Stafford Springs, Connecticut,
is just two and a half hours from New York City, the country’s largest
market for top-quality meat. About a dozen farmers have agreed to follow
Shinn’s rules, which include feeding calves on mother’s milk for at least
two months and then on just grass or hay, and adopting certain other humane
raising methods. To ensure the quality of the meat on which he is betting
the cooperative’s reputation, Shinn goes from farm to farm with an ultrasound
machine that evaluates the fat and muscle structure of each animal at slaughter
weight. Big industry, he points out, grades meat after slaughter; but the
cooperative’s machine enables farmers to choose in advance only those animals
that will meet the standards of the cooperative’s Pasture Perfect brand.

   Like Lasater
and Gamble, Shinn believes that in the long run the only way to guarantee
quality is through careful breeding; his chief concentration is on finding
breeds best suited to the New England climate. So far he is a successful
competitor in the luxury market on grounds of flavor: in a recent tasting
of filets mignons, Wine Spectator rated Pasture Perfect’s best.

     
Before ordering and cooking grass-fed beef, you have to decide you’re ready
for the real taste of beef˜a taste that corn-fattening has for decades
blanketed with an unpleasantly sweet, bland, rich coating. Losing the flavor
of corn in beef is like scraping away a gooey glaze. The usual complaint
is that grass-fed beef is stringy rather than tender. This can be addressed
by careful cooking, and by buying cuts naturally higher in fat. It can
be erased by my mother’s famous brisket.

    Every
family has its treasured pot roast, of course, and mine has special significance.
At the beginning of their marriages my mother shared the recipe for it
with her best friend from high school, who had moved to northern California
from the Connecticut town where they grew up, and who liked it so much
that it became her company dish. After my mother died, my family had the
luck of continuing to enjoy it as prepared by her friend, who became my
stepmother.

    Homey
recipes like this have periodic revivals, especially in insecure times,
and they are at the heart of two appealing new books: The Way We Cook,
by Sheryl Julian and Julie Riven, full of wonderful, simple recipes based
on their northeastern upbringing and wide cooking experience, and Marian
Burros’s Cooking for Comfort, with reliable, barely reconstructed recipes
from the 1950s and 1960s and her own Connecticut Jewish childhood (shockingly,
Burros adds ketchup, brown sugar, and tomato puree to her mother’s spare
original brisket).

   For my family’s
recipe, season both sides of a medium brisket˜Lasater’s are just the right
size, three to five pounds, and well trimmed˜with salt, pepper, paprika,
and, if you truly want to revisit the sixties, Ac’cent. Heat the oven to
350°. In an uncovered heavy Dutch oven sear the meat fat side down
over medium-high heat in a film of hot olive oil. Turn it when it is quite
brown and remove as much fat as possible. Strew over the meat one or two
medium onions, chopped; two or three medium carrots, peeled and sliced;
one large tomato, skinned, seeded, and chopped; a bell pepper, peeled,
ribbed, and sliced (green for period authenticity, though I prefer red);
and a medium clove of garlic, peeled and minced. Add two cups of water
or stock (my stepmother makes fresh, unsalted chicken stock for this dish),
cover, and cook in the oven for three and a half hours. After two hours
add peeled and halved potatoes if you wish, being careful not to crowd
the pot lest they steam rather than roast. An hour later add one cup of
sliced button mushrooms (my mother used canned sliced mushrooms, drained˜a
practice my stepmother follows despite her Californian emphasis on freshness),
a quarter to a half cup of red wine, and half a teaspoon of Gravy Master.
You can omit the Ac’cent, of course, now that we know about MSG headache,
and water is fine in place of stock. But you should really add the Gravy
Master. When the pot liquor is skimmed, it makes an incomparable gravy
for a dish that will ever withstand the test of time.

Lasater brisket and other
cuts can be ordered at http://www.lasatergrasslandsbeef.com or by phone, 866-454-2333.
The site for Tom Gamble and Bill Davies’s fajita strips and fancier cuts
is http://www.napafreerangebeef.com, and the number is 707-963-6134. Information
for ordering Pasture Perfect steaks and other cuts, and also on grasslands
farming as practiced by members of the New England Livestock Alliance,
is at http://www.nelastore.com, and the number is 413-528-3767. 

