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Archive for February, 2008

SISTERS ALL OVER THE WORLD, FIGHTING FOR DIGNITY, EQUALITY and FREEDOM

Friday, February 29th, 2008

I ask no favors for my sex…All I ask of our brethren is that they will take their feet from off our necks.
—Sarah Moore Grimké

You know, people—even so-called libertarians—often talk about the Founding Fathers and the Constitution being what made the United States of America great. Is there not a curious, almost willful ignorance within that idea?

Yes, the forming of a new Nation is self-evidently remarkable. Heck, it’s hard enough to find one’s keys in the morning. And the Constitution, by many accounts, is an incredibly progressive document for its time—that was so great it actually allowed for ammendments.

But the fact is, as everyone knows, the country had been up to that time and continued to be for a long time afterwards significantly built and expanded through the blood, sweat and degradation of people of colour known as slaves—not to mention the increasing decimation of the aboriginal cultures (“Go West, young man!”).

Further, neither the Founding Fathers nor the Constitution took radical issue with those facts, as far as I understand it. Indeed, both supported the ideology of slavery.

Having said that, I must, to be fair and less general, insert a note from Karen, one of the fantastic commentators on this blog, and one who knows a lot more about the Constitution than I (and see her comments below the piece, too):

However, to really understand…the US Constitution, you should read…“A Detailed Analysis of the Constitution” by Edward F. Cooke [who] builds a solid foundation for understanding the US Constitution, and if you want to read about women’s political movements, try “Founding Mothers” by Cokie Roberts. That was a group of gutsy, head-strong women.

[And to understand the creation of the Constitution, you could also read] any of the books that chronicle the letters exchanged between the delegates, especially John Adams and Thomas Jefferson or John Adams and his wife Abigail.

Aside from witnessing an amazing friendship and beautiful love story, respectively, you will see also that though the final document did not take radical issue with slavery, the issue of slavery itself threatened to collapse the Constitutional Convention and the creation of the government.

It was a difficult and ethically challenging compromise that was made to allow the Nation to continue at all. When you read, in the delegates’ own words, the debate the issue of slavery encompassed you see that this was an omission not lightly decided upon.

FURTHER EXPRESSION OF MY CONSTITUTION

Yes, it seems, the great Thomas Jefferson was aware of his own confusion and paradox (as I am sure, were others), but he was still a slave-holder. And admittedly, and perhaps similarly, I am confused about Sudan and Iraq and so many other places, yet I am an oil user. At certain points in history, one can barely see how not to be involved with the problem, confusion notwithstanding. But you get my point. And granted, it isn’t easy being human.

And, yes, the Constitution has evolved to defend many wonderful freedoms. The Fourteenth Ammendment is a great ammendment.

But it seems to me, America (or any other country) could and would never be great until all people were, firstly, recognized to be people, and free to be free.

THE REAL GREATNESS

For me, it is simply and more than anything else, the movements of the most oppressed, on the road towards emancipation, that actually made and make America (or any other country) get as close to greatness as it can be. The Declaration of Independence from the yolk of Britain is damn significant, but these movements—the abolitionist movement, the women’s rights movement, the labour movement and the civil rights movement and variations on these struggles are what come to mind—and their relative successes are what have truly made America a nation domestically related to freedom.

I say domestically intentionally. Don’t get me—or any other person with eyes and a heart—started on Foreign Policy.

By the way, I would love the anti-war movements to be in that group of successes, but we (in Canada, too) have not yet achieved, it seems to me, a result or a status that is significantly effective—though there are perhaps improvements since Vietnam, through the Central American massacres of the 1980s, to now, protest-wise—although the Iraq Invasion and the Iraq dismantling are dismal and morally disastrous, and show how unheard that voice is and was.

In short, politicians and people still freely, openly and excitedly argue for war (which by definition includes, more and more over the decades, percentage-wise, the decimation of civilians). In contrast, not many people any longer argue for slavery or stopping a woman’s right to vote.

My point is this: these great movements were, are and will continue to be incredibly inspiring and sources of inspiration in countering Idiocracies the world over.

