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Nov.12 (AGR)— In his newest book, Acts of Rebellion, activist Ward Churchill describes an Indigenist as “one who not only takes the rights of indigenous people as highest priority of [one’s] political life, but who draws upon the tradition —evolved over many thousands of years by native peoples the world over.” This most recent book is actually a collection of writings and speeches by Churchill that deal mainly with the issues of native peoples around the globe.

Churchill has been involved in the American Indian Movement (AIM) since it’s days of infamy in the 1970s. Many people may know AIM from the infamous framing of Leonard Peltier on charges that he killed an FBI agent while defending the Ogala Lakota reservation in 1975. Churchill is also a professor of American Indian Studies and Communications at the University of Colorado/Boulder.

One of the especially blazing pieces, is a speech Churchill gave at a conference on National Liberation, entitled “The New Face of Liberation.” In this essay the author denounces what he refers to as “progressivism,” or in other words the whole of Leftist thought (liberals, socialists, and Marxists), as being by definition anti-indigenous. He mentions the fact that in every modern society to date, the native populations have been singled out and killed. While speaking about what sort of philosophy could possibly be friendly to Fourth Worlders (a term used to describe the Indian nations all over the world). Churchill blatantly rejects the popular New Age stance by saying it is nothing more than “quality time masturbating in the woods.” Instead, Churchill argues that we must adopt a philosophy of rejection: that as a whole we must look into the past, figure out what went wrong, and reverse that. His suggestion on how to reverse this is simply by “nothing less than the dismemberment and dissolution of every statist/corporate entity in the world. All of them…In their stead, we seek reconstitution of that entire galaxy of nations upon which the states have imposed themselves.”

There are many other extremely well written and powerful essays in the compilation. For instance, the essay “Confronting Columbus Day,” is a legal brief written by Churchill in defense of AIM’s disruption of a 1991 Columbus Day parade. In the brief a very formal, rational position is presented in the argument that in fact, not only is the sabotaging of such events not illegal, but is in fact an extension of international laws against genocide. Churchill gives us the legal definition of genocide, agreed upon by the United Nations: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; [c] deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or part; and so on. Later we are given a list of genocidal crimes punishable by the UN: genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide; etc. Lastly Churchill quotes the UN in saying that all people are to be held accountable for these acts, “whether they are a constitutionally responsible ruler, public official, or private individual.” Using this legally binding document Churchill’s brief actually got the AIMers charges dropped, and also had got the jury foreman to reprimand the entire nation that Columbus is not only not someone to celebrate, but in fact he should be looked upon in the same eyes as Nazi SS leader, and Holocaust architect Heinrich Himmler.

In a particularly amusing piece, entitled Indians R Us, Churchill berates Robert Bly’s “Men’s Movement” as being “instantly ludicrous.” The utter contempt makes this essay one that can make the reader feel like they actually are talking to Churchill, rather than being lectured to. “A rather owlish butterball of a minor poet,” is the description Churchill applies to Bly. The author points out that the “Men’s Movement” is made up of specifically “dead white” Euro-American males, and is a “New Agey” concoction of Norse and Celtic legend mixed with bits and pieces of Islamic, East Asian, and American Indian spiritualism. Going on, Churchill speaks of the actual threat such ridiculousness may pose to actual indigenous spiritualism. He makes it clear that Bly and his followers are appropriating and trivializing bonafide Druid and Native American rituals He also points out that the majority of this men are about as Druid as himself. Indeed, according to the author the very nature of the “Movement” is culturally genocidal, based on the fact that it seeks to trivialize real spirituality.

Acts of Rebellion is a highly informative account of the United States genocide against American Indians from someone who has been on the front lines for almost 40 years. This book is also a great introduction into a more radical approach to everything from confronting neo-Nazi groups to fighting back against ecological degradation. Every single person who believes in a just world, who feels that we must struggle for the survival of the free and wild planet and the peoples who rightfully inhabit it should read this book.

Johannesburg, South Africa, Oct. 30 (IPS)— The T-shirt, the poster, the billboard. Traditionally the weapons of protest and of solidarity are remarkable for their ability to cross oceans with similar messages, as displayed in an exhibition at the Johannesburg Art gallery.

Sponsored by the British Council, the ”Upfront and personal - three decades of political graphics” exhibition comes on the back of an upsurge in the anti-war movement across the globe and was spurred on by the US-led war on Iraq.