 

BEEFHEART.

Party Of Special Things To Do

  when the stiff wind blows 

the flag dont wiggle

in the party of special
things to do

I met the ace of love

she took me to her plantation

for the love without separation

in the party of special
things to do

it could happen to me

it could happen to you

I met the ace of love

she said I want you to go

to the party of special
things to do

and when you’re through

Ill be right here waiting
for you

here take these sparks 

so my distant cousins can
get along with you

watch out for the mirror
man

and elixir sue

when I got to the party
of special things to do 

it wasnt hard to find Elixir
Sue

I met all the cards 

the wild cards 

the one-eye jill

the red queen

she turned her head

you know what I mean 

she turned it back and said

“I got a brand new game
I want to lay on you”

I met them all 

at the party of special
things to do

when I was done

I was far from through

I returned to the ace of
love

now wouldnt you?

I met them all

the camel wore a nightie

the camel wore a nightie

at the party of special
things to do

….elixir sue

it wasnt hard to find liquor
at the do

I met all the cards 

the wild cards 

you know what I mean 

then she turned it back
and said 

“I got a brand new game
I think I want to lay on you”

I met elixir sue

at the party of special
things to do

its so special

SICK POLICY.

01 MARCH 2004: SICK POLICY.

Gouging
the Poor

By Barbara Ehrenreich

 

The Progressive, February
2004 Issue 

There’s been a lot of whining
about health care recently: the shocking cost of insurance, the mounting
reluctance of employers to share that cost, the challenge–should you be
so lucky as to have insurance–of finding a doctor your insurance company
will deign to reimburse, and so forth. But let’s look at the glass half
full for a change. Despite the growing misfit between health care costs
and personal incomes, it is not yet illegal to be sick. 

    
Not quite yet, anyway, though the trend is clear: Hospitals are increasingly
resorting to brass knuckle tactics to collect overdue bills from indigent
patients. Take the case of Martin Bushman, an
intermittently insured mechanic with diabetes who, as reported in The Wall
Street Journal, had run up a $579 debt to Carle Hospital in Champaign-Urbana.
When he failed to appear for a court hearing on his debt rather than miss
a day of work, he was arrested and hit with $2,500 bail. Arrests for missed
court dates, which the hospitals whimsically refer to as “body attachments,”
are on the rise throughout the country. Again, on the half full
side, we should be thankful that the bodies attached by hospitals cannot
yet be used as sources of organs for transplants. 

    
Mindful of their status as nonprofit charitable institutions, hospitals
used to be relatively congenial creditors. My uninsured companion of several
years would simply work out a payment arrangement–on the scale of about
$25 a month for life–and go on consuming medical care without the least
concern for his freedom. No longer, and it’s not just the dodgier, second-rate
hospitals that are relying on the police as collection agents. Yale-New
Haven Hospital, for example, has obtained sixty-five arrest warrants for
delinquent debtors in the last three years. 

    

Of course, if you work for Yale-New Haven, it’s not your body that gets
“attached.” On a recent visit to Yale hospital workers, I met Tawana
Marks, a registrar at the hospital, who had the misfortune to also be admitted
as a patient. Unsurprisingly, her hospital-supplied health insurance failed
to cover her hospital-incurred bill, so Marks now
has her paycheck garnished by her own employer–a condition of debt servitude
reminiscent of early twentieth century company towns. 

    
To compound the sufferings of the sick and sub-affluent, hospitals now
routinely charge uninsured people several times more than the insured.
The
Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel reports that one local hospital charged an
uninsured patient $29,000 for an appendectomy that would have cost an insured
patient $6,783. According to the Los Angeles Times, in one, albeit for-profit,
California hospital chain, the uninsured account for only 2 percent of
its patients, but 35 percent of its profits. The explanation for such shameless
gouging of the poor? Big insurance companies and HMOs are able to negotiate
“discounts” for their members, leaving the uninsured to pay whatever fanciful
amounts the hospital cares to charge, such as, in one reported case, $50
for the use of a hospital gown. 

