Economic Aspects of "Love"

[American Dream]

Indigenous women understand that our struggle for autonomy is related to the total need for structural change in this society. We realize that indigenous people in industrial society have always been and will always be in a relationship of war, because industrial society has declared war on indigenous peoples, on land based peoples.

To look within a bigger context, when I say indigenous peoples, I’m not only talking about [Native American] Indians. All people come from land-based cultures. Some have been colonized longer than I have, which means they have got more work to do

---Winona LaDuke

http://urbanhabitat.org/node/951

[American Dream]

Dreamtime with the Zapatistas

August 12, 2013

By Brenda Norrell


In The Speed of Dreams, the necessity and romance of specific words and language is revealed, in the poetry that gave birth to the revolution.

There is no single word that adequately translates "campesinos." The word means comrade, partner, and close friend, but not one of these can replace the word campesino. The word "peasant" is not adequate, either, which refers to the people of the fields.

There are other words that resist translations, as revealed in The Speed of Dreams, selected writings of Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, 2001 - 2007.

For many of us who journeyed with Marcos and the Zapatistas on the caravan through Mexico, and spent decades going back and forth between Arizona and the Zapatista strongholds in Chiapas, the specific words and translations were not what we sought. We were attracted, and propelled forward, by the spirit of the movement, the deep love of humanity by those within the struggle, and the necessity of the resistance.

Now, nearly two decades after my first trip to the southern mountains of Chiapas, I find myself once again in southern mountains, this time it is the desert mountains of southern Arizona. In a silent home, a copy of The Speed of Dreams has been left behind. There is no television, telephone or Internet to distract me. There is only this silence and The Speed of Dreams. I am, at last, alone with the words of Marcos.

Among the profound messages shared within The Speed of Dreams is the power of words. There is the reality that the unspoken word ultimately becomes the act.

There are words woven deep within the heart of language that resist even the best translators.

"Ejidos," like campesinos, is one of those words, which refers to the communal land shared by the people of the community. Ejidos, which refers to the historic struggle for Mexican land reform, "prioritizes subsistence and collectivity as opposed to profit and hierarchy," explains the book's editors Canek Pena-Vargas and Greg Ruggiero.

In the careful use and play of words that signifies the struggle with brilliance, the editors also speak of immigrant words. "These immigrant words - as of yet undocumented by Merriam-Webster and the Oxford Dictionary - have no single-word English equivalent."

Words, as Marcos explains, ultimately and naturally became the Zapatistas weapons.

Marcos speaks of the respect and dignity that is the object of the struggle that has risen from the indigenous Zapatistas.

"But for us, pity is an affront and charity is a slap in the face."

Pulling from his chest full of memories, Marcos remembers a single pink stiletto heel, size 6 and a half, that arrived without its mate, in the piles of useless computers, expired medicines and extravagant clothes that were donated to the movement.

"I always carry it in my backpack in order to remind myself, in the midst of interviews, photo reports, and attractive sexual propositions, that since First of January what we are to the country is a Cinderella. These good people who, sincerely, send us a pink stiletto heel, size six and a half, imported, without its mate, thinking that, poor as we are, we'll accept anything, charity and alms. How can we tell them that we no longer want to continue living Mexico's shame?"

Marcos also describes a type of sophisticated charity that comes from some NGOs and international agencies that decide what the community needs, without consulting them. A community that needs clean running drinking water or a school, might be offered instead a class on herbs.

It is possible, Marcos says, to live without welfare, and "to govern for ourselves without the parasite that calls itself government."

Leftovers, paternalism, or allowing others to impose their projects has no place in the struggle. Zapatistas say, "Everything for everyone, nothing for ourselves, and if we say it, it is what we live."

Marcos celebrates those who support the Zapatistas with their peace camps, caravans, attentive ears, the companera word, and all of it that is without pity and charity.

In "When the Word Appeared," there is the story of how the word appeared and gave birth to thought.

"And so the history of the world is the history of that struggle between those who want to dominate in order to impose their world and their way, taking away the wealth of others, and those who do not allow themselves to be dominated, those who rebel."

Marcos describes the efforts of those who have not surrendered, those who have not sold out. In naming the champions, Marcos recognizes Mapuche in Chile and companeros in Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador and beyond.

"To the indigenous brothers and sisters of Ecuador and Bolivia, we say you are giving a good lesson in history to all of Latin America, because now you are indeed putting a halt to neoliberal globalization," Marcos says in the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle.

The declaration was made in June of 2005. In the years that followed, Ecuador and Bolivia led the world by adopting the Rights of Nature as law. Bolivia hosted the Conference on Mother Earth and Climate Change, resulting in declarations by Indigenous for the protection of Mother Earth.

With the creation and formation of the words, there has been a great amount of reflection.

Wrapped within The Speed of Dreams, there is the beauty, simplicity, and struggle of life in the Lacandon Jungle. There's the struggle of getting dry and staying warm during the July rains and the inevitable wearing out of boots, with the front toes gaping like open mouths. Marcos shares a great story of a trip to the river to bathe, and another about the fierce indigenous Mayan football games in the villages. Marcos also describes the weight of walking, bent over, from carrying the burdens of others. Those stories are the heart of the book, so it is best to get the book and read those stories for yourselves.

For those who traveled in delegations to Chiapas through the years, and always wondered what the Zapatistas might be saying about you before you arrived, there's an interesting dialogue as a group approaches. Marcos speaks of the multiplicity of the groups that would visit the jungle, and how one of the rebels referred, not in a negative way, to those in the group as "absolute chaos."

