Raymond K. Hessel

A little insight

2009-10-03T13:24:00.000-07:00

"Everything we did from 1983 onwards was based on our new sense of mission to have the south "privatised' or die; towards this end we ignominiously created economic bedlam in Latin America and Africa in 1983-88" - Davidson Budhoo, IMF senior economist from Enough is Enough: Dear Mr. Camdessus...Open Letter of Resignation
http://www.amazon.com/Enough-Camdessus-Resignation-International-Documentary/dp/0945257287

Nuts and what?

2009-09-21T18:31:00.000-07:00

roots, fruits, greens, grains, weeds and seeds

Authority of Truth

2009-09-07T17:49:00.000-07:00

I just read a headline saying three were guilty in airline bomb plot. It's interesting to me the word "found" is not in the sentence as in, "three were found guilty..." Left out it becomes a statement of truth supposing the courts are the repository of truth.

And notice on the news when fact is portrayed as an allegation by assigning it to some group (usually not a source the mainstream media is comfortable with) as in, "the group alleges that he..."

So truth is what is handed down by government. Facts are simply one side of a story when coming from "un-expert" sources.

Some Quotes from the Left

2009-08-26T13:52:00.001-07:00

The most terribly destructive idea on the left is the idea that we're
special, that we're different. We're not- everybody rebels in some
way. Our problem is to recognize rebellion and find a way of touching
it. The most profound challenge of the Zapatistas is when they say,"
We are perfectly ordinary people, and therefore rebels." That is
perhaps the most important thing- To understand the everyday nature of
revolution.

Theodore Roszak, in "The Voice of the earth: An exploration of
Ecopyschology (1992), implores the environmental movement to "Draw up
a psychological-impact statement." He asks: "Are dread and desperation
the only motivations we have to play upon? What are we connecting
within people that is generous, joyous, freely given, and perhaps
heroic? If cound ecology comes to stop asking us to be the animal we
are, even if it is for our own good, it will not win many converts"
(Roszak 1992, p. 38)"

Dear Government

2009-04-16T17:47:00.000-07:00

April 16, 2009

Department of the Treasury
Internal Revenue Service Center
Fresno, CA 93888-0102

Franchise Tax Board
P.O. Box 942867
Sacramento, CA 94267-0008

To Whom It May Concern,

Enclosed you will find a Payment Voucher for my 2008 tax return, which I filed electronically. However, instead of paying the monies enumerated on said vouchers for state and federal income taxes I am using the precise amounts to fund groups dedicated to peace and justice.

I cannot pay federal income tax in good conscience as more than half that money is spent on Pentagon weapons programs and for destroying people around the globe and terrifying the nation. Nor can I pay state income tax as it is spent on prisons instead of schools.

Though the purpose of the tax system may have been at one time to redistribute the wealth downwards, the current tax system concentrates wealth in the hands of the rich (they after all have found many ways—both legal and illegal—of evading payment of their share). This requires the middle, working and lower classes to fund wars of aggression and ever-dwindling social services at home, education and healthcare being only two of the most egregious examples.

When a large majority of the population has been for years in favor of a universal healthcare system (Single Payer) and an administration elected purportedly to bring change to this country will simply not consider a single payer system, then it is obvious that the government is not ruled by the people, but by the monied interests.

Increased inequality, wars of aggression, the prison-industrial complex, the deterioration of “education” and “healthcare” in this country is not what I am going to fund with the value of my labor.

Sincerely,
Michael Borucke

“For revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy America reigns without a rival.”
–Frederick Douglas

What if...

2009-04-08T15:34:00.000-07:00

What if the US wasn't the nicest kid on the block? What if our nation wasn't so great? I know it is. Don't get me wrong. But what would it mean if it's actions weren't done with the best of intentions, but were done out of nefarious, insidious intentions? I agree with you, America is the greatest. But can't we contemplate the idea for a little bit that America is a bunch of well-meaning citizens led by an empirical government, bent on consuming all resources and power? It's not possible I know. There's no way this is reality. Not even close. I love America.

But can we just discuss the question: what if it's not as good as we believe?

Protests, the corporate Media, and Agent Provocateurs

2009-04-03T10:40:00.000-07:00

I've been having an interesting time reading the NYTimes blog on the G20 protests and the corporate media's portrayal of the protests. After a while, this is what the author of the NYTimes Blog Robert Mackey wrote in the comments section.

"A friend who is a photographer in London writes in to share some observations on shooting the protests, and has something very interesting to say about the violence that broke out on Wednesday night.

Since he needs to maintain a good working relationship with the police, he asked not to be named, but I’d like to share some of what he, and another photographer he was with for part of Wednesday observed while working.

He writes that it appeared to at least these two photographers that most of the much-photographed violence on Wednesday evening was caused by people who looked like “agent provocateurs,” who “were going from police line to police line baiting the police — and they were the ones who instigated the push against police lines that kicked off the evening violence.” This photographer adds that “There was another guy baiting the police and whipping up the crowd to rush the police, he got a hundred or so protesters to follow him and then sneaked off as they reached police lines.” He also writes that the second photographer, who is a reliable reporter, “saw a bunch of protesters trying to stop a guy in black throwing bottles at the police, the protesters had an argument him and then accused him of being a policeman, whereupon he ran to the police cordon, showed some I.D. and was let through!”

Finally, my friend says: “I should point out that the only reason that we were able to spot these guys so easily was because the protest at that point was so peaceful, they really stuck out, so we followed them from one police line to another as they tried to start trouble.”

— Robert Mackey

What I want Obama to say:

2009-02-25T21:36:00.000-08:00

I saw President Obama (okay, that's a cool phrase somewhat) ask a little girl what she wanted him to do. She responded meekly, "Fix the schools."

A lot of people are making demands of him through video and the internet. This is what I would like for him to say to the American People:

My fellow Americans,

it's been 100 days since I took the oath of office. It's been too much. I can see how this job crushed the souls of many of my predecessors. Going in, I thought I could handle it. I thought we could get past the partisanship that has hampered the progress of this great country. But I was wrong. The dichotomy of Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal cannot be briddged for it is built into a system of inequality. What am I saying? I'm saying that we're asking the wrong question. We're acting out the wrong roles, here. We as a society are making the wrong decisions about who should be making the decisions. Maybe I should be clearer. As long as we the government, your representatives are making the dicisions, as long as the power to make decisions and the control to enforce those decisions is in the hands of the people you've elected to represent you, not only will you the people be devoid of power yourselves, but the concentrated power that the system gives uswill invariably be corrupted, and it will work for your benefit less and less, until it is your master.

What do I mean when I say invariably? Democrat or Republican it doesn't matter. The power we wield is too much for one person or any small group of people. We will be lulled by money, by the influence of good friends, by the desire to do good and we will invariably, time and again become corrupted-the power used not for the benefit of the people but for a few at the cost of the people. It seems perfectly understood in some ways: people know officials are corrupt. But you haven't put two and two together to see that it's not the person, but the seat of power you give to that person which is the problem.

Jimmy Carter is a person I have much respect for. He has dedicated his life after his time in office to humanitarian ends building homes for the homeless speaking out for justice when it was theunpopularthing to do. But as President he sold weapons to Indonesia so that Suharto could invade East Timor and slaughter a third of its people. He recently said that as Presdient he didn't understand the situation, that he--most powerful man on earth--didn't have the information on what those weapons were to be used for, and this ignorance willful or not cost 200,000 people their lives. I don't want that on my conscience.

This power you entrust us with is like the ring Lord of the Rings. No matter how good the character of theholder of the ring, eventually they become corrupted with its power. Now I do not claim to be Gangalf or the Elfin Queen or even Frodo the Hobbit whose task it was to bear the burden of taking the ring to Mordor to have it destroyed. But I have caught a glimpse first hand of the awful power that I now wield, and I have come to the conclusion that I must take steps to destroy this power before it becomes corrupted, before it corrupts its holder, before it consumes the entire earth and its inhabitants.

No, I did not realize when I assumed this position what an awesome and awful power it was. I knew it was great, but I thought I could control it, protect it from those who would corrupt it, but it's almost as if the power was meant to be corrupted, was meant to be used for the destruction of all life. That I have concluded, is its goal, its purpose. So it must be destroyed. But like the ring of fire cannot be destroyed in any other way except returned to the fires of Mordor, to its origins, so too we must send the power back to its origins.

But what is this power?

The power behind every decision I make behind every bill I sign into law is your power, the people's power. Now that has becomse so maligned, so cliched a term as to not mean much more than a slogan for so-called hippies and protestors.

It belongs to the citizens of this nation. The citizens have no right to abdicate this power to anyone, to anybody of officials. This is illegal power therefore. But we have a problem here. Power like this cannot be given back to the citizens. It was not forged to be given back, just as the ring was not meant to be destroyed. This power must be taken back. In this sense it must be earned back. First what would it mean if I "give it back" to the people? I don't have the power to give it back. Second it is onlymeant to be used singularly, remember. Third, there aremanyforces massing all thetime-while you sleep, while you work, as I say these words--forces that would blow up the entire world rather than see this power lost to them. (Do you believe that this power would stage wars to make you think your enemy was somewhere over there?) These destructive forces think nothing of assassinating a president to hold on to their poewr, especially at this time when I lay it bear for you, my plan to begin the take back of power.

What I want from every US citizen is to gather and meet with people in your community and in yourworkplace in whatever size is determined to you work best for your community, and come up with a list of demands of your representatives, your servants in government. We need to know what you need. And we need you to tell us. This step is absolutely essential to finding out what you need. Those of you who speak loudest in meetings listen more than you speak. Those who do not speak, your voice is essential to thisprocess. Inclusion must be the watchword at these meetings. How are you going to decide what your needs are? Take a vote, reach consensus?

When your lilst of demands is complete, meet with other communitieies andfigure out, hose to meet at least half the demandson the list, and how to satisfy as manydemands of another community's list. Your community should ask, are we self-sufficient?

Next I want you to meet at your workplace and do the samething. Now this will be tougher than meeting in your community because your boss will want you to work. But I am going to make sure people dcan freely meet in their workplaces to discuss and tell us what your workplace needs are.

http://www.pscelebrities.com/whitelightblacklight/2007/06/tolkien-anarchist.htm

What is the role of the Radical?

2009-02-15T09:32:00.000-08:00

Here from Mikhail Bakunin:

“All that individuals can do is formulate, clarify, and propagate ideas expressing the instinctive desires of the people, and contribute their constant efforts to the revolutionary organization of the natural powers of the masses. This and nothing more; all the rest can be accomplished only by the people themselves. Otherwise we would end up with a political dictatorship - the reconstitution of the State, with all its privileges, inequalities, and oppressions; by taking a devious but inevitable path we would come to reestablish the political, social, and economic slavery of the masses.”

Climate disruption and human agency

2009-01-27T09:40:00.000-08:00

Hi. The climate news is not good. The polar ice is melting faster than we thought. Old growth forests are dying from hotter temperatures.

What can we-people already doing so much to stay afloat ourselves-do to preserve the habitats of the polar bears?

Give money to Greenpeace?
Consume less energy/products?
Spread the word about climate disruption?
Live in harmony with nature?

Maybe the polar bear has already had it. Maybe we need to watch the creatures fade away. Not turn our heads away.

Meditation on Isolation by Herman Bell

2009-01-01T19:32:00.000-08:00

By Herman Bell, December 2008

When imprisoned, and placed in an isolation unit, at some point you begin to live inside yourself, assessing and measuring how you are doing against the moment-to-moment, day-to-day challenges that you are confronted by to gage how well you are getting on. Even though we may spend countless years in prison, little if anything ever changes there. This might sound contradictory: in our minds we can become inured to the harshest conditions as a natural survival instinct; however in reality, they remain just as agonizing. How we deal with them, process them, interact with them in our mind largely determines the change we perceive around us and inside ourselves.

Isolation bears two recognizable features: one is introspection, the other is torture. It brings out the worst in us and the best in us; regardless, we must somehow still make it through the day. And in the course of that day, and every day, we must fight our demons, real and imagined. The real ones are plain enough to see. They turn the keys. (But not all the turn-keys are bad, just most of them. I like to think that the decent ones were well brought up by their parents; and that the bad ones, perhaps, didn’t receive all they thought they should from their parents and others, and therefore will always feel the world owe them something and that meantime they can do whatever they want. Controlling for greed and ideology -- how else do we explain the pathology of man’s inhumanity to man?)

Isolation means you are cut off from the rest of the world, save for the occasional life-line that finds its way to you in the form of a visit, a letter, and the occasional headline on a discarded newspaper that you might glimpse as you pass it by. Your world is greatly reduced. Fresh air, sunlight, food, keeping your body and clothes clean -- the things you once took for granted -- take on new importance in your life.

Under these reduced circumstances, you become so sucked into yourself that an hour feels like a day has gone by, a day feels like a week, and a week like a month. You lose a sense of time; you no longer care whether it’s day or night; you hallucinate; you hyperventilate. You know your scene has to change, nothing lasts forever. Your survival instincts keep you holding on. And suddenly the unexpected melodic sound of jangling keys break through the cocoon that time and isolation had woven around you. Then you wonder had all that been a dream.

Isolation transposes our reality; physical torture shapes it. Physical torture is a ravening beast that has slipped its bounds from Hell to feast upon the soul of humanity. It’s the Big Bad Wolf threatening the Three Little Pigs. It’s the Boogeyman lurking in the woods we heard so much about, coming to get us. It’s our worst nightmare rattling a locked door, straining mightily to get at us. It’s Abu-Ghraib; it’s Guantanamo; it’s the CIA’s Extraordinary Rendition; it’s the screams of prisoners in U.S. police stations. It’s the cries of the torn, the battered, the tormented victims of this ravenous beast that rears its ugly head to feast on pried fingernails; electrically charred genitalia, ear lobes, and human breasts; chased down with a liter of water-boarding, stress-positions, extremes of hot and cold temperatures; and garnished with absolute silence and jarring noise. All done to preserve an antiquated political and economic system that deprives the many of their needs and serves the few in their greed. Outrage against this social practice should know no bounds; how can we not fight to end it?! Let us send the beast and its minions back to where they belong.

A Report from the Bay Area

2008-09-03T10:39:00.000-07:00

Bay Area Katrina Commemoration Draws 200+
Rebecca Ruiz-Lichter
rebecca415@gmail.com

29 August 2008

Bay Area, California- On the heels of media announcements that Hurricane Gustav could hit the Gulf Coast with devastating effects, Bay Area activists demand a halt to ethnic cleansing and disaster capitalism on the 3rd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

More than 200 Bay Area residents demonstrated outside of developer Lennar Corp.'s Headquarters in San Francisco and then headed to Oakland to rally in front of the Oakland Police Department (OPD).

The local chapter of the Right to the City Alliance, a national coalition of more than 35 social justice organizations, along with allies and supporters, aimed to bring attention to rouge developers, gentrification and criminalization of communities of color from the Bay Area to New Orleans.

Lennar Corp, a housing redevelopment corporation based out of Miami, plans to redevelop Bayview Hunters Point but Bayview residents are calling for more affordable housing and a stop to the project, which has been sending toxic dust into nearby homes and schools.

Outside of Lennar's San Francisco office, Katrina Survivor August Foreman spoke about the connection between community displacement and corporate greed, calling the Bay Area's decline in Black and working class residents a "dry Katrina."

Because of the constant threat of displacement, Foreman said, "We are all Katrina evacuees."

Protesters drew attention to Lennar's lack of accountability to the people of Bayview, much of which materializing in the violation of as many as eleven environmental regulations during construction on an extremely toxic federal Superfund site--the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Through a powerful visual representation, a delegation of organizers with People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) attempted to deliver a large illustration of an inhaler to Lennar's HQ to symbolize the environmental hazard they say Lennar has caused in Bayview, but they were denied access through to the offices by security.

Speakers noted that the displacement of communities of color was not only economic but in many cases closely connected to the demonization of youth of color through such tactics as gang injunctions. Oakland resident Sister Beatrice X explains, "The Oakland Police department harasses working class communities and just recently raided a housing complex in West Oakland with military tanks and swat teams, they are using brute force to literally push us out."

Demonstrators also drew parallels between recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in the Gulf Coast and the spike in ICE enforcement in California. Protesters demanded that OPD stop working with ICE and criminalizing the migrant community.

The Bay Area Right To The City chapter was working in solidarity with the survivors of the Gulf Coast disaster to call for community controlled cities and an end to corporate driven policy both locally and globally. The alliance declared that if Lennar and the OPD continued not to recognize the human rights of Bay Area residents, they would be back.