So it is, all over the world, for any women’s rights movements (literally, human rights movements) fighting for the freedom to not be discriminated against, abused or oppressed.

IRAN

I just discovered, via Amnesty International and the arrest of Jelveh Javaheri for fighting for women’s equality, the site We4Change: Iranian Women Struggle For Equality.

I am continually amazed by these displays of courage and wisdom. The group is trying to get a million signatures on their petition for equality, and are getting arrested and intimidated in the process.

They’ve only got about 5,000 signatures thus far. With oppression at home that all of us would loathe, and the drums of war pounding abroad, you’d think they could get a million signatures of solidarity in about twenty minutes, but we’re just not wired into that type of solidarity (although the Rolling Stones sell out BC Place or wherever in three minutes and over 50 million people, literally, watch the silliest things on youtube, myself, sometimes, included).

Yet they must carry on, and we all must carry on, standing up for the right of freedom, the right to knowledge and solidarity, as best we can.

From the site:

Iranian women’s rights activists are initiating a wide campaign demanding an end to legal discrimination against women in Iranian law.

The Campaign, “One Million Signatures Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws,” which aims to collect one million signatures to demand changes to discriminatory laws against women, is a follow-up effort to the peaceful protest of the same aim, which took place on June 12, 2006 in Haft-e Tir Square in Tehran.

Preparation activities in support of this campaign commenced in June of 2006 and the campaign will be officially launched on August 27, during a seminar entitled: “The Impact of Laws on Women’s Lives.”

The rest of that commentary is here.

AFGHANISTAN

And so it is for the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), virtually ignored (instead of supported, celebrated and sought out) by western Governments and media, like nearly all democraticizing groups in a country, be it Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or anywhere else, when war is planned against that country.

From the website:

RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, was established in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1977 as an independent political/social organization of Afghan women fighting for human rights and for social justice in Afghanistan.

The founders were a number of Afghan women intellectuals under the sagacious leadership of Meena who in 1987 was assassinated in Quetta, Pakistan, by Afghan agents of the then KGB in connivance with fundamentalist band of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar…

These women amaze me and inspire me—would I be so strong? Am I even close?

If you know of an other of the countless inspiring Women’s Rights groups around the world who are fighting injustices, intimidation and hell in their own countries, mention them here, and I’ll try to make a big collective list, a GRAND PAGE of freedom!, and we’ll realise, if nothing else for the moment, just how uncontainable, irrepressible, unstoppable and beautiful is the collective human longing for freedom, knowledge, expression, access and dignity—oh yeah, and creativity.

Love to all my sisters and brothers,

Pete

Posted in Activism, Human Rights, Law, Politics, Social Awareness, posted | 4 Comments »

ON THE SUBJECT (and irony) OF AFRICAN OIL

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

I care not how affluent some may be, provided none be miserable in consequence of it.
—Thomas Paine

China’s ravenous and socially-devastating involvement with oil in the Sudan (and selling weapons to Khartoum) was discussed in the little film Darfur in 10 Minutes: An Overview of the Conflict in Sudan.

But then, wouldn’t you know it, today I was at the Bibliophile bookstore on Commercial Drive in Vancouver (a lovely bookstore), with my mom, when I stumbled upon journalist Nicholas Shaxson’s 2007 book Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil.

It expanded upon the not deeply-discussed effects of the discovery of Africa being an oil-rich continent.

Shaxson understandably made clear that the problems of corruption within so many African countries are pervasive and devastating to civilians already under duress. I agree with this, of course. It’s a disaster.

Ironically, though, I have no doubt—instinctually, anyway—that, monetarily, the amount of corruption in Africa is nowhere near the dollar amount perpetrated in the Free West.

Consider this, for example:

But back to Africa. After discussing African corruption and what might be needed to diminish it, Shaxson writes on page 224 (I wrote this down on a piece of paper to write it down here):

To understand the next bit of radical surgery, consider this. It is not unlawful for a United States bank to receive funds derived from alien smuggling, fraud, racketeering, handling stolen property, contraband, environmental crimes, trafficking in women, transport for illegal sexual activity, slave trading—and many other evils.

Can this really be true?

