Bunny Mailbag: Obama, Forums, Legitimacy, etc.

Posted by Bunny.

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 put more effort into appearing less vicious towards the environment, social welfare needs, etc. But, ultimately 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 aren’t too surprised when the upcoming presidency ends up being 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 "interesting but also 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 a good ‘delivery vehicle’ for us 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 that needs to be done? 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). Giving all of our materials away for free (while not accepting advertisements or corporate sponsorship) doesn’t 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, until maybe one of us will suddenly get a great idea for how to make this all sustainable. Pinky has lots of great ideas and outlines for episodes and projects but we can't afford to do any of them. Maybe later. Also I think it’s important that one day Pinky would be able to afford going to the dentist and 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, everyone in France are genetically predisposed to hate freedom. Now you know the truth, you’re 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.

~French Bunny

Pinky Show Website Hacked

Posted by Pinky.

The Pinky Show website was hacked yesterday. Bunny set to work right away and got things back to normal so our website is once again free from malicious code.

But for all PC users, if you visited us yesterday or today (November 11 or November 12), it is possible that your computer may have been infected with a trojan virus. As a precaution, Bunny recommends that you scan and protect your computer with an up-to-date anti-virus program.

This is not the first time people have tried to forcibly shut us down and I'm sure it won't be the last. But like I said last time, it's not possible to stop cats from doing something once we've set our minds to it. All attempts to silence us will ultimately fail.

~Pinky, Bunny, Mimi & Kim

New Episode: Museums, etc.

Posted by Bunny.

Hi everybody. We just posted a new episode - it's supposedly about museums, but actually it's also an introduction to the ideological nature of all cultural institutions. This is the first episode where Kim does the presentation and I'm guessing it'll be most popular with our friends in cultural studies, museum studies, studio arts, and other stuff like that. We'll be doing some follow-up episodes in the future on this subject-area, for now we just wanted to make a small opening. Here it is:

We Love Museums... Do Museums Love Us Back?

Also, I wanted to point out that we made a free, downloadable poster that goes along with the episode. If you want it, you can retrieve it (it's a PDF file) from the We Love Museums... entry in the episode archives list:

Pinky-in-a-museum-display-case poster

We've got a lot of stuff going on around here, please check back often as several of our episodes are entering the final stages of production and we'll be posting them as we finish them.

"Have you hugged your animal friends today?"

~B.

Elections Perspectives: West, Zinn, Chomsky, & Invisibles

Posted by Pinky.

Over the past few months Bunny and I been posting some interesting stories about the U.S. presidential elections here in our blog. Today I have a few nice, short YouTube videos for you, posted in no particular order. Here come the elections - I hope you all vote! Take care, pinky

Cornel West:​

​Howard Zinn:

Noam Chomsky:​

​Two of the (Nearly-)Invisible:

[ video no longer available ]​

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Bunny: I would love so much to punch Wolf Blitzer in the face.

Lt. Watada Update

Posted by Pinky.

We are very pleased to hear that a U.S. District Judge has (finally!) ruled that the Army cannot send Lt. Ehren Watada to trial a second time for the same charges - to do so is called 'double jeopardy' and would be a violation of his constitutional rights. As you may recall, the first trial was declared a mistrial by the presiding Army judge when he realized that the trial wasn't going as well as he had hoped (i.e., guaranteed conviction). With this additional setback hopefully the Army will just discharge Lt. Watada already - his term of service to the military was actually over in 2006, since then he's basically been held captive by the legal process and consigned to a meaningless desk job counting paper clips.

I don't know what will happen next - if we hear something we'll post it here.

[ Pinky Show Ehren Watada speech from 2006 ]

~ pinky

Lots of new stuff to report!

Posted by Bunny.

We just released a new video episode - it's an interview with Clifford Thornton Jr. on the subject of The War On Drugs. Take a look at it in our archives.

Just published in the Conversations Area: an interview with Phyllis Bennis on U.S.-Iran relations. If you've ever felt "generally confused" about Iran and its nuclear program, possible U.S. military strikes, and so on, I think you'll find this article very helpful.

I added a bunch of new designs to our store including shirts, a tote bag, and stickers! Also, our Winter Solstice Shirt Fundraiser is back! Any 10 shirts in a box for $200! Wow, that's only $20 for a limited run, hand(paw?)-printed, super-soft premium shirt made in the U.S.A. by American Apparel! AND it has Pinky-drawn cats on it??? That's crazy! Place your order soon before our shirts run out.