______
Organizations in attendance included: Just Cause Oakland, People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), PODER, St. Peters Housing Committee, The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, The Katrina Solidarity Network, Critical Resistance, The Nation of Islam, Town Center and Courtyards and Acorn, the DataCenter, the Center for Media Justice, Priority Africa Network, Chinese Progressive Association, St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition, Community Justice Network for Youth, in solidarity with the Right to the City National Alliance

For more information on The Right To The City please visit: http://righttothecity.org/

A Time of Hope, a Time of Despair

2008-07-10T11:22:00.000-07:00

The following are two headlines from DemocracyNow! The first shows that some people still have a backbone,. The second shows how empty our system is. 30 years of falsely imprisoning a man who would only strive to make his community a better place.

Career NC Civil Servant Refuses to Honor Helms

In North Carolina, a career government official has been forced to take early retirement for refusing to honor the late Senator Jesse Helms. The official, L.F. Eason, spent twenty-nine years at the North Carolina Department of Agriculture. On Monday, Eason instructed staffers at his laboratory to ignore a statewide directive to fly the US and state flags at half-staff in honor of Helms’ death last week. Eason was told he could obey the directive or retire early. Eason chose the latter, writing, “I simply do not feel it is appropriate to honor a person whose epitaph of government service was to have voted against or blocked every civil rights issue that came before the US Congress. His doctrine of negativity, hate, and prejudice cost North Carolina and our Nation much that we may never regain.”

Conviction Overturned for Jailed Black Panther in “Angola 3” Case

And a federal judge has overturned a murder conviction for an ex-Black Panther who spent more than three decades in solitary confinement. Albert Woodfox and two other former Black Panthers are known as the Angola Three. Many believe they were framed for their political activism. A judge ruled this week Woodfox’s lawyer failed to properly challenge the credibility of witnesses who later admitted they were coerced into falsely testifying.

What is globalization?

2008-05-07T13:10:00.000-07:00

"The poor complain; they always do but that’s just idle chatter. Our system brings rewards to all, at least to all who matter."

MayDay has passed me by

2008-05-06T20:32:00.001-07:00

I have so many ideas swirlin in my head, and seeming not the traction to focus on one and make a go of it. But I need to breathe and realize it'll come when it comes.

A friend and I were talking about who people are essentially, and what part of them can they change--parts of their behavior. Okay, to personalize, we were talking about me and my propensity for introversion. Can I change this about myself? Well, I'm almost 30, almost old. So is introversion an unalterable part of myself? No. There doesn't seem to be any reason to assume I couldn't change whatever I wanted. So do I want to be more extroverted? Well, I think I am sometimes. Sometimes not. There's balance for you.

Okay. these posts will soon have more excitement, and more import

Hello Katie

2008-04-17T16:26:00.000-07:00

Hi, I'm writing something today, because you, my friend, asked me to. I'm in a cafe right now listening to RadioBemba over theinternet while a guy is at the piano playing something. It's beautiful outside today. right now. I will go outside soon to soak it up. I also have Katrina Solidarity meeting to go to tonight...

Hm. What else to say? So many of my friends are getting married. Goddamn. don't they know it's just going to end badly? no, i guess not. and to your reply "you don't know it will end badly, necessarily," I respond, well, one doesn't know necessarily that yogurt left in the sun will go bad either. But you can be pretty sure.

Okay I need to work on my metaphors. Yeah, and my friends need to stop acting so grown up. Jesus. I'm trying to lay off processed sugar(high fructose corn syrup esp.) and caffeine. We'll see howthat goes. I'm having a smoothie now. Yes, more vegetables. Okay I'm going outside.

BTW, did you get the double entendre with the title? Hello, Kitty. Byebye.

Man and Environment

2007-10-20T23:47:00.000-07:00

I have been having a hard time reconciling two facts: that A) Mankind is a part of Nature and B) This particular type of Mankind (today's society) is living as if it's outside of Nature. To put it another way, Man is destroying that which s/he is apart of. How can this be? Is man a virus? A parasite? The only animal with a suicidal tendency?

Well, the book Biomimicry has an answer that may be worth considering. There are types of ecosystems that inhabit a location at a given time. There are Type I ecosystems that emerge after some trauma to the system (fire, flood etc) and grow and reproduce very quickly and die just as quickly. After which there is succession and Type II plants edge out the Type I plants to become the dominant ecosystem for a while. They are, in turn, replaced by Type III ecosystem which describes the long-term, sustainable ecosystem of that place and time. The strategy of the flora in Type III ecosystems varies greatly from the strategy of the Type I plants.

To keep this short, we-our present culture-is analogous to the Type I ecosystem: we consume much we grow really fast, and die just as fast. We are still a part of Nature, but we are not the sustainable part of nature. If you want to know how to be more like a Type III ecosystem, you'll have to read the book.

Greening the Desert

2007-10-11T11:55:00.000-07:00

They are Greening the Desert and trapping the salt in the soils in Jordan near the Dead Sea. Oh, you have to see this video by the Permaculture Institute about the process. It's awesome

Fantastic the possibilities.

World Bank violates its own rules...

2007-10-05T13:17:00.000-07:00

...because it can.

World Bank accused of razing Congo forests
Internal report says mass logging threatens Pygmies; Findings
are embarrassing for British government
Source: Copyright 2007, Guardian, UK
Date: October 5, 2007
Byline: John Vidal

The World Bank encouraged foreign companies to destructively
log the world's second largest forest, endangering the lives
of thousands of Congolese Pygmies, according to a report on an
internal investigation by senior bank staff and outside
experts. The report by the independent inspection panel, seen
by the Guardian, also accuses the bank of misleading Congo's
government about the value of its forests and of breaking its
own rules.

Congo's rainforests are the second largest in the world after
the Amazon, locking nearly 8% of the planet's carbon and
having some of its richest biodiversity. Nearly 40 million
people depend on the forests for medicines, shelter, timber
and food.

The report into the bank's activities in Democratic Republic
of Congo since 2002 follows complaints made two years ago by
an alliance of 12 Pygmy groups. The groups claimed that the
bank-backed system of awarding vast logging concessions to
companies to exploit the forests was causing "irreversible
harm".

It will be discussed at board level in the World Bank within
weeks and may lead to a complete rethink of how forestry in
the DRC is practised.

It is particularly embarrassing for the British government,
which is a development partner of the bank and its third
largest financial contributor. It encouraged the bank to
intervene in the Congo forests with export-driven industrial
logging and has earmarked £50m for further Congo basin
forestry aid.

When the bank moved back into Congo in 2002, after years of
war which cost up to 4 million lives, it said industrial
forestry could contribute most strongly to the country's
recovery. In its rush to reform the economy it devised new
forestry laws, divided the county into zones and aimed to
create a favourable climate for industrial logging.

But although the bank is legally committed to protecting the
environment, and trying to alleviate poverty, the panel found
that the policies it imposed on the Congo were having the
opposite social and environmental effects:

• An area of 600,000 square kilometres (232,000 square miles)
of forest was earmarked for logging companies.

• The bank failed to address critical social and environmental
issues.

• It ignored between 250,000 and 600,000 Pygmies believed to
be living in the Congolese forests, even though their presence
was well known and documented.

• It put the Pygmies in serious potential harm.

Criticism is made of the forestry reforms that the bank
imposed in return for loans of more than $450m. Initially,
said the panel, "the bank provided [to the government]
estimates of export revenue from logging concessions that
turned out to be far too high. This encouraged a focus on
reform of the forestry system at the expense of pursuing
sustainable uses of forests, the potential for community
forests and for conservation.

For the most part foreign companies, or local companies
controlled by foreigners, have been the beneficiaries of
this," the report said.

In a scathing analysis of the bank's economic reasoning, the
panel said the bank had "distorted the real economic value of
the country's forests" by looking solely at the tax and
revenue that increased industrial logging might generate.
"There seems to have been little action to support alternative
uses of the forest resources," it said.

The panel travelled deep into the forest to take evidence from
the Pygmy communities, who told it they were not consulted
before the bank launched its wide-ranging forestry reforms.

One Pygmy leader told the panel: "We are being made poor in
every aspect ... the [logging] company prevents us from going
into the forests." Another said that the company had bought
the land so that people could no longer live in the forests.

"Roads are going ever deeper into the forests, opening it up.
We are increasingly deprived of our foods and drugs. We have
never seen anything from the bank except promises," said a
third.

Research by non-government groups last year showed that 12
foreign-owned or foreign-controlled companies were encouraged
by the bank to dominate the entire industry. Some had
concessions of more than 5m hectares, and all included Pygmy
communities in their holdings. The bank is reviewing the
legality of many of these concessions.

Yesterday international groups that have worked with Congolese
communities said they were shocked by the panel's findings.

"The Pygmies must be fully involved in developing any future
plans for the forest, and the bank need to find ways of
helping them uphold their rights, rather than helping logging
companies to destroy them," said Simon Counsell, director of
the Rainforest Foundation.

"The World Bank must change drastically its forest policies.
Industrial logging is not contributing to poverty reduction,
while its expansion undermines future financial benefits for
environmental services," said Staphan van Praet, the Africa
forest campaigner for Greenpeace International.

ITEM #2
Title: Congo’s Pygmies vindicated as official watchdog
condemns World Bank’s role in Africa’s great rainforest
Source: Press Release, Rainforest Foundation -- UK
Date: October 4, 2007

PRESS RELEASE
EMBARGO: 4th October 2007. 00.01 hrs
Congo’s Pygmies vindicated as official watchdog condemns World
Bank’s role in Africa’s great rainforest

An unreleased report of the World Bank Inspection Panel
obtained today by the Rainforest Foundation shows that the
World Bank has committed grave errors in its projects in the
rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which are the
second largest on Earth after the Amazon [1]. The Panel’s
investigation was undertaken after a formal complaint was
submitted by a number of organisation’s working with Congo’s
indigenous Pygmy people, who expressed their concern about the
impact of Bank-funded activities in the forests which they
inhabit [2]. An area of rainforest the size of France is at
risk.

The report finds that two projects funded by the Bank since
2002 would have promoted massive industrial exploitation of
Congo’s rainforests for timber production, potentially turning
the country into ‘Africa’s premier timber producer’. However,
the Inspection Panel also finds that there was inadequate
consideration of the “many important socio-economic and
environmental issues of forest us” at the time that the Bank
projects were prepared and started; that the Bank had not even
identified the fact that Congo’s forests were inhabited by
indigenous people, and had only given ‘limited attention’ to
the fact that some 40 million other people (mostly subsistence
farmers) also depend on Congo’s forests for their survival. As
well as threatening the environment, the projects would also
probably not serve to help alleviate poverty; the Panel has
found that the Bank misled the Congolese government into
believing that the revenues from logging its rainforests would
be much higher than were likely in reality.

Most damningly for the Bank, the Panel has found that Bank
staff broke many of the agency’s own internal ‘safeguard’
policies, which are designed to protect the environment,
natural habitats, and the rights of people living in the areas
affected by Bank projects. Bank staff ‘downgraded’ projects to
lower levels of potential environmental risk, thus reducing
the level of environmental assessment required, and then
anyway failed to carry out environmental and social impacts
before the projects started.

The Panel also finds that, whilst the Bank has repeatedly
claimed that it is helping to bring Congo’s existing and
mostly illegal logging operations under control, especially by
reviewing the legality of all the existing 150 or so logging
companies, there had been serious flaws in this process, with
inadequate management of it by the Bank. The fate of around 15
million hectares of rainforest (about the size of England),
some of it inhabited by Pygmies, could be determined by this
flawed ‘review’ of logging concessions.

Simon Counsell, Director of the Rainforest Foundation, said;

“The Panel’s report is a major victory for the ‘Pygmy’ peoples
of the Congo whose rights and livelihoods would be seriously
harmed by inappropriate development of the country’s
rainforests. We are now calling on governments to put pressure
on the World Bank Board to realise the gravity of the report
and ddemand immediate action to safeguard the Congo forests
and the 40 million people depending on them.”

Presidential Power

2007-09-24T11:41:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I posted some comments by people formerly in power and the ways by which they were kept in the dark about power.

Here is the quote by Eisenhower during his farewell address:In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

This is about the power that Presidents know about but are helpless to do anything about. It is instructive to read what the Presidents said about power (corporations) after they were out of the Presidency. Lincoln in particular. Jefferson was rocking way before he left the Presidency. Of course he was still a slaveholder.

What is the place of anarchists?

2007-09-24T10:21:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking about the climate change coming down the pike but the question applies to anarchist work in general. What is the place for anarchists? Who don't have a plan for everyone else, who don't want to direct people, except direct them to take power back for themselves, and follow whatever people's heart and mind converge on. To be agitators? Writers and actors? Showing by example a more human way, but not forcing any view on anyone?

The changes in society (pushed by changes in climate) are going to come about whether people like it or not. The post-industrial world, where people have to get back to simple is going to come whether people are prepared or not, whether the economy transitions smoothly or crashes. I guess anarchists are looking for the smooth transition. If it crashes, the government, or rather the powerful might take it as an excuse to install martial law and enforce their rule by the gun even more savagely than now-post apocalypse type stuff.

Reich and Fromm Today

2007-09-23T22:57:00.000-07:00

Are Fromm and Reich important today with psychoanalysis being as discredited as it is? Does the character structure, molded by a society and associated with unconscious strivings and desires account for a person's conscious behavior or is it just cognitive therapy that people need to get and realize the negative and distorted thoughts they are having?

For anarchists, Reich said that people are not ready for freedom; that their character structure is too messed up to have them be totally free as anarchists would assume. People are accustomed to and defined by authority that they would shrink from freedom.

But maybe after all the people will set themselves free, and they will be ready for freedom only when they themselves are ready to break the chains.

So what is the job of an anarchist, then? Is it inevitable? Are they to describe a path towards lowest cost bloodshed or the path of least resistance and reactionary violence?

Maybe these thoughts could be broken up and fleshed out a little.

Green City

2007-09-23T22:48:00.000-07:00

A guy came into the Green City Gallery where I was volunteering tonight. He asked why the projects there had been constructed. He told me they would not have been constructed by people who were hungry. Hmmm.

Coalition Provisional Authority

2007-09-16T23:01:00.000-07:00

David Oliver, retired admiral and the Coalition Provisional Authority's (C.P.A.) director of management and budget, was asked by a BBC reporter what had happened to all the cash airlifted to Baghdad:

Oliver: "I have no idea---I can't tell you whether or not the money went to the right things or didn't--nor do I actually think it's important."

Q: "Not important?"

Oliver: "No. The coalition--and I think it was between 300 and 600 people, civilians--and you want to bring in 3,000 auditors to make sure money's being spent?"

Q: "Yes, but the fact is that billions of dollars have disappeared without a trace."

Oliver: "Of their money. Billions of dollars of their money, yeah, I understand. I'm saying what difference does it make?"

--This as reported in Vanity Fair, October 2007

those who take up arms

2007-09-15T01:53:00.001-07:00

are quickly highlighted and pinned down-far faster than they imagine-by the powerful. The peaceful, though some may fall in the cause, can bolt in an out of line of sight, and more easily blend into the background, inconspicously.

Well meaning People in places of Power just don't know!

2007-09-12T22:29:00.000-07:00

Thinking about Carter and how he says he just didn't realize that the guns he authorized the US to sell to Indonesia were being used to suppress the East Timorese; I also remembered reading that Boutros Boutros Gali, the former UN Secretary General candidly admitting that he wasn't aware initially of how much the US used simple Power Politics in its diplomacy.

It further reminded me of an interchange via email I had with a PhD from MIT about the World Bank, and what its intentions were and the effect that good people doing good work could have working inside the bank-inside the system as it were. I just found the dialogue, and I thought I'd reprint my final response for posterity.

Fred,

I was a high school science teacher for the first two years, and now
I'm looking at air quality models for the Northeast States.

I was half-joking when I said they've only found out now that
inequality hinders development. I'm sure people must have realized
long ago those connections, but it seems like such a fundamental
underlying theme that if the Bank had been operating with this mindset
(which I don;t believe they have been looking at their results) then
they would have been saying this all along, and what's more, it should
have been evident from their projects, which of course, it hasn't. So
perhaps they've known about equality and development, but that
knowledge is meaningless if it's not implemented. This was more my
sentiment.

No doubt they are paying more attention to environmental affects of
their projects; both the Extractive Industries Review and the World
Bank Commission on Large Dams point to this. But again, when it comes
time to implementing, the Bank tends not to give any creedance to
these lessons. So they are lessons learned, but still history repeats
itself; why? Also, in the overview, I noticed a lack of
self-reflection (perhaps its in the report itself) of how the banks
policies have promoted inequality throughout the world. Obviously it
is a large actor that has had much influence on the development scene
in the last fifty years. If it doesn't try to take some
responsibility for the state of the world today, how do they know
which policies to change, or how do we citizens judge if they are
even interested in changing any policies at all? For example, Joe
Stiglitz' book was very critical of the IMF and rightly so though he
was a World Bank economist and he had virutally no criticism for his
own institution. Is the reader supposed to take from this that it's
only the IMF that needs to change its thinking?

