Jazz: Transgender Children & Gender Independence

This post was inspired by a special kid named Mazzy, whom I had the great fortune to have as a kindergarten student last year. Mazzy was born a girl but rejects all things "female" . Our teaching team gave Mazzy all the love, support and nurturing we could. The family appeared unwilling to talk about Mazzy's situation but they allowed her to dress the way she wishes, thankfully.

It was a tricky slope with some of the teachers on my team feeling like we should maintain Mazzy's gender as female; for school intents and purposes. I spoke with Mazzy once where she told me she knew she was a girl but did not want to be a girl. I said that I knew she wanted to be a boy and that it was ok for her to feel that way. With the family not opening up about the situation, we maintained Mazzy's gender pronoun as "she" and assigned her to the girls' bathroom. All in all, this beautiful, brilliant child adjusted remarkably well to it all. I'm still learning what the variations for children are when early gender and sex role identification begins. It's hard to tell if Mazzy ashews typically "girl" activities because she does not fit the socially defined stereotype (gender independent) or if she is a small transgender person who is really male.

I worry about Mazzy. And I'm resentful that our school psychologist is so useless that he doesn't recognize the importance of having a serious conversation with Mazzy's family about how to handle her wanting to be the person that she was truly meant to be. Good counseling could help Mazzy define her feelings and help the adults in her life to help her. Bad counseling could do a world of harm. And there is plenty of the latter around.

I think the first video is a great example of how this sensitive topic should be handled. The second, features a little girl named Jazz who speaks for herself.

Our teaching team was basically told that we can't broach the subject unless the family does first. I think this is tragic. Notice the percentage of suicides of"non-gender normative" people. We're not sure if Mazzy will be returning to our school in the fall. If she goes somewhere else, I'm hoping it will be a school system with a sensitive, insightful psychologist who can help Mazzy and her family prepare for her nurturing over the course of her childhood and young adulthood.

I struggled with what pronoun to use to describe Mazzy in this post. At first, I started with "he", because I believed strongly that Mazzy is transgender. But then I had a chat with my daughter, who is a college student majoring in Gender Studies. She told me that without really knowing what's going on with Mazzy because so few people are willing to discuss this issue with her or her family, that it's hard to tell what's going on. Clearly she is not fitting the social norm for what it means to be a girl. But she could be okay with being a girl (she's never really objected to using the girl's bathroom; but she also never corrects other kids and adults when they assume she is a boy). Or she could simply be truly unhappy with society's definition of what it means to be a girl.









Further Resources:
Transgender Children Face Unique Challenges

Understanding Transgender Children

Transkids Purple Rainbow Foundation

Family Pride's Blog

One of these things...

...is not like the others.


(Click on the photos to enlarge.)

Rick Davis...Try this...

Britney, Paris and Barack (Faux News Headline) ...

“Barack Obama is the biggest celebrity in the world, comparable to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton,” Rick Davis, Sen. John McCain’s campaign manager, wrote in an e-mail addressed to interested parties after throwing out a similar line on a conference call with reporters....

Sure, Rick. The only miniscule difference between the three is that one is set to make history, and the other two... well... aren't.



















Mr. Davis, if you're going to compare anyone to the likes of Paris and Britney, here's your man...

and he's ruining history!

Learning Curve

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.
__Kahlil Gibran

summertime

as my inlaws are here this week- i am reposting from my archives- namaste- b

as i drove home after dropping hubby off with a buddy for a night of frivolity (aka having a beer or two downtown), i started smelling summer. it's funny how very much memory is made up of smells- but i am very in tune with odors so i guess that's why many of my memories are triggered by smells. freshly mowed yards; fragrant flowers; the heat rising up off the asphalt into the night air- and the sounds of crickets. in the morning, it's birds- but in the evening- crickets. and for a moment, in spite of myself, i enjoyed the moment.

reality has an ugly way of creeping into life's lovely moments- and it brings me around to what i am trying to teach myself- the four noble truths. which, of course, led me around to the dalai lama's visit here in the states:

"Things are not black and white. Things are relative. Things are interdependent. When we look at a situation we have to consider all the factors. ... "You cannot look in one direction. In order to see reality, (you) have to see in three or four or seven dimensions" and that this applies in the economical field, political field and international relations."

which of course led me to al gore's speech and on and on....



which was only part of this post. we are all interconnected. and i think many are feeling this but not realizing it. i believe it is why bush still has a 28% approval rating and congress a 9%. most of the people of america listen to what al gore has to say- and they watch the ice melt and the oceans die- and they see the prices at the pump-- and they know it's wrong; terribly wrong. but they don't know what to do.

i recently read the terrific book 'creating true peace' by thich nhat hanh (thanks to bz at intrepid flame for turning me on to that) and it is a simple book with a simple message- peace starts within. we have to be the change we seek. engaged buddhism is simply that- engaging with fellow human beings regardless of politics, race, religion, etc. on a basic human level. yeah. there's always a catch :) he told me in the book- that i cannot isolate myself but must engage with the community at large- because we are all interdependent on each other as part of the human species. yep. no divisions as human beings. that's tough for me. he explains it's tough for westerners because of our culture of division and exclusion. so, i am living in the moment. life is in a state of flux and life is suffering. but we can overcome that and work together in peace to make the planet a better place for everyone. not just the haves.

not exactly the divisive message that the hard right christians and jews are preaching as they seek to divide and conquer the middle east. and there's no hidden agenda like getting to heaven because life doesn't really end. and that makes sense to me because i know matter doesn't die. and that's comforting to me as face my parents' mortality and the end of my country as i knew it. life constantly changes- nothing is permanent and much of our suffering comes from our attachment to things- whether they be ideas, people, material stuff, power, etc. the attachment to my mom is a tough one. but she, herself, has told my sister and i that we must let her go when she goes as she will be at peace.

so, the smells and sounds and textures of summer brought many thoughts to my mind.

i know i haven't given up on politics per se. i don't believe that we can afford to at this time in history. i just can't approach it in the same way anymore. i don't believe in the system. i don't believe in this current world government nor america's. i don't believe in any of the candidates for president and i cannot justify voting for someone i don't believe has the right view for the direction our country needs to head in. as barack obama heads for the center- he is already too far away from it. he needed to stand up for democracy and for changing the way we do things in america. would he have won? i can't say but i can say that i won't vote for him. i can't. he is just as much a part of the system as hillary clinton and just as disinterested in changing the status quo. al gore forcefully spoke about change. it has to happen. it will happen whether we like it or not. i just wish america would have led the way.

letting go and opening up are concepts that do not come easily for me but i need to find inner peace. i need to find a better way. and i think this buddha guy has something here. :)

Catastrophempire or They*the*Wealthy

Playing Progressive Hardball

Below is a link to an article I posted on Smirking Chimp.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/16135

Comments are welcome.

Vincent Bugliosi Testifies

Die, Warmonger! Die!

Warmonger - war·mon·ger - /ˈwɔrˌmʌŋgər, -ˌmɒŋ-/ – noun
a person who advocates, endorses, or tries to precipitate war.
[Origin: 1580–90; war¹ + monger]
~
~
CAUTION: This video contains a very simplistic and dreadful message.
(If you consider patriotism to be a virtue then you should have no problem with its meaning.)

The group is "Dope"...but this isn't about a band’s name. The song is "Die Motherfucker Die" ...but this isn’t about the title of this particular song. It’s about the fact that so many, following 9-11 and prior to Afghanistan and into the occupation of Iraq, have used this song as a template for expressing their rage and fear and sorrow. It is also this template that screams "vengeance" and "revenge" toward a phantom enemy. If these citizens could, would but reflect on the meaning behind such, they might see that they are projecting an image of themselves more than of some phantasmal adversary.

