Category Archives: public letters

On the End of Das Racist

24 Monday Dec 2012

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With a name like that there was no way it could last.

Over the last few years, it was hilarious trying to tell anybody who hadn’t heard of you about this rap act I really liked. Mind you, since I’m in my forties most of these people hate what they think of as rap anyway, so were already staring at me skeptically when I said:

“They’re called Das Racist”

“Das what?”

Then I’d spell it and they’re like, “Are they German?”

Then I’d be like, “No, it’s like saying (point at something), ‘see that right there … Das Racist!'”

“Oh. Where are they from?

“(sigh) Well, they’re two guys who met at college out East, one’s an Indian kid from Queens (and if I’m talking to a South Asian, here’s the Telegu/Punjabi sidebar) and the other’s from the East Bay, Kool A.D., Tricky Vicky Vasquez …

“Oh, and they have a hype man ….”

Selling something called Das Racist would be a marketing nightmare. Which is why I usually didn’t give a shit whether whomever I was telling this to was really getting it or not. It became a patter I’d use to measure them while they stared at me blankly.

Which reminds me of a lot of your lyrics.

I have really enjoyed the ridiculous package of craziness. Intellectually and poetically and conversationally and literarily and every other adverbally …the stuff was smart and hot.

Unfortunately both the shows I tried to see out here in SF went pear-shaped (first one got moved from the Down Low to Ruby Skye so the crowd was lame and the PA at the second sounded not good). I never got the cohesive, rap band vibe, live … shame. No big deal, though. I don’t blame ya. It ain’t easy, and especially when you don’t really want to be doing it. Forget the dumb shit and appreciate what was great.

To me, it makes total sense you’d split. I associate with each of your ‘products’ differently and in two different parts of my mind.

With Himanshu, our connection to South Asian culture mixes with what my experiences were living in New York City for five years (North Brooklyn at the turn of the millennium – left after 9/11). Whereas with Victor, it’s a Bay Area thing. I love the Bay. So I think I hear some differences in style and approach. Myself, I’m a NorCal man and know I could never live in NYC again.

It seems more amazing that what just happened happened at all. It was thrilling you guys were so ballsy and spit what you spit during that run.

ups to Ashok, Lakutis, Danny, Gandhi, Amaze, and all the rest of the music-making crew. I have it in permanent rotation now.

Thank you, Das Racist, for what was the best rap act of the last four years.

mtk, Oakland, CA

The Rebirth of Peace – Five Moves Obama Should Make Now

09 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by in elections, public letters

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The re-election of President Obama has opened a door for believers who bought into the President’s original message of hope and change when he was elected in 2008.

Much of Obama’s support then was a direct result of his vote against the Iraq War. Democrats chose Senator Obama over Senator Clinton for many reasons, but the “Iraq War vote” was an important one that has been wrongly dismissed – it’s what tens of millions with many other differences were agreeing about.

The Iraq War vote was a symbolic difference between Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama, but with so few opportunities to truly understand our candidates in modern Presidential elections, it became a significant statistic for a large demographic of US voters who have been dismissed and reduced by mainstream media and the two major parties for more than a decade.

There is an anti-war electorate, and it’s a sleeping dragon in the USA.

Millions came out on February 15, 2003, in opposition to George W. Bush’s plans for War on Iraq. The vast majority of these then came out for Barack Obama five years later seeking an anti-war candidate, only to be disappointed by the last four years of capitulation, centrism and even rightist approaches to foreign policy by the President.

Now Obama has been re-elected by the exact same margin that George W. Bush was and the political obligation for standing up for the anti-war and progressive electorate that helped put and keep him in the White House must be addressed.

Here are five simple yet powerful moves Obama can and should make right now – while the political capital exists and the GOP is reeling from the smack in the face of the demographic and ideological realities of the election.

1. Close Guantanamo Bay Prison

2. End the Drone attacks on sovereign Pakistan and elsewhere.

3. Take a strong, open and progressive stand to approach Iran intellectually through discourse rather than via military options.

4. Create a Department of Peace, as first proposed by Representative Dennis Kucinich: taking just .001% of the defense/military budget to finance the creation of a cabinet position dedicated to peaceful outcomes to conflict. Appoint Mr. Kucinich as the first Secretary of Peace in U.S. history.

