The debate turns now to whether or not to rescue marine animals from the oil. Pelicans and gulls specifically, but there's more. Of course, animals that took millions of years to be what they are, should learn to mutate themselves a lot faster. Seagulls and turtles and manatees and sea-otters, fish, crustaceans, jellyfish, plankton, all need to mutate in a matter of days rather than eons. True, it would be a LOT simpler for the HUMAN species to modify our behavior, not set our entire economic plan on one focus, like Fossil Fuels. The plan with a built in Self-Destruct button that gets armed and starts ticking away once we drill the first well. Of course that first well was "well" over a century ago, BUT there's still time to ramp down the madness, get back to a point where we can actually turn off he Self Destruct switch. Of course, it would take eliminating some of the things the Oil Industry advertising partners have been selling us as "essential to the American Lifestyle". Things like easily available in large quantities "food" that our bodies don't have the ability to process correctly, at least not in the concentrations which are being sold to us as a "normal" diet. Thus diabetes, colon cancers, increased. Also increased are heart disease, respiratory, kidney, thyroid, liver, just every part of the Human Biotic System that depends on a certain chemical balance that the McDiet not only doesn't provide but actively disrupts. The private automobile, sure, if you could afford to drive it, but, really, the cost to The Rest Of Us to maintain YOUR "right" to a private car is long since out of control. Witness, for instance the Oil Spills. Witness the wars being fought to secure more Oil, publicly subsidized wars. If the person driving sole occupant in a car made for 8 actually had to Pay His Way he wouldn't be able to do it. The ultimate Welfare Cadillac. We're required to provide "cheap" oil to the Consumer or be called Terrorist and Traitor. A system where everybody in the entire world is required to chip in to make a really expensive activity "affordable".... for a privileged few. People in nations where starvation is in the top 5 causes of death have to chip in for YOUR automotive pleasure. But things like Public Transportation and subsidizing better forms of energy harvesting and use, that the bad ol' wicked "Socialism". Summary of that, Public support of the entire population, BAD. The entire World Population support of an elite minority GOOD. Public Support of Mega Corporations like McDonalds altering the agricultural economy, GOOD. Public criticism of the fact that this impoverishes other PEOPLE in other nations, to the point of people who live on gigantic plantation style "food" factory farms starve.... that's Bolshevism and BAD. The Oil Corporations have been for the past year putting out some very expensive publicity campaigns saying that actually requiring the Corporations (mainly) and the Consumers to PAY what isn't anywhere near the Real Cost
Tag: Indigenous
Ward Churchill speaks on which settler invasion wrote the book on Apartheid
Ward Churchill spoke in Tucson on Friday and Brenda Norrell has posted the footage. Watching the ex-CU professor speak, I can't help but think about the university students' loss. They're missing the lamentably rarefied perspectives he offers of course, but more important, the inspiration gained from such an engaging luminary. Throughout his lectures, Churchill likes to put questions back at his audience. He understands, if I can presume to project his rationale, that a mentor's role is to bounce ideas around, and be sure his students have minds open enough to let them resonate. It's also a sign of someone fully confident with what they are teaching. Churchill gives you the impression he's interested in the best argument you've got, and I believe him, but in reality he's going to have few peers up to the task. When it's time for Q and A, Prof. Churchill calls it mud-wrestling, and welcomes all shots, "even spit wads." He draws the line at brick bats, because he says, one might bounce off his head and hit somebody else. He warns, as if he's had practice, "because someone might get hurt. I can assure you it won't be me." I wished at that moment that Tucson was not so far from Churchill's curiously vile detractors, who attended his trial in Denver, and who hold bitch fests online about every Churchinalia for reasons unspecified. I predict they're remunerated; the love-to-hate pretext is wearing thin, these yahoos are pro-Israeli tea-baggers. So there's no Drunkablog or Pirate Ballerina there tonight to take the "perfessor's" challenge. Although wouldn't such an exchange have been simply tedious? I recall this dismal attempt mounted against "Wart" by a couple CU college Republicans, it was just embarrassing. Have Churchill's online critics ever confronted him in person I wonder? They can spout off in the safety of anonymity, and that's about it. Churchill's speech to the predominantly Anglo and O'odham border activists was about the bigger issues behind the border wall. The theme of the gathering was Apartheid in America, and Churchill demonstrated how South African Apartheid came of the successful colonial methods practiced in the United States. These were the strategies employed by the Germans in taking and settling the Eastern Front during WWII, and of course the goals of Israel in Palestine. Churchill described how settler invasions vary from colonial administration. In the latter case, the colonizers can go home, in the former, they stay. Another distinction is critical, the settlers aren't moving to a land and becoming part of the social system, they remain citizens of the occupying force. They bring their identity and the foreign system with them, to apply against the people indigenous to the land. The process involves two steps: displace enough of the natives to make room for yourselves, but leave just enough to serve as a labor pool, for all the building that is required of empire building. You've need of only a portion of the original population, to do the manual labor required
Subcomandante Marcos on LA OTRA
Reading more about the Tohono O'odham, I came across this speech by the EZLN's masked leader Subcomandante Marcos, delivered at a 2006 tribal gathering of SW Native American insurgents. It's about the other Mexico, in solidarity with the other Americas: "La Otra." Compared his words to President Obama today telling the tribal summit in DC: "You will not be forgotten." Sounds like a eulogy. Doesn't it? Or simply another white man's empty promise. It appears to me that Obama is playing the forked tongue white man to Americans of every color, giving them assurances that they are now in good hands, yet turning his back on them all when the speeches are through. It's Obama the great equalizer, making sure that all Americans, Red, White, Brown and Black, get treated like they're black. EZLN: A Meeting with the O’odham By Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos La Otra - The Other Mexico October 26, 2006 Bueno, Compañeras and Compañeros: First we just want to thank the Monroy family, who is receiving the Sixth Commission and the Karavana’s compañeros, who are giving us lodging here, in… Rancho el Peñasco is it called? Thank you Compañeros and Compañeras. And thank you to all of you who have endured the six hours that we have been here, and I hope you have a little patience for what I am going to say. We especially want to thank the traditional O’odham authorities. Don José, Doña Ofelia – I don’t see her anymore – Is Doña Ofelia still here? No? Brenda, Doña Brenda? They’re