Spontaneous Combustion

Extremely portentous with his news outside of the Hof, he stood zwaar and expecting a pregnant rain that never dropped. Protestations that never rang out. Mild-mannered old ladies with purple umbrellas that never stood to hear him speak. The lines of onlookers that never gathered, and the indignant citizenry that never walked by shaking their heads in disgust.
The few who stopped brought dogs. Small, bony toy pups whose aggressiveness had been drained out by sequential generations of effeminated engineering. On the monorail they were launched into the hearts of the apathetic people. Bored at the edges of his warnings they delivered antiseptic shits.
Despotic tranquility of the perfect society.
He railed and waited for the shots to ring out, but only disinterest and a sagging quiet despair trotted over the cobbles.
So he yelled and he cooked and he sweated and he cleared his brow for a new fulmination, and the thumping house rhythms responed with a reverberation like a drone from hell. And he walked into the Hof and he climbed on the pedestal with the statue of the saints from another age and he pulled out a pill and he swallowed and combusted into an ambling grove of fire. Running into the square he launched himself at a crowd.
They didn’t look up from their laptops.
He crushed a group of benches, his skin crackling, teeth clattering, residue from his eyeballs and charring lungs dripping behind him to be licked at uncaringly by the dogs.
But they didn’t look up from their laptops.
He fell among them.
A few were wounded.
An ambulance showed up, and they pulled out their insurance cards.
A mortician took a picture.
A journalist conducted an interview.
The journalist checked his watch and left.
A police man filed a report and emailed a copy to the morgue with a request for dental records.
The sermon choked in the dust of uncaring easy balance.
Nothing was changed.
Tomorrow someone else will die. And no-one will mourn her either.

-JW

Desert Watcher

A few more Nica pics

My first foray into international correspondence/commentary

From New Album 12/18/08 4:44 PM

Large murals instruct Matagalpa party faithful how to vote.

Here on Real Clear World, and the story also got picked up on Forbes.com:

INicaragua's Broken Democracy
By Joel Weickgenant
The advice from Carlos Chamorro is simple, and it resembles a plea: Don’t forget about Nicaragua.

Chamorro is Nicaragua’s leading investigative journalist and a scion of one of the Central American country’s most storied families. His father Pedro Chamorro was assassinated in 1978 for going after the dictator Anastasio Somoza in the pages of La Prensa, Chamorro’s daily newspaper.


Carlos Chamorro offered these words as a new period of unrest unfolds in Nicaragua, in the wake of municipal elections whose results are believed by many – including opposition members and segments of the international community – to be fraudulent.

In a process marked by repression, intimidation and a laundry list of irregularities, President Daniel Ortega’s Sandinistas (FSLN) declared victory in 94 of 146 municipalities across the country on Nov. 9. But the opposition wants the results thrown out. The center-right Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC) disavows the official tallies, most strikingly in the capital Managua, where former presidential candidate Eduardo Montealegre claims he is the winner. Third-party evidence suggests they are right to challenge the outcome – and not all of that evidence is subtle.

The marred elections set a disturbing precedent at an awkward time, as Ortega prepares to take over presidency pro-tempore of the Central American Integration System. Nicaragua is highly dependent on external aid, mostly from the United States and Europe. Aid programs are dependent on good governance, and their administrators expect recipients to be accountable, and more fundamentally, legitimate. Yet organizations such as the U.S. government-run Millennium Challenge Corporation must be mindful not to punish the people for the sins of their politicians.

In a decision last weekend, the MCC appeared to strike the proper balance.

BREAKING A GOOD HABIT

Nicaragua has kept a clean record of honest elections since at least 1990, when Violeta Chamorro, Carlos’s mother, directed a multiparty coalition that defeated Ortega and the FSLN. A nation weary of fighting moved on, and along with other countries in the region established what observers have called a “habit of democracy.” International electoral observers including the Carter Center and the Organization of American States validated the 2006 presidential election that brought Ortega to power.

