feminist blogs

The video above and what follows was found *here*, or you can get there by clicking on the title just below. What is touched on is what hundreds of millions of people experience, but not white Westerners, for the most part: poverty and indeptedness is enforced through international monetary policies designed to keep poor countries poor, and relatively rich countries rich. That means disproportionately poor people of color will die, and white wealthier people will not die--because of pro-globalising economic policy, not primarily due to Global Warming. It's that simple, and it's that horrible and inhumane.

Physicist and activist Dr. Vandana Shiva explains how the World Bank and the IMF are complicit in orchestrating the expanding food crisis across the globe. Through the structure of their debt relief, these organizations pushed developing countries to stop growing staple foods, and to instead grow cash crops and commodities, like flowers and lettuce, for export to volatile international markets. Deregulated trade helps financial markets create hunger and make huge profits. Shiva also stresses the importance of farming organically to help mitigate climate change and sustainably provide the food we need.

photo of Dr. Usha Ramanathan is from here

What follows is cross posted from *here*, at Navdanya, Dr. Vandana Shiva's blog.

Press Release On Policy Dialogue: Niyamgiri, a test case for the defense of our forests and tribals

Yesterday, 12th of August 2010 Research Foundation for Science Technology and Ecology and the Save Niyamgiri Movement joined hands to hold a policy dialogue “Niyamgiri: a test case for the defense of our forests and tribals”, at the Constitution Club in New Delhi to support the struggle of Niyamgiri, its forests and its people against Vedanta’s plans to mine its sacred mountain.

While on their way to the conference to narrate the atrocities witnessed in Niyamgiri by the hands of Vedanta, two of the Dongria Kondh leaders Lado Sikaka and Sana Sikaka were beaten and abducted by police officers in plain clothes, and only released after the intervention of Kalahandi MP

The two leaders were traveling to Delhi along with members of their community who were also to attend the policy dialogue. The following Dongria Kondh representatives were also supposed to attend, but as phones and car keys had been confiscated by the abductors, they were forced back to send the alarm to the kin.

Men:	Women:
Kalia Sikaka	Rinja Sikaka
Drinju Sikaka	Sinde Sikaka
Sima Sikaka	Pandra Kadraka
	Sundri Krusiki
	Minjadi Sikaka

This incident reinforces the message that Vedanta’s rule of terror in Niyamgiri must be put to an end now, a message that all eminent speakers at the conference laid out clearly and unequivocally. “Niyamgiri stands as a test case” says Dr Shiva, for “If we fail in Niyamgiri, we won’t be able to protect the rights of people and nature anywhere else”.

The policy dialogue’s two objectives were in fact putting forward a comprehensive strategy to support the Niyamgiri struggle, while also more broadly deepening the democratic processes of the country to ensure its laws are upheld. Kalahandi MP Bakt Charan Das reiterates that laws on paper are not translating into rights in practice, as despite the FRA and PESA the individual and community rights of tribals in Niyamgiri are not b eing recognized or respected. B.D. Sharma, one of the architects of PESA, validates this point by saying that the provisions existing in the legal constitutional framework are not followed. For example the Gram Sabha, he goes on, is competent to manage its affairs and resources according to traditions and customs but the issue arises as the “top leadership doesn’t allow for people to be supreme”.

From a legal standpoint, Pinky Anand - Senior Advocate (SC) - and Sanjay Uphadyay –one of the framers of the Act - stress in fact that the issue is not one of absence of laws, but of lack of implementation, a point that was reiterated by most speakers. In reality, as T.K. Oommen, B.D. Sharma and Vandana Shiva remind us, the rights the tribal and forest dwelling communities are fighting for are rights to the Earth and its produce; they derive from Mother Earth and hence they are natural rights; they shouldn’t depend on an Act in the first place. Still, Sanjay Uphadyay reminds us how the rights are “already vested” and it is a duty of the State to respect them.

Much of the problem, the speakers conveyed, is that neither the Government, nor the urban public deeply understand the relationship that bonds the tribal and forest communities to their land and the environment. These communities have informally implemented the law of nature for centuries; as opposed to the law of loot, of greed, and corporate terror that is in place today.

Usha Ramanathan makes an important point by stressing that in cases like Niyamgiri, the Government itself is acting in violation of the Constitution and the law; we members of civil society should not question how the Government is using its powers; we should, practicing democracy, assert that it doesn’t have such powers in the first place! “The State” she says “has Constitutional obligations and does not have absolute powers”.