The fact that so many, not a majority to be sure, but so many found and find nothing wrong with taking a simplistic song with a dreadful message and applying it to video of the war in Afghanistan and/or the occupation of Iraq and its peoples destruction is precisely what I and many of my blogging and non-blogging friends are fighting against; a blind love or devotion (patriotism, nationalism) to country
that leads to nothing but more blindness and overwhelming rage
that cannot and will not dissipate until
every last drum of oil has been stolen,
every brown skinned person is dead or maimed,
every Muslim is bowed to empire and Christianity,
and every flag replaced with Old Glory!

That is not an attainable goal. Completely unachievable, and yet it is the very goal that the US government is proving it wants and that an uninformed public can’t see for a lack of reasoning skills, gluttony and complacency. This, the objective, is the end-game, the final stand or it surely will be if we continue down the witless path of vengeance and conquering of the world. We will pay an exceedingly heavy price and will likely not be around to even know it.

The video above is most sad, despicable, and most unworthy of praise. It is the rot that has swept over this country more since 9-11 than at any other time in our history. Kill. Kill. Kill. If we do not stop saying, "Die motherfucker die" and dropping bombs and firing guns and slaughtering for oil we will soon find ourselves at the short end of a colossal, all-inclusive stick…
~
~
With that I offer an ode to our need to use Dope's "Die Motherfucker Die" or any other senseless song or rant as anthem for the United States of America's marching music for the theft of godforsaken oil from relatively defenseless countries or as anthem for our ruthless and mighty vengeance of a day that trembles on our streets and collapses upon our hearts, but will never and can never be avenged or righted. This rage, this vengeance has become us… and we it.

DIE, WARMONGER! DIE!

The ghouls have all gone home.
Hell… They were never here.
It was your own expression
Floating within your fear,
Your own miserable manifestation.

Die, warmonger! Die!
Thrash no more your hell’s plague!
Die your death away,
Annihilate your starvation
And feed your joy instead.

The apparition is not unfamiliar,
It is your face, your own
Hovering in the skies.
O! Bring your wrath down
And eradicate the lies!

Die, warmonger! Die!
Thrash no more your hell’s plague.
Die your death away, die!
Bring your finishing breath down
And crack large the sky.

© 2008 mrp/tpm

John Prine: Souvenirs

Saturday Sonata X, with LT.

One of the great, sweet John Prine songs, and a great version here, from some TV show, apparently, circa 1980.

All the snow has turned to water,
Christmas days have come and gone.
Broken toys and faded colours are all that's left to linger on.
I hate graveyards and old oawn shops,
For they always bring me tears.
I can't forgive the way they robbed me of my childhood souvenirs.

Memories, they can't be boughten.
They can't be won at carnivals for free.
Well it took me years to get those souvenirs,
And i don't know how they slipped away from me.

Broken hearts and dirty windows
Make life difficult to see.
That's why last night and this morning
Always look the same to me.
And I hate reading old love letters
For they always bring me tears.
I can't forget the way they robbed me,
Of my sweetheart's souvenirs.

Memories they can't be boughten,
They can't be won at carnivals for free.
Well it took me years to get those souvenirs
And i don't know how they slipped away from me.

More Than Words.....

This blog has been focusing on many things recently, different writers have been focusing on damage, turmoil, history and influences of WHY and How things are broken on so many levels. Dark Daughta last night brought up about seeking definitions of different aspect of our language. But it left me thinking it is not so simple as "Language", not if our souls and hearts are defining those words differently, not if we are experiencing these times in America differently. And I also think someone living somewhere else and looking in from the outside sees this part of American History so differently.

I have friends in the UK, Spain, Asia and Japan and Down Under, and I realize that we end up having this talk very often. It is not even about "patriotism", or "citizens", those words are merely letters on a page, they do not have "Meaning" for me as an American at this point. Many of those very Words have been propandized or pandered or ever whored onto a confused people. When one lives somewhere that is grossly damaged and contorted and distorted, and Broken on ALL levels, and People and their Needs and Lives have become trampled and Invisible,suddenly words are just feathers floating in the wind after the storm has smashed the most beautiful bird to the ground.

It would be an impossible task to look at "WORDS"...Like asking 1946 Germans ," So did the 1930's feel Patriotic ?"... When maybe Someone should have asked 'How Did Your Country Break??? " " What was it like to watch a Dictator Rise and squeeze the life and soul out of your country?" What was it like to watch Military Mentality perpetrate the era of War and Fear Mongering?" Those questions would have gotten answers and maybe pain and tears and and maybe even Spiritual Awakening.If those questions were asked Now in America, I can tell you there are Answers and Tears to those questions....and Angst and Rage...but not real "words"...not yet.Because Everything that Many Knew and Loved is Not Here anymore.Lost People don't give directions well, or explain things well, that is the way of it.

I think about the 1930's and WWII and I read about Holocaust and WWII Survivors and What they went through, and that is where I look for answers about Now. Because Somehow those people found the courage to try to repair what was Broken around them and within them. Because over the past six years pieces of us have been broken,shattered and misplaced. During WWII In France the Underground Resistance had a Spiritual Side, it was made up of people that wanted to fight back, but not in violence, but in Peace. They left beautiful grafetti on buildings that was full of Hope and even compassion.They believed that if they fed people's Souls they could give Strength and spread Courage. They did what they could , providing Refuge, hiding All KInds and Jews, and helping print and distribute the Underground Newspapers and Messeges. Many were Ministers and priests, and some were just spiritually driven. The Nazi's called all that Assisted with the Resistance "Insurgents" and "Terrorists", it was haunting realizing how Much of the Language is So Similiar,merely recycled Hate Mongering.

Much of this Information about the Underground Resistance has been removed from the Internet, and that saddens me, as this is a Beautiful Brave Part of History for the French and for us.I know that people in other parts of the World KNOW that we all are NOT War Mongers, and that we are NOT All seeking Power and Corruption. I think part of Why I write about my porch , or my Soup, or my animals, or my son, or my long-gone grandmother is so that I make certain that in the Midst of this Hellish Regime Our Humanity is not lost or trampled(more). And yes, I share my own pieces of Bush Regime Tale, and not all are pretty, but they are My Story of surviving an Evil Regime. They are small in the face of it, but I have to have Hope that One Voice matters, and that Many Voices are Powerful and Strong, and Growing....and that Those Words that Feed Souls do Matter and somehow keep Some Souls Connected.

Earlier this year a Canadian friend said that they are praying we "Get THIS Election right".. I too am praying , praying that we don't let another election be hijacked like the last TWO. And that we as a People can stand against these Criminals, because the Whole World is watching....and depending on it. And a small band of Criminals has turned OUR Country Upside Down,and harmed millions and caused too much death and pain, and made many lose Sight of WHO and What they are and WHAT matters. We are having a Spiritual Crisis,a Humanity Crisis not just a Political Crisis....it is so Much More than Words. It is Dangerous and Dark....It is being lost in a Cave, led there by a Madman and handed a pack of wet matches and a broken candle....It is true that people in a Dark Cave Pray....and somehow those prayers are so much more than Words.
*******************************************
I am praying for the Strength to Return.
I am praying that Souls Connect.
I am praying that People look inside themselves.
I am praying that the Next Generations do not have to carry on with This Burden.
I am praying for the Power of Collective Conscience.
I am praying for an End to This Regime.
I am praying that we have the Courage to do what we need to do.
I am praying for Peace for all, Iraq and Here.
I am praying that the World can Forgive us.......somehow.
I am praying for ALL of us, that We The People get OUR Country Back....
I am praying that this Never happens again...


"Hope begins in the Dark, the stubborn Hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the Dawn will come." ~Anne Lamott
***************************************************
This song is not just about love....it is about Saving Something Deeper, Something More.... Even when feeling small and broken.....and getting to the Morning and the Light..Duran Duran "Saving A Prayer".

And finally...

I really love this song...

I'd like to propose a list of definitions...

Would anyone be interested in (co)drafting a list of commonly used words?

It's often assumed that we, as lefties, all share the same definitions of the english words we use here on this blog. I think it might be useful for us to actually discuss the different ways words can be defined so as to promote more understanding and conversation on The Peace Tree.

Not sure what everyone else thinks about this. But I'd like to offer this very short list of possibilities which are ones ones I'm seeing used often.