Why is this important? Well, because...

...we have VERY LITTLE TIME remaining to meet our fundraising goals! The end of the year is fast approaching and the half-matching challenge grant from the Pierre & Pamela Omidyar Fund will go *poof!* after that. We've been trying our hardest to do all kids of relationship building and fundraising because we're looking for signs as to whether people think the Pinky Show project is worth supporting or not. 100% of all monies raised goes directly into the project - please help us continue our work.

Misc. Hawaii update:
We're still working on the Hawaii series. Pinky's already re-worked the intro section about 80 million times - which is okay I guess because that's the most difficult part and I don't want to force her to release it until she's satisfied. I'm sure it'll be pretty soon. Meanwhile the subsequent parts continue to move nicely towards completion.

Don't forget to take good care of yourself as you fight the forces of evil!

~Bunny

Greg Palast: Steal Back Your Vote!

Posted by Pinky.

Now that the presidential elections are almost here, we've been getting more and more e-mails from people asking us who we're going to vote for. Well, as I've pointed out many times before, cats are barred from participating in human being elections.

But, for all of you people out there who (supposedly) can vote, you may want to watch this short video. BBC reporter Greg Palast (one of the more interesting, and dare I say it - entertaining - reporters out there) filed this short video report about how Republican & Democrat party politicians have been secretly engaged in a back-room struggle to rig the upcoming presidential elections. Don't go down to your neighborhood polling place only to be met with a unpleasant surprise ("No, you can't vote...") - watch this video!​

This video originally appeared as part of Democracy Now!'s October 9, 2008 broadcast. You can watch the whole show (or read the transcript) by clicking here.

I'm guessing that after you watch the video you'll be feeling very, very angry - no problem, Greg Palast and Bobby Kennedy Jr. have already anticipated that. They've published an informational comic book (less depressing / funner than a conventional newspaper article) that you can download here if you want to know how to "steal back your vote".

[ www.StealBackYourVote.org ]

Good night,
pinky

The Financial Crisis

Posted by Mimi.

What's happening? The Dow Jones industrial average is down 40% since its peak of 14,165 points a year ago, on October 9, 2007. That's a loss of $8.4 trillion. Is this a result of greed and fraud on Wall Street? Who is responsible? Has anyone gone to jail yet?

Kim and I are following the coverage of this financial crisis. Unfortunately, we often have difficulty understanding humans. (Just listen to the election debates – someone, or everyone, has to be lying.)

Trouble in the credit markets means no loans, and no loans mean no money. You may ask: Why are humans so dependent on debt? Here's a helpful video called Money as Debt - it's 47 minutes long but goes a long way to explain the current situation. Interesting how animated characters are easier to understand than humans in general.

Thanks to Matthew for sending us a link to this video. ~M.

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Posted by Bunny: I like the information contained in this video, especially the first half which covers the "history of money". Not crazy about the drawings tho.

Naomi Wolf: The End of America

Posted by Kim.

I'm enjoying this book, it's very provocative. I felt like I must post this video interview and I hope people will go and borrow this book from the library.

"You will be shocked and disturbed by this book. Most Americans reject outright any comparison of post 9/11 America with the fascism and totalitarianism of Nazi Germany or Pinochet's Chile. Sadly, the parallels and similarities, what Wolf calls the 'echoes' between those societies and America today, are all too compelling." - Michael Ratner, Center for Constitutional Rights

"The time is now..."

Go here: [ American Freedom Campaign ]

~kimkim.

Leaked: Let's Install a Dictator in Afghanistan

Posted by Bunny.

The minutes from a high level meeting between English and French diplomats in Afghanistan have been leaked to a French newspaper (Le Canard Enchainé). French government officials have admitted that the leaked information is authentic. According to the British Ambassador to Afghanistan:

• "The current situation is bad, the security situation is getting worse, so is corruption, and the government has lost all trust..."

• "The presence of the coalition, in particular its military presence, is part of the problem, not part of its solution... Foreign forces are the lifeline of a regime that would rapidly collapse without them. As such, they slow down and complicate a possible emergence from the crisis."

• The American strategy is "destined to fail."

• The only "realistic" way to unite Afghanistan would be for it to be "governed by an acceptable dictator" and the governments of the occupying forces (U.S., England, France, etc.) should begin preparing public opinion for this.

New York Times story here.

Obviously, no comment on the moral or legal implications of any of this.

~Bunny.