5. Pardon and Release Leonard Peltier – do it now ,Mr. Obama, at the beginning, rather than at the end of your term. Take a stand for prison reform.

I will not defend these points here, because I’m proposing them for purpose of discussion. Please read, consider, forward and comment.

Rather, I defend the idea that there would be very little or even NO political cost for taking these steps and that the benefits politically, socially and culturally would be immense.

Nate Silver has already pointed out that Obama’s margin of victory in the popular vote is almost exactly the same as Bush’s over Kerry in 2004.

Bush claimed a mandate and bombed and obliterated Fallujah! The triumphalism of the Republicans in 2004 was intensely exaggerated by FOX and the rest of television media. This is what contributed to the views of an ever-shrinking minority being allowed to dominate policy.

This is Obama’s chance to start the clean-break from the policies of Bush/Cheney and in particular the Foreign Policy, which was dominated by aggression, war and violations of every major peace treaty signed in the 21st Century: The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, The Geneva Peace Accords, The Warsaw Accords – Putin said, on the morning that Shock and Awe began in Baghdad, “It violates the U.N. Charter.”

Millions of Americans were the ones in Shock and Awe.

If Obama stood up for peace in the 21st century, tens of millions of voters and hundreds of representatives at all levels of government would support him.

It would also set a tone for his ability to work on topics which Republicans have rigidly blocked for the past four years. Obama could put the GOP way back on its heels.

Progressives would rise to support Obama for being a strong leader and taking steps to better our national character. The Democrats would gain millions who have felt left out by the centrism of the party over the last 20 years.

That is the point of this post: to create a huge groundswell of public support for these five ideas as a part of a National consciousness. That we, the 21st Century Americans, the Digital Generation, the new Americans, stand for a more peaceful relationship with the world.

It’d be easy to sell. The race between Obama and Romney was only close because so many millions did not participate. Many who did vote for Obama before left in disgust, but weren’t willing to cast a vote for the Republicans who do not share their values. These are the one Obama would attract. People longing to believe again.

Less than half the electorate votes. Obama could make huge strides among the disenchanted with principled action.

These are important stands for getting back our dignity as a nation. I firmly believe they would have very little political cost.

One way to measure if I am right is by memes, so if you’ve read this far and agree, I am asking all producers and hype-masters and friends and like-minded thinkers to tweet these five points and use the hashtags #Peace and #FreeLeonardPeltierNOW respectively as means of creating a measure of support.

Please do blog and produce work that promotes these ideals of peace that we all share.

Let’s push this country back on track by letting President Obama know he can be far more progressive without concern for political liability.

Start talking peace and Free Leonard Peltier Immediately – it’s the right thing to do.

The May Manifesto 2012 [feel free to redistribute widely uncredited]

07 Monday May 2012

Posted by in essay, North Oakland, public letters

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We demand better leadership, greater social welfare and a more secure future established and defended by law;

We demand the prioritization of social welfare by our government, as established by the Constitution, The Bill of Rights and this manifesto;

We demand a solution set to a Five Year Plan authored to conclude with a saner, better, safer, more economically solvent USA by the year 2068, which we consider the 50th Anniversary of The People’s Year, 1968.

We demand this begin with a bi-partisan, total-governmental “pause-and-reflect” to comprehend and address with greater social and moral responsibility what has been 30 years of a market-protective policy that has degraded our social foundation;

We demand Senators, Members, Justices and the Executive Office take much greater ethical responsibility for the struggles of our elders, the poor, the unemployed and suffering; ethical responsibility that matches at least what we achieved in great acts during times of economic crisis in our Nation’s recent past, specifically before the policies of the last 30 years: the Social Security System, FDR’s New Deal, LBJ’s Great Society, President Carter’s budget that predicated military aid from the USA upon humanitarian – and not political or economic – concerns;

We demand collaborative and not competitive effort in this regard – in the past we made the winner of the Presidency take other candidates as cabinet members and even the Vice Presidency – ending the animosity, showing greater concern, allowing our shared concern to become a national ethos for bettering our country;