"citizen"
"patriotism"
"our"
"we"
"country"
"peace"
"national"
"security"
"war"
"truth"
"soldiers"

these next ones were proposed by betmo:
"freedom"
"democracy"
"evil"
"righteous"
"worthy"

and I'll also add:
"occupation"

Note to self: watch and listen...

Edger posted this video from the Real News Network over at OOIBC...

For us wimmin, the politics of war are also end up being the politics of patriarchal sexual domination...

The story is from No Mercy which is a collection of fairly fierce and intense short stories by Pat (Now Patrick) (Rice-) Califia.

Funny, I think the gulf war was going on when this was written. On the earth/world where this story takes place the war had been going for quite some time. Some of the laws instituted by the government sound like things that could become an eventuality if the imperialist campaigns continue due to the nasty capitalist machinations of amerikkka and in other european (descended) western nations around the world.

The story's name is "Dolly". Dolly is the name of an android who is to be wired as a sex slave for an amerikkkan soldier who has returned from a future war in...you guessed it - The Middle East.

For me the story illustrates why it is so crucial for any anti-war movement to have an analysis of patriarchy, patriarchal privilege, patriarchal relations. War = rape, forced childbirth (for more soldiers), compulsory heterosexuality (to make sure wimmin are adequately coerced into having relationships with men so as to have more children who can grow up to be soldiers)...
There's more. I could go on. But you see where I'm headed...

Anyhoo...
These are some excerpts that I hope give a feel for the story's context...

Wasn't that what the President General said when he announced that women who'd been arrested under the Wartime Security Act would serve out their sentences in army brothels overseas? "These traitors will redeem themselves by safeguarding the virtue of patriotic American women and the sanctity of the American family." Suddenly Ro felt sorry for Dolly. She knew androids had no feelings, but she'd heard people say the same stupid shit about cats and dogs. Damned if they didn't. This...creature...was going to be programmed to respond to how she was treated. She would certainly look as if she were experiencing emotions like love, happiness, sorrow, or fear. And she would behave as if she felt pleasure or pain, heat and cold, pressure and tastes and sound.

Women couldn't stick together, huh? Couldn't protect one another? Ro nodded to herself. Right now, Dolly was just about the only female companionship she had. It was sort of like having a little sister. And you couldn't send your little sister out into the real world unprepared to deal with all its wickedness. Whistling her own tune now, Ro started rattling the keys. As she worked, she giggled from time to time. The programmers on either side of her, who had probably both been in uniform just six weeks ago, didn't notice her any more than they had noticed Pete's imitation of a dog licking his own balls. They had let their military haircuts grow out without bothering to trim them into a facsimile of civilian fashion. One of them had a scar that ran all the way around the top of his skull. The other walked funny, carrying his head sideways, tucked in toward his left shoulder. Ro didn't even want to think about what had happened to them while they were bringing democracy and Christianity to the oil fields of the Middle East.

---------

Charlene had been laid off from her job at the shipyard as soon as word came down that her husband had been discharged and was on his way home. They called it mandatory marital leave. It was supposed to be a benefit, so employers deducted money out of your check to cover it. Once the six months was up, you were supposed to be able to apply for your old job, but Charlene knew her welding days were over. Being able to get your hair done during the day was no compensation. After being responsible for mending holes bigger than she was in battleships, spending all day doing the dishes sure felt foolish.


---------

Unlike a lot of her friends, she hadn't conceived during their honeymoon. Maybe that was the problem. Peoplesaid having a baby helped you stay connected to your husband, kept the magic in the marriage. Every now and then she had gotten form letters from the army offering to send her doctor frozen "reproductive materials"t even if Jason wasn'y able to be with her. She knew it was important to keep the population level up.

--------------
It still made her feel guilty, remembering how awkward her reunion with Jason had been. She knew she was supposed to be excited and happy, and treat him like a hero. But the deeply tanned, heavily muscled, angry man who came out of the airport gate was not the boy she remembered. Jason had made her laugh. He had been a great dancer. He wasn't much on the football team. but he had a nice body, and he was kind.

--------------

The truth was, he scared her. He was too rough, and tense all the time, even when he came, as if he were holding in somethin awful that would kill him (and her) if it escaped. He could not sleep the night through without waking up in a sweat, screaming. But he never wanted to talk about it. He rushed through the act of sex as if it were an ordeal, and he would not look her in the eye or kiss her.

--------------

If she could, she would divorce Jason and move to another city, make a fresh start. Leave the West Coast behind and take the bus back to Atlanta. There had to be jobs for women like her someplace else. They couldn't be laying everyone off. She had skills, she had experience. But under the Military Morale Act, the same one that had created mandatory marital leave, it was illegal to divorce someone who had served in the armed forces. The President General needed his men to know that while they were serving their country, everything at home was safe and sound.

I really wish I lived nearby...

* * * please forward widely * * *

COMMUNICATIONS COORDINATOR
School of the Americas Watch is hiring a Communications Coordinator to be based in Washington, DC. The position is full-time with health benefits, paid vacation and holiday time. Salary is competitive, and there are opportunities for skills development.

COORDINATE MEDIA CAMPAIGN - 25%

Develop a proactive media campaign Update and maintain a database of Spanish- and English-language media outlets and reporters Monitor news and respond to stories with an SOA/ WHINSEC connection Send out news releases; host press conferences; develop messaging strategies Pitch stories to mainstream and alternative, national and international, English and Spanish media Field media inquiries and interview requests by either handling them or directing them to others as appropriate(including photos, background info, etc) Provide media skills training sessions and resources for grassroots activists and assist grassroots activists in developing local media plans Coordinate a volunteer media working group to assist with events and other ongoing media work Facilitate the operations of a media office for each major event Communicate relevant news info to research point person
GRASSROOTS COMMUNICATION & EDUCATION - 45%

Compose and send out mass emails to grassroots base Maintain and update website
COORDINATE TRANSLATION & INTERPRETATION - 10%

Coordinate volunteer translation and interpretation working group(s) Coordinate translation of documents Serve as staff point person for interpretation for each major event (Re)Organize, maintain and update Spanish sections of website Coordinate translation of website
ADMINISTRATIVE TASKS- 20%

Provide staff support for major events throughout the year Respond to ongoing telephone, mail and e-mail inquiries Maintain listservs Help to fill requests for speakers from grassroots organizers
Requirements: Ability to work independently and with a team in a collective organizational model. Strong oral and written communication skills. Some experience working with the media. Spanish fluency. Familiarity with HTML and web work.

People of color, women, differently-abled people and LGBT persons are strongly encouraged to apply. Strong preference for Spanish-speaking candidate. Knowledge of the School of the Americas issue and familiarity with layout design and Photoshop and Pagemaker a plus.

How to apply: Please send a resume, a writing sample of no more than 600 words, a cover letter explaining what qualities you would bring to this job and three references to Eric Le Compte at elecompte@soaw.org. Email or call 202-234-3440 with questions.

SOA Watch is a nonviolent grassroots movement that works to stand in solidarity with the people of Latin America, to close the SOA/WHINSEC and to change oppressive U.S. foreign policy that places like the School of the Americas represent. We are grateful to our sisters and brothers throughout Latin America for their inspiration and the invitation to join them in their struggle for economic and social justice.

Another difficult gift...

I originally posted this on OTBM.

As I continue to invite myself and others to break down words such as "citizen", "patriotism", "our", "country", "national", "security", "war"...that's all I can think of right now...
As I encourage myself and others to critically deconstruct the language used to discuss imperialist oil wars, invasions and occupations, I thought that maybe something in this post might come in handy. Cheers.

I was thinking about the flowers I mentioned having given to Ilyria in my last post. Thinking about the fact that those flowers could have been farmed by mexicans or some other brown people denied citizenship - screeched to a halt...

