tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33725867015370736072024-02-06T18:32:32.307-08:00RestitutionTerence Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16080702441874867109noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3372586701537073607.post-37054993949483591482012-02-04T12:04:00.000-08:002012-02-04T15:46:17.676-08:00Apartheid In Palestine<strong><span style="color: white;">Terence Stone</span></strong><br />
<br />
The story is too long; and like all stories too long many people won't find the time to watch, listen, feel and understand--even to tragedies involving mass displacements, brutal killings and broken hearts. The threads of lives that were once a beautiful tapesty of culture are now shredded, scorched and scatterred.<br />
<br />
Who are the victims of this saga? They are the Palestinian people, squeezed into Bantustans within occupied Palestine. Yes. The skills of South African Apatheid have been fully implemented with even greater sophistication by the State of Israel: pass laws; restricted movement; bulldozed homes; deprived of meaningful employment; spat upon; ancestral lands confiscated; mocked as less than human--all this and more.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/wE1A3WrMHdI?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br />
Unfortunately, all of this truth is scrambled and suppressed by a massive Zionist propaganda machine unparalleled in the history of media control. How could this have happened? The western world is merely left with sound bites and gross revisionism that has us all sitting in the bleachers watching a perpetual gladiatorial tournament of barbarity in which, at a whim, Netanyahu gives the thumbs down for the next kill.<br />
<br />
In 1917 Lord Balfour of England wrote to Baron Rothschild of banking fame and leader of the Zionist Movement in England (both of them buddies in that infamous aristocratic House of Lords that should long ago have been put to the torch). It became known as the Balfour Declaration, which said in part:<br />
<br />
<div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><em>"His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."</em></blockquote></div><br />
Balfour and the British had no right to make such a commitment behind the backs of the Palestinians whose motherland it was. Oh, Jews already lived there too; but it was a land that accomodated both peoples side by side. In 1947, through concerted acts of Jewish terrorism and the planned capitulation of the British, the state of Israel became an ugly birth--lots of blood, you'll understand. The Zionist child lived, but mother Palestine was left to die on the birthing bed.<br />
<br />
Since then, whatever platitudes of protections for Palestinians Bafour spoke from his forked tongue have been excised from Zionist exclusive expansion. Palestinians might just as well disappear at the end of the slow-motion genocide, which is clearly the end game goal of Zionist policy.<br />
<br />
Mourn with the oppressed Palestinians during this week of remembering Israeli Apartheid--let's call it what it is. For Palestinians--now three generations of refugees:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q9vRM0k2TdA?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>Terence Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16080702441874867109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3372586701537073607.post-88989096112066332162012-01-12T11:22:00.000-08:002012-01-14T09:19:10.903-08:00Oliver Twist and the Enbridge Northern Spillway Gunkline<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiCMsZB5QE2YLD-BsBhTnAdnstqXMxUmFnrAqKzZ-cVszxD8WiSgPEK-7YVcIn5Bqs_NHh19x5oVoQ-2JTeqelIueBGORE1gVayo7mShJUUv6hPktB7eYylWq3doDGNv8RvKP08esnf_U/s1600/Twist+and+Fagin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiCMsZB5QE2YLD-BsBhTnAdnstqXMxUmFnrAqKzZ-cVszxD8WiSgPEK-7YVcIn5Bqs_NHh19x5oVoQ-2JTeqelIueBGORE1gVayo7mShJUUv6hPktB7eYylWq3doDGNv8RvKP08esnf_U/s1600/Twist+and+Fagin.jpg" /></a></div> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">The Artful Dodger Introduces Oliver Twist to Fagin (Harper)</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p><span style="color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong>Terence Stone</strong></span></o:p></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em>"Unfortunately, there are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade."—</em>Joe Oliver MP, Minister of Natural Resources<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Joe,<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> <span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">As part of an unrepresentative government, you willfully misrepresent and distort language, acting as a sort of Oliver Twist who constantly mangled the Kings English.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> <span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">The environmental groups you refer to wish to “conserve”; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ergo,</i> they are “conservative”. By contrast, the Progressive “Conservative” party of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Canada</st1:country-region>, by its policies of ripping up the northern landscape of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Alberta</st1:place></st1:state> and extracting crud(e) tar to pipe thousands of kilometers at unsustainable input costs, can be considered nothing less than “radical”.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> <span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Either you know little about language, or, as little Oliver Twist, you participate mindlessly in the outrageous games of filching Fagin, Master Harper, who has his hands in everyone's pocket.</span></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPPtrDkgO12gHR7yXzTIDozI7cif-GTvnmKZiXYhjGzXv097vKbntjlU8tKuLU9P7YeDX3cft22joBT5aH4a6Rz5LSuQFWI3ydLdYTKKCpGE5Rt0tZ6EDo3xIysu3fCfERqeuG0kjPano/s1600/170px-Cruikshank_-_Fagin_in_the_condemned_Cell_%2528Oliver_Twist%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPPtrDkgO12gHR7yXzTIDozI7cif-GTvnmKZiXYhjGzXv097vKbntjlU8tKuLU9P7YeDX3cft22joBT5aH4a6Rz5LSuQFWI3ydLdYTKKCpGE5Rt0tZ6EDo3xIysu3fCfERqeuG0kjPano/s1600/170px-Cruikshank_-_Fagin_in_the_condemned_Cell_%2528Oliver_Twist%2529.png" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"> Harper as Fagin in his cell where he belongs</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><a href="http://www.blogger.com/" name="_MailAutoSig"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Terence Stone</span></span></a><span style="mso-bookmark: _MailAutoSig;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Tahoma;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _MailAutoSig;"><em><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-no-proof: yes;">“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” </span></em></span></span><span style="mso-bookmark: _MailAutoSig;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">― Arundhati Roy</span></span></span><o:p></o:p>Terence Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16080702441874867109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3372586701537073607.post-25542524855092647452011-12-31T15:19:00.000-08:002012-01-06T12:21:50.063-08:00Manifest Signs: The Birth of Resistance Everywhere<span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Terence Stone<span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">There is a wonderful statue at Canada Olympic Square in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Calgary</st1:place></st1:city> of “The Valiant Five”, Canadian women who challenged the Supreme Court of Canada in 1927 to include women in the definition of “personhood”. After long deliberation, in 1928 the Court declined to recognize that personhood. In what I can only conceive as a bizarre temporal juxtaposition, within the same century corporations were anthropomorphized or granted “personhood”. If this doesn’t underscore the fact of corporate hegemonic power—masculinst power at that—I don’t know what does.</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Iconic as it is, the statue of “The Valiant Five” became the monthly rallying place for Women in Black, a pro-justice, anti-war organization that was started collaboratively by Jewish women in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Jerusalem</st1:place></st1:city> and Palestinian women in the occupied territories following the first Intifada in 1988. Each gathering is a performative silent vigil, an act of universal mourning for all those killed in war, but particularly those rendered voiceless in their living and dying in these events--pointless state atrocities--women and children.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><a href="http://www.womeninblack.org/en/vigil"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Women in Black</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">, continues as a loosely affiliated, worldwide organization that still honours its roots in the heavily propagandized landscape of difference of the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Israeli</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">State</st1:placetype></st1:place>. Yes. <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region> has exported a peace movement. This is deeply inspirational: If women can unite across that seemingly impenetrable boundary of radical Zionism, there is no reason why any obstacle should endure against any movements for justice and peace.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">About eight years ago I was invited to join Women in Black, in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Calgary</st1:place></st1:city>. My wife, Nancy, and I attended with a group of women once a month, all of us dressed in black. The experience of silence and solidarity had a profound effect of holding us all in a cradle of mourning that was very moving. It had the visceral power to draw people to us to make active enquiries about who we were and what we stood for. Enquirers typically departed with new information and comments of approbation and support. Yes, even silence can be powerful.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The only attack I recall was from the Royal Canadian Legion before Remembrance Day when it became aware that we were wearing white poppies in memory of civilians killed in war alongside red poppies in memory of mostly young men who are traditionally sent to be slaughtered. Apparently, the Canadian Legion, like the US Government would rather us all overlook the insignificant detail of infinitely more civilians being killed in war--reduced to the term collateral damage--than military personnel; besides which it quite dulls the golden aura of glorious personal sacrifice that the idea of “just war” depends on.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On November 15, 2011, five courageous Palestinians imported the spirit of the US Civil Rights Movement to challenge the segregation of public transport in the <st1:place w:st="on">West Bank</st1:place>. They decided to board a bus and become the Freedom Riders of the Israeli occupied territories. Several busses refused to stop until one unwitting driver pulled up and the Palestinians climbed aboard. Deep consternation ensued as the bus pulled away under the scrutiny of the press and activists. The driver made a phone call that required him to halt at the Hizma checkpoint, outside of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Jerusalem</st1:place></st1:city>. Refusals by the Palestinians to disembark resulted in a delay of the bus as the military came aboard to physically remove them with the usual roughing up: “Huwaida Arraf, 35, challenged one young Israeli passenger who complained about the delay the protest had caused to her journey: 'Your soldiers hold us up 10 times longer than this every day at checkpoints across the West Bank.' (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Guardian</i>, November 15, 2011)”. This is a reality of Palestinian mobility that most Israeli’s have been trained to be blissfully oblivious of. Movement for Palestinians in their own tenuous territory is excruciating, if not perpetually dangerous.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I’d like to bring two threads of this article together here.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Firstly, this act of courageous Palestinian resistance was actively supported by Jewish human rights organizations with significant support from within <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region> itself. Most notable, but not exhaustive of these were:</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> <a href="http://www.rosalux.co.il/TANDI%20">Democratic Women’s Movement in Israel</a> (TANDI—an Arab-Jewish Movement); <a href="http://www.alternativenews.org/english/">The Alternative Information Center</a>; and <a href="http://www.tarabut.info/en/home/">Tarabut-Hithabrut – Arab-Jewish Movement for Social and Political Change</a>. My point is that the Jewish members of these organizations, while living on the privileged side of the wall, are every bit as courageous and principled as the five Palestinian Freedom Riders.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now we don’t know what happened to those five Freedom Riders once they were in custody or in the days that followed; but I have a story about these terribly misnamed “checkpoints”.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On a recent trip to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region>, I met twenty-two year old Maor in the Tibetan Peace Café in Dharamsala. He’d just completed his required service in the IDF. Half way through breakfast he’d abandoned his Jewish companions and joined me at a nearby table. He was bright, interesting, articulate and deeply troubled. After testing me as a listener, he confided his nightmares.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div style="tab-stops: 53.9pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He told me how difficult sleep had become and how a particular image now haunted him every day. It was at one of these insidious Israeli checkpoints that his patrol stopped three men and asked for identification. One of the men had an attitude of dignity—he didn’t wither or comply obsequiously enough. Maor began beating him with the butt of his rifle until he fell to the ground; and then he beat him more. He described being in a rage that seemed to have a life of its own. Eventually he stopped the beating. The Palestinian man lay face-down and still. Maor looked at him, thinking he might have killed him; but slowly the man turned his face, badly battered and bloody, to look at Maor standing over him. Maor said there was gentleness in the Palestinian’s voice as he looked into Maor’s eyes and said, “I could be your father”. Maor choked at this part of the story and told me that the man was just about his father’s age. He said that his father had always been gentle and principled. Maor did indeed see in the eyes of his victim a reflection of his father.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div style="tab-stops: 53.9pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Following that cruel beating, Maor said he keeps seeing the bloodied face and hearing the voice, “I could be your father”, over and over. The image intrudes into his nightly dreams and daily thoughts, persistently denying him peace.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div style="tab-stops: 53.9pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To emphasise the arbitrary and cruel practices of the IDF, Maor also told a story of being at checkpoint duty on an occasion of stopping a Palestinian man and his family taking an open truckload of pumpkins to market. Laughingly, they forced the man to unload all his pumpkins to look for weapons. After the truck was completely empty, the patrol systematically smashed every pumpkin with the butts of their rifles to check inside each of them for “weapons”. The man, his wife and children stood by in impotent terror. The patrol never stopped laughing as they went about their business.