We demand that our Representatives and our Media take a much more serious, sober and street-level look at our Nation and produce better coverage of issues and solutions-oriented messages that show our greatest strength: working together;

We demand that this pause-and-reflect to re-establish the priorities of the United States Government, our government, take place immediately, before Congress recesses and before the Election 2012 occupies the socio-political context, specifically because the elections process has collapsed in at least two of the first three federal elections of the 21st Century;

We demand an immediate Federal Election Commission as we had in 1973, focused on the rapid signing of a Federal Elections Act [FECA] that resolves once-and-for-all a nationwide, technologically-sound method of voting that satisfies major concerns about the proper casting and counting of votes, standardizes the process nationwide with contemporary technology and protects it from the blatant manipulation that has already occurred and is being swept under the rug (we have, since 2000’s horror of an election, established numerous non-profit, non-partisan institutions and groups with solutions);

We demand an end to the failed Immigration, Drug and Economic Protectionism policies that are collapsing into bitter, divisive and philosophically mean-spirited discourse predicated by race and race-orientation rather than national character;

We demand a solutions-oriented, bi-partisan Government to overcome what has gone on in the last 30 years: the slow descent of our culture into base values, the debasement of our government, our people, our way of life and our very spirit as a Nation due to despotism, political corruption, corporate influence and greed;

We demand a solution set to a Five Year Plan authored to conclude with a saner, better, safer, more economically solvent USA by the year 2068, which we consider the 50th Anniversary of The People’s Year, 1968.

We demand the Five Year Plan be authored by the Government after the Election of 2012 to allow the process of our recovery to begin next year – a Five Year Plan passed by Congress in 2013.

In solidarity,

we, the people

Last Piece Before Election 2008

31 Friday Oct 2008

Posted by in appeals, beliefs, Berkeley, Commentary, elections, essay, journalism, politics, public letters, thoughts

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We’ve proved that the electronic voting machines are made by highly partisan private corporations and feel strongly that fraud has occurred. There are dozens of very serious cases, allegations and simulations of sheer electronic fraud, by reputable academics. There are allegations of vote theft – the outright changing of results … read this excellent summative:  http://www.wanttoknow.info/electronicvoting


And still as many as ONE-THIRD of U.S. votes are being cast into the black box of un-auditable e-voting without paper record trails. See who votes how here:

[http://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/index.php?ec=mixed&topicText=&state=&stateText=] 

While this year’s presidential election has generated more interest than those in say 1996 or ’88, and perhaps even more than the Bush/Rove manipulations in 2000 and ’04, very few in the corporate press are preparing for what could be another utterly bogus presidential election night. The Republicans don’t need to actually win because they can negotiate the Democrats losing, and make the corporate press agree the polls were wrong.

“The Bradley Effect: that people won’t admit to pollsters that they didn’t vote for a black man” is already being paraded as an excuse, and races that are polling very wide are being portrayed as close! why? So it can be fixed again and presented as legit?

By contrast, many in the blogosphere of the Internet now feel that the outcome of the 2008 Presidential Election must be “either an Obama landslide, or definitively election fraud …” as it has been already identified in 2002 and 2004; including computer fraud via the alteration of votes in electronic voting machines, illegal vote purges and suppression in key states.

We have uncovered the exact ways in which HAVA (the “Help America Vote Act“) – forced county clerks in communities all over the country to rapidly accept UNAPPROVED Diebold, Sequoia and Premier electronic voting machines. We have testimonial after testimonial – all over youtube – complaining of what looks like rigging or suppression of votes. The outright changing of electronically cast votes by an exceptionally simple and quick hack is alleged nationwide. See these 3 movies on the facts:

http://www.freeforall.tv/
http://www.uncountedthemovie.com
http://www.stealingamericathemovie.org

So, on election night, what are we going to do? be transfixed by the corporate media? by Karl Rove’s fat face telling us a state has “flipped” from blue to red? or a “Too Close To Call” tuesday night and then a fixed election wednesday morning? how are we as a people to prevent election night and indeed our whole election process from being an utter joke?

Don’t let surprise turn into silent acceptance of a coup on election night. 

