Video: Occupation 101

Posted by Bunny.

I just remembered this video and did a search for it - surprisingly it's also on Google video. In some ways I think Occupation 101 is a better 'overview' than PP&P that I just posted a few minutes ago. Better yet, watch both as they're both excellent. I hope some of you will be successful in persuading some of your friends to watch as well.

I'm not sure if these videos are being posted by their creators so it's probably best to watch them immediately, before they're taken down.

Peace,
Bunny

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Posted by Kim: Thanks Bunny for posting this video, I never saw it before. About 1 hour into the video I just started to cry a lot. Will we do something about this?

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Posted by Bunny: Tomorrow morning Pinky and I go to Los Angeles for the 12/30 protest at the Israeli Counsulate. You come too. There are emergency protests planned all over the U.S. and world. If anyone out there is reading this, please find out what's happening in your city or town and hit the streets.

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Posted by Pinky: Thanks Bunny. The newspapers pretty much just say that the air strikes are in retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks into Israel. To which I'm sure most U.S. readers will just say "Oh, okay, Israel has a right to defend itself." There is no historical context provided. But I think if Americans knew a little bit about the situation in Gaza, probably there'd be widespread rage. Which is why there is no historical context given! I challenge any thinking, feeling person to watch this video and come away thinking that the air strikes are a simple matter of self-defense.

From the film:

"No amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing, and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of this situation here. You just can't imagine it unless you see it..." - Rachel Corrie's final thoughts, e-mailed to her mother prior to her death.

"This is an America issue. Because this is an issue of American foreign policy." - Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies

Bunny Recommends: Peace, Propaganda, & the Promised Land

Posted by Bunny.

For the past couple of days Pinky and I have been absorbed with trying to solve a bunch of equipment problems. I think my computer is ready to go to computer heaven and Pinky's RAID keeps failing for some mysterious reason. On top of that our mic preamp has developed an intermittent static problem. Grrr. It's just annoying enough to make us contemplate a switch to book-writing. (Comic books?)

I hadn't gone online for a couple of days and when I finally did this morning all I see are reports about the Israeli airstrikes. The year ends in rivers of blood. So sad.

Some of you may remember that we (Pinky, Kim, Mimi, and I) posted a mini-review of Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land a few months ago and we all thought it was an excellent documentary. Well, I just found it on Google video. While it may not be the best summary of "the history of the Palestine-Israel conflict" (that would be our friend Yamila narrating that complicated story while drawing explanatory maps on a napkin), but it's still extremely helpful for anyone who gets their information about what's going on from the mainstream media - which is probably 99% of everybody. I'm posting it below - please watch.

~B.

[ Update: I guess the video was taken down from Google Videos recently? ]

Pinky Doll Kit

Posted by Bunny.

I posted an auction on ebay for a Pinky doll kit. We've had lots of requests for these so now is your chance to get the last one and help out The Pinky Show at the same time. It took some effort, but I convinced Kim to give up her kit.

The auction ends Monday so put in your bid soon!​

Bunny Recommends: War Made Easy

Posted by Bunny.

Hey there, what are you doing tonight? Instead of Wheel of Fortune or Friends, how about watching War Made Easy? (70 minutes) Here's the description from the folks at Media Education Foundation:

War Made Easy brings to the screen Norman Solomon's insightful analysis of the strategies used by administrations, both Democratic and Republican, to promote their agendas for war from Vietnam to Iraq. By familiarizing viewers with the techniques of war propaganda, War Made Easy encourages viewers to think critically about the messages put out by today's spin doctors - messages which are designed to promote and prolong a policy of militarism under the guise of the "war on terror." Based on the book by the same title.

Please tell your friends to watch too. ~B.

PS Art on eBay!

Posted by Bunny.

Hello again. We've been back from Slovenia almost a week now and things are getting back to normal. Pinky and I both got sick on the trip but I got better fast and Pinky's still sick. Sickly, that cat. The trip itself was amazing. We're making a narrated slide show with about 100 photos we took over there and will release that soon. Pinky's pretty much done with the writing but I think maybe I'll have to narrate it this time because she still sounds weird and is coughing a lot.

In other news, while we were in Slovenia the folks at the Arlington Arts Center sent back the art work that we had in the Picturing Politics 2008 exhibition. Originally we were planning on keeping all the stuff we made for ourselves (because we like it), but the end of the year is quickly approaching and we're still short on our fundraising efforts, so after much discussion (grrr!) we decided to put them up for auction on eBay. The auctions run for only a week so if you've been clenching your teeth, agonizing over not being able to own either or both of these gorgeous+ masterworks - now's your chance! Yes, these are the very same paw-signed originals from the AAC show! WOW! (well, maybe not so 'wow', but they are very nice...) And of course 100% of any funds generated from the auctions will go to the production of new PS episodes. Interested? Click on the pictures below to check out the auctions!

By the way, don't forget to look at our blog. Later tonight I'm going to post a link to an excellent documentary my friend sent me - War Made Easy by the folks at Media Education Foundation. Required watching - send your friends.

~B.

Chris Sent Me Fan Art

Posted by Bunny.

Three years into doing the Pinky Show and I think this is the first time someone sends us fan art... and guess what - it's a picture of ME, not Pinky! Haha! Chris in New Zealand sent us this cool painting he made of me holding a sacred heart (w/ barbed wire). Many thanks to Chris, I like it. ~B.

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Posted by Kim: Hey, where's your tail?

I found this amusing chart on the internet...

Posted by Kim.

...or maybe since it’s true it's not so amusing.

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Posted by Bunny: Is it any different after elementary school?

Pinky Show goes to Slovenia; New PDFs.

Posted by Bunny.

1. Almost a year and a half ago we received an invitation to participate in a series of debates and an accompanying exhibition on global practices in radical education. Well what seemed so far away before has now finally arrived and Pinky, Daisy, and I will fly to Slovenia this coming Monday (Nov. 24) to participate in the events; Kim & Mimi will stay behind and water the plants, feed the ants, etc. The program was organized by the Radical Education Collective (Slovenia) and the exhibition will be held at the gallery Škuc in Ljubljana. The talks will include representatives from education groups from all over: Contra Filé (Brazil), Dostje!, H.I.J.O.S. (Guatemala), La Lleca (Mexico), Radical Education, Section for Latin America, Social Center Rog, Universidad Nómada, Zampa di Leone (Serbia), Albert Heta (Kosova), Agon Hamza (Kosova), Hajrudin Hromadžić, Helena Popović, and us. From the curatorial statement:

"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."

We are going to Slovenia to share and learn, I'm sure we'll return with many new ideas for the future. Pinky will take notes and give a report when we get back. We will be there for six days of dialogue/work, I think we might also have one day to relax and sight-see around Ljubljana. Assuming all goes according to plan, we will be back home on December 5.

2. Any orders placed in our online store between Nov. 24 and Dec. 5 will be mailed out as soon as we return from Slovenia. Mimi & Kim don't know how to do that stuff.

3. One of the objectives of our Pinky Show project is to create materials that teachers can use to encourage meaningful dialogue and reflection in their classes. To this end, I finally got around to making & posting downloadable PDF versions of the globalization cartoons, the museum poster, and so on. This makes using them as handouts easier. They are scattered throughout the Pinky Show archives. We hope you find them useful.

~B.

Mimi recommends: Sick Around the World

Posted by Mimi.

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

Radical Education Debates in Slovenia

Posted by Pinky.

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

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.