The Speed of Dreams describes the right of education for girls and women, upholds women's freedom of choice in regards to marriage and the right of women in roles of leadership.

As for culture in this movement that has risen from below, Marcos says, "... culture is a bridge for everyone, above calendars and borders, and as such, must be defended."

Now, here in the southern Arizona mountains, so close to that imaginary border of the US and Mexico, it is so quiet. There is no sound from airplanes or traffic. Outside, the tiny hummingbird makes a deafening racket. When I open the door, I hear the desert quails. There are no electronics to distract and steal away precious time. There is only The Speed of Dreams.

The same July rains that turn the Lacandon Jungle to mudslides and threaten the feet in the southeastern mountains of Mexico, are a celebration here in the dry desert mountains that are a fortress of the Sonoran Desert.

With the approach of a monsoon storm, there's colossal thunder echoing in the canyons. Then, the sudden violent winds threaten to strip bare the pungent chaparral and the mesquite trees towering above them which are heavy with dry and crackling beans. The dark clouds gather, looking as though it might begin raining and never stop. But it does stop. The clouds offer only a whisper of rain, just enough to keep the saguaros and chollas alive and leave behind enough moisture for the planting that is to come. It is a grand event. On this day, the sky has had its own rodeo and these cowboy clouds are moving on.

The monsoon rains have come in late July and hang around for August.

During the mornings, at first light, there's the hike out before the drum roll of the brutal Arizona heat. The Speed of Dreams, however, is waiting. It occurs to me that journalism, when done right, is an act of revolution, carried out by insurgents who have mastered their words as weapons. When there's time to reflect, the truth becomes clearer, the words offer themselves and the words carry a personal voice.

After many years when translations failed in the backs of trucks, on dirt footpaths in Chiapas mountain villages, I can now read the exact words in The Speed of Dreams that describe the creation of the Caracoles, the centers of community within the autonomous governments.

As for the translations, from Mayan dialects to Spanish to English, those of us who did well enough with our Spanish when ordering a bowl of chicken soup, or buying a bus ticket, found our pitiful Spanish was lacking when it came to translating the conceptual realities of the Zapatista movement. Those who were more or less bilingual on our journeys would stumble and hesitate, searching, grasping for the perfect words.

But we went anyway.

Those pristine and carefully chosen words have now been translated into English, and packaged nicely in a book, The Speed of Dreams, a world away from the grinding of corn, the laughter of children and the constant stalking by the Mexican military with their assault weapons.

As Marcos says, it is all evolving, with time turning back on itself, back to the beginning, then rolling into the future, doubling back, and turning inside out, and into the present again.

With the words, there comes the voice, if one can be quiet enough, and still enough, to hear it.

Before closing, I'll share a couple of little stories of my own. On the first trip to Chiapas, I became lost and alone in the mountain highlands.

We were in Chiapas as a human rights delegation to support the Zapatistas during the fierce Mexican military persecutions and executions of Zapatistas in the spring of 1995. Between villages, I became lost from the indigenous delegation from North America. Walking into a clearing, I saw a Mexican military helicopter hovering overhead. I knew this might not end well, and no one would ever know what happened to me.

Already, while riding in the back of a pickup truck to the mountain, a Mexican soldier had shoved his AK-47 in my face. (I was unfamiliar with AK-47s, and said to myself, that's the biggest gun I've ever seen.) Now I was alone and could not find the right footpath back to the village below.

Suddenly, I saw a bright red chile in the grass. The chile had fallen from our lunch bag, a piece of cloth stuffed with corn for our journey. After sliding down a slick and steep incline, I turned back. Mysteriously, and magically, one by one, the fallen red chiles marked my way back to the village below.

My favorite memory of traveling on the Zapatista caravan, years after the chiles rescue, was near the birthplace of Emiliano Zapata. A blind man, Miguel from Nogales, was seated next to me on the caravan bus from Sonora, which carried many Yaqui and O'odham. Miguel asked me to describe the colors of the flowers in the field, waves of bright colors out the window. Calling out the colors of those flowers as the fields rolled by, I could see the smile on Miguel's face as he too was seeing. These moments became a metaphor in my memory of that place in history, our time in history with Marcos.

Days later, hundreds of thousands of us arrived in Zocalo Plaza in Mexico City.

The Zapatistas have other funny stories about me, like when they thought I was a dead body because I was wrapped in a large amount of black plastic. I was trying to stay warm, asleep in a wooden shed which, I didn't know, was usually reserved for pigs. But I'll leave those stories for them to tell. There are other stories to share of the times when Marcos and the Comandantes came to Sonora, just south of the Arizona border. We'll leave those for their time in history.

The Speed of Dreams is a call to dreaming, as it was then, as it is now.

So, my companeros, thank you for your words and the times we shared, all turning round, inside out, and back into the present.


Brenda Norrell has been a journalist in Indian country for 31 years, covering the west and Mexico. She spent 18 years on the Navajo Nation and now publishes Censored News http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com


http://www.zcommunications.org/dreamtim ... da-norrell

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

Oka warriors, from Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (Alanis Obomsawin, 1993)

[American Dream]

Your society’s broken, so who should we blame? Should we blame the rich, powerful people who caused it? No, let’s blame the people with no power and no money and these immigrants who don’t even have the vote – yeah, it must be their fucking fault.