I'd be intereseted in knowing what kinds of different models are out
there, specifically what is the range of models usually considered for
bank projects. The market model is the most well-known to me...is
this or some variation most favored by the Bank? Obviously there are
going to be models picked more than others, and there are going to be
models that are not even considered. In your estimation, overall is
the Bank favoring big project solutions or small local-level
solutions?

I have no doubt that there are smart, well-meaning people at the Bank
working on projects that do truly help people. I have no doubt that
they are coming up with fantastic models to cure disease, alleviate
poverty and make the world a better place. It's not the people at the
Bank I see as the problem, but rather the structure of how decisions
are made, who makes the decisions, who funds the bank, where the money
goes etc.

"Dying for Growth" is a survey of the health of people in the Global South.
"Neoliberalism or Democracy" is a good book about the effects that the
policies coming out of the Washington consensus have had on different
countries.

I've read, though I haven't checked on this, that for every dollar
that goes to the global south countries towards aid, two dollars comes
back to the global north countries through debt servicing. (maybe you
know where I could find out statistics of that nature) A good portion
of these nations' GDP goes toward debt payment. Do you know how
countries came to be entrenched, almost enslaved, in debt this way?
It;s a very interesting history that sheds light on the current state
of affairs. "A Dark Victory" is a hard to find book but it finally
answered my questions about how the debts originated. I can get into
more detail perhaps later.

Now what I've read about the actual practice of water privatization
(not the theory) is that the companies begin charging for what was
previously free, the quality of the water service (availability)
itself has been questionable in several places, and the people who
disagree with privatization of their water find it difficult to find
redress for their grievances. On this last point I;m thinking
specifically of Bolivia and the mass revolt that had to happen in
order for the state to kick Bectel out of the water game there. It
might be acceptable for us white men to criticize the bank via email,
but for people on the ground who are most invested in these projects,
they critcize and some pay with their lives. "Water Wars" by Vandana
Shiva is another book this time about water privatization and its
effects. On paper, a 'private entity' independent from the
'bureaucratic inept state' sounds nice, but the fact is that a
multinational corporation has even less accountability to the people,
less involvement in the actual implementation and maintenence
(contractors) than the states that they serve.

> I am not trying to argue that the institutions we have
>are perfect and in no need of change.

Nor am I trying to argue that they should be perfect. But if they are
going to be a huge lending agency with an aim to alleviate poverty
then after fifty years they should have something to show for it. If
their aim, which I believe it is, is to promote western interests in
the Global South by implementing a 'development' that just so happens
to benefit the lenders, either by opening markets, extracting natural
resources, or exploiting cheap labor for (western) multinational
corporations, a 'development' that further keeps people sick,
dependent on aid, then that institution should not be touting itself
as a body that seeks to alleviate poverty. And it is my opinion that
such an institution should not even exist.

Notwithstanding all the 'hard-working and well meaning individuals'
they're still operating within a structure that serves the interests
of the rulers. The rules of the game were set long ago and though
they may change and 'improve' with time even to the point of actually
helping people, you will find that the extent of the change will be
determined by the interests of the rulers. This is my main point (the
rest is simply evidence) even though it seems a truth too obvious to
mention.

Looking forward,
Mike

On 10/7/05, Frederic Chagnon <frederic@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> Hi Mike,
>
> Sorry for the late response. I've been travelling in search of job
> opportunities. BTW, what have you been doing since the MEng?
>

I was a high school science teacher for the first two years, and now
I;m looking at air quality models for the Northeast States.

> I too just read the overview of the WDR, although I'm not sure that I
> interpret it as you do. I don't think that they just now found out
> that inequality is bad for development. I just think that they chose
> this topic as the main focus of this year's report, as they have
> chosen other focus topics in previous reports. You may disagree with
> this strategy of focussing on specific issues each year instead of
> writing reports covering all issues. It seems too easy to me to just
> criticise the report by saying that it took them too long to tackle
> the issue of inequality.

i was half-joking when I said they've only found out now that
inequality hinders development. I'm sure people must have realized
long ago those connections, but it seems like such a fundamental
underlying theme that if the Bank had been operating with this mindset
(which I don;t believe they have been looking at their results) then
they would have been saying this all along, and what's more, it should
have been evident from their projects, which of course, it hasn't. So
perhaps they've known about equality and development, but that
knowledge is meaningless if it's not implemented. This was more my
sentiment.

>
> I've browsed around the sites that you referred to me, and they raise
> important issues. I was struck by this on the 50years website:
>
> "The World Bank and IMF should also incorporate into their planning
> and decision-making processes the value of natural resources and
> ecosystems to be depleted and/or degraded by policy prescriptions
> and, in the case of the Bank, the project lending portfolio. For
> example, natural resource accounting should be incorporated into
> country programming and loan appraisals."
>
> In my very short experience working on Bank projects, I have been
> amazed at how attentive they are to environmental impacts. Perhaps
> they were oblivious to these concerns in the past --- as most
> governments were, whether in developed or developing countries ---
> but they are certainly making efforts to pay attention to these
> issues now. There is still a lot of progress to be made on how we

No doubt they are paying more attention to environmental affects of
their projects; both the Extractive Industries Review and the World
Bank Commission on Large Dams point to this. But again, when it comes
time to implementing, the Bank tends not to give any creedance to
these lessons. So they are lessons learned, but still history repeats
itself; why? Also, in the overview, I noticed a lack of
self-reflection (perhaps its in the report itself) of how the banks
policies have promoted inequality throughout the world. Obviously it
is a large actor that has had much influence on the development scene
in the last fifty years. If it doesn't try to take some
responsibility for the state of the world today, how do they know
which policies to change, or how do we citizens judge if they are
even interested in changing any policies at all? For example, Joe
Stiglitz' book was very critical of the IMF and rightly so though he
was a World Bank economist and he had virutally no criticism for his
own institution. Is the reader supposed to take from this that it's
only the IMF that needs to change its thinking?

> account for the environment. The notion of "ecosystem services" is
> still very much an academic one, and it needs to be transfered to
> practise.
>
> As far as the "neo-liberal cookie-cutter policies of privatization of
> water resources", I disagree. I gave a presentation on decisions to
> be made when developing water/wastewater infrastructure, and
> approached the institutional aspects by presenting both "private" vs.
> "public" operation models and the myriad of other institutional

I'd be intereseted in knowing what kinds of different models are out
there, specifically what is the range of models usually considered for
bank projects. The market model is the most well-known to me...is
this or some variation most favored by the Bank? Obviously there are
going to be models picked more than others, and there are going to be
models that are not even considered. In your estimation, overall is
the Bank favoring big project solutions or small local-level
solutions?

> arrangements between these two models. Two weeks ago, I met a woman
> who works for the WB Water & Sanitation Program in Mumbai. She was
> telling me of her latest project, in which they were attempting to
> bring safe sanitation in the slums of Mumbai. Their model was rather
> interesting: they worked with groups of women who assembled
> themselves to operate and manage public latrines. These latrines were
> apparently very well operated, were used as centers to teach about
> sanitation and public health. Some had even developed attached
> service centers (one had used the extra space for an internet cafe
> type operation that was apparently highly successful.) This example
> does not fall within the "public" or "private" model, and was fully
> funded by the WB.

I have no doubt that there are smart, well-meaning people at the Bank
working on projects that do truly help people. I have no doubt that
they are coming up with fantastic models to cure disease, alleviate
poverty and make the world a better place. It's not the people at the
Bank I see as the problem, but rather the structure of how decisions
are made, who makes the decisions, who funds the bank, where the money
goes etc.

"Dying for Growth" is a survey of the health of people in the Global South.
"Neoliberalism or Democracy" is a good book about the effects that the
policies coming out of the Washington consensus have had on different
countries.

I've read, though I haven't checked on this, that for every dollar
that goes to the global south countries towards aid, two dollars comes
back to the global north countries through debt servicing. (maybe you
know where I could find out statistics of that nature) A good portion
of these nations' GDP goes toward debt payment. Do you know how
countries came to be entrenched, almost enslaved, in debt this way?
It;s a very interesting history that sheds light on the current state.
"A Dark Victory" is a hard to find book but it finally answered my
questions about how the debts originated.

>
> This said, I do think that for large water/wastewater projects, there
> is a strong case to be made for "private" participation. For one, it
> is a conflict of interest to have the public sector operate and
> control/verify at the same time. For example, it seems evident to me
> that the institution that makes sure that effluent standards are met
> should be separate from the institution that operates the wastewater
> treatment plant. The public sector is highly adapted at setting these
> standards and enforcing them on behalf of the people they represent.
> The public sector is however generally inept at building and
> operating complex infrastructure. I see nothing wrong in having an
> independent entity be the steward for XX years of the water/
> wastewater service. Such arrangements can be made so as to ensure
> that a safe basic service is provided to all. This said, it is
> certainly not a panacea and most certainly not applicable everywhere.

What I've read about water privatization is that companies begin
charging for what was previously free, the quality of the water
service itself has been questionable in several places, and the people
who disagree with privatization of their water find it difficult to
find redress for their grievances. On this last point I;m thinking
specifically of Bolivia and the mass revolt that had to happen in
order for the state to kick Bectel out of the water game there. It
might be acceptable for us white men to criticize the bank via email,
but for people on the ground who are most invested in these projects,
they critcize and some pay with their lives. "Water Wars" by Vandana
Shiva is another book this time about water privatization and its
effects. On paper, a 'private entity' independent from the
'bureaucratic inept state' sounds nice, but the fact is that a
multinational corporation has even less accountability to the people,
less involvement in the actual implementation and maintenence
(contractors) than the albeit corrupt states that they serve.

>
> In general, I am not trying to argue that the institutions we have
> are perfect and in no need of change. We do need to make them better

> at serving the poor and enabling them to have better healthier lives.
> I think it is necessary to keep on criticising these institutions and
> suggesting ways to improve them. But I do think they are important
> and should not be destroyed. There are so few strong multilateral

What does 'important' mean?

> organisations, and the ones we have are in my opinion too weak and
> not independent enough. Reforms are certainly necessary in the
> governance of these institutions --- they need to have much more
> independence form the donor countries and should not be used as tools
> for foreign policy. But throughout the ranks, these institutions are
> populated with hard-working and well meaning individuals who make it
> their goal to improve our world, and I really believe that we can
> continually improve them.
>

Notwithstanding all the 'hard-working and well meaning individuals'
they're still operating within a structure that serves the interests
of the rulers.

Letting genocide fall through the cracks

2007-09-10T12:35:00.000-07:00

Below is a transcript from an interview with Jimmy Carter on Democracy Now! As president he signed a deal to supply arms to the Indonesian military which subsequently used those arms to commit a genocide against the people of East Timor. Here, he talks about how he, a president, could not even know of his complicity in genocide. Instructive..

AMY GOODMAN: I was wondering, in your time as president, the period that Indonesia occupied Timor, if you regret the allowing of Indonesia to buy US weapons at a time when it was one of the worst times for the people of Timor?

JIMMY CARTER: Well, as you may know, I had a policy when I was president of not selling weapons if it would exacerbate a potential conflict in a region of the world, and some of our allies were very irate about this policy. And I have to say that I was not, you know, as thoroughly briefed about what was going on in East Timor as I should have been. I was more concerned about other parts of the world then.

Since I've been here head of the Carter Center, though, we've taken a great interest in Indonesia. We were the only monitors in the first election, when Indonesia started moving toward democracy, and we’ve been for both elections there. And after the first election, the Carter Center sent a delegation to negotiate with people in East Timor, and we joined with the United Nations in conducting the first elections in East Timor, and this year, just a few months ago, again, in East Timor, trying to help them assuage the potential violence in that country and have them have a stable government. So we've played a great role not only in Indonesia, bringing democracy and relative peace, but also in the independence of East Timor in that referendum, and now to perpetuate democracy there.

AMY GOODMAN: Along those lines, as a president, what do you think are the reasons why you can be so isolated, a president, for example, in the case of Timor, saying now you wish you had known more at the time what was going on?

JIMMY CARTER: Well, a president, almost by definition, is immersed literally in hundreds of issues every week. You’re not only dealing with domestic issues, like energy or environment or education, health and welfare, also you’ve got the Congress, in budget affairs, preparing the budget for the military, as well as other things, developing new weapons, trying to make sure that we address the crises that confront us in an effective way. This was a time of a Cold War, when I was constantly aware of the fact that the Soviets could launch a missile, and twenty-six minutes later it would strike the United States with devastating effect. I had to be prepared for that.

I became deeply immersed in some long-festering issues. For instance, the Panama Canal treaties had been almost a matter of conflict between America and Latin American nations, including Panama, since the time of Lyndon Johnson. I just got back from helping to start the expansion of the Panama Canal. And the Mideast peace process had never been consummated in any substantial way since Israel was founded as a nation. I’ve worked on that. So there are so many different things that the President has to do that are pressing and crisis that you can't really expect any president, including me or my predecessors or successors, to know the details of things like East Timor. I wish I had, but I didn’t.

Finding the Truth

2007-09-03T10:58:00.001-07:00

I was talking with a friend about finding the truth amidst the information, the misinformation, lies, biased truth—the general clutter and clatter of modern society. Seriously, how is someone supposed to work 8 hours a day, take care of their responsibilities and find the truth about a given subject of interest?

Take Venezuela for example. The friend was telling me she had been told by a friend how Chavez was crooked and corrupt, and she saw on TV an egotistical figure giving speeches and seeming self-important. She asked what I thought about Chavez, and I thought, what would be the use of telling her my side? She would have another (opposing) opinion on Chavez, but would that bring her closer to coming to her own truth? I suppose.

How does one determine the truth when it comes to Venezuela? A lot of the media paints Chavez as a loon dictator who wants to turn Venezuela into Cuba. There are certainly enough Venezuelans who feel this way who get plenty of airtime on the mainstream national and international media such that one might believe the Chavista camp and the anti-Chavista camp were roughly even. Of course this is not true. Chavez has the support of 80%? of the electorate in Venezuela, and his popularity has been increasing with every election. But the media reports are one-sided such that the minority seems larger than they are to the average media consumer.

One way by which to determine the truth then, is to make sure you are getting at least the two sides of the story (understanding that there are 140,000 sides to any story and 10-20 sides are necessary to come to a really well-informed opinion), and for Venezuela this would mean finding what the government is saying about the issues, such as the recent decision not to renew a TV license for one of the opposition broadcast stations. (The station plays up the issue as violating free speech, the first step toward dictatorship. The government says they had a quite visible hand in promoting and supporting the coup d'etat that happened in 2002) And getting the two sides of the story from the New York Times and the Washington Times doesn't count...

Evaluating the respective sides of the story must be done critically as well. Asking what are the sources, how credible are those sources, do they have any benefit in reporting/emphasizing certain facts above others? Follow the money and generally that is where most messages in the mainstream are coming from. Believe those messages if you wish.

Then it occurred to me while talking to my friend that one might also be able to detect the truth by looking for the art and the music. As much as Art is an expression of humanity, that will put art wherever freedom resides. Now of course the Powerful have tried for a long time to co-opt art to put it into their service; the Powerful co-opt anything and everything for their own purposes. They co-opt the spirit of the 60's to sell mobile phones, they co-opt the language of humanitarianism to invade countries and destroy people (bombing of the Balkans and of Iraq).

Art is another matter because of its origins and meaning. When they try to co-opt art and music they only create propaganda and corporate advertising. They can never co-opt true art because art is an expression of the soul of humanity and the soul is never in the service of power. Well, maybe one day. But not today....

Though they do play Clash songs for a car advertisements, and the anarchist rock group Chumbawamba sold a song to GM for use in a commercial (the band turned around and gave the money to a couple anti-corporate groups). While this does play on the nostalgia people have for when they were rebellious and young, the Powerful have to ensure a bit of safety; the art can't mean anything today but nostalgia-certainly not rebellion. There are standards to uphold!

In the case of Venezuela, the music is certainly on the side of Chavez; when I was down there for the World Social Forum, I saw just as much art being created (and yes, being sold by vendors on the street) as political workshops that were taking place there. I can only guess the reason there was so much art going on: Chavez represents change to a better world, and that's where the artists always gravitate to. If and when Chavez becomes a dictator, you'll see the music, the art, and the life quietly go out of Caracas.

This supports my theory that Fascists can't stand art. Maybe it's because they can't dance. I believe it's because fascists are far removed from their own humanity-repressed it so much-that they are scared of any kind of art that is an expression of the human soul. The case of Hitler can be explained by the fact that he was a fucking awful artist.

