Negativland News

From: Negativland <dr_land@negativland.com>

Subject: Forklifters: Big Butt Is No Longer Licking His Stamper

To: Jonathan Land <jonathanland@sprynet.com> From: Negativland <markh@olywa.net>
Subject: Big Butt Is No Longer Licking His Stamper Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2000 02:03:13 -0800

Good Hello Forklifters.....in this e-mail you will find Negativland news and views -

1. BIG BUTT IS NO LONGER LICKING HIS STAMPER 2. OUR NEW MAILING ADDRESS
3. TRUE /FALSE TOUR AFTERMATH INFO
4. DEATH SENTENCES
5. BUT WHAT ABOUT NAPSTER?
6. UPCOMING NEG PROJECTS, WEB STUFF AND NEG BOY IN D.C. SPEAKING TO LAWYERS 7. GOOD-BYE FOR NOW
_____________________________________________

and also....

8. SOME THOUGHTS FROM A MEMBER OF NEGATIVLAND ABOUT VOTING FOR RALPH NADER. 9. ARTICLE - HOW BAD IS AL? by Geov Parrish

1. BIG BUTT IS NO LONGER LICKING HIS STAMPER Big Butt, the famed cat of David Wills ( The Weatherman) who was immortalized on various Negativland projects, passed away this weekend at the age of 23. We will miss his circular cat messes.

2. OUR NEW MAILING ADDRESS
After 20 years our official mailbox in Concord California has officially closed its doors. Our official new permanent and officially forever mailing address is the extra official -

NEGATIVLAND
P.O. Box 7218
Olympia WA 98502
USA

If you sent something to our old address and it was returned, try our new one! It works great!

3. TRUE /FALSE TOUR AFTERMATH
You might very well be wondering how things went on our TRUE FALSE tour since we haven't said a DARN THING to you all since it ended!! Well, as usual, it was artistically successful and a financial mess. We were pleased and proud at how well the whole thing came together with our fantastic crew as we performed the two and a half hour show in 24 cities all over the US. Audience response was truly heart warming and great and if you were at the show, thanks for coming! Each show was recorded directly from the board mix, and, after being in a bit of a coma this summer recovering from the tour, we are now hard at work putting together a double live CD that documents these performances of mostly all brand new and previously unheard material. Look for a release early in 2001.

4. DEATH SENTENCES
Negativland is FINALLY (really!) in the final stages of putting together their long rumored DEATH SENTENCES OF THE POLISHED AND STRUCTURALLY WEAK. This is a 64 page color book and 50 minute CD studio recording, to be released in 2001.

5. BUT WHAT ABOUT NAPSTER?
Negativland gets asked about Napster and the issues that surround it ALL the time...we have, of course, been following this situation very closely for the last year. Quite frankly, as much as we wanted to rush quickly out into the world with our own MP3 ideas on how to deal with digital music for free or for sale on the net, well.....quite frankly, we were stumped! Its a very complex issue. But after much pondering and discussion amongst our group, we are poised to un-veil on our website (http://www.negativland.com) what we see as the only viable response to this new opportunity. Stay tuned for more Forklifters announcements in the next month and see our ideas turn into reality.

6. UPCOMING PROJECTS, WEB STUFF AND NEG BOY IN D.C. SPEAKING TO LAWYERS

We are putting the final touches on a one hour video compilation, collecting together the many short videos made by Negativland and various collaborators over the last five years. Most of these have never been seen by anyone before.

Founding Negativland member Mark Hosler is finishing up his first ever solo CD for release sometime in 2001.

Pastor Dick will be making a return to our website with his sound advice to lost souls everywhere.

Mark will be in Washington DC on November 10th speaking to a national meeting of the Volunteer Lawyers For The Arts at Georgetown Law University. Mark will be trying to explain just what the heck Negativland thinks its doing by stealing all that stuff that doesn't belong to them to make new stuff out of. Contact Maureen Harrington at mharrington@thewala.org for more info on this event.

And something might be finally falling out of the back of a spy plane and landing in our front yard so we can sell it you. More on that later on.

7. GOOD BYE FOR NOW
So, as you can see, we are busy as soda bees working on many new things for your listening and viewing and thinking pleasure.

We'll soon be hitting you up with our creative ideas on how to finance all this stuff (cause we dont have any money!!)......so stay tuned.

And now....

8. SOME THOUGHTS FROM A MEMBER OF NEGATIVLAND ABOUT VOTING FOR RALPH NADER.

Dear _______

Here's my personal take on this Nader Bore Gush thing, in case you were wondering (and if you weren't, or you cant stand the thought of someone in a *band* throwing politics at you, then STOP READING THIS MESSAGE NOW!! ). My views here dont necessarily reflect the views of the rest of Negativland (though, in fact, they all pretty much agree with me).

First off, I am going to assume that anyone reading this realizes that George W. Bush Jr. is a frightening MORON, who can barely string a sentence together (there's also good evidence that he is dyslexic, so wont that be fun when he gets elected?). And I am going to assume that you know who Ralph Nader is as well and know something about his campaign platform and what he speaks out for and against. You can go to http://votenader.org to find out more. And for more info on how really swell Big Al Gore is, try reading the article below (HOW BAD IS AL?), much of which you may not already know.