I could not believe it at first, and I checked. But it is true. The only catch is this: the crimes must be committed abroad…

And Europe, it seems, are hardly better behaved.

In short, the real power centres are outside Africa, and until they change, nothing can change on any large degree anywhere, for the problem is systemic—and there is some hope of change, within democracies, and I use that term loosely.

Regarding the above, I literally stumbled upon this (only listen up to 5:20 with regard to this blog):

THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA CONTINUES

There was in the colonial era direct rule and then indirect rule—indirect rule being ruling by local leaders on behalf of the colonial power, as opposed to the direct rule of the colonial power.

This legal freedom for banks and businesses to profit with impunity via humanity’s most foul profit-making enterprises—slave trafficking, drug trafficking, mass fraud etc—seems to me to be the global continuation of Indirect rule unabated.

In other words, it is no longer Britain’s rule over Sudan or France’s rule over the Central African Republic. It is Multinational Institutions (via their legal framework: Trade Agreements) ruling over the Third World—with locals, often willingly, doing much of their dirtiest work.

And Shaxson is no anti-corporate activist. He has written for the Economist and the Financial Times. But in a six-question interview with Harper’s, he reveals what he learned after over a decade of research, against his beliefs:

Western schemes to “guide” Africans to behave better often fail, because African rulers—especially oil-rich ones—tend to be quite good at mastering their own destinies nowadays.

We can best help by making changes at home. One way is to curb our fuel consumption.

Another matter cropped up repeatedly during my 14 years of research: the draining of Africa’s wealth into rich-world tax havens. Current transparency initiatives don’t touch this issue; but instead we pretend that it’s only the Africans who are corrupt. Don’t forget that New York and London, swimming in foreign dictators’ loot, are two of the world’s biggest tax havens.

He continues, with reference to Angola and Nigeria—both resource-rich:

Angola’s oil-laden budget this year is about the same size as all foreign aid to all of sub-Saharan Africa—but according to the United Nations, Angola’s infant mortality is the second worst in the world, worse even than Afghanistan’s.

At the start of the last oil boom in 1970, one-third of Nigerians lived in poverty; now, four hundred billion dollars in oil and gas earnings later, two-thirds are poor.

People often put the problem like this: oil money would be a blessing but politicians steal it, so people don’t see the benefits.

But it’s much worse: the oil wealth not only doesn’t reach ordinary people, but it actively makes them poorer. It took me years to really accept this counter-intuitive idea. But after all I’ve seen, I have no doubts.

With the Western addiction to certain resources—oil in particular at this juncture of history—the “Scramble for Africa” continues with virtual impunity. The corrupt leaders of countries in Africa reap the rewards (as do banks and corporations in the West), and the majority of citizens already on survival’s edge (not to mention the environment) pay the excruciating price.

Anyway, it’s bitter food for thought, but important to know a little more about human nature and the systemic problems that ensure certain problems—but also show where hope is possible for a better world: working on laws, greed, accountability, increasing human rights, energy sources, environmental sustainability, politicians and solidarity and so on.

Lots of love to you, and sisters and brothers everywhere,

Pete

Posted in Activism, Africa, Film, Fraud, History, Human Nature, Human Rights, Law, Politics, Social Awareness, posted | 1 Comment »

CUT BACK ON MASS MISERY (and improve your health) BY CUTTING BACK ON MEAT

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

In my reading, I came upon this observation from “Smokin’” Joe Frazier—one of the greatest boxers of all-time, and the first boxer to defeat Muhammad Ali, if you exclude the US government.

Now Joe has no reason to point this out, except that it was obvious, and how he saw it. It’s from his time working at a so-called kosher slaughterhouse, before he followed his dream to become Heavyweight Champion. It’s in his autobiography (“Smokin’ Joe,” pg 23):

“[I]t must have been pretty damn scary for those animals. They’d bring them onto the killing floor in trucks.

And bam, a shute would pick the creature up by the belly, shackles would drop behind its neck—and, man, that bull would run the floor like an NFL fullback, hitting everything in sight, bouncing off walls, ramming sides of beef, and going after any human son of a bitch unlucky enough to be in his path.