Brad Friedman started with that attitude. The one-man election integrity super-blogger has been pursuing issue after issue in an organized fashion for the past four years. www.bradblog.com is indispensable now from the standpoint of election integrity awareness. It’s possibly the single best place to go on the day after election day to follow up on a priori complaints. 

Black Box Voting, begun by Bev Harris, pursues similar goals – they are at www.blackboxvoting.org – and have begun a campaign they call: What to Do on Election Night “Protect the Count!” that advocates taking your video cameras where votes are stored on election night and being prepared to spend the night.

From the standpoint of long term solutions, so we can get together after this election and write the un-HAVA [maybe we could call it SAVA, the Secure America’s Votes Act]  and have it passed by the new Democratic President and Congress, here’s one: Open-Source Voting http://openvotingconsortium.org/ It’s endorsed by many who care, as a good way out of the nightmare HAVA has produced. 

“But MTK … ,” you ask, “ … all that’s fine and good, but what are we gonna do if it’s election night and they are freaking rigging the election and shoveling a result down our throats via the Corporate Press with bullshit numbers, un-investigated mysterious vote-shifts and hundreds of thousands of purged and missing ballots, again?”

First, I think be very open-minded, slow to judge and aware. Second, why not be prepared to bring the government and the press to a halt on Wednesday the 5th of November if necessary – a stoppage of the process for investigation. In all seriousness. Be prepared to say you do NOT accept a concession by any party or any interpretation of the votes by any government body without a full Congressional Investigation into the Election. Imagine headlines in the Times that read Election Fraud Alleged … Public Demands Results Be Investigated, and subheads:

impound the electronic voting machines

do NOT certify any election where voters claim the process was interfered with.

demand the right for a re-votes, tell people to prepare for a second ballot if necessary and entire re-votes of counties and states should be encouraged if necessary  

Other than that … get ready to tell the people who want to take this country over illegally again that that isn’t what democracy looks like, ‘cause that’s what we will be doing. And it may take months.

sincerely,

mtk on the mic

Letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 2007

19 Monday Nov 2007

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AN OPEN LETTER TO NANCY PELOSI, SAN FRANCISCO 2007
To: U.S. Representative Nancy Pelosi:
You are the only person of power we on the progressive left can approach, because of your position as Speaker of the House: you could re-structure the dialogue in this nation, and some would say you could single-handedly save it in a totally unique and American way.

We beseech you to ignore Republicans, Democrats and so-called Progressives who have conceded impeachment in toto.

Impeachment, Censure and Congressional Investigation allow us as citizens to monitor our leadership. They are important tools of state that must be exercised actively to keep balance. We feel you know this, but are being roped into a position of pseudo-neutrality by National and Federal pressures in your role as Speaker, and so, as constituents, here in the Bay Area, we urge you to reconsider, to take a new approach and to save this country from despotism.

Representative Pelosi, you will be greeted by a flood of support from the grassroots level if you take this on. You could revolutionize the argument. You could be the one in Washington who says, “This has nothing to do with the upcoming primaries or the Election of 2008 – this has to do with what this country wants revealed by this Administration now, before another can take over, before they are out of the reach of public accountability.”

Make History: We ask you to have a public change of heart and to step up to being the ethical and cultural conscience of our nation at this tense moment in history when this very unpopular administration has us poised to begin world war against Russia and Iran on bogus intelligence and false claims against another of West Asia’s ancient centers of culture.

The Cheney/Bush agenda for tactical nuclear strikes on Iran is aggressive, frightening and – exactly like the agenda against Iraq was – illegal, unconstitutional and against our country’s fundamental values. Yes, Ms. Pelosi, I am accusing them of lying and deceit in the engagement of their war in Iraq – the Persian Gulf War Two. I accuse them of great, staged manipulations in their idiotic War on Terror. Many at home and abroad fear greatly that they are engaged secretly in practices to do this again, thus: If we do not impeach Cheney and Bush then they will bomb Iran … with or without our sanction.

The only way to regain control of the U.S. American government from this kind of despotism is to actively promote transparent investigation of every single corner that Bush/Cheney has labeled “National Security,” to do the same with this War on Terror.