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div style="tab-stops: 53.9pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Maor had already reflected on reasons why he would have been an active or complicit participant in these and other cruel abuses. He said that beginning in school he was taught to hate Arabs; but he added that it is the entire Israeli State that systematically and pervasively supports hatred of Arabs: “I understand that now”, he said. I asked him how he intended to deal with all this on his return to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>. He was clear in saying that he will never trust his own government again and will speak about the abuse of Palestinians. I believe him. Maor will now join the many Jews from inside and outside of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region> who have the courage to speak and themselves be labelled Jew-haters by their own people who cannot yet see the propaganda.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div style="tab-stops: 53.9pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;">Let’s remember the Palestinian Freedom Riders, the Jewish organizations that supported them, and conscientious Maor, a young Jewish man brutalized by <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Israeli</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">State</st1:placetype></st1:place> indoctrination. Let us not forget Women in Black as a worldwide movement that was painfully birthed in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region> from Jewish and Palestinian women, coming together to protest violence and injustice. Let’s remember The Valiant Five, whose stand for justice in their rejected claim to personhood acts as a stark foil against which the personhood of corporations can only make sense in the context of Imperialist hegemony that fronts it in the West’s material gluttony, the covetousness of Middle-Eastern oil, and the ongoing rape of the planet. All is interconnected.</span></span>Terence Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16080702441874867109noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3372586701537073607.post-34609607360173606462011-12-20T19:11:00.000-08:002011-12-21T15:34:30.888-08:00"It Is Done"--Unless One Great Spirit Should Now Rise<span style="color: white;"><strong>Terence Stone</strong></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">I must confess that following the "failure" of COP-15 in Copenhagen (2009), except for a hastily hammered out agreement between the US, Brazil, India, South Africa, and China, to obscure the word "failure", I crashed. After months of effort, along with millions of others around the world, to pressure for an urgent and just agreement on climate change the word “hopeless” entered my vocabulary.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">The oil companies had spent many millions of dollars on a massive and coordinated disinformation campaign, supported by <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region> and a few other countries set on nothing less than sabotage. Computer hacking for anything that could be quoted out of context was widespread. Eventually the oil industry backed hackers hit a little paydirt; but with a lot of spin, information obtained from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UK) was cited out of context as "proof" that climate change research was fraudulent. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Released just two weeks before the COP-15 Summit, the timing of the release couldn't have been more perfect. The great beast didn't slouch toward <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Bethlehem</st1:place></st1:city>, but dropped into the centre of the conference on all fours; with coal-red eyes it crouched, drooling hot bitumen from its gaping maw and exuded a crude stench, observing all. Nobody attempted to remove or even name it; indeed, like the elephant in the living room, most pretended it just wasn't there. Of course, when investigations by six committees were concluded on the research of the CRU, its findings of climate change due to human activity were completely exonerated.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Another confession: When BP's Deep Water Horizon disaster happened on April 10, 2010, I was deeply shocked, as were all people of conscience. But as the weeks went by I began to hope fervently that every effort would fail--that the disaster would be of such an incomprehensible magnitude that the entire Eastern seaboard of the USA would be irreparably damaged for decades and that the shock would be global, jolting people out of their apathy; and that the world would at last see that there is no such thing as a "deep water horizon"--the only horizon we have encircles the globe and it is disappearing as the scant time we may have to act draws ever closer. Regrettably, all has been sucked into the black hole of officially mandated memory loss.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Since then, scientists who were climate sceptics have renounced their scepticism, or repudiated their paid-for lies, because the writing is in the sky. Disaster is afoot. Do you remember the movie, <em><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana;">Asteroid,</span></em> in which American (of course) super-heroes fly up to meet an asteroid on a course to destroy planet Earth? With just the right measure of technology, heroism and a nuclear bomb, Earth is saved. I recall a related discussion a few years ago in which and American (of course) suggested dealing with hurricanes of increasing power that threaten the coastal US (of course) by exploding a nuclear bomb in the eyes of these storms, thus blowing them to bits. Ha! Sorry <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region> (of course), you can't blow climate change to bits like your fabricated enemies.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">So here we are, two years later in the immediate aftermath of the COP-17 Summit in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Durban</st1:place></st1:city> with another complete "failure"--except an agreement to meet again to work toward an agreement that has been hailed by the major polluters as a success in order to obscure the word "failure". How can any of this make sense, even to those with the stupid-seal stamped on their foreheads? But let's name the main culprits--drugged-on-oil <st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region> (of course), cradling in its arms its tar-baby <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">The reality is that any agreement reached "quickly" would not be implementable before 2020. The next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report isn't due until 2013, by which time it will be reporting on findings for climate change that is roughly five years out of date. The problem is that each report so far has under-calculated the effects for the period it reports on. Essentially the message with each report is, "Surprise! Surprise! Everything's happening much faster than we thought--Mmmm!--Please excuse our conservative calculations".<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">You know what, I'm recycling stuff that everybody should know, but the majority doesn't care about; so I think I'll just shut up and leave you with a recycled poem for our disposable planet and its disposable human race and other life forms:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<strong><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana;">REQUIEM</span></strong><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">The crucified planet Earth,<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">should it find a voice<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">and a sense of irony,<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">might now well say<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">of our abuse of it,<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">"Forgive them, Father,<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">They know not what they do."</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">The irony would be<o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">that we know what<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">we are doing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">When the last living thing<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">has died on account of us,<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">how poetical it would be<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">if Earth could say,<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">in a voice floating up<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">perhaps<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">from the floor<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">of the <st1:place w:st="on">Grand Canyon</st1:place>,<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">"It is done."<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">People did not like it here.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">--Kurt Vonnegut, <i>A Man Without a Country</i><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"></span></span>Terence Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16080702441874867109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3372586701537073607.post-33889785153586107252011-12-20T08:28:00.000-08:002011-12-24T17:38:31.505-08:00Accusations of Anti-Semitism: The Imperative To Speak<strong><span style="color: white;">Terence Stone</span></strong><br />
<br />
I've struggled a lot with speaking my truths about Israeli State policy of the late twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries, that particularly virulent form of Zionism that has probably done more to sponsor terrorism--American, British and Islamic--than any other single factor. Israel has taken the role assigned it as proxy cop for the region on behalf of the USA and turned it into an excuse for fascistic conduct toward the Palestinians and the neigbours it has been able to bully, directly and indirectly. True--I criticise once in a while, but often hold back when I'd wade in neck deep against my own government. And perhaps I should console myself with the fact that there are a lot of Jews far more eloquent and impassioned than I am who constantly hold a critical mirror to the excesses and injustices of the Israeli State; of course hostile Zionist propagandists resort to the most obscene tactics--they accuse these fellow Jews of being "Jew-haters", "self-haters", "traitors", or of "not being really Jewish" at all; so why should I censor my own small voice anyway?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I was born in 1944 and my father served in the British armed forces during the war. He wasn't very tolerant of difference, but one of the first things he exposed me to was a huge tome with many pages of those photographs you arrive at after turning printed pages, only to be faced with misty veils of protective tissue behind which lurk horror after detailed horror of the Holocaust: disinterred mass graves; mountains of skeletal bodies; the ovens; the gas chambers; and my father crying as he talked me through it all. At five- or six-years-of-age it left a deep impression.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
For a good portion of her adult life, my mother worked as housekeeper to the eminent Swifts and Rosenblatts of Liverpool. They treated her exceptionally well. It was a comfort to me to know that she was accepted like family in both homes. There was mutual commitment beyond the role of employee and employer. Then about 25 years ago, pieces of evidence began surfacing that suggested that our family might once have been Jewish and subjected to one of the many ignominious episodes in British history of forced conversions. I remember thinking, as I have often done since, how proud I would feel in being Jewish; there is so much I admire about Jewish culture. I can hold that thought, even as I condemn the <st1:placename w:st="on">Israeli</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">State</st1:placetype>--no less than I think about the Americans I love and admire, even as I condemn the terrorism and Capitalist Imperialism of the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">USA</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The last paper I chose to write in my MA (English Literature) was on the Holocaust; probably to give some narrative form to those childhood images I could never quite get out of my head. I chose a critique of <em>Shoah</em>, the epic documentary of the Holocaust by the Jewish film-maker, Claude Lanzmann. It's nine-and-a half-hours of video filled with scenes of those places of extermination, completely silent except for the birds in abandoned concentration camps; lots of technical information too; but the worst images for me are in Lanzmann taking two survivors back to those places of horror.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
One was a 13-year-old boy in one of the extermination camps who, like Lazarus, rose from the dead out of a pile of Jewish corpses. The Nazis who found him alive discovered he had a beautiful voice, so he was spared a second attempt at extermination to entertain them on the river patrols for the remainder of the war. With a rictus smile on his face he was taken back to a Polish village in which the people still remembered him singing as he passed each morning on the river. All is celebration until Lanzmann steers the conversation cleverly to reasons the villagers might provide for the Jewish exterminations. Ugly, vituperous voices emerged from the crowd accusing Jews of being Christ-killers; and so the poison leaches while the elderly man--still emotionally that 13-year-old boy, stands smiling with a continuing instinct to simply live another day.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The second survivor, Abraham Bomba, a Tel Aviv barber, is interviewed by Lanzmann while he is cutting hair in his shop. Sweat is beading on his upper lip; the blood has drained from his face; stoically he holds his voice steady and speaks the words mechanically. As he cuts hair he recounts cutting the hair from Jewish women, gently reassuring them just before they are led into the gas chambers. Lanzmann manipulates him back into the depths of his trauma. Abraham begins to tell of one woman who arrives, a family friend from his village. He cuts her hair and tells her the necessary lies of reassurance. In the middle of the telling, he suddenly cracks emotionally: "Please!" he turns to Lanzmann, "I can't! It's too horrible!" Lanzmann refuses to stop, insisting, "You must go on".<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I watched the entire nine-and-a-half hours of <em>Shoah</em> three times, and important segments such as these two, reported above, countless times--60-70 hours of viewing. I was a straight A student in all my papers and my thesis except this one. It was the only paper I turned in late and the only one that fell short of an A. Why? Because I couldn't find the courage to critique Lanzmann's work in the way I thought it should be critiqued--as a masterpiece of documentary art that deliberately tortured and victimized Jewish survivors all over again; I imposed on myself an act of self-censorship. This is not my paper, so I won't expound further on Lanzmann's cruelty, and I don't want to set my viewing experience off against those who were exterminated and those who survived. I got a little closer to it all in traumatizing myself so that I couldn't sleep or go through a waking day for over a year without intruding images from the documentary and the book images, refreshed, that my father introduced me to at six years of age.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I have often attempted to engage in reasonable conversation about issues related to the excesses and injustices of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Israeli</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">State</st1:placetype></st1:place> policy and military conduct in online forums. Invariably I am attacked viciously and unreasonably as an anti-Semite by swarms of online Zionists when I know nothing could be further from the reality of who I am. The balance of my prudence and self-censorship tipped some time over the past year with the conduct of that hateful murderer, Binjamin Netanyahu, and his Zionist gangsters.