not here either, what a pity. Doña Alicia? Well, that’s what happened to us. The traditional authorities went away and we came to listen to them. No? But Don José is here, as I want to bring a message from the indigenous Zapatista communities to the Tohono O’odham people, and also for the Navajo and Cherokee people. What the compañero, the Purépecha chief Salvador said, from the National Indigenous Congress, also represents our thinking. The traditional O’odham chief, Doña Ofelia, pointed out something that we already see in the papers. That thing that a few people are promoting here, the National Indigenous Convention, is a lie. It is really directed by someone who was an official under President Vicente Fox, and later was unemployed and is now involved with the National Indigenous Convention, which is really a movement to support López Obrador. The Indian peoples don’t interest them. The documents, which they are presenting, which those people are distributing, make no mention of the San Andrés Accords, which have cost blood and death not just to Zapatistas, but to more than 40 Indian peoples, tribes and nations of Mexico, who are in agreement with that struggle. We are in agreement with what was expressed by Doña Ofelia, the O’odham traditional authority. “We are Zapatistas. We live in the last corner of this country. We are of Mayan roots. We are people of Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Tojolabal, Chol, Zoque
Ward Churchill to speak for O’odham
According to Censored News, Activist and scholar Ward Churchill will speak at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, 4831 W. 22nd St., on November 13, 2009 at 7:00 p.m. to benefit O'odham VOICE Against the Wall, which since 2003 has organized and advocated for the traditional O’odham leaders and elders of the Tohono O’odham communities in the southern territory of the United States and northern territory of Mexico. Professor Churchill’s talk is part of the “Apartheid in America: Surviving Occupation in O’odham Lands” O'odham activist Ofelia Rivas will also participate. The event is sponsored by the Dry River Radical Resource Center, the Earth First! Journal, and Voices against the Wall. Here's some background on the O'odham struggle: By J. D. Hendricks, 2004 TIAMAT PUBLICATIONS #5 The People Who Emerged From the Earth Over two thousand years ago the descendents of the O’odham moved into the southwestern region of the area now claimed by the U.S. as the state of Arizona. 1 The O’odham have had one of the longest histories of contact with the forces of European colonization compared with the rest of the native North American peoples. The O’odham’s first contact with Spanish invaders took place in the mid 16th century; nearly one hundred years before the colonization of the North Atlantic coast and Great Lakes regions were begun by the French and English colonists. As such, the history of the O’odham provides a good context for an investigation of the colonization of Native North America, and more specifically, an investigation of the interplay between, and results of, the varied responses to colonization – that of collaboration, accommodation, and resistance. Many histories of the O’odham refer to these desert people as the Papago. The term Papago was a name given to the O’odham by the Spanish colonizers, and is likely the result of a Spanish corruption of the O’odham word “papabi” which was the O’odham name for one of their principal bean varieties. Thus, the Spanish colonizers term for the O’odham (Papago) came to mean “the bean eaters.” 2 For the purposes of this study I will refrain from the use of the term Papago and will refer to “the people” 3 by their traditional pre-colonial name. 4 As is often the case, with the name Papago being a good example, European constructs are often imposed upon indigenous peoples by the historians that seek to portray their past. This result can occur when historians seek to glorify European norms and traditions at the expense of indigenous ones, and can also be the result of the subconscious indoctrination of the historian by the dominant culture – in this case that of western style industrial civilization. In other cases it can be the result of a simple uncritical usage of language. One of the most dominant and reoccurring “civilized” constructs imposed upon indigenous peoples history is the commonly understood notion that the O’odham, or any other indigenous North American culture for that
Columbus fall from grace not predicted by Mayan Long Count Calendar
For centuries, we've had only engravings to depict the Christopher Columbus discovery of the New World. With the moving pictures of today (a growing number in color according to IMdB), you'd think by now one or two would have caught the real Admiral Cristóbal Colón in blood-red technicolor, terrorizing his new minions with cruel Spanish steel. Today is still celebrated by the US as Columbus Day. Elsewhere, October 10 is designated International Indigenous Peoples Day. Accounts in Mexico say the Maya predicted the European invasion which was to plunge the Americas into eternal darkness. They foretold when, 1492 and how, bearded white men delivering uncompromising savagery. Based on the accuracy of this prediction, supposedly, many now have begun to scrutinize another pre-Columbian calculation, the end of the world in the year 2012. It's odd we accept an unflattering characterization of our scourge, without embracing our inheritance and ongoing role. The villains were our ancestors. We are our fathers. It's not just the Italian Americans who cling to the heroic myth of Christopher Columbus. Every white immigrant, and let's be fair, the hispanic are white too, has an interest in soft-pedalling over the Columbus genocides. The European program of enslavement and pillage continues on these continents today, even as the North American colony serves as platform for the exploitation of all the developing worlds. Every Anglo-Iberian is complicit in extorting indigenous peoples of their well-being and heritage. It would probably be no exaggeration to say that the modern equivalent is not far removed from forcing native populations to slave for gold on pain of dismemberment. Columbus's men grilled the Indians slowly over spits, or cut off both hands so victims couldn't staunch their own bleeding. Today's conquistadors on Capitalism's wild frontiers use much the same methods. To re-frame Spain's discovery with a genocidal agenda is to understand how the competing French and English enterprises redoubled the brutality. Western expansion was invasion. Manifest Destiny was promised land rationalization. Settlements were occupation, and are occupation. To see Columbus in his true horror is to see today's Indian reservations for what they are, concentration camps for the last embers of the American insurgency. We Anglos and Iberians are inheritors of stolen destinies. Lives stolen 500 years ago and futures we are stealing still. Meanwhile, Westerners distract their consciences with THE END IS NIGH prophesies. Has there been a lifetime since creation when mankind didn't fear the end of the world? In recent decades it wasn't the Rapture, it wasn't Y2K, so now it's the end of the Mayan Calendar, whose schedule of events ends in 2012. New Age astrologists have pinpointed a specific date, December 21, 2012. Really. To me that date bears a suspicious resemblance to the symmetric time events which thrill digital watch wearers. December 21 is of course the Day After the end of time, the unknowable vacuum which follows the end: 12-20-2012. On a metric calendar, that's 20.12.2012. Spooky.