This year, it became apparent in the months running up to the election that 2008 would break the “habit.” First, the government disqualified a pair of opposition parties from the ballot. Then, it refused to accredit the Carter Center or locally-based electoral observers Etica Y Trasparencia, who despite not being allowed inside the polling stations were able to compile an astounding list of irregularities.

Chamorro, who edits the weekly Semanal and the television program Esta Semana - both dedicated to investigative journalism - watched as the offices of his organization CINCO, the Center of Investigations of Communication, were raided.

The government accuses the organization of embezzlement and money laundering. “The investigation serves two purposes,” explained Chamorro, whose CINCO is one of 15 NGOs under investigation by the government, according to Reporters Without Borders. “On one hand, the government is visibly intimidating, silencing a critical voice. On the other hand, the government wants to fabricate a “case,” to justify a new politics of control and regulation of NGOs as relates to their cooperation with external entities.”

LIST OF INFRACTIONS

Etica Y Trasparencia Executive Director Roberto Courtney said the electoral process was corrupt enough that his organization easily compiled a list of irregularities despite being denied entrance into the polling stations.

Among the more serious allegations made by the group, who approved the 2006 results, are as follows:

- Expulsion or limited access of representatives from the PLC in numerous polling stations (JRVs)

- Fraudulent cancellation, introduction, substitution and invalidation of votes

- Early closings in a minimum of 20 percent of JRVs in Managua

- Failure to report electoral results in a transparent and timely manner in at least 10 percent of JRVs

WHAT NOW

It remains unclear what Daniel Ortega hopes to accomplish. When faced with the possibility of a cutoff of U.S.-based funding, the president crowed that Venezuela will step in and fill the gap, however unlikely or uncertain a possibility that may be.

What’s clear enough is that his desire for control is a destabilizing factor in a country where old wounds have not yet fully healed. Since Nov. 9, tensions have boiled over in a number of disturbing ways, including one incident where a journalist was stabbed with a bayonet. A recent poll showed that while Nicaraguans do not support a revote, neither do they support Ortega’s aim of refashioning the government from a presidential to a parliamentary system. Such a move would allow Ortega to continue his leadership as prime minister.

It’s also unclear how Ortega plans to govern a nation he has divided anew. “By closing the door to (a revote or recount) Ortega made it impossible for himself to resolve the political crisis, and address the lack of legitimacy deriving from fraud,” Chamorro said. “Every day new voices demand a recount … including prominent Sandinistas like the outgoing mayor of Managua Nicho Marenco.” The future of the country is uncertain, Chamorro warned. “I have the impression that a deep wound has been opened, and the repercussions are already irreversible.”

If Nicaragua’s government lacks legitimacy, the intervention of the United States in particular will be met with equal suspicion. American intervention in the country has never been neutral, and has borne a disproportionately negative influence on the country’s politics, stability and development in the past. The Americans supported the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, and then backed the right-wing Contras in their armed struggle against the Sandinistas.

The MCC took the right approach last week, suspending any expansion of funding to the country while continuing the work already being done under the $175 million compact in Nicaragua. A spokesman for MCC reminded, though, that continued support is up for review, and assistance is performance-based. “MCC is designed to work with countries that are committed to good policies that promote political and economic freedom,” the spokesman said.

Chamorro said the U.S. should work with other international partners to interact with Nicaragua in a way that takes into account the “negative lessons of the past.” Countries like Spain and Canada, according to Chamorro, in particular are qualified to act as interlocutors.

“The international community does not have to and should not pretend to act in place of the Nicaraguan opposition, but can firmly support it,” Chamorro said. “First of all: don’t forget about Nicaragua. Ortega must know that he cannot subject the country to a regressive authoritarianism without consequences.”

The Nut of the Problem = Greed

Aaah, newspapers are dying. Low circulation, drops in advertising revenue, the intertubes...what's that you say? The Green Bay Press Gazette posted a 42.5 percent profit margin last year?

http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/documents-reveal-double-digit-profit.html

Yet Gannett is laying off reporters left and right.

Rest in Peace Odetta

One of the greatest voices the world has been privileged to hear fell silent today.

Alone with Spirits

I don't know why, but despite the flares and the fact the subject (one Ardi Eleveld) has her back to the camera, this is one of my favorite pictures.

