Interview: Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@
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Zerzan’s Running on Emptiness:
The Pathology of Civilization
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The return of John Rambo

By Kurt Nimmo

Jan. 22-- If Bush can't kill bin Laden in real life, he might as well have Rocky do it in the movies. Showbiz reporter for the UK Sun Online, Jacqui Smith, says the 56 year-old Sylvester Stallone will once again bring the Rambo character to life, this time to fight the forces of evil, namely the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. Stallone was so keen to see bin Laden brought to justice -- something Bush is unable or unwilling to do -- he wrote the script himself. Initially, the aging Sly was scripted to kill the Evil One all on his lonesome, but he had second thoughts because, as a Hollywood type told the Sun, the actor "thought that was beyond the imagination," which is to say, I suppose, the idea of a middle aged Rambo doing what the US military was unable (or not permitted) to do in the span of more than a year is "beyond the imagination."
Nonetheless, Americans need closure on the bin Laden thing, and if the US military can't deliver justice maybe Hollywood can, at least on the big screen. Millions of Americans will trek enthusiastically to mall cinemas far and wide to indulge vicariously in the murderous and patriotic rampages of John Rambo (who in an earlier movie went back to Vietnam to finish what Johnson and Nixon didn't have the balls to see through). Rambo will slaughter the straggling Taliban and al-Qaida bad guys Rumsfeld overlooked. No laser-guided missiles or JDAMs needed, no bunker busters or cluster bombs designed to resemble food packages required -- Rambo will do the job himself and not one innocent citizen will fall victim to "collateral damage." Rambo will hunt down and smoke out the Omars of this world and kill each and every last one with his bare hands, no pansy-ass Predator drones armed with Hellfire missiles needed. It will be justice delivered 70mm cowboy style. No doubt Miramax, makers of the original Rambo movie, are anticipating handsome returns at the box office.
Stallone and Miramax, however, are a little behind the curve. In the months since Sept. 11, bin Laden has slipped under the Bushite radar screen, especially now that they have their sights fixed on Iraq and its bounteous oil fields. If Hollywood is sincerely interested in producing a topical movie, they'd have Rambo parachuting into Baghdad under the cover of darkness with a grenade launching AK47 slung over his shoulder, bayonet clenched between his teeth, and his naked chest crisscrossed with teflon hollowpoint cartridge belts (a few depleted uranium shells thrown in for good measure). Rambo would sneak into one of Saddam's many palatial residences and slit his throat while he dreams of Nebuchadnezzar. But then, considering no intelligence service or covert op team has been able to get anywhere near the slippery Iraqi dictator -- not with Saddam's al-Bu Nasir praetorian guards lurking about -- this scenario may be even more "beyond the imagination" than the idiotic bin Laden idea. But then idiotic movies are Hollywood's stock and trade.
But why stop with Rambo in Afghanistan or Iraq making toast and just deserts of America's enemies? Miramax may want to hire a swarm of scriveners to write any number of "prequels" to the bin Laden bedtime story. How about "Bill Casey Goes to Afghanistan," a movie about how the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Pakistan's Inter Sevices Intelligence agency single-handedly created the Mujahideen -- trained them by the thousands in the art of bomb-making (some lucky enough to make it to the CIA's retreat in Virginia) and financed them handsomely -- and then turned the wild-eyed Muslim fanatics loose not only on the hapless Soviets but the world of infidels at large. Or maybe an epic on Bush Senior's first Iraq attack is in order. Imagine John Rambo blowing up the An Nasiriyah chemical warehouse in Iraq in advance of US ground troops arriving, thus saving thousands of red-blooded American boys and girls from Gulf War Syndrome. Maybe casting would be able to entice April Glaspie into a cameo role. Or Tarek Aziz. Somebody needs to see if Tom Clancy's available to write the script.
Truly, we Americans live in a land of unending absurdity and ignorance. Hollywood knows its game well enough to understand that a movie where bin Laden and assorted al-Qaida and Taliban fugitives are hunted down and killed by a lone wolf all-American mercenary will be a good investment (no matter if Stallone is pushing 60; John Wayne was offing various gooks, injuns, and mobsters on the big screen well into his 60s). Just as the mild antiwar second thoughts of the soldiers portrayed in Mark Bowden's book Black Hawk Down were cut when Hollywood made it into a movie, Miramax's effort will be devoid of any historical or political context or appraisal. Americans do not cotton to such glaring realities in their blood-drenched fantasies where the Good always prevail and the Bad are brought to justice. Nor will there be scenes of disemboweled wedding guests near the village of Deh Rawud, no portrayals of slaughtered Taliban prisoners at Mazar-i-Sharif, no sweeping pans of starving refugees massed at the borders of Pakistan and Iran seeking to escape US military bombardment. In the Great American Fantasy, the Good and the Bad slug it out on the tundra (or deep within remote jungles), far away from babies, grandmothers, and humanitarian workers. Of course, as in a previous John Rambo movie, a peacenik or two might get slugged in the face. Serves 'em right for going up against the Good and Righteous.
As John Rambo represents a grotesque cardboard personage, so does the unelected and increasingly acerbic (and detestable) president George W. Bush. Junior told the American people in his dim-witted and unimaginative way a few short months ago the perps of 911 are "wanted dead or alive" and would be hunted down and smoked out like renegade Comanche who terrorize womenfolk and scalp god-fearing sodbusters. Go forward a few months in time. Now bin Laden's name is never mentioned and the half-ass dictator Saddam Hussein (when compared to any number of US-supported dictators, say Indonesia's Suharto or Chile's Pinochet) has inherited bin Laden's iniquitous cloak of unquestionable evil. The former CIA asset bin Laden served his purpose for Dubya and his clatch of empire-mad neo-cons who are attempting to create their own renovated version of Manifest Destiny on a global scale. Only this time the natives will not stay on the reservation. This time around they will not be easily cowed into pitiful submission.
If Bush is allowed to bring his war to the people of the Middle East (and Central Asia, South America, and wherever else people resist the brutal encroachment of empire) the ensuing cataclysm will be of truly historic proportions. Our children will not sing great songs, as the neo-con Richard Perle would have it, but mournful laments. Not only will oil wells burn and millions of people die horrible deaths in far away lands but war will spread like wildfire to the tinderbox shores of America. The police state Bush has in mind for the American people will not stop it. No way are there enough Marines, Army Rangers, Delta Forces, Seal Teams, Special Forces, or CIA operatives to contain its spread and wrathful violence.
Not even John Rambo will make America feel good about itself in the aftermath.