That scamboogah was desperate to get off that killing floor; he never made it, though. Cross Brothers [the company name] stored guns there for the occasional emergency like that, and, bang, they’d shoot the crazyass bull in the head.

And that would be that.”

And this from a recent article, February 27th, called USDA sued over ‘downer’ cow rules:

The USDA ordered the largest beef recall in history Feb. 17 after the Humane Society released undercover video showing workers at Chino-based Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. shoving sick or crippled cows with forklifts to get them to stand.

The video also showed workers dragging sick cows with chains, shocking them with electric prods and shooting streams of water in their noses and faces.

The lawsuit says the workers were trying to get the animals to stand, even briefly, so they could be considered acceptable for human consumption.

The full article is here.

For those who need to see to believe, here’s some of the undercover footage. By definition, slaughterhouses/factory farms are brutal.

From Wayne Pacelle of The Humane Society of the United States:

The meat industry tries to squeeze as many profits out of these animals as possible—even animals too sick or injured to walk are animals they want to turn a profit on.

This company, Westland Meat Company (but don’t fall for the bad apple/Enron theory!) received 40 million dollars in tax-paying (your) dollars last year. Downer cows, incidentally, come to a large degree from dairy farms.

And this one, for pork chop lovers, from Medical News Today (Feb 4, 2008), called Paralysis Outbreak In Meat Workers Handling Pigs’ Brains:

The current thinking, which is yet to be proved, is that the meat workers are being exposed to splatter and aerosol droplets of pig brain tissue created by the compressed air blast, which liquefies the tissue before expelling it from the pig skull. Once inhaled, small particles of pig brain tissue are then attacked by the worker’s immune system which uses antibodies that also attack the body’s own almost identical human nerve tissue.

A whole new meaning to the term bacon bits. Pass the happy salad, please. With scrumptious oil and vinegar and tomatoes and garbanzo beans and carrots and whatever else you want—mmmm, love.

The full article is here.

Heck, even the AIDS virus probably crossed into humans via the butchering/eating of chimpanzees.

Love me, love my pets. Love my pets, love animals just as beautiful as my pets.

For the record, I don’t have any pets (excluding my brain), but love more, anyway. With food, it’s even good for you,

Pete xox

For other articles of mine on the topic, see Milking Ol’ Betsy (For All She’s Worth), Mad Cowboys and an Inconvenient Truth, and A MEATING of HEARTS and MINDS.

And no matter what you read or do, be kind to yourself.

Posted in Activism, Social Awareness, Vegetarian, posted | 1 Comment »

Colonialism in 10 Minutes: The Scramble For Africa (and before)

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

A man is worked on by what he works on. He may carve out his circumstances, but his circumstances will carve him out as well [my italics].
—Frederick Douglass, escaped African-American slave, and great leader of emancipation

When trying to comprehend Africa today, one aspect, regardless of one’s confusion, should be obvious. For this I will use an analogy: If Person X was to continually beat Person Y (or an animal), only a moron would ask why Person Y struggles to move forward in their life, suffers from uncertainty, confusion, violent outbursts etc.

Even “Africa” as defined as something collective is absurd, except perhaps, in its uber-decimation by slavery and then colonialism, and the confusion and despair (and, of course, greatness and hope) that abounds today.

In short, no matter how many ways I try to look at it, it seems undeniably clear to me that Africa, by a number of external and internal forces, has been willfully and relentlessly gutted and anihilated for over a millenia—a fragmentation of the everyday people, the culture, the essence, the spirit, mostly for resources, with racism as a justification.

This point is mentioned but not pushed in Darfur in Ten Minutes: An Overview of the Conflict in Sudan. And the point matters for myriad reasons and I wanted to point it out.

From an “all-of-humanity” point of view, Africa is a crime scene, and by not being as clear about that as, say, the holocaust, the crime continues.

The fact that the “Scramble for Africa” can continue so remorselessly—whether by outside players (even “Free World” players), or outside players working with inside players—is mind-bafflingly hideous, and would be criminal if justice had any real relationship to mutlinational business interests and profits.

Or, as Shirley Chisholm once put it:

When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.