So mainly this message is for those of you who have, even for a moment, wondered about voting for Ralph Nader...or who are really torn between voting for Al Gore or Ralph Nader.

Personally, I can't do this lesser-of-two-evils thing. That's the only choice we've ever been given in every presedential election in my lifetime. I have no stomach for it anymore. Evil is evil. Gore and Bush are both scary bozos and are the most lame and pathetic presidential choices I've seen in my lifetime. At no time in history have two candidates for president been more exactly alike! The Democrats move to the center...and so do the Republicans. They adjust their campaign strategies from day to day based on polls and who donates the most money to them and give no indication that there is any reason to believe *anything* they say. They just want to WIN. But this time there is actually a candidate I'd like to vote for! A guy who is actually speaking about real issues that I care about and who can get 15,000 people to turn out for a rally for him in New York City. For the first time in my lifetime I actually give a shit about voting for prez .....Ralph Nader! Woohooo!! http://votenader.org

So - could my vote for this Nader guy send Bush to the White House? According to USA TODAY, it might! But I really dont care....and here's why - I think you have to take a much LONGER view of history than the next four years. If we keep using this lesser of two evils excuse forever (because there will never EVER be a "good" time in history to vote for someone like Nader) then we will never vote for what we truly want. We'll get talked out of it every time by folks like in many of the "hold your nose and vote Gore" e-mails that have been sent to me lately . The Democrats rely on this to win and thus don't even bother to pander to the progressive left at all anymore like Clinton once did.

So my feeling is - why not start voting for what we really want RIGHT NOW?

One way I have always lived my life is to TRY and live and act as you want the world to be. Its why Negativland continues to ignore silly corporate copyright laws and make the kind of stuff we want to make. It's why I live in Olympia Washington. And what is the most fun and optimistic thing to do this election that reflects how I would like our world to be? Why, voting for Ralph Nader, of course! Voting for the lesser of two evils is a wasted vote.

If Bush *does* get in it will help mobilize folks on the left and the anti-globalization movement even more than it is now. Civil disobedience will become even MORE HIP than it already is. Under Reagan and Bush Senior, the left was vigilant and active and prevented many things. Under Clinton...well, Clinton did such a brilliant job of feigning to the left that the progressive left got lax. A lot of bad things slipped by. I have read many comparisons of Reagan and Clintons record and Clinton is FAR WORSE., but he *seems* like such a nice caring liberal guy. Shit, nothing like NAFTA, or WTO or WELFARE REFORM or the DIGITAL MILLENIUM COPYRIGHT ACT or the continued DAILY BOMBING of Iraq happened under Reagan! And there were many many more pro-big-business decisions made under Clinton than Reagan.

A vote for Nader then, is, to me, a vote for optimism and hope. A "hold your nose and vote for Gore" vote is a vote for cynicism and hopelessness. A vote for Nader will strengthen the progressive movement in the long term in this country (c'mon, ya gotta think long term here!) and force the Democrats to move more to the left to pacify us in the next ( or maybe the next one after that...we have to think LONG TERM!) presidential election. It will push the Democrats into adopting some of Ralph's and the Green Parties ideas in order to win in the future. But most importantly, if Nader gets 5% of the vote, the Green Party will qualify for millions of dollars in funds for the next presidential election four years from now. And that will be a small, but very significant, step in creating something truly new in American politics.

So, to me, its a no brainer. I vote for Nader.

And if Bush really *does* try to turn back the clock on Roe VS Wade (which I doubt he will. He's just posturing for the extreme right vote. Every poll ever taken shows the majority of Americans are in favor of choice.... go to http://www.votenader.org/feminist_support.html for some smart responses to that critcism of Nader) it will be GREAT to see how much shit hits the fan to fight it. And believe me, that fight will be successful . I have no doubt about it.

love,
mark
negativland

P.S. Oh....and one more thing...after seeing a well done and extremely upsetting documentary film here in Olympia about the genocidal effects of our continued sanctions in Iraq (we've killed *one sixth* of their population via sanctions in the wake of our destruction of all their societies infrastructure in 1991 when we bombed not only their army but their water treatment plants, electrical plants, medicine factories, milk plants, etc. etc. which have never been rebuilt.....AND the effects of all the highly radioactive depleted uranium we shot at them) and hearing both Bush and Gore adamantly oppose any lessening of those sanctions, I could never in good conscience vote for either of these two lovely men.

P.P.S. and dont' get me started about our electoral college.. I *know* we don't live in a true democracy.....

9. HOW BAD IS AL?

BY GEOV PARRISH

For most progressives, this presidential election is not a choice between Al Gore and George W. Bush. It is a choice between Al Gore and Ralph Nader, or Gore and some other third party candidate, or Gore and not voting. Bush, like an inescapable force of nature, is simply assumed to be awful.

