People can't be this fucked up...

Could this be true?:

“The real reason that BP is drilling this relief well is that they want to have a functioning well for recovering oil from the reservoir before they destroy the leaking well. In other words, BP is hedging its bets that state and federal governments will not allow further drilling after the spill is stopped, so they’ve hyped the necessity of a so-called relief well in order to guarantee their company’s access to the oil field once the crisis ends.”
- Don’t Blame Offshore Drilling by Christopher Brownfield, The Daily Beast

The President needs to nationalize the relief effort. Period. Among leftists, I am the most extremist pro-market/believer of capitalism you might ever find. And I am ready to debate my position for as long as necessary. Nonetheless, nationalization is what needs to be done. BP employees in the Gulf are to be magically turned into federal employees, the Fed is to supervise everything and to ‘politically’ own the problem (so there is at least some kind of reality-based incentive -like votes- for someone to do something), and BP is to foot the bill.

In a fit of madness, Chris Matthews uttered the terrible word that my Buddhist brain has been avoiding: execution. Yes, in China they execute people for shit like this. I stop.

Ohhhh. I can not fathom how such a nasty thing could be true. Not even from BP. Really. Not in a time like this. Not with the oil already 12 miles into the marshes. It can not be possible. Can it?

Cerati

I am not used to think about rock and roll divinities as mortal human beings. They were born to make noise, to rock it out, to inspire, to modernize our souls. And so it always comes as a huge shock when they get struck by the inevitable human plights of illness or death.

Last year, it was the sudden and devastating passing of Luis el Terror Dias, a giant of rock, the grand father of Dominican tuki tuki, a poet, a superb guitar player, and a close friend and guru of some dear friends of mine.

Last week, Ronnie James Dio. If you ever heard Dio's powerful tenor, it was impossible to imagine it ever being subjected to extinction. But today he is no more.

This week we desperately await for good news about Gustavo Cerati, Argentinean singer-songwriter, guitar player, and rock divinity. He suffered a stroke after a concert in Caracas, and is lying in a coma. The most optimist prognosis is plainly awful. Cerati, the consummate Buenos Airean yuppie, the cosmopolitan dandy with a shinning elitist soul, the over-affected tenor, the slick and moody Kierkegaard-look-alike porteño, only 50 years old and so near of being no more.

I would not understand and love Spanish rock as I do without Cerati and Soda Stereo, the band he led from the early 80's to the mid 90's. I would not love rock as I do without Dynamo, Soda Stereo's 1992 masterpiece. Elegance itself would feel empty without Bocanada, Cerati's 1999 awe-inspiring gem.

These moments, argh, they make me feel like a child: I just don't want Cerati to die. I don't want him to be paralyzed or bed-ridden. I want Cerati to blast it out forever. To be eternal. And so I cling. On the verge of prayer.

Ouch

Julio Aparicio gets gored...you know how I feel about that. He survived, but the bull was swiftly dispatched by a gang of manly matadors in very tight pants.

Slick Barry

Well my dear people, Obama is gonna do shit about the spill. Nada, rien, nothing. Why should he?

It turns out that even if the whole Gulf of Mexico turns into a frying pan of bubbly steamy oil, this biblical catastrophe is going to have NO impact on Obama's approval numbers, it is going to be of no consequence for 2012, and hence, he's gonna do crap about it.

Where is the GOP and its rabid, irrational opposition? -Drilling, baby, drilling and accusing Obama of being too tough with BP!

Alas, I expected, just because of cheap electoral politics, to hear at least one Republican say: 'the President is doing nothing because he is a rich lawyer from Chicago, an incurable elitist, and he does not care about people down South'. But no. The GOP is offering no leverage by numbers or polling.

Everything and everyone is conspiring to bring the oil right to our shores.

And what are we gonna do about it? -Vote Palin 2012.