I posted this exceprt from Uganda Rising to offer a brief overview of what happened in Africa during the European colonial period, when vast areas of the continent were literally and systemically looted at will. Below the piece is a further damning description of the so-called Arab slave trade, which was equally hideous.

COLONIALISM IN 10 MINUTES: THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA

This description from David Lamb’s “The Africans,” of how the “Scramble for Africa” began legislatively, is illuminating—with a virtually complete disregard that people on the continent of Africa have meaning.

If Africa’s quest for unity has failed so far, if Africa’s presidents get along no better than the European powers did with one another during the colonial period, no one, least of all historians, should be surprised.

Let’s step back a century [the book was written in 1983] to the time when Africa was Balkanized and brought under European domination. It happened in Germany at a conference that not a single African attended…

The acrimonious disputes [between the European powers], though all were solved peacefully, caused much apprehension in Europe, and it was finally decided the world’s powers had better sit down to determine some game rules for Africa.

Delegates from fourteen countries assembled for the Conference of Great Powers in Berlin in October 1884.

Four months later, on February 26, 1885, they signed the general Act of the Berlin Conference, which provided that any power that effectively occupied African territory and duly notified the other powers could thereby establish possession of it. The Berlin treaty, along with other accords signed during the next fifteen years, defined “spheres of influence,” which partitioned the continent among European governments and reduced their rivalry for domination.

The disease of cruelty and violence, by its force and inhumanity, spreads the disease of cruelty and violence.

Here’s an excerpt from an article in Le Monde Diplomatique called The Impact of the Slave Trade on Africa, April 1998, by Elikia M’bokolo. The statistics are staggering.

The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth).

Then more than four centuries (from the end of the fifteenth to the nineteenth) of a regular slave trade to build the Americas and the prosperity of the Christian states of Europe. The figures, even where hotly disputed, make your head spin.

Four million slaves exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean.

Of all these slave routes, the “slave trade” in its purest form, i.e. the European Atlantic trade, attracts most attention and gives rise to most debate.

The Atlantic trade is the least poorly documented to date, but this is not the only reason.

More significantly, it was directed at Africans only, whereas the Muslim countries enslaved both Blacks and Whites [equal opportunity]. And it was the form of slavery that indisputably contributed most to the present situation of Africa. It permanently weakened the continent, led to its colonisation by the Europeans in the nineteenth century, and engendered the racism and contempt from which Africans still suffer.

Noam Chomsky, to end, with a quote I like to use from an interview with him:

[A] look at history and perception of what we see, does, I think, lend some credibility to a traditional view coming out of the Enlightenment—it is at the core of liberalism, the ideals we are supposed to honour but disregard—which says that fundamental to human nature is a kind of instinct for freedom, which shows up in creative activities.

This is actually the core of Cartesian philosophy, the core of enlightenment political thought. And I think we see plenty of examples of it: people struggling all over the world for freedom.

They don’t like to be oppressed.

Be as free as you can be, without causing harm, and love more—and stand up for that whenever you can, however you can. What else can a person do?

Pete

Posted in Activism, Africa, Film, History, Human Nature, Human Rights, Law, Social Awareness, posted | No Comments »

DARFUR: AN OVERVIEW of the CONFLICT in the SUDAN

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

I had the wonderful opportunity to interview my friend Ivan recently, who has spent a lot of time “on the ground” in Africa over the last few years—including months doing emergency humanitarian work in Darfur. I put this 10 minute piece together, hoping this explanation could be useful in clarifying a humanitarian disaster to which the news doesn’t always give context.

The brief overview describes three of the significant “drivers” that explain what is going on in Darfur, but also show why decreasing the misery is so difficult.

The three “drivers” are 1) ethnicity, 2) oil (mostly China, in the ongoing “Scramble for Africa”), and 3) desertification/climate change.

I hope the piece is helpful, and by its clarity, inspiring. Any informative comments are greatly appreciated—and if you find the piece clarifying, inspiring, useful or anything else, please pass along the link here or the link on youtube.

Remember, we have (both Canada and the States) massive ties to China. Let the politicians and anybody else you know, know you’re not happy about living-hell for citizens being a trade-off for oil.