She goes on to say that much of the problem lies in our understanding of development and in the imposition of our urban paradigm to communities with a unique lifestyle. Eminent sociologist T.K. Oommen follows on this stating that while some displacement is perhaps inevitable, it is paramount to minimize it, and adequately compensate the displaced, after receiving their informed consent. Neither holds true in the case of Niyamgiri, where, he says, we are simultaneously witnessing an ecocide, aquacide, culturecide eventually leading to silent genocide due to displacement.

Unfortunately though, the approach followed by the Centre in forest and tribal areas has been one of “control” or “develop”, says Uphadyay. Questions of good governance or empowerment were never raised.

Rajya Sabha MP Mani Shankar Aiyas said: ‘The tribes need to feel empowered and free which is only possible when the centre involves them in the process of development.’ All the speakers agreed that the approach to be followed should be one of community empowerment: this stresses on the paramount essence of both the notion of common management of resources, and on the fact that these communities know what they want.

The Dongria Kondh through the voice of Lingraj reiterate that they are well aware of what they want: they do want development, but a sustainable one, that respects their traditions and customs. People have the right to refuse our urban industrial paradigm of development; if the process is leading to immiserization of locals, it can’t be called development, says Ramanathan.

Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh said tribals and other forest communities should be made stakeholders of their own development, and also part of the market economy the country has embraced. "The way forward in Niyamgiri” he said “is to make the forest dwellers owners of their own produce. The benefit of any capital investment is their inherent right."

Finally, all speakers agreed that in the immediate future, the efforts should concentrate on creating a comprehensive legal framework that addresses all issues thoroughly, in the place on the individual Acts currently in place; there is also need for a review of existing legislation to do away with all loopholes and inconsistencies that allow Vedanta and companies alike to carry on with their national loot.

In the words of Bakt Charan Das “We have to choose what is more important, the corporate leaders or millions of people in the countryside.

We must use mass agitation. We can assemble. We can go on hunger strike in Gandhiji’s way. This is how community rights must be brought to the country. We can decide. With this I conclude.”

What follows is a cross post from Brenda's excellent website, Censored News. Thanks again, Brenda!!!

What is in bold and in larger text, within the post, was put in bold and made larger by me. For the original post at Censored News, please click *here*.

Photos: World Indigenous Peoples Day Tucson

photograph of Dr. Vandana Shiva is from here

I am increasingly convinced that any G8 plans and policies, before moving forward in any regard, ought to be accepted or rejected by Dr. Vandana Shiva. Any practices, principles, and paradigms that promote globalisation as the West defines it "positively" must meet with Dr. Shiva's approval or disapproval.

We are lucky to live in a time with this brilliant author, lecturer, philosopher, physicist, environmentalist, and feminist with a cogent knowledge of how the Global North impacts the Global South, how the so-called First World negatively and destructively impacts the Second, Third, and Fourth Worlds. I hope that all those with Western, white, male, and Global Northern and/or "First" World privileges, entitlements, and power defer their sense of right and wrong, helpful and harmful, sustainable and unsustainable, to Dr. Shiva. I pray they realise that their political positions, globally mean that they are not well-positioned to know much about the consequences of actions which are in service to the most wealthy at the expense of the most poor, in service to the most privileged by gender and race at the expense of those without either.

In the name of She, the G-d whose name cannot be said, I pray.

All that follows is from *here* at zcommunications.org.

image is from here

image of map of South America is from here

Hello dear A.R.P. readers across the Americas and beyond,

If I were to publish a list of the ten WHMen I most respect, John Perkins would surely make the list. I have heard him speak, and he shows great love and compassion for everyone, even understanding how the most corrupt people are caught in systems that control them as much as they control the systems.

See *here* at Amazon.com for a list of his excellent eye-opening books.

He's written a great deal about corporate greed and corruption, globalisation, anti-Indigenism, the destruction of the Earth and poor people by the rich corporate leaders and their lackies, who care only about vampiric consumption of the world's resources and making a profit, while caring nothing at all about human, non-human animal, or other life on Earth. Morally bankrupt and ethically unconscious aren't sufficient terms to describe these white het men who are also hit men at the tippety-top of  the systems of atrocity they oversee.