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Added 10/04

This cartoon by Matt Bors from GI Special 6J3 [ download PDF ]. Pass it around - it's what (some) GIs are reading. Thanks to HI-REDVET folks for forwarding to us. ~B.

"Let me corn!!"

Posted by Pinky.

Happy Birthday video for Lori from pinky.​

Your Money or Your Health

Posted by Mimi.

My friend Corie went to the vet today because her tail was sore and swollen (she got bitten by a dog). She needed surgery, and luckily her big one had $500. Imagine what happens to people who don't have health insurance. (believe me - human being surgeries don't cost "only" $500!)

Healthcare is a right. Yet 47 million Americans are uninsured and millions more are underinsured. 18,000 people die every year because they are uninsured. People with insurance are bankrupted when they have a serious illness. People want universal healthcare and physicians want universal healthcare. We cats don't understand why American people still don't have universal healthcare. Watch this video!

>> Health of the Nation – Coverage for All Americans <<

In the video, the panelists discuss problems with the current health care system. Seems like everyone is dissatisfied with the current system.

Currently, about 60% of the U.S. healthcare system is financed by the government (taxes). These funds pay for Medicare, Medicaid, the VA (Veterans Administration), and coverage for public employees (including police and school teachers), elected officials, military personnel, etc. About 20% is financed by the people directly through out-of-pocket payments such as co-pays, deductibles, and insurance premiums. About 21% is financed by private employers. Under the current system, the poor pay a much higher percentage of their income for healthcare than higher income individuals.

In fact, American people can have universal healthcare at essentially no additional cost. A universal public healthcare system can be funded by savings from eliminating administrative wastes under the current system (at least 30% healthcare costs). People may pay a little more in taxes, but this would be more than offset by all current out-of-pocket payments. For the vast majority of people, the cost would be less than the current system. See Physicians for a National Health Program: http://www.pnhp.org.

Shouldn't a government take care of its people? Is it more important to save lives (for no additional cost) than to save Wallstreet (for $700 billion)? We would've been very sad if Corie had died today because of a stupid little bite.​

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Posted by Bunny: Just so you know, Mimi is a practicing physician and before that worked as an economist.

Everything Has a Spirit + I Can Hear Gandhi

Posted by Kim.

Pinky & Bunny are busy audio recording today so I'm bored and blogging.

First thing I want to say is "Everything has a spirit." I have no proof of this, but I think it's totally okay to write diary entries about things that are not yet proven as facts but maybe fall under the big category of "beliefs". Question though - how can something like this be proven? I have no idea and I don't really care. When I was younger I could hear almost everything talking to me, even fruit and staplers. Everybody thought I was crazy, even Mimi. Or they said "She's just a kitten." It's not just cats who like to pretend that we are so unique in the spirit-world, I notice human beings are the same way. Actually, deep down I think lots of people want to believe everything has a spirit but if they stop and think about it using the officially approved thinking methods, then they make conclusions, "No, only we are so special to have a spirit" which to me is totally ridiculous. But as I said earlier I have no proof. This is funny though - if you put fake eyes on a picture of anything suddenly people will say "Hey look at that talking stapler!", no problem.​

Related topic: Here is a very, very rare audio recording of Gandhi. Everybody's heard of Gandhi but almost no one has heard his voice before. Maybe you saw a movie about him but that's not the same thing.

(click on the picture to play audio)

Come to think of it how do we know this is really Gandhi's voice? Unless you were there and made the recording yourself, why would you believe me that this is Gandhi? Do you believe me just because I showed you an old album cover?

I think it's very unpredictable what we are willing to accept as proof of something on a day to day basis.

~kim

1:1 Relationships

Posted by Pinky.

You ever get the idea that your life is trying to teach you something? Recently I've had a bunch of separate things happening to me that, taken all together, is making me rethink what I value about relationships. I won't bore you with all the details of the individual occurrences, but still, I think I'd like to write about it a little if you don't mind, so I can figure it out a bit.

The past couple of years Bunny and I have put a lot of effort into trying to make The Pinky Show more popular. Especially this last year, we've spent an enormous amount of time writing e-mails or talking on the telephone with people making working relationships that we think will help get the word out. We think our message is important so we want a ton of viewers. (I hope that doesn't sound too arrogant, I just mean that we have an important job to do and we take it very seriously.) Recently we went over 6 million PS episode views, so it does look like something is working, but one of the things that I've been thinking about more is this: Are we approaching relationship building the right way? What kind of relationships do we want?