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The idea of Palestinian Statehood has become a joke. All that is left to constitute a state is a discontiguous string of enclaves--classically Bantustans, after the South African apartheid model, or the reserves of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s indigenous peoples on which model this systematized destruction of peoples was based and has been refined. The two state solution is no longer viable; so from within or from without, I'm inclined to favour the dismantling (or destruction) of Israel in favour of a single state solution in which Palestinians are repatriated to the lands stolen from them and safeguards instituted for Jews who must share the territory.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Manifest Destiny as a motivating principle for Israeli or <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> hegemony is a teleological anachronism--an artefact that comes from pre-Enlightenment thinking. It will always be an active imperialist project of violent domination because the end is always the inviolable goal, the achievement of which all means are justified. With roots of the respective theologies sunk deep in the Old Testament (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tanakh</i>) as the foundational claim on Jerusalem proper and the New Testament as the promise of Christianity’s New Jerusalem, a sort of Biblical interdependency underpins this most unholy of alliances between Israel and the USA that threatens global destruction. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Writing elsewhere in late spring of this year I predicted an Israeli or American military assault of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Iran</st1:country-region></st1:place> in the autumn. We've come perilously close, but now it likely won't happen this year with complications arising for <st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region> out of the Arab Spring uprisings, the complications of an emboldened stance by <st1:country-region w:st="on">Turkey</st1:country-region> against <st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region>, and a worsening <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> economy, which is under even more threat by the possible collapse of the Euro-zone. No flight corridor will be provided by <st1:country-region w:st="on">Saudi Arabia</st1:country-region> for Israeli bombers, so the Americans will have to launch an attack on <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iran</st1:place></st1:country-region> directly.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The American withdrawal from <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> now makes this a more viable option. Unfortunately, bunker-buster bombing of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iran</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s deep and hardened nuclear facilities becomes a pretty pathetic method of closing down their nuclear program, which raises the not so far fetched spectre of tactical nuclear weapons being used against Iranian facilities. In all likelihood <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s supporting role. You see, unlike many other people, I don't see <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iran</st1:place></st1:country-region> as the problem. It has always been the reality of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region> as the only nuclear power in the region that has fed the ambition for nuclear symmetry amongst its neighbours.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The only hope for a more stable region is, paradoxically, in accepting the terrible reality of nuclear proliferation (it was always only a matter of time), the necessity of giving up the notion of a two-state solution in Palestine, the repudiation of Zionist manifest destiny, and simple justice and dignity for a too-long-oppressed Palestinian people. If all of this amounts to anti-Semitism, I stand proudly accused, but refuse to be condemned. I will not be manipulated into silence by Lanzmann or the fact of the Holocaust, raised to a high aesthetic of victimization, which has been completely co-opted by the fascistic Zionism of our fragile times.Terence Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16080702441874867109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3372586701537073607.post-23373328069628721422011-12-16T12:00:00.000-08:002011-12-21T15:47:50.409-08:00Monsanto and a Mutant Christ: Priests Perform Black Magic<strong><span style="color: white;">Terence Stone</span></strong><br />
<br />
<div style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">The Independent</span></i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"> (December 16, 2011), asks the question,</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="background: white;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Is the <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Vatican</place></country-region> close to endorsing the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops in order to feed the world's growing population? Could it be that the Catholic Church is about to take a moral position on GM food.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="background: white;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A leaked document from a group of scientists linked to <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Rome</place></city> has set a hare running about the possible endorsement of GM technology by the Pope. The document, from scientists linked to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, suggested that there is a moral duty to adopt GM technology in order to combat hunger”.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="background: white;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I thought these interesting questions and reportage that set my mind pondering and researching some of the implications of it all. First of all, let’s just state some facts and probabilities.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="background: white;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Monsanto is responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, from their manufacture and supply of Agent Orange in the Vietnam war to the hundreds of thousands of suicides of Monsanto's debt-burdened farmers of India, many of whose suicide poison-of-choice is Monsanto’s Roundup; but I won’t turn the list into a litany—such is the prerogative of Catholicism, Anglicanism, and other Christian denominations.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="background: white;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Continuing with some probabilities related to the tremendously wealthy Catholic Church, which maintains a secret, "conservative" investment portfolio of billions of dollars: It’s quite likely the Church is invested directly in Monsanto, and highly probable that it has indirect investments in the company, such is the incestuous nature of “conservative” Corporations. We might just add that the titular head of the Anglican Church is Queen Elizabeth II, whose investment portfolio undoubtedly reaches insidiously into Monsanto’s boardroom, if not its bedroom.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="background: white;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Of course any open linkage between Monsanto and these churches raises profound moral questions; and it's useful to assert that the <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Vatican</place></country-region> is itself a Corporation, a relationship that is much clearer since the banks and other private Corporations have also, like the Catholic Church, more recently resorted to begging bailouts as a main source of income. But my concern here is narrowly focused on ontological issues.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="background: white;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Of the seven sacraments performed by the Catholic priesthood, the Eucharist is arguably the most contentious and doctrinally central to the Church. It is in fact an act of magic that only the priesthood can perform. The priest takes the bread and wine an transforms it, literally, into the body and blood of Christ (it only symbolizes in Anglicanism until it becomes subject to the fast approaching hostile corporate take over by the Church of Rome).</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="background: white;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now here’s the problem: Once upon a time little bands of nuns scurried around hot kitchens baking the bread. They were very dedicated and paid a great deal of attention to quality control since there are very strict rules and conditions under which the bread is made. After all, purity is essential if the bread is to become the body of Christ. While the nuns dutifully went about this task, the priests lounged around smoking cigarettes, drinking scotch--and talking about little boys.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Slowly the job became too much, or they couldn’t recruit enough nuns who were gullible enough to do the job; so it was turned over to local bakers who continued the good work. Of course, you can count on the Americans to go Big. The</span><span lang="EN"> </span>Cavanagh Company of <city w:st="on">Greenville</city>, R. I., produces the Eucharist wafers for 85% of the <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">US</place></country-region> and Canadian “markets” and 50% of the British “market”—over 80 million wafers per month. The F.C. Ziegler Company of <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Oklahoma</place></state> produces most of the rest.<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="background: white;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now, they might be lovely people working around the clock in <state w:st="on">Rhode Island</state> and <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Oklahoma</place></state>, but at this level of production, quality control goes out the window. You see, they have to depend on the delivery of white wheat-flour only for the Eucharist and—Yes! You got it. Monsanto has free reign in the <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">US</place></country-region> to indiscriminately ship GM wheat to the mills. Ergo, the Eucharist is being manufactured with GM wheat!</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="background: white;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This begs the horrifying question: Does this mutant grain, this defiled gift of Monsanto, result in a mutant Christ for Catholics to consume every week? Furthermore, does the once sacred magic of the priests who knowingly create a mutant Christ now perform a ritual act of Black Magic? And since (as far as I know) no GM wine has entered the food chain, does it, as a pure manifestation of Christ’s blood, not reject the body of Christ with its incompatible mutant DNA, even as it is digested after the sacrament? Do Catholics now suffer tummy ache?</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="background: white;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Perhaps the Pope in order to remain infallible (we’ll forget the apology to Galileo 500 years after his death) will be forced to sanctify GM foods in order to retain the myth of the Eucharist and the integrity of Vatican Incorporated, a holy (sic) owned subsidiary of Monsanto Corporation.</span></span></div>Terence Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16080702441874867109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3372586701537073607.post-2607296215835491242011-12-09T06:44:00.000-08:002011-12-09T07:01:15.372-08:00PAOV (Occupy Victoria): The Birthing Room and Beyond<span style="color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Terence Stone</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My blog today is a little 5:00 a.m. rant I wrote in reply to an email from a dear friend. I'll let it stand as it is:</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Yes. Occupy was forced out in Victoria too. The authorities couldn't cope with the homeless becoming perpetually visible and actually finding a forum for their voices; so they've been forced back into invisibility and silence. </span><br />
<div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Atomized for so long by powers wanting us to consume more, and more, and more, we are all struggling with how to be together as organic, inclusive communities. It's all rather painful at times--a bit like being born again; but if people keep their faith and determination, the movement will evolve and change.</span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The entire phenomenon is protean. Law enforcement, the justice system, the political establishment, and the Chambers of Commerce have become so co-opted by their own production of images-as-reality, closing down the sites seems to have satisfied them that Occupy has been dismantled. They couldn't be more in error. They've only closed the delivery room after the painful but exhilarationg birth of goodness knows how many children.</span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All have dispersed into other locations--many of them virtual--gathering stregnth for the next level of public disobedience--of creative rebellion. If nothing else it's heightened for everyone involved, and those who have been curious bystanders, the reality that we are indeed living in a world gone mad. It's an asylum for pathologies of greed, corruption, delusions, and high-risk, self-harming behavious that are now clearly suicidal and genocidal. Institutions of all kinds have become great echo chambers that do nothing but amplify destructive ideologies maquerading as rationality.</span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div></div><div></div><div><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You're right. Harper and his thugs go about with impunity insisting they represent the majority in the stupid, first-past-the-post electoral system we have in which fewer and fewer Canadians participate every four years. In reality, as so many people were warning pre-election, there was always an insidious backroom agenda in play as narcissitic Harper stared lonley and longingly into the cesspool of his ambition and fell deeply in love with his own shitty reflection.</span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With only the Senate as a low hurdle for Bill C-10 to clear and COP 17 disproportionatly undermined by our pathological Prime Minister, the question is what comes next and just how much will aquiescent Canadians tolerate. Is this really a national trait so entrenched that Canadians will endure any lie and abuse? I hope not. I dare not believe it for the sake of our country and the entire globe.</span></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">In any event, the many facets of Occupy that still exist and grow daily will inevitably confront and dismantle all of these excesses and non-democratic systems over time. To believe anything else is to roll over and die. If that happens, we deserve extinction. For me this weekend--a little culture jamming!</span></div>Terence Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16080702441874867109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3372586701537073607.post-58056001415893573162011-12-03T21:54:00.000-08:002011-12-04T00:56:14.554-08:00Smart Meters and the US Military-Industrial Complex<span style="color: white;">Terence Stone</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">There has been growing protest over the stupid decision by BC Hydro in collusion with Christy Clarke’s BC Liberals spending a billion dollars on smart meters from Itron, Inc. of <place w:st="on"><placename w:st="on">Washington</placename> <placetype w:st="on">State</placetype></place>. No oversight; no public discussion. It’s a bit like the stupidity of introducing the HST with no public input. Both cost the taxpayer dearly.</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">But perhaps I’m being a bit too generous in simply calling them stupid decisions. Both involved enough money to make a lot of people rich; so you can bet that these decisions were carefully calibrated to go ahead and damn the torpedoes. The problem is that both decisions took place in a growing atmosphere of public discontent in the way government and business is done—thanks to the financial crisis and it persistence.