DARFUR IN 10 MINUTES: AN OVERVIEW OF THE CONFLICT IN SUDAN

As a personal note, with the Darfur hell so centred around oil, I can’t help but think of the Iraq hell, that also began in 2003, and has likely resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians—basically folks like you and me.

To get a brief overview of the colonial legacy in Africa, and put Sudan in even more context, take a look at this ten minute summary from Uganda Rising.

Don’t you just dream of a time when enough people actually say, “No”—and it has meaning? Maybe that time is closer than we know.

Lots and lots of love to you and yours—may you sleep well and be safe, and feel loved,

Pete xoxo

PS Thanks to Dennis Burke for the music (which is actually from See Grace Fly).

Posted in Activism, Africa, Film, History, Human Nature, Human Rights, Social Awareness, posted | No Comments »

LOOKING AT CLOUDS WHILE WALKING GENTLY ON A BEING’S BACK

Monday, February 25th, 2008

Again, I’ve been so busy with research and planning and so on for the Ali project, that I haven’t had time for writing. But I did play a little concert on Friday night, and read a poem before singing. I read the poem because of what happened that Friday, early afternoon.

I was on a panel as a writer/blogger, and afterwards—on a stunningly beautiful Vancouver day—I was suddenly overwhelmed by a cloud. Don’t ask me to explain too much. I’ve never been mesmerised by a cloud before, nor do I do hallucinogenics. But this thick white billowing beauty with the sun glistening off it, and the occasional sun-drenched sea gull zooming by, yelled out to me, and I felt quite filled with emotion.

A few thoughts followed? Why a cloud? Why me? How are we related? Why such a great life? Why such a difficult world? Why so much beauty? Where exactly is the bus terminal? and so on.

Anyway, I found the bus terminal, and I sat down—grinning evidently, because it was pointed out to me by a fella in the seat in front of me, and I was asked why. Never too uncomfortable, I said, “Well, this might sound strange, but I was overwhelmed by a cloud.”

Get this. It turns out the guy was was a professor of meteorology at UBC. What are the odds? 2-1? And who totally understands. he says, “Yeah, well, we’re from the same energy system.”

Not only that, he works in the area that actually asks if the earth is a living organism—and of course it is! So we talked about the wonder of organization in an entropic system, increasing photosyntheis as the Spring approaches, James Lovelock (whom he knows) and the Gaia hypothesis, and the similarities between a cloud and a human, energetically speaking.

This led me to pulling out a poen that I’d recently written—I seldom read poems to women on buses, let alone men. I only read half of it, actually, but this is it now, in its entirety (and I read it at the gig):

Sing your song with all your breath
For all of this from birth to death
Is held in flow by pure vibration
A subtle taste of liberation
An all-pervasive cosmic song
Invisible beings sing along
Then hum the song to you and me
A divine fragmented melody
An endless kiss, an invitation
Veiled by body’s limitation
But when in bursts we hear that song
We see the soul in everyone
At least a flash if not the whole
For pure vibration is the soul
So if you find your song’s off course
Listen closely for the Source
And if you still can’t find the key
Sing for all divinity
Enter into pure vibration
Divinely blessed imagination
Your beingness is not delusion
That’s another soul’s confusion
And even if they don’t agree
They never give up trying to be
An individual, with a theory
That alone should make you leary
But let’s get back to pure vibration
Forgetting is my limitation!
And know that every song you sing
Is from the Source of everything
Not nothingness but ecstasy
Not void but wild divinity
Not “you” as “we” are understood
But pure vibration personhood
A thought barely conceivable
A dream and yet retrievable
Hid behind shadows and light
A pure vibrational delight
A concert with a trillion acts
Why else scientific facts?
Why else love songs and atheists?
Why else this life with all its twists?
I do not mean to cause offence
But we’re kept alive by intelligence
We’re not just matter rubbed together
A result of dirt and stormy weather
We are here by pure vibration
As Einstein saw in contemplation
Held in tune by a soul much greater
To who we all sing now or later
An ode to vast intelligence
A soul like us in every sense
Save magnitude and lack of doubt
So smile within and sing without
Let pure vibration be your song
To the One who’s sung you all along

I mentioned the conversation at the gig, too. The crowd seemed quite amused (plus, due to
entropy, I probably embellished).