— the late Iain Banks

[American Dream]

http://www.justseeds.org/fernando_marti ... tina4.html


Fernando Martí


Palestine: slingshot, olive, key. Symbols of self-determination over a 1918 map of Palestine, showing Palestinian and Jewish villages of the time. Keys, hopes and aspirations for a right of return to the homeland, a memory of what grandmothers held to after the Nakba, symbols of destroyed homes and villages. Olives, aspect of a land-based culture, of history and economic sustenance, feared and destroyed by the settlers. The slingshot, a symbol of resistance and struggle, and of youthful uprising against apparently invincible forces. I realize that all those symbols have a certain nostalgia to them. Like this website that sells old-school made-by-hand prints, today’s struggles may be communicated through text messages and media posts, but when the lights are turned out, we return to faded paper maps, rusted family keys, makeshift slingshots, and the ancient olive trees that still give life…


Ojalá in Spanish is derived from the Arabic insha'Allah, God willing, used commonly in my language as "hopefully," "someday."

[American Dream]

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/how-wa ... you-hooked

A Brief History of How War Gets Us Hooked on Drugs

By Michael Arria



From its very inception, the term “War on Drugs” was engulfed by problematic irony. The declaration was made by President Nixon in 1971, not from any concern about the disease of addiction that was afflicting millions of Americans, but because of the increasing number of servicemen in Vietnam who had turned to narcotics to dull the psychological pain of a brutal and misguided war.

More than 40 years later, the unintentional punchline of Nixon’s phrase has duplicated itself thousands of times over. We now associate America’s “War on Drugs” with all issues that military interventions generate: an increase in terror, thousands of deaths, and an endgame that merely exists in theory.

Dessa K. Bergen-Cico, assistant professor in the Department of Public Health and Nutrition Sciences in the College of Human Ecology and lead faculty for the Addiction Studies Program at Syracuse University, has been studying the operative connection between combat and narcotics for years. We spoke to Bergen-Cico about her latest book, War and Drugs from Pluto Press, which tracks the hot-button association back through the centuries, and lays out some alternative blueprints for the future.

Motherboard: Is there a specific historic moment that you believe war and drugs were forever linked or has the connection been around since the beginning of warfare, in your mind?

Dessa K. Bergen-Cico: History shows a long connection between the use of psychoactive substances for the preparation of war. From an organized sociopolitical perspective the Opium Wars stand out as the initial link between war and drugs. Through these wars, England established the models of using the trafficking of drugs as a means of funding wars and funding colonial empires. It also established a model of using drugs as a tool of war to subdue and conquer a populous through population-level addiction.

This model was then adapted for use by the French colonization of Indochina, the Dutch colonization of Indonesia, and so forth. The Vietnamese partially funded their rise against the French through the opium trade. During the Cold War the region became known as the Golden Triangle [Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar] where opium was cultivated and sold to provide liquid assets to both pro-communist and anti-communist efforts.

No war illustrates the connection between war and drugs more than the Vietnam War. During the Vietnam War opium, heroin, and cannabis were made readily available to American troops. This not only destabilized forces but it served as a refuge from the horrors of war. On the home front in the United States drugs were becoming synonymous with the peace movement and the counterculture. From this perspective I would say that war and drugs became linked in ways that really signify the profound ripple effects of war on society at large. For me, the Vietnam War has forever linked drug use as an expression of “rage against the machine” and a countercultural manifesto.

You have an entire chapter about drugs in the American Civil War. Despite mountains of commentary on the conflict, it is an aspect that is infrequently discussed. How do drugs connect to that war?

As with all civil wars, the fighting occurred in the homeland, and affected civilians as well as soldiers. There were significant casualties [620,000] and the dead and dying were physically and emotionally handled like cattle at a slaughterhouse. Psychological numbing was a means of survival; soldiers and civilians alike turned to alcohol and morphine to escape the horrors of war. Whiskey, sherry, and brandy were standards on the medical supply lists for each regiment.

The dead and dying were physically and emotionally handled like cattle at a slaughterhouse: Psychological numbing was a means of survival.

Similar to the proliferation of prescription opiate abuse today, the post-Civil War era saw the emergence of “morphinism” or morphine addiction. Although the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder was not recognized until after the Vietnam War, there is no question that the country was deeply affected by the trauma of the Civil War and trauma is a significant factor in alcohol and other drug abuse.

Drug abuse by Vietnam soldiers and veterans developed into a staple of war films years later, but was there much public awareness of the issue while it was happening? What was the scope of the war’s after effects, at home, within this context?

The 1960s represented a cultural turning point in how the world viewed military conflict and drugs. By the end of the 1960’s there was significant public awareness of drug abuse by soldiers, veterans, and it was prolific at home and was deeply enmeshed with the peace movement. Drug use within the United States grew in response to increased availability through connections with the Golden Triangle region of Southeast Asia. Heroin use readily spread to the U.S. through military transportation routes, allegedly including coffins and body bags carrying U.S. servicemen home for burial.

Between 1965 and 1972, heroin use escalated among both troops in Vietnam and civilians stateside. Between 1965 and 1969 there was a five-fold increase in the number of heroin addicts in the United States, and a growing heroin epidemic among servicemen in Vietnam. With concerns over a generation of soldiers about to return home from Vietnam with heroin and marijuana habits, President Nixon declared the War on Drugs.

Increased acceptance of drug use among Americans in response to the political unrest in the 1960s and the influx of pure and inexpensive hash, marijuana, and heroin from Southeast Asia created demand that grew throughout the 1960s and 1970s and has remained strong.

