Dear readers, allow me to write personally in this space -- an indulgence which I very rarely draw upon -- and kindly forgive this slightly longer "Note from the Editor." Here comes the time to review the passing year. My friends, colleagues and comrades, who make Swans possible time and again, have written their perspectives on 2004. They cover a lot of ground, cultural, societal, political; some are more activist, some more historical, or even philosophical. They are so thorough and talented that I did not feel the need to add my own 2 cents' worth. Read them to your heart's content and do not miss the poignant poetry of Octavio Paz (in three languages!), Walker Percy's excerpt on death genes (to which Phil Rockstroh recently alluded), the essay on Plantation Politics by S. Jeffrey Jones, the usual Martian Blips, and the letters... (All-in-all 20 pieces!)
Had I offered my own views, I think I would have focused on Abu Ghraib, the torture chambers and the violence that permeates our society, but many a contributor addressed these issues. Otherwise, I consider that 2004 is nothing less, or more than contrasting continua. To relate what I mean and in the spirit of the holidays, let me share a little allegory and a small window on my inner self.
The Boy Who Would Be Emperor And The Old Man By The Sea: The boy who would be emperor travels to a garrison to praise the accomplishments of his legions; he calls them the forces of Freedom and Democracy, of good against evil, of light against darkness. The old man by the sea walks into the hall of a youth congress to reflect on what he calls the Battle of Ideas. He is old indeed, while still reasonably fit, but carries a vast experience built upon a lifetime of struggles made of many mistakes and successes -- he is only human, after all. The boy presides over the destinies of his 300 million subjects; his powers are formidable -- he is imbued with a godly mission, to create a World Democracy in his image. His praetorians crisscross the seas, the skies, the lands of the entire world; they are posted in some 170 countries. On his word, and in the name of his god, they rain death and destruction upon the recalcitrants, any peoples or countries stubborn enough to refuse and resist his vision, his manifest destiny. At home, his subjects, year in and year out, lose their pensions, their health care, their jobs; their education system is falling apart, the infrastructure of the country in shambles, so that the boy may finance his crusades and lavish his friends and foreign cronies alike with leis and gold. He is feared and loathed by the multitudes the world over. Even among his subjects uneasiness is rampant; but his aura of invincibility is such, and his admirers and evangelizers placed in so many positions of power, within the halls of prayers and justice, the vast stables of commerce and industry, and the legislative bodies, that only a whisper of opposition can be heard from the inmost depths of his once-upon-a-time much blessed land. His country and his culture are slowly disintegrating, but the boy who would be emperor stands at the pulpit, his face beaming with the charm and pride of death and praise the lord.
Meanwhile, the old man by the sea praises the children of his small country, hailing the future of this tiny island where music and commonality of purpose, art and solidarity, keep defying the odds. The old man talks about the universalization of education, the number of new classrooms, new schools, new institutions of higher learning, in biotechnology, in computer sciences, and new computers, and new video-recorders, and books, and books, and more books -- everything geared toward the well being and the improvement of the daily conditions of the people, all of the people. He is very precise, offering exact figures and statistics on the achievements that have taken place in spite of outside interferences, threats and blockades. The old man looks particularly proud to expand on the field of medicine, on the number of doctors -- over 20,000 -- who help in 66 countries around the world (for instance, 450 of them are currently in Haiti, compared to less than 50 sent by the "International Community"). There are those, you see, who export DU, F16s, 500-2000 pound bunker-busting bombs...those who export death; and there're those who export doctors and knowledge...those who export life... The old man emphasizes once more the ardent, fundamental obligation to keep waging the Battle of Ideas -- instead of waging endless war and destruction -- for the sake of humanity's survival. He defines that famous, ageless battle as, "the battle of humanism against dehumanization, the battle of brotherhood and sisterhood against the most blatant form of selfishness [...] the battle of justice against the most brutal form of injustice, the battle for our people and the battle for other peoples." And then, the old man becomes silent and walks quietly to sit and rest among the smiling children whose faces beam with the lightness of being, and the peaceful love they all so much deserve...
Last night, my dearest companion and I made love. We made love for hours; with passion and furry; with peacefulness and tenderness; in the darkness of the bedroom; on the sofa in the living room, under the warmed glow of the wood stove; we walked naked outside on the deck and watched the stars, and kissed, and smiled, and hugged...we left no parts, no crannies, no mounts, unexplored, un-kissed, un-caressed. I love you so very deeply, Jan, without reservation, in total acceptation: I love YOU.