It features the items of popular culture that activists and organizations in South Africa and Britain use to build support and solidarity and to get their message across without the benefit of corporate public relations budgets.

Two such weapons, developed in different countries, bear a striking resemblance to each other and also reveal the changing nature of relations between civil society in the two countries.

Under apartheid, the relationship was one of solidarity against apartheid - the show features a large selection of posters and T-shirts used to deepen the boycott of South African products like fruit and wine.

Now the two civil societies are united in their opposition both to the war in Iraq but also against a new age of empire by the United States. In South Africa, a simple white T-shirt emblazoned with the words “No to war” with a red hand daubed alongside was a common sight used in the marches that rocked the country when US president George W. Bush went to war earlier this year. In Britain, activists wore exactly the same T-Shirt in the march on Trafalgar Square in London that brought out 1.3 million pacifists in the biggest demonstration since the Second World War.

Protest is being globalized and consciousness too. One set of anti-war posters can be downloaded off the Internet for use in protests across the world. More recently, growing resistance to the global economy and the power that multinational corporations wield over people’s lives has led to a burgeoning anti-globalization movement.

A tool of the trade of this movement is what is called ”subvertizing” — the subversion of multinational brands. One set of posters at the exhibition is dedicated to the trial by McDonalds of two activists they took to court in the famous ”Mclibel” trial. Their supporters used the golden arches and clown which symbolize the global burger chain to make anti-McDonalds propaganda. In another poster, Bush featured in a campaign against the petroleum company, Esso.

The presidential eyes were replaced by dollar signs with a petrol pump filling his ears, it says: ”Tanked up on Esso.”

In South Africa, the T-shirt production company ‘Laugh-it-off’ makes its money from subvertizing and also faces a libel/defamation suit. Parodying the beer brand, Carling Black Label, the company has replaced the words with White Labor; Black Guilt.

South African Breweries took ‘Laugh-it-off’ to court for brand subversion in a trial that continues and is igniting the fires of free speech advocates. The T-shirt is also featured at the exhibition, as is a British example that uses the Coca-Cola brand for its ammunition. Around the red Coke sign, where the words ‘Add Life’ would usually go, the designers have replaced it with “Destroy Capitalism.”

“This exhibition shows how freedom is constantly probed and pushed to the limits by artists, designers and activists alike,” says the curator’s message.

A second major theme of the British aspect of the exhibition is political postering, where visitors are taken through a range of election posters. William Hague, the former Tory leader, is lampooned as Maggie Thatcher, the fiery 1980s British prime minister.

An Economist magazine cover some years later paintbrushed the present prime minister Tony Blair as Thatcher hinting both at New Labor’s move to the political center and at the fact that Blair benefited from her policies.

South Africa’s political posters are different: they span the past ten years of freedom and are interesting in what they reveal. The early posters are celebratory works to launch the new constitution and the parliament. The later posters from the past two years are taking on the satirical, in-your-face feel of the British posters, mirroring a civil society that is growing more robust in its independence from government.

One from the campaign to force government to improve its AIDS treatment policy shows a proud and confident pregnant woman holding up a copy of South Africa’s constitution - a symbol of the court case the Treatment Action Campaign fought (and won) to force government to provide life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs to pregnant women and babies.

Another poster features a man contorting himself into a ball. It asks the question: “Is this your future as a flexible worker?” and draws attention to a line in government’s major economic policy plan which promised investors a more “flexible” labor force.

By Andrew Gumbel

Nov. 16— From earliest childhood, Jamie Johnson was told not to talk about money. Specifically, he was brought up not to talk about his money -- the untold millions that were his due from birth thanks to the Johnson & Johnson company founded by his great-grandfather in 1886. So when he came up with the idea of making a documentary film about the children of America’s super-rich, his family, along with the social circle he frequents in and around Manhattan, were not exactly best pleased.

His father, who has never worked a day in his life, made it clear he found the whole idea unwise and a little vulgar. His family’s lawyer warned him he might be committing social suicide, and was not surprised to hear that he was having trouble finding participants to talk about themselves on camera.

But Jamie Johnson persisted, and the result -- an oddly compelling 60-minute portrait of his friends and contemporaries entitled Born Rich -- has become a quirky sort of hit. Featuring interviews and snippets from the lives of half a dozen principal participants, it was much discussed at its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival last January, and is sparking all sorts of commentary once again now that it is airing regularly on the HBO television cable station. That commentary has been by turns anguished (especially among the East Coast smart set) and gently satirical (especially among schadenfreude-prone television critics). Johnson not only broke a taboo among his peers; he also made a film that dares to point out the palpable existence of class in the supposedly classless United States of America. The “voodoo of inherited wealth,” he calls it.