The question--and it's a question that may well determine Washington state's electoral votes--then becomes: How bad is Gore? Is he redeemable enough that it's worth voting for him to prevent Bush from becoming president, or is he another one of those forces of nature littering our corporatocracy?

For the answers, don't turn to the campaigns, where both the candidates and the media are eager to play up the meager differences between the two men. Turn instead to Gore's substantial record, as son of privilege, congressman, senator, and vice president. Here's a sample:

War on Drugs: A marijuana smoker in his early years, Gore now pushes hard for tough-on-crime policies that have imprisoned a record two million people in America--more than the entire population of the state of West Virginia and four times as many as were incarcerated in 1980. He supported application of the death penalty for over 60 federal crimes (mostly drug dealing offenses) and calls for the elimination of federal habeas corpus review.

Military Attacks: Gore was one of the few Democratic senators to lobby long and hard, during the contentious debate preceding it, in favor of the Gulf War. He also supported "intervention" in Libya, Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Sudan, and Yugoslavia. He is an ardent supporter of militarism in any situation in which the United States claims a "humanitarian" motive. As senator, Gore was a key proponent of development of the MX missile; now, he supports $60 billion for Star Wars (the ludicrously renamed "National Missile Defense").

Civil Rights: Gore's "Reinventing Government" initiatives of 1993 and 1994 were a successful, and thinly disguised, attack on minority protections in the civil service. In 1980, he supported a bill by Representative Bob Dornan of California that, if passed, would have preserved tax-exempt status for schools that barred black students.

Supreme Court: Before Anita Hill went public, Gore was a strong supporter of the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas, enthusing, "I believe there is no question of Judge Thomas' competence . . . he possesses a quick and incisive intellect. He speaks and writes with precision, power, and persuasiveness. . . ." Senator Gore also voted to approve the most reactionary member of the Supreme Court, a corporate lawyer named Antonin Scalia.

Abortion: Gore opposed abortion rights for most of his congressional career, speaking of "a fetus' right to life." He supported the Hyde Amendment banning federal funding for abortions for poor women and even at one point opposed a provision allowing exceptions in the case of rape. He voted for an unsuccessful House measure that defined a fetus as a person from the moment of conception and denied federal funding to any hospital or clinic that provided an abortion.

Gay Rights: Gore voted in 1980 for an amendment prohibiting the federally funded Legal Services Corporation from assisting people discriminated against because of their (actual or perceived) sexual orientation. In August 1986 Gore voted for a Jesse Helms amendment forcing the District of Columbia to overturn a law prohibiting insurance companies from discriminating against HIV+ applicants. A year later, he voted to prohibit HIV+ immigrants from settling in the US. At the behest of pharmaceutical corporations, he has led efforts to prevent South Africa from introducing affordable generic HIV drugs.

Free Trade: The Democratic Party platform this year touts Gore's role in brokering "more than 200 trade agreements, including NAFTA and GATT [WTO]," and calls for fast track authority to sidestep future congressional opposition to such disasters.

Welfare Reform: The same Gore-crafted platform crows over the dismantling of the federal welfare program and vows to crack down on "food stamp fraud," long a bugaboo of the far right.

Environment: Gore has long-standing financial interests, now totaling $500,000 in stock, in Occidental Petroleum, a company that is trying to build a pipeline that would threaten the very existence of the U'Wa tribe in Colombia. In a scam reminiscent of the Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s, Occidental was the lucky beneficiary of a 1996 Gore plan for the federal government to sell off a strategic military oil reserve outside Bakersfield. His current energy plan calls mostly for tax breaks for energy companies. Gore also signed off on strip mining adjacent to one of the most popular state parks in his home state of Tennessee. As vice president, he has led US efforts to stonewall international agreements on ozone levels and global warming and calls for "protecting the environment without trapping businesses in a tangle of red tape"--code for abolishing inconveniences such as the Endangered Species Act.

Labor: During the Carter presidency, Gore provided one of the key votes that sank a bill aimed at expanding unions' rights to picket during a strike.

During Bill Clinton's 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, liberals argued that sure Clinton sounded conservative, but once elected he would do the right thing. He almost never did, of course, but in 2000 liberals are focusing on how bad, or how stupid, George W. Bush is. They aren't even trying to make a Clintonesque apology for Gore. There is no chance that he'll do the right thing when faced with a politically risky decision. He never has.

On all of these issues--with the exception of military intervention, where he is actually less of a hawk--Bush is just as bad. But when a Republican politician acts on such issues, there is opposition. When a Democrat such as Gore does it, politicians and pundits proclaim a national consensus and dissenters are shunted aside.

With this formula, the Clinton/Gore administration achieved in its eight years countless destructive policies that Reagan and Bush Sr. advocated but could not push through. Gore is more conservative than Clinton, and more effective than Bush. His administration will be a nightmare.

--
http://incomplete.net - "If it's not here, it's incomplete!"

"Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop taking amphetamines."

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Original file name: Negativland news - converted on Sunday, 11 March 2001, 14:27