        
Back in 1961, psychiatrist Thomas Szasz noted the “medicalization” of behavior
formerly classified as crime or sin, such as drug addiction or what was
defined as sexual deviance. Rather than seeing this as a benign and potentially
merciful trend, the crotchety Szasz complained about the growing concentration
of power in the hands of a “therapeutic state.” How quaint his concern
sounds today, when instead of the medicalization of crime, we are faced
with the criminalization of illness. 

    
Because almost everyone, no matter how initially healthy and prosperous,
is now in danger of falling into the clutches of the medical/penitentiary
system. It could start with a condition–say, high blood pressure or diabetes–serious
enough to be entered into your medical record. Next you lose your job,
and with it your health insurance–or, as in the case of 1,000 or so freelance
writers (including myself) once insured through the National Writers Union,
the insurance company simply decides it no longer wants your business.
You go to get new insurance, but no one wants you because you now have
a “pre-existing condition.” So when that condition flairs up or is joined
by a new one, you enter the hospital as a “self-pay” patient, incur bills
four times higher than an insured patient would, fall behind in paying
them, and, given the hospitals’ predatory collection tactics, wind up in
jail. 

    
Sociologists have long seen a connection between sickness and criminality,
classifying both as forms of deviance. Certainly, the relevant vocabularies
have been converging: Note the similarity between the phrases “pre-existing
condition” and “prior conviction,” as well as the use of the terms “record”
and “case.” A doctor once told me that, although he had detected a new
and potentially life-threatening condition, he would refrain from prescribing
anything to correct it, lest my record be marred by yet another pre-existing
condition. 

    
The day will come when we look back on such small acts of kindness with
nostalgia. Even as I write this, some bright young MBA at Aetna or Prudential
is no doubt coming to the conclusion that a great deal of money and valuable
medical resources could be saved through the simple expedient of arresting
people at the first sign of illness. Skip the intermediate stages of diagnostic
testing, hospitalization, and attempted debt collection, and proceed directly
to incarceration. The end result will be the same, unless you succeed in
concealing that cough or unsightly swelling from the cop on his or her
beat. 

    
I’m prepared for this eventuality, having been raised by a mother who was
in turn raised by her Christian Scientist grandparents, and had thus been
trained to greet her children’s symptoms with contempt and derision. I
was conditioned, in other words, to conflate physical illness with moral
failure. Should a rash or sore throat arrive, I stand ready, at some deep
psychic level, to serve my time. 

    
But for those of you who still imagine that illness and pain should elicit
kindly responses from one’s fellow humans, I have one last half full observation:
Our prisons do offer health care–grossly inadequate care to be sure–but
at least it’s free, even for child molesters, ax murderers, and those miscreants
who have the gall to be both sick and uninsured. 

John McLaughlin: Zen and the art of guitar-playing

John McLaughlin’s new LP was 12 years in the making. Meditation kept him sane, he tells Martin Longley

26 February 2004 The Independent

 The career of John McLaughlin
is full of extreme musical contrasts. When his guitar was electric – as
with the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Tony Williams’s Lifetime – he gave us
frenetic runs at awesome speeds, cloaked in murderous feedback. But when
he moves to an acoustic guitar, he is one of the most delicately sensitive
players, exploring Indian classical music with Shakti, or reinventing flamenco
with Paco de Lucia.

    
The Yorkshire-born McLaughlin flew to New York in 1969; two days later,
he was playing with Miles Davis on the sessions for In a Silent Way. McLaughlin
stayed in Manhattan for 15 years, but has now lived in Monaco for the past
20. When we meet, his thumbs are encased in sticking plasters. Has he been
playing too much vigorous axe, fast and intricately picked? Er, no: he
hurt them during a spell of DIY.    McLaughlin recently released Thieves and Poets, an ambitious work for orchestra and
improvised guitar that was 12 yearsin the making. McLaughlin considers
it a monumental effort. “That was without doubt my magnum opus,” he says.
“I never worked so hard on a recording.”

    Improvisation lies at the heart of McLaughlin’s playing. “I’m improvising a lot. I’m
not a classical player. I don’t want to be a classical player. I love to
improvise, because things happen that never happen anywhere else.”

    The standards on the album are all identified with jazz pianists. “I started off as a
piano-player,” McLaughlin says. “I was 11 when I started guitar. Blues
came, and I was blown away by that. And then, in the space of four years,
flamenco, jazz and Indian music. By the time I was 16, I was already under
the influence.” All those are improvising forms, of course.

