21 December 2008

UNITED STATES ONCE AGAIN DISAPPOINTS

US refuses to sign UN gay rights declaration

This is a good article, particularly as it situates current homophobic practices and beliefs around the world as being imposed colonial rhetoric and ideology. That the US did not agree to this declaration and continues to leave unexamined its homophobia - perhaps, as suggested by Scott Long, inherited from Victorian morality - is a testament to the fact that the United States is indeed a nation regressed into an infantile postcolonial paralysis, incapable of making educated, progressive analyses of its policies that affect human rights of its citizens and the world. How embarrassing. Your country continues to betray you. What are you doing about it?
OCH

20 December 2008

ELIMINATE THE INAUGURAL INVOCATION ENTIRELY

...and eliminate any and all religious and spiritual everything from the ceremony, and while you're at it why not explore the novel idea of " church separation from the state." I'm getting really tired of everyone in America pretending to "Trust in God" and conflating governance and law with these imagined absolutes disguised as religion. It's tiresome, meddles with the efficiency and beneficence of democracy, and limits human potential. Let's focus on the here and now, the politics and people at hand, and the job, not invoking a "holy spirit" who represents a dangerously cobbled together ideological tyranny.
OCH

http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/election_2008/2008/12/19/rick_warren/index.html

12 December 2008

CIVIL UNIONS PLEASE

http://www.lambdalegal.org/publications/articles/iowa-supreme-court-hears-marriage-case.html

I'm beginning to pull away from the marriage equality struggle entirely and towards the marriage abolition/equal civil union movement. Separation of church and state is more important than a remedial, symbolic granting of legal rights within the current framework through which "sovereign subjects" foolishly further ingratiate themselves into a false democracy that is crippled by religious structures. Marriage Equality does very little to address the core dynamics of American homophobia. It jumps over them, denies them, doesn't examine their roots in Christianity, but instead tries to include homosexuality in it - which doesn't work with the dominant contemporary Christian paradigm. But it does seem too radical for this country, today.

Why, in 1957 only, did America decide to put "In God We Trust" on our currency? I'm glad the issue is at least being brought to the courts in Iowa, a state where the concept of men having sex with men is usually constructed and understood as a "sin." Aren't people getting tired of all these "sins" that they have to work through? They're so limiting.
OCH

25 October 2008

THE REALITY OF THE FIRST BRIGADE

American Civil Liberties Union : ACLU Demands Information On Military Deployment Within U.S. Borders

So, for those not familiar with the First Brigade, it's the latest episode in our non-democracy.

17 October 2008

THE RELEVANCY/IRRELEVANCY OF PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE RESUMES IN THIS FAKE DEMOCRACY

Politics are on the mind aren't they?

My response to the email about the petty nit-picked details of each candidates: I don't care about anyone's past, I care about their present. And because Obama is black in America, he HAS to have a perfect resume in order to even be considered. There are some people in this country who still hate "niggers." watch this delightful video produced by Al Jazeera, the CNN of the Middle East, and you'll see what I mean.

But...

Qualifications and degrees and history and past affiliations and records and truth/"facts" about political candidates have no relevancies any more in the American political system, for any party, so all of this is moot.

This is no longer a democracy. People do not trust the government any more because there is nothing to trust. It's the case with constituencies in all parties. There is no transparency, there is no consistency, there is no accountability - this is no democracy. the laws have been manipulated in such a way that the laws are subverted.

One example, our voting system is so flawed and unorganized that it does not even meet the standard criteria required to be considered for observation by the Carter Center, the international organization designated by the UN that ensures democratic voting takes place in developing nations around the world! From their site:

Would you discuss U.S. voting procedures in light of emerging international standards?

Dr. Carroll: According to international standards, the management and administration of elections should be impartial and transparent. Most countries with strong democratic institutions have an independent national election authority that administers elections nationwide with uniform processes and standards. In the United States, elections are administered at the state and local level, often under the direction of partisan officials, and with varying practices, procedures, and machinery.

The United States should adopt uniform voting procedures within states and perhaps nationwide, and antiquated voting machinery should be replaced with more reliable technology in all communities, rich or poor. In addition, simulations of voting systems would test reliability and accuracy before elections and build confidence in new technology.

There also needs to be a way to let voters know whether they have followed proper procedure and a way that they can immediately correct mistakes. Having a paper record of the vote or a paper receipt for the voter is a way to build confidence in the system. There is also a clear need to create an information-sharing system among counties and among states to cross-check voter registration to eliminate duplications, deceased registrants, and other errors.


That's only addressing the voting - not the lobby system, the earmarking, the electoral college issue - or the many other perversions of our constitution. The big problem is that Americans have been so identified with their chosen candidate's personal identity and their "character" presence rather than how they vote on the issues. This happened because Americans don't know what the issues are because the public education system of this country is so terrible.

Things have shifted in a more civilly-involved direction with this particular election because of its star-power, total dependence on the medium of television, and its requirement that characters be "cast" in a role within the structure of dramatic narrative - The Election '08 Program. It means nothing, really. When we all expect a politician to "represent us" we think that means that they must replicate exactly who WE are based on absolute irrelevancies to the political process like race, religion, family background, job history, personal history, life, challenges - not at all how they stand on the issues. But again, Americans don't understand the issues, how the issues directly affect them, or how the political system actually works. I really don't either.

by OCH

12 October 2008

05 October 2008

MONEY AND THE CRISIS OF CIVILIZATION

This is a fantastic article elaborating on the upcoming changes in the economy of our civilization, the beginnings of which we are seeing with the global finance crumble. This article is explaining what will happen, what already has begun to happen.