I ask this now because I've noticed I've been feeling weirder about people as our project gains popularity. It's not that people are becoming weirder (I'm not crazy - I do realize it's not everybody around me that's changed...), I just think the problem is I'm spending way too much time communicating with people I don't actually know. As our project has gotten more popular, Bunny and I find ourselves spending more and more time doing 'relationship building' with people we'll probably never meet. I'm sure most of these individuals are perfectly nice and in real life they'd be wonderful to chat with over coffee. But to be realistic, for 99.9% of the people we communicate with, we'll probably never have a chance to meet them face to face.

I know having allies is really, really important. We have common political objectives and I realize we all need to work together to achieve specific goals. But I also think I haven't thought enough about 'working relationships' via the internet and how that's connected to how I'm put together emotionally. Bunny, Mimi, Kim, and I are actually very private and introverted. We're not un-friendly but I know we all tend to like relating to less people more deeply, instead of a ton of people just a little bit (or not at all). And the latter is exactly the direction that our lives have gone in the past couple of years! My gut feeling is I think that's some kind of problem.

The bottom line is I think it's really important for me to keep 1:1 relationships the center of my life. Considering the nature of our work, I'm not really sure how I'm going to do that, but I think it's definitely a good idea.

I'm going to try to make it a priority to strike a better balance in our relationship-building activities. We're not going to stop working to increase our audience, because that really is a basic requirement necessary for the success of our project. But I also think I need to fundamentally change my mindset about how I interact with others. I need to be more picky-choosy about who we spend our time working with. I think it's okay if Bunny and I approach our work as if we are making all this stuff for ourselves and each other, and oh, by the way, it just so happens we have a few million people watching. Something like that.

Every day we get a ton of e-mails from people and a good number of them want something: can you do "X" for me/my organization, I need an answer regarding "Y", make an episode on subject "Z", and so on. It only occurred to me this morning that we don't really have a way to ask these people something simple like: "Who are you?"

~pinky

Day 2 of Not Blogging!

Posted by Pinky.

Okay, I know just yesterday Bunny said we're not gonna blog so much anymore and here I am making a diary entry for the second day in a row. (sorry?) But I wanted to post this very interesting YouTube video titled An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube. It's kind of long but also very fascinating. I think everybody intuitively knows that YouTube is somehow a very important social and cultural phenomena, but most of us don't really understand what it is, who it is, and why it is. So if that's you then here's a useful video.

Thank you to Lynette for telling me to watch this!

Okay I think I'm going to go to sleep early tonight. Goodnight everybody.

~pinky

Blogging vs. Videos; Young People Doing Good Things

Posted by Bunny.

A couple of weeks ago I launched our Teacher's Survey to help us collect data about what people think about our videos, our website, and other stuff. One of the things that quickly became apparent when we started analyzing the data returned from the survey: people really like videos. Nearly all the surveys we got back told us that they consider the videos on our site - not only videos we've produced but also videos by others we've re-presented - to be extremely useful, which I guess is very good news. This blog, on the other hand, received only a 'somehwat useful' rating from most site visitors.

Pinky and I had been assuming that people like this blog because the blog pages actually receive a lot of visitor traffic. But now that we have data to look at, we realize that a lot of people might be reading this blog without finding it too useful! And since we are all about doing work that others will hopefully find useful, I think it makes a lot of sense that we should spend less time writing in this blog and more time making or finding good videos for people to watch and use.

We'll probably just keep this blog on the website because there are a lot of times we just feel like writing something with no intention of further developing it into an episode. It's a relatively quick way to get an idea out there. But since neither of us are fast writers it does take time away from other things so probably we should use our time more wisely.

So! On that note, tonight I will post a nice YouTube video here that made me feel really good when I watched it. I know some of you think we (cats) are really down on human beings for all the stupid things they do, and to a certain extent I guess that's true, but I am also very impressed with some human activity from time to time. Like these people in the video, for example. They are young people who are taking the responsibility to make their life's work all about helping the planet. When the majority of people decide to make the majority of all their waking hours count - instead of thinking of service to humanity, animals, and the planet as some kind of spare-time activity - then I think this planet will survive. Thanks to Life of the Land for the video.​

When the Anna Rose talked about her response to seeing the coal ships on the horizon exporting climate chaos to the rest of the world, I almost choked. Can't be that she was the only one to see that - which makes me wonder: Why is it that, presented with disturbing or otherwise challenging information, some people will change their lives in order to fight for change, while others will continue on, business as usual? Pinky and I have been trying to figure this one out for a few years but still have no real explanation.