Apple Cider

This article on Gizmodo is important, for it signals the shifting grounds of the technology wars: the blogosphere is cannibalizing on Apple. Suddenly, Apple is not THAT cool or innovative, or liberal or fun or creative. It is old, grumpy, resentful, capitalist, police-friendly; and Google leaps ahead of Apple.

Steve Job’s overeaction to Gizmodo’s breaking the news -and publishing juicy photos- of a lost, never-seen-before, super duper secret iphone 4, achieved something few of us could believe just a month ago: the techie-heads crapping on Apple. That’s what happens when a multi-billionaire sends the cops to the house of a harmless nerdy tech website editor.

There is something scary about Google’s drive for global domination. Its omnipotence and omniscience. Yet, it is somehow understandable and with many historical precedents: it is a business and it wants to be everywhere and be used by everyone. The strategy is simple: cast a wide-net and be everything to everybody. The sheer size of Google’s global empire has made it impossible for them NOT to adopt an open platform philosophy. It has been the only way to attract an impressively diverse customer base. So by keeping it loose, they keep it together.

Apple’s vision and philosophy are different. Apple, unlike Microsoft, is not interested in having 100% of the planet using their Macs. They have around a 5% market share and they are comfortable with that. The gross of their money, however, comes from elsewhere: ipod and iphone sales. In the last decade, Apple has been steadily marching towards a technological and philosophical close-down. An obsessive compulsion to have people experience their products in Apple’s terms exclusively has become evident. Though it is impossible to perfectly close a whole computer with a fully loaded operating system, Apple has been moving towards controlling more and more, the ways their computers can be experienced and enjoyed. They have done this by limiting choices and by devising proprietary technology that works only for that 5% of the world’s computers. With ipods and iphones they have achieved what was impossible to do with a fully functional computer: complete lockdown. All in the name of the Apple experience.

Meanwhile, like a cheap whore, Google keeps selling itself the world over. And the more it expands, the more open it has to be....and the more chaos it can potentially engender.

Google fought the China’s Communist Party to a draw. They took a stand, on principle. If Google was able to fight the People’s Republic of China’s government to a draw, it will crush Apple and its petty tyrant. Apple runs the risk of becoming not only a joke, but even more painful, irrelevant. That will not happen today. But just as Google’s strategy for world domination is a long term one, Apple’s demise will take years. But down it will go. Unless it opens up.

My Garden, China and Dio

My wife is away in China. And I am kind of lost. I have trouble sleeping. The only things grounding me are my daily yoga practice, my garden and my guitars. And, yes, spring.

Today, I have been tending my garden in the backyard, along with my downstairs tenant/friend/drummer, Jose Anibal. We have the drum set right here, I have my computer down here, my amp and my guitar, and the sun. We have been rocking it out to the enthusiastic applause of our four African neighbors. The tomatoes are gonna flow after this for sure.

This will be paradise perfect if only my wife, Libertad, were not in China. I miss her smile, her hands, her voice, her smell, all of her. She is the legged and roaming flower of this garden.

I feel insecure about my writing because she has not read it and commented.

I don't feel like commenting on politics that much. Only the oil slick is politically present in my brain, and the thought that my friends from New Orleans are moving out of there because it just too much.

Too much is also the fact that Ronnie James Dio, who gave us the devil horn fingers, died today of stomach cancer. And, that's how I feel: like a Rainbow in the Dark. RIP.

As you can see, I am rambling. That's what happens when Libertad goes to China, and when my guitars are near me. I feel no guilt though, this is who I am right now: incomplete and musical. And as Stuart Smalley would say: that is OK.

Il professore, Carla, Tamar, Chris, Nader and Matt

For years I have been paying matriculation charges at the GC hoping for each semester to be THE one when I finished my Thesis Proposal. I've foolishly given CUNY thousands of dollars. And the proposal was nowhere to be seen at the end. A painful separation and sweet reconciliation from my beloved, new jobs, the death of my mother. Life always got in the way, and academia seemed farther each passing day.

This semester I thought: if I am paying, let the GC give me something back for real. And so, I ended up registering at the Writing Politics seminar.