    
In the late Sixties, McLaughlin and the Wolverhampton-born bassist Dave
Holland shared a flat in London, before both were discovered by Miles Davis.
“Can you get more lucky than that, for a European jazz musician? We were
sitting in this club, and Miles turned round and said, ‘It’s time you formed
your own band.’ This is the most honest man I ever met. Brutally honest.”

    In 1997,
Zakir Hussain was invited to tour by the Asian Music Circuit and given
free rein to choose his musicians. The tabla-player met McLaughlin and
suggested a Shakti revival. “I’m hooked again,” McLaughlin says. “Shakti
are phenomenal players. I have a great affection for Indian culture and
music. They’re delightful people just to be with – there’s a wonderful
atmosphere in the group.”

    That wasn’t the case with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Between 1980 and 1985, McLaughlin
tried to re-form the original band because it had ended in such acrimony.
“This really pissed me off, because music’s not about that – it’s not about
your ego. It’s about joyful experience or moving experience. We were together
only two years. I think we had too much success too quickly. I’d just finished
this Love Devotion Surrender tour with [Carlos] Santana. All was not well.
Jan [Hammer] and Jerry [Goodman] would not talk to me any more, which was
very weird. We went on stage for the first concert and they still weren’t
talking to me. We had a break and I said, ‘I don’t care if I’m the worst
sonofabitch in the world, but spit it out! I don’t want to play with people
who don’t speak to me.’

    
But they just turned round and walked out of the room. Next time I saw
them I said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I don’t want to
live like this. If you don’t want to talk to me, then we’ll fold the band
and you do what you want, and that’ll be the end of that.’ They went their
own way and formed their own band, but they were soon at each other’s throats.
Human nature!

    “It was
a great band. Jerry came to me some time later and said that he couldn’t
believe he was responsible for the break-up. He regretted it deeply.”

    McLaughlin
gave up trying to re-form the original Mahavishnu Orchestra. John and Jerry
renewed their friendship, but Jan never called. “I must have been a little
weird at that time,” McLaughlin says. “I was studying meditation with Sri
Chinmoy and had a spiritual name. Maybe that got up their noses, I don’t
know. I didn’t ask them to meditate with me, or pray. I don’t care, they
could have as many girls as they want, do drugs. Everyone’s got to live
the way they want to.”

    McLaughlin’s
spiritual quest is central to him. “I have a profound affection for
Buddhism, and Zen Buddhism’s particular ways of meditating. This is the
way I want to live, because it makes me feel good. I’m an old hippie: I
did a lot of acid, a lot of grass, a lot of other things. By
the end of the Sixties it was clear to me that to have an altered state
of consciousness is very important, for sanity’s sake. For
my own sanity, let’s say. I can only speak for myself. I didn’t want
to have an altered state of consciousness by ingesting chemicals, or mushrooms,
or stuff like that. This became part of my life by the end of the Sixties.
I will do it until I’m gone. I’m convinced that it helps me not just mentally,
intellectually or spiritually, but physically.” He must be right, judging
by his trim, youthful appearance.

  Shakti will tour again this summer, probably in a double bill with Jeff

Beck. “My old comrade-in-arms, another one who’s about as deaf as me. Listen,
when you put everything up to 11, your ears pay for it eventually…”

    The two
toured together regularly in the 1970s, and McLaughlin says Beck is his
favourite guitarist. “He’s looking for new formats, and I identify totally
with that. My next record’s going to be completely bonkers. I want to go
more underground. I think the jazz critics will really crucify me this
time.”

    All McLaughlin’s
musical incarnations are brought together on a new box set of live recordings
made at the Montreux Jazz Festival between 1974 and 1999. McLaughlin hadn’t
heard that music since it was played. “It was very emotional for me, to
hear this music, these bands. I don’t have time to listen much to what
I do. It was so powerful, very nostalgic.”

     
McLaughlin is also recording a DVD guitar tutorial, documenting the content
of his masterclasses. “Teaching is a very strange thing. I believe that
all we can do is show how we do what we do, starting with the basics. How
to master improvisation, exercises, development of phrases.