Energy Systems

2007-08-29T14:13:00.001-07:00

In school I read about how our society's energy system choices reflect a lot about the society. The nuclear energy industry for example, needs heavy investment into a really dangerous technology that must be centralized and militarized to operate. Decentralized systems like photovoltaics or wind also say something for the societies which choose renewables.

Here's what I'm reading for work: "Distributed photovoltaics may reduce T&D costs, but the system may also benefit if grids connect wide areas and increase the diversity of renewable supplies." The author coming from industry is making a case for de-centralizing power in the future. The benefits of smaller generation sources closer to places of consumption include lower transmission and distribution costs, lower planning and operation costs, a more robust system: less prone to failure or hardcore, widespread blackouts in contrast to large generation plants.

To me this echoes a lot of the same benefits that would come from de-centralizing power in human society, including all those intrinsically human advantages, like more dignity in making ones decisions....of course, you'd never hear me making that analogy in public!
:)

New Orleans, you know, where Music comes from

2007-08-28T01:15:00.000-07:00

I left New Orleans three weeks ago this Thursday.
Last week, I went to a benefit in SF for the group that I had volunteered for while down in the Big Easy. Today I walked past a bar that was playing a song that had New Orleans in the lyrics. I didn't realize how many songs had New Orleans in the lyrics.

I hear Aaron Neville singing "Louisiana" on Democracy Now. My parents tell me about "The Battle for New Orleans" special that aired on PBS, I see Bush just visited the school that Common Ground helped to gut (I was there for it's reopening celebration). There is still a lot to do in New Orleans. A lot to overcome.

Our Elders: Should We Listen To Them?

2007-08-21T15:11:00.000-07:00

Elvira Arellano Immigrant Spokesperson Deported

2007-08-20T11:26:00.001-07:00

8/20: Latest - Elvira Arellano Deported...

In a sad and shameful ending, according to the latest report, Elvira Arellano was deported to Mexico just few hours after her arrest by ICE agents at downtown Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon (8/19), at outside Our Lady Queen of Angels Church, where she had been speaking to reporters [see below article from Spanish Newspaper La Opinion]

This is a shameful move from the government to arrest and deport her, this is a clear signal from the government to terrify people who dare to speak up and fight for the injustice.

We are still encourage everyone to call local ICE office and organize your local peaceful protest/vigil on Monday (8/20) to express your outrage.
ICE Field Office Director, Los Angeles
300 North Los Angeles St., Room 7631A
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Phone: 213-830-7911

ICE Headquarters, Director, Office of Detention and Removal Operations
801 I St, NW
Suite 900
Washington, DC 20536
Phone: 202-305-2734

Lists of local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices

http://www.ice.gov/about/dro/contact.htm

Lee Siu Hin
National Coordinator
National Immigrant Solidarity Network

Out of NOLA :`(

2007-08-20T11:10:00.000-07:00

I've left New Orleans. Left almost two weeks ago for a new experience (and job) in San Francisco. It will take a long time to process my experiences in New Orleans. However, I know for a fact that NOLA will never leave my heart. If I do go back or if I don't, I can't possibly forget it. I also know that NOLA will come back-exactly how it will come back depends on the people of this country.

If we forget about New Orleans it will "come back" in a shallow way; this includes casinos and developers taking over other people's land. Gentrification mainly. If NOLA stays in the consciousness of the American public, then not only might the 260,000+ still displaced residents come back home, build back their houses, schools and churches, but NOLA just might come back better than before, with justice, equality, and a strong environment.

Remember, out of crisis comes opportunity.

Earthworms can clean up oil! Hooray!!!

2007-07-20T16:58:00.001-07:00

Well not exactly earthworms per se, but the microbes that they excrete can break down petroleum chemicals in the soil. Pretty Cool eh?

Everyone with oil spills get your grove on to soilfoodweb.org for info on how to get a lot of this earthworm Castings. Make sure you have Red Wiggler Earthworms. They're the best.

Here's an abstract about the castings breaking down the soil (big thank you to Radical Reference for providing the abstract)

"Effects of Lumbricus terrestris, Allolobophora chlorotica and Eisenia fetida on microbial community dynamics in oil-contaminated soil" From the journal Soil Biology & Biochemistry. 2005, vol. 37, no11, pp. 2065-2076 [12 page(s) (article)] (1 p.1/4)

"Oil spills are one of the most common types of soil pollution. Bioremediation has become an attractive alternative to physicochemical methods of remediation, where feasible. Earthworms have been shown to stimulate the degradation of petroleum hydrocarbons in soil, and it was hypothesized that the role of earthworms in remediation lies in the enhancement of an oil degrading microbial community. The aim of this study was to characterize microbial activity and community dynamics in oil-contaminated soil incubated with or without earthworms. Three earthworm species (Eisenia fetida, Allolobophora chlorotica and Lumbricus terrestris) were incubated in crude oil polluted soil (ca. 10,000 mg/kg total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH)) and a reference soil for 28 d. Control treatments with manual mixing and/or cattle dung amendment were also included. In the oil-contaminated soil, respiration and concentration of microbial biomass was significantly enhanced by earthworm amendment, and TPH concentrations decreased significantly. These effects were less evident in treatments with A. chlorotica, possibly due to a difference in behavior, since individuals of this endogeic species were found in a state of inactivity (aestivation). Microbial community dynamics were described by phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) analyses. After 28 d, similar shifts in the soil PLFA composition were observed in the oil-contaminated soil irrespective of worm species. Fungal:bacterial ratios were increased in the presence of worms, but also by addition of dung as a food source, indicating a non-specific effect of metabolizable substrates. In contrast, the fatty acids 17:1ω8 (=Δ9-heptadecenoic acid) and 20:4ω6c (arachidonic acid) were specifically stimulated by the presence of earthworms in the oil-contaminated soil. The results showed that earthworms can contribute positively to bioremediation of oil-contaminated soil, but that the effect may be species-dependent."

There are also a number of books available on this subject that should be available to you at your local public or university library. For example:

Remediation of Petroleum Contaminated Soils: Biological, Physical, and Chemical Processes
By Eve Riser-Roberts

Louisiana is sinking!

2007-07-12T13:14:00.000-07:00

You actually cannot get rid of wetlands for wetlands by definition are at the interface between the land and the ocean. Therefore, where ever those two bodies meet will be where the wetlands are. The only way you may not have wetlands is if there is no more land.

Now Southeastern Louisiana is sinking, and as a result, the wetlands that are supposed to protect and be a barrier for the land including New Orleans are moving closer and closer to New Orleans (Northward) as the land sinks. Scientists say we have 10 years to go before it's too late and the wetlands inevitably come to the backdoor of New Orleans, and then Goodbye NOLA.

So I read this today http://www.louisianaweekly.com/weekly/news/articlegate.pl?20070625b, which says the dead zone is growing. The dead zone created by too much fertilizer coming out of the mouth of the Mississippi. We could use this excess fertilizer--which is just nitrogen and phosphorus--to build the wetland plants and trees that could stabilize the wetlands where they are. Of course we could also use all the precious sediment from the river to build the actual land in the wetlands (called accretion) to counteract the 'sinking' that is happening. But the man-made controls on the river make utilizing this sediment impossible right now. Instead the precious stuff is sent into the Gulf along with the nutrients neither of which we can benefit from.

We know the answers to our problems, but we can't do anything about them because the powerful have the control. This can be seen with the recent closing of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO). Local people, organizations, and the local Parish government have been calling for its closure for decades, but only two weeks ago did the Army Corp. decide to close it. It has done damage to wetlands, increased salinization of inland water bodies and cost a lot to taxpayers and to the environment. Yet action on it can only be done by federal body and then only veeerrrry slooooowly. This is everywhere the same problem with federal bodies.

What do we do if we don't have the time to wait for the Army Corp.? What if the sinking of Southeastern Louisiana out paces the federal, state or even local bureaucracy?

Limits of Market Action

2007-06-24T13:50:00.000-07:00

I've just started reading this article on the restoration of some wetland area in my home state of Illinois: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/23/AR2007062300611.html
and I got to wondering how far the whole "It pays to be Green" idea can go. Surely, there has to come a point when the market will not tolerate anymore greening, provided that greening is authentic, i.e. conserves nature in sustainable ways. I suppose I'm thinking of the market-nature relationship in antagonistic ways-perhaps Marxist-but history has thus far proven the relationship is indirect: economy improves as capital grows, which means the environment (and the rest of us) pays the price via externalized pollution and resource depletion.

But there is low-hanging fruit to be had. Perhaps people/companies (grrrr...) can make money by greening what was once degraded by rapacious greed that is capitalistic behavior. Will such greening at the hands of those corporations responsible for the degradation in the first place be actual greening? Should we trust 'em? Will we fall into a new dogmatic paradigm and continue with the same earth-killing behaviors so long as we're greening someplace, somewhere?

Schools and Cleaning Fluid

2007-06-21T11:23:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of thoughts I had a few weeks back-still relevant-that I haven't posted till now:

I was riding my bike down St. Claude into the French Quarter. Maybe I was going downtown but what I saw that broke my heart was blocks away from the French Quarter before St. Claude becomes North Rampart. I saw a sign on an abandoned school saying “School Starts Aug. 28, 2005.” Of course school never started then for Louisiana students. Some had left, some without any options had to stay and some were probably housed in the Superdome for days after the flood. The sign hadn’t been changed since then, and doubtless the building hadn’t been occupied for schooling since the spring of 2005. In the Lower Ninth Ward, school is something noticeably absent for the exiled community. Homes of course are still non-existent, but schools seem to be the lynchpin of the community, along with the churches. Youth are also precariously absent from the Lower Ninth, and hence the future is nowhere in sight here.

As a former teacher, and as a critic of education and schooling in general, I remain a skeptic of ideas that school will elevate a populace, or will have any advantages for a people displaced and scattered. After all, doesn’t school just teach the poor how to live with being poor, the worker how to take orders, the middle class how to be obedient for certain rewards? Though I was told once that school in the South, in particular the Black South, had a different character than that which grew out of the Northeast tradition. There education was thought of as a means of liberation, whereby the oppressed could learn and thereby transcend the position they were born into. As long as it was controlled by the liberated still reaching for freedom themselves, and taught by the liberated I believe it could have been a sight of progress. As bell hooks wrote about her experience in a black school, thought and subversion were apart of what she loved about school. Still I believe the system has gotten very good at absorbing and transforming that which is Other, or revolutionary, or unique, into something which is upholding of the status quo-that which is part of the system. So with school, that which was meant to elevate those who were slaves or those who were lower class became a tool to indoctrinate the populace into preparing them for the roles they were meant to play.

What can I say about schools in New Orleans then? There is little reason for a family to return if their children can’t be educated. It is sad to see the schools so empty, even if I have attached the notion of children with schools. Children are the future, they are the hope. They are a reason to come home, and their absence here, though not total-decideds the future of this town.

Models for Self-Sufficiency

2007-06-17T15:58:00.000-07:00

Youth Business Opportunities and Small Loans to Minority Businesses.

We have to be looking at economic models for gainful employment of youth of color and people of color generally. If Halle Barrie's character in "Bullworth" was right, as I believe she was, that it was the jobs in the black community after the second world war that provided the stimulus for the civil rights movement and the black power movement after that, then we must focus energies on building, or re-building the economic base of the black community.

The simple idea that black business should be providing services and products to the black communities is not the way it is right now. Would micro-credit be a solution to this? Maybe but it also has it's problems as an economic model.

But the Toxic Soil Busters are an interesting example of a youth-run business that is cleaning up the town of Worchester-literally. By educating citiznery on the problem of lead in the soil and remediating the soil, these youth are making a viable business that could be patterned after in other cities.

Update: Been So Long

2007-06-17T14:17:00.000-07:00

A quick update of my experiences in New Orleans. I've been working so much, it's been hard to sit down and write. Even now, I'm supposed to be working with a resident of St.Bernard Parish on a citizen group and their fight to hold Murphy's Oil accountable for their environmental degradation. Yes, well then. Let's begin.

-Two weeks ago we went to protest the commemoration of the opening of the Desire projects in the Lower Ninth Ward. Mayor Ray Nagin was their speaking on the glorious return of residents to the city and to the progress being made. But we were there to remind the audience (and TV cameras apparently) that the contractors who had built those projects had violated federal law by NOT using local workers in the rebuilding process of a disaster area, and instead used illegal immigrants so as to further disenfranchise the local pool of unemployed and at the same time exploit cheap labor-as a side benefit, the black and brown are vying for the same jobs, and so less likely to see their plight as coinciding.

In addition, the Desire Project is going to be mixed-income, which means that some residents of the project, most being low-income, will not be moving back to their houses. And if history is an example, 'mixed-income' is short for 'soon to be middle-income,' much like the experience with the St. Charles Project.

So this is-in brief outline-is how New Orleans is going to rebuild. For mixed-income residents, by illegal immigrants, and of the powerful interests/politicians. Not too sustainable.

-This past week we planted Tall Cut Grass in the Blind River. Tall because the grass is tall-can reach 10 feet; Cut Grass because the edges of the thick grass blade can and did cut our hands; Blind River because, well, I don't know the Blind part, but it was a river. This might strike some as interesting because we are after all doing a wetland planting and rivers aren't wetlands. But actually, right next to the flowing river was stagnant water that abutted the banks. And as we were tramping along the muck in these small wetlands, we would disturb the methane in the anaerobic soils and cause bubbles of methane to float to the top. We added to Global Warming true, but we did plant 800 pots of Cut Grass, with each pot having ~5 grasses.

Hopefully the Nutria, an invasive rat species that ate all the live oak samplings that we planted about two months ago, will leave the Cut Grass the hell alone!

One note about the location of the planting. The Blind River seemed to have some very expensive homes on its shores. Those lots with the expensive homes didn't have any wetland plants to secure the shorebanks, which is why we were there planting. This brings up the question of what were we there to save? The shore banks? For whom? For rich people who didn't want to help preserve the banks themselves?

I think the Wetlands group might be a little more discriminating in the places we are going to do replanting. Avoiding Nutria (curses!) and finding locations that are more likely to benefit from added plants.

Another question: Are rich people alienated from the environment by definition?

-We also met with a group from Univ of Wisconsin this week. They want to make sure that their names are NOT included on any of our literature. They want to do a study on the feasibility of a wastewater assimilation project in the Cypress Triangle. The CT abuts the Lower Ninth Ward to the North--I've written about it before. But their projects will determine if putting secondarily treated wastewater in the CT will help bring back the Cypress Forest that once flourished but has since been diminished by the salt water intrusion.

The project would provide freshwater (not saltwater) to Cypress as well as the Nitrogen and Phosphorus that is available in wastewater. The wastewater would be treated a third time by having those nutrients removed, and the city doesn't have to pay for that remediation. In the long the Lower Ninth Ward would benefit from having a living Cypress Forest to hold back the full force of hurricane storms. Winners all around. It sounds like a very good project, and I hope the study proves positive. I asked the students from Univ of Wisconsin who DO NOT want their names on any of our literature if they had given any thought to the idea that once a beautiful Cypress Forest is brought back to the CT, then housing prices might rise and force residents to leave--basically environmental remediation as impetus to gentrify. They hadn't considered that in their feasibility study. But maybe now it's on their radar. I certainly don't know how to address that conundrum.

Website Ideas

2007-06-03T13:08:00.000-07:00

Here are some website ideas I've been thinking about:

Threat of an Example.com
-good examples of living apart from the system

Broken Promises.com
-record of what the politicians say and the results

What they Mean.com
-what they mean when saying a word
-what is actually meant in the real world when saying the same thing
-what the word should mean

Update

2007-06-02T11:33:00.000-07:00

So the Senate and the House have given the Army Corps the go ahead to close the Mississippi Riveer Gulf Outlet, the 76-mile canal that has been a really awful project for New Orleans since it's creation in 1965. It's destroyed hundreds of acres of wetlands, cost taxpayers up the whazoo, helped Katrina destroy the Lower Ninth and St. Bernard in its own right, and indirectly (wetlands destrution) and not even been economically profitable for the powers that be.

Most likely, the last one is the reason it's being closed. I heard Lyndon Johnson's family bought up all the wetlands in St. Bernard Parish after Hurrican ripped through in 1965, and it was Johnson himself that built MRGO to provide a more direct route for ships to the Gulf from New Orleans.

Letter to the Editor

2007-05-28T10:02:00.002-07:00

Here is my letter to the editor of the Washington Post. The article I'm responding to is no longer available-it was basically a decent article that looked at progress in New Orleans without considering race or class:

Dear Post Editors,

In contrast to the picture described in your article "New Orleans: A City Gets to Its Feet, Slowly;" a picture of universal, if slow progress in New Orleans reconstruction, stymied by lack of federal funds, there is another framework with which to understand the situation here, and part of that framework includes the city government’s complicity in the destruction of homes and the refusal to allow residents to come back and rebuild, especially in regards to the Housing Projects throughout the city.