~Bunny.

Educator's Survey

Posted by Bunny.

We've created a new survey for teachers/educators: [ link no longer active ]

Feedback is very important to us - it not only helps us to understand how people are using our work; positive quotes and testimonials are also very helpful when we submit grant applications. So if you do any kind of teaching - at a school, university, community center, your living room, or anywhere else for that matter - please help us to make a difference by taking a few minutes to fill out a survey.

So if you know any teachers that use/love/hate The Pinky Show, please send them the above link. Or, if you know any teachers who don't already know about the Pinky Show project, please introduce them to our website. We don't have a budget for advertising, public relations, or marketing - everything is 'word of mouth'. Thank you!

Hey America! Why Not Visit Runit?

Posted by Bunny.

Runit is a small island in the Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Where are the Marshall Islands? Here's a tiny reference map to orient you.​

And why would you want to visit Runit? Well, for one thing, Runit is home to a very impressive concrete dome built there during the late 70's. After seeing the photo below, I'm sure you'll want to see it in person:​

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Spectacular, isn't it? The concrete cap is 18" thick and 350 feet wide. The tiny dots on the dome are people. So yes, it's big.

The dome was kind of like a gift from the United States to the people of the Marshall Islands. Why? Well, after World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union were both engaged in an unfriendly game of nuclear oneupmanship. As part of this competition the United States used various sites in the Marshall Islands from 1946-1958 to test nuclear weapons. Of course this resulted in enormous amounts of radioactive contamination to the environment and all life forms in the area, but fortunately 20 years later the U.S. was kind enough to scrape up some of the contaminated everything and dump it all into one of the atomic bomb craters. Then they poured concrete on the whole thing. The dome has developed lots of cracks in its surface and it's leaking toxic stuff into the environment, but the U.S. government says it has "no formal custodial responsibilities for the site", which I can only assume means that it's safe. So the next time you feel yourself desiring a tropical island getaway, don't forget Runit.

~Bunny.

P.S. Almost forgot - here's a short excerpt from a recent news story about the legacy of atomic testing in the Marshall Islands (The Sydney Morning Herald, Aug. 18, 2008). You might want to read it.

Later I meet Lemeyo Abon. She - like 90 per cent of the children from her island of Rongelap who were exposed to radiation during the test era - has cancer, in her case thyroid cancer.

She vividly describes the morning of March 1, 1954, when a flash of light eclipsed the sun and white powder drifted down from the sky.

"It was fallout from Castle Bravo, the largest nuclear bomb the US ever detonated and one of the world's worst radiological disasters," says the 68-year-old grandmother.

Her warm, weathered face speaks of a life lived but not of the anguish. "First, there were lots of miscarriages among the women," she says. "Soon afterwards came the deformed babies - the 'jelly babies' or 'octopus babies' we called them.

"The birth defects have passed down the generations. My own granddaughter was born with a tail," she says, as if this were scarcely out of the ordinary. "She was medevaced to Honolulu for surgery and now she's 14. Sue's her name ... what a smart girl."

Read the whole story here.

First Peek: PINKY SHOW installation at AAC

Posted by Pinky.

Exhibition curator Rex Weil sent us a snapshot of the Pinky Show section in the Picturing Politics: Artists Speak to Power exhibition at the Arlington Arts Center going on right now.

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​The vitrine on the left has Pinky Show zines and stickers in it. It's a bit weird to see something like zines encased behind plexiglass but if it wasn't probably the zines would walk away very quickly. The shabby Pinky Show poster ('laminated' with packing tape) on the left is the poster we usually have in our office - we take that poster with us every time we do a workshop or go somewhere to speak, so it's pretty beat up.

The only thing that concerns us about the installation is the apparent lack of wall text for the two large pieces. I wrote some text to be placed next to them - from the picture it looks like it wasn't included. (I wrote to the curator to ask - he wrote back to say that he wasn't sure it if was included or not; he's checking) It bugs me when museums don't include information that help explain the objects on display. If a context is not provided, I think it becomes too easy for the museum visitors to think of the art work only in terms of what it looks like. ~pinky

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Posted by Bunny: The wall text that was supposed to be placed next to the art work is below. Anyone who wants to see the images more close-up can see them in our Commons Gallery - just click on the On Native Land series icon. ]

I'M ON UR LAND..., Version 2.0
Pinky & Bunny
Giclée on canvas, 24 x 30 inches
2008

Pinky notes: Among other things, maps are a fundamentally important instrument of conquest. In the case of the "New World", the mapping of native peoples and lands helped settlers conceptualize and orient themselves to their new and unfamiliar surroundings.