In South America, there has been astounding success in saying a big ol' NO! to globalising corporate capitalism, which also means, necessarily, saying no to many forms of genocide and ecocide.

With varying levels of success, a form of democracy exists across the continent that has never existed in supposedly "democratic" countries like the U.S., where our elections are media-events and where the public is left without information about how federal governmental politics works, what the true agendas are, and how any candidate who makes it to the top of our two party system will likely support the oppressive status quo.

Many leaders across South America are listening to the voices of The People--marginalised people, not the ruling class, and not the Pundits and Pollsters. Over the last decades, the changes have been dramatic and unequivocally pro-human/anti-corporate globalisation, which is not to say there are human rights for all people in South America. Indigenous women activists need plenty of support. So too do Black and Brown women fighting for women's human rights against the deadly mix of white and het male supremacy.

Colombia and Venezuela--note their location in the map--are still dealing off the radar with the U.S. in ways that threaten the region, and Mexico and Haiti are among two countries in Central America that the U.S. are working to manipulate and control in various ways, including militarily and through the spread of the cancer called corporate capitalism, destroying the possibilities of local/regional economies and social justice.

Basically, the U.S. wants military bases in all of these places to then attempt to militarily control more of each region of the world. This is partly how it works, in one of those countries: the U.S. sends weapons to Mexico, which allow more drug-trade/war related murders to happen there, allegedly making the case for increasing the U.S. military presence in that country. Everywhere the U.S. military is present, women are trafficked and raped.

Below is John Perkins latest newsletter:

Reject Corporatocracy Ambitions in Venezuela

Dear Friends,

Venezuela, Colombia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Wikileaks, BP, assassination squads - these are times that try our souls (to paraphrase Tom Paine). These are times that raise our ire. These are times for action!

I receive lots of emails about the subjects listed above. In recent days I have been inundated with emails from people who believe the U.S. is about to take action against the Chavez administration in Venezuela and that the action will appear as a grass-roots movement initiated in Colombia . Many ask me to speak out against this.

I have no inside information as to whether or not this is true but I do know that Washington was elated at the election of its puppet, Juan Manuel Santos, to the presidency of Colombia, by the agreement to establish seven new U.S. military bases on Colombian soil, and that "wars on drugs" are often supported by the CIA as a way of financing its own "Black Ops" and also as an excuse for donating US military aid to countries that then are required to purchase equipment made by the corporatocracy (this model was perfected by the British during the 1800s Opium Wars and further refined by the CIA in Asia's Golden Triangle).

Many of my Latin American friends are convinced that the rising drug violence in Mexico is a response to the success of the Colombia drug wars - that it reflects the corporatocracy's determination to take greater control over Mexico, and through it, Central America, and that it is manipulated by the CIA. I can not verify the validity of this theory but it would be not inconsistent with things I experienced as an economic hit man. The fact that so many people are so deeply suspicious of Washington's motives sends a strong signal.

I am speaking out at every opportunity I have. On radio shows, at events where I lecture, and in my writings. I want to urge you to join me and to ask all your friends and your Facebook and Twitter connections to do so also. You and I have the power to prevent such actions - in Venezuela, Iran and throughout the world. We MUST exercise that power. These times are our testing ground.

The tired war machine that our country's leaders revert to in order to promote long-term economic gain for just a few elite must cease.

I'm asking for your help and your participation in raising a storm. Pick an issue or issues - any of the ones listed at the beginning of this article, or others that draw on your personal passions. Please do all the following and together our voices will be heard:

1. Write to every blog you can about this and link to ones that battle corporatocracy
2. Write letters to your local newspapers
3. Send emails to your elected officials
4. Do not buy from BP, Exxon, Chevron/Texaco (destroyed large sections of the Amazon), or Shell (responsible for the hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his companions in Congo). If you must buy gas, do it from Citgo; a Venezuela-owned corporation, it is also the only major oil company that finances education and health services to some of the world's most impoverished people. Write emails to all these companies telling them why you are taking such actions.

We know that all the blustering of the Pentagon and White House over the Wikileaks disclosures is another indication that Washington is trying to cover up the crimes it commits in its rush toward resource domination. Rather than focusing on the real crimes committed by our troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere and the need to bring the guilty parties to trial and assure that such acts are never repeated, the U.S. government directs its energy at ferreting out the whistleblowers.