Do you see a lot of parallels between substance abuse in post-Vietnam War America and what is happening right now to veterans coming home from the current wars in the Middle East? It’s a topic that isn’t normally brought up, even when we have discussions about the costs of these wars.

There are unequivocally parallels between substance use in post-Vietnam War America and what is happening in America today. During Vietnam military personnel were introduced to opium and heroin during deployment; today the route to opiate addiction for military personnel starts with prescription opioids such as Oxycontin. The Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia has been replaced with the Golden Crescent [Afghanistan and the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan] where 90 percent of the worlds opium is cultivated.

In my book, I map out the escalation of opium cultivation, transnational drug trafficking and drug use in response to war; this is a pattern repeated over and over the Vietnam War, the Soviet-Afghan War, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

[American Dream]

http://ragdublin.tumblr.com/post/474543 ... ritten-out

Anti Fascist Italian women's group, GDDD, written out of history



The GDDD were an organization of women in Italy from 1943-45. They were the largest group of active anti fascist women at the time. At their height they had around 70,000 members and comprised of women from every walk of life, from previously unpoliticised housewives to lifelong radical activists. Some of the work they did included organizing strikes, armed resistance, setting up after school hot meals for children, providing clothing and shoes to low income families, stealing coal and bread and handing it out to those in need, Robinhood style

Unlike some anti fascists at the time, the GDDD did not long for the Italy before fascism, as these women had lived in that world and experienced a culture based on patriarchy and women’s subjugation. Instead, the women of the GDDD longed for a new world which at it’s core practiced real equality for everyone.

Unfortunately these women, of which 35,000 died in defence of their beliefs, were written out of history by the very patriarchal systems which they opposed. Many of the GDDD male colleagues held, and exercised, the power to minimise women’s voices in the political realm.

Ada Gobetti, a former member of the GDDD, on the 8th March 1951, International Women’s Day:

"War is not inevitable. If women knew how to unite, as they knew how to unite in the battle for liberation, rising above any social, religious or political difference, to fight together against destruction and massacre and to work together in an industrious harmony, the face of the earth could well be changed. This is the call of the 8March: above any differences all unite to save the peace. May the gentle twig of mimosa the colour of the sun that will adorn the streets and the houses of Italy in these days remind women - and not only women - of this fundamental responsibility."

[American Dream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/16/ ... erry-hill/

Postcard from Cherry Hill

by LINH DINH

If the American Dream can be reduced to a single object, it is the suburban home, with its front yard, back yard and two car garage. This residence must not share a wall, ceiling or floor with any neighbor, a living arrangement highly unusual worldwide, but that’s why it’s called the American Dream, dummy, not the Cambodian or Italian Fantasy. If you want to dwell in a hive, go back to your country! Any country. The American Dream cannot perch over a coffee house, boulangerie or taqueria. To live apart is a core wish of the American Dream, with having everything private, including a separate wash basin and toilet from your children, or even spouse, and neighbors are nuisances, of course. Though you may occasionally invite them into your fenced off American Dream, it’s best that you hardly see them, with an occasional wave or quick banter a sufficient acknowledgement of their annoying presence. The American Dream, then, is basically an escape from other people, be they blacks, immigrants or other whites, the wrong types, or even the right kinds. Whoever. Just stay away from me, OK?

Nearly all Americans have immigrant roots, but what is an immigrant, really, but one who has escaped from his gazillion-year-old community and history, so that he can remake himself anew in a place with few enduring landmarks and scant memory? Granted, many of these newcomers were bombed or free traded into arriving here, and many were even shackled en route, but the end result is a nation of uprooted beings, with most quite giddy to be liberated from themselves. They can’t wait to put on any outlandish costume and keep it on forever, or change it often, as desired, for America will be a never ending Halloween or cosplay party, but soon enough, many will be pigeonholed or caricatured into something quite ridiculous, if not appalling, like a terrorist, say, or a Speedy Gonzalez. You may end up but a mocked, or even locked up, shadow of yourself.

Much of America looks and feels like it was built just yesterday, with anything half a century old deemed ancient and a drive-by occasion for dewy eyed nostalgia. Here is our borough’s historic Dairy Queen, and here a plaque commemorating that such and such once lived somewhere around here, though the original building has long been demolished to make room for a 7-Eleven. History is a drag, dude, since it bogs you down with standards and responsibilities, so it’s better, as Americans, that we forget everything, including yesterday’s political outrage, be it of the NSA, CIA, FBI or Homeland Security variety. What scandal? I’ve already forgotten it, see, just as I’ve forgotten who I slept with last night. It’s deleted from my memory folder. See how liberating that is?

With its detached homes and no central square, park or even downtown, Cherry Hill is your quintessential American Dreamscape. Its Main Street is barely 500 yard-long, with no stores. To shop, one drives to the Cherry Hill Mall, which is the slick, gleaming and sanitized heart of this community, even its raison d’etre. Opened in 1961, it was the first fully-enclosed, air-conditioned mall in the Eastern US, and the largest shopping center in the world. After several renovations, it’s still kickin’ 52 years later, though with a smattering of Potemkin store fronts to disguise its empties.

With its sporadic sidewalks, Cherry Hill is barely jay walkable. During a couple of multi-mile hikes, I was often on grass, dirt and asphalt. No foot traffic means no real neighborhoods, hence no neighborhood bars, save the Red Eagle, the last place where, after work, a Cherry Hill doofus can still shoot drunken shit with his goofball neighbors. Local taverns are essential for the mental health of a community. Like a traditional square, it’s where you can see, at last, who you live among, as in Joe, Jose, Hung or Shermaine. Instead of ogling endless come-ons on TV, why not get groggy at your local dive? Though there, you’ll also be bombarded by television, not just one but perhaps a dozen, but at least you’ll be among flesh, blood and body aroma. (Yes, it is pitiful we can’t be sociable without getting trashed on Pabst Blue Ribbon or another, equally deflating brew, unless you’re still solvent enough, somehow, to afford better.)