From Two days in North Carolina

Took it this March - egadz how time flies - in the forests around Blowing Rock, N.C.

Blind Boys of Alabama coming to Savannah

This is a pretty big coup for the Coastal Empire:

The Blind Boys of Alabama are coming to Tybee Island.
One of the most famed groups to perform Gospel music, originally formed in 1939, the group was scheduled to perform this weekend at Shoreline Ballroom in Hilton Head. However, when the promoter in charge of the show was recently hospitalized and diagnosed with cancer, organizers were faced with canceling the concert.
That's when they turned to Cafe Loco.
"I got a call on Thanksgiving from a club manager," said Cafe Loco Owner Joel Solomon. "I said I'd love to have the band here. We worked on it all Thanksgiving break. They're a big band and they need a big production."...

Happy Thanksgiving

Commemorate this day with a few words of doom from Godspeed You! Black Emperor's "Dead Flag Blues:"

The car is on fire, and there's no driver at the wheel
And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
And a dark wind blows

The government is corrupt
And we're on so many drugs
With the radio on and the curtains drawn

We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
And the machine is bleeding to death

The sun has fallen down
And the billboards are all leering
And the flags are all dead at the top of their poles

It went like this:

The buildings tumbled in on themselves
Mothers clutching babies
Picked through the rubble
And pulled out their hair

The skyline was beautiful on fire
All twisted metal stretching upwards
Everything washed in a thin orange haze

I said, "Kiss me, you're beautiful -
These are truly the last days"

Musical Sanity

I love Andy Whitman. Why do I love Andy Whitman? Because Andy Whitman has no patience for hipsters. Andy Whitman.

Craziness: New Science Projects

A friend of mine introduced me to this Denton, Texas-based group the other night. Maybe it's just the kickass homemade Mexican food I was digesting, but I appreciated the guy's cantilevered cauterwauling beyond just the novelty act. He actually carries a tune pretty well!



I always wonder with a performer who takes this tack though...is he stuck with it perpetually? If he gains a following, then decides he wants to drop the crazy stage demeanor and sell himself as more of, say a Simon Garfunkel type, could he pull it off? Or will he always have to throw down this mad-homeless-Elvis vibe?

The MySpace: New Science Projects

Sobre Todo

From Recent photos

Nicaragua Idyll

From Recent photos

Paradise lives in the work that builds it: the fence posts that mark its miles and the trees that shade its livestock. The earthworms that feed on coffee skins and manure to manufacture its fresh humus, and the clouds that shelter the grasses in its valleys. The banana plants that prevent erosion, the coffee plants that dot its hills, the red plastic bottles with the mixture of coffee and grain alcohol that get the beetles drunk so they don't eat the crops.

It demands careful love, and sustaining respect. But what it takes away, it gives back tenfold in the purity of an autumn view; in the bounty of a hale, locally-grown meal; in the sensory wallop of a truly fresh cup of coffee.

Musical press releases

As a sometimes music journalist, I found this blog post by Paste Mag's Andy Whitman, where he categorizes various attention-grabbing techniques employed by publicists in their press releases, hilarious and true to life. This especially:

The Obscure

Pull out the trivia trump card whenever possible. No one will know what the hell you're writing about, but you'll be able to feel better and more smug about yourself.

Band Y emerged from the seminal Winnipeg proto-Snowcore scene that included Phlegm, Don's Shovel, and Half Maggot, Half Madonna. Produced by the legendary Bob Smith (Cool Whip, Zulu Toboggan), Band Y's debut album Slush mixes elements of Mancunian-tinged postrock with Winnipeg's signature icy but warm sound. It will melt your brain.

Tremendous trio, long-forgotten origins

From my work blog:

Many folks forget that the original three members of the all-time great international guitar trio included not Al Di Meola, but jazz guitarist Larry Coryell.



Brilliance.

McLaughlin, of course, will be rejoining incomparable pianist/composer Chick Corea - their collaboration in the Five Peace Band is their first since they were both members of Miles Davis's group in the late 60's - during this spring's Savannah Music Festival.