What we have to do is stop being hoodwinked by the communications people who constantly try to thwart us from reacting to the real issues at hand. We must start demanding transparency in our government and corporations and in their dealings with other countries. We must not let the U.S. propaganda networks blind us with fear. We must not reengage the old war machine in order to create a false economic boost for our country and devastation for so many others.

These are times when the corporatocracy is attempting to consolidate its power. It is up to each and every one of us to stand firm against those attempts. A line is being drawn in the sand in places like Venezuela and Iran. By the attack on Wikileaks. And the crimes of BP. Please take my hand and step across that line with me. United we will stop the U.S. from marching further to the drum of corporatocracy imperialism.

Many thanks and blessings,

John

John Perkins

New York Times bestselling author of "CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN" and "THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE"

http://www.JohnPerkins.org

http://www.dreamchange.org

Twitter: @economic_hitman

photo of Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love is from here

White is is the new back. As in "We're baaaaack!"  

There is a new film out starring Julia Roberts, titled after the best-selling book whose author has been a guest on Oprah's talk show. The movie is called Eat Pray Love, and it is based on a U.S. class-privileged heterosexual, slender, light-complected, blond, blue-eyed, white woman's journey through Italy (where she finds delicious food), India (where she finds spiritual riches), and Indonesia (where she finds romantic love). Do you get why the story is so appealing to class-comfortable white Amerikkka yet?

I'm not saying Elizabeth Gilbert is a horrible person. I'm saying her book is well-received because she's a blond, blue-eyed, slender, heterosexual, class-privileged white woman who fits Oprah's audience demographic well, and who the media will love to speak with while heavier and/or dark-skinned women of color and/or lesbians and/or homeless prostitutes will be ignored as not fit to talk to about how they Eat Pray Love. Even though their story is more socially important and in need of hearing than hers could ever be.

The title, if it were to be politically and historically accurate, might just as well be Eat Exploit Pray Pillage Love Loot.

There is a vampiric assumption among white class-privileged U.S. people that the rest of the world is, variously: our backyard; our playground and war (battle) ground; our swimming pool; our diamond mine; our lumberyard; our petrol refueling station; our garbage dump; our marketplace and mall; our international cafe and restaurant; our summer home and winter resort; our sea-shell collection site; our South Pacific and Caribbean get-away paradise; out dating hot spot; our sex club and brothel; our predatory child-, transgender-, and woman-rape is-not-a-crisis centers; and our wage and sex slave trafficking post--actually there are hundreds of international stop-and-shop "trading" locations.

Earlier this year, on a television program called The Bachelor: One The Wings of Love, U.S. white pilot Jake Pavelka proposed marriage to Vienna Girardi. (He was also very interested in the blond, slender, white Ali Fedotowsky, but she gave him up so as not to lose her job, thank goodness. Because she returned as The Bachelorette and met and got engaged to a truly lovely man named Roberto Martinez. Ali is also a wonderful human being and it appears to me that the two of them will be very happy together. As for Jake and Vienna, if you want to see where that romance went in a hurry, see this post.

The locale for the final date for Jake, the "exotic" proposal locale, for the deepening of romantic heterosexual white love, and for the proposal to marry in front of millions of people, was St. Lucia. (For Ali and Roberto it was Bora Bora.) To watch the program, you'd think St. Lucia is a paradise. St. Lucia is geographically stunningly beautiful, and you cannot go there without encountering extreme levels of poverty and exploitation by the West, which has settled on St. Lucia as a regular stop for cruise ships, the CEOs of which will argue that tourism is important to St. Lucia's economy--it's far better for their own personal pocketbooks, to be completely honest here. No one in St. Lucia will get as rich as the CEO of a cruise ship fleet no matter how many ships come to port, no matter how many white folks buy various things for sale there. And if you, do have the decency to buy things, and don't try and get the prices down. If you're on the ship as a passenger, you can afford the stated prices for the goods. Don't skimp. Be generous and courteous. And, for the record, the country's name is pronounced San LOO-sha.

St. Lucia would fare far better a more sustainable local/regional economy, not dependent on the white West for anything at all, especially cruisers taking photos of the gorgeous landscapes if only the depressingly impoverished darkies would get out of the scenery. Throughout the broadcast of the last two or so episodes filmed there, we saw no Black people at all. You would have thought it was an island of well-designed hotels, made for only white people. Down the hillsides that were featured in almost every shot, by the coasts, are shacks where economically poor people live, work, eat, pray, love, and die without you ever hearing about them--or seeing them.