Then I sang a few songs. It was sort of a sexy night, discussing the 64 arts of the Kama Sutra, so here’s the set list:

Learning How God Loves
Naked Love
Wide Open
Be Brave Tonight
Ever Blessed

And a request for Wise Old lady of Love.

It’s a fantastic crowd—the only one in the world that knows the words to my songs. I love singing those songs, live, and thinking we are an organism living on an organism, and so on, and so on, and so on until you feel endless gratitiude for the fact that you have your own place.

As for our own little universe, I have heard that of all the cells withing us and around us (stomach bacteria etc), only 5 to 10 percent of these cells are actually us. The others are hosting on me, like us to the earth.

Love to you,

Pete

Posted in Creativity, Music, Poetry, Science, posted | 6 Comments »

BLOGGING, TIME CONSTRAINTS, LOVE, GANDHI and GRATITUDE

Thursday, February 21st, 2008

There is a sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed.
—Mohandas K. (Mahatma) Gandhi

Mahatma means great (maha) soul (atma)—one who sees a bigger picture, all souls as sisters and brothers. Now that’s inspiration.

FRIDAY: NORTHERN VOICE

I’m on a blogging panel on Friday and yet I’ve had no time to write on this blog.

In a comment, my friend Tim (co-directed Hope In The Time of AIDS with me) wrote:

No blog posts for Pete in 4 days…something big must be brewing!!

I hope hope he’s right.

As for the film I’m directing called Facing Ali, I’ve been heavily researching the endlessly fascinating 1960s and 70s, and history as it unfolded in juxtaposition to Muhammad Ali’s journey—from Cassius Clay to heavyweight champion, to a friendship with Malcolm X, to joining the segregationist Nation of Islam under Elijah Muhammad, to refusing to go to war in Vietnam and so on.

Extraordinary times—just as these times are extraordinary.

Just think about the utter incomprehensibility of being alive, being born where you were born, of existing. And then consider the incomprehensibility of how it could be (or not be) any other way. Woo.

QUOTES

A couple of quotes I read recently—the first one bouncing off Chomsky’s inherent suspicion of leaders, where he says we don’t need leaders—in fact run when you hear the term—in a true democracy we would have representatives.

A not so subtle distinction that should be kept in mind.

Eugene V. Debs (who was sentenced to ten years in prison for being against the brutal carnage of World War I) writes:

I never had much faith in leaders.

I am willing to be charged with almost anything, rather than to be charged with being a leader. I am suspicious of leaders, and especially of the intellectual variety. Give me the rank and file every day in the week.

If you go to the city of Washington, and you examine the pages of the Congressional Directory, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of Congress, and mis-representatives of the masses—you will find that almost all of them claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction.

I am very glad I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.

And a comment from Thomas Jefferson, who is always touted as being a great democrat.

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

That’s some food for thought.

All I can say is, assuming your intentions are good, be yourself as much as possible, and inform yourself with edifying information as much as possible. My friend and Vedic scholar and teacher Jeffrey Armstrong has said that:

Ego expands to fill the space not filled by knowledge.

Go forward with your heart’s intention, your action as clear as possible, and strive in greatness to do so with ahimsa (cause no harm). We are remarkably temporary here (at least in some undeniable way), which makes seeing everybody as sisters and brothers, and choosing love in every action (with discernment) the richest of choices.

I’m feeling so grateful for this time, this life, and trying to love all my sisters and brothers,

Pete

And here’s a link to a video of a song of mine I recently put together, called “What’s Going Down.” That’s my grandmother talking off the top, when she was 97. She died in 1999 at the age of 101.

Oh, here she is again, at the beginning of this tiny little ditty called Orangutan from way back in the early ’90s. I just love her laugh.

She lived through poverty, two World Wars, the depression, two dead husbands, her mom and her brother leaving for good when she was very little, and immigrating to Canada at eighty.