</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">CEO, Dave Cobb, left BC Hydro for pastures green in October, connected no doubt to the smart meter fiasco; although we’ll never know how since BC Hydro is in this one up to its eyeballs and is in no position to withdraw and not lose face. Impassive it will remain under public assault over the installations.</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">I had my own small victory today, though. The smart meter crew knocked on the door and said they were installing. I said, “You’re not!” The guy seemed a bit miffed, but politely withdrew. Then I got to thinking even more about this “smart meter” crap.</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">Why “smart meter”, I thought; then it occurred to me that the US Military-Industrial Complex, inextricably interdependent with the US Government and its policies, has spent perhaps a hundred million dollars in branding “Smart” weaponry to more easily declare and wage war around the globe. In particular, we’ve been treated to video-game dead hits of “smart bombs” to demonstrate how very caring bloody aggression can be. So why should BC Hydro and the BC Government spend millions on public discussion and public relations. The groundwork was already laid by the war criminals Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush.</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">“Lets call it a smart meter”, whispered Christy Clarke to Dave Cobb, dithering about how to explain away a billion dollar purchase without public consultation. Dave grinned and relaxed after thinking about the implications. “Clever idea, Christy!” he exclaimed. “Our friends in the White House have already sold this one for us and everyone will associate these hot little devices with no collateral damage. My God! You’re a genius Premier”. Christy patted Dave on the back as he left her office, congratulating each other on the perfect selection of language.</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">Unfortunately, “smart bombs” are pretty dumb as a concept. It might make easier to declare a war here or there--wilfully, unnecessarily; so one can hardly say "smart bombs" <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">save</i> lives. Besides, if you’re any place close to a “smart bomb” surgical strike, you die too; and that’s not including those significant “smart bombs” that refuse to obey orders.</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">It’s the same with “smart meters”. The tag “smart” declares to you, the home owner or renter, “Don’t worry, I’ve been designed to make everything safe for you (gentle smile). I have relatives in the Pentagon—no collateral damage, honestly!”</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">I see you relax, fellow residents; but stop! Don’t believe that damned meter! It’s trying to be a smart ass! There’s fall out--radiologically speaking. The meter may be invisibly located in a part of your residence that might fool you into thinking it’s safe; but it will transmit perhaps half a dozen times a day and you or your child will get a collateral dose of radiation. You or your child may actually be leaning against or sleeping at the other side of the wall, ensuring that your temperature gets a momentary boost and DNA starts to fragment.</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">Next time you hear someone mention “smart meters”, think of Don Rumsfeld, Christy Clarke, Dick Cheney, Dave Cobb, and George W. Bush, all snickering behind closed doors. Think of those poor bastards who were nailed by “smart” things across <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Iraq</place></country-region>; and if a guy comes to your home and says, “Smart meter installation”, reply, “No thank you”, and close the door.</div>Terence Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16080702441874867109noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3372586701537073607.post-57075229571340725822011-11-28T13:54:00.000-08:002011-12-02T23:02:25.119-08:00Wi-Fi: The Failures of School Boards and the Health Protection Branch<span style="color: magenta;">Terence Stone</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We are all currently bathing in microwave radiation; so pervasive have transmissions become from a huge range of equipment that its difficult to argue the rationale for putting the brakes on just one more source of emission—but we simply must! Since we have all been bathing in this radiation at incrementally increased levels for some time now, it really is a good analogy to being in a bath: you lie in hot water and incrementally add a little more hot water every few minutes, until you notice your skin getting red and your heart pounding in an effort to cool at the surface of the skin.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now I bring my baby grandchild into the bath with me. He screams, but I pay no attention. I may be uncomfortable for a while after the bath; unfortunately, I’ve scalded my grandchild who needs medical attention.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So where do we draw the line? Let’s not, eh! It’s too complicated. Let's just add another bucket of boiling water to the microwave bath; we’ll get used to it—no worries; be happy.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Unfortunately, this is an ignorant attitude. It does not take into account that like the bathwater analogy, our children—yes they’re all ours!—are far more susceptible to the effects of radiation than adults. DNA fragmentation occurs at low levels and is cumulative—no less than for the people living on the margins of <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Fukushima</place></city>’s no-go zones. So why would most of <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Canada</place></country-region>’s school boards approve of Wi-Fi when they could stay with hard-wired systems? Well, it’s probably because they have departments of Innovation and Learning Technologies, which by their very <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">raison d’etre</i> are fundamentally interested in technologies and not children. They are in the bedrooms of Corporations whose interest is in profit and not children.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Surely, you might say, the Health Protection Branch of the Canadian Government has the health of our children as part of its mandate! Yes; but history reveals over an over how this department of government—under-resourced and subject to subtle steerage by Corporations and their Government bedfellows—has repeatedly failed in its mandate to protect. It is anathema to have the word “protection” in the name of this department, just as I’m coming to really understand that “trustee” in the title School Board Trustee is anathema to the trust we are asked to place in them.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Having once worked as a corporate liaison to the Health Protection Branch, I am aware of so many failures to protect Canadians that a researched list would quickly fill several volumes of Hustler Magazine, displacing its pornography with the pornography of wilful failure to protect our children.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now it’s important to acknowledge that some school boards such as Saanich, here on <place w:st="on">Vancouver Island</place>, and individual schools across Canada have embraced the precautionary principle. <state w:st="on">California</state> has rejected the use of Wi-Fi in schools, as has most of <place w:st="on">Europe</place>. Surely there is a little smoke being produced by the heat of microwave radiation or why would there be so many notable exceptions to Wi-Fi use in schools?</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Following is a letter written by an intelligent, concerned mother, qualified professionally in the health sciences, who has taken the time to research and understand the implications of Wi-Fi as an unnecessary and dangerous exposure for her children. She wrote to her Ward Trustee and the School Board Director, Innovation and Learning Technologies. She provided express permission for me to reprint without names (and what does that say about our vaunted democracy?).</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em>Hi [Ward Trustee],</em></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em>I appreciate you getting back to me on this matter. </em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em></em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em> </em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em></em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em>In my research I have found that Health Canada's "safe level limits" are too high in comparison to many other countries, in particular European countries whose safety level limit is up to one thousand times less than <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Canada</place></country-region>'s. This "safe level limit" is based on the “thermal effect”, the limits where the heating of human tissues occur, which originated from naval radar military research over 40 years ago. Many physicist and biologists have demanded that this be reviewed, and think that children's exposure to wireless internet "Wi-Fi" for long periods of time (5 days a week, 6 hours a day) is going to have major long-term consequences, and will be even fatal for many people.</em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em></em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em> </em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em></em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em>I do not want my children or any other children to be "guinea pigs" to this new technology. I think that Calgary Board of Education is making a BIG mistake by installing wireless devices in schools. It is our moral responsibility as parents, teachers, trustees, and other authorities to research this issue more in depth and practice the precautionary principal; since there has been absolutely no research done on children (who are much more vulnerable to radio frequencies than adults) and the effects of “Wi-Fi”.</em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em></em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em> </em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em></em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em>You might be interested to know that there is one city in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">France</place></country-region> in particular whose Mayor has banned wireless internet from all schools and public places. (see 1<sup>st</sup> website below). Also other public schools in other cities have decided to independently remove “Wi-Fi” due to its unknown effects (see Safeschool.ca).</em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em></em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em> </em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em></em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em>Long term exposure to “Wi-FI” is going to be an epidemic. Asbestos, DDT and Lead was deemed “safe” by Government Agencies such as Health <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Canada</place></country-region> and the World Health Organization, and not to mention numerous prescription drugs, including Thalidomide.</em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em></em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em> </em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em></em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em>I am asking you, as a Trustee, to do your part and advocate for the children in the Calgary Board of Education School system. We all have a moral obligation, I am doing my part, will you please do yours? It is easy to “pass the buck” and not take accountability. ”Wi-Fi” is simply a convenience, not a necessity. The risks don’t outweigh the benefits. I hope that you will research this information and are able to support me in promoting a precautionary approach for the sake of our children’s health.</em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em></em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em> </em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em></em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em>You might be interested in looking at the following websites for more information:</em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em></em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em> </em></span></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em></em></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"></span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN7VetsCR2I" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0066cc; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN7VetsCR2I</em></span></span></a></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em></em></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><a href="http://www.magdahavas.com/2010/08/13/wifi-in-schools-and-health-effects/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0066cc; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em>http://www.magdahavas.com/2010/08/13/wifi-in-schools-and-health-effects/</em></span></span></a></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"></span></div><em><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><a href="http://www.listen2yourgut.com/blog/wifi-radiation-exposure-safety-limits-per-country/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0066cc; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">http://www.listen2yourgut.com/blog/wifi-radiation-exposure-safety-limits-per-country/</span></span></a></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"></span></em><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em></em></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><em>Thank you for your time, [Trustee].</em></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><em>Kind Regards,</em></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><em>Jane Doe, RN BN</em></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A copy of this letter was also sent to the Director, Innovation and Learning Technology, at the Board of Education. His reply follows:</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em>Hi Jane Doe,<br />
<br />
Thank you for the email and the attachment of the letter you composed to trustees. You have clearly spent a great deal of time doing this and I appreciate the work you put into pulling this information together. Reviewing this has been helpful in ensuring we have data which incorporates multiple perspectives. <br />
<br />
Like you, the Calgary Board of Education<span style="color: red;"> takes matters pertaining to health and safety very seriously</span>. We </em><span style="color: red;"><em>also take our responsibility to fulfill our mission of preparing our students to achieve success as active and contributing participants in society very seriously as well </em></span><span style="color: black;"><strong>[the latter clearly trumps the former in order of priority]</strong></span><em><span style="color: black;"><strong>.</strong></span> <span style="color: red;">This endeavour does mean working to best leverage the learning resources</span> </em><strong>["leverage"--taken straight from the discourse of economics, that discredited "science"]</strong> <em>and tools of our students’ time, many of which are digital in nature and accessed via networks. <br />
<br />
I appreciate your perspectives and feel the information you have forwarded clearly indicates that <span style="color: red;">continued research</span> </em><span style="color: black;"><strong>[pre- or post-mortem?]</strong></span> <em>in relation to wireless is necessary to remove some of the ambiguity that exists regarding RF radiation emitted by wireless technology. In relation to the matter of safety of wireless, I believe this underscores the importance of us taking our guidance from the authoritative government body, Health <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Canada</place></country-region>, whose role it is to establish public health policy and set safety standards. </em><span style="color: red;"><em>Clearly setting safety standards is not a core part of our business</em> </span><span style="color: black;"><strong>[there you go, it's a "business", not a public trust with our children].</strong></span><em> As a result, our system policies and procedures relating to the installation and operation of wireless networking infrastructure must based upon and comply with standards set by Health <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Canada</place></country-region>. At present, emissions from the wireless technology used by the Calgary Board of Education is well below the safe limits identified. Should Health <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Canada</place></country-region> change the safe exposure limits and guidance regarding wireless networking technology at any point in the future the Calgary Board of Education would take measures to re-align our use of wireless networking technology so as to be consistent with these new standards. <br />