The trouble began as soon as the nature of his film hit the gossip column of The New York Post, and it has persisted ever since, culminating in an incident a few weeks ago in which he was cornered at a party by a bunch of drunk Ivy League bankers. They said he was an idiot and a class traitor; he did his best to ignore them. One of the film’s protagonists, the betting industry scion Luke Weil, tried to sue him for defamation of character -- the case was thrown straight out of court -- while another, Josiah Hornblower of the Whitney/Vanderbilt dynasty, now says he regrets participating because the film has caused embarrassment and humiliation for his family.

So why did Johnson do it? Mainly, I would guess, because he felt he had to, and because the very taboo imposed on him all his life was the very thing he felt he had to break to become a sane, productive human being.

“I didn’t want to inherit the fear of talking about money,” he says in the film, after showing the audience two distinctly uncomfortable exchanges with his father. James Johnson the elder is depicted as a bit of a lost soul, an amateur painter and admirer of objets d’art struggling to find reasons to justify his existence. Jamie, by contrast, is determined to ask him tough questions about the rationale of inherited wealth and use the experience as a therapeutic rite of passage to his own adulthood. “There are no courses in college on how to be a hardworking and productive rich person,” he says. “It’s something you have to figure out for yourself.”

When he was little and growing up in the New York countryside with horses and gilded carriages, nobody thought to explain to him that there was anything unusual about his station in life. The first inkling he had of his extraordinary financial good fortune came when he was 10, and a classmate of his found his father’s name in the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans.

The experience was both humiliating and strangely revelatory: “I felt I was finding out a secret I wasn’t supposed to know.” And it might have been the early seed that planted in his head the notion that all this money, and the hushed silence around it, needed to be explored if it was to be understood.

The film opens with Jamie’s 21st birthday party, a black-tie event that also marked the evening that he came into his inheritance and gained control of “more money than most people can earn or spend in a lifetime”. There is a Gatsby-ish feel to the occasion, not least because of the period flapper costumes of the women, and the obvious excess of pyramids of crystal champagne coupes. Jamie himself is seen carefully donning his tails and top hat. And, as we are introduced to his friends, we quickly realize this is no ordinary group of people.

SI Newhouse IV, heir to the Condé Nast publishing empire, has trouble naming all the magazines his family controls. (“I don’t have enough fingers,” he explains, looking at his hands as he reels off Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Gourmet, GQ and the rest.) A textile heir called Cody Franchetti refers to idle chitchat shared with “Lauren” and “Isabella” without feeling the need to supply their last names (Hutton and Rossellini). Ivanka Trump, daughter of Donald, suggests her father has endured greater troubles than the homeless people who gather outside his buildings because he, unlike them, has gone billions of dollars into debt. Luke Weil discusses how the bar bill of an evening at an exclusive night club in the Hamptons can easily mount into thousands of dollars (“These things happen”). And Josiah Hornblower, the Whitney/Vanderbilt heir, describes the astonishment he remembers feeling, as a child, that not everybody has a family museum in Manhattan, as he does. There are also contributions from the 27-year-old model and heiress to a grocery chain Juliet Hartford, and Georgina Bloomberg, daughter of Michael, tycoon and Mayor of New York, who confides that her family name “stinks”.

It is easy to look for the ridiculous in this cast of characters. Clearly, some of them fear this is exactly how they are going to be viewed. “This has been a total nightmare,” one of the film’s subjects told The New York Observer recently on condition of anonymity. “I look like a total moron, and that’s not who I am.” Certainly, finding the moron element has been a bit of a sport for the American tabloids. But Johnson himself does not seem to be aiming for caricature; his characterizations, even at their most blasé or obnoxious, ring pretty true.

The fascination of his film, for non-tabloid critics and audiences, stems rather from its rare and intimate view of a forbidden world. The effect is almost anthropological, like a David Attenborough documentary on some rare species and the idiosyncrasies of its habitat. These super-rich kids, for their part, react to the camera rather like a patient with a therapist; they start out diffident, then settle down and end up saying more than they probably should. That, more than anything, makes them different from their British counterparts (and perhaps also from their own parents); our aristocrats have little familiarity with the sort of American-style confessional openness that can temper the effect of generations of studied emotional repression.

