Okay, time for another round of answering e-mails.

Question 1: What are your thoughts on Barak Obama becoming the new President of the United States? - from Daniel Frogbrains

Answer: Hi Daniel, It’s difficult to imagine a worse administration than the current one. Well, actually, I take that back, my imagination is pretty good. But I think Barack Obama will be noticeably less vicious in his approach to the environment, addressing social needs, etc., which is of course a very good thing. But I also realize that he’s an elected politician in the United States of America, which means that much of what he does will follow the interests of whichever class is most successful in wielding their own form of power. Which is to say if ordinary working- or middle-class citizens do not insist on being reckoned with then I hope they are not too surprised if the upcoming presidency feels remarkably similar to previous presidencies.

Question 2: Greetings Pinky and crew, Why do you not have a forum set up? If your interest is discussion, then wouldn’t providing a forum for discussion be a logical goal? I look forward to a response. - Mrrar

Answer: Hi Mrrar, I like your name. The main reason why we don’t have a forum set up at our website is because we don’t have the resources or time to implement something like that the right way. I mean, it would be easy to throw a message board together and let people go at it, but I can imagine things getting out of control very quickly. All of the online discussion forums we’ve participated in in the past have been “not very constructive”. Discussing complex and difficult social issues doesn’t seem to go well with the “anonymity of the internet” thing. I bet a lot of the very nasty people who we run into on the internet would never say such stupid things if we were talking with them face-to-face. But that seems to be a very common problem. Of course if we can figure out a nice way to get around this problem we will be very happy to reconsider. In the meantime, we will just continue making videos and other stuff for people to discuss among friends, family, in classrooms, or whatever. The internet is the vehicle of delivery for Pinky Show but we still think the most transformative dialogue happens offline.

Question 3: Based on previous donation rates, what is the chance that the Pink Show will survive? (also from Mrrar)

Answer: Not particularly good. Pinky and I are 100% committed to this project but the challenges are also formidable. A two-cat production team to do the all the work we do? Hmm, this is probably not sustainable. And Mimi, who does all the paperwork and accounting for the Pinky Show project, has never accepted even one penny for all the work she does (not to mention she is already totally overworked in her “real job” as a doctor). Also, giving all your programming away for free, while not accepting advertisements or corporate sponsorship, probably does not make too much ‘economic sense’ either. I don’t think people realize how much time or money it takes to produce this kind of work. So for now we are just trying to keep going, doing the most cost-effective work for as long as possible, while we have our fingers (?) crossed that maybe one of us will suddenly get a great idea for how to make this all work. Pinky has lots of amazing ideas and outlines for episodes and projects but we can’t afford to do any of them. Maybe later. Also I would like to take Pinky to the dentist and the eye-doctor.

And finally, today’s stupid question, from Sean O’Brien: What is your nation of origin? The cat speaks excelent English with a passive tone and yet expresses aggressive Anti American goverment opinions. I do however detect an accent. For me to take anything presented serious, I need to understand and then be able to verify it’s origin.

Answer: Hi Sean, Yes, we are all from France. Now you know why it is so difficult for us to contain our anti-American sentiments, because as you already know, all of us in France are genetically predisposed to hate freedom. Now that you have discovered The Truth, know that 100% of what we present cannot be “seriously considered”. I have saved you much time, you are very welcome.

Idiot.

Oh, by the way, we have received quite a bit of questions & comments regarding the We Love Museums video, but I will leave it to Kim to respond to them when she has some time to do that.

- Bunny

Last night at about 2:30 a.m. Bunny and I found out that we are going to Slovenia next week. It was a little nerve-wracking for me, not knowing if we were really going or not until the last minute, but now that they sent us the airplane tickets I guess we are really going! Why Slovenia? Here’s the reason:

ENCOUNTER ON RADICAL EDUCATION
November-December 2008 events: Dialogs/Debates/Exhibition

Participants: Contra Filé, Dostje!, H.I.J.O.S., La Lleca, The Pinky Show, Radical Education, Section for Latin America, Social Center Rog, Universidad Nómada, Zampa di Leone, Albert Heta, Agon Hamza, Hajrudin Hromadžić, Helena Popović.

The encounter of art and activist collectives from three continents is a small piece in the mosaic of numerous experiments of symbolic and material social recomposition in times of capitalism’s profound systemic crisis. It represents an opportunity to rekindle discussions about the tradition of radical pedagogy and the methods of co-research, to learn about the media representations of overlooked realities excluded from the mainstream visual and sensual realms, about various tools for the production and distribution of effective counter-narrations emerging at the margins of the system: autonomous, self-organized communities.

