I’m feeling Immortal technique on this rant. From the discussion of exploitation of musicians to the geo-politics of Bin Laden (Bin Ashcroft?). Don’t forget the vocabulary lesson.
Thanks to 2dopeboyz for the link.
Category Archives: colonialism
Talking blues about predator drones
Brilliant critique of the predator drones. Bring it funky uncle.
America launched Predator drones against a sixth country recently — Somalia. The pilotless killer aircraft have now been used in Pakistan (by Bush something like 40 times in eight years, by Obama several hundred times in two and a half years!) as well as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and now Somalia. (Funny — I don’t recall a declaration of war in any of those conflicts.) The Predator has to be the most cowardly, disgusting, and counterproductive (because of the additional enemies it makes for America) weapon in the history of warfare. I predicted many years ago that violent video games were just training and not-so-subtle indoctrination for the real thing, and now we have it — operators sit in comfort somewhere in the continental USA, fondle their obscene joy sticks, and people (innocent? guilty? terrorists? civilians?) die thousands of miles away. Predator operators are not heroes — they are cowardly ignorant nauseating scum, and Obama has proven himself to be a rabid war criminal. The American people will suffer the payback for these crimes for generations. We are not at war with Pakistan or Yemen or Somalia. No one in this country really knows who is being killed. This is just old-fashioned murder, not war, except that it is the most cowardly method of murder ever devised. Obama will retire into well-protected comfort, while you and I and other relatively innocent Americans have been made into legitimate targets wherever we go in the world.
via What A Wonderful World It Could Be « Talkin’ Blues About The News.
Filed under colonialism, human rights
Empowerment to stop female genital surgery
Some of the most significant news stories that center on African women in recent years have been about female genital mutilation or FGM. (Interesting footnote, I’ve noticed that the choice of language between ‘female genital surgery” and “female genital mutilation” is treated as a bright-line for the writer’s politics about the issue itself. What is interesting to me is how many of those who choose ‘mutilation’ quickly shorten the phrase to the acronym FGM, arguably obscuring the linguistic elevation of the act from ‘surgery’ to ‘mutilation’).
Rather than forcing readers to guess about my politics from my choice of language, I’ll be clear: I think the practice of FGM is terrible.
Female genital surgery is terrible and the stories about it are often recounted by westerners as a means of distancing, otherizing, and even animalizing African families are also toxic. The approach to simply wield the tragedy as a moral panic — implying that somehow parents in Africa don’t love their kids doesn’t help change genital surgery.
Tostan does. Tostan is an African NGO that has a lengthy track-record of respectfully engaging with communities about the importance of strong women and girls. Tostan runs 30-month community empowerment projects, one of which, in Gambia, has resulted in 117 communities declaring their abandonment of FGM and child marriage.
Mr. Alagie F. Jallow said the day is a historic one as the participating communities have registered their achievements and positive social transformations. He said over one hundred and seventeen communities in Basse, Jimara, Tumana, Kantora, Wuli and Sandu districts, including the adopted communities, have come together to openly declare their abandonment of female genital cutting, early and forceful marriage in URR.
He said this historic moment came about after the participating communities have undergone an intensive three year holistic community empowerment programme led by facilitators through social mobilisation and sensitisation activities by the team, CMC members and the communities. He said the training was centred around issues affecting the health and well being of women and girls as violations of fundamental human rights as enshrined in the Universals Declaration of Human Rights, Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights amongst others to which the Gambia is a signatory.
He said these human rights are also part of the Kobi one modules of the Tostan Community Empowerment Programme (CEP). He said the CEP is not only focusing on harmful traditional practices but a holistic approach to community led sustainable development covering themes on democracy and good governance, human rights and responsibilities, problem solving process, health and hygiene, literacy and management skills as well as feasibility study and introduction to small micro project implementation.
If you have some spare change, and you think this is as awesome as I do, celebrate by sending a couple of bucks to Tostan.
Filed under colonialism, feminism, health, human rights
Looting greece with the help of the IMF
ATHENS — They are the crown jewels of Greece’s socialist state, and they are now likely to go to the highest bidder: the ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki; prime Mediterranean real estate; the national lottery; Greek Telecom; the postal bank and the national railway system.
via Some Greeks Fear Government Is Selling Nation – NYTimes.com.