I am a volunteer with a relief organization here in the Lower Ninth Ward. Last week we witnessed the demolition of a church located near the infamous spot where a barge had crashed through the levee and into the Lower Ninth. The city did not attempt to repair the damaged church; it simply demolished the entire structure and hauled it away in trucks. A week before that, the city razed a home next door to a home that our organization uses. What is happening in the Lower Ninth, and what the author fails to point out in his article is that the demolition of homes is proceeding apace as other parts of the city are being rebuilt.

It is under the euphemistically-named "Good Neighbor" policy that residents have to gut their homes, or after an allotted amount of time the city will gut the houses for them. For residents who cannot pay the cost of house gutting or for those exiled residents who have not even been notified of the status of their house (which is not an insignificant number), eviction is the next step. The pink eviction notice nailed to abandoned homes alerts residents to the thirty days they have before the city comes to carry away their demolished house in trucks.

Aside from the fact there has been no support for reconstruction in the Lower Ninth Ward by any level of government, and aside from the ludicrous nature of the “Good Neighbor” policy, the fact is that many of the homes currently targeted for destruction are not blighted homes. Many are homes that have been gutted and have been certified structurally sound by contractors. Still the residents of these homes find their houses on the city’s demolition lists.

Several Housing Development Projects around New Orleans share a similar story: structurally sound and having sustained relatively minor damage from Katrina and the flood, the Housing Projects, instead of being opened up for occupation and restoration by residents, many Projects remain boarded up and surrounded by barbed-wire fence 19 months after Katrina. Notices on these buildings tell residents to get permission from the city before entering the premises to claim their possessions. New Orleans citizen groups are still trying to save four of the largest Housing Projects from being razed by the city.

Residents here feel that no one cares about their existence; that their history is being erased via the creeping demolition of their built community; that this erasing of a community is actually what “restoration” means for the Lower Ninth Ward. Given the slow yet perceptible moves towards gentrification, and a media that conveniently excludes the viewpoint of unequal rebuilding support, I am starting to see why.

Two Stories in Louisiana

2007-05-24T20:24:00.000-07:00

In a local newspaper, I read today of a story that's going on in the Lower 9th Ward where I have been volunteering. The City of New Orleans is bulldozing and clearing houses in the Lower 9th that have no reason to be torn down. They are certified to be non-blight, yet these houses continue to appear on blighted house lists in order that they may be torn down.

Another story in Jena, LA near the Texas border goes something like this: 6 black students at the high school get arrested for attempted second degree muder for beating up a white kid. Hmmm. Deeper into the story I hear tensions at the school were high after three nooses were found hanging from a tree in obvious threat to the black students there. Also an alumnus from the high school threatens some black students with shotguns. No one is convicted of anything but the black students for beating up a kid. Hm. Nooses.

Debunking myths to utopia

2007-05-24T20:17:00.000-07:00

The Utopianists have to get better at responding to the knee-jerk reactions and unthinking defenses of the status quo by people who are not necessarily in favor of the current state of things, but who lack imagination. We have to do this because, well, things could really use changing, and that starts with the minds of these people.

Okay, so in my small effort to some sort of methodical response to these tired quips, I wanted to share something I've read by David Graeber from "Fragments of An Anarchist Anthropology (available online):

This of course brings up the “who
will do the dirty jobs?” question—one which
always gets thrown at anarchists or other utopians.
Peter Kropotkin long ago pointed out the fallacy
of the argument. There’s no particular reason dirty
jobs have to exist. If one divided up the unpleasant
tasks equally, that would mean all the world’s top
scientists and engineers would have to do them
too; one could expect the creation of self-cleaning
kitchens and coal-mining robots almost immediately.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now this is funny, as all responses to the knee-jerk rationalizations could be to show the irony of the statement!:):):)

Peace, World!

Where’s the money? More broken promises.

2007-05-20T10:58:00.000-07:00

Well, we thought construction for the Gulf Coast was going to happen. The outrage was palpable, the politicians heard it; the funding would follow the outrage. The allocations were made, it was just a matter of getting the funding. On Saturday I read that grants that were supposed to be available for people to make their rebuilt homes storm-proof (forgetting the question of whether that’s even possible) are no longer available (Times-Picayune, May 19, 2007). In the same paper, I read that in order for Bush to not veto a war-funding bill that had a time-table for troop withdrawal from Iraq, Democrats sacrificed $1.3 billion item for Gulf Restoration from the bill. So the Dems sacrificed Louisiana in order to give Bush all the money he wants for more war—so troops would start to come home by July.

What is Clean? or Overcoming my Suburban Notions

2007-05-20T10:40:00.000-07:00

I was in Home Depot the other day and saw the Clorox Bleach Bottles on the shelves and I shuddered—this is a good thing. Bleach is toxic and not meant for an environment inhabited by humans or any other animals. But usually when I see Clorox (or more importantly, before coming to Common Ground) I thought Clorox just another helpful aid in cleaning things. But it is a pollutant we are putting on our floors and toilet bowls, and the residue that’s left after Clorox (concentrated chlorine) does its job is just as toxic to people and other animals. These are called Trihalomethanes. The municipal water in the industrial nations is chlorinated to prevent pathogens. When chlorine kills pathogens it leaves these THMs which are carcinogenic in themselves.

Okay, but what are we supposed to do? We need to drink water that’s free from pathogens. Well, we can catch rainwater to drink and use. It's free and it doesn't have bad things in it. (okay acid rain for the Northeast aside.)

But to clean things? Counter tops? Dishes? Contaminated homes? Efficient microorganisms are what we use here in the Lower Ninth. It has good germs as opposed to bad, pathogenic germs. It’s what we were cleaning contaminated houses with.

Notes on Fragments

2007-05-20T10:32:00.001-07:00

Revolution as a process, not a break. As building autonomous communities in an 'engaged withdrawal,' not as confronting state power. As seeing all of us as the same not as Us studying Them.

Graeber has some interesting things to say in his "Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology."
Another example.

"The Tsimihety are now considered a foko—a people or ethnic group—but their identity emerged as a political project. The desire to live free of Sakalava domination was translated into a desire—one which came to suffuse all social institutions from village assemblies to mortuary ritual—to live in a society free of markers of hierarchy. This then became institutionalized as a way of life of a community living together, which then in turn came to be thought of as a particular “kind” of people, an ethnic group—people who also, since they tend to intermarry, come to be seen as united by common ancestry."

A funny example of subversion:

"Residents of the squatter community of Christiana, Denmark, for example, have a Christmastide ritual where they dress in Santa suits, take toys from department stores and
distribute them to children on the street, partly just so everyone can relish the images of the cops beating down Santa and snatching the toys back from crying children."

One last note (for now):

"This of course brings up the “who will do the dirty jobs?” question—one which always gets thrown at anarchists or other utopians. Peter Kropotkin long ago pointed out the fallacy of the argument. There’s no particular reason dirty jobs have to exist. If one divided up the unpleasant tasks equally, that would mean all the world’s top scientists and engineers would have to do them too; one could expect the creation of self-cleaning kitchens and coal-mining robots almost immediately."

Of course I should be reading more than just white male academics. Thanks for the check, Becca.

New World Bank Report on the Occupation of Palestine

2007-05-20T09:10:00.000-07:00

Here are some 'highlights' of a recent report on the effects of the occupation on the West Bank and Gaza. The report is called, "MOVEMENT AND ACCESS RESTRICTIONS IN THE WEST BANK"

"Israeli restrictions have divided the occupied West Bank into 10 economically isolated enclaves, severing financial links and denying Palestinians access to some 50 percent of the land."

"The report notes that the number of physical barriers, including checkpoints, roadblocks and gates, in the West Bank continues to rise. Based on data from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Territories (OCHA), the number of such impediments as of March stood at 546, or 44 percent higher than at the signing of the Agreement on Movement and Access in November 2005."

"About 270,000 Jewish settlers live in the occupied West Bank among some 2.5 million Palestinians. The World Court has ruled that settlements built on land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War are illegal."

Now how do that many settlers impact the "safety concerns" of Israelis?

Sunflowers

2007-05-12T12:06:00.000-07:00

A quick explanation of our Sunflower Project:

Sunflowers are hyperaccumulators when it comes to lead, which means that the plants soak up lead that is in the soil. How does lead get into the soil? Lead-based paints that are scraped off/sanded off buildings. As with every city New Orleans has significant amount of lead contamination in the soils. This is not a problem associated with Katrina, but has been a chronic problem of the last 50 years.

In a turn on environmental justice, it happens that poorer sections of town have less soil contamination than the richer parts of town when it comes to lead. The reason for this is that the richer people were able to afford the more costly lead-based paint than the poorer sections. Of course children putting their hands in their mouth after playing in the soil is the most important vector of contamination, and the number of children with lead poisoning in New Orleans is truly sad.

So we plant sunflowers in the Lower Ninth to take out the lead. And we will plant mustard greens next growing season to take out arsenic that is also in the soild. In places where there is more contamination, the professor we're working with simply covers the contaminated soild with a foot thick layer of virgin topsoil-too contaminated to try to remediate. I'll let you know how the remediation goes.

The water supposedly doesn't have any lead in it. The Sewerage Board's latest report is from 2005. The Lower Ninth Ward was the last area in the city to have their water turned on. Meanwhile, water leaks from pipes in vacant lots turn parts of our street into mini-wetlands. Okay, it seems like I'm kavetching.

Touristas Go Home

2007-05-12T11:46:00.000-07:00

I saw a woman witha shirt on that said, "Tourstas Go Home." She might have meant the people that are in New Orleans merely to take advantage of Bourbon street and the music. She may have been directing the shirt towards people who drive through the Ninth Ward to take pictures of the destruction. She may have meant the people that are volunteering from other states to help rebuild the city.

Whatever her sentiment, I of course liked the shirt. Today while fertilizing the sunflowers (have I mentioned we're growing unflowers to take out the lead in the soil?) there were plenty of cars rolling on by-some local, some from out of state-taking pictures of our organization's signs and our work, and then rolling up their window to take off. Maybe a fraction talked with the person down the road who had literature about the work that we're doing. Maybe some made a donation.

Witnesses to the destruction and the state of things down here in New Orleans are important. They can take what they have seen back to their homes and tell people what they've seen. If their intention is to have a few pictures for themselves, and not tell people what they've seen, then that is not helping people rebuild, that is selfish. But maybe these people need to be informed of their importance. The role that they can play. Instead of leering at these touristas then, I could step forward and inform them of their crucial role as witness.

Oh, and if you haven't, consider stopping by New Orleans for some food, music and solidarity work! :)

Military Police

2007-05-10T16:47:00.000-07:00

One thing I haven't mentioned is that the Military Police are still here in New Orleans, patrolling everywhere, and especially in the Lower Ninth Ward. They drive in big Humvees, dressed in fatigues as if they are in a war situation.

They get to accidents quicker than the regular police. I have never seen anyone arrested by the MPs. But why are they here? Afraid of people looting? They instructed a friend of mine to not stand next to his car, which was parked in a park. Um. Useful.

Adventures in LaLaLand

2007-05-09T09:16:00.000-07:00

I went somewhere I wasn't supposed to yesterday. Nevermind where. But on Google Earth today, I got to see a very close-up shot of that same place.

It'd be very easy for a company to pay someone like Google to take real-time shots of their property and a computer discerns whether someone is trespassing. Now I dont' want to give ideas to companies. Only to point out how easy it is with simple online tools (forgetting what kind of sophisticated equipment the governments is probably hiding) to track and then to execute some kind of police call (or Death Ray strike from space).

Well, they're doing pretty much the same thing at Toll Booths by taking pictures of people's license plates when they don't pay the toll. Will this kind of surveillance be far away. Probably not. Is it any reason to be worried? Not if the creeping fascism creeps slowly enough.

The Wetlands and Iraq

2007-04-29T12:36:00.000-07:00

I read in the Times-Picayune today that 1) the wetland restoration is being stalled in some places because of land-rights issues and 2) George Tenet is not to blame for the Iraq War, this according to George Tenet.

Where to place the blame? Does it matter? A lot of blame to go around. Because the problems of war and wetland degradation and the decision making process about how to solve each is disassociated from the people who are directly impacted, people may point the finger back and forth until a) the entire Middle East blows up or b) the Gulf is in the backyard of New Orleans and JazzFest gets a whole lot wetter. All of which are possibilities.

What does this advocate for? Local control, carajo! Decision-making where it counts. If you believe that only governments can get our energy resources secured for us, or save our necessary wetlands, then you don't understand how the government is responsible for the loss of wetlands or is responsible for the scourge of war or the insecurity of the entire world. Okay. enough ranting.

Low Impact Development is one way to rebuild New Orleans and other devastated cities. Devastated by natural catastrophes or by Wal-Mart stores. You can look up Low Impact Development on, ironically enough, the EPA's website. Think about the principles of LID, notice how it's taking a completely different route than regular development. Different thinking. Follow nature. Could be driving all our planning. And all our living.

Cypress Triangle

2007-04-20T09:27:00.000-07:00

I went to see the Cypress Triangle yesterday, escorted by a very esteemed elder. The Triangle is where the marsh directly to the north of the Ninth Ward begins. I saw stumps where many cypress trees had once been. The cause for this graveyard was not Katrina but the salt water intrusion into the marsh over the past several decades. The arrival of saltier waters into the wetlands is due to rising of the sea level and the simultaneous sinking of Louisiana into the ocean. The cypress trees, had they been viable could have slowed down Katrina's winds and storm surges, but there were no leaves to catch the energy, just stumps left. Katrina would breach the levees about a mile down the Industrial Canal into the Ninth Ward, flood the entire neighborhood, and bring a barge from the Canal smashing down on houses and dreams.

The salt water intrusion is happening in all of the wetlands wherever land is sinking relative to the ocean. It so happens that in those wetlands hit hardest by intrusion, pollution, are adjacent to economically depressed communitites. This in fact is a case of Environmental Justice.

My escort, a resident and activist, showed me the place where city, state officials want to put a trolley station and renovate the area. The location is at the end of Caffin Street, directly in the heart of the Lower Ninth Ward. Real estate prices would subsequently rise and in order for developers to make money, they want those displaced homeowners to not come back. Build up a richer, cosier environment for people who can afford it-just a train ride from the French Quarter. And replant the Cypress Triangle with live trees. Finally.

So how do activists work in solidarity with residents to rebuild a devastated community, better than it was, as cozy and lush as the in plans of the developers, move the salt-water out of the marshes and bring in secondarily-treated wastewater to feed the trees nutrients?

As far as rebuilding, restoring the Lower Ninth, some want to proliferate solar panels, advocate turning off the TV. Others advocate DIY projects that use waste, are cheap and easy to maintain. Not only are they "off the grid" but they promote self-reliance and self-confidence and autonomy. That in a crisis people can and should rely on each other, and not look to the government.

Is anarchism a white middleclass game?

2007-04-18T13:26:00.001-07:00

Second Sex

2007-04-06T15:24:00.000-07:00

I've just started reading The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir and I was thinking as I wrote it, and considering woman today-How much have woman won in getting into the mainstream, which is still male-dominated? Getting into the system, whether through professional jobs, college admissions, is still within the male context, the patriarchal history and context. So I ask, has the dominant culture learned to adopt those strengths of what it means to be feminine (de Beauvoir will let me know just what that means), or have woman adopted those characteristics of the patriarchy necessary to survive? Which has changed? And who is better off for it?

Green Chicago, White Chicago

2007-04-06T05:19:00.000-07:00

Here's an article about Greening of Chicago. There is nothing said about the gentrification of Chicago-sending people of color out of the city as the white people from the suburbs are brought back in.

Old Chicago Factory Finds New Life as Green Exchange

CHICAGO, Illinois, April 5, 2007 (ENS) - A four-story concrete loft building in Chicago that once housed an underwear company is being renovated according to LEED certified standards to become the Green Exchange, the city's first business community committed to environmental sustainability, profit and positive social impact.

Green Exchange will include an organic restaurant and caf�, a sustainable furniture store, a green building supply company, an eco-friendly printer, architects and designers focused on sustainability, an environmentally-friendly clothing company, a car sharing service, and a bike shop. The first tenants will move in at the beginning of 2008.

The 250,000 square foot Green Exchange located at 2545 West Diversey Avenue is a project of Baum Development LLC, a comprehensive commercial real estate development firm.

The redevelopment has the support of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. "We want Chicago to be a shining example of how a major urban area can live in harmony with its environment � and we want our city to be an advocate for green practices in city planning, construction, energy use and day-to-day management of government and the private sector," said Mayor Daley.

"Green Exchange is a great example of the public/private partnerships that are working together to help make Chicago one of the most environmentally friendly cities in the nation," the mayor said.