Two blocks from the Red Eagle, I passed a sign, “Cash Buyer ONLY. 5BD / 2BTH ON 3 ACRES. 105K CASH,” then noticed another just before I hit its empty parking lot, “Must Sell House. 3 Bed / $25K Cash. Move In Condition.” I walked in to find myself the only customer. It was late afternoon and Derrick, the bartender was watching Predator, a sci-fi war flick featuring Schwarzenegger. Biceps tumescent, Arnold clutched his bromantic subject, “What’s the matter? The CIA got you pushing too many pencils?” I’ll let Freud diddle with that. Settling in, I ordered a Yuengling as some televised clown announced, “Bunch of slack-jawed faggots around here. This stuff will make you a god damned sexual Tyrannosaurus, just like me.” Crowding the screen, helicopters hunted someone not unlike me, but in the here and now, there wasn’t much to look at, so I inspected a poster, “IRISH BOXING. Harrowgate Boxing Club, Philadelphia vs. Holy Family Boxing Club, Belfast, Northern Ireland.” There was also this sign, “IF THE BARTENDER TELLS YOU TO LEAVE YOU HAVE 60 SECONDS OR 60 DAYS.”

Just 21, Derrick hails from nearby Glassboro, where “You don’t see anybody, and the people you do see don’t have anything to say, so I do like Cherry Hill better. I haven’t been too many places, though.” He smiled, shrugged. Glassboro has a High Street, nice English touch, of mostly dying businesses. The entrance to its long shuttered theater is draped with a photo montage showing classical musicians, folk dancers and a giddy shopper. The houses there are mostly well kept, which may lull one into thinking everything is fine, until one sees: “KITCHEN OF HOPE. FREE FOOD GIVEAWAY. SAT. 10AM-1PM IN THE PARISH HALL.” And, “THE BETTYE BELL SAMARITAN CENTER. COMMUNITY FOOD PANTRY AND CLOTHES CLOSET.” Seeing a photo of Glassboro on my blog, a reader also writes, “What is extremely sad is that in the reflection on the right of this window is my broken dream of my own salon..all my savings, sweat, tears…the town which I grew up in loved believed in…lied…and they do not care.. I now have to leave and start over.. They really don’t care either..I’m not the first nor will I be the last.. Let down..Turning Heads Salon….”

With Rowan University in Glassboro, one’d expect a perked up drinking scene, but the only tavern I found near campus was a chain, Landmark Americana, which was predictably lame, like an airport pub. In Cherry Hill, locals also prefer to get stupid at impersonal joints like T.G.I. Friday’s, Houlihan’s or Bobby Burger’s Palace, etc. Compared to these, Red Eagle is a real landmark, though it would be nothing special anywhere else. Open since 1950, it had been watched over each day by Kay Labricciosa, until she died 1 ½ year ago at age 96. Kay could have sold her liquor license for a million bucks, easy, but this former line worker at Campbell Soup, in nearby Camden, simply loved her bar too much. Atlantic City and Snooki’s Jersey Shore may give outsiders the impression that New Jersey is a wildly partying state, but it actually has 35 dry towns. Quakers and Methodists settled here.

Chatting with Derrick further, I found out he was thinking of becoming a registered nurse or union electrician, “They make pretty good money, their benefits are good and they have a good retirement plan.” Everywhere, union labor is being squeezed by free lancers, and this situation will only get worse as the economy deteriorates further, as more folks are willing to work for broken, unsalted and rancid peanuts, or even bits of acorns. You wouldn’t know it from the daily propaganda, however. Today’s headline, “America Leads the Way as Emerging Nations Like China Fade.” Judging by the many contemptuous or howling comments, this brainwashing is becoming less convincing, “1.5% growth is ‘leading’? Wow, I was feeling okay before I read this. Now I want to throw up,” “America’s propaganda machine would make even Hitler jealous!” “America leads the way in national debt in dollars. Also probably leads the nation in the amount of people in jail and homicides too,” “I hate this economy. Quite frankly things really suck for me right now” and on and on, and on.

Just starting out in life, though, Derrick has to stay positive, but he knows full well how messed up everything is, “I know the economy is bad.”

“And you know it’s not going to get better, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, I know that too.”

“There are still people who don’t know that!”

“I know it, and my dad knows it.”

By this time, several people had come in, including three roofer types who joked about a huge black man on Cops, the reality show. Though not visibly injured, he was sitting on the curb and sobbing like baby. To great laughter, they then incorporated “penis penetration” into various sentences, but I was too far away to figure out the context. It was also hard to hear because Cake was singing “I Will Survive.” After Devo flatlined the Stones’ “Satisfaction,” bands have gotten lots of mileage out of this joke strategy, with the Butthole Surfer’s “American Woman” perhaps the most sublime. Before the roofers left, one said, “By the time the Phillies come on, I’ll be at home, on my couch, eating my girlfriend.”