Johnson’s subjects are presented as a strange form of almost involuntary club. Because their money sets them so obviously apart, and because nobody else is likely to be able to understand what makes them tick, they end up frequenting each other. More than one participant acknowledges that it makes them feel good to share thoughts about their wealth since it is so strictly forbidden to broach the subject with anyone else. Stephanie Ercklentz, an inveterate shopper who thought about training to be a doctor (except it was too arduous) and worked for a spell as an investment banker (before deciding she’d rather be drinking Bellinis with her chums than working long evening hours on Wall Street), admits in the film that she has never dated outside her social circle -- Wasp-only country clubs where Jews are barely tolerated and the appearance of a black guest, or so we are told, could cost the offending member their club privileges.

The group comes across as boundlessly curious, and also somewhat naive, about the source of their families’ wealth. Johnson himself, for example, sounds almost wistful as he points out that he is ineligible for the 50 percent Johnson & Johnson employee discount. “I am just a shareholder and a customer,” he says, almost ruefully. Josiah Hornblower admits that his antecedents were crooks running a “complete racket” charging New York for operating the subway. But then he adds, as if to make himself feel better: “Everyone was a crook back then who was making money.”

An inevitable arrogance and snobbery creep in -- traits that probably explain some of the second thoughts the participants have been having recently about their contributions to the film. Cody Franchetti deplores the vulgarity of a social parvenu like Bill Clinton, and says he finds feelings of guilt about his wealth “absolutely senseless”. Guilt, he adds, is “something for old women and nuns.” Luke Weil, meanwhile, describes the temptation he felt as a teenager to lord it over “some small-town kid from Connecticut” and tell him: “I’m from New York. I can buy your family. Piss off.”

Almost all of these gilded young things seem to feel an obligation to rail against their background, but in almost all cases it is the most timid of rebellions, standing little or no chance against the crushing weight of money, lifestyle and established social mores. They are all vaguely aware it is a bad idea to devote life entirely to leisure -- almost every family is littered with sorry tales of drug addiction, serial marriage and other forms of overt misery. They all feel the need to act as if the money were no big deal, but at the same time live in terror of what they would do if their fortunes were either lost or unexpectedly denied them.

Above all, they exude a certain listlessness. Johnson himself expresses it well when he suggests that he and his family “live outside the American Dream.” The aspiration to make a mark on the world and build a fortune — the hunger that has driven American capitalism for more than 100 years — was long ago fulfilled by Johnson’s forbears, leaving him with nothing to aim for, in the traditional sense. His father is shown pushing him towards becoming a curator of rare manuscripts, a suggestion he finds faintly ridiculous. In that context, Born Rich comes across not just as a documentary but also as a lifeline which Jamie Johnson can only hope will lead him to salvation -- professional and social -- as a proper film-maker.

Source: Independent (UK)

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“A raid last week by the FBI domestic terrorism squad... is part of a nationwide investigation into crimes committed in the name of animal rights. Agents hauled away computer hard drives... federal criminal justice officials said.” - Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 2, 2003

(AGR)— It doesn’t matter what causes you’re involved in. It doesn’t matter if your activism consists of letter writing or direct action. It doesn’t even matter if you’ve committed a crime, or not. Your hard drive could be used as a witness against you. It could provide evidence to be used in court, or information used to harass and discredit you or your cause. It could even be used against people who communicate with you.

Intuitively, we like to think that if we delete a file it goes away. We like to think that email can only be read by the people we address it to. We like to think that the person we’re emailing is the same person we think they are.

“You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.” - Morpheus, The Matrix.

Still reading? Good. Starting now, we’re going to learn about computer security for activists, and we’ll see how deep the rabbit-hole goes. This is the first in a series of articles focusing on computer security for activists. Hopefully this series will answer your questions about computer security. Better yet, you’ll take what you learn and use it to make yourself and your comrades safer.

Most of us use our computers for communication, whether by email, the world-wide-web, or creating fliers. All of these things (and many others) leave a trail which may be used to harass, discredit, blackmail, or even prosecute you or anyone you communicate with.

It’s easy to think of email like stuffing a letter into an envelope and sending it off. The fact is, it’s more like a postcard than an envelope. Email can easily be read by government agents, roommates and co-workers, or nosy system administrators, and you’d have no way of knowing. There are many products that claim to provide security for email, but many of them are useless. If you’re not a computer scientist, how can you tell what’s secure and what’s snake-oil? How much does it cost to get good security? Probably the best email encryption software is not only strong enough for military use, but it comes in several versions that are priced right for the budget-conscious activist: They’re free.

