Saturday, January 01, 2005

Commentaries on selections of Andy's diary from the year 1980 will be posted during the month of May 2005. Other months will be updated accordingly.

New year's eve for Andy. Eating Pizza at 6 or 7 on January 1st? Wow, gotta live up to that one. Something else. Can't say much, except that it's great that Bianca and Mick broke the ice on New Year's eve. Bianca is a strong woman. Got to respect her for all the work she's done to help those in need around the world. I think Andy's diary does not really mention her "after-life" past the mid-eighties (given Andy died in 1987), but Andy does mention her interest in politics, and the beginnings of her career as an activist in later posts. Not sure if I'll include them in this online blog, but we begin to see her change in Andy's diary from afar.

Given so many parties covered on these blog-pages, with good measure I provide a direct link to one of many Bianca's bios. She might be the premier example of people who were party animals in the sixties and seventies, turning to responsible beings once they reached their thirties and forties. She's more like an activist yuppie (perhaps?) Then again, she was never a hippie, just partied a lot with lots of money. Word,

Bianca Jagger was born in 1950 in Nicaragua, where she experienced the harsh US-backed military rule of the Somoza family, which ruled Nicaragua for almost half a Century until 1979. At the age of 16 she won a scholarship to study at the Paris Institute of Political Studies. She was married to Mick Jagger from 1971-79.

During her childhood and adolescence she witnessed first hand the terror of Somoza's National Guard, and when she returned to the capital Managua as a young woman in 1972 to search for her parents after the disastrous earthquake that left 10,000 dead - she witnessed the Somoza regime profiting from the tragedy of the victims, ruthlessly pocketing millions of dollars Nicaraguans were meant to receive from humanitarian aid. Ms Jagger's early experiences had a profound effect on her life and inspired her to campaign for human rights, social and economic justice throughout the world. Over the years she has received international attention as both a passionate and effective campaigner.

In 1981, she was part of a US congressional fact-finding mission visiting a UN refugee camp in Honduras, when an armed death squad from El Salvador crossed the border, entered the camp and abducted 40 refugees, and proceeded to march them towards El Salvador. Bianca Jagger and fellow members of the delegation gave chase along a dry river bank, armed only with cameras. The abductors pointed their guns at them, but were told "You would have to kill us all or we will denounce your crime to the world.” There was a long silence and without explanation, the death squads released their captives and disappeared.

In the 1990s Ms Jagger evacuated 22 children from the worst war zones in Bosnia. Mohamed Ribic, a boy 8 years old, lived with her in New York for a year after a successful heart operation, before returning to his parents. In 1993, Ms. Jagger went to the former Yugoslavia to document the mass rape of Bosnian women by Serbian forces as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing. For many years she campaigned to stop the genocide in Bosnia and make the perpetrators accountable before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Her reports on the war crimes against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo contributed to the international community decision, to intervene and stop the genocide. She has been on many fact-finding missions which have taken her to Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, to remote rainforests in Brazil and Ecuador, to Bosnia, Kosovo, Zambia, Afghanistan, Iraq, India and Pakistan.

In the 1990s she also spoke out on behalf of indigenous Populations rights in Latin America, and to save the tropical rainforests where they live, campaigning on behalf of the Miskito Indians in Nicaragua against the government's granting of a logging concession to a Taiwanese company which would have endangered their habitat on the Atlantic Coast; helping demarcate the ancestral lands of the Yanomami people in Brazil against an invasion of gold miners; and working with other rainforest groups against the threatened clearance of about 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforests for soybean plantations for international export.

In 1996, she was given the Abolitionist of the Year Award by the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty in the USA for her efforts on behalf of Guinevere Garcia, a death row prisoner in Illinois, whose sentence was commuted, after Jagger's campaign. In November of that same year, Ms Jagger received a Champion of Justice Award as a “steadfast and eloquent advocate for the elimination of the death penalty in America” . Her articles, lectures and press conferences on the subject continue to challenge a penal system that is unfair, arbitrary and capricious, and jurisprudence fraught with racial discrimination and judicial bias. In 2004 she was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for the Fight Against the Death Penalty by the Council of Europe. Jagger has also been a goodwill ambassador for the Albert Schweizer Institute and has worked for Amnesty International on their, "Stop Violence Against Women", "Torture" and "Death Penalty Campaigns". She spoke at the anti war rallies in London in spring 2003.