I knew one woman from the island nation who was working on her French degree so that she could teach and give lessons, boosting her own earnings allowing her to better provide for herself and her children; she and they were abandoned by their father. She was working longer hours and working harder than the rich white men I know--with considerably fewer resources, far less assistance, and with no health care. Her beloved father was a French speaker from Martinique and that was part of the appeal of learning the language for her as he had passed on.

But the more practical reason was because the French colonised various islands in the region and left their bloody devastation and lovely language behind, people need to know French in that region, as well as English. With a plan to generate some savings and once her children were grown, she, like the tourists, could also leave and teach elsewhere, and travel to places she longs to see. She longed to get off the island which she saw as kind of a prison. A stunningly beautiful prison.

To earn money she gave excellent tours to the whites who poured through in awe of the vistas, unless some poor Black village people were in view and then the whites often felt "bad". The feeling of badness is not too helpful. What might be helpful would be assisting local entrepreneurs and college students in finding ways to earn a living there and to otherwise invest in the local economy.

The land of St. Lucia is magical, but its magic has been made into something less-than-joyful by the White Man. It's been made into a place where people have few opportunities to enjoy the culinary delights of Italy, the spiritual riches of India, or the opportunities for love in Indonesia, that Elizabeth Gilbert wrote about so successfully.

If you go to St. Lucia, imagine not being able to leave. Consider that as the primary reality of most St. Lucians, with regard to traveling abroad. Unlike those, including myself, who have been cruisers, they will not even likely get to see the island nations to their north: Barbados, Antigua (pronounced Ann-TEE-gah), and the U.S. Virgin Islands--the gorgeous St. Johns, owned and run by rich white men for rich white people, still exploiting the labor of poor Black people who also live there.

Cruise ships, for the paying passengers, are an experience of beauty, indulgence, and comfort. There's a lot of eating and a lot of loving but not so much praying going on because people--the passengers, not the cabin, cleaning, and wait staff--generally feel like they're already in heaven. The CEOs, or even the ship's captains, won't tell you the truth about where all our white trash, garbage, and filthy sun-screen-filled water goes. (Here's a hint: think "Caribbean Sea".)

A neighboring nation to the north and east of St. Lucia, Haiti also needs to be white-washed in the sense of whites getting washed away. The same for all the Caribbean island nations that Europeans invaded, genocidally mass murdering the many Indigenous people who lived there, colonised with slave economies, and gave up when various economic-political factors conspired against European interests, such as a slave revolt in Haiti. As you may well know, for approximately 7000 years--yes, that's thousand, not hundred--most of the Caribbean had been inhabited sustainably and non-ecocidally by the Arawaks, Caribs, Tainos and their ancestors many of whom originated from Venezuela. But wherever there is wonderful darkness, you can be sure wicked whiteness is sure to follow, stomping out the darkness, with mythologies and religions declaring this "a good thing to do".

Yes, white is is the new back. And the old and new cause of "blood red" across Asia.

Just when people you thought it was safe to go back to venture into the waters of sustainable regional economies, U.S. white folks come back to re-establish their whiteness as the visitor-invader. It would be a mistake to think this is genetic, now matter how much it appears that it's in white people's genes to return to formerly violated vacation spawning grounds. The problem is political, structural, institutional, and a product of enforced social ways of being, acted out currently by a globalised economy that requires whiteness exploit and invade everywhere it can be. To exploit, pillage, and loot.

image of bumper sticker is from here

On Christianity, Marriage, Hypocrisy, and Western Civ:

I was initially excited to hear the news of the challenge to the California law, a law of gross discrimination that was well-funded by The Mormon Church TM. I loved how the arguments were framed by Judge Walker. I applaud him. For more, see here at HuffPo.