Demand the Administration open these to Members, in private or a special committee, if not publicly. Look into the requests of Constitutional scholars and others who see criminality in their behavior. Yes, definitely Investigate and Impeach Cheney; and be proud of taking this Bush government up loudly and on the record, because future generations will vindicate you. The lies, conflicts of interest and criminal acts are provable, apparent.

Bush, Cheney and the Neoconservatives:  Rumsfeld,  Ashcroft, Perle, Wolfowitz et. al., must be questioned. They have lied to the United Nations and our own people, and are universally being condemned for this. Our only hope is to show the rest of the world that our system here in the United States does have in place the means to check itself, when it is so obviously occupied by despots. That is what Impeachment and Censure are for. The world waits for us to take these people to task. Congress must open up the Bush/Cheney administration before it leaves office.

It is imperative to the future of our country that we force them to testify and tell us what has been going on in our name in their so-called war on terror. The successes they trumpet turn out to be staged and often involve terrified innocents. Their failures in Iraq and Afghanistan are riddled with criminal activities in prisons, in the field of battle and in the streets. There are hospitals and villages where our soldiers are feared and despised.

Please, Representative Pelosi, look deep into the future of this country, summon the courage and do what you do so well. Stand with your colleagues in the House who cry for Congressional Investigation of Cheney/Bush – that includes Impeachment and Censure, if necessary. It is an absolute necessity before the U.S.A. can pass one more law or engage in one more battle.

No, Ms. Pelosi, Impeachment, Censure and Congressional Investigation of Bush/Cheney have nothing to do with the Election of 2008. They have everything to do with the soul of our nation.

Respectfully,
M.T. Karthik

Letter to Senator Boxer Protesting Election 2004

26 Friday Nov 2004

Posted by in elections, Los Angeles, public letters

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Senator Boxer:

Let me begin by saying I voted for you. And that you may now be the only person that we on the progressive left can approach, because you are in many ways a part of power and the ruling class in the United States and you are a well-respected member of one of the major parties.

We beseech you to ignore Republicans, Democrats and so-called Progressives who have conceded this election as accomplished fairly and to independently look into the matter.

Please, Senator Boxer, take up the call for Investigation of the Election of 2004. Do it now; before the Electoral College votes and before the Inauguration of the President.

At this moment – as in 2000 – colleagues of yours in the House are prepared to contest and investigate the election for fraud. One Senator willing to ask is all they need to achieve such a request. Only one single Senator who is politically safe, who has the support of a Progressive community, and who has the courage of conviction to stand up and say simply that:

decisions regarding how we vote and for whom are being made too quickly, and as a result carelessly, and perhaps erroneously;

that our democratic processes are being rushed and hurried by the Republicans led by Karl Rove [called the “architect” of the re-election by Bush] and;

that democracy in the U.S.A. is suffering terribly, if not critically.

As a woman and a progressive Democrat, you have won re-election easily. People here support you for your ideas and values. You are in a safe state among people who share your beliefs.

After hearing four weeks of testimony from key states [especially Ohio] and after reading horrifying stories from around the country as to what happened on Tuesday, November 2, I and many of your other constituents believe that the results of the 2004 election are significantly riddled with errors, many of which circumstantially point to the STRONG possibility of FRAUD and vote fixing.

Senator Boxer, changing the outcome of the election is NOT our interest in asking this of you.

The desperate and fundamental need for a fair elections process and real democracy DEMANDS a slower, more measured, piece-by-piece investigation – conducted by Congress – of the Election of 2004 and in particular of the votes cast via electronic voting machines.

It is now clear that George W. Bush’s falsely named Help America Vote Act written to address the many issues that resulted from the 2000 election, served only to rush US counties and states into purchasing machines that have become black holes for American votes.

California’s Secretary of State Kevin Shelley was admired by people across the State for standing up to the manufacturers who were clearly complicit in rushing these devices past proper standards and though now he is being attacked within the system by the powers that be, it is clear he has TREMENDOUS public respect for his forward-looking actions on e-voting over the past year and a half.

By setting an aggressive calendar for hearings and for public and private input, Secretary of State Shelley was able to decertify machines and to put out a detailed list of 23 conditions for the use of other machines to make them safer and more accurate for Californians. He said when doing this that cheating wasn’t going to happen on his watch.

