And Joe Scarborough says she's not a journalist?

Well, I guess Joe should know about NOT being a journalist!!

Check this out !! One small step for humankind !!

Hey Folks -

I don't watch the Joe Show, but someone tipped me off about this.

At least one active media person (Mika Brzezinski) has scruples (will she get canned?). Watch how the two monkeys give her a hard time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkhK2VU32qo

- Uke Man

Chiseling Chavez

Twisted Media

Hey Folks –

Here we have a great illustration of how the “mainstream” press, the “responsible press” (as opposed to bloggers ) spreads their irresponsible “mainstream” propaganda.

In the cartoon above Hugo Chavez is being sculpted from an oil-can-shaped stone, perhaps correctly suggesting that his country’s oil resources are responsible for his international importance or impact.

However, it is further indicated that the emergence of Chavez as someone to deal with comes as a result of the destruction and discarding of “FREEDOM,” “RIGHTS,” and “LIBERTIES.” Indeed, the title of the “sculpture” is inscribed: “TYRANNY.”

Well, freedom, rights, liberties, and tyranny – like love – are often in the eye of the beholder.

As I have said before, previous to Chavez 80% of Venezuelans lived below the poverty line. The 20% on top have long enjoyed the freedom and liberty - indeed the right – to tyrannize the rest of their countrymen, in part at least by playing footsie with foreign investors. Chavez is a threat to that.

In other words, working to improve freedom, rights, and liberties to the degraded 80% of Venezuelans is seen by some as “TYRANNY” !

Ramirez’ cartoons always reflect the right-wing-business-corporate-fascist line. Look at the fine print there by his name: “INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY.”

So much for responsible, mainstream media.

- Uke Man

The evil, insensitive, Hollywood slut flaunting her painful "fashion statement"!!

It's an insane world!!

Hey Folks -

Here's a good case study of why the world is so screwed up!! This entire story is one insane contradiction after another.

A Holywood starlette with - I'm told - a drug problem visits Peru (where most people can't read Chinese characters) carrying a bag sold as a "fashion accesory" by the Capitalist country of Communist China.

The bag is (as the article states) "emblazoned with a red star and the words 'Serve the People' printed in Chinese, perhaps Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong's most famous political slogan," but Mao wasn't really "into" fashion. Moreover, the "Communist" government running China is responsible for ending Mao's Communist government and replacing it with the market-driven system now threatening to beat the West at its own game. Worse, Capitalism's most famous political slogan ISN'T "Serve the People"! "Buyer beware" maybe, but NOT "Serve the people."

That's Madison Avenue not the Maoist Road.

Then we have the "pain" caused by a slogan nobody could read on a small bag carried by one tourist in Peru. Moreover, the pain-inflicting phrase is "Serve the people." Now who wouldn't be pained by such sentiment ? It's almost as bad as if David Hasselhoff visited Italy wearing a lapel pin that demanded, "Make the trains run on time!" Golly, THAT would cause a stir !!

Also presented is the view that the pain is caused by the reminder of the Maoist Shining Path insurgency. But nothing is mentioned of the nasty military government it opposed or of Alberto Fujimori (our country's good pal) who opposed the insurgents but eventually fled the country to avoid criminal prosecution by his own people.

Finally, the stamp of approval to this hodge-podge of contradictions is given by a "human rights activist," supposedly a lefty, right? Well, George Bush claims he's for human rights, too. Talk is cheap.


- Uke Man


Cameron Diaz apologizes for Maoist bag
June 25, 2007 Associated Press

LIMA, Peru -

Cameron Diaz apologized Sunday for carrying a bag with a political slogan that evoked painful memories in Peru.

The voice of Princess Fiona in the animated "Shrek" films visited the Incan city of Machu Picchu in Peru's Andes on Friday carrying an olive green bag emblazoned with a red star and the words "Serve the People" printed in Chinese, perhaps Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong's most famous political slogan.

The bags are marketed as fashion accessories in some world capitals, but in Peru the slogan evokes memories of the Maoist Shining Path insurgency that fought the government in the 1980s and early 1990s in a bloody conflict that left nearly 70,000 people dead.

"I sincerely apologize to anyone I may have inadvertently offended. The bag was a purchase I made as a tourist in China and I did not realize the potentially hurtful nature of the slogan printed on it," Diaz said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press.

On Friday, one prominent Peruvian human rights activist said Diaz should have been a little more aware of local sensitivities when picking her accessories.

In Sunday's statement, the star of "There's Something About Mary" said the purpose of her visit was to participate in a television show that celebrates Peru's culture. The actress has been in Peru as part of "4 REAL," a Canadian TV production that focuses on young community leaders around the world.

"I'm sorry for any people's pain and suffering and it was certainly never my intention to reopen what I now know is a painful wound in this country's history," she said.

Diaz also spoke of Peruvians' beauty and warmth and said she wished "for their continued healing."

Parental guidance suggested (to poop on!!

Do Unto Wal-Mart as it Does Unto You!!

Wal-Mart!!! - Make war on your employees? Expect retaliation !!

Hey Folks -

Is anyone (besides Wal-Mart bigwigs) surprised that theft is up at Wal-Mart ?? Hey! you treat your employees like trash (but have them meet periodically to chant praise to the company's benevolence), and what do you get?

Close down Mom & Pop operations, drive out local manufacturing (to save a nickel in China) and put people out of work; what can you expect?

Use a business model that ensures desperate workers for the company and an ever-growing number of displaced workers forced to take low-paying jobs who can't afford anything other than Wally-World's "everyday low prices," and what do you get?

Demonstrate a ruthless disregard for the humanity and rights of others if they stand in the way of personal enrichment, and what do you get?

No surprise here !!

We'll always have organized crime, a la Tony Soprano; but this increase in theft isn't coming from the "criminal element" (so, don't send out the Bat Signal). It's coming from the people.

Under capitalism corporations constitute legal organized crime. The system works hard to keep regular folks from recognizing that and, for the most part succeeds. Nevertheless, when things get bad enough, the people react to the pain whether they can analyze it or not.

Theft is one reaction. It's self-defense. It's to be expected. Wal-Mart has grown rich stealing from its workers, its customers, and the tax-payers. Turn-about is fair play.

- Uke Man



Theft Rising at U.S. Wal-Mart Stores
Wednesday June 13,
By Anne D'Innocenzio and Marcus Kabel, AP Business Writers

Wal-Mart Struggling With Rising Loss From Shoplifting and Employee Theft at Its U.S. Stores


NEW YORK (AP) -- Shoppers at Wal-Mart stores across America are loading carts with merchandise -- maybe a flat-screen TV, a few DVDs and a six-pack of beer -- and strolling out without paying. Employees also are helping themselves to goods they haven't paid for.


The world's largest retailer is saying little about these kinds of thefts, but its recent public disclosures that it is experiencing an increase in so-called shrinkage at its U.S. stores suggests that inventory losses due to shoplifting, employee theft, paperwork errors and supplier fraud could be worsening.


The hit is likely to rise to more than $3 billion this year for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which generated sales of $348.6 billion last year, according to retail consultant Burt Flickinger III.


Flickinger and other analysts say the increase in theft may be tied to Wal-Mart's highly publicized decision last year to no longer prosecute minor cases of shoplifting in order to focus on organized shoplifting rings. Former employees also say staffing levels, including security personnel, have been reduced, making it easier for theft to occur. And a union-backed group critical of the retailer's personnel policies contends general worker discontent is playing a role.

Wal-Mart declined to offer any explanations for the rise in losses, but denied it has cut security staff and said employee morale is rising rather than falling.

Although Wal-Mart declined to reveal any details, analysts suspect Wal-Mart -- which for years had a theft loss rate that was half that of its peers -- is getting closer to the industrywide average. Theft is a big problem for all retailers, costing them $41.6 billion last year, according to a joint study released Tuesday by the National Retail Federation and the University of Florida. The study found that the theft rate as a percentage of sales ticked upward slightly to 1.61 percent of sales in 2006 from 1.60 percent in 2005.


Whatever the cause, such theft -- which late founder Sam Walton once called one of retailers' top profit killers -- adds one more challenge when Wal-Mart is already struggling with sluggish sales at its established stores due to an overall economic slowdown as well as its own stumbles in its home and apparel merchandising strategies.


Eduardo Castro-Wright, president and CEO of Wal-Mart's U.S. store division, briefly acknowledged the theft problem in a mid-May conference call with analysts. He cited shrinkage as well as increased markdowns and higher inventory for dragging down first-quarter profit margins.


"We are concerned about shrinkage and are investigating the cause and are taking steps to correct it," Castro-Wright said. Company officials won't comment on those countermeasures.


The company also said in a June 1 filing with federal securities regulators that the gross profit margin for its Wal-Mart Stores segment fell by 0.1 percentage points in the first quarter due in part to "higher inventory shrinkage."


John Simley, a Wal-Mart spokesman, declined to elaborate. He would say only that the company's theft losses as a percentage of sales is "better than our industry peer groups."


Analysts say it's significant that the company has publicly disclosed that theft is becoming a problem. "It is getting to the point of being material," said Richard Hastings, vice president and senior retail sector analyst at Bernard Sands. Securities regulations require companies to alert shareholders to significant corporate developments that could affect the value of their holdings.


Such pilferage as a percentage of sales has been declining since the mid-1990s as retailers have invested in new technology such as closed circuit TVs, according to Richard Hollinger, professor of criminology at the University of Florida.

About 47 percent of the dollars lost came from employee theft, while shoplifting accounted for about 32 percent, according to the National Retail Federation report. Administrative errors account for 14 percent, while supplier fraud accounts for 4 percent. The remaining 3 percent is unaccounted for.

In one of the more brazen employee thefts, a man wearing dark clothing and a ski mask entered a Port Clinton, Ohio, Wal-Mart store in January at midnight unnoticed by employees and stole $45,000 from the store safe. The store's night manager, Dana Walker, 30, was later arrested for the crime. He became a suspect because he knew the combination to the safe, police said.

The company's vociferous critic WakeUpWalMart.com, funded by the United Food and Commercial Workers which has for years tried to organize the retailer's workers, publicized the company's decision last year to relax its zero-tolerance policy on shoplifting. The new policy seeks prosecutions of first-time offenders only if they are between ages 18 to 65 and steal at least $25 worth of merchandise.

That change may have emboldened some folks to shoplift, said Mark Doyle, president of Jack L. Hayes International, a retail consultancy on loss prevention.

WakeUpWalMart.com and some former employees said Wal-Mart may also have been trying to appease complaints by some police departments that its stores tied up police with too many shoplifting calls. Wal-Mart has denied that.

Wal-Mart also may have been spooked by worries about lawsuits from wrongful death, unlawful imprisonment and other legal issues related to aggressively chasing down shoplifters. In March, Wal-Mart agreed to pay $750,000 to the family of a suspected shoplifter who suffocated to death as loss prevention workers held him down in a parking lot outside a store in Atascocita, Texas. The shoplifter died in August 2005 in a parking lot, according to published reports.

The change in policy came at the same time the company began using more part-time workers -- in part because of a new scheduling system that matches staffing more closely to peak shopping hours -- and shifting security personnel, analysts and critics say. That has left the discount chain without an experienced and loyal staff to monitor what's strolling out its back and front doors, analysts and some former employees supplied by WakeUpWalMart.com said.

"The business is being run by bean counters. I am shocked at the Spartan level of staffing," said Flickinger, managing director of Strategic Resources Group. He added, "There are also morale issues. Workers feel that the company is taking care of itself."

While Wal-Mart denies that it has cut anti-theft jobs overall, it said it has adjusted staffing to put more personnel in stores in high-crime areas and fewer in stores with less trouble.

However, Dan Meyer, a former district loss prevention supervisor for several Wal-Mart stores in New Jersey, disputes that. Meyer, who said he accepted a buyout last fall after almost 12 years with the company, said Wal-Mart reduced the number of loss prevention staff in each store last year and redesigned their jobs in a way that was less active and more administrative.

"That's why shrinkage is up," he said.

Meyer said he averaged 13 apprehensions a month during most of his time at Wal-Mart. That number dropped to three to four a month in the months before he left last October. Meyer said his totals dropped because there were fewer security staff and less support from his managers for aggressively rooting out theft.

WakeUpWalMart.com has linked rising theft to its claims that the company offers skimpy pay and benefits. Wal-Mart also faces a class-action lawsuit alleging female workers were passed over for men in pay and promotions.

"I am not the type to steal, but because we are so mistreated, when I saw things I just didn't do anything," said Gina Tuley, a former Wal-Mart bakery worker, who quit her job at the Seagoville, Texas, store in March. A big complaint was that her hours had been cut, reducing her take-home pay.

Wal-Mart defends its pay as competitive and its health care coverage as better than most retailers, and has denied gender discrimination.

Simley said an April survey of employees that showed rising job satisfaction suggests Tuley's attitude does not represent most Wal-Mart associates.

Even so, several former associates said in interviews that their bonuses have declined because of the rise in inventory losses. Wal-Mart's Simley disputes these claims, saying theft reduction was dropped from the bonus formula about a dozen years ago. It was Walton's idea to tie associates' bonuses to their stores' pilferage levels to give them a vested interest in keeping theft in check.

Tuley said her bonus last year was $300, down from $800 the previous year.