In 2004 Jagger added her name to the international campaign seeking compensation from ChevronTexaco for gross environmental damage in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The US-based oil company is accused of creating a 'Rainforest Chernobyl', turning the Ecuadorian Amazon into an environmental quagmire. During two decades of operations in Ecuador (1971-1992) Texaco (now ChevronTexaco) dumped more than 50 per cent more oil into the rainforest environment than that spilled during the Exxon Valdez disaster. The waste has spread over many years to contaminate groundwater, rivers and streams on which 30,000 people - including five indigenous groups – depend for water.

Jagger was part of a fact-finding mission to the area in October 2003 and 2004. She confronted ChevronTexaco's CEO at the company's annual shareholders' meeting in April. "Instead of a single, dramatic spill that captured headlines around the world, what happened in Ecuador was far more... insidious," she said. "Over the course of 20 years, Texaco slowly poisoned the residents of the Oriente Region by dumping toxic waste and crude oil into the water systems. None of my past experiences as a human rights' campaigner prepared me for the environmental devastation I witnessed in the provinces of Orellana y Sucumbios. Nor was I prepared for the sad stories of human suffering and the heightened incidents of cancer and spontaneous abortions."

She argued that the oil company neglected to use the technology available at the time to protect the environment. "The reason why they did not do it is they believe life in the third world is worth nothing," she said. "That's why this case is so important. We need to make them accountable." In an earlier speech in Ecuador itself, she said: "These visits lead me to conclude that until ChevronTexaco addresses the environmental damage it has caused in Ecuador, it should be treated as an outlaw company that does not deserve the right to do further business or make further investments in any country anywhere in the world." Jagger also played a prominent role with Greenpeace in the launch of their "Boycott Esso campaign".

On June 9, 2004 Bianca Jagger received the World Achievement Award from President Gorbachev for "Her Worldwide Commitment to Human Rights, Social and Economic Justice and Environmental Causes".

In March 2004 Jagger made a keynote speech at the launch of Amnesty International's Stop Violence Against Women campaign. She plans to make campaigning against sexual exploitation of children a central plank of her future work.

Bianca Jagger is a member of the Executive Director's Leadership Council for Amnesty International USA, member of the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch -America. Ms. Jagger also serves on the Advisory Board of the Coalition for International Justice. She is a member of the Twentieth Century Task Force to Apprehend War Criminals; a Board member of People for the American Way and the Creative Coalition.

Ms Jagger has written articles for the op-ed page of the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Miami Herald, the Observer (UK), The Independent on Sunday (UK), The Mail on Sunday (UK), The Guardian (UK), The Sunday Express (UK), The New Statesman (UK), Liberation (FR), Le Journal du Dimanche (FR), Le Juriste International (FR), Panorama (IT) and the European (UK), The Dallas Morning news, the Columbus Dispatcher, to name a few.

That burning building Andy describes today can only remind contemporary readers of the disaster of 9/11. I'm even surprised he was able to sit at the Tratoria and have a coffee. And he compared the event to Towering Inferno.

His comment does show how we are immersed in media language. I remember going to the book store at Loyola Marymount University, where I was teaching in 2001, to make sure the books I had ordered for my students had arrived. I looked up and on one of the TVs there was the image of a burning tower--then I looked at the other TV sets and they were all showing the Twin Towers. And I immediately thought it was a movie. And I realized it was real, and I said, "it's like a movie." And then a second plane hit the tower, and a camera got this and kept repeating it. And in my head I repeated the hit from different angles, even when the TV cameras were not providing these images. And even now I play these fictionalimages from different angles in my head--like a movie, like a typical Hollywood blockbuster film. I was instructed to teach that day, and I did. But it was hard. Nobody wanted to be there. But the students stayed and we talked about the disaster. On my way out of the university, I remember seeing military personnel guarding the gates. The experience led me to develop an online artwork.