Derrick’s squeeze had also appeared. She was in charge of the Red Eagle’s kitchen. I never got a chance to meet her, but Derrick told me she was planning on becoming a farrier. With grants, her training would only cost around $2,000, he said, then she could earn up to 90,000 bucks a year, which sounded awfully high to me, but since I knew zilch about horse matters, I said nothing. Later, another of my blog readers, Richard, informed me, “Regarding the cook wanting to be a farrier. That is one of the most physically demanding jobs to be had. Period. I applaud wanting to work with animals and I’ve owned horses for years… but I’ve never seen a farrier like her. Shoeing a horse is tough work and not even remotely close to the physicality of cooking in a bar. Not saying she can’t cut it, but it takes strength. A lot of it. Never, ever met a female farrier.” Also, “$90k is way optimistic. More like 30k—maybe—if you get a decent customer base going. My current farrier is 6’ 3” and weighs a rock solid 250. Big guy. Very strong and even he has bad days with horses. Plus the injuries to the farrier that will happen, and they WILL happen. If you talk to her again, mention the travel required. My guy does 3 states: Idaho, Montana and Washington. Expenses add up.”

So it looks like she’s being duped by whoever is offering the course. Feeding her horse manure, they’ll pocket her life saving and grant, then kick her out the fragrant stable door. In this, they’re behaving just like, well, any American university, for it’s less concerned about teaching than luring as many students in as possible, no matter how unqualified or redundant to their profession. Its main goal is to reassure and flatter these hopeful naifs so it can enrich itself with the suicidal loans they’re taking out. Like much else in our society, higher education has become mostly a ponzi scheme, with countless aging failures covering their losses by teaching, i.e. hustling, the next generation, but the main benefactors are not these sad professors but university administrators and, no surprise here, banks with their life wrecking loans.

So much ado over horse shoes! Relieving Derrick, Kay’s great grandson got behind the bar. It was now 7 o’clock, but there were still only six customers. I talked to a man with a stiff, two-foot pony tail growing downward from his beard. Born here, 54-year-old Barry now lives in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, and for the last year, he’s been trying to sell his Cherry Hill home, at $250,000, without success. He has only gotten one offer, of 200K, from some developer. At the peak of the housing bubble, this spacious home, with a lovely, kidney shaped pool, was valued at $500,000. Built in the 70′s, it was originally owned by his grandma. “Man, I don’t even want to come back here, it’s so depressing.” He then showed me photos of a spider, a crab and a sunset, to show how idyllic his new home was. He also showed me his fourteen-year-old daughter, who looked about 18. “She looks a lot more mature,” I said. “That’s how they are these days,” Barry replied.

Young people may look older these days, but we’ve made it extremely tough for them to grow up. With the economy tanking, thirty-six percent of Americans between 18 and 31 are still living with their parents, and Americans are also getting married later than ever. Part of this is a shift in cultural attitudes, but many of us are simply too broke to start a family.

Leaving the Red Eagle, I walked nearly a mile to the Cherry Hill Mall to catch a bus back to Philly. The 404 took me past Pennsauken, site of the world’s very first drive-in movie theater. It is yet another instance of a communal activity becoming private, with the audience here confined to steel boxes as they silently watch projected fantasies. Its first movie was Two White Arms. Numb with married life, a schmuck faked amnesia so he could screw around. Here was also the Pennsauken Mart, a proto-mall housing a hodgepodge of tiny businesses peddling cheap clothing, framed kitsch and fatty chow. With its pell-mell and tacky clientele, it unashamedly evoked the Third World. Both drive-in and Mart have since been razed, the latter after 50 years in business. Unlike sterile Cherry Hill Mall, Pennsauken Mart was a charming destination because it was less regulated and more confusing. It was surprising, in short. Unlike corporate shopping centers filled with chain outlets, a traditional market place allows merchants to reveal their personalities or idiosyncrasies, and it doesn’t mind some chaos, for too much order, like a perfectly straight street, is boring and even stifling. In Edinburgh, there’s Cockburn Street that curves left, then right, all within five hundred feet. This is terribly exciting, I tell you, almost too much so, for I’m getting all hot and bothered just writing about it. Though you may know all of its buildings and shops by heart, you can’t see each until you’re practically on top of it, and this suspense is good for the mind, heart and soul, I tell you. Maybe Mama Said has a new paint job, or there’s a donnybrook outside the Malt Shovel Inn, but you wouldn’t know it, would you, until you’re there. Though ideal for surveillance and business, an overly rational street becomes an imperative that forces you, on your own volition, no less, to lunge straight ahead, but a more organic, maze like lane merely seduces and entices. By not allowing you to see your goal immediately, it becomes an agreeable flirtation or striptease, unlike the brutally straight boulevard that announces, from miles away, your inevitable end.