Still, she said, "People would walk out with bags of merchandise ... I heard the alarms go off and people wouldn't even look," she added.

Business Writer Marcus Kabel contributed reporting for this story from Springfield, Mo.

"No one is free, until everyone is free!" - Dr. Martin Luther King

Gay Straight Karma

Hey Folks -

Here's the first part of an article printed in its entirety farther below:

SYDNEY (AFP) - An Australian hotel popular with gay men has won the right to refuse entry to heterosexuals and lesbians, officials and the owner said Monday.

Now, I'm not for exclusion; and while I understand the desire to freely be oneself without putting up with people who aren't open and accepting, I don't think separation is a satisfactory solution (and, for me, the "I don't care about heterosexuals or lesbians" attitude of the hotel owner is too close to the attitude of many who discriminate against gays).

However, having said that, I'm glad this has happened.

For some time now I've argued that if homosexual marriage could be outlawed by a majority vote of a state's citizens, then heterosexual marriage could be outlawed by the same method. Places like Wyoming and North Dakota, among others, have small populations. If enough gays relocated there, the tables could be turned.

Of course, that's only "on paper" or "on a logical basis," and when has legal precedence or logic overcome prejudice and fear? My brother, the lawyer said, quite rightly I believe, that if gays were able to gain a majority and pass such a law, it would be declared unconstitutional. Australia must be a bit different than its American cousin.

In any case, perhaps this development down under will goad more people into recognizing the impropriety of discriminating against any group of people - and if they won't come to their senses on the basis of open-minded brotherhood, then maybe on the basis of "what goes around comes around."

- Uke Man



Gay Aussie hotel wins right to ban heterosexuals, lesbians
by Justine Pellegrino Mon May 28, 5:26 AM ET


SYDNEY (AFP) - An Australian hotel popular with gay men has won the right to refuse entry to heterosexuals and lesbians, officials and the owner said Monday.

The Peel Hotel in Melbourne won an exemption from the Equal Opportunity Act to prevent insults and abuse directed toward gays in its bars and nightclubs, owner Tom McFeely told AFP.
"The hotel predominantly markets itself towards homosexual males, towards gay men and we want to protect the integrity of the venue as well as continue to make the men feel comfortable," McFeely said.

"When large numbers of heterosexuals or even lesbians are in the hotel that changes the atmosphere and many gay men can feel uncomfortable."

The landmark decision by a civil tribunal gives the establishment -- which does not offer accommodation -- the right to refuse entry to people considered a threat to the safety and comfort of its patrons.

Helen Szoke, the chief executive of the Victoria state government's Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, said the Peel Hotel's gay clientele had experienced harassment, hostility and violence.

"(They) also have felt as though they've been like a zoo exhibit with big groups of women on hens' parties coming to the club," she said.

McFeely said his aim was not to ban all straight patrons and lesbians but to limit their numbers so gay men could freely express their sexuality.

He said he expected a backlash from other patrons, but added: "I'm not worried about it because to be frank I don't really care what heterosexuals or lesbians think.

"My main motivation is to protect my gay male customers and I realise heterosexuals and lesbians may be upset. but I don't care about that.

"We are open at 8.00pm and we go all the way through till the morning. We have two dancefloors -- it is a nightclub environment."

McFeely said it would be easy to sort out desirable gays from undesirable straights and lesbians.

"It is particularly easy to implement with the females 'cause that is pretty obvious.

"With the heterosexual males, if they identify themselves as that at the door, or indeed we question their behaviour in the venue and if they come across as being heterosexual, then we will simply ask them to leave if the behaviour is unappropriate."

Human rights group Liberty Victoria supported the decision, vice-president Michael Pearce said.

"There are numerous places where heterosexual people can go," he said.

"I think what (the tribunal) has said is that there aren't that many places where gay people can go and meet without the risk of being harassed or vilified, and that they are entitled to have their own spaces to do that in."

Milton, Ronnie, and Scottie

Which is worse? The venal lies they feed us? Or our docilely making a meal of them? We'll throw up eventually, don't you think!!?? - Maybe not...

Hey Folks -

Here's the rant from Circus of Cool at Comfest. It seemed to be well-received. It does best if read in time with a slow, dark jazz piece - such as "Monk's Mood."

- Uke Man






I’ve lived a while – long enough
And it’s lookin’ like this place that looked so great
is a dollar short – and a day or two late..

If I’d known that,
I’d’ve lived a wilder life,
Mr. Eubie Blake.

Too much knowledge is a dangerous thing.
That’s why they never tell the kids what’s what;
They’d lose it, and quit shopping

Like there really WAS no tomorrow and
The credit card really WAS a shark.

No … can’t tell the kids.
They wouldn’t believe it anyway.
What with everyday low prices at Wal-Mart

There’s stuff that needs to be owned.
NEEDS to be owned.
Here, in W’s OWNER SHIP society !!

Oh, Captain, my Captain!!
The Owner Ship,
She’s runnin’ on impulse power, Cap’n.

The dilithium crystals are … DEAD.

And in the armory on the hill
Where the Shining City sits,

The American dream is dead
Killed by stupid, greedy shits.

Ronald Reagan’s dead
and I don’t care
And asshole Milton Friedman’s there!!
Hovering in the fog and filthy air.

And round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The USA has seen its day.
And as Malcolm would say
The chickens are roosting;
There’s hell to pay

And no amount of smashing queers
and single moms and brothers with the mark of Cain
Will EVER make your kingdom-come again.

The dilithium crystals are DEAD.

And in the armory on the hill where
The Shining City sits,
The American dream is DEAD
And flown
And round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, the lone
and level sands stretch far away.

The "Shining City on the Hill" - "Mourning in America"

Do unto others - with God on your side

Hey Folks,



It's difficult for me to think anybody could embrace "American Exceptionalism" (the notion that this land was ordained by God as a moral beacon - slavery notwithstandin). But apparently it is a fantasy clutched firmly to the bosom of many or most Americans.



Check out this NPR commentary on the topic:



http://www.npr.org/templates/dmg/popup.php?id=10659960&type=1&date=02-Jun-2007&au=1&pid=31612441&random=5164561260&guid=0009EC9736C6058F5E02519761626364&uaType=WM,RM&aaType=RM,WM&upf=Win32&topicName=Opinion&subtopicName=Commentary&prgCode=WESAT&hubId=-1&thingId=10659959&tableModifier=&mtype=RM



- Uke Man

COMFEST 2007 - Friday

Bobby Starker at work

Friday!! COMFEST Begins!!

I'll be working "Recycling" (talking trash) - See you at COMFEST !!

COMFEST 2006

COMFEST TIME !!

Hey Folks,

It's COMFEST TIME - this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday !!! It's something !! Check it out!!

Here's the Show Schedule: http://www.comfest.com/schedule.htm



And here's the Welcome by Steve Abbott, from the Program; it tells it like it is!!! Check it out, and come by and be a part of it.



- Uke Man

Welcome to the
2007 Community Festival!

It’s a place and time where you can kick back for a few hours or three full days, soaking up the vibe of an enviable exercise in participatory democracy.

Volunteer committees work for most of each year to attend to the thousand details involved in making this annual event come true: organize vendors, seek out and schedule bands, arrange permits, organize activities for children, collect ads, produce a program, and contract for a range of services ranging from safety and sanitation to utilities and sound. And this isn’t half of it. It’s a big job, but to celebrate the ideals that shaped the first ComFest in 1972, it’s worth it.

Who is ignorant of the past remains forever a child. —Cicero

The spirit that produced that ramshackle street party was shaped by the civil rights movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s, the antiwar movement of the ‘60s and early ‘70s, and the success of the first Earth Day in 1970, when over 20 million people nationwide participated in actions demonstrating that people wanted their "leaders" to take action on environmental issues. Those grass-roots efforts showed that everyday people, working together, could not only stimulate political action but improve social relationships as well.

The first ComFest took shape when a handful of political hippies who had already formed, among other things, a free medical clinic, a food co-op, a tenants union and an alternative newspaper, pulled off a big street party at the convergence of East 16th and Waldeck Avenues in the OSU area. OK, it was a couple of street barricades, a bunch of card tables staffed by service groups, a few children’s activities, four beer taps, some great local bands, and regular and high-test brownies at the Yippie table.

That first festival was tense. On opening morning, police arrested several community antiwar leaders, including a few ComFest organizers, and they were hunting down others. They swept through the festival area hoping to locate them. Released on bail, one returned to 16th Avenue, took the stage and urged the crowd to continue its resistance to the war.

The communal work that brought that two-day event together produced a festival celebrating a form of "extended-family values." People with similar interests, but doing different things, united around a common belief: Everybody does better when everybody does better.


The following year’s ComFest had a lot more booths and a lot more people. The early video production group Datagang gave people the opportunity to experiment with video equipment and techniques. Saturday night ended with a transcendent set by the incomparable Rahsaan Roland Kirk—the Columbus native and jazz innovator’s last show in the city—and the crowd dancing to the refrain of "Volunteered Slavery."

Thirty-five years on, cooperative progressive values are imbedded in the principles of ComFest (on page 9). ComFest volunteers believe that, to the greatest extent possible, people should control the decisions and the tools that shape their lives. Within ComFest, the larger decisions are made by the group in open meetings. Smaller decisions are reviewed by the entire group. The entire process is guided by the bylaws of the not-for-profit organization created to ensure ComFest’s continued operation.


You might say, "So what?" It’s a fair question, especially in a culture and political system that tout freedom as the ultimate value. But the difference between what they say and how they operate challenges the very spirit that formed and fostered this incredible event.


They do everything possible to shackle us to things. The consumption-driven demands
of a capitalist system ignore the organic elements of life on this planet. The legal requirements that corporations maximize profits for investors do not consider the harm that occurs in the relentless drive to increase financial wealth. When every resource, human and natural, is treated as a tool in the service of material acquisition, the true value of each is diminished.


You say it’s money that you need
As if we’re only mouths to feed —The Arcade Fire, "Intervention"



Our economic and political systems, whatever advantages they offer us, sell freedom with a hidden price: an expectation that we become passive observers to the exercise of real power. The wealthy believe we should participate economically but not politically, that we should channel our energies—our ability to influence the forces that shape our lives—into the purchase of things that give us the illusion of control.


So we seek bigger houses/vehicles/ TVs and smaller computers/cell phones, lots of gadgets we can manipulate at will. And not surprisingly, our focus on diversions further isolates us, physically and psychologically, from others.


MTV, what have you done to me? —The Arcade Fire, "The Well and the Lighthouse"


We’re not unaware of our powerlessness. We vote to bring troops home from an unnecessary and disastrous war, but our leaders ignore us or waffle on decisive action. We agree that the health care system is broken, but our leaders cringe before the insurance cartel. We sit gridlocked in traffic and oil prices continue to climb, but our leaders keep their faces pressed to the cowboy boots of their petroleum pals and mumble that alternatives aren’t cost efficient. We complain about all of this to each other, but we flounder in our dissatisfaction.


You take what they give you
And you keep it inside —The Arcade Fire, "Intervention"

But rather than confronting those responsible, or uniting and channeling that frustration into political organizing and action that will call those responsible to act in our interests, we distract ourselves with entertainments and turn the anger on each other. To escape our sense of powerlessness, we numb ourselves with "reality" TV and the soulless envy created by celebrity culture. Told we are free, we pretend that our freedom to consume and to bury ourselves in bling and trinkets will make us feel better.


ComFest has survived in the face of cultural and political forces that every day gravitate against our collective welfare. In putting this annual party together, we reassert the belief that together we can produce decent jobs and fair wages, health care that cares for everyone, housing that is affordable, peaceful relationships with others, and food that doesn’t undermine our health. We believe that self-interest is best realized through what’s in everyone’s interests. And we believe that it’s valuable to celebrate struggles and successes.


Between our primitive survival instincts and a relentless drumbeat of advertising and empty political rhetoric, we don’t need any encouragement to think only of ourselves. What we need is recognition of our common humanity and the inescapable fact that we are all linked inextricably. Our shared effort produces a commonwealth.


We believe in things
We’re told we can not change
Why shouldn’t we?
Why shouldn’t we? —Mary Chapin Carpenter, "Why Shouldn’t We"


Ultimately, ComFest is as much an idea as it is a place and event, a way of seeing what can be when people decide to abandon fear, embrace hope, and work together. It’s a vital and vibrant idea, one that says today you can kick back, relax, soak up the sun and good vibes, and dream a little. Each of us contains seeds of change. Plant, them, nurture them, and bring their possibility to reality. Make something happen. And then come back here next year and celebrate it. That’s worth looking forward to.


—Steve Abbott

Winnie the Gate-Keeper, "Treat 'em like mushrooms."

As a journalist (gate keeper) in South Africa, Churchill said that it would be terrible to report British troops had been defeated in a battle when actually they hadn't; but that it would be even worse to report a British defeat that HAD occurred. So much for trusting in the "Gate-Keepers."

Blogs and Joe Hallett

Hey Folks -

A while back Joe Hallett wrote a column in the Columbus Dispatch knocking blogs. More recently on NPR an author harped on the danger of the internet; it's undercutting the authority of "mainstream media" our culture's "gate keepers," he says; and he trusts the gate keepers (like the Columbus Dispatch) to tell us what we need to know. That's good enough; we don't need to be confused by know-nothing web-talkers like me.