    “I’m
62 years old. I’ve got a lot of stuff in my head and I don’t know when
I’m going to go. Jazz musicians are not known for their longevity. I want
to get it down, so people have access to it.”

 

‘Thieves and Poets’ is
out now on Emarcy; Verve is reissuing his 1992 album ‘Que Alegria’; and
the 17-disc box set ‘The John McLaughlin Montreux Concerts’, is available
through Warner Jazz 

“It’s easy to wallow in misery, it’s the most comfortable place to be. But it’s always worth trying to get out of it.”

Gruf Rhys’ track by track guide to Super Furry Animals’ Phantom Power album 

Hello Sunshine

The voices at the beginning are a sample of Wendy and Bonnie. There’s a sense of loss in the sample: a sense of longing. I suppose it’s a courting ballad with a ‘been so down looks like up to me’ mentality. It’s easy to wallow in misery, it’s the most comfortable place to be. But it’s always worth trying to get out of it.Liberty Belle
For this I devised cartoon characters called Liberty Belle and Memory Lane, and Liberty Belle I suppose
represents the bells of freedom and Memory Lane represents history’s harsh lessons that Liberty Belle always forgets. Liberty Belle represents the American Dream, which is all conquering and has no fear. She’s young, innocent and carefree, skipping along. Memory Lane is the flipside, the one that’s learnt from history’s harsh realities. It’s sung from the perspective of a bird living almost in a parallel universe to humans, oblivious to the
gravity of the games which are being played around us. I think that’s how I feel a lot of the time, and a lot of other people do too.

Golden Retrieve

I listen to a lot of people like Davey Graham, a lot of British folk and bluesmen and European acoustic musicians from the 50s and 60s, and musically Golden Retriever has that kind of feel. The lyrics are a blues parody – “I met the devil at the roundabout”. I tried to update blues vocabulary, because I think that one of the things that bothers me most about rock and roll music is that people keep regurgitating the same words. I try to make my own clichés, you know? It also coincided with passing my driving test a few years back, which had a great affect on my life. In studying for my theory test I had to absorb a lot of road sign and driving theory vocabulary, which has made its way into songs like Golden Retriever and Valet Parking.

Sex, War & Robot

Bunf discovered the pedal steel during the recording of the last album and he’s played it on Hello Sunshine and Bleed Forever. On this one we got a pedal steel player from Cardiff called John ‘Catfish’ Thomas for this track. There are a lot of songs on this record about broken relationships and war, and I think they go hand in hand, but always with a positive outlook to the future.


Piccolo Snare
Piccolo Snare is a song about societies torn apart by war and the waste of human life for nothing, pawns in a worthless game. A lot of the vocabulary for that song comes from the Falklands War, the Malvinas War, whatever you want to call it: ‘Tumbledown’ and ‘Skyhawks’, etcetera. It could be about any war, but that was a war I remembered from when I was a kid where people from my area were dying, as the media tried to maintain some ridiculous degree of jingoism Apart from using the vocabulary it’s generally a song about people’s misguided
belief in flags. All flags are tarnished; they were only invented so that people wouldn’t shoot their own side in the war. It’s a song in at least three parts. It starts off folk rock in feel, and builds up to a cosmic funk coda!


Venus And Serena
It’s about a child, who can’t communicate with his elders, growing up with two pet tortoises called Venus and Serena. But he feels that the reptiles understand. I suppose it’s similar to Liberty Belle in that sense, in that in this day and age the turtle seems to take on an image of wisdom compared to the people elected to governors. It uses tennis vocabulary to make the point. Venus and Serena have beautiful names and they seem to have exemplary powers. I think it’s about making pictures in people’s minds.I’m trying to get into balladeering and narrative in songs, but I don’t think I’ve perfected it by any means.
You can put this one down to my struggle with narrative! After a song like Piccolo Snare you need a bit of light to make sure that people don’t go out and jump off the nearest bridge. We feel we have some social responsibility
to uplift people. 


Father Father #1 and #2These were in the DADDADtunings. I think it puts some breathing space in the album. They also help
to join songs together in mood, they help to bring the album down, or build
it up again and give it some kind of consistency. They were originally
the bookends of the song-cycle.

