More on Palin, from Eric Patton’s ZSpace Page:

“what should radicals do about the nomination of Palin?  The same thing we should have been doing all along:  addressing the institutional structure of society, pointing out that better people on top of barbarous institutions won’t make barbarous institutions that much less barbarous.  Yes, as Noam Chomsky says, small differences between major players in the U.S. can result in large differences in outcomes outside the U.S., because of the overwhelming power of the U.S. in world affairs. [4]  Those differences do matter.

But it’s the system that’s rotten, and it’s the system that must be changed.  Democrats are war criminals too.  Perhaps in the short term, a less-vile war criminal is preferable to a more-vile war criminal.  But they’re all war criminals, because the system demands that whoever sits atop it be a war criminal.  If you had cancer and the doctor gave you morphine, that would be okay.  However, if you had cancer and the doctor kept giving you morphine, without ever treating the underlying cancer … well, you don’t need to have an IQ larger than your shoe size to draw the appropriate conclusion.”

I arrived in North Carolina (to visit my family) at the same time as Obama was speech-ing at the Democratic National Convention.   All this talk of “change” without any substance to that change.  Change because of the promise of potential change, and not the promise of change.

And then came Hurricane/Tropical Storm Gustav - which blessed this country (the U.S.) by shortening the Republic National Convention.

Anyway, for months my friends have heard me state time and time again that I won’t possibly vote for Obama. I’ll stay home and not vote. I’ll vote third party (if third party is on the ballot) but won’t give my vote to the Zionist, hypocrtical, economically-right-wing politician whose only consistent issue has been himself.

Then McCain came along and brought with him Alaskan Governor Palin.

Brilliant.

Now, I am voting for Obama. Damn.

Why? Not so much the right-wing nature of Palin, and her disgusting anti-abortion stance, but her environmental record — her record of destroying the environment.

Drill more oil. Drill oil in the Alaskan wildlife.

“the woman who could soon be a 72-year-old’s heartbeat away from the United States presidency has an environmental policy so toxic it would make the incumbent, George Bush, blush. …

Many oil companies abandoned Alaska when prices fell in the 1980s but they have been rushing back to drill and prospect areas that are among the least hospitable on earth. That spirit of the Klondike is already in full swing in Prudhoe Bay the epicentre of oil production and one of the world’s largest industrial complexes. It’s so big that BP, UPS and FedEx operate a special fleet of jets from Anchorage just to service to the region.

Hundreds of spills involving tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil and other petroleum products occur in the area each year. Decades-old spills are still a problem and 17,000 acres of wildlife and marine habitat have already been destroyed.

But Prudhoe is just a tiny fraction of the area being targeted by Governor Palin and the oil companies. A similar fate of environmental destruction awaits the entire coastal plain as well as the special areas of the western Arctic – home to migratory caribou herds, musk oxen, wolverines, grizzly and polar bears should a McCain-Palin administration be elected.

The oil boom has attracted oilmen from across America. One of them is Todd Palin, husband to the vice-presidential candidate who works for BP on Alaska’s North Slope.

It is illegal to hunt polar bears, and that is not about to change. But in an area known as “Polar Bear Seas”, from Point Hope on Alaska’s far western edge to the pristine coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, one tenth of the world’s polar bear population is at risk, as well as beluga and bowheaded whales and bearded and spotted seals.”

So, the choice in NC (where third parties have difficulty getting on the ballot) is between Obama and McCain. The main difference between those two is one who is not-good on the environment and one who is terrible on the environment.

What a democracy!

amidst the significant and quite painful humans-oppressing-other-humans struggles we face, we need to remember: our world is changing. and quite drastically so. and potentially quite dangerously so.

yes. climate change. (not the only environmental problem, by the way).

Starting tomorrow “A six-day international symposium on climate change and food security in South Asia will begin in Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka”

and today, there is a powerful entry in a blog: “Without positive, permanent action taken RIGHT NOW, the latest estimates say we have 8 years and 4 months before climate change has reached an unstoppable point of build-up”. That’s 100 months.

I have an additional personal challenge, now — how to teach climate change next semester without encouraging my students to get on Prozac.

… most notably nonviolent resistance. No resistance is allowed.

“After months of preparation, the Free Gaza Movement’s perilous relief mission is under way. But I am not with them, despite the fact that I am the only Palestinian-born organiser involved. Last week, my immediate family, who still live in the West Bank, were attacked and terrorised, and I also received numerous anonymous death threats. My family were warned that I must leave the project, and that I must not contact the media. This psychological terrorism now forces me to make a public protest. Though I am no longer on board, I will not leave this mission, even as potential confrontation with the Israeli military looms closer.”

eyes to the south

not the south of Lebanon that has been the source of pride and inspiration for decades.

not south of Lebanon (occupied Palestine) that has been struggling relentlessly for decades upon decades - and, has been not remembered enough

but further south.

to South America. to Bolivia.  Where there is a harsh struggle for justice, for liberty, for dignity, for self-determination, where the majority are calling for respect and the minority are wanting to hold on to their control.