Filed under capitalism, colonialism
American sterilization: North Carolina
RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) — Nearly 35 years after ending the country’s most active post-war sterilization program, North Carolina is the only state trying to make amends to thousands of people who cannot have children because of eugenics-inspired theories about social improvement.
Next week, victims and their relatives will tell their stories to a state task force considering compensation to victims of sterilizations that continued into 1974. Roughly 85 percent of victims were women or girls, some as young as 10. North Carolina has more victims living than any other state because a majority was sterilized after World War II, said Charmaine Fuller Cooper, director of the state Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation.
via North Carolina grapples with sterilization program legacy.
Filed under colonialism, feminism, health
Overpopulation fear-mongering, Structural adjustment and Peru
The simplistic blame-game associated with over-population is ridiculous. The dynamics of what happens when people have children are more complicated than the traditional privileged environmentalists articulate in their ‘more babies mean more trees get cut down.’
Consumption of things that are made out of trees is why trees are cut down.
I almost always credit Betsy Hartmann whose insights have helped me to better understand population and consumption issues. Here is Betsy explaining the distinction:
Don’t get me wrong. I support the provision of contraception and abortion as a fundamental reproductive right and as part of comprehensive health services. What I’m against is turning family planning into a tool of top-down social engineering. There’s a long and sordid history of population control programs violating women’s rights and harming their health. That’s why feminist reformers in the international family planning field have fought hard to make programs responsive to women’s — and men’s — real reproductive and sexual health needs. A world of difference exists between services that treat women as population targets, and those based on a feminist model of respectful, holistic, high-quality care.
Of course, the enthusiasm for reducing population translated into devistating programs of sterilization around the world. Most recently this history of sterilization is impacting the election in Peru. Paid for with United States Agency for International development money, the Peruvian dictator Fujimori sterilized almost 300,000 women against their will.
The sterilisation program came about as a poverty reduction strategy. In the early 90s Peru had, under Fujimori, put in practice one of the most aggressive structural adjustment policies ever implemented. It was so forceful that even the World Bank advised the Peruvian government to slow down. As a result of prolonged economic crisis and neoliberal reform, 50% of Peruvians lived under the poverty line and population control was an ideal to aspire to. The UN population conference in Cairo in 1994 and the women’s Beijing conference of 1995 provided Fujimori with inspiration, and his government received funding from USAid to undertake the ambitious project.
That’s right. We have to lay some of the responsibility for this systemic violence against women at the feet of the United Nations and the leaders of first world nations. The forced structural adjustment policies, and the US-funded United nations overpopulation projects also deserve blame.
Filed under capitalism, colonialism, human rights
Anthropomorphism and maps
Donna Seger has a lovely blog Streets of Salem. She has recently collected a nice gathering of maps represented via living creatures. Kicks ass.
Filed under academics, art, colonialism
Racist geography visible in signs
One of my favorite writers is James Loewen, a Sociology professor who wrote Lies my teacher told me. The book is an analysis of the most popular US history text books assigned in high schools. Loewen cruises through outlining how the texts are written to exclude and teach generations faulty understandings of our history. His work uncovered “an embarrassing blend of bland optimism, blind nationalism, and plain misinformation . . .”
He also has a nice book on American monuments Lies across America: what our historical sites get wrong.
Gwen Sharp is working out some recent work on whiteness and geographical markers in Sociological images. Here is the discussion of historical markers that identify whiteness.
So what story about our nation do these two monuments tell? The only information contained on the two-sided Fall City monument refers to the activities of Whites; the Native residents were important only when they lost land. For all intents and purposes, the history of the area started only once a White man had set eyes on it. Similarly, Tallent’s arrival in the Black Hills is memorable largely because she was a White woman, whose presence is by definition worthy of note and celebration — imagine, a vulnerable White woman braving the wildness of the Dakota territory! The fact that she was an illegal prospector camping on land she didn’t own while in the pursuit of quick wealth is neither worth mentioning nor a cause to question whether she’s a laudable figure deserving of a monument. Thus, the effect of both of these monuments is to normalize colonization and illegal settlement, and present the arrival of Whites as the beginning of meaningful history.
Filed under colonialism, Native, propaganda
Life of refinement 