He then testified before the Election Assistance Commission and at both the Democratic and Republican Conventions, that other states should earnestly learn from California’s experience and institutionalize protections … but it was too little, too late.

Other states and indeed Bush’s White House and the GOP-controlled Congress diminished the significance of Secretary of State Shelley’s very hard work.

Senator Boxer, you will be greeted by a flood of support from the grassroots level if you take this on. You could revolutionize the argument.

As our Senator won’t you chastise them for what they did to our Secretary of State? Won’t you stop their stampeding toward re-election for long enough to examine the facts and the data? Won’t you please tell the rest of the country that Californians were very relieved to have had a Secretary of State who cared enough to demand protections against problems suffered in other parts of the country?

Please, Senator Boxer, look deep into the future of this country, summon the courage and do what you do so well.

Stand with your colleagues in the House who believe a Congressional Investigation into the Election of 2004 is an absolute necessity before the U.S.A. can pass one more law or engage in one more battle.

Only one Senator is required … it would make us all proud if you were first.

Respectfully,
M.T. Karthik

originally sent to: http://boxer.senate.gov/contact/webform.cfm
26 November 2004

The Night Schwarzenegger Won

07 Tuesday Oct 2003

Posted by in audio, journalism, Los Angeles, protest, public letters, reviews, social media

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I anchored news coverage for KPFK radio in Los Angeles during Governor Davis’s Recall to perhaps a quarter million listeners. Backed by solid investigative reporting and original interviews with numerous sources, my staff and I wrote what I would deliver after Schwarzenegger declared victory.

I co-authored and authorized the use of these words to introduce the new Governor. Much thought and weeks of effort went into it – listen:

I was initially suspended for my actions, but listeners protected me and I defended myself with sources and original reporting we had done into Schwarzenegger’s background for each of the adjectives we used to describe the new Governor.

In the end the phrase “sexual predator” was the issue. But I had, myself personally interviewed women for our news program who claimed it. Several others on our staff had interviewed other women complaining of it as well.

These were women who had been unheard by the State, likely because of Schwarzenegger’s power. We were the only news outlet affording them airtime. I made that call. As a journalist, I felt obliged.

I don’t know if anyone else described it like this on mass media, but I doubt it. Now years  later, Arnold’s sexual problems have been revealed publicly and his marriage dissolved from it. We were right. We said it … and few people heard.

and just a few minutes later, I was asked to describe and explain it to Londoners, who were just waking up to the fact that the movie actor Arnold Schwarzenegger had just won the Governorship of California.

MTK on British morning drive time radio.

That was 12 years ago, I was 33 and a news director with the backing of a huge progressive community in Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network – we were a voice for that community. That was the last of many lonely moments in that year for myself and our listeners.

An Austrian, Arnold Schwarzenegger, stole the Governorship of California because Democrats couldn’t effectively prevent a Republican-forced Recall Election of Governor Gray Davis, nor, once the Recall was in effect, competently back the supremely qualified Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante to victory (many in the State claimed it was because he was a Latino. ouch … 2003.)

Off-Year Elections

06 Wednesday Nov 2002

Posted by in appeals, beliefs, essay, Letter From MTK, Los Angeles, politics, protest, public letters

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I am a pacifist and a conscientious objector to war who seeks political asylum for myself and my family from the United States of America, whom I perceive to be the world’s worst terrorist nation-state.

It is a nation-state without clearly defined borders. It consistently and has constantly maintained armadas on the high seas and in ports all over the world – on “sovereign” territory. Its government is a military junta run by pseudo-Christian fundamentalists who have turned a universal moral truism: “Thou Shalt Not Kill” into its opposite, and have violated every international law on war established since the Second World War (as they have it): Nuremberg, violated. Geneva, violated. Warsaw, violated. U.N. and U.N. charter, violated from first day. The despotic faction in charge has violated also the United States’ own Constitution and shielded itself from recrimination or even inquiry. It is secretive, cabalistic and frightening to many.