Peru police shoot indigenous protestors
Peru's military has opened fire on indigenous activists who were blocking further Amazon mining, helicopters have been seen dumping charred bodies into the river to cover-up the death toll. Contact the Peruvian embassy - solidarity actions are planned June 11 through 16.
High Country Earth First Denver Meeting
High Country Earth First is hosting the EF! ROADSHOW, in DENVER, May 25-26: Monday 2pm in Cheesman Park, and Tuesday 6pm at the Gypsy House. Four ongoing EF! projects in Colorado: DENVER: Stop I-70 Expansion through North Denver; SAN LUIS VALLEY: Halt gas drilling in Baca National Wildlife Refuge: and WESTERN SLOPE: Red Cliff mine campaign and Feral Futures (May 24 - June 7). From "Rockslide," High Country Earth First! The need for resistance in solidarity with the wild has never been louder or clearer than it is today; the EF! roadshow is a great tool for growing that resistance. There are countless examples to draw from in the story of radical movements before us: militant labor organizing tours, anti-fascist resistance recruitment and international speaking tours to build cross-border solidarity. The origin of Earth First! itself is credited to a few roadshows that kicked it all off in the early 1980s. We are building on this tradition; akin to a fellowship crossing Middle Earth to amass insurgents to face Mordor head-on. List-serves and websites aren’t enough This Roadshow’s primary intention is to strengthen our radical grassroots ecological network. For almost 30 years, we have been an organized voice bridging conservation biology with grassroots community organizing, road blockading and eco-sabotage. In the past 5 years we have seen numbers and experience-level in the EF! movement decline drastically. Yet, our place has never been more urgent. New groups are popping up across the country, but they are detached from many of the groups, history, and skills that came before them. We can’t afford to stumble and make the same mistakes over again. We are at the tail end of a decade where corporate globalization rooted itself in the US and spread across the planet like a plague. And now that the reality of climate change is finally sinking into the mainstream consciousness, the same superpowers that pushed so-called ‘free trade’ policies to exploit wild nature more efficiently are promoting carbon trading in attempt to make a profitable industry out of the disasters they’ve created. The spineless Big Green environmental NGOs are scrambling for crumbs and cutting deals with the industry for shallow public relations victories. Earth First! must rise and recognize that it’s presence is a strong component of making the broader environmental movement truly effective. We are its spine, or as an EF! co-founder, Howie Wolke, has put it, we are the lions of a movement ‘ecosystem’. Our niche is critical, and its presence (or absence) is felt deeply by our surroundings. We need to reconnect the multi-generational aspect of Earth First! that has fallen by the wayside in recent years. We need to broaden our network’s base—from radical rural grandparents to revolutionary urban youth. We need re-establish lost relationships with scholars and scientists who resonate with us. We need to re-inspire musicians and artists to contribute their passion to our battles. When it comes down to it, solid movements are based on strong personal relationships; and real relationships don’t go very far over the internet. We need face-to-face
Anti-Zionism 4D: Defining Demonization Double Standards and Delegitimization
The word "nutritious" defines a food quality that provides sustenance. I've no doubt as skepticism grows about the likely poisonous aspects of refined sugar and High Fructose Corn Syrup, the corporate sugar-water purveyors will append "satiates your subliminal impulses" to the meaning of nutritious. Who safeguards our dictionaries from authoritarians who profit from reweaving the fabric of knowledge we consider inviolate? We expect facts to change, but it is unsettling to be robbed of the words which we count on to measure the change. Did you think "anti-Semitic" meant prejudice against the Jews? It does, except the Zionists behind sustaining Israel want it to indemnify their unpopular endeavor too. Anti-Semitism now means opposing Israel, although the stigma implied is of course still "Jew Hater." But the appropriation is unseemly. Crusading Evangelicals could tell you, if you oppose their bloody incursions into the lands of Islam, then you must be anti-Christian. But are you? It would seem only fair that the victims of anti-Semitism should be entitled to define what oppresses them, but that's not who's wrapping themselves in its protection. Zionists (both Jewish and Christian) claim that an overwhelming percentage of World Jewry supports sustaining the US-Israel occupation of Palestine. Is it true? I wager that the far greater proportion of both Jews and non-Jews repudiate military aggression, occupation, ethnic cleansing and religious oppression. But if it were true, claims of suffering historical persecution are not grounds to be given license to persecute others. Anti-Semitism describes real, tradition-rooted anti-Jewish sentiment. To expand its meaning disrespects the very tangible prejudice which Jews still face. Opposition to sustaining Israel is actually Anti-Zionism, which is neither for nor against Judaism. Anti-Zionism denounces another long-held prejudice: White European Man's assertion that the Holy Land belongs to him. Anti-Zionism is the opposition to sustaining an illegally invaded, illegally occupied, racist administration of Palestine in the name of "Zionism." Anti-Zionism calls for "the destruction of Israel," meaning the dissolution of the Western colonial theocracy imposed on the indigenous population of the Middle East. To oppose the sustaining of Israel is a call to exterminate Israeli apartheid. Anti-Zionism is no resurrection of the Final Solution. It means leave people be. White settlers should not assume to usurp the lands and water rights of the native Palestinians. Zionism defender Nathan Sharansky has constructed a definition of anti-Semitism with an expanded breadth, he calls them the three Ds: Demonization, Double Standards and Delegitimization. It's this 3D definition with which Zionists are branding UCSB professor William Robinson, himself a Jew, as an anti-Semite. Professor Robinson circulated an email among his sociology students, comparing Israel's actions in Gaza to methods used by the Nazis, now US-Israeli lobby groups are calling for UCSB to censure him. Sharansky's three Ds are easily refuted because he offers no more than circular argument. Ipso Facto my eye. I reprint Sharansky's explanation below, but first an abridgment: Demonization: "...having [the Jewish state's] actions blown out of all sensible proportion ... can only be considered anti-Semitic." Double Standards: "It
Leischmaniasis.