I wonder if Andy was wearing a real wolf parka. Here's the deal on that fur,

Hmmm, searching for Wolf Parka I ran into the oddest site with the same entry from Andy's diary...

In lieu of actual captions, we offer a photo/text mash-up with excerpts from Andy Warhol's Christmas diary entries, reproduced on James Wolcott's blog. [More photos from the night at Nikola Tamindzic's "Rated X at Opaline" Gallery.]

The whole entry is like a remix of Andy's post of Wednesday, December 29, 2004 I am commenting on. How to top that? We'll end this entry with that.

Mimi and that dictator. Heavy...

Haitians, most of whom are descendents of African slaves, and Dominicans, whose ancestors were Spanish settlers, have a hard time shedding stereotypes about each other

“I’ve always wanted to live in the Dominican Republic,” says Mimi, a generously-shaped Haitian woman with a dazzling smile. Her husband, Charles, a slender Dominican, is sitting in the patio of their sheetmetal house in the new quarter of Dajabon, a Dominican border town. “I don’t feel any racism here,” she says.

Well, I don't think that's our Mimi Trujillo. Of course the Mimi Andy is talking about is West Side Story's,

And although the Sharks’ men and the Jet’s women do not have as large roles as the others, their superb coordination, timing, and dancing hold the play together. Hence people like Dennis Olonia, Janet Aspers, Samuel Torres, Jane Burke, Mimi Trujillo, Linda Trujillo, Barbara Goldman, Cindy Rea Daniell, and Darcy Owen—these dancer-actors, by their ability to keep the play flowing, to emote with their faces and their bodies, weave it into a whole experience, a truly dramatic vehicle that jells.

And surprisingly enough, there is nothing, I mean nothing on her and a dictator online...

I think that kid posing as a criminal with Andy in his photo shoot was thinking of going to college (gotta save that moola...)

10 Ways to Save Money for College

By: Justin S.

1. Don't spend your pay check/ allowance on unnecessary items. Ask yourself "Do I really need this item?"

2. Buy used books instead of new ones.

3. Eat at home instead of eating out.

4. If you must eat out, find an inexpensive place.

5. Don't buy an expensive car.

6. Buy store-brand items instead of famous brand names.

7. Don't go to too many parties.

8. Use basic T.V. You do not need over 300 channels of cable.

9. Share rent by living with a roommate.

10. Walk around instead of driving.

Maybe the kid was telling Andy not to go to too many parties because he wanted Andy to be cool. Know waddam sayin'? Like Lindsey Buckham... he be cool.

LB: I don't know. I think that being in Fleetwood Mac and having two girls on stage as opposed to a group of five guys up there who might be more aggressive about presenting themselves.... There's something about the presence of the group with two chicks, sort of out front, that repels a certain amount of that. But I just don't look for it anyway. I don't go to too many parties. I have a good time once I'm there. I'll have a few drinks or something.

Who is Andy. The man could fit through doors--too big 7'8". Wow.

Who is Andy Warhol...

Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola in 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Warhol was not only one of the most famous artists of the 20th century, but also a true entrepreneur.


Who

Andy Warhol was not only the twentieth century's most “famous” exponent of Pop art but, “a post-modern Renaissance man”: a commercial illustrator, a writer, a photographer, a sculptor, a magazine editor, a television producer, an exhibition curator, and one of the most important and provocative filmmakers of the New American Cinema group of the early 1960s.

is

"I can think of no artist who was more successful at presenting and perpetuating an image of himself as Andy Warhol," Burns said. "I mean, if you go out on the street and ask, 'Who is Andy Warhol?' people will say he was a painter, and they can even name Marilyn of the Campbell's soup can. In addition to creating paintings and films and working in a number of media, though, he also created an image of himself, and that image was possibly his greatest work of art. He grew up in a specific place and a specific time, and he was the greatest responder to that time."


Andy

That name may be very familiar to you. Many of us know who he is but even those that don’t know exactly what he did, they do know the name. Andy Warhol was a very popular commercial illustrator. He was an artist that has become a household name for many.

Warhol

Artist, celebrity, showman, or guru?

[?]

It depends on whom you ask and what you have come to believe.