Well, if one believes that the major networks, Fox, CNN, PBS; clear channel talk, NPR, and conservative to moderate-right newspapers/news services are all we need, fine. But that doesn't make it for me.

Listen to the NPR story at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11131872

Part of Mr. Hallett's column follows my Open Letter to him below.


- Uke Man


Dear Mr. Hallett,

I haven’t studied blogs (I haven’t made an effort to talk with blogmakers), but I nevertheless feel qualified to suggest a few things.

1. I believe you are right about numbers of readers on individual blogs being relatively small, but if you add all the readers of blogs that offer views divergent from the status quo Republicrat or Demican or Businessprenure "lines" presented in the “mainstream” press, the disparity narrows.

2. I’m not precisely sure of what you meant by “get their politics,” but it could imply that readers simply read and incorporate whatever the media feeds them. And presently they get much more of their mind-washing (their "politics"?) from the newspapers rather than blogs.

Newspapers and blogs can both be used that way, but I think it’s actually radio and TV that do the lion’s share of feeding the uncritical what they are supposed to think. Such a function, whoever provides it, is not an honorable activity, however – not in a democracy. Moreover, the traditional media isn't necessarily to be trusted anymore than blogs.

3. If, instead you meant getting (first hand) and reporting factual information relevant to politics, then certainly most blogs don’t do that. That doesn’t mean, however, that blogs “are echo chambers for ideologues to comment on and twist what they've read in the morning newspaper or on newspaper blogs.”

Everyone is an ideologue (whether they know it or not). I went to the two sites you held up as better blogs. Both are clearly ideological. The Dispatch is ideological. Maybe the editorial board at your paper would claim that they allow their reporters complete freedom to dig independently into anything, find the facts and report them and their meaning without political consideration (i.e. without "twisting" anything). I can’t believe, however, that any newspaper does that. I don't see how ANYONE can honestly think so.

So, we come to the real point and value of blogs (and, at the same time, the largest threat to the status quo). Most blogs are not created to pursue investigative reporting. They exist to give people a chance to publish INTERPRETATIONS of the facts presented by the “mainstream” media (and others); interpretations that do not appear in the mainstream. That is what motivates bloggers, and what frightens those whom Dispatch editorialists have, for years, called “opinion makers.”

As with the invention of the printing press and the contemporaneous Protestant Revolution, blogs are revolutionary. The people cannot be kept as quiet as before; they cannot be as easily guided by the mysterious priests with their secret, authoritative understanding of the truth inscribed in a Latinate Bible (unintelligible to the common man) nor can they be as easily guided by the official "politics" handed down by the culturally designated "opinion makers" (who are supposedly to be taken as gospel ??). The official line and talking points of those with the capital to own and propagate them have less of a monopoly; Blogging gives the people the means to “publish” their own truths without having to get past the "gate keepers."

Don’t think so? Why then does China insist on controlling the net? Why have our troops been ordered to stop blogging? Hmmmmmmmmmm . . .

Moreover, the fact that I and other bloggers don’t do hands-on investigative reporting has no bearing on the value of what we publish. As you know, before we went to war, based upon the “facts” we all had studied, I urged the Dispatch to oppose the war. Based on those same “facts,” the Dispatch decided to support going to war. I rest my case.

I hope you will reconsider your view of blogs. There are, as with everything, negative aspects, but I don’t believe that all of your recent criticisms are valid.

Yours - Tom Harker

From your column:

"On the matter of political blogs, Schultz and I were in lockstep. Their importance is overblown and their readership, although growing, still is a fraction of those readers who rely on newspapers to get their politics.


Little original reporting comes from political blogs. Exceptions in Ohio include rightangleblog.com and its counterpart on the liberal side, buckeyestateblog.com, whose authors at least make an effort to talk with newsmakers. Mostly, though, political blogs are echo chambers for ideologues to comment on and twist what they've read in the morning newspaper or on newspaper blogs such as www.dispatch.com/politics."

"Hey Willard !! Go suck a gooseberry!!

I should have known !!

Hey Folks -

I feel bad. Not long after I posted the article directly below - along with my sarcastic comments - I discovered that poor old Tomoji had been victimized by (who else?) the grubby, "so called" press (the "mainstream" press, the "gate-keeper" we're supposed to trust [as opposed to bloggers who "twist" things- see the forthcoming posting] ).

According to Keith Olbermann, Tomoji - who may have said what Reuters reported - also said that he was "sorry," that he had "lived too long"; a much deeper, human, and perceptive comment than the news service reported.

The comment, however, didn't fit well with the Disneyesque cultural demand for saccharine cheerfulness - forgodssake!! Think of the children!!!

Worse, it undercuts the war on booze and smokes.

Good for Tomoji !!

If I get to Tokyo, I'll buy him a drink.

- Uke Man

Da!! It lengthens your life as well !!

Ukrainian Shepherd claims it's the nightly sex

Hey Folks -


Isn't it a Queen song that asks, "Who wants to live forever?" Well, Tomoji Tanabe does. I bet he was never in a rock-n-roll band !!! Bet he never read Gulliver's Travels either:

Japanese teetotaller named world's oldest man at 111
Mon Jun 18

TOKYO (Reuters) - An 111-year-old Japanese just named the world's oldest man said he owed his longevity to steering clear of alcohol.

"I don't drink alcohol -- that is the biggest reason for my good health," Tomoji Tanabe told reporters on Monday. He also told media he does not smoke and likes a glass of milk a day.
Asked how much longer he wanted to live, the besuited Tanabe, a former local government worker, said simply: "I don't want to die."

Tanabe, who lives with his 66-year-old son and the son's wife in Miyakonojo, about 900 km (560 miles) southwest of Tokyo on the island of Kyushu, met the city's mayor to receive a certificate from the Guinness Book of World Records recognizing him as the oldest man.

But he has some years to go to equal his female compatriot Yone Minagawa, 114, who is listed by Guinness as the world's oldest person and also lives in Kyushu.

A former shepherd in Ukraine, Hyrhory Nestor, also claims that title, saying he celebrated his 116th birthday in March.

The Japanese are among the world's longest-lived people, with 28,395 people aged 100 or above in Japan at the end of September last year, according to the Health Ministry. Researchers have attributed the phenomenon to factors including healthy diet and tight-knit communities.

If you ask someone why they died young, they say nothing - a much wiser explanation than those usually extracted from those achieving super-age.

So, how long before Tomoji's testimonial appears in "The Watchtower" or in MADD pamphlets exhorting temperance? Hell, I bet Tomoji never ate Twinkies, shredded wheat, or oatmeal either, but do we have anyone organizing Mad Mothers Against Oatmeal ??

I bet he never drank Ovaltine either!!

Just because he's old doen't mean he knows why he got there; and it shouldn't be assumed that it's a good thing that he IS there - as Freddie Mercury and Jonathan Swift have pointed out (and as his aged children may have thought as well).

Henny Youngman once said that he'd read a book claiming alcohol was a health threat and that he should give it up! Then he thought of his mother who had lived to the age of 93. She had enjoyed a pint of whisky every day of her life.

So, he quit reading.

I don't figure on living long enough to get my mug on Willard Scott's Smucker Show for Centenarians so I can claim my longevity's the result of worshiping Baal, regular use of marijuana, monthly ingestion of gravel, and obsessive thumb-sucking.

Since that opportunity is unlikely, I'm putting my hope in the Ukrainian shepherd and his sheep.
- Uke Man

The hands & eyes of Fascism

Pan's Labyrinth

Hey Folks - Real world horror and fantasy – the Spanish Civil War and a fantasy world; fairy tales as a way to understand our difficult reality.

The reality: resisting fascists in 1944, the year I was born, and the failure of the allies to do what was morally required and the gruesome consequences of that.

The fantasy: ugly insect “fairies” in an ugly underworld.

Interesting thoughts on the nature of fantasy as being really no different from religion or politics in the sense that all are “conceits” rather than concrete realities – or that ALL are equally realities, in a non-objective, “spiritual” sense.

“The entire world we live in is fabricated. . . these imagined conceits [that we call “real”] can create such horrors.”

“Monsters were created by mankind to explain the universe around them and when we became civilized, the universe within us.”

"Horror and fantasy saved my brain from this torment [caused by early religious teaching]"

Yes, Folks, this crazy world - the largest part of it - is just a "conceit," a creation of our mind in order to tame the anarchic universe in which we live.

Give a listen to a Fresh Air interview with the creator of "Pan's Labyrinth"!!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10266161

And watch the movie, too!!

- Uke Man

Dad

Father's Day 2007

Hey Folks –

It’s been ten years since my father died. I miss him. He was quite a man.

I knew him before he acquired polio, but I don’t remember him that way. He always walked with crutches and braces as far as I remember. But even so, he was the toughest, strongest, most honest, intelligent, and honorable man I ever knew.

The metal superstructure never slowed him down – no more than did his hat. He worked, drove, enjoyed his pontoon barge, made friends, and helped thousands of the less competent souls around him throughout his life.

Dad didn’t need “help”; he helped others. He helped Grandpa and Grandma (as he had since his youth – Grandpa was a bit of a dreamy idler). When my best school pal’s parents kicked him out, Dad took him in and treated him like his own. When the hotshot father-next-door (supposedly a former “Paratrooper”) was giving me a dose of undeserved shit to show off for his kid, Dad took him on, and ended the brief confrontation by threatening to wrap his crutch around the guy's head (Dad really WAS a WW II Sea Bee; he knew the most efficient way to bend aluminum around anything – craniums included – the “paratrooper” bailed out).

A major thing he did for me – besides providing a broadly extraordinary role model – was to set my mind free. Raised Catholic (Dad converted), I was full of all the fears that all Catholic kids get crammed into their heads at school (at that time, via the Baltimore Catechism).

One time on vacation, visiting Protestant Grandpa and Grandma, on a Friday, Grandma was innocently frying bacon for breakfast. I LOVE bacon, and the aroma was driving me nuts - because it was FRIDAY, and I couldn’t eat meat.

When my Dad figured out why I was agitated (if I ate meat on Friday, it would be a mortal sin, and I’d go to hell), he told me I COULD eat the bacon, and I WOULDN’T go to hell.

Well, there you have it: the Pope on one side and my Dad on the other; delicious bacon on one side and austere doctrine on the other. It was easy. I went with the old man!!

Of course, for a while I suffered occasional pangs of doubt and thoughts of flame, but that was the beginning of the end of thought control for me. As one eighth-grade friend later said to me, “What you need is discipline!!” To which another replied, “They’ll never discipline Harker!!”

I think that last statement is right. It’s been true so far at least, and I owe that to my dad.

Most of what I am I owe to him.

- Uke Man

Fantasy Land

Looking for sense in all the wrong places

Hey Folks -

Almost everything we ever hear about education is just so much crap. To understand that, you have to give up any notion you might have that the point of school is to educate children - especially ALL the children.

The goal is in no way to get everyone thinking about and dealing well with the practical, aesthetic, academic, psychological, political, economic, and other realities of life. If one thinks it is, then the columnist's words below, while changing nothing, appear to be sensible commentary. They aren't.

I've placed my comments (in red) here and there within the article.

- Uke Man

HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHERS MISS THE MARK, SAY PROFESSORS
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Columbus Dispatch
By Pat Smith

Recent reports shed light on why so many high-school graduates have to take remedial courses their freshman year in college: High-school teachers and college professors don't see eye to eye on the students' preparation. This makes little sense. It "sheds" no "light." Essentially it says students take remedial courses because professors say they have to. We already knew that.

The American College Testing Program found that two-thirds of professors say students are "poorly" or "very poorly" prepared for college-level work, whereas roughly three-fourths of teachers think students are well-prepared. This charade is not restricted to colleges and high schools. High schools make the same accusations against middle schools and junior highs; which deny the charges while casting them down, in turn, upon the elementary schools.

It seems that everybody would like every student to show up at each and every level performing with Lake Woebegone, above average skills.

The disconnect is substantial in all subjects: Seventy-six percent of high-school English teachers think their students are well-prepared for college work, whereas only 33 percent of professors think so. In reading, the gap is 72 percent to 36 percent; in math, 79 percent vs. 42 percent; and in science, 67 percent vs. 32 percent. In other words, students appear to be no better prepared than those in previous years, despite all the attempts to improve their performance. It is not clear from this article, but it appears that the "data" suggesting that students are not any better prepared is purely anecdotal. Worse, the purported "conclusion" is based solely on the "data" provided by the professors. The conflicting "data" provided by teachers is totally discounted.

Can anyone honestly defend this selective use of the "data"? If it makes sense to take what the professors say as determining, then don't we have to accept the highschool teachers' condemnation of middle/junior high teachers, and then their condemnation of the elementary teachers? And then their condemnation of parents and pre-schools?

All of that is just self-centered scapegoating; none of it is sensible.

One key finding is that college instructors want students to have a solid grasp of fundamentals (Obviously, secondary teachers "want" that, too), whereas teachers favor exposing them to broader areas (It's not acknowledged by the columnist that secondary teachers teach ALL the students, not just the ones who will choose to go on to college. Naturally, teachers' approach will be more general than the professor's narrower agenda). For example, in English and writing, college instructors place more importance on basic grammar and usage skills, with many expressing frustration that freshmen often can't write a complete sentence. Many freshmen drop out of college; many should not have gone in the first place. The "data" doesn't report the numbers of freshmen who can't write a complete sentence. How many write quite well? How many semi-literate state representatives serve in Ohio? Remember Cooper Snider?