The election of a Republican Senate unifies the branches of the U.S. government under an insecure, aging collection of un-representative rightists who paranoically project evil on to mankind, believe these actions to be legitimate. The media are predominantly owned by huge corporations who support this worldview, and the system has successfully factionalized, cordoned-off, controlled and out-capitalized independent outlets for information, thus eliminating any hope of a “checks and balances system” for at least two and a half years. There is about to be wholesale change of how business is done in the name of the United States with its partners and alliances. New compromises will be demanded on top of this, for this white, unfathomably rich, minority of the human species.

The people who have taken control of the United States government are the biggest money there is in the world and now, they are a desperate machine composed of a people who have fictionalized for so long that they feel they have startlingly seized control legitimately. To this worldview has been granted two years of control of the Supreme Court, both Houses of Congress and the Executive Office. (Please Lincoln Chafee, Turn. Now. Not to independent, to Democrat, outright.)

As a registered voter who has participated in the last 9 U.S. elections with federal implications, including the following for President, in order chronologically from 1988: Dukakis, Clinton/Gore, Nader and Gore and in local races in Austin, TX, San Francisco, CA, New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA, for Governors Ann Richards and Jerry Brown and many Democrats, Independents and Libertarian and Green Party candidates. I have participated deliberately in the American exercise in democracy with consideration.

I now believe that not one single vote that I have ever cast in the American system has made a positive difference in the world, because my vote either went to a losing candidate or my candidate was, in point of fact, a loser (Clinton). The American system is corrupt and worthless. It is not democracy (Germany’s is far better). The tiny range of political ideologies in its corporate-controlled system protects a wealthy minority from everyone else. A minority that allows only limited entry – at its speed, for its purposes – to its party.

Because I do not wish to participate in the lie that the USA perpetuates, I have been successfully marginalized by the very wealthy of the United States of America.

So, I have not democratically voted at all, but have merely attended a pathetic dance-of-legitimization that has resulted in hats and horn-blowers for the faction that calls itself Grand Old Party, a dance which would have been only mildly less incorrigible were it being done for the Democrats (I dare to say: “If Gore’s President, the WTC are standing today.” Bush baited them … all summer, just like Roosevelt in ’41 with the boats in Japanese water. It’s their style actually, it’s not even that clandestine, they call themselves “gentleman farmers” … The Bushes brought down the attacks, dammit. Face the facts. And they are murderers, this morning by an unmanned spacecraft over Yemeni soil. No judge, no jury. Cowboy – maybe Wellstone got it the same way.)

They are a serious family, the biggest mafia. The grandfather assisted in the financing of Hitler and the mentality that exercised the poisonous lie of eugenics. As it failed, they somehow planted candidacy onto one of their sons through a shady war-story and, though he lacked intelligence, he managed to ride on the coattails of the television actor, and so became Chief Executive and began baiting Arabs for oil, their “spice”. They rolled into Texas from Maine or Connecticut with a whole lot of money and they bought a posture by feeding bigotry, insecurity, fear and rage. They manipulated and bullied newspapers and poor people. They re-instituted barbaric, unenlightened practices. And they lied and posed bare-facedly, using powerful media to do so, rehearsing ultimately for the “big-time”. This is all so obviously scripted in their response to an event they ‘staged’ … And still they posture. It’s amazing, shameless.

Yes, conceptually, the Bush-Americans staged the attacks on the World Trade Center. [Leave out the Pentagon and wherever the other guy was wandering in what must have been a hellish turmoil. (“Your job is to see if they’ll shoot you down, God be Willing”).]

The Millennium was the set up and 9/11 was the knock down.

Forever let it be added to their list of crimes, the short-sighted old fools, the Bush-Americans staged the “planes-into-towers” thing. They built the set, bought the losses, made the calculations, placed the documentation tools, baited the enemy and stepped out of his way. And that is an accusation. A legal and civil accusation. These people are fascist and amoral and need to be tranquilized and jailed. They lack the intelligence to see humanity and our planet for what it is, a delicate organism.

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

AMERICA, I HAVE SEEN THE ENEMY, AND IT IS YOU.

Letter to the Editor of the New Yorker, 1997

10 Sunday Aug 1997

Posted by in essay, NYC, public letters

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The idea called India today affects the lives of hundreds of millions of people.  This idea is embodied by a geographic area which has ever-changing borders in the minds of those who name(d) it.  We who were born on Indian soil know it.  Those who were not but who are related to India in some way feel a very powerful relationship between themselves and India.