After Pennsauken, the 404 entered Camden along Westfield Avenue. This stretch has been revived by an influx of immigrants, mostly Mexicans and other Hispanics, but also some Vietnamese. They move to this blighted city because it’s all they can afford, but soon enough, some will trickle into Cherry Hill, Collingswood or Westmont. One immigrant family, however, is no doubt cursing its decision to come to the US, period, much less Cherry Hill, for three of their sons are in maximum security prisons. In 2007, as the US occupied or bombed several Islamic countries, and as Israel slaughtered thousands of Muslims in Gaza, the US convicted five Muslim men of plotting to kill US soldiers at Fort Dix. If you need to massacre Muslims indefinitely, you have to demonize them continually, obviously. Three of the convicted, the Duka brothers, lived in Cherry Hill. As usual, this terror plot was concocted entirely by the FBI, who used two secret agents to befriend, lure and coach their scapegoats each step of the way, until they could be entrapped with bogus evidence. The framed Muslims came on the FBI’s radar after they had filmed themselves shooting rifles at public range while shouting, “Allah Akbar!” One of them then took this video to Circuit City so it could be converted to a DVD. Notice that everything so far had been done publicly, and legally, but then the FBI agents, with their tortured plot, entered the picture. Halfway through this entrapment, one of the targeted men even contacted the Philly Police to report the unfolding terror scheme, as in “See Something, Say Something,” but he never suspected the authorities themselves had set up this trap, so that he and his buddies could be snagged in a hysterically amplified publicity stunt, so that his adopted country could go on mass murdering Muslims for the love of oil, natural gas and Zion. Dritan Duka, Shain Duka, Eljvir Duka and Mohamad Shnewer were but 28, 26, 23 and 22-years-old, respectively, when they were locked up for life. Shnewer’s dad still runs his pizza joint in Cookstown, New Jersey, just outside the McGuire Air Force Base and Fort Dix.

Those who don’t live in the US may be surprised to find out that Americans are regularly treated to a TV show called, “Inside Israeli Basketball.” Now, there are basketball leagues all over the world, with the ones in Spain, Italy, France, Greece, Turkey, Argentina, Lithuania and China all good or excellent, so why is Israeli basketball singled out for scrutiny? But it’s just a pretext to feature Israel in a normalized light, as this is more of a state-sponsored travelogue than a sport show. The camera regularly wanders out of the gym or arena to inspect a lively street scene, a pleasant beach or a comfortable apartment. See, see, everything is very normal here, and peaceful. By showing such, its producers want you to forget the images of tanks, fighter planes and bombed Palestinians. TV is also used to maintain the appearance that things are fine in the US, for even as we kill and imprison countless innocents, and as we unravel economically, politically and socially, everything is still reassuringly frivolous and stupid on American television. How can we be sinking if we’re still fixated on Justin, Taylor and Honey Boo Boo?

We’re so chilled, yo, we’re brain dead.


Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories, five of poems, and a novel, Love Like Hate. He’s tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog, State of the Union.

[American Dream]

Joe Murphy used to joke that Guam was a “dirty word” or a “four letter word,” and in one sense he was right. Guam today is something that is obscene, in the same way as other small places beset by militarism and colonialism. The Marshall Islands, Diego Garcia, Okinawa, Guam, all of them have histories and contemporary realities that you could call obscene in the sense that they don’t fit in with the narrative of how just and right the world, and the United States are supposed to be. But they are also obscene in the sense that people don’t know how to bring them into polite conversations and would rather they remain invisible, or worse yet visible in only a narrow way. These places can all be talked about in terms of their strategic importance. They all have US bases from which the US conducts, training, testing and projects force. For people in the United States and around the world, that is primarily what these locations are, islands with bases. These are the “formal” aspects of their existence. Media and governments accept these things and report them without much criticism. Even military officials have no problem talking about these islands in these ways.

— NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO: Guam is a Dirty Word

[American Dream]

CNT Anarchist militia women in the Spanish Civil War (Full Gallery)

[American Dream]

anarchist militia women. spanish revolution.


http://fuckyeahanarchopunk.tumblr.com/p ... revolution

[American Dream]

http://rabble.ca/news/2013/01/choosing- ... ism-canada

Choosing not to look away: Confronting colonialism in Canada

BY DAVID CAMFIELD MONIQUE WORONIAK | JANUARY 31, 2013

Canada has "no history of colonialism." So said Stephen Harper in 2009. Today the Idle No More movement is shouting down this lie through actions both creative and courageous. In its place, it is telling Canadians at large what some of us have always known: that the country we live in was founded as -- and continues to be -- a colonial-settler state.

Colonialism involves one society seeking to conquer another and then rule over it. European countries worked to conquer the Americas, Africa and most of Asia between the end of the 1400s and the 1800s. In the beginning, the goal was usually to gain access to resources -- including gold, silver, furs and fish -- that could give a boost to the feudal societies that existed in most of Europe at that time.

As capitalism developed, it spread a new way of organizing how goods and services were produced which focused on profit at all costs. The needs of humans and of the natural world with its land, air and water, were given little to no consideration under this new system. In a short amount of time Europe's appetite for the natural resources found in the lands it would colonize grew enormously.

Colonialism after capitalism

"Land. If you understand nothing else about the history of Indians in North America, you need to understand that the question that really matters is the question of land." Thomas King (Cherokee),The Inconvenient Indian (2012)

Two main types of colonialism grew out of capitalism's hunger for profit: colonialism based on exploitation of labour, and settler colonialism.

In most colonies, a small number of Europeans ruled over much larger Indigenous populations. In order to make profits from a colony, Europeans needed the labour of the people they had conquered. In these kinds of situations, the goal of the colonizers was to take wealth produced by the work of miners, farmers and, as time went on, sometimes factory workers. One good example of this was the work that farmers in India in the 1800s did to grow cotton, which was then shipped to Britain to be processed in factories and sold at a large profit.

Colonialism in Canada was different. Here it took the form of settler colonialism (other states with this type of colonialism include the United States, Australia and Israel). Settler colonialism took place where European settlers settled permanently on Indigenous lands, aggressively seized those lands from Indigenous peoples and eventually greatly outnumbered Indigenous populations.

The land grab: Settler-colonialism in Canada

Unlike the kind of colonialism experienced in places such as India, the main goal of settler colonialism was not to take advantage of the labour of Indigenous peoples. Instead, it was to displace Indigenous peoples from their lands, break and bury the cultures that grew out of relationships with those lands, and, ultimately, eliminate Indigenous societies so that settlers could establish themselves.