An infestation of a parasite carried by a small genus of biting flies, Leischmania. Most of them indigenous to Mesopotamia. There was a BBC news show yestereven, about the British pulling out from their latest FAILED attempt to impose their "superior" culture and civilization on one of the oldest civilizations on Earth. The Tommies were packing up all their gear to leave, they had tanks and trucks etc up on racks being power-washed and fine-cleaned to get rid of all the Iraqi sand... and especially the Leischmania flies and their eggs contained in that sand. One of the Tommies said something that resonated, "We learned this a long time ago, UNLIKE THE YANKS WHO NEVER DID learn it". See, we were asked how exactly sand flies from Iraq could cause Leischmaniasis HERE, in Colorado Springs. "Where, oh where" we were asked, "could those sand flies have come from?" My sanity and that of Miss Johnnie were questioned at times... That it would be somehow impossible to get the flies and therefore the parasites they carry from Iraq to the middle of the United States. How about it, GI Joe types, when you came back, how thoroughly did you have to clean the gear? Some of you were probably very good at it, but then, are ALL your comrades so diligent? Is EVERY commander from that gigantic Mongolian Cluster Fuck as dedicated as perhaps your own officers? You know as well as I do that some or perhaps most of them are the type who can't find his ass with both hands. The Army is still denying that they screwed up in this instance. Or that Leischmaniasis even exists in Colorado. Until last year they were officially denying that Gulf War Syndrome could have anything to do with the Depleted Uranium shells. There's still denials of PTSD and Helmet-head. There's still denials of Agent Orange. You guys are being screwed by the Army even long after you leave, you really ought to get angry then get even. Or at least get loud and get started demanding justice. Don't let them do a Bonus March Massacre on YOU.
UCSB Prof William Robinson pro-Semite
Wouldn't you think it bad form for Israeli militants to behave like Nazis, while immunizing themselves with the self-righteous indignation that any criticism of their actions can simply be dismissed as "anti-Semitic?" Photographs and confessions emerging from the IDF's atrocities in Gaza just beg comparison the German Einsatzgruppen in Poland. Earlier this year UC Santa Barbara professor William Robinson forwarded an email photo essay to a UCSB listserv, the already much-circulated side by side comparison to the WWII atrocities. Two students complained, plagiarizing stock IDF lingo. Now the Anti-Defamation League wants Robinson to recant. With IDF propagandists pouring on the bullshit, let's revisit the documents. As has already been noted, Professor Robinson is a harsh critic of US foreign policy, and already a likely target for the goon squad enforcers of Western Capitalism. Not many of America's actions are defensible, so Robinson has to be attacked by desperate means. Lucky for the lackey-jackals, Robinson chose to criticize Israel's atrocities against the Palestinians of Gaza. Bingo! The Israeli propaganda machine has armed aspiring Israel-defenders with a blanket rebuttal: just yell "ANTI-SEMITISM!" And what a load of crap that is. Much turns on the definition of "anti-Semitism." It packs the punch of meaning someone who hates Jews, but the advocates of Zionism have expanded the definition into 3-D! Zionist apologist Nathan Sharansky has coined the 3D definition of ant-Semitism: demonization of Israel, double standards, and delegitimization. You don't have to look closely to note that those points outline all the rebuttals of criticisms of Israel and any question of the legitimacy of the Zionist usurpation of Palestine. The criticisms posed by those concerned for the fate of Gaza are the same expressed by a large portion of the Israeli Jewish population as well. But the US Israeli lobby, militantly Zionist, has the complicity of the US war-mongering corporate media, thus the IDF Megaphone protestations get traction. These are the same cheap shots leveled against Ward Churchill. By flooding the internet to create the sensation that the indignation was shared, the IDF spammers have been successful in slandering these dissenting academics. Since we're seeing this technique being slopped unto our comment forums, let's examine the statement for which Robinson is being attacked. First we'll present Robinson's email. The next post will feature the ensuing letters of complaint, two from UCSB students, and third from the ADL. Original Email Here is Professor Robinson's original email, including his attachment of the Judith Stone article. This accompanied the aforementioned photo essay he forwarded. Subject: [socforum] parallel images of Nazis and Israelis From: "William I. Robinson" ... Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:00:05 ... If Martin Luther King were alive on this day of January 19, 2009, there is no doubt that he would be condemning the Israeli aggression against Gaza along with U.S. military and political support for Israeli war crimes, or that he would be standing shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinians. I am forwarding some horrific, parallel images of Nazi atrocities against the Jews and Israeli atrocities
Who said Israel is an Apartheid State?
"Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state." ...Who said this? The ANSWER Further Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, the Architect of Apartheid, said "...a colonial racist mentality which rationalised the genocide of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australasia, in Africa from Namibia to the Congo and elsewhere, most clearly has its parallels in Palestine." For more info about The Architect of Apartheid
Peru convicts Fujimori for war crimes even as Sri Lanka slaughters thousands in a similar counter insurgency war against its citizens
The world once sat by and allowed the United States and its Peruvian puppet, Alberto Fujimori to slaughter off tens of thousands of its indigenous citizens. The excuse was that Sendero Luminoso, the oppositional group, was not a nice enough group of people for liberals and Leftists to campaign to stop the slaughter from occurring. Today the whole world sits by, because they don't like the Tamil Tigers, and does the exact same thing of allowing the slaughter to go on. Yet, On this very same day, today Fujimori got convicted and Tamils are demonstrating to stop the same sort of slaughter. The world as a whole though seems to learn nothing? No CHANGE has occurred still. The role of the US government has been is to simply accept what its ally, India, does in Kashmir and in regard to the 'Tamil Question?' India is needed in a US constructed Asian regional alliance against both Russia and China, so this slaughter is just not important enough to the US government to prevent from occurring. The Tamils will simply join others as collateral damage.
Israel as Old South USA- No Nigger Arabs need apply here
In Jonathan Cook's The "Hebrew Labor" Principle Lives On, one gets a true picture of the Jewish State as Old South USA. We often hear in Zionist posts to our blog that, 'Our Arabs get treated better than they do in the Arab countries themselves', but it's just another one of their lies. Who would want to be anything other than Jewish in a theological dictatorship like present day Israel? YES, and there are multiple forms of discrimination against the non Jewish in almost every way, and that includes who gets the choicer jobs, too. In Old South USA, Blacks were systematically kept out of choice employment, and instead had to take the jobs of picking up the garbage, cleaning the poop of old people and small kids, and doing all the back breaking labor in the fields and doing all the deadly jobs in industry. We can always suspect that the Jewish Final Solution to getting rid of the indigenous population will not be the total elimination of the Palestinians. If all Palestinians were to be totally removed, then who would do the dirty work for the Master Race of only those officially registered to the Jewish religion? YES, what would the Apartheid Jewish Supremacy State do then? Who then could the Jewish State call upon to do the actual construction of the physical Jewish State infrastructure? See 'Arab Work' a new Israeli comedy for the 'humorous side' of the Israeli Apartheid State. It might be as funny as The Jeffersons sitcom once was, so I wonder if it will ever be shown on American TV?
Ward Churchill: Some People Push Back
Here is Ward Churchill's notorious 9/11 "Little Eichmanns" essay, published online September 12, 2001, presented here for archival purposes lest critics think they can silence one of our nation's strongest dissenting voices. Churchill later expanded this piece into a book entitled On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: reflections on the consequences of U.S. imperial arrogance and criminality published by AK Press in 2003. Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens by Ward Churchill When queried by reporters concerning his views on the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963, Malcolm X famously – and quite charitably, all things considered – replied that it was merely a case of "chickens coming home to roost." On the morning of September 11, 2001, a few more chickens – along with some half-million dead Iraqi children – came home to roost in a very big way at the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center. Well, actually, a few of them seem to have nestled in at the Pentagon as well. The Iraqi youngsters, all of them under 12, died as a predictable – in fact, widely predicted – result of the 1991 US "surgical" bombing of their country's water purification and sewage facilities, as well as other "infrastructural" targets upon which Iraq's civilian population depends for its very survival. If the nature of the bombing were not already bad enough – and it should be noted that this sort of "aerial warfare" constitutes a Class I Crime Against humanity, entailing myriad gross violations of international law, as well as every conceivable standard of "civilized" behavior – the death toll has been steadily ratcheted up by US-imposed sanctions for a full decade now. Enforced all the while by a massive military presence and periodic bombing raids, the embargo has greatly impaired the victims' ability to import the nutrients, medicines and other materials necessary to saving the lives of even their toddlers. All told, Iraq has a population of about 18 million. The 500,000 kids lost to date thus represent something on the order of 25 percent of their age group. Indisputably, the rest have suffered – are still suffering – a combination of physical debilitation and psychological trauma severe enough to prevent their ever fully recovering. In effect, an entire generation has been obliterated. The reason for this holocaust was/is rather simple, and stated quite straightforwardly by President George Bush, the 41st "freedom-loving" father of the freedom-lover currently filling the Oval Office, George the 43rd: "The world must learn that what we say, goes," intoned George the Elder to the enthusiastic applause of freedom-loving Americans everywhere. How Old George conveyed his message was certainly no mystery to the US public. One need only recall the 24-hour-per-day dissemination of bombardment videos on every available TV channel, and the exceedingly high ratings of these telecasts, to gain a sense of how much they knew. In trying to affix a meaning to such things, we would do well to remember the wave of elation that swept America at
Third class citizens in the Jewish Apartheid State
Indigenous Palestinians are not really even second class citizens within the 'Jewish Apartheid State since certain elements of the Jewish community are given second class status themselves. Even calling Israel's Palestinians Third Class citizens is kind of a stretch since they correctly believe and feel that the Jewish community will try to expel them at the first opportune moment. Discrimination against their culture, heritage, religion, and language is everywhere. Israel's forgotten Palestinians Israel is a classic colonialist Apartheid State. Even the rather conservative ex-Prez Jimmy Carter can see and admit that.