“‘There are two Bolivias now,’ said Damian Caguara, a pro-Morales member of a popular assembly. ‘The Bolivia of the traditional, conservative, right- wing governments and the peasant one, the poor one, the indigenous one that has been in a state of submission for years. The latter is the one that is now running the political scene and this is provoking a harsh reaction from the bosses that cannot stand their servants, the Indians, to be ruling. For them, this is simply humiliating.’”

my darling adorable friend (yes, marcy) has been nagging me for days that I haven’t blogged on the site for a long time, although i have much to say.

so, marcy love, this is for you.

a collection of tidbits.

this morning, someone told me “they have their reasons.  they have their reasons to be racist.”  we were talking about the lebanese army and the narh el bared palestinian refugee camp.  specifically, we were talking about the incident when the lebanese army opened fire on an unarmed protest. Two palestinian men were killed.

So, they have their reasons to be racist.

Well, I replied, the Israelis have their reasons for commiting genocide against the Palestinians. Hitler had his reasons for the mass murder he committed against Jews, Gays, Communists, and Gypsies.  Everyone has reasons for everything they do. That doesn’t mean their reasons are justified.  We can seek to understand racism but not to justify - and definitely not to forgive it, most especially when it is committed by an authority figure.

so, that was this morning.

this afternoon, i come across this article:  “Colin Chartres, director general of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) said the causes of water scarcity are essentially identical to those of the food crisis. “There are serious and extremely worrying factors that indicate that water supplies are close to exhaustion in some countries,” he said. He pointed out that current estimates indicate the world will not have enough water to feed itself in 40 years time, “by when the current food crisis may turn into a perpetual crisis.” ”

Further down in the article, there is this additional powerful tidbit:  “the World Bank needs to stop making water privatisation a condition for their loans”.

Yes: after having it proven, time and time again, that privatization of water drives up water prices and causes increased suffering on the poor and only works - at best - if there is a strong government - and, damn, if there is a strong government, then why the hell privatize to begin with, after having proven all this, the World Bank continues - in the name of alleviating poverty (yes, orwellian once again) to continue to push for privatization of the one resource that we literally need to survive.

But there is more.

Then there is this article, for anyone out there who still things that Obama has one redeeming feature - now that he’s proven himself to be a Zionist (see his VP, if still in doubt) and proven himself to support warfare (keep the US troops in Iraq, just decrease their number a little bit, and then increase the number of troops in Afghanistan, another occupation that murders civilians and steals resources), hell, maybe he is good on the environment, maybe he is not so bad on internal US economic policies. Well - check this out: “Barack Obama has made sure to put biofuels at the front and center of his economic proposals, and has a history of backing laws favorable to agribusiness.“

Favorable to agribusiness. not the farmer.

supporting biofuel - which is one of the main reasons for the food crisis and an additional projected contributor to climate change.

perfect.

but, wait, there must be good news, right?

yes.

there is.

Free Speech Radio News investigated the outcome of the recent Bolivian recall election that included not
just president Evo Morales, but the governors who called for Morales’ recall. Guess what.  Two of those governors are out and Evo Morales got 10% more backing than the record 54% he got when he was elected.

Look South for hope.

Look inward for hope.

Look to Gaza and the rest of occupied Palestine for hope. How? They still live. Despite it all, they still live.

Speaking of the great Mahmoud Darwish, Hanan Ashrawi said, “”He started out as a poet of resistance and then he became a poet of conscience.”

What is the difference, ya Hanan?

Resisting occupation, resisting oppression, resisting injustice — that is what a poet of conscience does, that is what anyone struggling to hold on to his/her conscience does!

Why present an implication that resistance, if violent, is therefore not of one’s conscience?

–

on another note, it is not surprising that the BBC article presented Darwish without one word on the occupation or oppression suffered by Palestinians at the hands (and guns and bullets and bombs) of the Israelis. only mention of Palestinian-to-Palestinian fighting.

The word spreads.  Person after person in the cafe hears the same news and spreads it.

Immediately, it becomes the sad greeting.

Mahmoud Darwish has died.

So many of the greats have gone…

Being held in a “segregation box” - a box that could be as small as 6 feet by 3 feet by 3 feet, in other words, a box the height of an tall man — for up to 12 hours by an illegal occupying army (US) in your own country (Iraq) — this, the US military, refers to as ‘humane treatment‘

Why?

Because you have been deemed to be “violent” - deemed so by an illegal, criminal, trigger-happy, occupying army that you - as an Iraqi - have every right, according to international law, to resist and to resist violently.

i just returned from shatilla refugee camp where i had seen ‘slingshot hip hop‘ - a documentary by jackie salloum on palestinian hip hop music.

walking into the film, i hadn’t been all that excited about the showing - since i don’t like hip hop music.

by the end of the film, i was quite grateful that i had gone (thank you marcy). slingshot hip hop is, without doubt, one of the best documentaries on Palestine, if not the very best, that i have seen.

this film took jackie salloum 4.5 years to make - and the 85 minute film was derived from more than 700 hours of footage.  It was definitely time well invested.

the documentary brilliantly and visually portrays the apartheid facing palestinians - be it in ‘48 land (’israel’) or in the occupied territories of gaza and the west bank.  the animation of the seige of gaza is powerful. the stories told, how we get to know the main figures in the documentary and see how they reach out to each other, and how they suffer at the hands of the torturous israeli regime. the aching similarities in Lydd, in ‘48, and occupied territories, how Lydd looks and feels like ghettos and looks and feels like a refugee camp. (and it made it all so much more powerful that we were watching the film while in a refugee camp ourselves.)

and the film does so more.  it connects the oppression of palestinians throughout the land with the oppression of other minorities elsewhere, particularly the african-american struggles and other peoples-of-colors in the united states.

a truly powerful, inspiring, moving, heart-breaking film.

see a trailer from the film -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rdS8zNp3ow