And so, my friends, between love and hate, I choose love; and between life and death, I choose life... It is then, with honor, the nobility of the heart, and the humility of the mind, that I have the privilege to nominate, in my name, Swans' Human of the Year: Fidel Castro Ruz, the much beloved president of the Republic of Cuba! (Runner-up: Ralph Nader!)
With much thanks to all for writing and reading, I am looking forward to 2005 with hope and resolve. We'll be back on January 1 with our Infamous Predictions™ -- Gilles d'Aymery
As always, please form your OWN opinion, and let your friends (and foes) know about Swans.
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Phil Rockstroh: 2004: A Case Study In Forensic Irony
Because, at the present time, public prayer is all the rage, I will begin this essay with one of my own: O Gods of Irony have mercy on me -- as I attempt to review the events of the past year involving a nation devoid of memory...a nation whose populace is incapable of drawing upon historical reference and perspective -- nor even possesses a collective memory span going back any farther than the last channel clicked; More...
Michael Doliner: 2004: Diary Of A Man In Despair
Friedrich Percyval Reck-Malleczewen started his Diary of a Man in Despair in May 1936 and wrote intermittently until October 1944 when the Gestapo arrested and then shot him. The Diary was published posthumously in 1947. It is a history of what it was like to live in Germany as the Third Reich gathered to a head. Reck's Hitler is a living-dead ghost with "a jellylike, slag-gray face, a moonface into which two melancholy jet-black eyes had been set like raisins." The mesmerizing hypnotist of other accounts is completely missing. George W. Bush, our great leader, is a comparable monster in a comparable stage of his career. More...
John Steppling: Empire Of Amnesia, 2004
When the looting in Baghdad began, and was encouraged by US forces, an Arab professor here in Krakow said, simply, "they want to destroy our history, and our cultural identity." This seems a year in which the erasure of history has found total traction and solidified into the raison d'être of the hegemonic ruling class. More...
Jan Baughman: 2004: Reality in Perspective
Frustrated by the harsh realities of 2004? There are plenty of alternative realities to focus on that will lift your spirits and make things right for the New Year. Purge your terrorism paranoia by eating cockroaches on Fear Factor. Find happiness in an Extreme Makeover, with a facelift, tummy tuck, new teeth, new nose, new hair; or turn to The Swan if you're an ugly duckling yearning to be a beautiful princess. More...
Joe Davison: 2004: Another Best and Worst Year
2004 is another year in which the best and worst of humanity continued a struggle in the Middle East for the future of our planet. Forget a US Presidential election to determine which of two rich white men would man the tiller of US imperialism around the globe, the real power struggle continues in Iraq between those intent on global domination and those struggling to maintain the ideals of self determination, without which human dignity and freedom are impossible. More...
Eli Beckerman: 2004: The Lost Year
As the waning crescent moon of 2004 turned into a new moon, that remaining sliver of light vanished into the darkness of the night. These things are cyclical. I find some comfort in that. The moon will wax full again. But let's face it. Not everything we destroy will re-emerge. Take the sea mink of Maine and northeastern Canada, for instance. Hunted for its fur, this mammal was wiped out and is gone forever. More...
Louis Proyect: 2004: Perspectives And Opportunities
2004 was the year in which the lines between the hard and soft left were drawn around the Kerry and Nader campaigns. While it would have been far better if both camps were united around the Nader campaign, the hard left was exemplary in sticking to its principles. History will record that Swans, Press Action and Counterpunch played an important role in giving voice to the Nader campaign. The people who read and identify with the perspectives of these online publications will become a key element in a renewed radical movement in the USA. More...
Gerard Donnelly Smith: 2004: The Insurgent Word
From monuments to magnificence to the constitutional banning of gay/lesbian marriage, from deciphering lies to pointing out blatant contradictions, from experiencing déjà vu while fascists create another sham democracy to trembling while self-fulfilling prophecies conjured by the illuminati take shape as an American Hegemon, it was a banner year for material if one is driven to write protest poetry and political exposition. More...
Joel Wendland: Retrospective On 2004, Or Why I Need More Sleep
Just thinking about this year makes me tired. From fighting the Bush agenda in the media and in the streets at every turn, to working with the broad democratic movement to fight unsuccessfully his return for another four years, 2004 may have been, at the risk of overstating its significance, the most important year of my life. Now as the winter approaches and time drags into another period of dread and impending fascism, I just want to sleep. More...