Every time we visit a web site, we create a “log” of our activities there. Depending on how interested the government is in your web-surfing habits, it’s possible that visiting the “wrong” web-sites could result in your name being put on a list, or maybe a knock on your door: If it can happen to people who share music files, it can happen to people who speak out against injustice. Is it possible that certain sites are monitored, to see who visits there? It sure is. Can you surf the web without leaving a trail? You can, if you know how.

By now, maybe you’re thinking about what files you should delete from your computer. Too bad deleting a file doesn’t really remove it: If someone knows how to look for it, it’s easy to find files that have been “deleted”. There are ways to really remove files, but it usually requires a special program.

When talking about computer security, it’s too easy to ignore the physical security of your computer. Forget about hacking and spying: If someone wanted to get at the information stored in your computer, the easiest way to do it is usually to pick up the computer and carry it away! A strong pass-phrase cannot defend against this! Even if your computer doesn’t go anywhere, poor physical security can leave your computer or it’s immediate surroundings vulnerable to electronic and passive eavesdropping. A fire or theft, whether accidental or otherwise, can be a powerful blow against a campaign or movement. History is filled with examples of activist materials being stolen or destroyed under suspicious circumstances. If your computer or data is lost, destroyed or seized, can your data be recovered? How long will it take to get back to work? How bad would it be if your data becomes someone else’s data?

This first column is meant to be more of a wake-up call than a how-to guide. Next time we’ll talk about PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and using encrypted email.

“Ask a hacker” is a new twice-monthly column joining the AGR.

If you have any questions you’d like to ask, you’ll find my contact information at < http://atom.smasher.org/ > or you can send questions to: editors@agrnews.org

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Puppets, pronouns, and the end of gender tyrrany

By Gabe Johnson

(AGR)- Last Monday, November 17, in UNC-A’s Zaiger Hall, local gender activists, Tranzmission, performed a puppet show titled, “The Little Trans-Am that Could.” The performance was brought to UNC-A through ALLIANCE, the on-campus gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender group.

The performance, based on the children’s story, “The Little Engine that Could,” began with a musical prelude by one of the performers.

The puppet show was about the journey of a personified Trans-Am up a mountain called, “Mt. Binary-Scary.” Along the way, the little red sports car makes some friends, who apparently represent different ways in which gender can be expressed. First, the car meets “Form,” a west-coast surfer with no particular shape at all. Next, they meet “Fix,” a female mechanic and finally the group gains an androgynous beatnik. As the companions climb towards their destination, the mean old mountain assaults them with insults aimed at demoralization. In the end, of course, the travelers reach the peak and celebrate their conquest of the massive mountain of contradictions by renaming themselves names which include the word “trans.”

The performance, which lasted only 10-15 minutes, was intentionally styled in a childish manner, after the book that supplied the plot line. After wards, the performers took the stage and questions from the audience in an attempt to open a classroom style dialogue, in which audience members were encouraged to ask any questions that they may have about the trans movement or the politics of trans people in general. The ensuing discussion was aimed at clarifying the culture of trans people and illuminating the difficulties this sub-culture has in expressing itself openly.

Most of the issues raised in the discussion seemed to revolve around the lack of sensitivity towards trans people and the ways in which trans people feel oppressed by gender socialization. For example, it was explained that many trans people prefer a gendered pronoun (he or she) that is not always reflected in their appearance. When people do not recognize their preference, they often feel marginalized. Likewise, when a trans person is forced to use a bathroom designated for a gender with which he/she/ze does not identify, the experience can be, according to Tranzmissions publication, “the ‘T’ word,” “…particularly scary or threatening.” (p.6)

A large portion of the discussion, which lasted nearly 1 ½ hours, was used to help clarify many of the terminologies that have become inexorably intertwined in the trans movement, such as the difference between transvestite, transsexual, transgendered, genderqueer, and drag queen, and ways in which the traditional binary gender roles can be subverted.

Tranzmission is a local group of trans people and their allies, that has been active in Asheville since April of 2002, when they organized the first of three punk rock drag shows, which have taken place in downtown since the first inception. Their goal, according to their publication is to, “…end socially enforced non-consensual gender tyranny.” They meet ever 1st and 3rd Monday of every month and have literature available in the AC/RC reading room.

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