<br />
You make a very good point about how specific health standards have changed over time as new scientific evidence comes to light. It is my hope that Health Canada will support conducting research that will further investigate the appropriateness of current standards. </em><span style="color: red;"><em>I hope you can appreciate that it would be inappropriate for the Calgary Board of Education to be setting or imposing health-related guidelines that are inconsistent with those established by Health </em><country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on"><em>Canada </em><span style="color: black;"><strong>[No. It would be kinda like...errrrr...leadership, since you already acknowledge that there is a history of Health Canada getting things very wrong!]</strong></span></place></country-region><em><br />
<strong> </strong></em></span><em> </em></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em>Again, I appreciate you taking the time and for being proactive in relation to the use of wireless. You are welcome to contact me if you wish to discuss this matter more fully.<br />
<br />
Best regards,<br />
Director, Innovation and Learning Technologies</em></span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">[Square-bracketed comments mine, the blogger]</span></div>Terence Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16080702441874867109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3372586701537073607.post-88428883622918221652011-11-25T14:41:00.000-08:002011-11-25T14:41:02.867-08:00Nycole Turmel Letter and My Reply<span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Terence,</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Thank you for copying my office on your email highlighting several area of importance for Canada to take a leadership role at the upcoming United Nations Climate Conference in Durban, South Africa. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">First, New Democrats were surprised and dismayed to learn from the Environment Minister that opposition MPs were not included in the Canadian delegation to COP17 later this month. For decades, Canadian delegations to international conferences have been understood to represent Canada - not merely the governing party. We strongly oppose this attempt to block opposition voices.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Canada is one of the world's top ten greenhouse gas emitters and we know this is due largely to the Harper government's promotion of oil sands development. Already, going into this conference the Environment Minister has declared that Canada won't be swayed by "opponents" into changing policies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In contrast, New Democrats strongly believe that good environmental policy and economic well-being are not in conflict - rather they depend on each other. Canada should invest in solar, wind, wave, and geothermal sources; work with provinces and territories to share clean energy; and ensure energy conservation in transportation and building methods. Not only will this have a long-term impact in terms of creating high-quality, permanent jobs, but it will also ensure that we build a clean and sustainable country for the benefit of future generations. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You may also be familiar with the NDP Climate Change Accountability Act, which legislates long-term targets to reduce Canada's greenhouse gas emissions - ensuring that Canada meets many of its international obligations. The bill twice passed in the House of Commons, and both times the legislative process was stopped by unelected senators. We continue to promote this legislation which was recently re-introduced by NDP Environment critic Megan Leslie. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You can read more about our party's ideas here: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span></span><a href="http://www.ndp.ca/platform/tackle-climate-change"><u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-CA">http://www.ndp.ca/platform/tackle-climate-change</span></span></span></u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue;"></span></span></a><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span lang="EN-CA"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<a href="http://meganleslie.ndp.ca/post/ndp-calls-for-action-against-climate-change"><u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-CA">http://meganleslie.ndp.ca/post/ndp-calls-for-action-against-climate-change</span></span></span></u><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue;"></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-CA"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Again, thank you for writing. Rest assured that our team will continue to speak out on this matter. The government must take action for future generations -- it's time for leadership that will move Canada forward.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Best regards,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Nycole Turmel, M.P.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Interim Leader of the Official Opposition New Democratic Party of Canada</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Hello Nycole,</span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I know you and your party are working on in the spirit of Jack Layton, and I appreciate that. From your perspective I imagine that is a strength the party draws on and will continue to draw on. He was an incredibly principled man for mainstream politics.</span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For me, the problems we face have crossed a line somewhere and I can't tell you where it was. Tinkering will no longer work. I believe the ideas you have set out in your email are very important, but they do not address the larger systemic issues embedded in systems domestic that are inseparable from foreign policy: NAFTA has to go; WTO agreements need to be torn up in the face of the multi-nationals that benefit at the expense of communities, biodiversity and local solutions across the globe; the World Bank is morally bankrupt; the IMF remains the henchman of the WB. All of this is behind US imperialism and its claim to manifest destiny.</span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My wife and I recently returned from a one year trip to South-and South-East Asia; brutalized by, primarily, the British, French and more recently the Americans, one would have to be blind to not see the destruction that has been left behind, not least of which are the many millions of innocents murdered in the name of "defense" or "strategic interests". The corruption of both has been internalized so that the political elite have merely assumed the mantle of their erstwhile imperial masters.</span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Canada needs to uncouple itself from its incestuous partnerships with private industry: health-care; education; public transport; power generation (including new initiatives); water supply; the fossil-fuel industry--all these and more should be nationalized--brought back firmly and irrevocably into the public domain.</span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Please, Nycole, this is a time for visionary thinking <em>and</em> action. The NDP along with the other political parties has to step way outside the box and slam the lid shut if it is to have any relevance ten or twenty years from now, or forego a legacy of moral rectitude in the diseased eyes of my grandchildren.</span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sincerely,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Terence Stone</span></div>Terence Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16080702441874867109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3372586701537073607.post-36930332638380702142011-11-20T19:18:00.000-08:002012-09-19T07:41:45.103-07:00“From the Republic of Conscience” by Seamus Heaney—A poem for our times<span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">When I landed in the republic of conscience<br />
it was so noiseless when the engines stopped<br />
I could hear a curlew high above the runway<br />
At immigration, the clerk was an old man<br />
who produced a wallet from his homespun coat<br />
and showed me a photograph of my grandfather<br />
The woman in customs asked me to declare<br />
the words of our traditional cures and charms<br />
to heal dumbness and avert the evil eye<br />
No porters. No interpreter. No taxi.<br />
You carried your own burden and very soon<br />
your symptoms of creeping privilege disappeared<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><br />
Fog is a dreaded omen there, but lightning<br />
spells universal good and parents hang<br />
swaddled infants in trees during thunder storms<br />
Salt is their precious mineral. And seashells<br />
are held to the ear during births and funerals.<br />
The base of all inks and pigments is seawater<br />
Their sacred symbol is a stylized boat<br />
The sail is an ear, the mast a sloping pen,<br />
The hull a mouth-shape, the keel an open eye.<br />
At their inauguration, public leaders<br />
must swear to uphold unwritten law and weep<br />
to atone for their presumption to hold office<br />
and to affirm their faith that all life sprang<br />
from salt in tears which the sky-god wept<br />
after he dreamt his solitude was endless<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><br />
I came back from that frugal republic<br />
with my two arms the one length, the customs woman<br />
having insisted my allowance was myself<br />
The old man rose and gazed into my face<br />
and said that was official recognition<br />
that I was now a dual citizen<br />
He therefore desired me when I got home<br />
to consider myself a representative<br />
and to speak on their behalf in my own tongue<br />
Their embassies, he said, were everywhere<br />
but operated independently<br />
and no ambassador would ever be relieved</span>Terence Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16080702441874867109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3372586701537073607.post-39145867418368917702011-11-18T20:52:00.000-08:002011-11-28T21:47:57.064-08:00Wasps: A Parable of Global Survival<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">In central <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Sri Lanka</st1:place></st1:country-region> there is a tiny village called Sigiriya. It’s claim to fame is a mammoth magma plug, Sigirya Rock, which rises to the sky. Here the palimpsest of time’s pages and contradictory history leaves scholars floundering for something that can be definitively claimed about the purposes to which the rock, its deserted gardens and city have been put throughout the millennia.<o:p></o:p></span> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjssjBnZ9m2cbdtfYKKrfw94W-vHsrEXH6TsomIaB8rFWs1Ez3V4CDEOSBivqQeQ4hfHELBH8Xbs2irzuEid3Y14v_LprOCrinbC4vh-LrpLNEUK36rJ_-IMaf2jLaDGMWfZ_vXIYAh1tE/s1600/Sigiya+Rock.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjssjBnZ9m2cbdtfYKKrfw94W-vHsrEXH6TsomIaB8rFWs1Ez3V4CDEOSBivqQeQ4hfHELBH8Xbs2irzuEid3Y14v_LprOCrinbC4vh-LrpLNEUK36rJ_-IMaf2jLaDGMWfZ_vXIYAh1tE/s320/Sigiya+Rock.JPG" width="290" /></a></div></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I suppose the best analogy I can find is to suggest that somehow we can know about the pre-historical purposes and meanings beneath the foundations of European Gothic Cathedrals left by Saxons, Celts, or other prehistoric pagans. Certainly hubris is a great destroyer that constantly seeks to erase or co-opt and transform previous realities into the dominant cultural ego of any age; and so we tell each other newly edited stories which, when taken too literally, detract from the impressions in our own blood, bone and sinew—in our hearts and the spirit of our intuitive nature—the simple, but not easy act of listening to the rock out of which the images are shaped; the ground beneath our feet that bore the weight of lives lived in pain, and grief, and hope, and joy, and victory and oppression.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Much of the literature foregrounds the features of the rock as primarily a Therevada Buddhist site in its function. One Buddhist scholar I met on the way up the rock suggested that it was an early Mahayana Buddhist site, which would account for some of the grandeur, in contrast to the greater austerity of early Theravada Buddhism.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Fewer opinions foreground its function as Monarchical; although the paws of a great lion one would have had to pass beneath halfway up the rock is one of the ostentatiously palatial structures favouring the notion of a great kingdom. This is supported by popular local myth that Sigirya was configured as the rock fortress of King Kassapa (477-495 AD) after the patricide of his father, the king of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Anuradhapura</st1:place></st1:city> a little to the north.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">However, there is no ignoring many signs of religious accommodation; consequently the either/or debate doesn’t do a thing for me. I’d much rather read the this <i>and</i> that of all I saw, particularly in view of how the kingdoms of Sri Lanka have been founded on a patronage of Buddhism which, reciprocally, has been used to reinforce imperial power. On the other hand, through the ebb and flow of influence and utility, there may have been times when a largely monastic function superseded its imperial role, and vice versa<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">There are suggestions that the rock was inhabited in pre-historic times, something highly likely given the natural caves, crevices and overhangs that are to be found everywhere over the surface of this magma plug from an extinct volcano; for unless this land was completely uninhabited by human life, it would only be a branch of hominid headed for extinction that could not see the many benefits of dwelling here</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">. </span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Why the civilization fell, whatever its form was, must also remain shrouded in mystery, since the rock at several levels would have been unassailable to sheer military tactics and might</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">After all of this contentious speculation, I became more intrigued by the incredibly beautiful and well preserved murals on the rock face half way up, and inaccessible without the aid of modern steel scaffolding. A stretch of steel walkway along the rock face opens onto a natural courtyard where the great lions paws mark the pathway to the final ascent to the summit. It’s in this courtyard that several signs warn visitors to remain silent to prevent wasp attacks. A large, finely meshed cage is available as a citadel should an attack occur; and they do on average about once per year.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh85uhL508zTHEcR-arTReaV4F9eeT10hFifRs_txgfYO_I044LEVBYA1ggg-tGj9QCgCGCsi4J_2S2m5SnjH9KnYpdLfZ_QFeWScmyKWiQ_cNu4gQka5vkkL6-puF8aU-RUFuh_SEmuFM/s1600/IMG_2361.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh85uhL508zTHEcR-arTReaV4F9eeT10hFifRs_txgfYO_I044LEVBYA1ggg-tGj9QCgCGCsi4J_2S2m5SnjH9KnYpdLfZ_QFeWScmyKWiQ_cNu4gQka5vkkL6-puF8aU-RUFuh_SEmuFM/s320/IMG_2361.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Pressure had been mounting for several years to exterminate the wasps for the safety of the tourists. Conservationists resisted. The locals protested based on their belief that these wasps were the reincarnated army of King Kassapa and that they were here to protect the remains of the kingdom.