It has been the best decision I've made in the last few years. And I have to thank all of you, il professore, Carla, Tamar, Nader, Chris and Matt.

You all took me out of my stupor and pessimism. You have energized me. You have given me back my academic and scholarly confidence. You have reacquainted me with the thing I love the most: the healthy and public exchange of ideas.

Our classroom is the healthiest of learning temples: a bar with good friends, without the endless flow of Bourbon. It has been, by FAR, the best experience I have had at the GC.

I love how we have all grown in concrete ways right in front of each other. No fear, just growth.

I have lost some of that paralyzing self-consciousness about my English. I have become a better writer. And for that I have to thank you all. And my dear wife, Libertad.

So, professore, thanks for watering us, for letting us be, for being so fast of your feet, for being so fucking smart, for allowing us to be clowns, encouraging towards each other, cruel, and funny.

And to the rest of the gang: I expect you all at my parties in the Vegan South Bronx!

THANKS!!!!

A slick of rage

It might well be my extremist instincts, but in the blink of an eye I have passed from enthusiastic support for Barack Obama, to an Olympic irrational rage toward his administration. From wanting him to befriend Lula da Silva, to wanting Lula to get Jiu-jitsu on his ass. And all because of that stubborn slick of oil in the Gulf.

I never thought that Obama's administration could end up bogged down in the same waters that defined W's inept administration: the Gulf coast was become Obama's Watergoo.

My beef? -Obama's parroting of BP's underestimation of the extent of the catastrophe.

BP says 5,000 barrels of oil per day, the administration parrots 5,000 barrels.

BP says that the amount of oil is irrelevant to the aggressiveness of their response, the administration parrots the same crap.

Well, it turns out that the spill is much more than 5,000 barrels per day, according to independent researchers and experts. And it also turns out that those are OUR waters and we have a right to know how much oil is spilling out. Just because. Regardless of the response, we have a right to know the truth.

I am afraid that Obama's slickness is spilling out of control, and the Gulf's catastrophe has brought it all out in all its ugly blandness.

To see this administration's utter impotence in confronting the spill and their complete dependence on BP's estimates is scary and nauseating.

To read Ken Salazar and Janet Napolitano begging on their knees for BP to cover the damage costs beyond the 75 million dollars of liability that the law requires is as humiliating as having Chinese tanks roaming free around Pennsylvania Avenue.

In these kinds of crises is when administrations grow or unravel. I want to see a couple of heads roll. I want blood. I want to see Obama and his cabinet sipping some tea à la pétrol.

For Homeownership

For the past few months my dear friend and world-renown SOHO resident communist, Chris Michael, has been shrewdly arguing against homeownership as against the virtues of renting. Chris's arguments are cogent and well-reasoned. Yet, today I want to present a counter-argument of sorts: how homeownership can be used as a tool in a progressive agenda.

When my wife and I bought our house in the South Bronx, after selling our beautiful one-bedroom apartment in Clinton Hill for over double of what we bought it, we had no idea of what owning a townhouse, a real house, meant. We didn't even know shit about the Bronx. With our coop apartment in Clinton Hill, we were responsible for our mortgage and a quite steep maintenance fee but, on the other hand, we never had to worry about anything concerning home-repairs and maintenance. We didn't even paid for electricity! Everything was done for us.

At first, our 4 story house (plus basement) seemed like a gigantic proposition. What were we going to do with so much space? It was a house with an independent garden apartment, but still it was considered a one-family house. We knew we were going to rent the first floor, but did we really need the other three floors just for the two of us? What about that ever present flow of friends and acquaintances trying to make it in NYC? Perhaps -we thought- we should rent the top floor two bedrooms to some of them, depending on their situation, and our needs. And so began our house-as-a-communal-refuge project. In the five years we have owned our house, countless friends have made our house their home, and we have derived immense satisfaction in knowing that not only they help us pay the mortgage with their below-market-rate rent (our one bedroom garden apartment goes for $850 per month), but we have helped lots of people to 'make it' in the city, or at least supported them giving NYC a try. From a now-successful actor to a junkie friend looking for a friendly detox environment, we have provided a safe heaven for people that have become part of our family. Our house has been their house, and we have created community thanks to the ownership of this blessed space.