For a synopsis, from the Huffington Post piece--one of them that they've published on this subject, see below:

• "Sexual orientation is commonly discussed as a characteristic of the individual. Sexual orientation is fundamental to a person's identity and is a distinguishing characteristic that defines gays and lesbians as a discrete group. Proponents' assertion that sexual orientation cannot be defined is contrary to the weight of the evidence."
• "Individuals do not generally choose their sexual orientation. No credible evidence supports a finding that an individual may, through conscious decision, therapeutic intervention or any other method, change his or her sexual orientation."
• "Same-sex couples are identical to opposite-sex couples in the characteristics relevant to the ability to form successful marital unions. Like opposite-sex couples, same-sex couples have happy, satisfying relationships and form deep emotional bonds and strong commitments to their partners. Standardized measures of relationship satisfaction, relationship adjustment and love do not differ depending on whether a couple is same-sex or opposite-sex."
• "Marrying a person of the opposite sex is an unrealistic option for gay and lesbian individuals."
• "Same-sex couples receive the same tangible and intangible benefits from marriage that opposite-sex couples receive."
• "The availability of domestic partnership does not provide gays and lesbians with a status equivalent to marriage because the cultural meaning of marriage and its associated benefits are intentionally withheld from same-sex couples in domestic partnerships."
• "Permitting same-sex couples to marry will not affect the number of opposite-sex couples who marry, divorce, cohabit, have children outside of marriage or otherwise affect the stability of opposite-sex marriages."

What differences DOES it make to HET marriages whether LESBIANS and GAYS can marry also? How does us getting married do anything to interfere with your fucked up version of marriage/divorce/remarriage?

But reading a discussion thread on this subject on Tim Wise's Facebook page has made something clear:

First, I completely agree with Jayray Ray:

Jayray Ray I've said it before and I'll say it again. I couldn't give the steam off my piss about gay marriage. While this whole debacle understandably shakes the foundations of convention, tradition, institutional religion and the conventions of heteronormity, IT STILL ONLY AFFECTS A STATISTICALLY SMALL AND PRIVILEGED MINORITY (i.e. the boringly saccharine ideal of two lawyers/doctors/designers His and His SUV's in the driveway).

Call me when real facts and issues surrounding gay, nay, human sexuality are brought to pandemic light. How can you people raise your half-assed liberal flambeauxs to such trivia when a third of teen suicides are by gay kids? Or when 45% of homeless or runaway youth on American streets identify as LGBT?

Talk about carts before horses. I've found too often that dialogue seems to cease between the queers and the breeders when the conversation turns to sexual education. And I'm not talkin' Johnny's first nocturnal emission or Susie's Aunt Flo!

If you read the discussion thread thus far, you'll understand where this is coming from:

It  means little to me that some well-meaning Christians will come to the fore to state how glad they are that this has happened. The question is this: how do you Christians organise to shut down the machinery run by the bigots who call themselves Christian, who spit in the eye of Jesus whenever they open their mouths to proclaim the Glory of [Their One True-ish] G-d? When does it become imperative that Christians stop praying to their Lord, and start practicing what he allegedly preached? Forgiveness of priests molesting children and raping nuns does NOTHING to stop child molestation and rape, in case you haven't noticed.

While I support Civil Rights protections as vitally important, I don't ever mistake them for anything approximating human liberation from oppression. There shouldn't be two water fountains, one for whites and one for Blacks, or obstacles to voting. There shouldn't be partnership laws that exclude lesbian and gay couples. Civil Rights are supposed to be a strategy for achieving social justice and equality, not the last stage in the accomplishment of such liberation and equality.

The water from the single fountain still demands that some get no water at all.

What does voting really accomplish when we only can vote, nationally, for candidates from two parties that both ignore poor people, people of color, queer people, WOMEN'S RIGHT TO FREEDOM FROM ASSAULT and SUBORDINATION, and people who are destroyed by capitalism and the military industrial complex, which BOTH Democrats and Republicans FULLY SUPPORT.

Voting does allow us to elect a Black man as president--who some silly and virulently racist whites will insist is not a U.S. citizen. Some election results have symbolic meaning and social value that ought not be looked upon cynically.

AND,

When the out Lesbian-Feminist Red woman is president, in a seven party system in an actual democracy, then I'll know something has shifted fundamentally. When white, allegedly het, allegedly Christian men don't rule all our institutions, then I'll get out the fun noise-makers. Until then, the not-fun noise-makers.