Bleed Forever

Bleed Forever is about the
radiation that descended all over North Wales after Chernobyl, and the
general proliferation of nuclear power stations in the area. There was
a huge increase in leukaemia in children and some livestock are still not
allowed to be sold on the market. There’s even a Geiger counter feel to
Cian’s synth on this song! This was recorded pretty much live. Often during
a live take I sing the wrong lyric, so the line about the skin care consultant
ended up staying in. I suppose we didn’t care necessarily if it was in
tune or not just as long as it sounded human. I suppose it’s about how
you don’t see radiation and how you don’t really know if it’s affecting
you or not. And how it could wipe whole cultures out. Another invisible,
or ‘phantom’, power source. 

Out Of Control

It’s our most Iron Maiden
song. I think Golden Retriever is pretty heavy rock as well. I think it’s
pre-metal, if you want to get technical. ‘Ninja Jihad’ sounds like a ridiculous
cartoon character. They’re very flippant lyrics, they just regurgitate
what we see: everything seems out of control. It’s like an over-dramatic
theme to a current affairs programme! Again it’s in DADDAD. It balances
out the album musically it wakes it up when it could fall asleep. 

Cityscape Skybaby

When we went to Colombia
in 1997 we got invited to this Marxist village, they were having this five
day fiesta to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the murder of the local
landowner. It’s a song inspired by that, but moved to a Russian pre-Revolutionary
setting! We have such a derivative chorus at the end to counterbalance
lines like “she came in smelling of cabbages”. 

Valet Parking

The album builds up to an
uplifting ending, into an euphoric climax. I think Valet Parking lifts
it up a gear. It’s a song I actually wrote while driving, which I wouldn’t
recommend to anyone if they want to keep their license. We tried to recreate
a traffic jam in rural Monmouthshire we mic’d up four of our cars, and
revved them in time to the track. It’s about a road trip from Cardiff to
Vilnius. It’s a love song to the process, to the road. Apart from Autobahn
by Kraftwerk not enough songs have been written about the glories of pan-European
travel. The title is also a reference to the Brazilian songwriter Marcos
Valle, who this song is dedicated to.

The Undefeated

It’s about underdogs, and
over-dogs. It’s a real simple lyric. “Noise pollution solution”… It’s
a pop song with biblical references, and no specific issue or event in
mind, although I probably wrote it when the Welsh football team were going
through their worse period of results in their history. It just shows how
sometimes
your fantasies can come true, and now the song, apart from the title, doesn’t
fit at all. It’s about, even at your lowest, seeing a ray of light. 

Slow Life

It’s the most epic song
on the album it was either going to start it or finish it because it dwarfs
all the other songs. It starts off with an electro cop show style intro,
which we jammed on top of and Sean O’Hagan did some amazing strings the
lyrics are just regurgitating what we hear on the news, recycled, vomiting
them all back. I like the idea that even the mountains have memories and
that people don’t forget things easily.

 “Speakers and microphones work on phantom power, there’s no batteries and they’re not connected to the mains, and yet they work. Similarly, as a band our make up is the same as anybody else and yet we write songs and play music to people, and we have no idea why. It’s a mysterious power source. I like the idea of it, a phantom power that nobody understands.

“‘Phantom Power’ also sounds like a sinister power source that controls the world from beyond people’s comprehension. And a lot of the things that go on today seem completely illogical and I think we watch the world go by with disbelief. We seem to be living in such a heavy time. We’re just absorbing all the words thrown at us from the TV and regurgitating them back.”I suppose it’s almost unavoidable that lyrics like that are coming out at this point when almost all our entertainment is based around war. Musically as a band we tend to regurgitate what we absorb from our record collections, and lyrically I suppose the same goes, the topics of conversations over the last couple of years have been based around violence more than usual. We’ve been put on high-paranoia alert by the media! There are a lot of songs on this record about broken relationships and war, and I think they go hand in hand. But always with a positive outlook to the future.”Phantom Power was recorded in our own studio late at night in an office block in Cardiff. We’d erect
tents in the corridors at nights to record acoustic guitars and we’d have to take them all down in the morning before other people our neighbours came to work.”There’s a dressmaker next door, an interior designers the other side, on the floor above is No.Brake,
the people who do our website and have been producing the DVD, so we could work on the visuals and the sound simultaneously. Our percussionist Kris Jenkins has a studio downstairs and he was working on our remixes and the
dressmaker was made some balloons for one of the films. I think the whole building was involved at some point.

