photos by John Haney
John's striking photos look like they could accompany the text of a Naomi Klein manifesto. Chilling, honestly. E.L.
Well done John! My favorite is the first photo with the CN tower in the background. It is a Canadian symbol, hardly visible, shrinking amongst all the financial buildings.
Thanks for posting, John. I am reminded of the custom of the Dominican Republic to hang their flag upside down in times of war; the last photo has the US flag upside down.
John!! So good to find you again. Glad to see you're still shooting. Like the photos, especially the portrait with the upside down flag. Email me, I'd love to hear how you're doing.
Me and Riot are fans, John. Hope to see more of it soon.
Mr. McCaslin
Great opinions!!
[The ongoing series of guest articles continues with this essay by Amanda Jernigan. Amanda is a writer living in Guelph, Ontario. She currently works for Porcupine's Quill, a fine imprint of the small, Canadian variety.]
Intertidal:
Travels in a Moral No-Man's-Land
by Amanda Jernigan
Photograph by Erin Brubacher
It has now been almost a year and a half since we woke up on a morning in mid-September to a phone call telling us to turn on the TV. Since then the world has gone galloping warwards, committing all sorts of injustices in deed and speech, and all this time I have been silent.
I've spoken, sure - I've griped about the news to friends and family, in desultory conversations had while chopping onions or driving to work. But as for serious expression - language polished by thought polished by language? Nothing.
Andrei Alezseyevich Amalrik says, 'If a person refuses the opportunity to judge the world around him and to express that judgment, he begins to destroy himself before the police destroy him ... ' I encountered this quotation not long after that September day, and the words have lingered in my mind as a reproof to me.
Why silent?
Right on, Amanda.
Not only is this reluctance to imagine other humans' states of being dangerous in its own right, it leaves our arsenal weakened in the face of divisive rhetoric.
The bourgeois and the brutal elite take no apparent shame in using language for their own purposes, even where it twists and wrings what philosophical matter it has from the words. Look at the ambiguity of the recent US political and military rhetoric: phrases like "the evildoers" and "the terrorists" garner at once a sense of ominous, elusive power about their subjects, while deepening and solidifying that sense of separation from whatever human beings the speaker cares to lob into those categories. (yes, read this paragraph twice and tell me where my own battles with hypocrasy lie)
I enjoyed your essay very much. It was another reminder of the power of language in our personal and public politics.
Consider this chain: political logistics and the running of our daily lives depend on decisions. Decisions are based on knowledge. Knowledge is extracted from information.
If one controls the information, one influences the politics and logistics of our lives and our nation. This is one of the central things that makes media monopoly contrary to democracy.
Here's to the voice and language of the people.
Rick
What's on your mind, if you will allow the overstatement?
Buy www.i-directv.net this it is a wonderful addition to anyones home entertainment system.
[And now for something completely different. Sort of. The following article was submitted by John Haney, a friend, photographer, and keen practicioner of off-colour humour. A veritable plethora of references, and maybe a bit of levity. A good excuse to say "veritable plethora", anyway.]
Bush's Blue Balls
A Short Editorial
I am pleased to have just read, from the Sydney Morning Herald, via (and courtesy of) Dru Jay's web site Misnomer, that, in preparation for a war in Iraq, George W. Bush has a plan in the works termed "Shock and Awe". This is a concept whereby the United States would bombard Iraq with approximately 800 missiles in 48 hours so that the effect would be rather like "[that of] the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima" Harlan Ullman, military strategist, croaks. "We want them to quit, not to fight..." so that any battle in Iraq would take not "days or weeks but minutes." The article goes on to note that operation "Shock and Awe" would target power sources and water sources in Baghdad. Hmmm. I think I can draw a worst-case scenario of all that water and electricity blowing-up and spraying this way and that. "Shock" no doubt! There will be no shortage of mustachios standing straight-up. Not to mention a lot of people in the desert without any more water or electricity.
Minor point: from what I understand, this is not a plan hatched by Bush, but by the Pentagon durring, surprise surprise, the Clinton years. As usual, the trotskyists have the goods here.
Something tells me the SOA-types who come up with this stuff are pretty happy to have someone like Bush in the White House, though.
Johnzo: maybe it would have been more effective to use some kind of ape/oranguatang analogy instead of frogs??
Toads Emily, not frogs! Yes, maybe apes would have been more appropriate.
re John Haney's photos of the Toronto anti-war march--beautiful shot of the birds winging above the wires, but I also liked the implicit political commentary of all those product logos looming above the marcher's heads, and of course the line about the 11th hour! Kim J.