The ACT blames poor state standards and excuses teachers (we wouldn't want to excuse teachers, now would we!) without acknowledging that the poor standards mostly are written by committees of teachers, who are heavily influenced by their professional associations and their own preparation in colleges of education (we wouldn't want to miss a chance to blame unions and colleges of education, would we!). The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation's Chester Finn (A Hoover Institute guy - does that tell you anything?) has described the state of state standards as "generally vague, politicized and awash in wrongheaded fads and nostrums ("wrongheaded" according to the Hoover Institute, the same outfit who sent inexperience wonder-children to so successfully stabilize Iraq for Bush's democracy). With a few exceptions, states have been incapable (or unwilling) to set clear, coherent standards and develop tests with a rigorous definition of proficiency." He adds that they were mediocre-to-bad 10 years ago and they are mediocre-to-bad today. Some states have taken steps to improve the alignment of their learning standards with college expectations (Well, good for them, but how is it working out? King Knute ordered the waves to cease, but he was disappointed, wasn't he), and Ohio should be congratulated for joining eight other states to write new math standards. And not a minute too soon, as Ohio ranks 38th out of the 50 states in the number of high-school graduates academically ready for college. As before, we are provided no data to substantiate this. Is it again based solely on what professors SAY?? Why is that more valid than what highschool teachers SAY?? If based on other data, how valid is THAT data? Was it collected by the Hoover Institute or one of their friends?

Employers are in substantial agreement with professors about the knowledge and skills that high-school graduates should have (and now we come to the crux of the matter: what EMPLOYERS WANT), and the impetus to align standards with real-world needs (i.e. business's wish list: intelligent, hard-working, long-suffering, multi-talented, high school graduates who function as college graduates on Bangladeshi wages) is coming from business (as you would expect) and governmental leaders (in the pocket of business), not educators (who deal with REAL children in the REAL world, not in the world of WHAT BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENTAL LEADERS WANT).

A second ACT report reveals that even students taking a full array of college-prep courses -- the core curriculum -- and receiving good grades are not well-prepared for college (according to professors??? Perhaps if you asked highschool teachers, they'd tell you that many of their students shouldn't go on to college. But YOU tell their parents that!). Among ACT-tested 2006 high-school graduates who took these courses, only a fourth are likely to earn a C or higher in English composition, algebra, biology and social-science courses (Taking the ACT doesn't mean one actually GOES to college. What are the percentages of those who finish the first year of college?) . Nearly 20 percent could not expect such grades in any one of the courses. While more students are taking the recommended core curriculum and getting better grades, they (what percentage? ) still aren't doing well in college. So what do Mr. Finn and Ms. Smith suggest? Flunk the little shits? Well, maybe. But if the professors are so upset, they should have their "institutions" raise the entry standards. If the students are so uneducated, don't let them in.

What the hell, high schools could start turning away middle schoolers who aren't up to snuff; and middle schools could start turning away kids who aren't up to snuff, and then elementaries could start turning away kids who are not up to snuff. In no time at all we would develop a critical mass of dispossessed people large enough to support a revolution that would send Mr. Finn et.al. and his business/governmental "wanters" skipping!!

ACT faults grade inflation, teacher quality and students who are not ready for high-school work (what the hell does THAT mean? Yeah, the middle schools didn't do the job [oh, but I've already said that, haven't I]), noting that English teachers spend one-third of their time reteaching skills and algebra and biology teachers, one-fourth. A third report indicates why this might be so.Does it REALLY show WHY this might be so? Or does it just say the same thing over again in a different way? That is, students are not prepared because they don't get prepared; their excuses are: they don't do the work required (prepare) and they think they (15 to 18 year olds) are better judges of what they should be studying than their "boring" teacher is.

Could there be a different reason? One related to our disparate social/economic structure? or to the normal curve's interference with the Lake Woebegon phenomenon?

The 2006 High School Survey of Student Engagement again finds high-school students doing little preparation for classes, with 40 percent spending only five or fewer hours per week on homework. In addition, half of all students surveyed report being bored in class every day because of a lack of interesting (75 percent), relevant (39 percent) or challenging (32 percent) material. Apparently Ms. Smith feels their pain.

Yet the ACT emphasizes that students are capable of handling rigorous work (of course they are; some of them; which ones?) and congratulates high schools that provide it, including Dublin Coffman and Scioto, Gahanna Lincoln, Hilliard Davidson, Pickerington Central and Thomas Worthington. Do the special education, severely handicapped, and severe behavioral students at these schools "handle rigorous work"? Would the professors rate THEM as prepared for college. Does that not matter, but disadvantaged urban and rural kids who don't measure up constitute an indictment?

Ohio's leaders cannot just grapple with how to fund public education but must also demand greater clarity about what we expect and we are getting for our tax dollars.

Ohio's "leaders" are responsible for the sad mess we have now, and - like King Knute - they (and Ms. Smith) can demand all they want, but nothing ever changes because they are not playing with a full deck. They want something for nothing; they want what they want, and they think they can get it by "demanding" it.

Well, you can't get something for nothing, and when you demand something for nothing, you get NOTHING for nothing.

Mr. Finn shouldn't be surprised if over the last ten years schools haven't given him what he has demanded. Mr. Finn and Ms Smith can't get what they want by crossing their arms and stamping their feet any more than King Knute could stop the waves by frowning at them!!!

- Uke Man

* * *

For ACT Reports: www.act.org/path/policy/index.html.
Pat Smith, a former teacher and past president of the Worthington and state boards of education, served as executive assistant for educational policy in Ohio's Office of Budget and Management.



patsmith10@sbcglobal.net

For WHAT ???

What about "Wait a Damn Minute Day" ????

Folks,

A while back was Memorial Day. The official clap-trap that always surfaces on that day always gets me going. Below is the local newspaper's editorial. Points that caught my eye are in red. My comments are added in blue.

- Uke Man




Memorial Day - Columbus Dispatch editorial



Today is time to reflect on the sacrifices that keep nation safe, free

(How many wars, and which ones kept the nation "safe" and "free"? Canada and Australia are free of England; did they have a revolutionary war with England? How many Americans had been killed or even threatened by North Vietnamese before we took on that war? If soldiers died in wars that weren't fought to keep oor nation safe and free, should we still reflect on their sacrifices? If so, shouldn't we also reflect on the less than honorable motives of those who sent them off to die?)
Monday, May 28, 2007 3:27 AM


How incongruous that the most solemn of national holidays ( Solemn?? It should be solemn, but not in the way the Dispatch intends. It is a heavy undertaking to consider the millions who have been sacrificed for little or no reason) marks the unofficial start of the most frivolous of seasons. Americans look forward to this three-day break, which brings the opening of swimming pools and other summer recreational opportunities.


On the way to the cookouts and playgrounds today, people should stop by cemeteries and reflect on the sacrifices made by their countrymen since the American Revolution to make and keep the nation safe and free (What percentage of our young people killed and maimed in war would YOU place in this category?).


This holiday emerged from the ruins of the Civil War. (Which of these Civil War dead do we honor? Which sacrificed to keep our nation safe and free? Who are the "heroes"?) Both Northerners and Southerners wanted to honor their heroes, and both regions claimed to be the first to hold regular tributes to dead soldiers. What about holding regular diatribes against greedy, self-serving, insane war mongers?


In 1966, Congress and President Lyndon B. Johnson bestowed the title of birthplace of Memorial Day on Waterloo, N.Y., where 100 years earlier townspeople closed shops, lowered flags and offered praise and honor to the soldiers killed in the war.


Because of a tradition of spring flowers blanketing graves, many Americans called the annual observance Decoration Day. By the end of the 19th century, it was observed nationally on May 30. Not until 1971 was Memorial Day, as it came to be known, made a national holiday by an act of Congress. Henceforth, the holiday was to be observed on the last Monday in May.


Many Americans have become blasé about the importance of honoring the nation's war dead. (The obvious importance of a blanket honoring of soldiers for making us "safe and free" is the "importance" of maintaining a blanket endorsement of all militarism as promoting safety and freedom regardless of the actual motivations). It's good to remember that those who put on the uniform agreed to do what many Americans could not -- or would not -- do. They sacrificed their personal security, left loved ones thousands of miles away and struggled with harsh conditions to answer the call to duty. And that duty cost them everything. Shouldn't at least part of Memorial Day be a solemn recognition of the meaninglessness of so many having sacrificed everything through a false sense of duty?


Compared with what they gave, the time it takes to visit a cemetery, attend a public commemoration and offer a prayer for these defenders and their loved ones is nothing. The loved ones of my good friend who died in the Viet Nam War were never threatened by anyone from Asia. Still I solemnly mourn him, and not just on Memorial Day. But not because he died doing his "duty" for God, country, freedom, and security.

I mourn because he should have lived and because he died for nothing.

But these observances are not just for those who have died. They also remind the men and women serving in the U.S. military that the nation values their work and their courage. With the nation's military embroiled in two wars, that message is more important than ever (Yeah, with two wars going on, we wouldn't want the troops to find out they've been duped. If they started asking questions, it could mess up everything).

Stagecoach BBQ Thursday

Pete, Tom, & Ty in Santa Cruz

Hey Folks,

Pete, Ty, and I will be doing a few songs at the Stagecoach BBQ & Blues Thursday (tomorrow/today - June 14). Alot of other good folks will be performing as well !! 6:30-9:30 p.m. - No Cover. Check out the Stagecoach website: http://www.stagecoachbbq.com/ and hear the jingle the band and I did for them.


Yours - Uke Man

The American Nightmare

The Insidious Hand of the Market - BEWARE !!!!

Hey Folks -

Froma Harrop ends her column with: "Preying on vulnerable people is a disgusting business model. Does anyone in Washington have a conscience?"

Is that what it depends on? Unless someone in Washington has a conscience, it's OK to prey on vulnerable people? Apparently Washington thinks it would be wrong to rob, beat, or kill businessmen who prey on vulnerable people; there are plenty of such consciences in Washington - and laws, too. But fucking over the helpless, ignorant, desperate, unfortunate, aged, and mentally challenged qualifies as "the American Way"!!

When, when, when - Sweet Cheeses !!! - will the people open their eyes and start kicking the shit out of their oppressors? In The Grapes of Wrath the Okie being put off his land asks, "Well, who can I shoot?" and supposedly there is no answer.

Well, actually, there is.

- Uke Man

Soaking the poor is now big business
Friday, June 8, 2007 3:42 AM
By Froma Harrop

The working poor make great victims. They are often trusting and financially unsophisticated, and with wages stagnant, they're desperate for cash. These folks hold jobs, so they have a money stream and possibly equity in their homes, all ripe for plunder.


Corporate America has decided there's gold in draining the low-income masses of what little they have. Loan sharks and con artists once dominated this territory, but big businesses have moved in and are proving to be far smoother than the thugs who break legs. Their legal fine print can trap the uneducated in outrageous debt contracts without rousing the authorities.


Perhaps you've heard of J.D. Byrider, the used-car chain with the jaunty jingle. In 2005, Roxanne Tsosie, a home-health-care aide in Albuquerque, N.M., bought a Saturn with 103,000 miles from Byrider for $7,922. She borrowed the entire amount at an interest rate of nearly 25 percent.


The Navajo mother of four thought that her $150 installments were to be made on the usual monthly basis, but actually the contract demanded payments every two weeks. After three months, she gave up.


No problem for Byrider. It took the car back to sell to the next chump and kept the $900 that Tsosie had paid.


This story comes from BusinessWeek's splendid report, "The Poverty Business." Byrider doesn't post prices on the windshields. Instead, the salespeople figure out the maximum they can squeeze from the working-class buyer, then charge it -- financing courtesy of Bank of America. The practice is called "opportunity pricing."


As BusinessWeek notes, the thing being sold doesn't matter. It's just the bait to saddle someone with punishing loan terms. Companies can now assess the financial wherewithal of potential victims with special software called Automated Risk Evaluator.


Payday lenders offer workers cash advances on their next paycheck. Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp have entered this booming business, charging annual interest rates of 120 percent. Five payday lending chains are trading on the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ.


Jackson Hewitt is a tax-prep service that gloms onto low-income neighborhoods. Its specialty is lending money to low-income workers in anticipation of their IRS refund -- while siphoning off more than 10 percent of it. The refunds usually involve the Earned-Income Tax Credit, which is aimed at the working poor, prompting some to dub Jackson Hewitt and its ilk "the new welfare office."


Milking America's poor is now a global opportunity. Subprime mortgages, which charge high rates and fat fees to people of modest means, are packaged into securities. Investors currently hold more than $1 billion in subprime loans from 22 ZIP codes in Detroit alone, according to The Wall Street Journal.


Some readers may say: "Tough. If they're too lazy to study the terms, they deserve to get soaked." So here's a question for you: What is Libor?


Libor stands for the London interbank offered rate, which recently was 5.42 percent. It is the short-term rate on top of which subprime lenders in Detroit were adding another 9.125 percentage points. True, the borrowers weren't careful, but how many people have ever heard of Libor?