Source: CounterPunch

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Zerzan’s Running on Emptiness:
The Pathology of Civilization

Running on Emptiness:
The Pathology of Civilization
By John Zerzan / Feral House, 2002

Review by John Brinker

John Zerzan is the founder and leading thinker of anarcho-primitivism, a tendency within anarchism that is based in deep ecology rather than the economic and social theories of classical anarchism. A recent collection of his essays, Running on Emptiness, serves as a good introduction to his ideas.
Zerzan believes that all of the ills of modern society originate in humanity’s adoption of symbolic thought, leading (he and others postulate) to language, division of labor, agriculture, animal domestication, and eventually to the gamut of problems the world faces today. The answer, then, is to abolish all forms of technology, up to and including language, numbers and time. Activists and writers who address specific issues such as United States foreign policy are missing the point, according to Zerzan.
It is on this basis that Zerzan launches his bitter attacks on other anarchist thinkers. In two essays, "Who is Noam Chomsky" and "‘Hakim Bey,’ Postmodern ‘Anarchist’," anyone deviating from Zerzan’s line of thinking is
criticized for being insufficiently radical. A John Zerzan drinking game: a shot each time he
accuses another writer of being "liberal, "reformist"or "postmodern."
This is the single biggest problem with Zerzan’s writing, including his presence in the letters sections of several anarchist publications. His style is combative, polemical, and intolerant, recalling the unproductive infighting that has reduced socialism to its current state. He has slammed periodicals like Fifth Estate for hosting open-minded discussions between different would-be factions of the modern anarchist movement. Many feel that such squabbling serves only to take energy away from realizing anarchism’s core principles of anti-authoritarianism and self-organization.
Without accusing Zerzan of fascism, it is worth remembering that the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and National Socialism in Germany were based in part on ideas of returning to simpler times. Zerzan barely addresses the question of how anarcho-primitivism could be applied on a large scale. To abolish technology universally would seem to imply coercion and authority. If, on the other hand, the world’s population is expected to voluntarily embrace anarcho-primitivism, a more eloquent spokesperson might be needed.
As with many collections of essays, there is some degree of redundancy in Running on Emptiness. After a few pieces, those with shorter attention spans may be tempted to give up. There are two unexpected gems, though. The most accessible piece in the book is a talk with writer Derrick Jensen, who shares Zerzan’s beliefs but has a more easygoing approach. There is also a piece on abstract expressionist painting: despite being an entirely uncritical piece of art criticism, it contains flashes of enthusiastic scholarship.
Zerzan’s ideas in and of themselves are provocative and worthy of discussion. In the last essay here, he draws an explicit connection between the failure of liberal democracy (representation in the political sphere) and symbolic thought (representation in the cognitive sphere). As he makes clear in his praise for abstract expressionist painters, he feels that it is the standing in of one thing for another—a picture of a bird standing in for a real bird, elected officials standing in for "the people"—that is the root cause of civilization’s malaise.
Ironically, what Zerzan’s writing lacks are the qualities of wild nature: diversity, flexibility, patience, and grace. In the dialog on technology, ecology and authority, Zerzan’s ideas certainly make a valuable contribution; however, his dogmatic style does not.