Posted in Activism, Africa, Human Rights, Politics, Social Awareness, posted | 2 Comments »

COMPOSING/DIRECTING: How To Salvage A Crap Film With A Good Score

Friday, February 15th, 2008

Okay, that’s not the real title. But Steven Spielberg did once say the music from Jaws (John Williams) was thirty-percent of the film right there. Now I’m not sure if there’s a formula for blockbusters (I sure haven’t found it), but the importance, pressure, intensity, revelation and joy of scoring a film can not be underestimated. Cued at the the right time, with the right mood, a film moment can be profoundly elevated. It can also be bled dry.

However the process works, it is a remarkable marriage of the elements—video and sound—and the people working on the film—director and composer. I’m part of a talk called “The composer/director collaboration,” with Dennis Burke, a great talent and a great guy, who did the score for both See Grace Fly and Uganda Rising.

It should be fun—and hopefully inspiring, revealing and informative:

Emily Talks, at the Emily Carr Institute on Granville Island in Vancouver, as part of the ECI Spring Speaker Series.

Pete McCormack and Dennis Burke

“The Composer/Director Collaboration”

Thursday February 28
7:00 pm

All talks in Lecture Hall 301, South Building

Director Pete McCormack and composer Dennis Burke discuss the collaborative process in
filmmaking, moderated by John Sereda.

Sponsored by the Guild of Canadian Film Composers, Department of Canadian Heritage Creators’ Assistance Program and the SOCAN Foundation.

FEBRUARY 23rd

And just in case you missed the earlier blog, I’m on a blogging panel (a very cool and diverse panel, it seems) at the popular Northern Voice 2008 Weblogging Conference, February 23, 11:30-12:10, in Vancouver, called From Book to Blog or Blog to Book.

From book to blog or blog to book: how authors use blogs to attract publishers’ attention and to connect to each other, to readers and to the media.

…among other things, clearly.

Lots of love to you,

Pete

Oh, and here’s a link to a recent video, well, just because. The opening line is my grandmother, around the spry ol’ age of 97.

Posted in Creativity, Events, Film, Music, posted | 1 Comment »

WE OWN THE WORLD: Chomsky on Democracy and Representation

Friday, February 15th, 2008

Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider affairs with a philosophical eye, than the ease with which the many are governed by the few.
—David Hume, First Principles of Government

An interesting conversation with Chomsky. This little explanation woke up my brain to the profoundly obvious—just like Lysander Spooner’s “A vice is not a crime” because a crime implies (in general) criminal intent, and a vice, as a rule, does not.

Chomsky:

“It’s a mistake to expect anything from leaders other than attempts to expand their power and control and domination. They differ, but as soon as you mention the word leader, you should shudder and look somewhere else.

In a free society you might have representatives, but you wouldn’t have leaders. So let’s imagine this was a real functioning [democracy]—we’re in the primary seasons. Well what would a democratic primary be?

Take New Hampshire. It wouldn’t be a candidate comes into town and…tells you lies about themselves. What would happen is the people of the town would get together and work out the kind of programs they want the next president to follow.

And then if somebody wanted to come in and be elected they’d say [the people from the town], “Okay, you can come, but here’s what we want you to do. If you’re willing to do that, maybe we’ll vote for you. If you’re not, we’re not willing to vote for you.” And there should be mechanism to make sure they do it or you throw them out.

But the way we do it is quite different. The leaders come. They present themselves, usually falsely. You’re then to decide: Do I want him or do I want him? But that’s completely backwards from what a functioning democratic society would do. So when you talk about leaders, you have to shiver.”

The full interview is here.

Chomsky, elsewhere in the interview, discusses the Orwellian absurdity of Condaleeza Rice saying Iraq would be fine if they could just get rid of all foreign troops (and doesn’t, evidently, consider the US to be foreign). This, among other reasons, is why Noam called a recent book We Own The World—which is the only way Rice could say what she did and not trip all over herself. Alas…

Anyway, busy times. All is well. Wish I could write here more—miss the interaction and the fantastic and edifying comments. Hope you liked the video. Hope you’re feeling creative,

Pete xox

Posted in Politics, Social Awareness, posted | 1 Comment »

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