The project's architects Hartshorne and Plunkard intend to preserve many of the existing historically significant features. The team will comply with LEED standards when renovating by incorporating an energy efficient environment, a green roof, clean air quality, a landscaped courtyard, bike rooms, meeting and event space, and priority parking for hybrid vehicles.

Green Exchange seeks to broaden the sustainable business marketplace from niche to mainstream. For more information, visit: www.greenexchange.com.

In Legal News

2007-04-02T19:12:00.000-07:00

Here is a report from a week ago. The Police spied-extensively-on protest groups. This isn't going to stop until people realize it's going on. And they face their consciences and decide that it's not right. The whole article is not reprinted, but it is NYTimes.

March 25, 2007

City Police Spied Broadly Before G.O.P. Convention

By JIM DWYER

Correction Appended

For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police records and interviews.

From Albuquerque to Montreal, San Francisco to Miami, undercover New York police officers attended meetings of political groups, posing as sympathizers or fellow activists, the records show.

They made friends, shared meals, swapped e-mail messages and then filed daily reports with the department’s Intelligence Division. Other investigators mined Internet sites and chat rooms.

From these operations, run by the department’s “R.N.C. Intelligence Squad,” the police identified a handful of groups and individuals who expressed interest in creating havoc during the convention, as well as some who used Web sites to urge or predict violence.

But potential troublemakers were hardly the only ones to end up in the files. In hundreds of reports stamped “N.Y.P.D. Secret,” the Intelligence Division chronicled the views and plans of people who had no apparent intention of breaking the law, the records show.

These included members of street theater companies, church groups and antiwar organizations, as well as environmentalists and people opposed to the death penalty, globalization and other government policies. Three New York City elected officials were cited in the reports.

In at least some cases, intelligence on what appeared to be lawful activity was shared with police departments in other cities. A police report on an organization of artists called Bands Against Bush noted that the group was planning concerts on Oct. 11, 2003, in New York, Washington, Seattle, San Francisco and Boston. Between musical sets, the report said, there would be political speeches and videos.

“Activists are showing a well-organized network made up of anti-Bush sentiment; the mixing of music and political rhetoric indicates sophisticated organizing skills with a specific agenda,” said the report, dated Oct. 9, 2003. “Police departments in above listed areas have been contacted regarding this event.”

Police records indicate that in addition to sharing information with other police departments, New York undercover officers were active themselves in at least 15 places outside New York — including California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montreal, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Washington, D.C. — and in Europe.

The operation was mounted in 2003 after the Police Department, invoking the fresh horrors of the World Trade Center attack and the prospect of future terrorism, won greater authority from a federal judge to investigate political organizations for criminal activity.

To date, as the boundaries of the department’s expanded powers continue to be debated, police officials have provided only glimpses of its intelligence-gathering.

Now, the broad outlines of the pre-convention operations are emerging from records in federal lawsuits that were brought over mass arrests made during the convention, and in greater detail from still-secret reports reviewed by The New York Times. These include a sample of raw intelligence documents and of summary digests of observations from both the field and the department’s cyberintelligence unit.

Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the Police Department, confirmed that the operation had been wide-ranging, and said it had been an essential part of the preparations for the huge crowds that came to the city during the convention.

“Detectives collected information both in-state and out-of-state to learn in advance what was coming our way,” Mr. Browne said. When the detectives went out of town, he said, the department usually alerted the local authorities by telephone or in person.

Under a United States Supreme Court ruling, undercover surveillance of political groups is generally legal, but the police in New York — like those in many other big cities — have operated under special limits as a result of class-action lawsuits filed over police monitoring of civil rights and antiwar groups during the 1960s. The limits in New York are known as the Handschu guidelines, after the lead plaintiff, Barbara Handschu.

“All our activities were legal and were subject in advance to Handschu review,” Mr. Browne said.

Before monitoring political activity, the police must have “some indication of unlawful activity on the part of the individual or organization to be investigated,” United States District Court Judge Charles S. Haight Jr. said in a ruling last month.

Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which represents seven of the 1,806 people arrested during the convention, said the Police Department stepped beyond the law in its covert surveillance program.

“The police have no authority to spy on lawful political activity, and this wide-ranging N.Y.P.D. program was wrong and illegal,” Mr. Dunn said. “In the coming weeks, the city will be required to disclose to us many more details about its preconvention surveillance of groups and activists, and many will be shocked by the breadth of the Police Department’s political surveillance operation.”

The Police Department said those complaints were overblown.

On Wednesday, lawyers for the plaintiffs in the convention lawsuits are scheduled to begin depositions of David Cohen, the deputy police commissioner for intelligence. Mr. Cohen, a former senior official at the Central Intelligence Agency, was “central to the N.Y.P.D.’s efforts to collect intelligence information prior to the R.N.C.,” Gerald C. Smith, an assistant corporation counsel with the city Law Department, said in a federal court filing.

A little Fromm for you (with some Humboldt thrown in)

2007-03-08T11:31:00.000-08:00

Erich Fromm was a scholar from the Frankfurt School. Here's a quote from one of his books, The Sane Society:

'As long as there was overt authority, there was conflict, and there was rebellion – against irrational authority. In the conflict with the commands of one’s conscience, in the fight against irrational authority, the personality developed—specifically the sense of self developed. I experience myself as “I” because I doubt, I protest, I rebel. Even if I submit and sense defeat, I experience myself as “I”—I, the defeated one. But if I am not aware of submitting or rebelling, if I am ruled by an anonymous authority, I lost the sense of self, I become a “one,” a part of the “It.”'

This is from Von Humbolt (Wilhelm) book, The Limits of State Action:

If we consider the position of man in the universe,—if we remember the constant tendency of his energies towards some definite activity, and recognize the influence of surrounding nature, which is ever provoking him to exertion, we shall be ready to acknowledge that repose and possession do not indeed exist but in imagination. –Von Humboldt, “Limits of State Action”

The ancients devoted their attention more exclusively to the harmonious development of the individual man, as man; the moderns are chiefly solicitous about his comfort, his prosperity, his productiveness. The former looked to virtue; the latter seek for happiness. And hence it follows, that the restrictions imposed on freedom in the ancient States were, in some important respects, more oppressive and dangerous than those which characterize our times. For they directly attacked that inner life of the soul, in which the individuality of human being essentially consists; and hence all the ancient nations betray a character of uniformity, which is not so much to be attributed to their want of higher refinement and more limited intercommunication, as to the systematic education of their youth in common (almost universal among them), and the designedly collective life of the citizens. –Von Humboldt, “Limits of State Action”

Both are talking about similar things. I like the way they put them.

Organizing relief organizations

2007-03-02T10:26:00.000-08:00

Question: Is it possible to have an anarchist relief organization?
Ans: Maybe, I haven't seen one yet.

Question: Is it possible to have a hierarchical organization relief org?
Ans: Sure, there are plenty of examples.

Question: How about one in between the two; one that is devoid of patriarchy, and racism and all the things that plague the larger society, and a really good mission,yet one that still has a top down structure; one in which those that volunteer are not included in the decision-making process?
Ans: Yes I think the constraints on this organization, especially the temporality of the majority of volunteers, make this decision-making structure necessary.

Question: Can we get done what needs to get done in a relief organization, while living the principles we'd like to see in our utopia?
Answer: The idea of relief is to provide people with their immediate and long-term needs to get back on their feet (in the absence of government help) and assist in making the community more sustainable than it was before. We don't need patriarchy to acheive this. It will probably hinder the effort ultimately. Of course we don't want to hinder the mission (ie relief) from some misconceived notions of patriarchy. But whom is to arbitrate here? Who is to decide what is right or wrong? People still steeped in notions of patriarchal culture or a small core of activists who have unwrapped their layers. Hmmm. No answer here.

One Perspective on perspectives: New Orleans

2007-03-02T09:58:00.000-08:00

A friend here in New Orleans has been working some tough social work cases in the past two weeks. He's very young, but he has already taken on the responsibility for finding jobs and homes for many New Orleans residents.

I talked to a man who lost everything he had in the flood, and had come back here to try and start over. His family is still displaced in different states. He told me "they" blew up the levees so the Lower Ninth would flood. There is historical evidence for this theory for they blew up the levees back in the twenties so as to save the French Quarter from a flood. In 1965 Hurricane Betsy provided another opportunity for those in power to decide who lives and who dies when they blew the levees once again.

I was in the Lower Ninth for a day last week. I got to see the rebuilt flood walls atop the levees. So as not to confuse the two, levees are mounds of earth, flood walls are concrete structures built on top of the levees. Anyway I was at Ground Zero, and the remains of the Lower Ninth were still in disarray, desite the official rhetoric of rebuilding and all the good work that independent groups like Common Ground have done so far.

One person from CG told me he came from Houston to help people in the flood, but was turned back at the state line. He tried crossing into Louisiana again, this time with white men (first time was with men of color) and he got through. He found himself feeding people who refused to leave their homes. As this was after the flood, he would get food to people holed up in their attics. One elder woman whom he had gotten food to regularly was found raped and killed in her attic.

The stories are surreal and horrible, and I know that I know only a fraction of a percent of the whole story.

It's funny, but my daily existential experience has been anything but horrible. One doesn't have to pay attention to any of the horrible stories generated by the flood and by extreme poverty.

What I want to say is that society has made it easy for mainstream society to forget/ignore the savagery imposed on the most vulnerable in our midst. I guess it's necessary for that amnesia, that whitewashing of memory and experience to occur if society is to not question itself, and to allow it to happen again, and when it does, to be totally floored that anything like that could happen in this society.

Forget the talk about 'Katrina fatigue'. The margainalized people here are tired of being forgotten.

I will keep my ears and my eyes open.

To help or to work in Solidarity in New Orleans

2007-02-27T13:12:00.000-08:00

I didn't give the question much thought when I decided to come to New Orleans and volunteer at Common Ground. Not until I saw a poster hanging up at Common Ground that questioned the perspective of 'helping' did I start to see the difference between working in Solidarity and helping. Here are some differences that I see.

To Work in Solidarity with people is to see them as Subjects, as capable human beings, equals (as brothers and sisters) facing a disaster brought about due to systematic oppression. The equality with which both work in Solidarity elevates the character of both parties and enhances their work.

To help people is to objectify people. They don't have any agency; they are helpless. One is there to help the helpless masses, the needy, the pitiable. This is Charity; this is the thinking of the Liberal.

The authority this confers on the Helper gives him the "Power Trip" and messes with his soul. He begins to see himself as superior, and them as inferior, or perhaps even less than human. The pratice of Helping or Charity eventually degrades the original intent in

To Work in Solidarity (to me) implies to work togethers towards a better world in general and a better systemic condition for the comrades. When I say systemic condition, I mean a situation in which the Subjects are better able to handle their own lives, to rebuild and at the same time to support the comrades struggle for more agency.

To work in Solidarity is to see one's own struggle as a part of other people's struggles. (This is the sentiment of the poster hanging on the wall if not the exact words.) The recognition that my comrades' struggles are my struggles.

To help people means to have a legitimacy authorized by something outside the object: the funder, the helper, the government, the God. All of which places the power in the Helper, the doer; no power rests with those being helped; there's no accountability or responsibility for the consequences of the Helper's actions.

To Work in Solidarity has a legitimacy conferred by those Subjects with whom one is working in Solidarity. The person working in solidarity takes her ques from her comrades, and her legitamacy lasts as long her comrades say her support is needed.

The fact that we are in an unequal society and the fact that the majority of those coming to Common Ground (even those committed to staying long term) have a background of privilege raises another point: Can one be in solidarity with another if the ground they stand on is unequal? If one can leave whenever they desire? What kind of accountability is there in that situation?

This is not, repeat not to dismiss the efforts of those struggles, just something for me to ponder as I work in solidarity with the people of New Orleans.

Below is a quote from Mandela, also hanging on a wall at Common Ground.

Shine on.
________________________
"Our worst fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful
beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness
that most frightens us. We ask ourselves,
'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented,
and fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God; your playing small doesn't
serve the world. There is nothing enlightened
about shrinking so that other people won't feel
insecure around you ... It is not just
in some of us, it is in everyone.
As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously
give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our
presence automatically liberates others."

Nelson Mandela
From his inaugural speech as South Africa's
first democratically elected President, given May 10, 1994

Art and Rebuilding in New Orleans

2007-02-25T11:18:00.000-08:00

I was sitting in a shelter in the 7th Ward yesterday, talking with a friend about white people's place in the movement to rebuild New Orleans' communities of color. Do we have a "right" to be there? Do we have a duty?

Well, one of the ideas my friend had about rebuilding was to paint the white walls of the small shelter (housing 3 families with 5 children total) instead in bright and energetic colors to add some beauty to the house. On second thought my friend said there were probably more important things that should get done first like picking up the glass shards that were lining the side of the house and the gutter in front of the house. [This in a neighborhood were no FEMA has ever showed up to help the people rebuild.]

But I said that beautification should happen simultaneous with other rebuilding projects. Ideally, beautification should be built in, apart of such sustainable rebuilding projects. Taken from one point of view, there will always be something more important than painting the walls "simply" for beauty's sake. On the other hand, what does beauty do for a person's soul? How does it change a person's outlook, their behaviour and sense of hope to have something beautiful in their lives?

This same consideration goes for a lot of other situations where some would want to hold off on certain projects others in the movement might enjoy pursuing because there are other things deemed more important by the powers that be. The thinking being that the effort can be better used in other "more fundamental" areas. One example is the raising of class issues at the expense of race or gender or other issues because class war, once won will solve all other problems. Or feminists who do not look at race issues in gender studies because one can look at the former independently of the latter. Of course, this is not the case. Many in the movement today see all issues of oppression as inextricably tied to one another and any

What I would like to include in this panoply of issues, which is not talked of much in the movements' literature is the promotion of the art issue. We need art and freedom, one will support the other and vice versa. Art and artists will show us the possibilities, art will make our demonstrations human and attractive, art will help us keep our sanity in the face of this death culture. Art will reach people in places in their heart that rational thought can't reach them. Art will give people courage, and make life a little easier to live.

Fascists attack art and music instead use symbols of oppression to degrade our thought, but they cannot totally destroy in us what is human-there will always be art.

Beautify everything there is to beautify. Tear down branded psuedo-art. Leave it in shreds. Post diaries onto street lights. Burn memories into magazine ads.

The Terror of knowing what this world is about

2007-02-20T11:26:00.000-08:00

Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie.

Happy Mardi Gras

2007-02-20T10:04:00.000-08:00

Quick thought I wanted to write down. I had a conversation with a person on education. Basically it was a reform vs. abolishment debate-I reduce for expediency sake.

Israel Uprising

2007-01-31T22:00:00.000-08:00

I was just watching 'Uprising' the tv movie starring Hank Azaria about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, one of the few instances of armed resistance to the Nazis by the disempowered victims, by the Jews. These heroic people drove back the Nazi military with little more than Molotov cocktails and pistols. They held out longer than the Polish army did, and some even escaped. Quite impressive actions-done with strategy and bravery; and the movie itself was worth watching.

What was made reference to a few times in the movie by the main characters was escaping from the Warsaw and going to Palestine, to farm, to make the desert grow. It seems like for the victims of the Holocaust, or at least the Jews in the ghettos, Palestine represented the promised land. But promised to whom?

Well, we know that Palestine already had people in it before the victims of the Holocaust went there (ilegally). Some might say they deserved to go there, they survived horrendous ordeals. But that they went through hell doesn't mean they have the right to dispossess someone of land they had first.

Now when I talk to ardent Zionists, even people whom I consider rational on all other topics, they become irrational in their defense of Israel. It seems they stick to prescribed talking points no matter what I say. For example, if they say people are being blown up by suicide bombers, I say Palestinian civilians are getting killed 8 times more than Israelis. Then they retort how Israel is a democracy, or how the Arabs are ruled by dictators. It's often a disconnect like this that makes me think the person I'm talking to is not really talking to me, and by talking I mean listening to and considering what I'm saying and responding to part of or at least acknowledging some part of my argument. Instead it's a PR campaign targeted to Americans using specific words and imagery: suicide bombers, democracy, dictators-words that play on the notions of ourselves and what we Westerners fear in the 'Other.'

Watching the movie gave me some perspective on some of the shit that the Jews had to go through just to survive as a people. And it also gave me some idea as to what Israel means to Zionists: a place where Jews won't be persecuted. I mean, if you came from a culture that had a history like that, one could see how you might want a place of your own, how you might protect it to immoral ends, i.e. the fact that other people were on this land doesn't matter too much to you, if you have the means to push them out.

I've heard Israeli officials say that Israel is a place where Jews won't be persecuted, but I guess I just don't think the Left recognize what psychological factors are involved in the maintenance of a Jewish state. At least I haven't heard anyone talking about it.