Those born at this moment, in these hours, weeks and months fall into a different category.  They are the contemporaries of nations and countries named.

They will come to call places India, Israel, Ecuador, Panama, America, Europe & etc. There is lessening influence from the time when they were not named as such.  As the years pass those who called other names, or fought for other names or fought naming, grow older and eventually die.

When a person who thinks carefully about names has a child, it is a moment of great importance.  For many, naming a child is an important act, but for many others naming does not stop there.  The act of teaching names to a child is equally important.  Because the names one teaches may live for at least another  generation through this act.

Early in his essay, “Damme, This is the Oriental Scene for You!” (New Yorker, June 23 & 30, 1997, p.52) Salman Rushdie makes use of a newborn name: Indo-Anglian literature.  And in so doing teaches the many children of his revolution a new name.  Whether this name lives for another literary generation depends upon its use and its use, as with all language, is a function of its necessity. Indo-Anglian literature is, by the parameters of its creation, a contemporary art.  Contemporary arts throughout history are marked with factors that distinguish them from previous movements. Among these factors perhaps the most impressive is risk.  In contemporary arts risk may become more valuable than endurance.

History is dying.

The era of the written word as a valuable and trustworthy guide to understanding is yielding itself to other processes by which we come to estimate the world around us.  The diversity of the tools and media we have available to estimate and distribute estimations of events and acts around the world are affecting literature in unprecedented ways.  The historical word, first spoken, then written and now reduced to an accompaniment to images in both written and oral forms, is dying.

In its place a concert of word and image and sound and space and portrayal and metaphor are being utilized to represent truth.  The modern citizen of the physical world must deal with this as the ideological world shrinks to the size of a p-nut in the palm of an Indian boy running the aisle of a plane travelling a tres grande vitesse on 16mm film, 24 frames per second.

The greatest contemporary artists in the written history of the arts have been brave.  In the face of change and alteration of beliefs, they have sought methods by which they can represent truths.  These artists exist today.  They seek trust.  They try to represent hope.  They are as Gandhiji, conducting “My Experiments with the Truth.”  In this way we are living in a very complex time for an artist or writer who wishes to participate at the most important, the most global, the most contemporary level.

Indo-Anglian writing and arts share, with the arts of other ancient cultures (Afro-Anglian?  Chino-Anglian?  Sino-Anglian?) the new joy of working in the Post-Colonial Era.  Indeed, the joy of supporting the end of the colonial era in an effort to support the whole one-ness of the human species.  At his wonderfully unifying musical concerts, the great Fela Anikulapo Kuti used to say, “You can say many things with English, but in order to say many other things which are true you must break it, which is why we speak broken English.  This next song is in broken English. You must break your English to understand it.”

In this country, we are faced with a unique set of problems as artists and writers trying to represent truth with the tools available to us.  We are subject to the philosophies of the dominant culture in the United States of America, which paradoxically represent the Colonial Attitude in a different aspect.

To be an Indo-Anglian writer in the United States is to choose to be a contemporary artist working in a contemporary arena to represent truths which affect millions of people using the tools available in the most powerful country in the world, an awesome task.

The writers who represent post-colonial Indian thought in literature in English are dedicated to many similar topics, but writers who are Indo-Anglian face the same difficulties with naming as anyone who wishes to express: we do not want to be grouped.  And yet we are all tied to this land mass which, as an island something like 45 million years ago smashed its way into the continental spread of Asia forcing up the formation of the tallest mountain in the world and the twisted masses of mountainous geography in the North of India.  Such a violent, willful act of inclusion seems so contradictory to this desire for independence.

Choosing to be here in the US, I struggle to represent the truths I experience despite this. In the United States the way in which the cultures relate has been poisoned by the specter of racism.  The complex way in which racism was born, named and now has insidiously changed itself into a thing which can exist despite the stated collective desires for freedom, peace and equality is a direct function of the way this country has been created.  It is something for which everyone who lives here is responsible.

In conclusion, I care about where you are from … but how we behave now that we are all here is what concerns me most.

M.T. Karthik, Harlem, August 10, 1997
[did not appear in the New Yorker magazine]