Switch "citizenship" with "settler-ship", settlership - the privilege of becoming a settler on stolen northern lands...
the privilege of becoming part of a stratified labour force designed to support systems of domination that support the ongoing colonization of the land and its peoples, Native people, the privilege of --

Shmolee is frustrated at having fallen...his cries are diverting my attention...he's actually fine, just a little bit pissed...Mr. Snotty Nose. :) Okay, I have him. now, he's doing his usual - tha breast thang.

Settlership...
I'm not a citizen. I'm a settler. A settler who, regardless of whether I'm "landed" (hee, hee, hee...interesting word) or whether I have the paper that says I'm a citizen, I have settlership by virtue of squatting here along with everybody else, even those who squat and are defined as squatting "illegally", "aliens". We're all aliens, except for Native people.

When people try to "get in", when they try to find ways to be allowed to become citizens, they're actually lobbying for settlership.

Settlership...
I was saying to myself that it's not like this is somewhere like ancient Athens...but then I had to stop myself - didn't they, like have a permanent slave class a person couldn't dig themselves out of? Wasn't citizenship and all its perks only accorded to adult Athenian males and through them only indirectly to the wimmin, youth and children in good standing who were parts of an adult male's patriarchal family?

Okay, so citizenship, as it is traced from those times right through to the West/North in present day has always been for a few, always about oppression, with the privileges offered to a few completely predicated on those same privileges not being offered at all, or only being offered sparingly to many, many others.

I think with kkkanada and amerikkka, states actually not being founded on ancestral lands as was the case with Athens, Sparta or even Rome...of course these people's were all imperialist colonizers who also spread out in a really martial, virulent, oppressive version of present day urban sprawl, absorbing the lands and peoples around them in order to access more resources, power and land for settlement reserved for citizens...

kkkanada and amerikkka are states founded on the ancestral lands of other peoples, ancestral lands stolen in a situation quite like that up above where the colonizers came greedy with a mind to dominate, where they did not want to share, only wanting to reserve the right to take everything, every single resource and redistribute it in the form of "settlership" - automatic for those born white to the families of the original genocidal colonizing people (that would be those people/bloggers who habitually say stuff like: "I know I'm white, but what can I do?" or "I know I'm white but that doesn't make me a racist!")...

Settlership is also conferred sparingly to those born while sporting various shades of brown and black, whose labour is purchased at whatever ridiculously low rate (economic and class exploitation) in exchange for their full support of the settler state not for full settler rights, but only for whatever the state deems fit to offer to any given individual or grouping of people who might have to lobby, protest or rebel before accessing even a modicum of the unconditional settlership some are born into...(freed african slaves can have this, south asian indentured workers can have that, chinese rail workers can have this, black caribbean domestics can have that, mexican migrants can have this, filipino nannies can have that...).

Native people, obviously not settlers, cannot be anything but a serious and ever present threat to the validity and power of the racially and economically stratified, settler state...they can only be cast as trouble makers who must be maligned and undermined at every possible juncture.

Other black and brown people who crave even partial settlership will know not to ally with them, will know to stay away from them, shun them, forget them, or to only pay lip service to their causes. We (and I mean that there's a "me" in that "we") will choose not to support their land rights because supporting their land rights would be a clear subversion of the possibility of us constructing colonized crazy ass selves as having even a partial right to their lands, which in turn would undermine the power of the state to confer full or partial settlership on any/all of us who really just want a to have little settler babies, get high paying settler jobs, buy into the illusion of purchasing some real estate (un/settled land) and a build or decorate our little settler homesteads (houses) which stand directly over the bones of millions of dead people...while folks wring their hands over whose front yard has the most fucking curb appeal.

Okay, he's squirming a lot today. I'll have to come back and read this to see if it makes any sense...later.

This is for me...for us...

This was a post I wrote over on my blog.

It's about my relationship to The (stolen) Lands which other people refer to as "Canada" and "America"...

This piece has grown...
It's still really raw and messy...
It's still morphing as I develop my ideas further. I'm struggling with language I'm not accustomed to utilizing. I'm struggling with analysis I'm not accustomed to aiming at me. So, if you're reading now. Keep going right to the end. Afterwards, you might want to start again or return in a few hours, or days or weeks, because this is a set of ideas and explorations in tha makin. I write and delete and insert and read. Then I go away and talk and think and chew and gag and ache and return to write again, inserting more ideas and questions. As a result, this piece is growing as I do.

A set of cascading realizations
In tha gut...
roiling, gurgling.
Do you listen to your stomach?
I do.
This is difficult...
hee, hee, hee...
exciting, a new set of realizations and interrelationships to process and explore and gnash my teeth about.

I've got to document an email exchange I had with a Native woman who lives here in Toronto. She had been trying to make contact with me about talking, processing emotions using a radical anti-oppression framework.

Life, as indicated from the various postings here on this blog, has been chaotic, crazed, unintelligible, horrific too much of the time for me to be able to see or think clearly enough to support someone else's self-uncovering.

So, I didn't return calls, emails, or when I did I was non-committal.

Intentional community woes behind me, blogland skirmishes where I sustained way too much idiot friendly fire, baby labour behind me, recuperation well on the way and my own counsellor getting a solid, thick earful every week...

I engaged, connected fully present and ready to offer life support.

Still, when we finally began communicating I realized I was annoyed and felt as if she wasn't getting me and how I am located as a Black, caribbean born, woman.
I had flashbacks to other conversations, terse conversations with Native women I'd met over the years. I remembered feeling defensive, indignant, misunderstood as if they couldn't possibly want to lump me in with white colonizers and immigrants from other parts of the world...as if they couldn't actually be trying to say: none of you should be here, so get tha fuck off our land.

READ THE FULL POST +/-

Thinking about immigration as a misnomer from where I, caribbean born into the western hemisphere via the horrors of the middle passage, stand, I regrounded comfortably in a refusal to understand myself as "landed" or as "immigrant". Since, to my mind my people's had been forced to occupy space in the west for hundreds of years. Coming to kkkanada was just a shift of neighbourhood from the islands off the coast to the mainland.

Thinking about shade, lightness, white-skinnedness and darkness, I grounded in a consciouness which allowed me to see the ease of misdirected and/or projected rage originating from behind light skins readily smeared on those inhabiting dark skins, those understood because of their location as accessible, easy targets.

I really tried hard to stay with the familiar, the place I've been sitting all these years.

I talked/wrote about the Middle Passage and said that Black people didn't come to Turtle Island voluntarily that we were forced, dragged, stolen.
Our relationship to the land, this land started there. Others who came later, whether they were enticed by faulty adverts or running from persecution, ironically enough seeking "safety" from harm, only to be fuk'd over, head taxed, coolied, deported or workfared into submission by white people's racism, came willingly.

Black people, I asserted and maintained, were different.

And fucking hell, we are. More than I had been willing to see.

Did I say this is difficult? I'm excited...and scared. Shivers.
I am human, able and willing to ignore certain hard harsh truths if they're not sitting right under my nose. Denial.
I am human. So, this woman's presence with spirit, truth, self-knowing and clear conscious sight has galvanized me, drawn me, invited me, forced me off the edge of yet another flat earth. Her stating of a very simple truth: It's not possible to cry out against the Israeli occupation of Palestine or against the US invasion of iraq without reckoning with the invasion and occupation of this place. These thoughts send me bungee jumping again...I don't know where or when I'll be able to land...

Shifting...shifting...my mouth feels dry and my heart's skipping beats.

Feeling uncomfortable I'm hearing this woman's pain, heeding her truths, listening to an invitation direct from my spirit to feel my way through, deeper, deeper. I hear a word she uses, so foreign to my tongue. I use "colonizer" meaning a white person not me. She uses "settler" which I understand encompasses the white people, people of colour on this land and...me?

I couldn't stay with that thought for very long at first.

But my ethics, a sense of what makes sense so defined by the writings I've had the privilege of reading and understanding not just as academic, theoretical, political frameworks, intellectual exercises divorced from reality, but filters through which to see and templates from which to craft tools which can be used to build consciousness of my own location and privilege, guided me true and brought me back.

Power, privilege and oppression, a new blend, tha, tha, tha remix.
Here I go again.