About two years after moving here, we began what we christened 'The Bronx Salon Series', a series of public events where academics and activists presented their projects and/or papers to a public audience, followed by an open discussion and a party afterwards. Green projects (like the South Bronx Food Coop and the Green Workers Coop) were launched and made public in the parlor room of our house. We have had scholars from Berlin talking about hip-hop in ethnic enclaves in Paris, Warsaw, New York and Berlin, and we even had Marshall Berman present his last book, On the Town, here, in our parlor room. Friends from the GC, from Columbia University, from other academic institutions, PLUS our neighbors (the projects included) have enjoyed our discussions and parties. Doing that in a place that you don't own might be a little bit difficult. You could get away with doing it once or twice, but it would be a tough sell for any rational landlord. 'Yeah, it is cool, use my property to host public panels and invite the people from the projects and whomever wants to come'. The series has been possible only because we own the place.

Then we have our basement. The basement has served as a recording studio and rehearsal space for at least 6 different music bands since we moved here in 2005. Our musician friends know they have a free space for rehearsals, that they can make as much noise as their music calls for, at almost any time they wish...that is a rare opportunity in this overcrowded and noise-conscious city. We have recorded four CDs in that basement, some of those CDs are now part of the NYU library, the New York Public Library, the University of Puerto Rico's library and the Library of Congress. Again, owning the house, the sense that we could do whatever the fuck we want without asking for permission, is what has allowed us to provide that service to our friends. Again, our music projects have created a sense of a shared community, and it has been a source of immense personal satisfaction and pride for the artists and for my wife and I.

One day, about three years ago, we got an invitation from Mayor Bloomberg to come to a discussion with city planners about plans the city had about our hood. Why? It turns out that we are now considered to be important cultural and neighborhood leaders in our area. Every time that there is a plan for our neighborhood, we are invited, and we make the most of it...we say no, we say yes, and they have listened to us. In those meeting, plans have been scratched because we -and other 'important cultural leaders'- have made it clear that we will raise hell if they go ahead with a rezoning or closing a green area. We have gotten that humble clout because of the projects we have done in our house, and we have developed those projects because we own the place; we are not renters, we cannot easily move away if something is not of our liking, this place HAS to work for us, or else.

Last week we began experimenting with planting our own vegetables in the backyard, and we have friends already talking about helping us do a communal garden in our roof (they will buy everything we might need, including the special soil -produced here in the Bronx- that is best for roof gardens).

And next week we will begin our own radio station, with the antenna transmitting from our future roof garden. Most of the neighbors that own their own houses have already given us their approval to post re-transmitting antennas on their roofs. The idea, initiated by one of our tenants, is to to provide an open neighborly space for the discussion of issues affecting our neighborhood, and to play good music. We are still working on the programming, but we already have the servers, software and antennas ready to go. Our first experiment with the system -this weekend- was a resounding success.

Owning a house can be a drag, it is true. It is a lot of work. It forces you to learn about pipes, boilers, electricity, plaster walls, beams, drainage systems, etc. But, as with everything in life, it is absolutely dependent on one's attitude and approach. 95% of the friends that have rented in our house move out and stay in the South Bronx, blocks away from our place. Two of them even bought their own apartments in the borough. The idea, I guess, is to move beyond public/private artificial distinctions and to think beyond one's own self-interest, without disregarding hard facts as mortgage and oil payments, being a responsible landlord, and paying the bills. Our friends help us pay our mortgage, and we in turn have given them a progressive space for experimentation and community building. That's what owning a place should be all about: making it your own.

Silly bikes

Excellent post -via The Daily Dish- about silly bikes: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/04/ban-silly-bikes/