Costa Rica a prototypical Western Democracy
PUERTO JIMINEZ, CR- Touring Costa Rica has been interesting. Considering the turmoil of Central America, it may be a shining example of a functional Capitalist Democracy. It´s got a healthy middle class and a relatively contented populace. Can it offer a lesson to its strife torn neighbors? Sure. Get rid of the Indios. Citizens of the "Rich Coast" pride themselves on being light skinned, owing to a Spanish heritage of course. They´re the descendants of settlers, mixed some with labor imports from the Caribbean. But the indigenous people are gone. Which makes for scarce land redistribution demands. When Columbus first came to Costa Rica, there were 400,000 inhabitants. When they saw that the Spaniards were enslaving whoever they conquered, the tribes hid in the mountains. As a result, Costa wasn´t properly subjugated like elsewhere. The Spanish didn´t want land that didn´t come with ready slave labor. But hiding didn´t save the indians. As the Spanish settled the land, the original population dwindled, to 10%, then 2% within 200 years. They are, as Randy Newman sang it: "Gone, real gone." There is an inspiring history to Costa Rica´s present relatively egalitarian government, and I´m going to write more about some of their laudable leaders. But I have to argue that CR smacks of US artifice. And lo, even as I cringe at the camo themed souvenir caps that remind me of the Contras, it turns out Oliver North operated his Contra army and drug smuggling operation out of an airfield in northern Costa Rica. There´s a surfing destination near there called Ollie´s Point, named after the would be filibuster himself. Those apolitical surfer fucks. (It is hard to surpress disdain for the hard-recreating American asses despoiling CR toilet paper. I cannot bear their vibes of inutile indifference.) So the Costa Ricans are less Central Americans than good old Americans. And that never meant Native American.
Israeli fury seals a Single State Solution
Israel's relentless and unrepentant program to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza, will yield but a single outcome. And it would certainly please the Palestinians, if they live to see it. First, if Palestine is deprived of viability as an independent state, Israel is left with only a single state solution. Second, with Israel convinced that its security from rocket fire depends on every last Arab neighbor being interned or interred, there is no other choice but cloistered Apartheid. Will the international community long tolerate a feudal theocracy constantly inflaming the resentment of its indigenous laborers? I was being facetious to suggest that Palestinians will not live to see Israel vanquished. Much as Israel might try, the Palestinians won't be killed off like North America's original natives. Neither Gaza nor the West Bank will succumb to genocide, alcoholism or uranium poisoning, nor vanish like an eclipsed civilization. They can be driven off, and dispersed among the neighbors, but the Palestinian diaspora will hang interminable with a much fresher claim to the lands of their fathers than ever had the Zionists. But on the ground, the captive Palestinians will never reconstitute even a client state, so long as Israel pens them in like Soweto. Lands allotted to Palestinians will be work camps, and prison camps, with every un-free man's right to rebel against the yoke of occupation. Israel will dodge rockets until the last slave is shackled. And I guess the world will sit by and let them do that. However blatant they want to be about it. Knowing that after Lebanon and Gaza, Israel has disciplinary actions aimed at Syria and Iran, what are the prospects for cohabitation in the Middle East? Does Israel expect that its "right to exist" grants it a swath of no-man's zone, extended beyond the borders of all its neighbors? Israel's wrathful attack on Gaza, as retaliation for Hamas' motley rockets, the disproportionality of the air strikes, and the IDF's disregard for innocent civilian casualties, betrays Israel's racist ambivalence about the fate of non-Jews. Without a humanitarian regard for others, how can Israel expect to be asked to the adult's table? So Israel has sealed its own fate. Obliterate the Palestinians or drive them off, ostracize the neighbors until you are all alone. Israel will be a solitary state, inhabited by the white elite, separated by a state religion forbidden to their darker working castes. The untouchables will live behind apartheid walls until delivered by an Arab Mandela. Then international pressure, hopefully too a domestic conscience, will bring Democracy, and then, as current opponents of a single-state-solution fear, a popular vote will eradicate the oppression of religious rule. Say goodbye to Israel, the Jewish State. It will "be wiped off the map" of the Middle East, and left for Jews and Palestinians to inhabit with equality. So long as particular Palestinians do not survive who have claims to properties appropriated by the Zionists, or so long as some compensation is offered to buy off the Palestinian's right
Anti-Zimbabwe sanctions create cholera epidemic in Africa
There is nobody more cynical and murderous than Gordon Brown, the Barack Obama equivalent who is Great Britain's Prime Minster at the time. Here is Gordon the Goodie promoting genocide in July of this year UK looks to Europe for Zimbabwe sanctions Now here is the same Gordon Brown in December PM urges Zimbabwe cholera action where he blames Mugabe for the cholera outbreak and not himself. He wants regime change in Zimbabwe and he is not about to cry (other than crocodile tears) about any collateral damage he might cause! Who gave Gordon Brown and the British the right to be intervening against any government of Zimbabwe anyway? This all started back when Mugabe moved against the couple of thousand left over Rhodesian White Apartheid regime's leftovers in the country, who had taken away about 40% of the best land in the country from its indigenous Black population. Mugabe began a program of redistribution of that land and Great Britain went bananas about it. Today, cut to the cholera epidemic where the same Brits have used economic warfare to destroy Zimbabwe and to create untold suffering. Mugabe is no hero in all this, but the issue really is imperialist intervention and not just one unlikable head of state is up to or not? It really is nauseating to see the BBC reports where they honey coat their pro economic warfare against Zimbabwe 'reports' as they always do. Gordon Brown as saint? Not even close.
Smile, your mom chose life!