Already deep in debt, Luisa and Rose Ajuria were surprised and pleased to be offered a Tribute Mastercard, the Chicago sisters told BusinessWeek. The card charged a 28 percent interest rate, $150 annual fee and a separate $6 monthly fee. Its pusher is CompuCredit, a giant Atlanta corporation that specializes in poor credit risks. The Ajurias may soon lose their home.


Dump a few of these loans on the working poor and see them spiral downward. Preying on vulnerable people is a disgusting business model. Does anyone in Washington have a conscience?
Froma Harrop writes for Creators Syndicate.
fharrop@projo.com

Columbus Arts Fest

Cookin' !!!

What a band !!

Bob - before the show - meditating the Zen of the empty tent table.

Ahhhhh, yes !!!!!

Hey Folks,

The Uke Man is still recovering from two exhilarating recent shows: the Columbus Arts Fest in downtown Columbus and the Tom Waits-a-Thon at the Carabar on Parsons Ave just off Broad Street.

I REALLY had a great time backed by the Prodigal Sons at both outings – actually felt young for a while.

At the Tom Waits-a-Thon, put together by my friend Chris Barton, twelve acts paid homage to the great songster. I faded before 1:00 a.m. and headed back to Circleville (my son graduated from OSU the next day and I had to rise and shine early. BUT I did get a few pictures.

If you missed the shows, maybe you can get a notion from the pictures. AND, you can still catch us on the Saturday of COMFEST at 2:00 on the Gazebo stage!!

- Uke Man

Tom Waits-a-Thon

Faces

Tom Waits-a-Thon

Voodo Man, Bob Sauls

Tom Waits-a-Thon

The Skillet Lickers

Tom Waits-a-Thon

Ty, Tom, & Pete

Pictures from Columbus Arts Fest

More later

Pictures from the Tom Waits-a-Thon

More later

Make Love Not War

From James in England

Hey Folks -

I sent my English friend James the link to the "Yellow Ribbon" song (posted here a few days back - see: http://music.download.com/theswingstatesroadshow/3600-8976_32-100835228.html?tag=MDL_listing_song_artist ), and he wrote back with something he believed related to the question of "supporting the troops."

I'm sharing it with you:



Tom,


I was listening to a radio programme on Siegfried Sassoon and the said
programme is usually accompanied by an email to subscribers including
bits that they couldn't get in the show for that particular subject of the day etc etc. In said email it reported what he wrote for the Times Newspaper about World War I in 1917 (ninety years ago).

"I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military
authority, because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.

I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow-soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practiced on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realize.”



James





- Uke Man

Tom Waits-a-Thon !!

Tom Waits-a-Thon Saturday at the Carabar

Hey Folks,

On the heels of a fun show at the Columbus Arts Fest, with the help of two of my bandmates (Peter English & Tyler Barnes) I'll be performing in a Tom Waits-a-Thon benefit tomorrow (Saturday, June 9) at 9:00 P.M.

We'll do "Downtown Train," "Jesus Gonna Be Here," and "A Little Rain." Other Waits jewels will be performed by:

BOB SAULS / GABE SMITH DEBACLE / KEVIN GLASSCO PLUS / THE WELLS / BROTHER BRIAN / ARTURO'S SUPERGROUP / BOB STARKER / THE RAZERS / THE SHAMBLES / THE SKILLETLICKERS / STEVE PERAKIS AND FRIENDS

The CARABAR is at 115 PARSONS Ave. at OAK St., COLUMBUS, Ohio

No Cover

12 ACTS CELEBRATE THE MUSIC OF TOM WAITS

ALL PROFITS GO TO WWW.ALLISONFORACURE.COM
(Which is for Propionic Acidemia Research* )

Stop by.

- Uke Man

*What is PA? Propionic Acidemia is a rare disorder that is inherited from both parents. Neither parent shows symptoms, but both carry a defective gene responsible for this disease. It takes two faulty genes to cause PA. Individuals with PA can not break down parts of protein and some types of fat due to a non-functioning enzyme called PCC. This inability causes a build-up of dangerous acids and toxins, which can cause damage to the person's organs. PA can also damage the brain, heart and liver, cause seizures, and delays to normal development like walking and talking. During times of illness your child may need to be hospitalized to prevent breakdown of proteins within his/her body.

The "Yellow Ribbon" is for the Bush Crime Scene

For all the Dimbulbs who shouted, "You don't support our troops!!"

Hey Folks -

Way back when the war was just started it was claimed - because I protested the war - that I didn't "support our Troops." No matter what I said, my half-witted critics insisted that THEY supported the troop - not me.

Well, check out "Yellow Ribbon" at:

http://music.download.com/theswingstatesroadshow/3600-8976_32-100835228.html?tag=MDL_listing_song_artist (you may have to "temporarily allow popups")


It gets to the heart of the issue; it points out what too many clods have refused to acknowledge for too long.


- Uke Man

(a ukethanks to George)

Columbus Arts Fest Last Year

Pete, Ty, Moi, Bob H., Bob S.; Jon & Karen not shown

Arts Fest - COMFEST - Pumpkin Show, and that's all, Folks !!

Hey there –

Three more shows by Ukulele Man & his Prodigal Sons and then it’s done. We’ll play the Columbus Arts Fest Thursday; then we hope to play COMFEST later this month, and to close out our run at Pumpkin Show in October.

My association with the young’ns has been one of the most warm, rewarding, and exciting experiences of my life; one I will cherish always.

It’s been a wonderful ride, but time marches on, and the old man is getting older and the “Sons” are getting more complex lives themselves. I’ll play-out solo and, occasionally with one or more of my band-mates, but – unless there is a “revival” some ways down the road - this will be it.

So, friends, if you can, try to catch one of our last three shows. You won’t be sorry.

- Uke Man





Columbus Arts Fest - THURSDAY, June 7, 2007 - 11:30 a.m., Broad & Marconi, by the river in downtown Columbus !!


We'll be playing:

Mississippi River
Bleed Blues
Hard Drinkin’ Mama
Paintin’ Them Toes
Jesus Chrysler
Pirate
Pee Wee
Crazy Over You
King of the World
Pea Green Boat
Crazy Old World
Do You Know
Spam
Back This Way Again

Two roads diverged for a Yellow Bird

Columbus Arts Fest - Thursday

Ukulele Man & his Prodigal Sons - Columbus Arts Fest - Thursday !!!

Hey Folks -

The entire band & I will be playing a long set at the Columbus Arts Fest this Thursday, June 7, at 11:30 a.m. on the Broad Street Stage.

Come have lunch with us!!!

More later.

- Uke Man

Teeth in the Sun

I'm Baaaaack !!!!

Hey Folks !!

The Old guy is back in town. Tired, but still cookin'!!!

Check out the chilling story posted below !! There's more comin' soon!!

- Uke Man

City (World??) of Fear

Hey Folks,

If anyone hasn't figured out where the increasing enrichment of the few via the increased squeezing of the poor is taking us, here it is.

Few want to admit it, but there it is - in massive scale - in the face of fantastic wealth and skyscrapers - the degredation of so-called "civilization" - a threatening harbinger of a new Dark Ages.

It's a long article, but the facts in it cast a long, ominous shadow !!

- Uke Man

Vanity Fair April 2007
City of Fear / Letter from São Paulo

by William Langewiesche

Operating by cell phone, a highly organized prison gang launched an attack that shut down Brazil's largest city last May, with the authorities powerless to stop it. For many in São Paulo, this vast, amorphous criminal network is the only government they have.

For seven days last May the city of São Paulo, Brazil teetered on the edge of a feral zone where governments barely reach and countries lose their meaning. That zone is a wilderness inhabited already by large populations worldwide, but officially denied…. and rarely described. It is not a throwback to the Dark Ages, but an evolution toward something new--a companion to globalization, and an element in a fundamental reordering that may gradually render national boundaries obsolete. It is most obvious in the narco-lands of Colombia and Mexico, in the fractured swaths of Africa, in parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, in much of Iraq. But it also exists beneath the surface in places where governments are believed to govern and countries still seem to be strong.


Certainly Brazil qualifies. And São Paulo is not some flimsy town. Though it suffers from violent crime and shoddy streets, it is the largest metropolis in South America, home to 20 million people, a global business and banking center, and the capital of Brazil's wealthiest and most powerful state. From its center of luxurious condominiums and office towers, it spreads across 3,000 square miles, sprouting tall apartment buildings for as far as the eye can see. It has a problem with shantytowns and slums, the favelas which ring the city with illegal constructions and millions upon millions of the ultra-poor. But most of the favelas lie on the periphery, so far beyond view that for the upper and middle classes they can almost be ignored. And look on the bright side: back toward the center, São Paulo has a great university, beautiful garden restaurants, and Japanese food that puts New York's to shame.


But then, suddenly, on the afternoon of Friday, May 12, 2006, São Paulo came under a violent and coordinated attack. The attackers moved on foot, and by car and motorbike. They were not rioters, revolutionaries, or the graduates of terrorist camps. They were anonymous young men and women, dressed in ordinary clothes, unidentifiable in advance, and indistinguishable afterward. Wielding pistols, automatic rifles, and firebombs, they emerged from within the city, struck fast, and vanished on the spot. Their acts were criminal, but the attackers did not loot, rob, or steal. They burned buses, banks, and public buildings, and went hard after the forces of order--gunning down the police in their neighborhood posts, in their homes, and on the streets. The police shot back and killed some people, but the others did not stop. They were like ghosts. On an animated plot of São Paulo their presence would have seemed like pinpoint flashes of light sparkling at random far and wide. The sparkling was slow, leaders were angry about a certain transfer of prisoners that had just taken place, but this was not something the government could survive undoing, and in any case the P.C.C. had made no such demand. Indeed, it was making no demands at all. The gang's top man was being held in solitary confinement at a maximum-security prison 350 miles west of the city. He was a career criminal named Marcos Camacho, or Marcola, who was said to be intelligent and a careful student of Sun Tzu's classic text, The Art of War. Now 39, he had spent half of his life in prison and was serving a long sentence for armed robbery and kidnapping. On Sunday, May 14, with the attacks ongoing, a police airplane flew four envoys from São Paulo to see him and negotiate a peace. Typically, Marcola denied any knowledge of the attacks and refused to get involved. He would not even use a proffered cell phone to quash a rumor of his demise, though he finally did allow another prisoner to make the call. After several hours the envoys flew home. The day after the attacks suddenly stopped, word spread through São Paulo that the state had agreed to provide the P.C.C. with 60 flat--but word spread quickly, and traffic snarled as citizens tried to rush home. After they settled behind locked doors, they did not dare to venture out. Restaurants and shops were closed. The boulevards lay lit and abandoned. On television came news that the attacks were the work of a prison gang, half forgotten but widely known, called Primeiro Comando da Capital, or P.C.C., the First Command of the Capital. Across the state 73 prisons rose in synchronous rebellion. This caused less concern than one might expect, in part because prison riots are common in Brazil, and are routinely if sometimes brutally contained. But the attacks against the city were something else, and the government had no idea how to respond.


State authorities claimed that the situation was under control, but television showed that it was not. In fact, the authorities were barricaded inside their headquarters watching the same broadcast scenes. Some of the replays were set to music. The attacks continued in irregular waves, without discernible patterns. Through Friday night and across the weekend the police reeled backward, abandoning their posts, only to be ambushed in the open. The police in São Paulo are despised for corruption and brutality, but they do loosely stand for law and order, and it was shocking to see them in retreat. Over the first two days more than 40 police officers and prison guards were killed, and also one of the firemen responding to the flames. For every agent killed, several others were wounded. Passersby died, caught in the crossfire. The national government offered to send in the army, but for political reasons the state refused. It was Sunday now, and Mother's Day. I later heard the recording of a cell-phone call in which a woman who had just torched a bus complained that a service station had sold her adulterated gasoline that did not burn hot enough. Who can you trust? The city huddled through the third night. On Monday morning, after a period of calm, people summoned the courage to return to work, in the hope that the trouble was over. But at midday the attacks resumed, and people again fled for their homes, creating one of the greatest traffic jams in São Paulo's great traffic-jam history.


Then, as abruptly as they had started, on Monday night the attacks suddenly stopped. It was widely assumed that the state had caved in and made concessions. And in fact the state had tried. Halfway through the weekend, having realized that they lacked the ability to restore order, the authorities bitterly concluded that they would have to negotiate--but with whom and about what? The P.C.C. is an immense and secretive network of semi-autonomous cells, and is shapeless by design. It includes 90 percent of São Paulo's 140,000 inmates, and at least as many people in the slums. The authorities knew that its leaders were angry about a certain transfer of prisoners that had just taken place, but this was not something the government could survive undoing, and in any case the P.C.C. had made no such demand. Indeed, it was making no demands at all. The gang's top man was being held in solitary confinement at a maximum-security prison 350 miles west of the city. He was a career criminal named Marcos Camacho, or Marcola, who was said to be intelligent and a careful student of Sun Tzu's classic text, The Art of War. Now 39, he had spent half of his life in prison and was serving a long sentence for armed robbery and kidnapping. On Sunday, May 14, with the attacks ongoing, a police airplane flew four envoys from Sao Paulo to see him and negotiate a peace. Typically, Marcola denied any knowledge of the attacks and refused to get involved. He would not even use a profered cell phone to quash a rumor of his demise, though he did finally allow another prisoner to make the call. After several hours the envoys flew home.