In Canada, the society that settlers established became capitalist and created an economy that continues to exploit people for their labour and the land for its many resources. Respect for life and the relationships between living beings and the natural world is not important to the capitalist Canadian colonial-settler state. Under this system the land is treated not as something that humans should live in a respectful relationship with, but simply as a resource to exploit (much like the owner of a company demanding workers produce as much wealth for him as possible).

Canadian colonial capitalism would not survive without access to Indigenous peoples' lands. This was true in 1867 when Canada was founded, and it is still true today.

Choosing not to look away

The amazing energy, organization and assertions of Indigenous sovereignty that have recently taken place within Canada have shone a light on the truth of how the country was founded and how it is still run. Every week there are new and more actions -- flash mob round dances, railway blockades, consumer boycotts, hunger strikes -- that are working to force non-Indigenous people to see the reality of the country they live in and the ways that it continues to disrespect and abuse the original keepers of the land and exploit the land itself.

Bright lights are often described as harsh, but illuminating truth is an act of respect. Since its founding 146 years ago, the Canadian state has walked arrogantly, cruelly and carelessly forward, refusing to look back, and working to make non-Indigenous people believe they shouldn't either. The respect -- even love -- for the land and all of our relationships with it, and with each other, that has been expressed in recent weeks has challenged non-Indigenous people to take another look.

Now that the light has been shone, non-Indigenous Canadians have a responsibility to take a look at the truth of the country's past and present. A responsibility exists to look at the founding documents of our colonial-settler state and sources that help to explain their meaning and impact. A responsibility exists to look at the history of the lands we each live on and to learn who lived there before us and what treaties, if any, were signed in the course of taking the land. And we have a responsibility to look at and learn about past and recent acts of Indigenous resistance.

Each non-Indigenous person will have to choose what to do after all that looking. One important teaching offered by Indigenous cultures is that knowledge is most powerful when shared, that stories are meant for storytelling. Having learned more of the true story of the Canadian state, another duty of non-Indigenous people is to tell that story, to insist on it travelling through all our circles.

Asking "Where could the story go next?"

One of the many gifts that the Idle No More movement is giving to non-Indigenous people is the opportunity to look at this country, the way it treats the people living in it and the way it treats the land and water we all depend on for survival and to ask, "Where should we go from here, together?"

We could, for example, ask what would it take to uproot Canadian colonialism? In his book Wasáse, Taiaiake Alfred (Mohawk) argues that "the most basic changes in colonial states required to create a just relationship and to set the foundations for lasting peaceful coexistence" are "the return of unceded lands, reforms to state constitutions to reflect the principle of indigenous nationhood and to bring into effect a nation-to-nation relationship between indigenous peoples and Settler society, and restitution." (Alfred's case that what's needed is restitution, not reconciliation, can also be found online in his contribution to Response, Responsibility, and Renewal.)

We agree. We also believe another question needs to be asked: who in the Canadian colonial-settler state would have the most to lose by giving up control over Indigenous lands? There is no doubt that the people who own and run corporations (the capitalist class) will fiercely oppose any strong movement demanding changes like the ones mentioned above.

We believe that as Indigenous peoples continue to assert their right to determine their own futures and the right to their lands, it will become more and more important for all of us to talk about the ways in which the struggles against colonialism and capitalism are connected.

In this moment, Indigenous peoples are loudly raising their voices to remind us about the need for respectful relationships between individuals, nations and, above all, with the land. Increasingly, they are demanding that we listen. But they are also asking us to join them -- to look in their faces, dance holding their hands, and to stand with them as they stand for the land. For all of us.


Monique Woroniak is a librarian who works, writes and does Indigenous solidarity work in Winnipeg. David Camfield is one of the editors of New Socialist Webzine. Both authors acknowledge that they reside on Treaty One territory and the traditional lands of the Red River Métis.
This article was originally published in New Socialist Webzine and is reprinted here with permission.


For further reading

A lot of good writing exists about the oppression of Indigenous peoples and their resistance to the colonialism of the Canadian state. Here are a few we recommend:

Howard Adams, Prison of Grass: Canada from a Native Point of View
Taiaiake Alfred, Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom
Todd Gordon, Imperialist Canada, Chapter 2
Thomas King, The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America
Leanne Simpson and Kiera L. Ladner (editors), This is an Honour Song: Twenty Years Since the Blockades
Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996)
Citizens Plus (the 1970 Red Paper)

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

on the first day of class

i’m going to introduce 10th grade & 11th grade U.S. history by talking a little bit about Fred Moten’s idea of the “freedom drive” and black subjectivity (I’ll use the word “experience”) to propose nine propositions for our year together:



I’m going to consider all of your thoughts, arguments and questions — as long as they are based on sincere effort to understand course material

I am going to take some positions that invite you think consider the “freedom drive”

industrialization and capitalism is unfair

imperialism is inhumane and unjustifiable

the U.S. has not always existed, and is not always justifiable or justified

people who suffer are not always right about everything, but they do have the right to propose different ways of doing things

answers are not easy, and finding them takes thinking, trying things out, listening, and failing

you are here to learn, not to fight against learning or to get by without learning

I am here to teach, and I will come to each class with the intention that your learning will benefit you, and that the learning experience is your own


# hey to my students who are on tumblr in class!



http://kimberlyalidio.tumblr.com/post/5 ... y-of-class