“We didn’t really feel any

pressure to show off, we just wanted to impress ourselves. The last record
was the first for our new label, and we wanted to make a completely over
the top ambitious album because it might have been the only chance we’d
get to make the sort of album where we could hire engineers and expensive
studios for a crazy length of time. We took full advantage of it – that
was our brief to ourselves. It was a similar approach to our first album
where we were used to recording in Gorwel Owen’s house. We saw Fuzzy Logic
as an opportunity to spend six weeks in a residential studio with a Jacuzzi
and three meals a day. I think we would have made a better sounding album
back in our Gorwel Owen’s house. And we did with Radiator.

“Similarly with this album
we didn’t feel any pressure to make a follow up to Rings Around The World
production-wise, we were able to follow our own noses and experiment with
engineering it ourselves. I think it’s warmer; we wanted to make a more
human record. The last one was made by scientists and a computer. To a
certain extent there’s less to talk about and more to listen to on this
album.”

JESUS BUILT MY HOT ROD, OR AT LEAST SPONSORED IT, BUT THEN I RAN OVER A CONE AND SLID INTO THE GRASS AND…

Keeping the faith

In NASCAR, lines blurred between racing and religion
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — When Bobby Labonte takes the green flag in Sunday’s Daytona 500, he’ll be racing for victory — and the Lord.
The hood of Labonte’s car is both a shameless movie plug — The Passion of the Christ, coming soon to a theater near you — and some new-style proselytizing for the Gospel.  
Yes, witnessing has moved from the revival tent to the fast lane.
“It’s a chance to get the word out,” Labonte, who grew up in Corpus Christi,Texas, said about the ad on his car. “Someone who is curious about Jesus and has never been saved sees the race and says, ‘Hmmm, I’d like to see what that’s about.’ … Maybe we can change their minds.”  
NASCAR racing and the Christian faith have often worked hand-in-hand, from infield services for drivers, crewmen and officials to the pre-race invocation to the annual break in the schedule for the Easter holiday.
Now comes a car promoting The Passion of the Christ, a soon-to-be-released movie that already has drawn lavish praise from conservative clergy — including the Rev. Billy Graham — but angry denouncements from Jewish groups fearing it will stir up anti-Semitism.
For Labonte, it was a no-brainer to plug Mel Gibson’s film on the No. 18 car, especially since the movie focuses on the seminal event in the Christian faith — the crucifixion of Jesus. 
“I know how much it has impacted my life and my family’s life,” said Labonte, a former NASCAR Nextel Cup champion.
Stock car racing is unapologetic about its ties to Christianity, which isn’t surprising for a sport that grew up in the Bible Belt. But, mirroring NASCAR’s attempts to diversify the good ol’ boy image, the word has gone out that all religions are welcome.
“Walking through the garage, yes, I’m unashamed about being a Christian,” said Dale Beaver, a chaplain for Motor Racing Outreach, which conducts half-hour chapel services before events. “If you’re not a Christian, that’s OK. We can still get along.”
NASCAR has attempted to maintain symmetry between its predominantly Christian fan base and those of other faiths.
Hal Marchman, a retired Baptist minister who has given the pre-race invocation since Daytona International Speedway opened in 1959, always ends his prayer with “shalom and amen,” incorporating the Hebrew word for “peace” into his Christian beliefs.
“We’re not the only ones,” Marchman said. “I respect the Jewish religion. I respect every religion.”