The day after the attacks suddenly stopped, word spread through Sao Paulo that the state had agreed to provide the P.C.C. with 60 flat-screen television for enhanced viewing of the upcoming World Cup soccer matches. A prison official later told me that the televisions in question already belonged to the P.C.C, that they were part of a hijacked load, and that the P.C.C. had wanted--and now received--the right to bring them in as a jailhouse boast. And okay, in Brazil soccer really does matter. But no such petty purpose can explain an assault on an entire city, nor can superficial political theories, of which there are several. Clearly, something much larger was going on. What is certain is that the assault was a demonstration of strength, an act of self-affirmation, and a measured blow against the rule of law. Some of the attacks were so brazen as to be nearly suicidal. The point being made was not that they could be carried out, but that they could be sustained. The lack of serious demands added a vicious twist. It denied the government the power even to concede, and allowed the P.C.C. to script the drama from beginning to end. Moreover, because the P.C.C. leaders were already in prison, they had little to fear of punishment. They could taunt the state from within the very walls it had built to contain them. Ah, the art of war.


A lawyer I spoke to called the asymmetry outrageously unfair. She said, "They can send people to kill the police, but the police can't do the same to them, because they are under state protection!" The police in particular felt the frustration. Able to identify only the occasional culprit, and ordered by their superiors nonetheless to get tough, they struck back with masked death squads and uniformed agents against the residents of the slums. Brazilian law officially precludes capital punishment. But by the end of the week, when the actions ceased, the police had killed at least 450 people, many with execution-style shots to the head. The state disputed the numbers and came up with 100 or so dead, most of them killed while resisting arrest. In a traumatized city where many people had condoned the police actions, only the most credulous could believe such unbelievable claims. The state was making a show of its fictions. It is a fact of history that the pretense of governing endures even as government disappears.


Big Jelly and Little Cesar


Brazil. The World Cup. The P.C.C. was a soccer team at the start. It was founded in a São Paulo state prison in the summer of 1993 by eight players, seven of whom have since died. The prison sits in the city of Taubate, off the road to Rio de Janeiro. At the time it was a punishment unit, where troublemakers went for stints of solitary confinement before being returned to larger prisons elsewhere in the state. Conditions there were atrocious. The prisoners lived locked alone into 160 dark and putrid cells, surviving on filthy slops, defecating into holes they could not flush, and subject to beatings by the guards. They were released into the yards only every few days, and in groups of merely five. Some committed suicide. Most, however, were tough, and managed not only to remain vital but also to communicate fully from cell to cell. In 1993, when they lobbied the warden for a soccer tournament, he decided to let them form teams. It is unclear how exactly they proceeded, given that they remained locked in their cells and could not assemble to practice. Through the jailhouse telegraph they gave their teams names in anticipation of battle. Several included the word "Command" for the swagger, but the P.C.C. outdid all the others by calling itself "First," and staking claim to the "Capital." In light of subsequent events, the name may sound like a warning. The warden himself was eventually murdered by the monster he had created. But the Primeiro Comando da Capital was born wanting just to play soccer.


The games were held in an enclosed yard, without spectators or guards. The P.C.C. won a few matches, became its cellblock champion, and prepared to play a rival team from another part of the prison. During the run-up to the game, the competition got out of hand when the boasts turned to taunts, and the taunts became threats. Each team vowed to drink the other team's blood. The captain of the P.C.C. was a killer from the lowest of São Paulo's slums, a physically powerful man named Geleião (Big Jelly), who had grown up in the gutter, and was now 35. His sidekick was a natural-born fighter named Cessna (Little Cesar), five years younger, who had a reputation for bravery and was to serve as the P.C.C.'s chief executioner over the decade to come. Cessna had been raised in a middle-class family, but even as a child had idealized crime, and at the age of 12 had killed for the first time.


On the day of the match, August 31, 1993, the two teams moved together down a hallway toward the prison yard. The details remain obscure, but it seems that the guards were nowhere to be seen, and that the last P.C.C. player closed a barred door behind them to ensure privacy. Just before they got to the yard, Geleião made the first move. He grabbed an opposing player, and with a single ferocious twist killed the man by snapping his neck. Cessna and the others sprang forward, and with bare hands and shivs took another four lives. There is no evidence that they enjoyed the killing. They inhabited a violent world and had responded necessarily to insults they believed it would have been dangerous to leave unanswered. In doing so they had also condemned themselves to lives of unending vigilance and strength, since every one of the dead men had family or friends who might try to take revenge. Afterward, they swore a public vow of mutual defense. Through the telegraph they declared, "We are united forever now. Whatever happens to one happens to all. We will never betray each other. We are brothers for life. That simple vow proved impossible to follow, but it established a principle from which all else evolved, and among the prisoners of São Paulo it resonated loudly.


The Mark of the P.C.C.


The prisons of São Paulo were falling apart under the loads they had to bear. The most notorious of them was a decrepit facility named Carandiru, which dated from 1956 and was the largest in Brazil. It stood inside the São Paulo city limits in an industrial neighborhood on the north side of town, surrounded by high gray walls and accessed through a single heavy gate. It contained nine cell-blocks, each five stories tall, and by the early 1990s held more than 7,000 inmates, nearly twice the intended capacity. On October 2, 1992--11 months before the P.C.C.'s bloody birth in Taubaté--it was the scene of a massacre by the police, who while suppressing a rebellion in its Cellblock Nine had killed 111 prisoners, and wounded 130 others. To carry this out the police had fired merely 515 rounds--a record of efficiency reflecting the fact that most of the shooting had been done at point-blank range on prisoners who had already surrendered and were cowering in their cells.


In the background was a crime rate in São Paulo that was among the highest in the world, and the fact that even as the city was remaking itself into a center of global business it was being transformed into an archipelago of innumerable little fortresses where a large population of the fortunate lived and worked in near-total isolation from the poor. The two transformations were related. It was not only that the poor were being abandoned by government but that the very need for government was being questioned by the elites. Armored cars, private guards, helicopters, and business jets. Walls and high-voltage fences. Cheap labor, filthy rivers, and private schools. Tax evasion. Yes, and the fullness of long-distance communication. Within the limits of comfort, global capital seemed to be seeking places where laws were almost a charade, and in São Paulo it was demonstrating that the connection that mattered was neither to the street nor to the state. For better or worse the pattern was driven by trends larger than Brazil. For better or worse national policies were helpless to stop it. No insight was required to understand that crime was a symptom of poverty and alienation. But these were problems that government programs could barely address, let alone solve, and so, predictably, in the 1990s, authorities in São Paulo started cracking down and getting tough on crime. Fading states are not without power. Arrests and convictions soared, and sentences grew longer. It was a popular policy in São Paulo, where people assumed that their streets would grow safer, as if crime were a finite problem, and violence was a predilection of some certain percentage of the population. Recently I met an anthropologist with a different view, who told me that after a talk she gave in São Paulo she encountered a businessman who was very mad. He said, "Don't talk to me about projects in the slums. What we need now is an even harder line." The previous week in his new armored car he had been robbed and shot in the arm when he had pushed the wrong button and rolled down a window instead of sounding an alarm. Oh, and she knew of another driver who had kept his windows closed in a similar circumstance, but while yanking out a pistol just to be safe had shot himself in the leg. Was this the fate of São Paulo? All that is certain about the get-tough campaign is that in the 1990s the state's prisons could not handle the surge, and that Carandiru, for one, was overwhelmed.


Carandiru had at most 100 guards for its inmate population of 7,000, a ratio approximately one-tenth that of San Quentin. Though the guards circulated throughout the prison, for the most part the prisoners were left alone to sort things out for themselves. To some degree they did. A medical doctor named Drauzio Varella, who for 13 years volunteered his services every Monday there, told me that Carandiru offered proof that people are not rats. Varella is a man of extraordinary talents, a renowned oncologist and writer, who published a memoir of Carandiru and in recent years has produced a series of popular television documentaries on subjects of health. We walked together through an impoverished area near the city's center, stopping every few minutes for strangers who approached to say hello or complain of their ailments. In the intervals we talked. Varella said, "Rats who are overcrowded become violent. There have been experiments in the United States to show it. But Carandiru showed that people in those same conditions will organize, and establish rules for their survival. The rules in Carandiru evolved as the prison grew more crowded. They were not written down, but were passed on as understandings. For instance, you had to wash. Every day. And during meal delivery you could not stay in the hallways. For hygiene. Inside the cells, when people were eating, you could not use the toilet. You could not spit. You could not cough. You could not pick your teeth."


And these were mere manners. More serious restrictions applied to the regular weekend visits by family and friends, when concerns greater than health were at play. Since 1984 the right to such visits has included the right to have sex. Space for these "intimate visits" is not officially provided, but is arranged nonetheless by the inmates. Varella was struck by the system in Carandiru. He said, "Some of the cellblocks had more than a thousand prisoners. Five, six guys per cell. Can you imagine women coming to such a place to have sex with their men? But it was the most respectful thing. The couples went up the stairs. While they climbed on one side, on the other side men came down to receive their own visitors. When a woman passed as she climbed, these prisoners averted their gazes--aggressively. Usually they looked at the walls. And then there was the scene upstairs. Men without visitors were not allowed to descend, but had to leave their cells and stand in the halls. As the couples walked along the halls, all these men looked at the ground. You could track the progress of the couples by watching the heads go down. And so the couple entered a cell. If there were two or three guys getting intimate visits, they made a timetable between them. Each couple was allowed one hour alone. And after one hour, they had to go out. I was so impressed that it was possible in Carandiru for these men to organize in such a way. But, you know, anarchy does not endure in human affairs. And there is no empty space for power in prison."


I said, "There is no empty space for power in the world."


He laughed. "Yes, in the world."


The first rule was the need to pay debts. The deal-making was pervasive. Prisoners decided between them who would sleep where. The best cells were considered owned, and were bought and sold and rented. The main business, however, was in drugs. The principal drug was cocaine, which people injected into their veins, or smoked in the form of crack. The price was twice that of the street. Varella said, "The law was very strict. If you didn't pay, you died. Because if I sold you crack and you didn't pay me back, if I did nothing, nobody else would pay me, either. And I had to pay my supplier, because he had to pay his own supplier. So I had to kill you. This usually happened on Mondays, because the sellers gave the weekends for families to bring money."


In each cellblock the acknowledged boss, according to Varella, was the chief of the inmate janitors, known as the Cleaner. Varella said, "If you wanted to kill me, you had to talk to him first. You had to go to the Cleaner and say, 'I have to kill Drauzio Varella.'


"'Okay, why?'


'"Because back in the neighborhood he raped my sister-in-law.'


"'Do you have any evidence?'


"I have a police report of the rape.'


"'So bring it to me.'"


Varella went on with his story. He said, "The Cleaners were the judges of the cellblocks. Very smart guys. Silent. They knew how to listen. Very calmly. They would talk economically. They were interesting types. Usually they were not physically strong. Sometimes they were very small guys. But strength had no role at Carandiru, because people had to sleep. And if you gather 20 guys, even Mike Tyson wouldn't stand a chance. So you would bring your evidence to the Cleaner, and he would read it and say, 'Okay, you can kill Varella. But I'll tell you which day.' Not just any day, because it might conflict with other plans, like a drug deal, another killing, or an attempted escape. The Cleaner would say, 'Okay, you can do it on Friday morning.' And then you really had to follow through. If you went back to the Cleaner and said, 'I thought a little bit more, and I decided after all that I don't need to do this,' then you were not a serious guy. You would have to leave the cellblock, ask the guards to transfer you, because the Cleaner would never again allow you to share the space with him."


Varella's affection for Carandiru was unabashed and clear: he had been seduced by the humanity residing there. He was also an embellisher, an artist with a poetic South American mind, who had experienced Carandiru subjectively and now remembered it through the constructs of his writing. This was obvious, and he pretended nothing else. His descriptions of the prison were matters of the heart as well as the mind. But he was not, as some people claim dismissively, an apologist for the men who were being held there, or for the society they had built. After all, he was a doctor too and squarely confronted the horrors. Man-on-man rapes. Thoughtless wars over turf. Unprovoked murders. Sadistic cruelties of the worst kind. Suicide. Many of the inmates lived in desperation or denial. Crack was an epidemic, and intravenous cocaine nearly as bad. Seventeen percent of the prisoners had H.I.V. or full-blown AIDS. Sixty percent of them had hepatitis C. Varella tested a group of 80 transvestites for H.I.V. and found that 78 percent were positive; among those who had been in prison six years or more, the rate was 100 percent. And they were doing this to themselves. Anarchy does not endure in human affairs, but Carandiru had rules that were clearly inadequate.


Varella saw the worst of it because one of his duties was to inspect the dead. He said, "That is a very disgusting experience, to see these guys stabbed and covered in blood. Full of holes from different-sized knives. And it was very common. Sometimes I'd have two or three or five bodies at a time. And then one day it got even worse. I think this was around 1995. A man was killed, and when I turned his body over, his head flopped to the side. He was nearly decapitated. It was clear that this had been done after his death. When people are killed, they fight and scream and try to escape. They all do. No one could have made such a full clean cut on someone struggling like that. And so I said, 'What savagery is it to do this to anyone?'


"A guard said, 'This is the P.C.C.'s mark.'


"And I said, 'What is the P.C.C.?'