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Business is business and the extermination lobby won; all the nests were destroyed four or five years ago. The following year a curious thing happened. One of the custodians noticed an infestation of insects beginning to eat away at the beautiful murals that had survived two-thousand years. It didn’t take long for experts to realize that the natural predators of the insects were the wasps that had become such a threat to noisy tourists. King Kassapa’s reincarnated army protecting the old kingdom? Mmmmm! The wasps have now returned and the murals are safe again, as is the peace of Sigirya; and if noisy tourists don’t respect it? Well, you can count on the wasps.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">It’s a lovely little story of equilibrium as a natural principle; and it informs for me the correction of global destruction by unbridled greed—like the money grubbers at the gates of Sigirya—that needs to take place if civilizations are to survive. It seems to me that the revolutionary hordes of the Arab Spring and the Occupy protesters in the West are like the wasps of Sigirya. There has been a persistent effort at exterminating the spirit of the masses, but equilibrium will out. It seems a natural correction.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS_bb1xdZKdPjOsHt5yhBtkik3lXnPd7IFooByXk5zPT3u0m3rVkRIVeR9YmxhXNXfejvmHmQIN0LdEIthHV6VQs7ux3NXca6vaVBR1-LBVlfcghGNtIP4C5Knjw5jiF3NemQujDMykW0/s1600/IMG_2363.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS_bb1xdZKdPjOsHt5yhBtkik3lXnPd7IFooByXk5zPT3u0m3rVkRIVeR9YmxhXNXfejvmHmQIN0LdEIthHV6VQs7ux3NXca6vaVBR1-LBVlfcghGNtIP4C5Knjw5jiF3NemQujDMykW0/s320/IMG_2363.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Could it be that we—the 99%—are a reincarnation of a collective-unconscious, acting as a single organism, like the wasps of Sigirya, that has at last been awakened by the noise and destruction of Capitalists behaving as if they are merely privileged tourists objectifying the globe, rather than being of it? </span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">We are now attending to the simple, but not easy act of listening to the earth out of which images are shaped; the ground beneath our feet that bore the weight of lives lived in pain, and grief, and hope, and joy, and victory and oppression.</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Verdana;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">It’s an interesting thought as we all huddle and then swarm from our hives of activity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Terence Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16080702441874867109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3372586701537073607.post-38890462747862095282011-11-13T15:11:00.000-08:002011-11-13T15:56:30.344-08:00The "Occupy" Movement Before the Rising Tide: "Witnessing"<span style="color: white;">Terence Stone</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 45pt 0pt 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;">The Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement are about social justice; but even before anybody seems ready to call for the specifics of change, we talk, reflect and find periods of stillness. It’s not inertia or lack of specific purpose that characterizes the Movement's activity at this time. <span style="color: red;">The people who have mobilized are, at the same time as they are protesting, doing intuitively what functional cultures have done forever—"witnessing". The unspoken call to “witness”—to witness all we have become so wilfully blind to know—precedes the real rising of the tide.</span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;">What are the edges of injustices we’ve come to observe through a television screen or movie lens like a gunner through a gun-sight? What are the deeper injustices filtered by the media? What does it mean to really go beyond observing and grasp firmly the edges of knowing and hence understanding?<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 45pt 0pt 0cm;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 45pt 0pt 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;">An economist and his investment-banker wife recently argued with me that the last 50 years has been the most peaceful period globally in the entire history of the human race. They both believed it, looking as they choose through the gun-sight of targeted profitability after the bombing is done.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 45pt 0pt 0cm;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 45pt 0pt 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;">It’s not easy—witnessing—when we’re out of the habit. In fact most of us have become downright cowards. I’ve found too often my own inclination to turn away, but decided to take my first lesson from eleven-year-old Avjit Halder who was born into, and raised in, a Calcutta brothel (<i>Born into Brothels, </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">2003). He faces a haunting photograph of a veiled woman and addresses his Western entourage:</span> “This is a good picture. We get a good sense of how these people live; and though there is sadness in it, and though it’s hard to face, we must look at it, because it is truth.” Raised in circumstances that would be difficult for us to imagine, this child, given the opportunity to turn away does exactly the opposite—he turns to face and "witness" what he sees,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“because it is truth”.</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 45pt 0pt 0cm;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 45pt 0pt 0cm;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Arundhati Roy who wrote the masterpiece, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The God of Small Things,</i> shunned the cushy life that fame and fortune could have brought her. Instead, she deliberately rejected it all in favour of agitating for justice in her beloved <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region>. She has fought the abuses of Monsanto, GE, Enron, her own government’s occupation of <st1:place w:st="on">Kashmir</st1:place>, displacement of the indigenous Adivasis and Dalits (untouchables, or “those who are broken”) because it was the right thing to do. The advice she gives in this time of blindness is first of all to ritually <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">witness:</i> “Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget”. (“The End of Imagination”).<o:p></o:p></span></div>Terence Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16080702441874867109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3372586701537073607.post-86806548592970680332011-11-13T13:19:00.000-08:002011-11-13T14:09:46.875-08:00The Killing Tree: A Haunting<span style="color: white;">Terence Stone</span><br />
<br />
I look at trees differently now, ever since Nancy, my wife, and I visited the killing fields of Cambodia. They have a life beyond the visibly statuesque form they take, immobile. Something about each one is diferent. It takes a special kind of attention we all posses to see this, but rarely use. Trees talk; they may even cry; they are custodians of memory.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Ever since our visit to the killing fields of <i>Boeung Choeung Ek </i>("Crow's Feet Pond"), fifteen kilometres to the south of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Phnom Penh</st1:city>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Cambodia</st1:country-region></st1:place>, I've been haunted. In the two months since then I haven’t been able to shake the immanence of the killing tree against which thousands of children were slaughtered. At random moments and in fragments of dreams like shards of bone I find myself with images and thoughts of the children who died there—their last moments: the last thing their eyes saw, or ears heard, a split second before the obliteration of consciousness—and now feel increasingly compelled to know more about the killing tree itself.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV7yI8MIi247nAw5Ig0qtzc0_Di42J7o8gV-dBx4uJgpSV_t7f7lVUl_GTCu8Uq8TCH6C-eiheLuoH0ikzIJ2lmlPVqsJP-O9T52Gx9PCtBHrIk0blBBBE3Fbt1am_KqmqNXw6iz_TvkA/s1600/Baby%252520of%252520mother%252520prisoner%252520with%252520flower%252520left%252520by%252520someone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV7yI8MIi247nAw5Ig0qtzc0_Di42J7o8gV-dBx4uJgpSV_t7f7lVUl_GTCu8Uq8TCH6C-eiheLuoH0ikzIJ2lmlPVqsJP-O9T52Gx9PCtBHrIk0blBBBE3Fbt1am_KqmqNXw6iz_TvkA/s320/Baby%252520of%252520mother%252520prisoner%252520with%252520flower%252520left%252520by%252520someone.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">In peace...</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span lang="EN" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN;">For example, I discovered that the killing tree was called the <i>chankiri </i>tree. At first I understood this to be Khmer for "killing", but could find no translation that would confirm it. Cumulative hours of web searching revealed little else until I came upon a reference to the <i>chankiri</i> tree as a cottonwood tree, common to the tropics. Somewhere else, shockingly, I found that the <i>chankiri</i> tree is also known as “The Tree of Life”. Since accumulating these fragments of information, I continue to search for other references that might confirm or refute my findings, but have found nothing. Why, I thought, has this become such an obsession?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span lang="EN" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN;">More than two thousand children were brought from <i>Tuol Sleng</i> by truck with a parent or parents, to arrive as the last of daylight died in the west. There they were torn from the last pair of arms that would ever cling to protect them and were delivered to their executioner, a young Khmer Rouge soldier, who took each by the legs and formally laughed to demonstrate being devoid of compassion or mercy as he swung the child’s head against the trunk of the tree. I’m sure it was over quickly for most, but if it wasn’t, then the executioner would swing and laugh again until the trembling or convulsing form demonstrated appropriate obedience to this terminal law of <i>Angkor.<o:p></o:p></i></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span lang="EN" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The day we walked the path through <i>Boeung Choeung Ek</i> children were singing in a nearby school. Their sweet voices enchanting the loops and harmonies of a beautiful Khmer melody that drifted over this place of cruelty and death. I had not yet come upon the tree. When I did, I read the sign that children were beaten at the tree, but didn’t take in fully what this meant. What I did feel was a compulsion to lay my hand upon the tree and find some kind of pulse—to feel something witnessed by this tree—the only living thing retaining the memory in some form of what exactly happened to each of the children brought here. My hand inexplicably lingered; something was being communicated and I felt death palpable. Nearby, in lyrical defiance of the past, the children still sang.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span lang="EN" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN;">It was only after stepping away and I read the information sheet that was provided on entry to the site that I understood the grisly details of the method of execution. I was horrified to realize that the very place where I laid my hand would have been the exact place of impact of the children’s heads. Numbly, I tried to take in what had happened in the square metre of ground on which I had stood and to which I now returned. The children still sang golden notes that drifted over the undulating field and through the branches of the trees, and I could neither separate nor put the two experiences together.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxFmQZTrXmV8075XkGomjVEQvSsinmIgvFCSf3sXuPDsXa_sUNHpwbax3qWNeUGYjcYNo2Y8ook9A8KTIyhyphenhyphenrwR-iExkSCVzmmC34juguU9MXZF9-rxdrB6NOnZjNQK8exlFSvtXoPB5E/s1600/Bricks%252520and%252520termite%252520hill%252520look%252520like%252520childrens%252520play%252520at%252520the%252520base%252520of%252520the%252520Killing%252520Tree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxFmQZTrXmV8075XkGomjVEQvSsinmIgvFCSf3sXuPDsXa_sUNHpwbax3qWNeUGYjcYNo2Y8ook9A8KTIyhyphenhyphenrwR-iExkSCVzmmC34juguU9MXZF9-rxdrB6NOnZjNQK8exlFSvtXoPB5E/s320/Bricks%252520and%252520termite%252520hill%252520look%252520like%252520childrens%252520play%252520at%252520the%252520base%252520of%252520the%252520Killing%252520Tree.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">The children have been playing</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span lang="EN" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN;">I stared at the place where my hand had rested, expecting that it would surrender some knowledge, but nothing more came to me. My eyes drifted down to the roots at the right of the tree where six bricks were arranged at right angles to each other against the trunk; a termite hill was forming over them from which a string of prayer beads hung; articles of children’s clothing seemed to be emerging from the soil; a rose had been placed in the arrangement; a drinking straw protruded from one of the soil encrusted bricks; a candy wrapper and various leaves were set around. The bricks reminded me of the torture wing and first cell block of <i>Tuol Sleng.</i> After this initial shock of recognition, I remembered how the Jewish children of <st1:place w:st="on">Auschwitz</st1:place> had drawn butterflies and enchanted forests in order to escape the horror of their fate before they too were slaughtered. I looked down again at the base of the tree and thought, “The children have been playing”; and nearby still the children sang.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span lang="EN" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN;">I now think that all this has since been the measure of my obsession about the tree. I remember the thousands of photographs we’d seen earlier that day of the prisoners at <i>Tuol Sleng.</i> Few of them were of children unless they were sitting beside mothers as they had their mug shots taken, holding name and number in front. In some of the photographs, the children were mere infants in their mothers’ arms. What were missing were their names—all of them denied even basic identity as each truckload of the condemned brought each of these invisible children closer to obscene sacrifice and perhaps some perverse mercy against the trunk of the killing tree—and the children at the nearby school still sang.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnRWnnMMegzozV_c4aWzv5-If3d70BT9O53EwsNchqQCpWyPvyG6hpiF7f6IVEI0r9oVaGSUwoy4ECNJzQ7PQJpj9HZ1CCQ-SPBbGuBRSg7gb8k11igtQwNn1XIZlvR7KIBs4zYrTHX0E/s1600/Mother%252520With%252520Child.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnRWnnMMegzozV_c4aWzv5-If3d70BT9O53EwsNchqQCpWyPvyG6hpiF7f6IVEI0r9oVaGSUwoy4ECNJzQ7PQJpj9HZ1CCQ-SPBbGuBRSg7gb8k11igtQwNn1XIZlvR7KIBs4zYrTHX0E/s320/Mother%252520With%252520Child.jpg" width="201" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Numbered mother with her anonymous baby</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span lang="EN" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN;">At the very least I want to know the names of the children who were broken on this tree. I want to read each name out loud. I want to struggle with the pronunciations and repeat each name exactly as it was uttered by a loving mother who smiled at her infant for the first time she took it to her breast. This has been my obsession—<i>Naming!</i> But because this is impossible, I turn to the killing tree which still stands and holds an essential part of each child in its memory. It is the only thing that can be known: <i>Chankiri</i> tree; family of the great tropical cottonwood; "Tree of Life" that refuses to give up the spirit of each child that was broken against it and whose blood fed the soil in which it stands and grows year after year after year—and where Khmer children nearby still sing hauntingly beautiful melodies.<o:p></o:p></span>Terence Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16080702441874867109noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3372586701537073607.post-6069575367392109072011-11-13T08:10:00.000-08:002011-11-13T10:08:55.575-08:00Tamils: "They Must All Be Punished!"<span style="color: white;">Terence Stone</span><br />
<br />
<br />