WMA

2007-01-30T13:17:00.000-08:00

You know what would be cool? If men who are working for change-radicals, progressives, activists, especially white men could for once not say a god damn thing at a meeting. Just be there and be supportive. We (white straight males) have no idea what it's like to be silenced by the dominant culture (for we are priviledged by it and it tells us that our voices must be heard), so simply as an experience, white, straight, males in a group should decide amongst themselves which meeting this could happen in,

and then don't speak for the entire meeting. Feel the urge to add your two cents come bubbling to the surface and resist that urge. Realize that the meeting will work without your voice. Listen to other people who are now speaking that never have before, and recognize that maybe there's a reason for it.

Try it. It might be the hardest thing you've ever done.

Iraqi Courts

2007-01-30T12:58:00.000-08:00

The US setup the courts in Iraq, the ones that executed Sadam and are continuing going after Sadam's guard.

One provision in the mandate of the courts was that it could only go after Iraqi citizens; foreigners couldn't be prosecuted for war crimes, or for any offense. US officials and corporations guilty of selling Sadam arms, gas, credits are the ones now occupying the place ready to take Iraq's oil. The last thing they want is to be held accountable for past wrongs.

This is one example of how Power escapes the judgement of history. Very silently. It has gotten really good at hiding it's mechanisms. Americans see Sadam hanging on the news, and believe justice has been served. Any bias in the court system is purely the Iraqis fault, but we can forgive them they are such new democracy.

Scientists Knowledge

2007-01-20T19:56:00.000-08:00

A scientist friend, recently told me she didn't mind biotechnology-she knows the science, and it's not harmful.

Sort of like the nuclear scientists who say they understand the science of nukes, which are harmless....okay, i'll elaborate when I can think more clearly.

The Oppressors Language

2007-01-20T19:48:00.000-08:00

I just heard some Israeli human rights lawyer talking about facts "on the ground." That phrase, "facts on the ground" was created by the US government to allow for illegal settlements in the West Bank. You can't very well give Palestinian land to Palestinians if it's currently settled by Israelis. Those are facts.

But then I hear this Israeli human rights lawyer using the same jargon. Are people aware of the words they chose? Why do we chose the language of the oppressor?

My students don't use the language of the oppressor, they use their own language. Ridiculed by the outside though it may be, it is theirs, and it represents strength for understanding, and a space for commonality and solidarity which has a meaning that can't be destroyed so easily by the oppressor. That's ONE of the reasons I believe the revolution will ONLY come from people of color

Reclaiming words, ideas

2006-12-09T07:08:00.001-08:00

Many words have been used or exploited by the powerful and mainstream to dull the people's minds. I'm studying for the GRE and I've come upon one that I wanted to write about.

Pragmatic (adj): Practical rather than idealistic.

Well, what is practical? Going along with the status quo is pragmatic/practical. Fighting for a better world is idealistic. Why? Cause it's not going to happen. What I say is that going along with this status quo-misery piled upon misery while others make decisions for you-is idealistic. This status quo is not practical when you look at it; it is highly unsustainable and headed for fascism or environmental catastrophe. Believing that it's sustainable is not even idealistic however, it's just ostrich-syndrome writ large.

Reclaiming words, ideas

2006-12-09T07:08:00.000-08:00

Email Q&A

2006-12-08T18:03:00.000-08:00

circa October 24th 2006

Tim:
So how do you reconcile your support of {North Korean President} Kim {Jong-Il} with your principles of...

1. Promotion of popular democracy at national to global levels.

2. Libertarian and anarchic opposition to statism and especially to dictatorial governments. Especially ones which don't mind their people starving, such as Ethiopia 1984 and DPRK several years. Especially the very meanest and most repressive and most aggressive governments, DPRK taking the prize at first out of 168.

3. Anarchic revolution and regime change in support of this.

4. Opposition to arms buildup and nuclear missiles and regional destabilization and arms races.
5. Truth regarding imputations of governmental motivations of offense vs defense.

Mike: Tim, You've given me a lot to think about. Here are some knee-jerk reactions to your worthwhile questions.

1. I do not "support" Kim. I do want democracy (of a kind we don't have here save in our heads) to become the norm worldwide. Democracy will never come from without a country, only from within. On his move to get nukes, I cannot say anything against that (even though I'd like to live in a nuke free world) while my country has been playing God for years with the largest nuclear arsenal on earth.

An interesting question that comes to mind is how are despotic rulers kept in power? Those that allow their population to starve. Why do they starve in the first place? And actually with Ethiopia, it's an interesting albeit digressing question of what caused the famine in the first place.

With the Saudis it's easy to see that it's the US backing the royal family in repressing their own people. Now do I want to see democracy there? Yes, but we won't talk about that because the powerful have shaped this discussion so that we talk about North Korea. Now I believe democracy would come in time if not for the powerful. If Kim isn't powerful enough then there must be some hidden power keeping him there. Hmm, not sure if that makes much sense. But in an indirect way, the US could be keeping him in power-retarding revolution by being the monster Kim must protect the people from. All leaders use the other guy to scare there population into obediance, if there weren't a bad guy, we'd have to create him.

As an anarchist I supported East Timor's liberation struggle, and I support Palestinian state-both moves toward self-determination. Remember, small steps. Unfortunately a lot of the people in those liberation struggles either fell under the yoke of neo-colonialism in the form of neoliberalism and global market capitalism (South Africa, Jamaica) or went Islamist in their rejection of all things Western (Algieria).

When the craziest, most powerful man in the world lumps you in a category with two other countries, one he's turned into a horror, and the other he's threatening with the same, I'd say most rational people would call it defense. Do you have any other info on that?

Peace,
Mike

Israel is Goliath

2006-07-19T07:29:00.000-07:00

Isn't it ironic

2006-03-06T11:33:00.000-08:00

There were seven Iraqi women that were supposed to come to the US to talk about their experiences in Iraq, and what the war is like. Well, only five could come because the other two had their families killed by the US military, and the State Department wouldn't grant them entry because they had no family that they could go back to and hence, no compelling reason to return to Iraq.

More info on Democracynow.org

Cell Phones sounded a tone...

2006-02-14T19:21:00.000-08:00

There are many problems with cell phones in this society, and let me talk about some that are on my mind. We've got this problem of isolation in post-modern, capitalist society. We don't talk to eachother. This is a problem everywhere, but especially in present-day Boston. You're on the subway and it's clear how uncomfortable it is, the train could be full, and no one talking to eachother, unless, that is, if you have a friend there and then yours is the only thing people can hear for lack of any other sound. Where this isolation comes from seems clear, but is rarely talked about, because I guess people don't like to think about it. But to me, this isolation comes about in part because today's civilization does away with the need to depend on other people. We only need to buy from corporations, and pay taxes to the government to have all our physical needs met. Besides a lover, maybe a nuclear family and a circle of friends, we don't need many other people. So conversation declines, we have TV to entertain us. And of course TV also keeps us afraid of other people at the same time. (When I say 'us', I talk about white people afraid of most 'other' people).

Alright, so in short summary, there's the root of the problem.

With the result that we don't talk to eachother when we are in the presence of eachother, and what to do about that? Well, we can read a book, the day's Metro edition, turn on IPod and pretend we're not trying to ignore everyone, or we can call everyone we know on our cell phone, and let them know exactly where we are at that moment, when you think you will be somewhere else, presumably in closer proximity to the person on the other end of the phone. And of course, everyone on the train will also be aware of these updates....annoying, yes. But what does this irritating phenomenon-a total ignorance of other people (lack of cell phone etiquette, while quite apparent is not what I'm getting at) have to do with where we are going as a society? Is it just one more thing to do to ignore people, or is it a new depth we've reached?

I asked a former student of mine to think about whether cell phones bring us together or keep us further apart. The next day he told me it keeps us apart, because he said (and I don't remember exactly) we dont' have to be next to eachother to be communicating. 24-7 access to everyone we know, and we don't have to be anywhere near them. While paradoxically in the same space with someone for a prolonged amount of time, and never speak a word to them. Why? If we can just keep to our safety. The safety of isolating technology.

Yoga is wonderful but don't overdo it

2006-02-13T18:32:00.000-08:00

it's interesting how much one can do with one's breath. you can reach places you've never reached before with your breath-like your toes, the ground-all through your breath. And it doesn't take all year, or even a day. In less than a minute you will be stretching to new heights, or lows. This may sound like a gimmick, but it's not. Truth is you can do yoga for free, anywhere. You can also reach within yourself, as yoga was originally developed as an aid to meditation. Concentrating on your breathing helps get rid of a lot of crap in your head swirling all day. Focus. Centered. More flexible and hence feeling better in your body. what an amazing thing yoga.

as with anything, don't overdo it trying to impress the ladies. I can't move my neck so well anymore.

Venezuela on 5000 bolivares a day

2006-02-05T19:01:00.000-08:00

I just got back from Caracas, Venezuela and the World Social Forum-it's a meeting/gathering/networking for the lefties in the world, it's also in response to the World Economic Forum, a gathering of the world's elites-heads of state, corporate executives planning on how to take over the world. Oh, they talk about "making a better world" but that is a better world for them, the rich. And it doesn't have to get any better for them, does it? Okay, I'm digressing.

But as I want to write an article for Boston Independent Media, I thought I could get my thoughts down first. Here goes.

We, me and my roommate (who speaks much better spanish than I do) met a lot of people, saw a lot of poverty, and some of what the government is doing to alleviate it. Now please understand that I come as a Yanqui who doesn't know a lot of Spanish, Venezuelan culture, or poverty, when I criticize the goverments' actions.

Everything in Moderation, except extremism

2006-01-05T10:18:00.000-08:00

Live your life simply. Don't live it by simple sayings that say nothing.

Let's hope it's a good one without any fear

2006-01-03T18:07:00.000-08:00

It's always helpful to step back from it all and appreciate it, the blanket-what Dustin Hoffman was reffering to in I [heart] Huckabees. We're all here and we are all connected. By what? By science, by God, by nature, by history, whatever. By all of it.

Happy New Year.

End of the Year

2005-12-31T08:05:00.000-08:00

I wanted to talk about a little known issue that's crept up in the last year; that of community access TV. Amidst the clamor of war drums and scandal after scandal occurring at the highest levels of government, the fact that community access is under threat barely registers with the literate, knowledgeable, "educated" class in this country. Maybe that's the point, eh?

The bill that was supposed to do away with about half of the federal funding for community access TV is being hung up according to the article below. Notice the language used in the bill, same "privatization" deal that's going on everywhere: "Public Sector is inefficient, let's give it to private sector" Translation: "Let's give what your taxes have built up to rich people so they can get even richer, and we have less access"

Another thing to note: Whatever they give to us can be taken away. Whatever we make for ourselves can still be taken away, but less easily. How much do you participate in your community media?

Below is an article from: Cambridge Community TV website

Telecommunications Legislative Update

Submitted by susan on December 28, 2005 - 9:42am.

Good news and bad came from Capitol Hill in December. The Good: the House Energy and Commerce Committee postponed its plan to push for a vote on telecom reform before the end of the year. The Bad: Senator Jim DeMint introduced an anti-franchising bill, the Digital Age Comunications Act, or DACA.

What started as a bi-partisan effort to re-write the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has quickly broken down along party lines, with Democrats in the House of Representatives accusing the Republican committee leadership of ignoring Democrats’ concerns and suggestions. A hearing in November on the second version of the House bill featured criticism from the Alliance for Community Media, the Consumers Union, and NATOA (the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors), as well as from many committee members. Various versions of bills are being discussed, all intended to ease the rapid deployment of broadband services.

DACA is very straightfoward: in the Senator’s words, it identifies the existing regulatory structure as “nonsensical barriers to investment, job growth, and free enterprise....... DACA replaces the vague ‘public interest standard’ -- which serves to promote regulation -- with an ‘unfair competition standard’. “ This plain language clearly indicates the desire of many elected officials to place the concerns of the corporations above the public interest.

The concerns shared by the public access community and other public interest advocates include:
• One-size fits all national franchising: instead of being required to reach agreements with inividual municipalities, broadband providers would be able to make a contract at the federal level that would have to be recognized at the local level. For example, instead of having to negotiate with the City of Cambridge to deliver services, Verizon could file paperwork in Washington and begin using our public rights of way to do business. Cambridge would not be in a position to require anything of Verizon that would fit the particular needs of our community. This could trigger the ‘level-playing-field’ clause in our franchise with Comcast, whereby Comcast would not be required to provide any service that is not required of its competitors.

• Network Neutrality: the large telecommunications companies, led by Verizon, are trying to push through regulation whereby they can give preference, through greater broadband capacity, to their own ventures. So, for example, if they roll out video services on the internet, they would provide faster download speed for their service than for that of a compeitor.

• Redlining: providers might not be required to roll out their services in all areas, and therefore they might discriminate against economically disenfranchised communities or neighborhoods less likely to purchase their services.

CCTV will continue to keep our members informed as these issues are debated in Washington. In the meantime, make sure that your Senators and Representatives are aware of how much you value CCTV and local control over our public rights of way.

STRIKE!

2005-12-21T17:19:00.000-08:00

Full support to the New York Transit Workers Strike!

"These workers respresent the last best hope of New Yorkers. New Yorkers who are living at the edge, New Yorkers who are facing the arbitrary authority of management without a voice."

If the money saved by not giving in to Union demands ($20 Million) has been spent on Police overtime in the first two days of the strike, then why did the MTA not give in? Well, money must not have been the whole reason, right?

In a totally unrelated story:
Bikers have taken over the streets of New York! http://bikeblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/oh-what-fun-it-is-to-ridewhen-theres.html

All power to the strikers and the bikers.

"It's only life after all!" -Indigo Girls

PEACE IN THE NEW YEAR

thought for the day

2005-11-22T19:48:00.000-08:00

my magnificient thought for the day has escaped me. it led me down so many paths, it was to be a beacon of hope for mankind. and i didn't think to write the damn thing down so now it's gone.

but check out "Islamic Relief" website if you're concerned about the 250,000 people that are going to be freezing literally in Pakistan this summer cause of the earthquake. You're donation will help a lot. Though it doesn't seem like much to you.... starting to feel like sally struthers.

Operation Opress-You

2005-11-14T18:17:00.000-08:00

It hasn't been a month, and already I'm slacking with this new fangled blogging thing. My roommate challenged me to leave my laptop off at home, and so I haven't been on for the past week.

Alright, so this past weekend I returned to the clinic defense actions I had last done about 4-5 years ago when I first got into activism. I was at the Planned Parenthood in Boston trying to block the pro-lifers (or anti-choicers if I may use that language) from harrassing the women going into the clinic. Now most of them just prayed. I was told one of the priests there had signed a letter along with others saying that it was acceptable (or maybe even righteous, I didn't read the letter) for people to kill abortion providers...pretty pro-life, eh?

Why is it so frustrating trying to talk to a pro-lifer? Is it them? Is it me? Is it the situation we're in? I found that I couldn't agree with them on the right words to use. I also found that their righteousness trumps logic. For instance, I told one of them that historically the only societies that try to outlaw abortion are either very fundamentalist or very fascist, like the Taliban for instance. In an instant, without thinking he gave me a response that went something like this: the act of killing a fetus leads to a culture of dehumanizing and degrading life, the Taliban also dehumanizes and devalues life, therefore, if you are for abortion (or for the right to have an abortion) you are like the Taliban. Rather I was more like the Taliban than the Taliban themselves were. As the stupidity of the argument was dawning on me, he moved on to another talking point. And only afterward did I see the logical extension of the argument. Taliban, indeed!

Now they had 10-15 tweens there praying at the clinic, and when there was a pause in the praying, I decided to ask the kids a question that had occurred to me-hey I'm a former teacher, I wanted to address the kids, who had no idea why they were there. So I say "Kids I got a question for you, So you've got this---" And then the leader, parents whom ever made them start praying again, and this guy with a fake picture of an aborted fetus gets in my face, and starts yelling at me, putting the picture/poster between me and the kids, so I couldn't address them at all. Okay, if I'm supposed to be sinful, I suppose it's a good idea for them to shelter their kids from me. But I only wanted to ask a question....

And the question was this: If God is all-loving and all-forgiving (which I remember from catholic school) then why pray for these women? Wouldn't God forgive them? Wouldn't God forgive everyone for that matter? Well, some guy came over to answer my question in really weird terms. He said God's love does not go beyond God's justice. Or maybe it was the other way around. Regardless, I had never heard of God's justice coming into the picture; I remember all-forgiving and that was it. But if you do think all-forgiving was the only thing I guess there's little reason for the constant repentance at church for being human and all that guilt that comes with being Catholic. You'd have to leave the church if you thought God was all-forgiving.