Marriage, as a legal, economic, political, social institution (however inclusive of lesbian and gay couples it sometimes seems to want to be) creates gross discrimination against and further marginalisation of single people, some intersex, intergender, and transgender people (two men and two women being allowed to marry is far from "inclusive"--we'll see what the wording ends up being), and for many of us who are trauma survivors who would rather die quickly than subject ourselves to having to be sexually available to anyone "till death do us part".

What is still not statused, privileged, or institutionally celebrated is the reality that most of us live with: having caring friends; community members or neighbors who show up in sickness and in health; primary friendships who help us process the dramas and traumas of the married people we know; living with roommates who function as family-of-origin; networks of friendship scattered geographically who are our lifeblood; non-Western models of supporting one another and raising children, and many forms of NON-WHITE extended family.

To be crystal clear: I'm not advocating for Mormon--or any other--straight men to be able, under religious law, to rape their wives who are also their daughters. No, I'm not going to support that. That's me being discriminatory against a group that has practiced anti-Indigenous genocidal child-stealing and incestuous rape for centuries--BECAUSE THEIR GOD TELLS THEM TO DO SO. When you don't recognise that your god is a devil, you're seriously doomed, and so too are all those you attempt to "save". Message to the Christian evangelists, proselytisers, and missionaries: GO HOME. LOCK YOURSELVES IN until you get who the Jewish man named Jesus REALLY was and what he REALLY stood for. See this for more about him:

http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-most-christians-dont-want-you-to.html

Marriage as it exists in dominant cultural law and imagination maintains and enforces rampant racism, heterosexism, and lethal misogyny by promoting a very Western patriarchal ideal.

Most humans need more than that, even while some of us very much need marriage to be more inclusive.

Civil Rights in the U.S. have only ever been able to extend, amend, or modify the rights and supremacy of wealthy White Het Men to pursue happiness.

Civil Rights, in and of themselves, do not decenter or destabilise the U.S.'s  kyriarchical, plutocratic, patriarchal foundation even a bit. The proof of this is to see who is the most powerful in this society, today, and this coming weekend: wealthy WHM. (And two hundred years ago? Wealthy WHM.)

Western Civ, despite it's lofty liberal proclamations to the contrary, has absolutely no plan, practice, values, or initiatives in place to make this society anything other than one that most benefits wealthy WHM.

So let's not forget that. Western Civ must be radically transformed, not amended; not just made "more inclusive"; not--especially--made to look humane when is EVERYTHING BUT. The U.S. is a country that requires and enforces rape as a terroristic form of social control and gross human suffering--including for het men's entertainment, identified and protected, Constitutionally, as free white corporate pimp-speech; it thrives on racism and genocide as an industrial strength value and practice, it must commit corporate-funded ecocide. All this must be done in order for the U.S. to exist--and continue its EXISTENCE. So liberal reform efforts, like the same sex marriage agenda, are not ones that are getting any applause from me any time soon.

Whether it's carving into women's bodies or into the Earth, the White Man finds ways to do his damage, savagely and without regard for human life (women) or sacred Indigenous places (across the U.S. that was stolen).

Imagine, if you're a white man, someone carving the face of your murderer into your flesh, as a reminder. And now consider Mount Rushmore to be exactly that, except the carving was in stone instead of one human being's flesh.

When it comes to naming and organising against atrocity, consider that genocidal rape is accomplished in part by making it impossible for an oppressed and ghettoised people to have their own children, by cutting into the bodies of women without their permission and ending their ability to control their own reproductive choices. The history of the U.S. is to violate the Earth and to violate women. The White Man does both, with no accountability or justice for those and that which is harmed. If you aren't outraged and motivated to take action to stop these atrocities this, why aren't you?

What appears next also appears below, in the main body of the post, but I wanted to highlight this atrocity, this form of genocidal rape, because it gets so little attention in dominant media:

40-50% of All Indian Women have been Sterilized. Evidence of massive sterilization of American Indians has been revealed by the (GAO) General Accounting Office in a study for ex-Senator James Abourezk from South Dakota in 1976. Most of these women were sterilized without their informed consent. The Same GOA Report also revealed that Indian Children are being used as "human guinea pigs," by the Federal Government in 56 different medical experiments (in most cases without parental consent). The Abourezk Report found that approximately 3,406 Indian Women had been sterilized in a three year period between 1973 and 1976, in only four states. Lehman L. Brightman, President of United Native Americans,Inc. estimates that between 60,000 and 70,000 Indian Women have been sterilized in the last twelve years. Most of the Indian Women were sterilized "unknowingly" and without their informed consent, and in many cases by outright intimidation. In many cases women were told they were going to die if they had more children, that they had cysts on their ovaries, or that the operation was reversible. Voluntary sterilization among the general population of the U.S. of some 200 million people isn't going to wipe out the country, but in smaller groups like the American Indians, it could wipe them out forever, as an example: If Every white woman in the state of California was sterilized, the white race in North America would not be in danger, but if every California Indian Women was sterilized, the Genocide of California Indians would be Permanent. President Carter has Refused on 3 different occasions to stop the sterilization and to remove Dr. Emery Johnson, the Director of the Indian Health Service. . .The man most responsible for Indian Sterilization.

From Censored News, with thanks to Brenda. Please click on the title just below to link back.

40th Anniversary Commemorating the Takeover of Mount Rushmore

Whether it's carving into women's bodies or into the Earth, the White Man finds ways to do his permanent damage without any regard for human life (women's) or sacred Indigenous ground across the U.S. that was stolen. Forty years ago towards the end of this summer Indigenous people took a stand to reclaim what the White Man named Mt. Rushmore, but which is really the Paha Sapa.

Imagine, if you're a white man, someone carving the face of your family's murderer into your flesh, as a reminder of the atrocity and to arrogantly declare "I was here". And now consider Mount Rushmore to be exactly that, except the carving was done in sacred land instead of one human being's flesh.

Next, if you're a white het man, consider how it would feel to be forcibly sterilised. Doctors welcome you into a room and when you wake up you've had your body cut into and your reproductive options taken from you. That these things happen to people who are not men and are not white is why they happen at all. How many American Indians do you think could get away with systematically and forcibly sterilising white men and be allowed to continue to do the procedure, even after it was reported?

Consider that genocide is accomplished in part by making it impossible for oppressed people to have their own children if they wish to, by cutting into the bodies of women without their permission and ending their ability to control their own reproductive choices. The history of the U.S. is to violate the Earth and to violate women of all colors. The White Man does both savagely, barbarically, with no accountability or justice for the lives and the Life that is harmed.

While many American Indian women are harmed, they also resist white male supremacist violence and atrocity: gynocidal, genocidal, and ecocidal to be sure. To all white men: what are you doing to support their resistance efforts? What are you doing to make surgical sterilisation illegal and criminally prosecuted and to make sure the license to practice atrocity is taken away from these savage white men?

What appears next also appears below, in the main body of the post, but I wanted to highlight this atrocity, this form of genocidal rape, because it gets so little attention in dominant media and no white man I know is organising to stop this:

40-50% of All Indian Women have been Sterilized. Evidence of massive sterilization of American Indians has been revealed by the (GAO) General Accounting Office in a study for ex-Senator James Abourezk from South Dakota in 1976. Most of these women were sterilized without their informed consent. The Same GOA Report also revealed that Indian Children are being used as "human guinea pigs," by the Federal Government in 56 different medical experiments (in most cases without parental consent). The Abourezk Report found that approximately 3,406 Indian Women had been sterilized in a three year period between 1973 and 1976, in only four states. Lehman L. Brightman, President of United Native Americans,Inc. estimates that between 60,000 and 70,000 Indian Women have been sterilized in the last twelve years. Most of the Indian Women were sterilized "unknowingly" and without their informed consent, and in many cases by outright intimidation. In many cases women were told they were going to die if they had more children, that they had cysts on their ovaries, or that the operation was reversible. Voluntary sterilization among the general population of the U.S. of some 200 million people isn't going to wipe out the country, but in smaller groups like the American Indians, it could wipe them out forever, as an example: If Every white woman in the state of California was sterilized, the white race in North America would not be in danger, but if every California Indian Women was sterilized, the Genocide of California Indians would be Permanent. President Carter has Refused on 3 different occasions to stop the sterilization and to remove Dr. Emery Johnson, the Director of the Indian Health Service. . .The man most responsible for Indian Sterilization.

From Censored News, with thanks to Brenda. Please click on the title just below to link back.

40th Anniversary Commemorating the Takeover of Mount Rushmore

[I found this image online, but not at a specific URL and I searched for it on a URL but couldn't find it.] I'm kind of expecting crayon makers to come out with a "Whiter Shades of Pale" series any day now.