In the aftermath of the twenty-seven year civil war in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Sri Lanka</st1:country-region>, Nancy and I had hoped to volunteer with Sri Lankan Tamils of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Jaffna</st1:place></st1:city> in the devastated far north of the country; but the Sri Lankan Government refuses permits for foreigners to visit—it has much to hide. Consequently, we decided to spend time in a largely Tamil town close to tea plantations in the hill country of the south where Tamils still work in serfdom under a framework of rules established by the British 200 years ago. And so we landed in spectacular Haputale and spent close to two weeks getting to know the people and children of a Tamil school at which we volunteered. We were sad to leave, but were enriched in understanding by our experiences, not least of which was on leaving.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">We boarded the bus from Haputale to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Colombo</st1:place></st1:city> early enough so that the six-hour journey would get us in to our guest house with time enough to nap before dinner. Our time in Haputale was one of the most interesting and transformative experiences we've had. Both of us declared that we would need a long time and some physical distance from the town to process it all; so we thought we were free and clear to begin the work once we’d boarded the bus; but then we hadn’t counted on the power of synchronicity to turn up in the guise of an ostensibly sweet older man in whom the experiences of the previous ten days began a process of rapid distillation that left us spinning with the fumes of noxious brew that I can still taste at the back of my throat.<br />
<br />
"Hello! Where you from?" The dapper older man issued the usual greeting with the perennially linked question that most Sri Lankans ask in meeting any English speaking person for the first time. <br />
<br />
The bus pulled away: “<st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region>”, I replied.<br />
<br />
“Ahhh! <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region>”, he beamed a glittering smile that can only be delivered under the sun of this blooming paradise. “Nice country!” He added, with the subtlest shift in emphasis, as if a sliver of tissue paper had been tossed onto one side of the scale of equanimity. “Lots of Tamils there in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Toronto</st1:city></st1:place>”, he noted, still holding his smile behind a wisp of cloud.<br />
<br />
“Yes”, I affirmed, “Lots”.<br />
<br />
The sun broke through the trace of cloud and the dapper man redirected its beams through a magnifying glass, so that his smile became an ugly distortion of courtesy: “<st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New Zealand</st1:place></st1:country-region> is a very good country; so beautiful! A very, very good country! Lots and lots of Sri Lankans there too—Sinhalese! Not many Tamils”, he wagged his head. “So much trouble here in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Sri Lanka</st1:place></st1:country-region>”, he became grave. “The Tamils bring so much trouble”.<br />
<br />
Now I knew his agenda and began the verbal and body-language detachment that signals the end of a conversation; but like an evangelist on a mission, he was blind and deaf to anything but himself and his own opinions.<br />
<br />
We were beginning the long descent of the <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Colombo Road</st1:address></st1:street> from Haputale. He gestured with his hand outstretched, palm upturned toward the magnificent hills where his fingers seemed to reverently caress Lipton’s Seat, that high vantage point from where Sir Henry Lipton would go to capture in a single view all he owned, land and labour; our fellow traveller swept his arm in one great arc that passed over the plantation valleys where insignificant points of colour slaved under the sun along the lush terraces of green--all below the horizon of his limited vision.<br />
<br />
“This is their land too! Beautiful! And they want to destroy it! And we are so good to them!" He looked hurt. "But okay now; fighting is over”, he smiled with a look of victorious satisfaction. He paused, as if to assemble the rank and file of forces in his imagination: “I’m a police officer”, he declared, putting his authority to speak in no doubt. “They must be punished! All of them! There must be discipline!” Toxicity leached from his skin.<br />
<br />
I recalled a conversation I had the previous day with a lovely Tamil man of great intellect and capacity for empathy. Although I don’t have many men friends because of too many betrayals, this was one man, I thought, in whose hands I would joyfully place myself in the full trust of friendship. He talked with great restraint about the daily plight of the Tamils who work the plantations: rudimentary housing; low wages; impaired earnings during the dry season; the hopelessness that pervades the community; and the structures of authority that holds it all together—the Tamil <i>Kagani,</i> or field boss, who is hired out of his own hopelessness into a position of betrayal, to strut and threaten with his presence, and sometimes his violence, workers that are not producing to his satisfaction. I met the man’s aunt, a tea picker, who showed me her lacerated and calloused hands; she permitted me to touch them and I was moved. The Tamil man who would be my friend does not believe in violence.<br />
<br />
“They must all be punished!”<br />
<br />
<st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Nancy</st1:place></st1:city> had moved to a more comfortable seat behind the driver. I excused myself from conversation with the officer, gesturing to my hearing aids and the roar of the engine from under the engine cowling that separated us, on the fore and aft bench-seat, from the driver. The officer sat against the windshield—we might say in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region> that he was riding shotgun—a position of power. I swung across the aisle to sit beside <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Nancy</st1:place></st1:city> just as she let out a yell of surprise at a sprawling, irregular line of about two hundred Sinhalese soldiers doubling (running) up the long, daunting hill in full uniform under the tropical sun, and carrying rifles in any manner that would relieve the agony of their terrible ordeal.<br />
<br />
“Punishment!” The police officer exclaimed dispassionately.<br />
<br />
We watched them all as they struggled, faces twisted in Dantesque agonies as they were cajoled and berated by their tormenters dressed in cooler running gear. Further down the hill, some stragglers appeared ready to keel over, but were tormented all the more by their senior officers. Collective punishment for the transgression by a minority is a perverse strategy of team building within the military that also works in acts of brutal repression of one’s “enemies”.</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
The young Sinhalese soldiers were still struggling up the hill and I wondered if any of them really knew why they were being punished, or even had the capacity at this stage of their indoctrination to delve into places of ethical introspection. How would the rage of this injustice and other training injustices become so deeply embodied, along with the immense physical strength that comes out of training, and then be directed by superior officers against others--the "enemy", whoever they might be--in mindless acts of further brutality. I thought of the police officer nearby still impassively watching the soldiers.<br />
<br />
I knew he was still thinking, “They must all be punished!”<br />
<br />
After going to see a number of schools in and around Haputale, <span style="color: red;">I recalled a horrible scene just a few days before our departure, in which several teenage Tamil boys dressed all in white were being beaten by an enraged male teacher who towered over them. He had snatched a thick stick from a tree and was indiscriminately beating the boys about their arms, legs and bodies as they stood—dissociated--too scared to run. Other children, from 6-18 years, and women teachers looked on in obvious horror. Other images followed: Pakistani police with their lathis beating people at political rallies; Indian police with their lathis beating slum dwellers and beggars; English police beating people with their batons at political protests; American police with their nightsticks in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Seattle</st1:place></st1:city>. The pain and humiliation of the Tamil boys' beatings continued. I looked across at our friendly police officer.</span><br />
<span style="color: red;"><br />
</span><span style="color: red;">“They must all be punished!”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">I remembered a poster on a Sri Lankan bus I'd seen a couple of weeks earlier. It advertised, “Stop Child Abuse!” Below the caption were a police hotline phone number and a helpline number for offenders. There had been persistent efforts to tear away the poster from the edges, which had partially defaced the phone numbers and the ability of using this poster to make a successful call. At first I thought that parents, incensed that anyone would assume the right to tell them how to raise their children, were probably responsible for the defacement; and then I saw the teacher with his stick tucked under his arm, furtively picking away at the poster; our friendly police officer stepped in to help, concentrating on getting his fingernails under the edge of the police hotline phone number. I looked across at him, but he was only staring with steely eyes at everything that offends.</span><br />
<span style="color: red;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">Constantly he thought, “They must all be punished”</span><br />
<br />
At the halfway point in our journey, the bus stopped in a small town for refreshment and a toilet break. When I returned from the toilet, <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Nancy</st1:place></st1:city> reported that the police officer had had ranted at her about Tamils. Repetition really. There was a lot of hubbub, so it gave Nancy and I a chance to talk. She told me that the bus had stopped at the <i>kovil</i> (Hindu temple) on the way out of Haputale (I hadn’t noticed). The conductor had quickly entered the <i>kovil</i> and returned with a quantity of holy ash with which both he and the driver had marked their foreheads and cleansed their hands for the journey. The driver used some to cleanse the steering wheel and the sun visor. Clearly they were both Tamils. Now I understood that all of the police officer’s venomous racism was being spoken openly in front of them as if they did not exist, for surely he knew they were Tamils.<br />
<br />
Several Tamil beggars entered the bus with their own sad stories in order to earn a few rupees while at the station. He dismissed them in Sinhalese or Tamil--I’m not sure--and they shuffled on. <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Nancy</st1:place></st1:city> returned with some food for our lunch; and until everyone could get organized, she sat beside the officer.<br />
<br />
“You have beggars in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region>?” He asked her.<br />
<br />
“No”, <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Nancy</st1:place></st1:city> replied. Our officer wagged his head and smiled his approval.<br />
<br />
Perceiving that this friendly officer was once again trying to make a political and moral point, I hurriedly interjected rather more forcefully than I would usually have done in disagreeing with Nancy publicly, but I now wanted this officer to say what was on his mind so that I could engage him directly..<br />
<br />
“—Yes we do! We have lots of beggars—everywhere: downtown in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Calgary</st1:place></st1:city>; and <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Bloor Street</st1:address></st1:street> is full of beggars!<br />
<br />
“I only meant that the begging was not as aggressive as here”, <st1:city w:st="on">Nancy</st1:city> protested; but the officer had found his cause; any conversation between <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Nancy</st1:place></st1:city> and I was now irrelevant.<br />
<br />
“What city is that!” The office exclaimed with his assumption fixed.<br />
<br />
“<st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Toronto</st1:place></st1:city>”, I replied.<br />
<br />
“Ahhhh!” Declared the officer, his eyebrows lifted, his eyes widened, and his mouth opened, gaping like a striking snake with a cavernous smile of supreme triumph as he leaned forward and wagged his forefinger in my face, convinced once and for all that he had found his Tamils on the streets of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Toronto</st1:place></st1:city>.<br />
<br />
“Yes!” I continued, “And they’re all white people”, I told a small white lie. “What’s more, the only reason they’re begging is because there is too much wealth at the top with ineffective systems for redistribution to those who are most vulnerable at the bottom”, I emphatically declared.<br />
<br />
The officer was confused and slumped back into his seat with jaw set beneath tightly pursed lips that creased the sides of his chin. His eyes became dull, his brow furrowed. Defeated for now, he coiled up, unconvinced; but remained ready to strike at some future fragment of evidence that would confirm his venomous views that even after the war there is a sinister attitude amongst many Sinhalese that all Tamils must be punished.</div>Terence Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16080702441874867109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3372586701537073607.post-79344534460383349252011-11-10T21:07:00.000-08:002011-11-13T08:27:51.580-08:00The End Of "Occupation": The People's Assembly of Victoria<span style="color: white;">Terence Stone</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">Language freights power. Once raised to awareness, it’s obvious to most people how we use language conventionally and unconsciously, often in ways that oppresses people in the hierarchical nexus of social relationships--cultural, political and economic. The Peoples Assembly of Victoria has been sensitive to how this works in renaming itself from the colonial and martial term, “Occupy” <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Victoria</st1:place></st1:state>. By doing this, unconscious facets of dominant attitudes are shifted, both personal and collective, that influence how progress is made through “peace and building” rather than “battle and ownership”.</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">To use some recent examples: I don’t want to be semantically associated in any movement with the overt, brutal occupation of Iraq by the British-American axis, the occupation of Afghanistan by a broad coalition of nations, or the occupation of Palestine by Israel; I don’t want to be associated with the myriad economic occupations that brought us together across all the imposed divisions between us to call for social justice. And yet the term “Occupy” stubbornly occupies the way we talk amongst ourselves or document our activities. We do ourselves a disservice and play into the hands of those who would destroy our movement in a “counter-offensive” by a continued use of the word “Occupy”.</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">Our first community consciousness of how inappropriate the term “Occupy” was came by way of a recognizing the displacement of indigenous peoples from the very place—Centennial Square—where we stood together in solidarity to begin dismantling the systems of occupation that are oppressing and destroying the Earth and her Children.