So as not to be too hard on these people, I'd like to end with an actual exchange of opinion and an honest attempt at dialogue I had with a young couple. I asked them why they were there, and they gave me the standard response, and I reciprocated with mine. They asked about the symbol we were wearing on our clothes to distinguish us from the anti-choicers: the woman's symbol with a raised fist in the center. And I talked about how it's about standing up for women, and I asked her if she thought women were oppressed. She said she'd never experienced any repression. They told me they were against the war, and I asked if they could resolve the fact that the people at the top promoting the war were the same people on their side against abortion. They said they were two different topics, and it occurred to me that they were. Did one not have anything to do with the other? I thought they did, but my mistake was thinking it was perfectly clear to others. And I hadn't really thought about the connections much myself. All in all a pretty civil discussion if not productive.

Here's my end comment. It may seem contradictory that one may be pro-choice and anti-capital punishment. But they are about the state being able to control life. In euthanasia as well, it is the question, should the state have the right to control life? To take a life in the case of capital punishment, to preserve a life that doesn't want to exist anymore in the case of euthanasia, or a life that they have no right to save in the case of abortion. Then the church is right there with the state trying to control not only life, but sex. Sex must be for procreation, hence only between a man and a woman, and terminating the end product is unthinkable.
I'll leave it there.

Ends, Ways and Means

2005-11-01T08:11:00.000-08:00

Two nights ago, I spent some time in a bar with some communists. It took about five minutes for the differences between the communists and the left libertarians to be made perfectly clear. Again.

Largely, it's a matter of means to an end. Ostensibly the two groups want the same ends, but it's the way of getting there that make the two groups two groups.

The communists believe you must grab state power and replace the capitalist state with a workers' state. Eventually, the state will wither away and the commune will spread around the world. Their means are the ballot, and eventually the revolution. The anarchists believe that you must do away with the state from the start. Their means is through education, organization, and through the social revolution.

Cops and history

2005-10-27T05:57:00.000-07:00

I was doing some tree inventory project in East Boston about a month ago-where tree inventory consists of classifying and recording trees on Boston streets using a GPS. Anyway, I got to talking to a woman about the Police having been cleared of any wrong doing in the killing of the Emerson college student after the Red Sox had beat the Yankees in last year's playoffs.

She gave me the standard line that it wasn't the cops fault, seeing as they were just doing their job, under high stress, they were being threatened, yada yada, and they couldn't be blamed for having killed an innocent bystander with a paint ball pellet shot into her eye socket.

The question that comes to my mind is why does she stick up for the cop? Why, for that matter, do most people-most white people-stick up for the cops? She was definitely not at the scene of the murder, and most likely she had never been in a situation where cops were firing on her. So where does this rationalization come from? Is she simply parroting the media's explanation of such events? Perhaps she has family member or a friend of a friend in the police department. Maybe every white person knows someone who is a cop, and thus applies their estimation of their friends' morality and behavior to the entire police system. Maybe our media (and culture in general) has tried to show police as decent and good at heart, not aggressive and mean and prone to violent behavior. But my aunt married a cop, and he kept her in a state of fear telling her that no one would convict him (a cop) if something happened to her. So I choose to believe that the second behavior is not only possible but probable.

Think about it: you're in a job of punishment, and control. Everyone you come in contact with besides your fellow cops are pretty much violators (in your estimation). Not only does this occupation attract those types who already have a proclivity towards control and meteing out punishment, but the demands of the job drive people toward these inclinations: domination and violence.

And also racism. Today, 2.3 million people are behind bars (most incarcerated country in the world) with a disproportionate number of people of color. This is just one instance of the racism inherent in the legal system, racial profiling is another. Chronic (no pun) inconsistencies in drug laws is another. The value of a black life versus the value of a white life in death penalty cases is another. So how can a policeman who works in this racist environment everyday not come to hold racist beliefs (if he didn't to begin with)? I'm not saying that it is a surety that a given police officer will eventually become racist. I'm saying that the system is institutionally racist. And that a cop has to continually recognize and combat racist tendencies that the penal system promotes in order to not become racist oneself-how many cops do you think do this? If you think the days of racism are over, that the all-white juries convicting black suspects in kangaroo courts are things of the past, I refer you to Faulkner's comment, "The past isn't dead. In fact, it isn't even past."

Back to Boston, present-day. We have a dead white woman, shot accidentally (and apparently legally) by a white man. Why am I discussing racism then? I think white people tend to identify more with cops than with the victims of cop violence for myriad of reasons; one of the most pervasive ideas we use to justify such atrocities is that cops protect us-the people, from them-the victimizers. But what happens when this notion breaksdown? What happens when the cops become victimizers? I guess for some the cops can never become victimizers. Accidents happen becomes the rationale. And maybe for this instance it was an accident. What would have been the response of the public if the crowd that night had been black or latino?

And what would have happened if the cops had never shown up that night? A couple of cars been turned over? A car set on fire perhaps? Well, if society (and the city officials) aren't ready to question what is at the root of such behavior, then I suppose the only option is to put down said behavior using deadly force.

And all throughout history those actors enforcing whatever code in whatever country always thought they were doing right. What separates the soldiers of then with the police (and soldiers for that matter) of today?

Okay enough questions.

Politics (of the subaltern Other)

2005-10-25T17:14:00.000-07:00

I think there's a correlation between one's outlook on humanity and their political stripe. This even extends to the so-called anarchists who tend to position themselves outside the political realm. The correlation I see is this: one's position on the political spectrum varies with the way one views how human the next person is relative to herself/himself.

I've come up with this conclusion after hearing people tell me again and again, "No, I don't need government, I know I'm not supposed to kill people. It's other people who need government who tell them what to do, who need laws and punishments for their crimes. Not me"

No one I've talked to needs government. It's always the other person. And after reading a couple books on the period of Spain before the civil war (and watching a great movie called "Libertarias") I've gotten a sense of how the facists saw the "other". Specifically, how they saw the peasants; namely as animals, beasts who needed to be exterminated.

And as you go from fascist to republican to democrat to socialist, and ultimately to anarchist, the pattern seems to be that the next person, the "other" is closer and closer to you as to her/his humanity is concerned. The fascists say, "Government is for the "other" who needs to be put on a leash, and do my bidding." The republicans say, "I don't need government (I am the government) but of course the rabble needs to be governed for their own protection." The democrats say, "I don't need to be governed, but there are a lot of bad people out there..." The socialists say, "We need a government that speaks and does for the people, because the people really can't get there themselves". The anarchists say, "I don't need government, and neither does my brother who I've never met, but we're both human".

So however much you believe the next person needs to be controlled, because of her/his inherent badness, that's a good indicator of your place on the political scale. Of justice.

UN celebrates UN day--this is not an Onion headline

2005-10-24T17:39:00.000-07:00

So the UN turns 60 today. Happy Birthday UN! I can't really reflect too much on what the UN has done, cause well I'm american, thus was never meant to understand the UN that well. I'm supposed to understand that somehow communists or terrorist sympathizers are in control of the UN, and that the UN hates america and we pay all this money to poor countries and they still hate us.

And I don't remember Boutros-Boutros Gali, whatsoever. He was the Secretary General of the UN before Kofi Annan; he "left" office in 1996 (I was 17 at the time, in high school learning about government) but I couldn't tell you anything about the person. But here is something he wrote in his memoirs about his time as Secretariat:

It would be some time before I fully realized that the United States sees little need for diplomacy; power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy. [...]But the Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy Nor does the United States. Diplomacy is perceived by an imperial power as a waste of time and prestige and sign of weakness.' (1999)

To me, this illustrates of two things: 1) Memoirs are useful resources. Those political figures no longer in power can be a bit more (and sometimes a lot more) candid about their feelings and experiences, and we get a glimpse into how things really operate. 2) It took BBG 'some time' to realize the US' imperial ambitions. So even with someone in that high of a position (however much power you believe the secretary general has, it's still a high profile gig) they don't realize how much power politics comes into play.

But why? He couldn't have believed that the US is an honest broker, really striving for world peace, did he? Well, regardless, the US got rid of him, and put in Kofi, a little bit more pliable shall we say to US interests.

Later in 1996, the US removed Boutros-Ghali from office. Fourteen votes were cast in favour of a full second term; the United States cast its veto. Despite the resistance of France, the US was eventually able to have its own candidate Kofi Annan nominated. Boutros-Ghali's last accomplishment as Secretary-General was An Agenda for Democratization. It can be read also as a reaction to what he perceived as the imerialist behaviour of the US. More than half of this text was dedicated to 'decomocraitzation at the international level'. As he explained in his memoirs, 'the fact that a single vote-that of the United States-could dictate the outcome at the United Nations threatened hopes for increasing democratization on the international scene.'

Today, the fashion in the media is to talk about reform of the UN: Oil for Food Scandals, general corruptions and inefficiencies, and most recently, the alleged rewriting of the report about the investigation into the death of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

But this is the Red-Herring: this is the old, "Look over there at what they're doing, and not what we're doing." The power, as Mr. Boutrous-Gali found out, lies with the US, and not the UN. Of course there are problems with the UN, but it's counterproductive to keep looking at the UN when the US is preventing peace from breaking out all over the globe.

On the NPR I heard some UN official summarizing (one can never talk for more than 30 sec on NPR) the accomplishments of the UN. He said the UN had passed a resolution in the 1970's that called zionism a rasict ideology, and I thought, "alright, hooray for the UN, and hooray for him saying that on NPR". But he wasn't finished, because the accomplishment was actually scratching that resolution...I wonder how that happened.

But check this out, here is a link to sign up to daily UN briefs, keep you updated (if you're not already) on the world outside the US http://www.smartbrief.com/un_wire/index.jsp

The letter Z was banned in Greece

2005-10-23T15:35:00.000-07:00

I just saw the movie "Z", a historical drama made in 1969 about real events that happened in Greece in 1963.

Essentially, it's about how the State commits then covers up it's crimes ("crimes" in this sense meaning actually breaking the law, as opposed to the immorality of the law itself). The Greek state back in '63 killed the leader of the opposition party (had him killed would be another way to say the same thing) and proceeded to eliminate any witnesses that wouldn't give the State's version of events: that the death was an 'accident'. If you check it out, listen to the State officials and their minions talk about the "healthy society" and the "infection" represented by the leftists, pacifists, atheists...etc. Of course I don't know if they truly talked with these facist sentiments, but the question is, can we find any of that language being used today? Because when you here those ideas-biological infection of society, obediance to God, preservation of Western Civilization-you know fascism can't be far behind.

So at the end, when the State couldn't cover up its crimes, it merely created a dictatorship, purged the law, made the guilty innocent, and the victims into the guilty. And banned anything that would give people ideas. Like books. And apparently the letter Z in Greek means "he is alive"-in this context, the opposition leader who had been killed. Of course, in a dictatorship you want to erase memory to the extent possible. And hence Z was also banned.

Funny, I don't remember being taught this stuff in school. But surely our democracy is strong enough to prevent dictatorship.

Bechtel, Bechtel Everywhere

2005-10-21T11:11:00.000-07:00

On wednesday I saw a film about water privatization, called "Thirst". It was about how communitites in California, in Bolivia, in India are resisting privatization of their water supply-that is, the handing over the control of water to Multinational Corporations, like Coca-Cola, Bechtel, Pepsi, Nestle.

In Bolivia, where the government privatized the water without asking the people, the people actually rose up and drove out Bectel, the giant firm responsible for Boston's Big Dig. Why didn't the people want the great services that privatized water could offer-the reliable service, the clean water quality? Simply because the residents couldn't afford it after Bechtel raised rates 300%. So it was a matter of rise up or die of thirst.

Boston recently conducted a blind taste test with the Mayor, the owner of Sam Adams brewery and a couple of professional wine and beer taste testers to see who could tell the difference between municipal water (do you know where your water comes from in Boston?) and Aquafina, Dasani, Poland Spring. The participants couldn't tell the difference between bottled water and tap water, quality wise. Tests show there is no significant water quality difference between bottled and municipal. Why do we buy bottled water that is 1000 times the price of municipal water?

The only conclusion I can think of is we've been duped into it. Corporations spend a lot on advertising to convince us not only to pay 1000 times more for what is free (and necessary to life), but also to normalize that habit; to convince us that it is right for us to pay for that water, and that really, we're not owed water as a matter of being human beings. After all, food isn't free, why should water be? And shit, why shouldn't you have to pay for clean air too?

This is another part in the process of chipping away at the idea of a social good, of privatizing and commodifying everything on the earth.

Mass Global Action is a good resource to use to educate about water privatization. Public Citizen has a report on the history of water privatizations that have taken place.

And there will be another showing of Thirst at the Somerville Library November 3rd at 7pm.

The End Times

2005-10-19T15:21:00.000-07:00

This is only the third day of my blog experience, but I'm already having to consider if this is it, the end of days. Yet another earthquake happened, this time in Japan. That makes 3 earthquakes, one volcano eruption, 12 hurricanes, 9 severe storms, 1 lanslide, and 1 major tsunami all in less than a half a year. And those are just the ones that made news....

So we've got to consider that something is sending us a message: whether you're God-fearing, God-loving, IntelligentDesign-oriented, or simply you believe that the earth is attempting to reject a virus-namely, civilization, something has got to be going on.

Alright, but maybe this is just good-old home-grown climate change occuring in part and strengthening because of civilization's gross misunderstanding of nature. This is unfortunately not going to get better in the near term. Catastrophes like these will indeed get more common, and so our ability to adapt will come into question. For us in the US we'll feel the consequences least (though we'll have been responsibile for most of the problem). Of course, Katrina was in a way a reminder that we're no nation is immune, but I'm afraid it still left many with the feeling that they weren't vulnerable. How many of the white, middle-class in the US could identify with our poor countrymen of color drowning in the Ninth District?

But the climate change will touch us, whether directly, or indirectly with the refugees who have no where else to go. And when it happens that martial law is declared, when the artic melts and it will, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology can't construct the levees high enough to keep away the rising tide, when the offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands are inundated and the precarious precipice that the global economy rests on falls into the ocean, what is going to be our response? Are we going to be vigilantes or are we going to start asking hard questions. The questions that you think after you leave a really good movie, or finish a really good book. Those are the ones we need to share with other people.

Here's to the human race!
Always have hope.

Immortal Technique concert was postponed

2005-10-18T20:12:00.000-07:00

So today I went to two talks on Katrina, one highly technical, academic talk on the structural failures of this or that levee. The second was at a bookstore given by two folk who had gone down to New Orleans with a van full of food to help out.

In a very short summary, the first talk gave one the feeling that technology was the key to understanding the catastrophe. I don't want to say too much about the first talk except to ask two questions: 1) Is technology going to save us from the next catastrophe? Just look at the flood about to happen in Tauton, MA; a flood that technology is helpless in stopping. 2) Did the technology that we installed way back when contribute to or diminish the current catastrophe?

Now the second talk I liked much better. It was given by two people who went to New Orleans a week after Katrina hit. One speaker was an EMT giving first aid to people in need, the other speaker was merely preparing food for people, and they had a very positive effect on people who had been (are still being) abandoned by FEMA.

As for the stories the media was floating about gangs roving the streets-don't believe them. Those are just stereotypes meant to enforce this notion of people of color as savages (savages on DRUGS!) and it gives the green light to the Cracker Patrols/vigilantes/militias to roam around with their guns and shoot whatever/whomever they want. Those lies we're real big, and they didn't really need proof, did they? People just took for granted the blacks looking for a fix. I fell for it. But that it fit so nicely with our prejudicial notions should tip us-white mainstream society-off to the fact that they are stereotypes, and most likely lies. Say there did exist non-white gangs in New Orleans. Do we know the number of said gangs? Or do we just assume that there are swarms?

But in contrast to the mayhem that you always hear on the news (you really have to hear the worst about human nature in the media, if they are going to get your attention) the speakers talked about how happy people were to get some help and how people were working together to get through a catastrophe. So think about this, when society needs government the most-during a catastrophe, say-government is not there. In the absence of government or some coercive control, you don't have the worst of human nature, you see the best in human nature. People helping others not to make money, but because people naturally have compassion. And you don't have people killing other people except for police killing people and white vigilantes. It's getting late...

So I'll end with this, this country is steeped in racism; and unless we talk about this, unless white people start talking with black people as humans and start discussing race in this society, this shit is never going to go away. It will only get worse. If you want to see the hate, racism, and violent white supremacy in this society, just look at Craigslist. And this is not a phenomenon on TV or separate from us, the "mainstream liberals." Everyone has got to confront their own racism.

The Beginning

2005-10-17T13:50:00.000-07:00

Judith Miller is either a CIA mole working at the New York Times, or so in love with I. Lewis Libby that she'd go to prison for him. Or both. Or she's insane.

Discuss.