On Fillmore Street there is one of those giant, obnoxious billboards with a giant smiling baby on it, and the words, 'Smile, your mom chose life'. Probably put up there with the help of one pedophile plagued church, too. You know the name of that church, I think? All over the world this church that aided the Nazis and aided in the genocides against indigenous people in the Americas and aided in the pogroms against Jewish people even before the Nazis, is on one giant campaign to make people think that they respect life because they want to impose their will on young women. Smile, but did your mom always not have an abortion when she got pregnant? One rather thinks that it is not quite that simple at all, in fact. You see, these crazy church people are often liars and hypocrites. They do one thing for themselves and urge something else entirely on others. Does Ted Haggard come to mind? Maybe many of those religious moms did have an abortion even if they did later on life give birth to you and your brothers and sisters? Maybe they had several abortions before they started to raise kids? Maybe they had an abortion or two after you were born? It's not quite as simple as that billboard portrays it as being, now is it? These crazy religious nuts don't even choose much life at all, but choose death most often instead. Imagine advocating that women give birth wholesale in countries like Nicaragua, where this obnoxious church, the Catholic, has gotten the government to ban all abortions for all reasons. The Nicaraguan people do not even make $1,000 per year per capita to raise their families on. Does this church do anything to 'choose life' when these children are born? I rather think that they do not. How about you? You know what this church does with its money? It invests it in real estate. It invests it in sanctimonious propaganda billboards that tell others what they should do. But they don't help raise those poor families in countries like Nicaragua where they force women to give birth to often unwanted and uncared for children. They spend it on lawyers to get out of paying money to people molested by their priests when these people were still children. This is the Catholic Church for you. This is the American Catholic Church. 'Smile, your mom chose life' my ass. The Catholic Church has a totally checkered attitude towards choosing life, and that's their little secret they don't want you thinking much about. Life with the Catholic Church! What a trip! And NO, life does not begin at conception.
Uncle Tom’s Hotel Rwanda
Let's clear something up for the sake of poetic justice. Uncle Tom was a maltreated slave who bore his burden with dignity. He was no collaborator, no stool pigeon, no upper class of black slave that kept the lower savages in order. That "Uncle Tom" is what the term has come to mean: a white man's black man, owing perhaps to the original character's civilized humanity which a white reader might not have expected to be a capacity of an African slave. The neo-Uncle Tom is a Tutsi. I heard the film Hotel Rwanda was just incredible, I'm sure it was. I watched the Frontline documentary to commemorate the anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda and so thought I knew the sad story already. Well I was right and I was wrong, but not about the film. The mounting trouble in the Democratic Republic of Congo is causing leaders to forewarn of genocide such as Rwanda experienced in 1994. We're told the same Hutus are marauding today. In addressing the issues of the Congo, do we have an understanding of what happened in 1994, beside the film dramatization? The question to ask is whether what happened in Rwanda was genocide. That's not to minimize the killings, but to scrutinize the motives. Was the fighting between Hutus and Tutsis racially motivated tribal warfare, or was it class warfare? Were the events of 1994 components of a peasant rebellion, distinguished by the opposing forces being from different ethnicities? The distinction is critical. Behind the Hotel Rwanda imagery is the theme that African tribes need to be protected from each other. This happens in the form of UN intervention usually. The storytellers also know that if the narrative is bloody enough, a Western audience is just as ready to throw up its hands. Thus our impulse to join the Peace Corps or Medecins Sans Frontieres is quietly scrubbed in favor of calling in the cavalry. And then, only in the event of genocide. Someone keeps wanting Westerners to believe that African tribes will continue to kill each other regardless what we do. Is it true? No, the Africans fight because of what we do. The Tutsi victims of Hotel Rwanda were not just hotel keepers and clerks. The Tutsis were the administrative enforcers of post-colonial central Africa. The Hutus were the oppressed, and rose up against the Tutsis after generations of oppression and killings. If Africa were let to develop autonomous states from its indigenous populations, its people could put their natural resources to use improving their lives. Instead, our post-colonial tentacles continue to stir up instability. Our business interests make sure that the native Africans never get their footing. We fund strong men to enforce violent rule over the inhabitants. It's a controlled instability that facilitates the minimal societal infrastructure our traders require. But instability is difficult a balancing act. When the mayhem gets out of hand, peace-keepers are brought in at the people's expense, to restore the disordered order.