This image references John Smith's well-known map of the area now commonly referred to as Virginia. Comparisons with later maps of the same area clearly illustrate the extent to which settlers have succesfully erased Native people from the land - via displacement, forceful removal, introduction of diseases, and outright killing.

As you can see, there's not many English language place-names on this map. It's not unusual for documents to live multiple lives - at one time a useful tool to be utilized in the service of conquest, and now a document that helps to dispel commonly held settler myths - for example: "When we arrived, the land was vacant; there was hardly anybody here. There was no genocide."

Bunny notes: Looks like the native guy's quiver is made from the front half of a dog! lol

---

On Native Land triptych (left-side panel)
Pinky & Bunny
Giclée on canvas, 24 x 36 inches.
2008

Pinky notes: This piece is the left-side panel of a triptych (approximately nine feet across) titled On Native Land. Together the three panels name imperial culture, militarism, and occupation as basic structuring elements of the United States of America, currently the planet's most powerful settler state.

This image, with its huge columns and the D.C. Mall in the background, is a reference to how imperial culture and symbolic form are deployed to shape popular narratives and provide the empire with a strong sense of identity.

The middle image (not included in this exhibition), a nuclear explosion at the Nevada Test Site, refers to militarism and direct use of force (sometimes just the threat of force will do) in the service of building and maintaining an empire. The right-side image, a photograph of Arlington National Cemetery (also not included in this exhibition), is a reference to the seizure and use of native land by settlers for settler interests.

Of course there are other aspects of empire that warrant discussion, but we think talking about how these three mechamisms work together is a useful starting point.

The triptych may be viewed in its entirety at the Pinky Show website (www.pinkyshow.org) in our Commons Gallery.

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Posted by Kim: Wow too bad they didn't put your text next to the paintings! Isn't it ironic that the show's title is "Picturing Politics 2008: Artists Speak to Power" and then they end up limiting what you can show and say? That's too funny!

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Posted by Pinky: Kim, I don't have any information if the wall text has been included or not, if it was intentionally excluded, or what. As of today (8/29) I'm still waiting for a reply.

Beautiful Death From the Sky

Posted by Pinky.

The other night I was searching the internet for information on nuclear warheads when I came across this pretty photograph:​

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The first thing I thought was "Wow, that's beautiful... what is it?" Turns out it's a long-exposure photograph showing the descent of multiple warheads from a nuclear missile. I'd never seen a photograph that actually shows the warheads falling to Earth before. This particular photo is of a test of a MX intercontinental ballistic missile (a.k.a. LGM-118A Peacekeeper missile - yes, that's what they really named it) over the Marshall Islands. Each one of these missiles can carry up to 10 warheads, with each warhead carrying the destructive power of 25 Hiroshima bombs.

I'm sure it's not easy to design a machine as complicated as an intercontinental ballistic missile. I mean, think about it: a large, multi-stage rocket that's somehow able to shoot far up into the sky, so high that it skims the very edge of space, then maneuvers itself into position so that it can then rain 10 warheads down on 10 different cities, thousands of miles away, each nuclear explosion killing millions. In seconds. It's amazing. And it's not only a marvel of science, it's also a marvel of logistical planning. Someone had to coordinate the work of literally thousands of scientists and technicians, just to get the decades-long, enormously complicated project to move forward!

And actually I think that's the part that keeps me up at night. It's one thing to lay awake in bed, thinking of all the people and animals and plants that will be destroyed by the awesome destructive power of these weapons. But what really haunts me is the question of how so many smart people would be willing to completely give themselves - their minds, their hard work, their enormous creative potential - over to a process of developing weapons of mass destruction.

It seems so weird to me that if any of these people were acting alone, or maybe in a small group, to make a bomb to blow up a few dozen or even a few thousand people, everybody would say "Oh my goodness these people are terrorists, they need to be caught and executed!" But since these scientists are working for Lockheed Martin or Raytheon and they are trying to figure out how to incinerate millions at a time, this is respectable work. Is it the degree from MIT or Stanford that makes it okay? Or do we need these weapons simply because there are people in this world who deserve to be mass murdered via nuclear explosion and fallout?

I wish Bunny & I had enough time to walk around and ring the doorbell of every scientist that works for the so-called 'defense industry'. I want to plead with them to please reconsider and maybe try to use their knowledge and talents for something less insane.

~pinky