"The guard said, 'It's a small group of guys who are very cruel and are trying to impose themselves by violence.'"


Cell-Phone Swarm


Geleião and Cessna had arrived from Taubate. Under their leadership at Carandiru the P.C.C. expanded into the narcotics trade. Though it was ruthless, it was also judicious and cool. It murdered spectacularly, but only in calculation of need. What it had that the competing factions lacked was discipline. The discipline was based on a moral code that enhanced the existing prison rules and included an insistence on better living conditions and prisoners' rights. The P.C.C. was a criminal gang but also a political force--albeit an absurdly self-righteous one. Prisoners were attracted to the group because it brought order to their lives and gave them purpose, protection, and power. There were obligations. P.C.C. followers lived by its laws under penalty of death. Those who formally joined became "Brothers" for life. They were initiated with a baptism involving water, and had to sign a 16-point manifesto that still serves as the P.C.C.'s constitution. The 16th point was a declaration of the group's intent. It stated, "No one can stop our struggle, because the seed of the Command has spread throughout the prison system of the state, and we are also succeeding in establishing ourselves on the outside…. We will revolutionize the country from inside the prisons, and our strong arm will be the Terror of the powerful." For the initiates, there was no possibility afterward of backing out. They had to pay monthly dues and share their windfall profits. They were given a voice in weekly meetings, but once a decision was made, they had to carry out orders.




The seed was spread as the prison administrators transferred the members around. Those transfers were routine and in no sense a recognition of the P.C.C.'s strength. Indeed, the administrators insisted on seeing the new brotherhood as just another jailhouse gang, and would have scoffed at any suggestion that it required special care. When questioned by the press, government officials denied the group's existence. The secretary of prisons refused to acknowledge it even internally, behind closed doors. After a fight with a rival gang in Carandiru toward the end of 1995, Gelei˜o and Cessna were shipped to prisons in other states--respectively, Paraná and Mato Grosso--with no warning to the authorities there. They were gone for a few years and took the opportunity to plant the group beyond São Paulo. After the two men incited some prison rebellions in those states, local officials irritably shipped them home. During their absence, and with their approval, control of the group in Carandiru had shifted to two senior members of the group, named Sombra and Blindado. They in turn were befriended by Marcola, who heads the P.C.C. today. Marcola was a childhood friend of Cessna's. He had been in Taubate; at the gang's formation, though as a player on another team, and had observed the P.C.C. from the outside for a while before joining. He was more business-minded than the others and was seen to be the smartest of the bunch; he soon assumed the position of the leadership's adviser. The subsequent twists are too intricate to follow. The P.C.C. was not as coherent as it pretended to be. It suffered from internal power struggles, and for a while took to extorting money from other prisoners--a serious violation of its own creed that might have doomed the group, had Gelei˜o not intervened. But the P.C.C. was remarkably self-corrective. It put Blindado and Sombra to death, and having made that point continued to grow.




Though the gang was funded by criminal ventures, including the narcotics trade, its motivation was never primarily greed. Even today the leaders show little sign of personal wealth, and though some must profit from their positions, they do not seem to use the group's resources as their own. Marcola supports a girlfriend in middle-class style but himself lives a life that is famously austere. Still, there were perks from early on. Amid the general squalor of the prisons, full members were provided with immaculate quarters in special P.C.C. sections, where the cells were freshly painted white, hung with art and illustrations, and well stocked with food and drink, magazines, books, and eventually TVs. The advantages of the group's discipline were felt elsewhere as well. Excluding the killings carried out by the P.C.C. itself, murders started declining if for no other reason than that rivals were being crushed. Rape was effectively outlawed. And pressure was being applied against the use of injected drugs and crack cocaine--both seen by the P.C.C. as corrosive to its power. H.I.V. rates began to drop. This happened even as the state continued to overcrowd the prisons, increasing the population by 800 inmates a month, and measurably aiding the P.C.C. in its rise to power.




Further aid was provided by globalization. Under pressure from international lenders, and burdened by state-owned industries it could no longer sustain, Brazil had opened itself to global capital and was pursuing a policy of economic liberalization. In 1997 it deregulated and privatized telecommunications. The result was an explosion of networks as multi-national companies rushed in to compete for the business. Until then cell-phone coverage in São Paulo had been spotty, but within two years the gaps had been filled, and prices had begun to come down. Particularly around the prisons, the usage was high, and the companies responded by building more capacity. According to one official I spoke to, the government was not aware of the pattern at the time, but, later, when it was and requested that the companies shut down their services within reception range of the prison walls, the companies resisted, as they resist today, in the name of the greater good provided by a truly free market. Be that as it may, the P.C.C. stood at the forefront of telecommunications. The phones it used were smuggled into the prisons, along with a flood of cards containing hijacked numbers. The system was sophisticated and was built by corrupted technicians. It relied on several dozen "centrals," which functioned as cell-phone forwarders through which conference calls could be made.




Starting around 1999, the conference calls were made twice a day. Typically they consisted of the most senior leadership connecting with the top men in each of the prisons--30 or 40 at a time--and because of the large numbers, the calls required discipline and practice. Each call began with a social round, reaffirming the P.C.C.'s integrity and goals. Good morning, Brother. How are you today? Now, tell us if you've run into problems, and what we can do to help. The first order of business pertained to the details of prison life--inedible food here, an abusive guard there, the rough treatment of visiting families everywhere. The second order of business pertained to business itself, to challenges or opportunities in the drug trade, to punishments that had to be meted out, and to budgets. On whatever subject, solutions were openly discussed (and opinions were sometimes polled) before the ranking member made a decision and moved the conversation on.




The P.C.C. was ignorant and cruel, but it was also proving itself to be extraordinarily adept. At a point when greed and overextension might have caused a more rigid organization to break apart, the P.C.C. gained the strength to take on the state. The cell phones lay at the heart of that process. They allowed the P.C.C. to transcend the pettiness of location, to rise even above prison walls, and to operate without restraint in an ethereal world of communication. The group began to reshape itself, away from its original pyramid design, and toward a structure of semi-autonomous cells which was so fluid and complex that it could not be pinned down. A young prosecutor near Taubate showed me a map of the connections that his office had made. It was based on intercepted calls and was plotted with the same investigative-analysis software used by the U.S. military in Iraq. I mentioned to the prosecutor that his map looked like those purporting to chart the insurgency in Anbar Province--a web of lines so chaotic that no useful pattern results. The prosecutor nodded glumly and said, "What in God's name is happening in Iraq?"




I held up my hands in surrender. "This P.C.C. structure, do you think it was intended?"




"No, look at it--how could this be planned?




It was built of nothing but relations that multiplied."It was built of conversation. It was financed by crime. It was too loose to be steered tightly, but it had the innate ability to swarm. It offered proof that people are not rats, because they organize in ways that change with the times. By 2001 even the government had to recognize the P.C.C.'s power. The recognition went public on the morning of February 18, when Carandiru and 28 other prisons rose in simultaneous revolt--an action of unexpected scale, now known as the "Mega-Rebellion," whose immediate cause was the transfer of 10 P.C.C. leaders to Taubate. All for 10 and 10 for all. More profoundly, the time had come for the P.C.C. to demonstrate its strength For reference, the 9/11 attacks on the United States lay seven months ahead. Because 2/18 was a Sunday, the prisons were filled with visiting families and friends. Prison tradition precluded trouble on visitors' days, but the P.C.C. saw the advantage to be gained, and it took 7,000 people hostage behind the barricades. To the state the message was Fuck you and checkmate. Some of the hostages felt betrayed, but most accepted the logic of the game: their presence could keep the police at bay and would prevent the massacre of their beloved men. The P.C.C. had an elegant touch. When given the chance to leave, most hostages chose to stay. The rebellious prisons were hardly calm: 16 prisoners were murdered by fellow inmates who took this opportunity to settle accounts. But the state was indeed thrown into doubt, and it reacted with uncommon caution. When the police were sent in they killed only four men, and probably in genuine self-defense. They moved so slowly that after two days it was the P.C.C. and not the state that restored order in most of the prisons.




Afterward, the authorities took credit for themselves and publicly proclaimed that they would not tolerate this gang. But within the privacy of the prisons they had to cede ground. The P.C.C. did not expect the state to disappear; it accepted that the government controlled the police, the courts, and the prison perimeters, and it required that the government provide health care, food, and blankets. But beyond such basics, it pushed to create prisons where the state could barely function. The authorities pushed back, as authorities do. Carandiru was a symbol for much that had gone wrong, and in September 2002 it was emptied and slated for demolition. It was replaced with new, smaller prisons, in the hope that smaller populations could be controlled more easily. The prison administration transferred some leaders and swept the cellblocks, confiscating weapons and cell phones. None of this mattered. The P.C.C. continued to grow. And so, after a while, with an election coming, officials simply declared that victory had been won. Your taxes at work. Mission Accomplished. Thanks to good government, the citizens of São Paulo could again sleep soundly.




Carandiru Rules




But many citizens already did sleep soundly--and all the more so because they had invested in private guards and fortifications, using some of the money they saved by evading taxes. Out in the city's favelas, the state's claims provoked laughter. The favelas are among the wildest slums in the world--places where the police are vigorously despised, and where it is good government, and not the P.C.C, that seems to have been dismantled. In 1998, there were no murders in the wealthy Jardins neighborhood, while in the shantytown of Jar dim Ângela, there were nearly 200. The P.C.C.'s growth in the favelas was typically unplanned. It proceeded spottily as drug purchases were made to supply the prison market, members came home after serving their time, P.C.C. families sought assistance and protection, and independent criminals saw advantages that the affiliation might provide. Residents had never encountered such a group before. These Brothers who did not mess around, these sons who had become such serious men. Initially the P.C.C. treated its favela crews as subsidiaries whose function was to support its prison agenda, but later, as it reshaped itself around cell-phone communications, the distinction dissolved, and the leaders discovered that they could direct an outside empire from inside the prisons' walls. Marcola in particular had the imagination and strength to do it. He led a coup in 2002, put a bounty on the heads of Geleião and Cessna, and, having assumed the top position, aggressively expanded the P.C.C. not only to the 90 percent point in the inmate population but also to a position of such strength that it could dominate millions in the city's unruly slums.




Elsewhere in São Paulo the domination is still poorly understood. After the attacks last May, newspapers worldwide reflected the confusion when they reported that the mysterious attackers were inmates who had been released on leave for the Mother's Day weekend. They were not. They were city residents, low-level P.C.C. operatives, some with debts to repay. Following the destruction of New York's World Trade Center, the P.C.C. started calling such people "bin Ladens." In May they were indeed terrorists for a few days, but so politically hollow that even social reformers in middle-class São Paulo insist that the rhetoric of the P.C.C. is a sham. The unanimity of opinion is striking. Apparently there are a few old-fashioned Marxists who proclaim that the P.C.C. is the vanguard--at last!--of the long-awaited revolution. But outside the favelas I myself have not met a single person in São Paulo who doesn't dismiss the P.C.C. as merely criminal.




Across the city's divide and inside the favelas, opinions are more ambivalent. People do not deny that the P.C.C. is a ruthless criminal enterprise occupied primarily with the narcotics trade. But they acknowledge its positive effects as well, not only in the prisons and for prisoners' families, but in the communities at large, where the gang, however selfishly, has provided for a crude new order one step up from the chaos that preceded its arrival. People understand the context too. Over beers in a favela I met a community leader and former armed robber who went by the name Marcos and was certainly no apologist for the P.C.C, but who tried to give me the view from the slums. He said, "We have all this information now--the TV, the Internet--so we've become more aware of what's happening in the world, and in this city. Whether it's soap opera or not, we see how the rich live. We also see how the TV lies. It shows a Brazil in which everything is perfect--the houses, the neighborhoods, the families. The poor look happy, like the Carnaval. But the reality in most of São Paulo is murder, violence, and drugs."




I said, "It seems like there are two realities here, Marcos. Because the rich can hide from you, and as far as I can tell, in São Paulo they hide pretty well."




He reminded me of the May attacks. "All their walls and armored cars won't solve the problem for them. They should start paying attention to the entire city. If they dropped the walls, they'd have to."




"But Brazil is moving in the opposite direction."




"Yeah, it is. And the candidate for governor says, If I get elected I'm going to build five new prisons and add 30,000 people. Well, if he's got the money to do that, why doesn't he put it into the schools, or into programs that help the people--into avoiding having 30,000 new prisoners?"




I answered, "Because it would be more expensive. Because it would require more time. Because the taxpayers don't pay taxes. Because they wouldn't support the programs if they did. Because the programs might help a little, but wouldn't help enough. Because it would be hard to measure results. Because the government is not trusted. Because Brazil has to pay back its international loans."




He said, "Okay, so the P.C.C. has come along."




I asked him for details. He said, "First, it looks after the prisoners' families by making sure they have enough to eat, and running a weekend bus service to the prisons for free. But it also helps ordinary people who have nothing to do with crime. If they go to the P.C.C. and mention their needs, usually they will be provided with the basic things, like food baskets, or medications, or maybe some material for patching their roofs. A lot of the older people are afraid of the P.C.C. and stay away. But the young ones will turn to anyone who can help."




I said, "I spoke to a prosecutor yesterday who denies absolutely that this happens. He says that the P.C.C. only looks after itself."