Colorization of the Grapes of Wrath
I think it's time to colorize The Grapes of Wrath. And I don't mean the Turner Classics process exactly. It may help to dumb down the artistic contrast of the black & white for a contemporary audience palate of splashy Disneycolor, but how about trying to make Steinbeck's theme more accessible to today's spoon-fed viewers? Let's colorize the skin of the poor migrant workers to reflect the inhumanly-treated populations of today's displaced im-migrants of color. I can't remember where I come down on colorizing the old movies. No one's insisted on infusing CMYK into Ansel Adams or Picasso's sketchbook, why are masterpieces filmed in black and white supposed to be pigment deficient? We don't presume to dub dialog over the silent movies made before the age of the talkies. As yet. Of course, Ted Turner was concerned for reviving interest in old intellectual properties, many of which were already in-artful. And perhaps his salesmanship maneuver has been proven effective. When my family sat down to watch Grapes of Wrath, the grey image tuned a number of youthful eyes away. Like Dorothea Lange's famous photographs, John Ford's film depicted disadvantaged Okies with whom the American audience could identify. We may not know what it feels like to be forced off our homes, but how the families cope with the hardship, we all can recognize. I'm curious how the film was received by Californians in 1940, coming less than ten years after the original plague of destitute Oklahoma refugees. How would the characters have faired with our sympathies if they had been played as coarse hillbilly Crackers with guns and a poor person's chip-on-the-shoulder desperation? The poor protagonists of The Grapes of Wrath were weakened skinny po-folk, who staked their relief on the strength of a single hopeful job listing flyer, who protested their oppression without resorting to violence, and who accepted hardship as their lot. Seeing into their daily lives, viewers were shown a dignified, earnest people who treated others with respect and compassion. Antagonist characters in the film were less charitable, taking advantage of the hard-luck migrants with guile, violence and authority. People into which the Oklahoma refugees traveled, New Mexico, Arizona and California, treated the migrants like vermin. Even as onlookers might express admiration for the Okies' determination to cross Death Valley, the better fed Californians held them in disdain for not knowing enough to be in such a predicament. The Okies were blamed for their own poverty. They threatened to burden everyone's already depleting resources. Only the viewers understood the unfair actions which had landed the otherwise self-sufficient sharecroppers to have to leave their livelihoods. The circumstances of the Dust Bowl cum great depression era forced removal of the small Oklahoma farmers is eerily familiar to today's economy and its foreclosures. Homesteaders find themselves made homeless, as a consequence of business decisions between corporations, banks and regulators. The Oklahoma farmers wanted to point their shotguns to warn the financial disruptors from their land, but found the conduits of
Denver Columbus Day Parade wants to kick indigenous ass
DENVER- Does it look like the COLUMBUS DAY PARADE organizers are practically begging for a comeuppance? Here comes the US cavalry of the American Indian Wars to finish the job Columbus began. On Columbus Day, the anniversary which has now become a teaching moment about revisiting the Columbus myth, about the holocaust unleashed by the European discovery, conquest and enslavement of North America, isn't it rather odd to CALL IN THE CALVARY? I MEAN, a celebration of Italian Americans is one thing. Is Christopher Columbus the only hero they can muster? Why not the Pope? I'm all for diverting Americans from the stereotype of the Sicilian American Sopranos legacy. But make it about pizza, not the frigging conquest of the American West. Columbus' own diaries confess his exploitive inhumane designs in Hispaniola. White man western expansion was no less genocidal. Who should be celebrating that? This squad looks like they're reenacting Colonel Chivington and his raiders freshly back from the Sand Creek Massacre. Perhaps they are retracing the victory lap the soldiers rode in Denver, festooned with the body parts of their victims, women and children, they exhibited as trophies of their victorious raid on the Indian encampment at Sand Creek. How fitting that for the modern day route, the western revelers drive Hummers. The glorification of the military is not coincidental, nor perhaps is the celebration of the uneducated. Do YOU, for example, count Winston Churchill's WWII England among your ancestors? Here is the invitation to the 2008 parade: "On Saturday October 11, 2008, at 10:00AM, we will celebrate the American National Holiday which commemorates Columbus' contribution to the formation of this great nation. It will also remind each one of us of the blood, sweat and tears our ancestors shed so that we might live and enjoy our lives in the land of the free." These are the Denver organizers' own photos of the 2007 parade. In the next you can catch an unedited glimpse of a protester. And what other can that be but a reactionary scowl? Here's what those opposed to the Columbus commemoration are putting together. 1. RACE, RESISTANCE AND THE COLUMBIAN LEGACY Join nationally-known activist Glenn Spagnuolo, co-founder of Re-create 68, for a night of education and dialogue about race in America and resistance to the Columbian Legacy! When: 5pm Thursday, October 9, 2008 Where: CU Boulder Campus, Hale Hall Room 240 2. Columbus Day Resistance March and Rally The annual protest of the Columbus Day Holiday and the racism that it embodies will begin with a march from Four Winds that ends at the Capitol Building followed by a rally for a better future. When: March starts at 8 am, Rally at 9am, Saturday, October 11 Where: Start of March is at Four Winds at 5th and Bannock in Denver 3. People's Council Following the Columbus Day resistance, people will be gathering to organize a new alliance locally that can act as a national vehicle for radicals. Bring your thoughts and cooperative energy. Please come and represent
Bolivian president talks about US subversion in his country
The Bush Administration and US government are promoting a terrorist campaign against supporters of the Bolivian president, Evo Morales. In fact, the US government is promoting and fomenting Civil War there, as it backs Rightist elements that have engaged in racist witch hunts against the indigenous community, whom in their great majority are backers of the 'Change' that their current president is trying to bring about. You tube has an interview with Morales just recorded this week. Check it out.
South America unites in rejecting US subversion on continent
Much of Latin America has watched on in disgust as the US government has fomented regional strife, civil war, and racist pogroms against the indigenous community in Bolivia that has claimed at least 30 lives so far. Reuters reports though that South American leaders back Bolivia's Morales and not Washington DC in this battle. Leaders of countries all around the globe are beginning to resist US government terrorism. Pakistan also has begun to fight back against US subversion of peace in their country, just as Russia gave a kick in the teeth to US subversion in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. See Pakistan troop fire turns back U.S. helicopters Latin America, too, is just fed up with the US government. Yankees Go Home! That is the cry every where these days!
Americans are stealing babies from Guatemala after all
DNA tests have proven for the first time that a baby adopted in the US, was in fact stolen from a mother in Guatemala. Adopted Guatemala baby 'stolen' How many others have been stolen previously, but never were tracked down? Indigenous women in rural areas were always at risk in Guatemala of having their babies stolen, simply because it was so profitable for the criminals involved and because the mothers were so powerless. This is reminiscent of another recent case of imperialist kidnapping, where a French agency was trying to steal children out of Chad, saying that they were 'Lost Children' from the war in Darfur. Chad Charges French Charity With Kidnapping When there is such a power imbalance like these between the US and Guatemala, between France and Chad, and between the US and Iraq and Afghanistan, abuses like this will be rampant. Children should be treasured and not destroyed by war, poverty, disease, and other forms of criminality that help make the rich richer, and make the poor suffer in silence. What type of world is this where atrocities like kidnapping babies from their mothers goes virtually unnoticed? I have seen it for myself, and it was happening directly inside the US.