But it’s not always easy for NASCAR to pull off the balancing act.
Two years ago, Morgan Shepherd put a Jesus decal on the hook of his racing truck before a race in Darlington, S.C. NASCAR officials received complaints — “maybe it was the atheists,” Shepherd said — and asked him to remove the logo. He complied, prompting a backlash from Christian fans.
A few weeks later, NASCAR told Shepherd he could put the logo back on his race vehicles. It’s been there ever since.
“I commend NASCAR and the sport I’m in,” Shepherd said. “They’re not afraid to stand up for what’s right. They let us come in and worship with MRO. We can pray before races. I know they’ve taken a lot of heat.”
He praised retired NASCAR chairman Bill France for resisting any attempts to eliminate religion from the race track.
For instance, it’s hard to imagine NASCAR levying a $5,000 fine on a competitor for wearing a cap with a cross during interviews, which happened with NFL quarterback Jon Kitna in December (the fine was rescinded last week by the league).
From Shepherd’s perspective, NASCAR’s alliance with the Christian faith gives the sport a more wholesome, family oriented image.
“I guarantee you’re never going to see anything like what happened with Janet Jackson,” Shepherd said, referring to the singer whose breast was exposed during the Super Bowl halftime show. “Those things are not going to happen in our sport. Not while Bill France is around.”
While Shepherd said he’s received plenty of praise for his Victory In Jesus racing team, that hasn’t translated into financial backing. His hopes of qualifying for the Daytona 500 were scuttled by a shoestring budget.
“Why does corporate America spend so much money … supporting things that don’t have moral values?” Shepherd asked. “And here we are, trying to serve the Lord. There’s nothing bad in the Bible. Even if you don’t believe in God, if everyone would just live by the Bible and the Ten Commandments, see how much better the world would be.”
Labonte has plenty of financial backing. In fact, the idea to use the No. 18 car as an advertising vehicle for “The Passion of the Christ” came from his primary sponsor.
Norm Miller, chairman of Interstate Batteries, has teamed up with Hollywood to promote other movies, including Toy Story 2 and The Hulk. But Gibson’s project took on special meaning after Miller saw the film at a screening in California.
He doesn’t believe the movie portrays Jews as being solely responsible for the death of Christ — a concept blamed for centuries of anti-Semitism.
“The Bible is clear: Jesus was volunteering when he laid his life down,” Miller said. “I don’t feel it’s near the issue people are trying to make out of it.”
And, said J.D. Gibbs, who runs the team, this marketing campaign isn’t intended to keep other faiths in the pits.
“We want everyone to look at this as their sport,” Gibbs said. “It’s not just a Christian sport.”
Labonte Overcomes Early Problems to Earn 11th in Daytona 500
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla., Sunday, Feb. 15, 2004 ˆ Bobby Labonte overcame early problems in the Daytona 500 and fought back to finish 11th in the 46th Daytona 500 Feb. 15 at Daytona International Speedway. 
Labonte, who started 13th in „The Passion of the Christ Interstate Chevrolet, had worked his way up to sixth by the time he pitted on Lap 30. However, as Labonte entered pit lane, he ran over a cone and slid through the grass between pit road and the frontstretch before entering his pit stall.
“That wasn’t very good on my part. (Fatback, crew chief Michael McSwain) said ‘Pit if we can pit,’ and I was on the high side and I didn’t know if I’d run out of gas or not, so I figured it’d be better to try and pit rather than just stick it out, because if you run out of gas on the backstraightaway or something, I’d be in worse shape,” Labonte said.
Shortly thereafter, Labonte suffered damage to the front of his car when he bumped another Nextel Cup competitor while trying to avoid a spinning car. The car suffered damage to the oil cooler duct and the Interstate Batteries Racing Team began to repair the car during a pit stop. 
Labonte had fallen to 40th when the race restarted on Lap 37, but managed to work his way up to 30th when a caution on Lap 58 enabled Labonte to get is lap back. 
“The guys did a good job of getting me out,” Labonte said. “We lost a lap, but we were fortunate on the ‘Lucky Dog’ situation, and we got to make it back up.”
 A 10-car accident on the backstretch helped Labonte gain several positions and by the halfway  point of the race, he had worked his way back to 12th. 
With the final 300 miles taking-place under green and the field spread out, Labonte could not crack the top 10 and wound up 11th. It was a major improvement from a 41st-place finish in 2003.
“It was almost a top 10,‰ Labonte said. “I think last year we finished like 80th or something like that, so it was better than that. I wish we could have finished a lot better. This racing was pretty good today, for me. Early in the race, we could pass a little bit better than at the end. I don’t know why it didn’t get any better toward the end.” 

    
“For us and a lot of guys, it seemed single-file, I don’t know if it was the wind [OR SATAN!!!!] or what. If we could have made up a little bit on one series of runs, maybe we could have caught a couple of cars, maybe we would have been in the pack of cars in front of us.”