Book cover graphic courtesy of Feral House: www.feralhouse.com

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Interview: Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@

By Joel Bleifuss

You have lived through World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Reagan wars, Desert Storm, the Balkan wars, and now this coming war in Iraq. What has changed, and what has remained the same?
One thing which has not changed is that none of us, no matter what continent or island or ice cap, asked to be born in the first place, and that even somebody as old as I am, which is 80, only just got here. There were already all these games going on when I got here. … An apt motto for any polity anywhere, to put on its state seal or currency or whatever, might be this quotation from the late baseball manager Casey Stengel, who was addressing a team of losing professional athletes: “Can’t anybody here play this game?”
My daughter Lily, for an example close to home, who has just turned 20, finds herself—as does George W. Bush, himself a kid—an heir to a shockingly recent history of human slavery, to an AIDS epidemic, and to nuclear submarines slumbering on the floors of fjords in Iceland and elsewhere, crews prepared at a moment’s notice to turn industrial quantities of men, women, and children into radioactive soot and bone meal by means of rockets and H-bomb warheads. And to the choice between liberalism or conservatism and on and on.
What is radically new in 2003 is that my daughter, along with our president, and Saddam Hussein, and on and on, has inherited technologies whose byproducts, whether in war or peace, are rapidly destroying the whole planet as a breathable, drinkable system for supporting life of any kind. Human beings, past and present, have trashed the joint.

Based on what you’ve read and seen in the media, what is not being said in the mainstream press about President Bush’s policies and the impending war in Iraq?
That they are nonsense.

My feeling from talking to readers and friends is that many people are beginning to despair. Do you think that we’ve lost reason to hope?
I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”
To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!
And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.
What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!

How have you gotten involved in the anti-war movement? And how would you compare the movement against a war in Iraq with the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era?
When it became obvious what a dumb and cruel and spiritually and financially and militarily ruinous mistake our war in Vietnam was, every artist worth a damn in this country, every serious writer, painter, stand-up comedian, musician, actor and actress, you name it, came out against the thing. We formed what might be described as a laser beam of protest, with everybody aimed in the same direction, focused and intense. This weapon proved to have the power of a banana-cream pie three feet in diameter when dropped from a stepladder five-feet high.
And so it is with anti-war protests in the present day. Then as now, TV did not like anti-war protesters, nor any other sort of protesters, unless they rioted. Now, as then, on account of TV, the right of citizens to peaceably assemble, and petition their government for a redress of grievances, “ain’t worth a pitcher of warm spit,” as the saying goes.

As a writer and artist, have you noticed any difference between how the cultural leaders of the past and the cultural leaders of today view their responsibility to society?
Responsibility to which society? To Nazi Germany? To the Stalinist Soviet Union? What about responsibility to humanity in general? And leaders in what particular cultural activity? I guess you mean the fine arts. I hope you mean the fine arts. ... Anybody practicing the fine art of composing music, no matter how cynical or greedy or scared, still can’t help serving all humanity. Music makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it. Even military bands, although I am a pacifist, always cheer me up.
But that is the power of ear candy. The creation of such a universal confection for the eye, by means of printed poetry or fiction or history or essays or memoirs and so on, isn’t possible. Literature is by definition opinionated. It is bound to provoke the arguments in many quarters, not excluding the hometown or even the family of the author. Any ink-on-paper author can only hope at best to seem responsible to small groups or like-minded people somewhere. He or she might as well have given an interview to the editor of a small-circulation publication.
Maybe we can talk about the responsibilities to their societies of architects and sculptors and painters another time. And I will say this: TV drama, although not yet classified as fine art, has on occasion performed marvelous services for Americans who want us to be less paranoid, to be fairer and more merciful. M.A.S.H. and Law and Order, to name only two shows, have been stunning masterpieces in that regard.

That said, do you have any ideas for a really scary reality TV show?
“C students from Yale.” It would stand your hair on end.

What targets would you consider fair game for a satirist today?
Assholes.

Source: In These Times

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