“There is no silence, we are here to speak. About memories that give us strength to organize social struggles. About networks that move into new territories. About art as experience and experiment. About cultural hybrids and political mutants. About practices of freedom and about different social relations.”

In their different ways, the participants are involved in deconstructing the dominant meanings, media discourses, and ideological certainties to give back the voice to those who were voiceless, and the image to those who were faceless. Their counter-narrations (publicly ignored histories, unspoken memories, etc.) humbly submit to the principles of empowering communities (of native inhabitants, farmers without land, children from metropolitan margins, relatives of the disappeared, migrant and precarious workers). They are based on a grammar of practical questions and concepts, whose purpose is not to formulate a unified “program of action,” but to teach us to tell a coherent story committed to new subjectivities of resistance.

For rad. edu: Gašper Kralj, Bojana Piškur

Program:

Encounter on Radical Education, Friday, 28 November at 6 p.m.
Participants: Contra Filé, Dostje!, H.I.J.O.S., La Lleca, The Pinky Show, Radical Education, Section for Latin America, Social Center Rog, Universidad Nómada, Zampa di Leone.

rad. edu. exhibition opening, Friday, 28 November at 8 p.m.
exhibition at Škuc Gallery runs from 28 November – 14 December 2008
Participants: Contra Filé, H.I.J.O.S., La Lleca, The Pinky Show, Zampa di Leone.

Debate on satire and animated film as a means of social critique and Zampa di Leone workshop, Saturday, 29 November at 6 p.m.
Participants: The Pinky Show, Zampa di Leone, Hajrudin Hromadžić, Helena Popović.

Discussion with Albert Heta and Agon Hamza, Wednesday, 3 December at 6 p.m.

Sounds interesting, right? I’ll write about it when we get back (~December 4) if not sooner (still don’t know if I’ll have access to a computer or internet connection while we’re there). Okay, now I better go pack my backpack.

~ pinky

According to the Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, health care ranks third on the list of voters’ concerns, behind the economy and Iraq. The U.S. health care system is the world’s most expensive medical system, yet 47 million people are without coverage, and hundreds of thousands of people go into bankruptcy each year due to medical bills.

I’d like to thank Dr. Gise for sending me the link to the FRONTLINE online video Sick Around the World. It’s about an our long and in it, Washington Post foreign correspondent T.R. Reid finds out how five other capitalist democracies - the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Taiwan and Switzerland - deliver universal health care, and what the United States might learn from their successes and their failures. Following are excerpts from the website.

• In the U.K., the government-run National Health Service (NHS) is funded through taxes. “Every single person who’s born in the U.K. will use the NHS,” says Whittington Hospital CEO David Sloman, “and none of them will be presented a bill at any point during that time.”

• In Japan, which has the best health statistics in the world, by law, everyone must buy health insurance - either through an employer or a community plan - and, unlike in the U.S., insurers cannot turn down a patient for a pre-existing illness, nor are they allowed to make a profit.

• In Germany, the country that invented the concept of a national health care system, Professor Karl Lauterbach, a member of the German parliament, describes it as “a system where the rich pay for the poor and where the ill are covered by the healthy.”

• In Taiwan, the government collects the money and pays providers. Every person in Taiwan has a “smart card” containing all of his or her relevant health information, and bills are paid automatically.

• In Switzerland, insurance companies are not allowed to make a profit on basic medical care.

• According to Ried, it’s not all “socialized medicine” out there. Many countries provide universal coverage with private insurance, private doctors, and private hospitals. These capitalist countries don’t trust health care entirely to the free market. They all impose limits: (1) Insurance companies must accept everyone and can’t make a profit on basic care. (2) Everybody’s mandated to buy insurance, and the government pays the premium for the poor. (3) Doctors and hospitals have to accept one standard set of fixed prices.

• These foreign health care ideas aren’t really so foreign to us. For American veterans, health care is just like Britain’s NHS. For seniors on Medicare, we’re Taiwan. For working Americans with insurance, we’re Germany. And for the tens of million without health insurance, we’re just another poor country.

Almost all of us can agree that this fragmented health care mess cannot be ignored. The longer we leave it, the sicker it becomes, and the more expensive the cure.

Okay, now go watch the video. It’s entertaining & very informative at the same time.

- Mimi