I remember going there little by little at first...
Writing her that Black peoples living in the Americas had made some really limited choices, to say the least. We hadn't allied with First Nations peoples across the board, but only in pockets here and there. And yes, I know there are pockets of Black folks all over the place with Native DNA and Native people with African DNA. That still doesn't quite get to the root of what's happening for me.

This is what I know:
Malcolm travelled across the Atlantic to Mecca and connected with Muslims and Pan Africanists. He didn't stay at "home" to seek counsel from Native elders and join his struggles by any means necessary to theirs.

Martin read from the "good" book, he didn't ground his pacifist dream for a brighter Black settler future on the struggles for this bloodied and captive land so rocked by genocide...maybe he would have realized he needed to fight not turn the other cheek and die.

To call these historical moments epic mistakes or major lapses in critical vision may sound dangerous, like a capital offense to some. But from where I'm at this admission just isn't enough. It sounds really weak, somehow. These moments have been pivotal, diverting the path of Black people's histories and herstories, forever. Forever linking us not to the land, but to the land theft agendas of the white Settler Colonizer here in the Americas.

Sure, immediately following "emancipation" some left for Africa. Liberia...my partner's mother, a Black feminist historian, adds Sierra Leone to my picture.

But so many remained. And those who remained had choice. They made decisions. They/we did not collectively ally with the custodians of the land and collectively attempt to link our political agendas with theirs. We did not collectively request permission to be here any longer than necessary to collect our things and go. We did not ask permission to take up permanent residence from the original and true custodians of the land.

Stockholm Syndrome in overdrive we internalized the settler colonial attitude that gave us a sense of entitlement, a sense of ownership based on underpaid work for bible thumping white supremacist colonizers still hell bent on theft and murder.

In that historical watershed moment, brutally, psychologically, emotionally, physically abused, torn, raped, infantilized, dominated, ethical centers so far off kilter, our moralities and world views substituted with that of our abusers, our colonizers, we stretched out trembling needy, covetous hands, reached for power, legitimacy and survival means all derived from the proceeds of stolen land.

And ever since then we've focussed on struggling self-centeredly against white folks for a better share of the land, for better treatment on the land while working with them, alongside them, helping them to imprison the land and its peoples through the apartheid system of bondage South African whites learned from Canada.

We kept tha peace to get a piece. Allying behind the scenes with our oppressors to further their colonial settlement project built and financed on our broken backs. Supporting their plans to dominate and then parcel out the land, we lent a hand.

Our complaints were that we didn't get enough respect as fellow settlers, that they should stop tormenting us and killing us Black Settlers and that they really shouldn't be raping Black Settler women. We complained that we didn't get enough land to settle, that we got land full of rock stones, never the "good" parts of the land. After all, we just wanted to work the land alongside them and their Settler families without any trouble. We just wanted to settle down and take care of our own Black Colonized Settler families.

Sometimes we hit the "jackpot". In the West Indies, the Haitians warred over half the (is)land and "won" the land. In Barbados, where I was born, we were "civilized" (historically crushed, made an example of by the British who wanted a completely controlled island without the uprisings plaguing other colonies that they could point out as proof that the slavocracy worked). More British than the British (to this day still taking pride in this) we waited peacefully until we were granted the right to govern the (is)land, legitimized by our betters - the imperialist, colonizing white royal family.

Some of us actually define ourselves, understand ourselves as "indigenous", originally coming from the land. I spoke to my sister years ago about our elementary school education in Barbados. We both agreed that we'd been left with the distinct impression as children that Black people had always been on the island, that we were originally from the (is)land.

Part of the problem with this self-naming is the utter avoidance of the memory of enslavement and an avoidance of our Africanness. Black Africans who live in the caribbean are indigenous to somewhere. We did spring up from the soil of a land...just not in the Caribbean. Those islands are Native land, too.

There is rage about being left in limbo, I think, on the part of us descendants of enslaved Africans. The continentals often make fun of us. They sometimes understand us as cash cows blindly seeking fetishistic objects that will help us feel more like we belong with them, a l'il something, a piece of carefully worn cloth, a wall hanging, a carving, a mask, an ashanti chair, anything to help pacify the pain of separation, profound dislocation. I've heard us described time and time again as lost and fucked up cousins, descendants of slaves...not directly related to any continental...unless the link is of strategic importance.

Knowing that the shoddy records kept during slave times mean that many of us, most of us cannot supply such precise information, I've seen continentals snicker about us saying: "You're from Africa?...Africa's a continent. Which part are you from? Which exact location on the continent?" The agenda? To show that we don't fully belong, no tribal linkage, no family to directly claim. Just a messy dna soup with nowhere to call "home".

But really, given the petroleum wars (Oil companies in Nigeria causing civil strife), the blood diamond wars (engagement ring people aren't really in the business of love, afterall), the cell phone mineral wars (coltan mining companies creating strife to divide and conquer thereby keeping mineral prices low and profits high), the genocides perpetrated with arms purchased from all too willing euro-descended providers, the AIDS crisis the West created, the poverty, corruption, the neglect, the starvation all evidence of meddling by imperialist Colonizer states (former or present colonial powers) and corporations, Africa's wealth continues to be syphoned away. So much of it goes to Settlers of all races here in North America, increasing the quality of life for so many of us Colonized Settlers...
Given all this there is no mass exodus of Black people wanting to vacate these occupied settlements and go "home". Yeah, for a vacation maybe, to look for spouses/friends/allies/hazy tribal links, to attend conferences, to go to the festivities and ceremonies unfolding around Project Joseph.

But not many, myself included, want to actually give up perfectly useful Settler status here to really go "home" to stay.

We tell ourselves we've set down roots here, struggled against white settlers, struggled against the odds to grow our gardens here. White Settlers forcibly transplanted us here and now we claim the rotted roots sucking sustenance from these lands as necessry to our continued survival.

And we've been fighting the White Settlers on that point ever since. Here in kkkanada they question the false land claims of us Colonized Settlers so as to assert their dominance. They ask: "But where are you really from?" In response, fearful of being seen as the dispossessed, we cling tightly to the lie of our claim to this place and demand validation and recognition from those who originated the lies.

So, we're in this "new world" and if we don't understand ourselves as linked directly to the land by ancestry, by "rights", then we really are nothing, we really are the dispossessed. And none of us want to claim limbo as "home". We behave as if the fact that we don't want to wander as traumatized scatterlings anymore, justifies us supporting and perpetrating settlement projects in the Americas. We were forced to work, to suffer, to scream, to cry out. For that we have a right to rest, even if our resting place is in someone else's bed.

We want to finally belong somewhere.

Me? I'm linked tuh me. I belong tuh me. I come from my ancestors by blood right and no matter how I behave, how rude I get, how much I fuck up the tidy little stories my peoples tell to themselves, to each other and to me, no one can take away my roots. NO one can nay say who I am and from whence I come. That's what I've got to keep me warm as I continue to do this work. I understand that my genes are a jambalaya, a mix up, a stew. These cells hail from a lot of places...just...not...here.

Another piece of the Black "indigenous" misnomer is about an avoidance of the knowledge of the peoples who originally occupied those islands, some of whom are still there. Black Africans living in the diaspora have prided themselves on the creations of "new world" musics - jazz, blues, r&b, funk, house, hip-hop, soca, calypso, reggae, dance hall. We've prided ourselves on maintaining links between Africa and our present locations as evidenced through a multitude of creoles and dialects. We've synthesized traditional African dress, art forms, cooking and the list goes on. We've created cultures that have traveled and morphed...which is a beautiful thing.

We've re-created ourselves post emancipation, fresh, new and more human and smelling of the salt sea breeze. We celebrate for a whole month, every year, our histories and herstories of collective self re-creation and "politicized" revolution. Of course another way to understand Black History Month is by pulling the veil off the uplifting story and acknowledging the not-so-beautiful tale of how Black people moved from human chattle on up the ranks to low level settler class. We, myself included, celebrate mostly without stopping to take stock of where this transformation has occurred, who benefited or whose suffering has continued unchanged and unchecked.