"The guy you spoke to yesterday, he's part of the government. He'll never admit that the P.C.C. is playing a role. But we live here, and we know." Others sitting with us chimed in to agree. Marcos said, "But the most important thing that the P.C.C. provides is not charity but rules. Like if you're someplace where there's about to be a fight with guns, and suddenly the P.C.C. arrives, people immediately calm down. Anyone who violates the rules they impose is going to have to answer for it."




"What are these rules?"




"Basic rules that we all agree with. For instance, not to look at another man's wife, not to rape, not to steal from the poor, not to steal from the little businesses here, not to inform on people, not to get in an argument and just take out your gun and kill someone. The rules aren't written down, but we all know what they are. What's wrong and what's right. Even the top drug dealers don't dare be arrogant the way they were. They have to be humble, because even if they're not P.C.C, they have to answer to the P.C.C. That goes for all of us now. You can't kill someone just because he did something you don't like. You have to go to the P.C.C. and explain why he has to die, and they will talk to the guy and decide on the punishment."




I said, "Carandiru rules."




Marcos had been a prisoner there. He said, "Like that. And the murder rate has dropped way off. A few years ago we had lots of killings here, and now things are much safer. The government goes around claiming credit because of its security policies, and programs like bringing in water and closing the bars earlier at night, but the truth is that the killings have slowed because the P.C.C. has arrived. See, murder was mostly a favela crime. Look at the rest of São Paulo, where the P.C.C. doesn't have much interest, in the better parts of town. There they have lots of police, but kidnapping, robbery, and theft keep going up--understand?"




He called the P.C.C. a "parallel government," but "proto-government" might be a better term, since the P.C.C.'s rule is exceedingly crude. Either way, the credit given to it for improvements seems nearly universal in the favelas. In another such neighborhood I met a young woman who for years had "walked" with the P.C.C. without becoming a full member, and whose name I cannot use, because she had turned against the group and was trying at some risk to disengage. Even she, who was otherwise skeptical, appreciated the gang's effect on civic order. She said, "There used to be a dealer here who tried to dominate the area, and would not share the business at all. When the Brothers came, they threw him out. Actually, they caught him and were going to kill him, but he escaped and ran away. But they don't use violence cheaply. Every Wednesday they get together and talk about all the events of the week, and they really try to find ways to avoid having to kill people for what they've done wrong. And things are much better now in the favela. It used to be that you didn't dare go out on the streets late at night. You couldn't enjoy yourself. You couldn't go dancing. You had to stay home and stay inside. It used to be there was a lot of gunfire. Exchanges of gunfire. That doesn't happen so much anymore."




She was sitting on her bed in her little dark hole of a window-less two-room cinder-block home. She laughed when I asked her if the police at the district station could offer any protection. Only if you have money, she said, then just maybe they will protect you. But no, if you go to the station or contact them in any way, they will make you wait for hours, make your life hard, treat you like a criminal. They care only about extorting money from drug dealers on the streets. So, no, not the police, not me, not ever. She had a friend who was pregnant and who phoned them after her husband beat her, and they said, Are you sure you really want to file a complaint, because if you do you'll be waiting for hours just to fill out the report, and then it'll be days before we'll get around to calling your husband in.




I said, "Why didn't she go to the P.C.C.?"




"If she had gone to the Brothers they would have been quick. But then her husband would have been in real trouble. They would either have expelled him from the neighborhood or warned him and given him another chance. But that would have been the last chance." She laughed again. "And she was in love."




Several nights later on the far side of the city I met with the leader of a P.C.C. cell, a "pilot" in the parlance of the gang, in reference to the responsibilities of command. He controlled five municipalities, where perhaps a half-million people live. The encounter was difficult to arrange. It took place in a slum where police death squads had been active in May, in a small house crammed with beds and used as a crash pad for P.C.C. soldiers. The neighbors had been warned to stay off the streets, and for several blocks P.C.C. sentries had been posted; they stood against walls and in the darkness of doorways, with no weapons in sight. My intermediary seemed nervous, but then he got stoned. We waited inside the house by a window without glass that overlooked a favela valley. The night was hot. P.C.C. soldiers milled about, drinking beer that we had brought. Some sat in chairs. They were mostly silent. One mentioned that he had just escaped from prison by buying the paperwork to order his release.




When the pilot walked in, everyone stood up. He was a tall, heavyset man in his late 20s, and completely unsmiling. Despite the heat, he wore a sweater and a heavy wool cap. He sat and we talked, but the conversation was sparse. He made claims about the P.C.C. that were transparently false. He said, "The Command has a vision of progress not only inside the prisons but outside in society. Not everyone who joins is a criminal. We also have good lawyers, and lots of upper-class people and intellectuals."




"Why would upper-class people get so involved?"




"Because they have revolutionary minds."




"So the Command is a revolutionary movement?"




"Yes."




"Okay, so jump ahead and tell me what you are fighting toward. Let's say you win your revolution and take power. What kind of Brazil do you want to build then?"




A smile flickered across his lips. He said, "We do not think about winning. We rebel against the government more to give a response now than with a vision of the future in mind."




That part at least seemed honest. But then he said, "In all the attacks against the police last May, we didn't kill a single innocent man. Everyone who was killed deserved to die for what he had done. The action was carefully planned."




"And perfectly executed."




"We respect the police who do their job correctly. We can accept it if they come to us after we have committed a crime. But the police who come and just humiliate the people, mistreat them, beat them up--those police will be stopped."




"What about the police who came in here afterward and killed so many innocent people? Since the P.C.C. provoked those killings, wasn't it your duty to fight back at that time? To defend the people?"




"The fault is with the media. Since it shows the Command in such a negative light, we have to stay quiet and hidden. And that's why it's difficult for us to protect society."




And so it went for an hour or more. From his position of authority, the pilot expected his words to be accepted at face value. He was a politician practicing spin. He was proto-presidential. Certain topics remained off limits to me. When I followed general questions about P.C.C. dues--its primitive form of taxation--by asking where the money ends up, my intermediary fluttered in his marijuana haze and apologized on my behalf. The pilot said, "It's a sensitive subject." He let the moment pass. When he frowned he was the picture of magisterial calm. He was strangely pompous, it now seemed to me. He was positively governmental.




The Feral Zones




The P.C.C. brought order to the prisons and slums, but showed itself to be lower than animalistic. It perfected a form of murder by which those whom it condemned to die were forced through threat of torture to commit suicide. In 2005, during a two-day riot that gutted a prison in a town called Venceslau, it invaded a protective-custody section, decapitated five of its enemies, mounted the heads on poles to wave before TV cameras, and, it is alleged, then placed one on the ground for a game of P.C.C. soccer. The P.C.C. was feral and twisted, but so what--it existed. The state secretary of prison administration at the time was a Japanese Brazilian named Nagashi Furukawa, who had arrived as a reformer and for five years had tried to apply the principles of good government, one of which is the need to be realistic. Furukawa despised the P.C.C, but he had formally recognized its power, and, having accepted a permanent withdrawal of guards from the cellblocks and yards in most prisons, he had tried to manage the inmate populations through the sole use of P.C.C. intermediaries. For a while the prisons had been calm, but now riots were again on the rise, and the P.C.C. was becoming insatiable in its demands. By the end of 2005, Furukawa was at a loss. He tried to isolate Marcola and his nine top "generals" in a distant prison--a move that only demonstrated the lack of good choices. In January the police arrested 30 heavily armed P.C.C. commandos who were poised to mount a raid of liberation. After the arrests Furukawa continued to take the threat seriously. Hoping to throw the P.C.C. off balance, he transferred Marcola and his men to a maximum-security prison in Avar;, close to São Paulo.




From there in February, March, and April, the P.C.C. leaders increased the pressure, issuing a string of demands so evidently superficial that they could be seen only as a mockery of the state or an insult to the reforms of Furukawa. They asked for the right to bring in those famous hijacked flat-screen TVs, for changes in the color of the prison uniform from yellow to gray, for longer intimate visits, for better cigarettes. In the past Furukawa might have arranged for such inconsequentials, but he could not now appear to be giving in. Over the first four months of 2006 he faced 14 prison riots. At the end of April, the police intercepted another P.C.C. raiding party, this one intent on hitting Avar;. Word arrived that the P.C.C. was going to demand an end to R.D.D., Regime Disciplinar Diferenciado, a new and more intensive system of solitary confinement. Word arrived that it was planning another Mega-Rebellion, perhaps for Mother's Day, Sunday, May 14. Word arrived that there might be some sort of attacks against the city.




Furukawa made a last-ditch effort to gain control. On Thursday, May 11, guards seized the top P.C.C. leaders in every prison in the state and sent them off--765 in all--to the newly rebuilt and temporarily empty prison in Venceslau. Furukawa recently explained the plan to me as if he still thought it could have worked. The idea was to disassemble the gang by interrupting its communications and isolating its best men in a truly clean, cell-phone-free facility, where the guards would not be corrupt, and a special unit of nearly 100 equally honest policemen would scrutinize every visitor, deter all smuggling, and somehow keep the P.C.C. lawyers from passing messages and commands. Naturally, nothing of the sort happened. The police unit never materialized--despite Furukawa's pleas to the governor to issue the necessary orders--and Venceslau today is a prison like any other.




That outcome was so predictable even last May that on the most practical level the P.C.C. hardly needed to respond. But more was at stake than just business or prisoners' rights. The chosen 765 were not merely the gang's elite but the very representatives and intermediaries whose recognition by the state had helped to sustain the P.C.C.'s authority in the prisons. Yes, they could be replaced by new P.C.C. intermediaries--and they immediately were--but the transfer of the 765 was an assault on recognition itself, and a betrayal of the established lines of communication. Furukawa was not thinking in those terms, but to the P.C.C. he seemed to be cheating. The P.C.C. felt further insulted when it obtained an illegal recording of secret testimony in the Brazilian congress in which the transfer was discussed as if the gang could so easily be manipulated and denied. But the P.C.C. had a plan in place. On Friday, May 12, one day after the transfer occurred, Marcola is believed to have ordered the attacks.




It was not a war but a struggle which neither side could win, difficult though this was for government officials to accept. For the P.C.C, calling off the attacks made sense once it had made a show of itself. The P.C.C. really had no larger point to make. Nor really did the state. The rule of law? Marcola was returned to R.D.D. confinement in Bernardes. Most of the chosen 765 remained at Venceslau, where they soon resumed business. Once the police death squads finished killing the wrong people in the slums, São Paulo got back to its normal, strange existence. Furukawa was replaced by a prison stalwart whose vision of the future was a memory of the past. According to Furukawa, the new secretary accused him of corruption. To me, in turn, Furukawa accused the new secretary of the same. The new secretary set up a group to study privatizing the system, perhaps by calling in one of the multi-national prison companies that offer to step in now where governments have failed. In July and again in August, the P.C.C. mounted small versions of the May attacks, killing eight off-duty prison guards, bombing government buildings, shooting at the police, and burning buses. A reporter for Globo television was kidnapped, and was released two days later, but only after the network aired a P.C.C. video in which an armed and hooded man read a statement denouncing prison conditions and vowing vengeance. Through the fall and into the winter, prison riots continued, as did occasional bus burnings--though these may have been the work of imitators and independents. Government officials were warned of a possible shift toward the kidnapping of their families. Marcola went on a hunger strike for weeks in protest of the R.D.D. The P.C.C. issued a long manifesto, threatening the city with more attacks, and warning that a grand reckoning would arrive on a day it called "the Day of the Roses." The date was not specified, but there was no reason to doubt that escalations were being planned. After Christmas similar attacks were mounted against Rio de Janeiro, ordered from within the prisons by local gangs and coordinated by cell phone. International tourism was affected. In January 2007, Brazilian president Luiz Inaction Lula da Silva said this was "terrorism, and must be dealt with by the strong hand of the Brazilian state." He soon announced that he was sending in the army, navy, and air force to protect the beloved city. Also, a federal security force would be deployed along the Rio de Janeiro state borders to keep out weapons, drugs, and criminals. The gestures were empty, but governments are condemned to govern.




In São Paulo, I spoke to a prosecutor engaged in tracking the P.C.C.'s finances. He said, "If we can succeed in this matter, we can stop the P.C.C."




I was skeptical. "And if you don't succeed?" "We have to succeed." "But if you don't, what happens then?" "We don't have another plan. We have only one plan, and that is to eliminate this P.C.C. The state cannot stand to live with such a group. It is impossible."




"I'm asking you a primitive question, but why? Why can't the state stand to live with this group?"




"It is very damaging to society as a whole. The absolute lack of control that the state has over the prisons. People see this. They know this."




The lack of control is much larger than that. It extends to the favelas and, more important, to the office towers where global money flows. People see this, or they should. São Paulo is not alone. Consider all the other Third World cities, consider Moscow, consider L.A. The P.C.C. is just another inhabitant of the growing feral zones. I said, "But isn't it possible that this is a level of chaos that São Paulo can continue to live with? With all its fortifications and armored cars? Doing business with the world?"




He said, "We've got to fear what we do not know. They grew up under our noses without us seeing them. And we are still in the dark. We don't know what's coming in the future. It is simply unacceptable that a criminal gang can order attacks against security agents, against judges, that it can attack financial institutions, that it can bring the transport system to a halt. What is a state if it cannot keep this from happening?"