Milo Clark: Beyond The Beyond: Reflections on a November Visited Upon us . . . Again
More than twenty years ago, and again two years ago, I wrote a paper on relative value. In it, I wrote about Wittgenstein's concerns straddling Popper's perspectives on the propensities dispersed within probabilities. Wittgenstein set conundrums: "How do you teach a blind man red?" He set limits not only on language, per se, but also on our individual and collective boundaries, limits, abilities to conceptualize, to see actualities. More...
Frank Wycoff: 2004: We Could Use Some People Power In The U.S.
Once again this year, a group of people have come together and forced a government to change its policy. First in Spain, a very emotional and united cry came out of the people forcing a change in foreign policy and in leadership. Most recently, the Ukraine, seeing the government and its branches try to steal an election, the people united in mass and as of the last newscast, succeeded in getting a new election. More...
Philip Greenspan: 2004: The Superpower Kept Sinking
On 9/11/01 each of the twin towers of the World Trade Center was struck by a 767 jetliner. The impact of the planes and the explosion of the jet fuel did not bring down the towers. The North Tower stood for 104 minutes; the South, 56 minutes. During those minutes the well designed and formidable structures were slowly losing strength until they finally collapsed. More...
Charles Marowitz: The Message Of 2004
I was struck in 2004 by how many people vowed they would leave the country if Bush won re-election; a widespread oppression and anxiety that forcibly reminded me of the massive emigration from Germany after the Nazis came to power and the first brutalities of the National Socialist Party came to light. I took such a vow myself and am still deliberating the pros and cons of flight. More...
Edward S. Herman: 2004: A Year Of Frightening Regression
The year 2004, not yet over, has been a bad one, and developments this year do not bode well for the future. Among the obvious bads were the reelection of George Bush, the tightened alliance with Israel and more aggressive support of the intensified Israeli ethnic cleansing, and of course, the murderous occupation of Iraq. More...
Manuel García, Jr.: 2004: The Year Of Disillusion
The big story of 2004 is the end of a two-headed illusion: that the U.S. is not an empire and that it is democratic. Historians and many knowledgeable people have long seen through the illusion, perhaps even for a century, but in 2004 the fact of US imperialism is obvious and casually stated, as is the realization that elections have little impact on government policies in substantive matters: the economy, war, the conduct of corporations. More...
Walker Percy: Death Genes: The Second Coming
Well then, does anything really change in a lifetime, he asked the sly sidelong-looking Andrea del Sarto in the Mercedes mirror? No, you are the same person with whom I struck the pact roaring out old U.S. 66 through the lonesome towns and empty desert. More...
Octavio Paz: Libertad Bajo Palabra
In Spanish, with French and English translations.
Allá, donde terminan las fronteras, los caminos se borran. Donde empieza el silencio. Avanzo lentamente y pueblo la noche de estrellas, de palabras, de la respiración de un agua remota que me espera donde comienza el alba. Invento la víspera, la noche, el día siguiente que se levanta en su lecho de piedra y recorre con ojos límpidos un mundo penosamente soñado. Sostengo al árbol, a la nube, a la roca, al mar, presentimiento de dicha, invenciones que desfallecen y vacilan frente a la luz que disgrega.
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S. Jeffrey Jones: Plantation Politics? Mimes, Minstrels And Miscalculation
It is difficult, in our time, to reflect honestly and seriously on the expectations and codes occasioned by our "culture," in dramas staged and repressed, including those in the president's decisions on recent cabinet appointments. Attached to the secretary of state, more and less remotely, is the fate of foreign relations, national policy on war, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and, lest we forget, the prospect of negotiations and peace. More...
Gilles d'Aymery: Blips #8
"Ours is an age in which partial truths are tirelessly transformed into total falsehoods and then acclaimed as revolutionary revelations."
—Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin, 1974
A few selected issues that landed on the Editor's desk: From suing Rumsfeld & Co. and following Ray Beckerman's trail on the election fraud (no, not in the Ukraine, but in the good ole USA), to the silly season revisited, and the Cruise Line Left, without missing a beat with the Boonville News, and, as always, people first...
More...
Encouraging words to keep us stirring the pot of dissent, a generous offer to commercialize Swans (we declined), John Steppling's cogent review of our previous rendition, and more... More...
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