</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">On November 7, an article appeared on the home page of the People’s Assembly of Victoria website titled, “Statement of Intent and Action for Decolonizing Victoria & Memorandum of solidarity and support with Indigenous peoples”. It was centrally concerned with the word “Occupy” as the residue of colonialism. The following day, November 8, an article appeared immediately <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">above</i> (I couldn’t help but note this curious accident of position) the “Statement of Intent…” titled “Declaration of Re-mobilization” (note “re-mobilization” as another martial term). In the second line of the text, “Occupy” is used twice. We might be excused for naming “Occupy Wall Street”, but it was tautological and an unnecessary reiteration of the very colonial attitudes embedded in language we are attempting to purge to have written “People’s Assembly of Victoria (Occupy Victoria)”. Now I add my confession, I find myself using “Occupy <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Victoria</st1:place></st1:state>” every day in conversation. I always correct myself, but it is insidious and persistent in the “occupation” of my mind. I’m working at it, as I believe we all must, for reasons beyond those already mentioned.</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">One of the problems is that I don’t believe that PAOV serves our purpose in the notion of the “movement” we’ve become and need to enhance as our settled days in <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Centennial Square</st1:address></st1:street> become numbered. The People’s Assembly is a functional and elegant notional term of solidarity in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">relationship</i> for purposes of discussion, decision-making, socializing, and fundamental change in oppressive institutions, along with a host of related roles; but it cannot convey the idea of spatial presence that the word “Occupy” imperiously provided, and I think this is the main reason we are constantly defaulting to use of the word.</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">Going forward, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">taking up space as a right</i> is going to be essential to our movement. Unfortunately, the English language is terribly impoverished in ways of talking about doing this without using terms that convey notions of ownership, property, invasion, domination, exclusion, and so on. Why? Because for its entire history the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">UK</st1:place></st1:country-region> and its imperial offspring have been preoccupied with wars with others and a class system that is psychologically embedded in its history and its people. By contrast, I suspect the indigenous peoples of the places we occupy could never have thought in such terms before colonization. If anything it was the other way around—the indigenous people belonged to the land and were <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">of it</i> in unity.</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">Unfortunately, we are left to muddle our way through all this using primarily English (or other Euro-centred languages) for articulating a nascent paradigm of being in the world that fully embodies social and environmental justice. I’m sure there are many ways we might progress with all this in mind, but to get the ball rolling I’d like to offer a humble suggestion. The proposed “Flash Occupations” could be called “flash actions”. The notion of occupying space could be replaced with the term “holding space”, a notion that has many powerful connotations: it asserts the right of being there; it does not convey invasion, occupation, or ownership; it carries a connotation of care and nurturing; but it firmly asserts a dignified strength. I began by saying that language freights power, but I believe we must find ways of using this power <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">with</i> others, rather than the colonial notion of power <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">over</i> others.</div>Terence Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16080702441874867109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3372586701537073607.post-31196678265042236272011-11-09T22:44:00.000-08:002011-11-13T09:09:17.642-08:00Murder Inc.: The Chemistry Of Death<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="color: white;">Terence Stone</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">As the Peoples Assembly Of Victoria gains confidence and leverage, despite the chess game the City of Victoria plays with the complicity of mainstream media to undermine it all, I’ve thought much about my own narratives in the larger story unfolding.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">I declare myself a well-educated senior citizen who has led a relatively privileged life. I’m a counsellor by profession, but began my working career serving ten years in the British military, mostly overseas. We would receive week-old newspapers from the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">UK</st1:place></st1:country-region> with reports of our military involvement during a decade of withdrawal from colonies too difficult to hold. The reports were all white, grey, or black propaganda—lies by any standard of truth-telling. We were in fact ensuring that dictatorships we could rely on to perpetuate British interest were installed and capable of taking control of colonial systems of power that were changed in name only by the proxy despots who would reap personal benefits as colonial middle-men.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Over the past year I returned to one of the regions in which I served. With my spouse we backpacked and volunteered around <st1:country-region w:st="on">India</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Sri Lanka</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Cambodia</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Thailand</st1:place></st1:country-region>. The devastating wreckage of colonialism is still apparent; an imperial tsunami is swamping entire cultures and ecosystems under the beneficent guise of Globalization, driven by the supercharged engine of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">laissez faire</i> Capitalism. The Emperor has but changed into more lavish attire.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Oddly it was in Dharamsala that <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Bhopal</st1:place></st1:city> returned to haunt me. We met an American couple who belong to The Friends of Bhopal; one of them gave me a book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It was fiveminutes after midnight in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Bhopal</st1:city></st1:place></i>, and it brought back the horrifying images and dreams I’ve had since that terrible December in 1984. Union Carbide’s pesticide plant failed and released clouds of methyl isocyanate into the surrounding slum communities and killed at least 3000 children, women and men—killed them even as they fled blindly from their beds at five minutes after midnight, only to fall—eyes burning and lungs froth-corrupted—in writhing agony and contorted deaths.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;">All those deaths were murders. The management of Union Carbide back in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">USA</st1:place></st1:country-region> gloated over the money they’d saved by cutbacks in safety, ignoring repeated warnings of imminent catastrophe. A manager at the plant wrote, hopelessly, a week before the disaster that they were all going to die. Nobody has ever been punished for the crime and 50,000 people still suffer debilitating health problems. What small settlements that were grudgingly made have been whittled down by each person in the feeding chain taking their cut. We met in Dharamsala a young Indian man born just a week before the tragedy in an uncontaminated area of Bhopal who told us that he has an uncle in that city who does business buying and selling the settlements at enormous accumulated profit because they take so long to process, while the survivors desperately need what little money there is remaining right now as a means of simple survival. Dow Chemical eventually ended up buying the still unsafe plant and is one of the major producers of pesticides in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region> today, along with Monsanto.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><st1:country-region w:st="on"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;">India</span></st1:country-region><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> is now, after the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>, the largest producer of pesticides and herbicides in the world. Cheap labour and lax safety standards make it an ideal destination country for outsourcing the horrors of chemical accidents that kill people and destroy the environment. It’s been a boon to Monsanto pushing its Roundup-ready rice crops onto contract farmers--now serfs to industrialized agriculture. So disastrous has this project been that the four or five genetically modified rice varieties that Monsanto introduced to displace the one thousand varieties previously used in sustainable, high-yield farming for over a thousand years have become vulnerable to pesticide resistant infestations. The contract farmers, debt-buried with annual purchases of Monsanto single-season seed, commit suicide by the preferred method of drinking the pesticides foisted on them by Monsanto, Dow Chemical, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">et al.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Conservatively, 150,000 farmers have committed suicide in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region> in the past ten years. One farmer commits suicide every 30 minutes. Without social safety nets, who knows what the statistics of death and abject poverty is for the survivors?<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The legacy of Monsanto and Dow Chemical is still evident in the wounded soul of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cambodia</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Monsanto manufactured Agent Orange, the dioxin-laden defoliant that destroyed millions of acres of forest and rice paddy in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Laos</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cambodia</st1:place></st1:country-region>. 46,000,000 litres were sprayed, willfully poisoning millions of people. The carcinogenic and mutagenic properties of the chemical have had multi-generational effects—prolific birth defects continuing primarily in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:country-region>, but also in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cambodia</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Monsanto made a killing, so to speak, and knew the effects of the chemical even as it ramped up production and raked in the profits.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Dow Chemical’s contribution to genocide was and still is Napalm, a gelatinous gasoline that sticks to bodies of victims and burns them alive. 400,000 tons were dropped during the Vietnam War; <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cambodia</st1:place></st1:country-region> was merely a collaterally damage neighbourhood. “Profit without conscience” could be the motto of Dow Chemical, since it currently manufactures Napalm “B”, the cargo of the incendiary Mark 77 bomb, one weapon of mass destruction used throughout Iraq, particularly in Fallujah where many children were burned alive into merciful death, or left horribly maimed.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Here Monsanto and Dow Chemical get a moment’s reprieve as I make mention of the 62,000,000 tons of conventional, high-explosive ordnance dropped by the US Government during the Vietnam War, 300 pounds of bombs for every man, woman and child in Indo-China (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia). Cambodia took a particularly nasty pasting in the American secret bombing campaign called Operation Menu, beginning with Operation Breakfast—called so because Nixon, Kissinger and Haldeman conceived the campaign over breakfast following Church one Sunday morning—an appetite enhancer for them no doubt, or perhaps a gift—grotesque manna dropped from the American God in Heaven to feed and bleed the innocents of Cambodian villages. I know (I hear them now) millions of children screamed, froze in terror, or died with their final thought of family or friends left unspoken.</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Verdana;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Haldeman's wrote in his diary (March, 17, 1969): <span style="color: red;">"Historic day. K[issinger]'s 'Operation Breakfast' finally came off at 2.00 PM ... K[issinger] really excited, as was P[resident]”. <span style="color: black;">Haldeman’s entry for the following day:</span> "K[issinger]'s 'Operation Breakfast' a great success. He came beaming in with the report, very productive."</span></span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">It was Cambodians—children, women, men</span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;">—</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">crawling, traumatized, out of craters from the American bombing that fed the murderous machine that came to be known as Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. In four short years, they managed to slaughter 25% of the Cambodian population. The trick</span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;">—</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">the cynical slight of hand executed by the USA</span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;">—</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">was to have bracketed off and set aside this four year period of genocide-as societal-suicide to stand as the “official” history of Cambodian conflict.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">You see, the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">USA</st1:place></st1:country-region>, in an act of perverse revenge, manipulated support of the Khmer Rouge’s bid, as the government in exile, for the Cambodian seat at the United Nations and then supplied them with arms to continue civil (guerrilla) war after the Vietnamese liberated the country in 1975. When it eventually came to negotiations at the United Nations how crimes against humanity would be defined for redress and “Justice”, the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">USA</st1:place></st1:country-region> forced agreement that no crimes against the Cambodian people prior to 1975 would be recognized, or prosecuted. The US Government was off the hook. What has disappeared from the public record is the 10% of the Cambodian population murdered by the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region> just prior to the birth of the Khmer Rouge, that monstrous child of a <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region></st1:place> imperial rape.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">One of the policies of the Khmer Rouge was to destroy ownership of any kind. Consequently, all title deeds belonging to everyone, including villagers and small farms—perhaps single paddies</span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;">—were burned. Now, under the Capitalist dictatorship of Hun Sen who says, “no title deed, no claim”, fishermen are being removed from ancestral coastline so that Russian Oligarchs can build luxury hotels; peasants and whole village are the victims of mass displacements for Chinese and Western Multinationals to clear-cut forests and mine the earth wherever they will. Industrial agriculture is moving in with Dow Chemical and Monsanto, amongst others, salivating over yet another catastrophe to exploit.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;">At this time of the year, let’s honour the White Poppy for Peace and in Remembrance of the 6 million murdered by US Imperialist/Corporatist ambitions in Indo-China, and the millions that have died since as a result of genetic mutations and unexploded munitions that blow people to pieces every single day in the region. Then as now the narrative of violence and greed continues; but the peasants and displaced of <st1:country-region w:st="on">India</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Cambodia</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Laos</st1:place></st1:country-region>—all across the Globe are fighting back. We have no other ethical choice but to fully witness their history, their suffering and their strength in struggle as we stand in solidarity with them wherever they live.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Terence Stonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16080702441874867109noreply@blogger.com0