Reality Sandwich | Money and the Crisis of Civilization

03 September 2008

ON VANDANA SHIVA by O. C. Holm


Vandana Shiva's talk September 2 at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley, California presented by the International Forum on Globalization was an enlightening and infuriating ride through the current global food and agricultural system. The Indian quantum physicist turned environmentalist and agricultural activist addressed global problems of climate change and food insecurity as created by industrial and centralized agriculture and its remedy being the re-localization of food production.

Peppered as it was with magnanimous humour and as jovial as can be throughout, the overwhelming tone in the hall was the painful fact that something has gone terribly wrong with our global food supply, it cannot be denied further, and immediate paradigm shifts must occur for the health of our bodies and the planet.

Some of what I took away from the evening and previous research on the issue:

That five corporations control almost all food production on this planet, that these corporations create laws within countries to determine what is farmed and where and how and for what global markets, that farmers often cannot eat the food they sow because it is to be exported to foreign markets or used for biofuels, that farmers the world over are required by laws to plant certain crops and to purchase certain patented seeds, that said patented seeds are genetically modified to NOT re-germinate and therefore must be purchased annually, that said patented seeds require the application of specific patented chemical nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides in order to grow, that said patented chemical nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides eventually desertify the soil, that said seed and fertilizer manufacturers go to the lengths of hunting down and having farmers who defy the laws imprisoned, that farmers whose only will to power is their now un-tillable land kill themselves, that some people on our planet still cannot get access to food despite that there is - and always has been- abundance, that capital made off market speculation created by this blind, greedy system of maximum exploitation of resources and labor get reintroduced back into said system, locking up capital in the hands of so few...

...is absolutely inexcusable.

This is not just happening in India, this is happening in Illinois, in California, in France, in Bolivia. We are one world because of this globalized economy and thusly, we are all complicit.

Of special mention and worthy of further investigation, Shiva is highly critical of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Africa initiative Alliance for a Green Africa, as it is based enirely in this current, flawed model of industrial, genetically modified agriculture. Specifically, from that organization's website, the exact reductionist strategy that sustains the system (emphasis mine):
"The Agro-Dealer Development Program (ADP) provides training, capital and credit to establish certified agro-dealers who are a primary conduit of seeds, fertilisers and knowledge to smallholder farmers to increase their productivity and incomes."
These "certified dealers" will most likely be enforced by new legal suppositions and not simply be "a primary conduit of seeds, fertilisers, and knowledge," but rather the only conduit (legal, that is). In my opinion, all of this will lead to "illegal seed trafficking" and the criminalization of "illegal seed use," functioning exactly as the current illegal drug industry works, not only in Africa, but worldwide as the industrialized mode of food production implodes on itself.

She also addressed a question from an audience member about commons law and how the manipulation of patents and the patent legal system and its inherent capital-generating greed is at the heart of this destructive dynamic. We must restore the commons.

The disappearance of bees was also touched upon. Might they be disappearing because of genetically modified organisms? It's very possible. Is there a way to prove this?

Some quotes from Shiva:

On monoculture:
"Shrimp should remain a luxury. Who needs to eat shrimp every day? People should not be forced [by this system and some laws] to farm shrimp to satisfy the palettes of foreign markets. "
In response to an audience question "What role should women play in all of this?":
"That question should be: 'What role DO women play in all of this?' They are the majority of the world's farmers! Things would be lot more different if they were not subjugated and they would do things like women do....like share."

by OCH

THE GLOBAL MIND APPROACHES

The strifes of difference, of separateness are fast dissolving as we become one mind. Yes, the noosphere, as conceived by Teilhard de Chardin in Le phénomène humain is congealing. Individualism will not die out, rather flourish for the better as the limitations imposed by the current fragmentations of society lift and the forced assertions against social structures and the superficial differences that divide humanity do not entirely evaporate but instead are shared.
OCH

22 August 2008

SLAVERY REPARATIONS

The horror of American Slavery (with capital A and S) has NOT been acknowledged. There has been no public acknowledgment EVER. When one travels to Germany, one sees memorials to the victims of the Holocaust EVERYWHERE. Where the holy hell FUCK is the NATIONAL U.S. MEMORIAL to those enslaved by THIS country, this culture, this society that was created using human slaves?!? It should be the biggest memorial in this country, ever. A monument. Where then also is the national holiday of reflection and remembrance? MLK day is not addressing SLAVERY. only the black side of the human rights movement.

BUT money CANNOT be involved. That gets messy. Monetary compensation is too abstract, too irrelevant, and ultimately meaningless...leading to such ignorant thinking as "you got yer money, nigger, now what the fuck you want?"

Reparations must be symbolic, deeply felt on a national level, with the deepest understanding of how the thinking that produced slavery is still the thinking we have today, and INITIATED by WHITE folks - it is the white folks who have held onto the legacy of slavery and continue to maintain it through their cultural rules, legal institutions, and belief systems. it needs to be initiated by white folks with the intention of apology, and the black folks will receive and ccept only a genuine, public, symbolic, apology (cash is meaningless) and progress will have been made, opening the doors for a mutual understand of this particular problematic social phenomenon that still exists, symbolically, today.

I hope it happens in my lifetime and I will work towards making it happen.

OCH