We throw giant Diasporic Settler cultural festivals (Carnival or Caribana, anyone?) in different parts of the Americas trumpeting our reslient, persistent presence here for all to hear. Colonized Settler revelers parade in costumes that to my eyes could easily resemble the fancy dance dress of some Native peoples.

We party and revel and remember struggles for our own civil rights while legitimizing falsified land claims that have allowed us to ignore our ethically and morally bankrupt status as Colonized Settlers in the Americas.

Why, in Toronto, folks even complained about having the big Colonized Settler Carnival removed from the downtown core to the lakeshore lands south of the city proper.
Now...
Keep in mind WE weren't taken out of our homes, moved to the lakeshore lands and forbidden to travel or to identify ourselves as ourselves if we left those places without the permission of Settler government officials.

Feel free to ground in the reality that OUR CHILDREN weren't taken away from us, moved to the lakeshore lands there to be subjected to a state sanctioned, massively traumatizing, abusive and brutal (mis)education, christian religious, brainwashing program from which they and their descendants would never fully recover.

Nope...
Our big, once a year, tourist money making, weekend fete, party, jump up, booze fest, meat market, jam up ram up, cultural celebration, opiate of Colonized Settler masses, was moved to the lakeshore lands.

No disrespect or erasure of police stalkings of Black Colonized Settler youth during this city's Colonized Settler carnival festivities or at any other time of the year for that matter. No denial of taxis passing Black men by or police killings and strip searches. And no, I don't forget how we came to be here in the first place. I'm just trying to add some new layers as I broaden my own perspectives and adjust the focus of my political picture.

Still, can you just picture in your mind's eye:
Colonized Settlers party, drink, eat, ritual/performance rut and honour links to Middle Passage ancestors while jumping up on soil that is ancient, bloodied, in bondage and still at war?

These are big parties even the white Settler Colonizers come to when they want to forget themselves and the horror they've birthed onto the land. These are comfortable places for all of us to go when we just want to have a good time.

Our carnival songs, our freedom songs, our redemption songs, our songs of revolution do not reflect who we've become in this place - Settlers. Our politics of resistance, with very few exceptions, does not reflect the knowledge of our history of collusion and participation in an atrocity spanning a few hundred years. Our cultures serve a dual function: support our continued existence and resistance while perpetuating the erasure and domination of Native peoples who don't exist tangibly in our new settler stories, songs and other expressions of consciousness. The settler agenda is reified. Native people just don't exist. And if they don't fully exist, then we don't have to ground in our Colonized Settler realities.

I'm thinking about the nationalism of the denizens of the caribbean islands and about the DNA of Native people still flowing through some of our veins. I'm thinking about Black people and Asian people and Arab people and South Asian people working, buying, owning and governing native lands.

I'm thinking about South Africa during the era of (official) apartheid. The category of coloured was invented, literally brought into being as a space reserved for mixed race people, South Asians and Asians who didn't have to be lumped in with the roiling masses of Black African people. Although they weren't going to be able to access the privilege of the white colonizers, they were offered some perks and privileges. In this way most willingly chose to function as a collective human buffer, a middle class existing between the dangerous darkies and the lily pure and powerfull whites. Many defended that settler project because defending it meant maintaining the access they enjoyed.

I'm thinking about Black Nova Scotians, about the Black people in southern Ontario...
I'm thinking about African- "Canadians" and African-"Americans" who proudly claim a place in the bosom of these apartheid states through what Black South African professor, writer, poet, philosopher Dr. Rozena Maart calls hyphenating their identities, linking themselves to state-sanctioned horror by name.

Our focus, whether it has been to struggle for better treatment or to be seen as fully human (meaning as good as white) or demanding more say or better wages, has always been about understanding and positioning white Settler Colonizers as center, as the legitimate "owners" and "rulers" of the land...thereby erasing the land rights of Native People.

Might (the ability to emotionlessly torment, dominate, rape, pillage, steal, poison, drug, torture, starve, imprison, massacre, lock away, partition off) means right. And because the white Settler Colonizers had already convinced us of their "might", we focussed on them, allied with them, becoming a part of their settler project.

Black folks living in the West, those descendants of stolen Africans set a precident for all coloured folks who would come later:

Don't undermine the Settler Colonial project
See what you can get out of it and agitate behind the scenes
Sabotage if you need to
But don't destroy the project
If there's something you can get out of it
There's no need to throw
the putrid, diseased, rotten, cancerous, virulent, contagious, insidious baby
out with the bathwater.

We set an example for all coloured peoples who came later:

Even the dispossessed can look forward
To having a share of the land
Might get spat on
Might get lynched
Might get cheated and fuk'd wit'
Might have to sit at the back of the bus
Might have to walk
Might have to bus your kids
Might have to take care of theirs
But always remember you're a part of the new state being built on the ashes of scorched earth, blood soaked land
You have a right to a share of the booty.

Black people set an important imperial standard. We made an example of ourselves:

If the human offal they worked and bred and killed and raped and damaged and mind controled
Don't mind lending a hand
Tilling the land for a share of the profit
However meager
However dusty the land
Then life here in the western hemisphere
In "the americas" (caribbean totally included)
Might be lived out within acceptable parameters.

If the slave times had really that bad, there would have been mass exoduses back to Africa, there would have been mass murders the moment Black people were declared "free". It would have had to be us or them. They would have had to deport us en mass...either that or massive group burials of really dangerous, violent, rabidly angry, foaming at the mouth "freed" men, women and children.

Washington would have been burned to the ground, like Montreal. North and South would have been fighting on the same side for their fucking lives, not against each other whistling muthafuckin dixie. Scarlet and Rhett wouldn't have had the time to make any little tow haired settler colonizing babies, they would have been building a goddamn siege wall around Tara and praying to their Gawd to save their scrawny white necks.

The white slavers, plantation owners, all those politely diseased white families in their big houses, the folks who were there when the hurtin' happened, who were the people who profitted from the hurting would have been struggling against us for their very lives, no?

But that's not what happened at that particular historical juncture.

The white Settler Colonizers went on to breed, expand, steal some more, murder some more, rape some more, dominate and terrorize some more. They built cities and countries and they're still here.

And Black people, the descendants of those African slaves?
Well, we found a way to settle down and swallow the pain. And as a result, we're still here. We're still here.

Because we found a way to live alongside the pain, to understand our pain as a fact of life, we've collectively "prospered". As a grouping of settlers we own a sight more than the proverbial forty acres and a mule.

Some own real estate, homes, cars, jewelry, stocks, bonds, planes, businesses all on the land. Some of our children can attend exclusive schools alongside the descendants of the settlers who colonized our ancestors, stole the land and killed its people. We hang out with white settlers, joke and drink and play and fuck and get better jobs than some of them too. We teach in their schools and get tenure in their institutions of higher learning. We work in their imperial banks of commerce, protect their investments, and put our money in their banks. We attend the churches where the bible (they used as an excuse to indoctrinate and brutalize Native children after they had been torn from the arms of their family members and put in residential schools) is read each and every Sunday. We shop at their Hudson's Bay Company (been bought by American settlers for a tidy sum), store still decorated with the colours of the measles blankets they used as biological weapons to murder millions.

And all the while the conscious Colonized Settlers remember to celebrate Kwanzaa (the festival of first fruits of this land), wear ethnic prints and purchase African objets d'art to decorate their/our homes built on the land.

Collectively we've arrived...the nouveau riche Colonized Settler class occupying stolen land as we attempt to deflect enough White Settler racism so we cam claim more proceeds from the land.

But even those who haven't managed to get a full share of the spoils of the land, even those who haven't quite "made it", know they can dream about the day when they too will be able to be more privileged descendants of slaves morphed into Settlers reaping the benefits of stolen land.

Colonized Settler Oprah rules tvland and soothes her guilt by posing as benevolent aunty to young continental girls. Colonized Settler Condi plans out new imperialist wars for her white Settler master the illiterate yet supremely powerful village idiot. Nerdling Colonized Settler P Diddy is making millions from perfume. Colonized Settler Tyra is binging and purging and complaining about fucking being seen as, constructed as fat while making millions. Colonized Settler Whoopi has to be tracked down by desperately pleading officials from impoverished Guinea-Bissau after a PBS television show traced her million dollar DNA back to Africa. Colinized Settler Spike makes a documentary about how badly the Black Colonized Settlers were treated in New Orleans, how so many of them still don't have anywhere to live, anywhere to call their own. Colonized Settler actors complain about not getting enough representation on the silver screen...they want more oscar popularity nods from the white motion picture academy, a bigger share of the profits and more attention for their/our Colonized Settler movies and television shows.

All the while...
White settler colonizers visit the Caribbean and sip drinks alongside the wealthy north americanized Colonized Settler descendants of African slaves, while not so wealthy Colonized Settler descendants of slaves beam hate-filled, jealous smiles, braid hair on the beach, mix drinks full of spit, clean their hotel suites, plot tourist murders in cane fields for the lot of them and dream of the big time...all on stolen land.

And all the while...
Colonized Settler civil rights activists stage demos, marches and the like demanding better treatment for themselves and for their Colonized Settler communities...for ourselves and for our Colonized Settler communities.

All the while...
The original custodians of this place and their children cry foul and shoot us dirty glances we claim...I claimed not to understand or deserve.

And all the while...
Black Colonized Settlers ally with Coloured Colonized Settlers who ally with white Settler Colonizers to protest the occupation and domination of Palestine and its original people by Israeli Holocaust Survivor Settler Colonizers. Now, say that ten times fast.

So, here I am, even still more layered and complexly vexed. The culturally and racially mixed and mixed up descendant of stolen peoples "freed" only to turn and enslave the land and undermine the struggles of its peoples. We effectively block their liberation while we cry out for our liberation, allying with their oppressor who we'd like to understand simply as the oppressor of us all. Now how fuk'd is that?

I'm bloodied and not all the blood I'm trying to scrub off is my own or from battle with my oppressors.

Can't go around this. Can't go over this. Can't go under this. Gotta go through it even though I know I'm not gonna be able to take back what has already transpired. I've got a shitload of options and choices to make or break up ahead. One things for sure...

I'm a Settler.
I am a Settler.
I really don't feel comfortable being a Black settler colonized and colonizing.
Identifying as a settler doesn't feel attractive, neat or clean. It feels ugly, messy and embarassing like I've got my own shit stuck on my fancy shoe. I want to scrape it off, off, OFF!

I don't want to have to add this to the identities I claim. I don't want to add this to the list of ways this oppressed body can oppress.

HOLYSHITHOLYSHITHOLYSHITHOLYMUTHAFUCKINSHITFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK. Somebody, ANYbody EVERYBODY SCREAM!

I'm a Colonized Settler breeder meant to birth millions/minions to solidify false land claims to stolen land by sheer force of numbers.
I'm a Colonized Settler mama, part of a humanplaguevirus that spread across the land.
I'm a Colonized Settler mama who can either decide to breed settler dissidents or Colonized Settler dominators hungering for their (un)fair share.
I'm a Colonized Settler with no choice but to embrace difficult consciousness and spoonfeed it to my little colonized settler babies so they will know the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

This is crucial.

This is how I got to this breaking point, cracking my own false consciousness wide open, pealing off what feels like a layer of my own skin in an agonizing home surgery.

Mamabrain or no, my five year old needs me to have a brain and to make use of it. My daughter's questions are keeping me honest...much more so than I would have liked, much more so than I would have planned.

Today...
I had to explain to her that we're Colonized Settlers who have helped to steal the land and dominate its people...
She did a double take because my usual wordings are compartmentalized:

We were brought here as workers, packed into big ships like sardines, forced to work the land for the pale people for free. They took our chidlren and sold them. They told us we were ugly and stupid. This was very bad. We are still very angry about this.
- on this side....
The First Nations Peoples' land was stolen by the pale people. The pale people gave them measles blankets. They poisoned them, poisoned the land and the animals, too. The pale people killed so many of them. Their children were/are stolen. They were/are harmed. They are very upset, very angry. They are fighting.
- over there on that side.

No connection between the two, no context we can share in common, no link I wanted to establish...until now.

She'll want to know more, want to know how and why. She'll come back with more questions...I'll need to understand more about me and about US so I can give her some more imperfectly layered answers.

Metallica + Smile Empty Soul

to peace or not to peace

I've been seriously contemplating Peace (with a capital P) now-o-days. Specifically, how to get from where we are at (war, conflict, taunting, yelling, non-listening, non-accepting and I could go on) ~ to there (Peace).

It seems, as Americans, we have learned that we need to 'force' peace onto people...especially those who disagree with us. Slam, bang when someone says something that we know (judging) is wrong or the ever so popular slam bang when someone comes at us in attack mode.

So, let's take a look at what the Dali Lama would do. Follow this link to read a speech he gave on Compassion (with a capital C).

How about Gandhi and Matrin Luther King's views on non-violence?

Our attitudes need to change folks.

And as I post my last post on this blog ~ I have to say ~ I plan on re-focusing my energies into activities and people who propagate Peace (with a capital P)

Truly peace my friend...PEACE
~~~

Losing Ourselves Beyond Redemption

The increasing erosion of our constitutions, civil rights and democracies as they are being gradually subjugated by Authoritarian Security Surveillance States. The bloating no-fly lists and terrorist watch-lists. The continuing inhumane and barbaric renditions, "enhanced interrogations" and indefinite detentions - of children, teenagers and adults alike. The continuing standing of Military Commissions, which are nothing more than politically-driven, rigged, kangaroo courts. The seemingly unending wars of choice and occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq - both based on lies to justify a vengeance operation for 9/11 and the securing of foreign oil resources. The ever mounting toll of civilian deaths, displaced refugees and soldier casualties.

This is the overall state of things today with regards to our so-called "Western civilization" - especially with regards to the U.S.A., the U.K. and Canada.

Through it all, much of the currently occurring discourse and debating on these above-mentioned, self-evident evils deal largely with semantics and quaint legalese gymnastics in order to defend and justify not only their perceived necessity, but to actually establish, maintain, or cement, their legality as well.

The following exchange cristallizes the sheer insanity which is now prevailing over what passes as reason these days (h/t):

American News Project notes that in yesterday’s House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on torture, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) asked Doug Feith if a 20-hour interrogation involving “hooding” and “removal of clothing” was “humane.” Feith hedged, curiously claiming that “removal of clothes is different from naked”:

NADLER: : Let me ask you. How could you force someone to be naked -

FEITH: It doesn’t say naked. It doesn’t say naked.

NADLER: Removal of clothing. Removal of clothing doesn’t mean naked?

FEITH: Removal of clothing is different from naked.

This, coming from that same Douglas Feith who has claimed to have championed a policy of respect for the Geneva conventions during his tenure in the White House (ri-ight).

...(Expand the post +/-)...

Let's have another example (h/t):

The controversial interrogation technique of waterboarding has served a “valuable” purpose and does not constitute torture, former Attorney General John Ashcroft told a House committee Thursday.

“I believe a report of waterboarding would be serious, but I do not believe it would define torture,” Ashcroft said, responding to questions from Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California.

He added, “the Department of Justice has on a consistent basis over the last half-dozen years or so, over and over again in its evaluations, come to the conclusion that under the law in existence during my time as attorney general, waterboarding did not constitute torture.”

Waters asked Ashcroft whether such techniques would be regarded as “totally unacceptable and even criminal” if they were used on American soldiers. “Well, my subscription to these memos, and my belief that the law provides the basis for these memos persisted even in the presence of my son serving two tours of duty overseas in the Gulf area as a member of our armed forces,” Ashcroft said …

Let's have more (h/t):

During a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee today, former Attorney General John Ashcroft falsely claimed that waterboarding has “consistently” been defined as “not torture” and refused to agree that the use of enhanced interrogation techniques — including waterboarding — on captured U.S. soldiers is “unacceptable” or “criminal.”

REP. MAXINE WATERS: Do you think that if these techniques were used on American soldiers that they would be totally unacceptable and even criminal? (…)

ASHCROFT: My job, as Attorney General, was to try and elicit from the experts and the best people in the Department definitions that comported with the statues enacted by the Congress and the Constitution of the United States. And those statutes have consistently been interpreted so as to say, by the definitions that, waterboarding, as described in the CIA’s request, is not torture.

Which in turn must be followed by this (h/t):

Today, during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) dismissed the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo and other U.S. detention facilities. According to Issa, “we treated our hospital patients worse” than we treat al Qaeda detainees. Former attorney general John Ashcroft chimed in, joking that doctors “were poking needles into me”:

ISSA: It is sort of amazing that as a member of the permanent Select Intelligence Committee, I’ve never heard any allegation of any detainee being denied food or water for a week. It’s clear that we treated our hospital patients at times worse than al Qaeda.

ASCHROFT: What’s more, they were poking needles into me all the time time.

Now comes the logical outcome (h/t):

Appearing on Shepard Smith’s Fox News show yesterday, O’Reilly explained that he “held (the released footage of Rev. Jesse Jackson criticizing Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) before an interview) back” because “it was not relevant to the general subject — one civil rights leader disparaging another, over policy.” Towards the end of the interview, Smith asked O’Reilly, “do we know who leaked it?” “No,” replied O’Reilly, adding that he would find out because he had “the waterboard over here”:

O’REILLY: So, we held it back, and then, some weasel got the whole thing, leaked it out to the internet, and here we are.

SMITH: Do we know who leaked it and what’s happened to that person?

O’REILLY: No, but I have the waterboard over here, and we have a couple of people that, you know, we’ll dunk. We’ll find out.

When Smith said, “we don’t allow torture here,” O’Reilly replied, “well, you talk to some of my guests.”

All of the above reminds me again of this:

(...) whether you call it "frathouse pranks", "enhanced interrogation techniques", "water treatment" or "waterboarding", torture has been going on, and is still going on - even after the revelations of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. In fact, many detainees have actually been tortured to death. Even children and teenagers ("child soldiers" and civilians) have been likewise tortured. Why, torture has become so mainstream that the U.S. is now in the business of torturing for, or helping in doing so ... other countries like China! Thanks to another of Bush's signing statements, the new motto is: "torture - it's not only legal, it's all good".

Indeed - Gitmo is really more like a boy scout camp than it is a prison camp. Why, it is practically Disney Land!

Not. At. All.

Nevertheless, there you have it. From first denying any torture, we've come to redefining torture as not torture, to trivializing it and, now, to make it a subject of asinine jokes.

Never mind the dirty little secrets that torture by the military is not really new, and that torture of detainees of the Global War on Terror(TM) began well before Bush and Co. decided to undertake the necessary legalese gymnastics in order to justify it "legally" after-the-fact,

And never mind that torture techniques currently being used (yes - torture is still going on) came from China, and that privatizing torture can be good business.

No, never mind all that because the new truthiness of the day is: torture is A-OK.

No wonder, then, that there are politicians who still think that torture techniques, such as those used in Gitmo or those revealed in Abu Ghraib, are nothing more than hazing pranks from some Fraternity.

No wonder, then, that U.S. politicians are doing their best to close down hearings on torture.

No wonder, then, that radio loudmouths can proudly say - and without any backlash whatsoever - that they would hang any lawyer doing their job in defending Gitmo detainees.

No wonder, then, that the President can claim with a straight face that critics of Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and renditions are slandering America.

And it is no wonder, then, that Bush allies/emulators (like my Prime Douchebag of Canada) actually support implicitly the use of torture, by either mendacious denial or by using the same types of euphemisms, obfuscations and sleight-of-hand double-talking in doing so.

Once again, as I previously wrote:

There is no going deeper into the pit of savagery and perversion here, folks. This is the very bottom, the lowest of the lowest, level of inhumanity.

No civilization allowed here - when the debate is about the efficiency and validity of torture in getting solid intelligence and confessions, as things are now, instead of being about the inherent immoral nature of torture, then you know you have lost any semblance of human rationality and grace.

Case in point.

All the while, we keep on ignoring the following simple, self-evident verity:

I also think of those dozens (hundreds?) who have been tortured over the years, thanks to the Bush administration's policy which has ever been supported - if not encouraged and staunchly defended - by pundits, lawyers, justices, politicians, warhawks, chickenhawks and all assorted fear- and hate-driven neocon enablers, supporters and apologists - including all those ostriches who would rather bury their heads in the sand rather than face the awful, ugly truth:

The U.S.A. has become a rogue state which practices indefinite detention and torture.

And who cares if some of those "evil Muslims" die in the process, right? After all, indefinite detentions, secret tribunals and enhanced interrogation techniques torture are valuable means and tools for the defense of freedom, liberty and democracy ...

(...) I humbly assume that I will be forgiven if I do not appreciate the "courageous" work done over the last seven years by the Bush administration and its cheerleading supporters - because from where I stand, they have spat upon and irreversibly sullied every precept of human dignity, of human respect, of Humanity, which used to be held as unassailable and uncompromising, sacrosaint values.

And it doesn't matter however much they try to justify/legalize/spin their actions - for indeed, nothing justifies indefinite detention, secret tribunals and torture.

Nothing.

Period.

Every single one of these fear- and hate-driven incompetents have pushed us from the moral high ground of justice, freedom and human rights into the bottomless precipice of barbarous and savage injustice.

And this other one:

That. Is. Justice. For. You.

All in the sacro-sanct name of Security.

Doesn't it make you feel so proud and patriotic?

God bless America and God bless Canada, f***ing indeed.

But the ugly truth is that all of us are guilty for our silence and absence of outrage. All of us have been irremediably stained for such a sociopathic lack of basic human decency, empathy, compassion and contrition.

In the meantime, the apparent majority of our fellow citizens either approve, remain complicit with their silence, just don't want to know, or simply don't care - as they are being conveniently distracted on a daily basis by the whims and vagaries of vapid and insipid (if not asinine) traditional media outlet accomplices (yet one more example here).

Thus I ask again:

(...) what does it say about a society where those who are the most pro-war and pro-torture can only change their minds after undergoing waterboarding?

I think it is now safe to say that the answer to that question is the following: simply read again the very first paragraph of this essay.

That is what "it says" about our societies.

Not entirely convinced? Then glance over these few headlines:

8 million Americans are now listed as potentially suspect;

FBI might use profiling in terror investigations (h/t);

Terrorist Watch List Hits One Million Names (h/t);

Court Backs Bush on Military Detentions (h/t);

CNN reporter criticizes TSA, finds self on terror watch list;

Prosecutor turned up on US terror watch list;

Torture and the rule of law;

RCMP slammed for storing secret files on Canadians (see also here);

CSIS keeping tabs on Olympic protesters (see also here);

U.K.: What do we do now? (see also here);

Homeland Security blocks voter drive (h/t)

Council used terror law to spy on fishermen;

Congressman still faces airport screening problem.

And I could go on and on and on and on.

If we can accept something so inhuman and barbaric as torture, and if furthermore we become so accepting/used of it that we can trivialize and even joke about it, then we can accept anything.

And so we have.

And frankly, I've used up all my outrage and my contempt on these matters. I wrote letters (newpapers, elected representatives), I've written blogs, I've been discussing this over and over in the public place (in RL) ...

Still, most people seem too self-absorbed, or too fearful of them "terrorists", or actually approve, or remain simply in denial, to be outraged or even give a damn about the slow destruction of our democratic principles, as well as our values of civil rights, human rights, human dignity and human respect.

And I - at least on this day - just don't know what to do about this anymore.

We have been losing ourselves since the day after 9/11.

Looks like we have crossed the threshold of ever being able to find ourselves again.

So we keep on riding fast and hard onto that road to perdition ... well beyond redemption.


(Cross-posted from APOV)