This, my friends, is the perhaps latest possible tip off for an upcoming event. FACING ALI is on TV, well, tonight. I just heard. But anyway: Tonight! at 9 PT on CBC Doucmentary, so only in Canada, and you have to be a subscriber to the channel—so, yes, a few limitations. Nonetheless, it’s on here, in about five minutes. Okay, one hour and seven minutes. You can also rent it now, at your local video store, if you’re too late here.

Hope all is well,

Pete

Where progress has been made, wherever any kind of injustice has been overturned, it’s been because people acted as citizens, and not as politicians. They didn’t just moan. They worked, they acted, they organized, they rioted if necessary to bring their situation to the attention of people in power. And that’s what we have to do today.

The remarkable, inimitable and endlessly courageous Howard Zinn died yesterday, at 87. It was actually my birthday, so I will use his life of service as even deeper inspiration. Not that one person, to the average citizen, could be much more inspiring than Howard Zinn.

What can be said about Howard Zinn?

From what he did at Spellman College in the late 1950s and early 60s—standing by his wondrous black, female students, including Alice Walker, and their right, their protests, demanding to be free and treated as equal human beings. This, of course, got him fired for “insubordination.”

Being the first person to write a book demanding a complete withdrawal from Vietnam, without conditions.

His massively influential and popular A People’s History of the United States, which told me about so many heroic and wondrous figures I had never heard of. A new list of heroes!

Zinn was often attacked by the intelligentsia. Arthur Schleshinger, for example, called him a polemicist, not a historian. I doubt Howard could care less. He was writing for the so-called average person, the citizen, you, me, and those suffering and struggling so much more. He cared what they thought. He was writing the alternate history.

In his own words:

“There’s no such thing as a whole story; every story is incomplete. My idea was the orthodox viewpoint has already been done a thousand times.”

Zinn said, paraphrasing, we can’t even begin to know our history if we don’t understand what unknown people have done to change this world:

Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.

I am saddened by this passing, to be sure—and for the finite nature of a human life in a never ending journey, and grateful for his inspiration. Isn’t it funny how, despite death, how much you love, how we all love and want to love? How much life matters? How much kindness and wanting the best for others matters? I love that.

I am researching for a film on the history of labour, and I was so hoping to interview Howard and meet him for the first time. Noam Chomsky was even going to give me an introduction. So in my research, in my learning, I will with joy remember Howard’s unconquerable spirit, how small actions matter. How you and I matter. And together we matter more.

There is a heartfelt tribute to Howard here.

One last line from dear Howard, who was, evidently, countless students’ favourite teacher. Boy, we’ll miss him. And we’ll carry on trying to stand up for more justice, compassion, positive change, solidarity, humour and creative out-of-the-box dreaming, thinking and acting.

Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don’t “win,” there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope.

An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.

If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Here’s to you, Howard. Thanks a lot.

Lots of love to you and yours,

Pete

I was talking with a friend of mine a few days ago about the link between suffering and art, and we were asking: is it necessary to be so flippin’ heavy? Is suffering necessary for art? Of course, some times it can’t be helped. A lot of artists have thought (or still think) that drugs, alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, coffee, whatever, are vital to creativity. Are they? To great work? Should I punch a wall? Heaven knows there’s enough pain in the world without being excessively self-inflicting. Could John Lennon have written I Am The Walrus without LSD? And was he really the Eggman? How many holes are there in Blackpool, Lancashire? Or was it holes in Albert Hall? Yes, I believe it was. And John Lennon would love to turn you on. At least that’s what he said.

I can’t remember what my friend and I concluded, because we killed ourselves after a deep depression before we could get an answer. Just kidding. I’m smiling. Hey, in fact it’s my birthday today. I’m older—45 trips around the sun—but my hopes and heart remain young.

Anyway, why is suffering and art considered compatible? Even necessary? I think one of the grand problems is the cult of personality, where actors and writers are put in this strange high pantheon in a society desperate to be distracted by glitz and story—a pantheon once inhabited, according to the Greeks, by our so-called daemon (we all have one, supposedly!). And the daemon, in some mysterious way, is the actual artist. Notice how close that word is to that word for a terrible, rotten being: demon. How ironic. Who altered its meaning? Well, demon is a term in Western religion, which may give a hint. But stuff happens, so what are you gonna do?

Anyway, in this lovely TED talk, author Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) talks about artists (all of us, in other words, in some way) rethinking the place and meaning of their creativity, their art, their relationship to art.

There’s even a great story she tells about Tom Waits, which makes the whole presentation cooler. So remember, at every moment of sinking despair, and before, there is great beauty in you. Genius (in the meaning she gives). Words, wanting to get out. Movement, wanting to move. Kind, creative speech, looking for an ear. All kinds of wonderful, inconceivable things that science can’t explain, which is why I love life, and why I love scientists.

Lots of love to you,

Pete xox

Decriminalising personal possession, though helpful in other ways, won’t do much to tackle organised crime, which retains its grip on the market. But America’s tentative moves in the direction of legalising the supply of drugs, rather than just going easy on users, could start to change things…If California’s hippies long for legalisation, the bullet-weary citizens of Mexico’s poorest barrios are even keener.
—The Economist, November 2009

Not much more to say about the War on Drugs. Well, of course there is. But I’ve written about it, in my minimal-understanding way, dozens and dozens of times. Here’s an interesting article, and an excerpt, that I will punctuate with a few numbers and spaces to make clearer. It must be noted that this article from Mick Moore—Drugs: towards a global tolerance regime—is not footnoted, which is unfortunate, but its ideas are food for thought:

Let us not delude ourselves that the poor farmers [in Afghanistan, North Africa or wherever] who produce the drugs at least get a good income.

They don’t.

At the farm gate, prices of raw material just after harvest are very low. The price only starts to inflate as drugs cross a national border; international smuggling is a risky, expensive business.

Poor farmers receive very little for their labour. They typically live in remote, conflict-ridden areas from which the [drug] processors and [drug] traffickers exclude normal development activities like schools, road-building, banks and agricultural advisers.

The traffickers can be more confident of a reliable, cheap supply of coca leaf and poppy if [1] government employees, honest politicians and armies can be kept at bay…

…if [2] farmers have little access to alternative sources of credit [to making a living], and if they have to pay high prices to transport fertiliser or to ship bulkier non-narcotic crops [food, for example] to market.

[3]The processors and traffickers prefer that there be little economic infrastructure in producing areas. They want and create weak states and misrule. [The traffickers] finance separatist and insurgent armies [re: terrorists] to keep the government at bay…

…and [4, the traffickers] simultaneously buy off politicians, police, armed forces and customs officers.

[5] The illegality of drugs makes it rational for traffickers to lock producing areas—and sometimes whole countries—into multi-dimensional underdevelopment. The same corrosive consequences for governance, public authority and democracy are replicated as traffickers tranship [traffic] heroin and cocaine through the Caribbean, Central America, Central Asia and, increasingly, West Africa.

[6] Increased tolerance and decriminalisation of drugs use within the main consumer markets of Europe and North America would do nothing to alleviate these upstream effects of illegality in the producing and transhipment countries.

[7] We need a simultaneous shift toward a more tolerant, effectively regulated regime on both the supply and the demand side of the business.

It is no longer utopian to talk of substantial policy change within a few years. Where and how will it come about?

[8] There are clear, strong links between [continued] prohibition [as we have now] and the growing likelihood of defeat for the Western military forces in Afghanistan.

But a certain kind of puritan populism is so well entrenched in American electoral politics that it would be very hard for the Obama administration overtly to promote significant policy change, domestically or internationally.

There are no simple answers, no cures, and hundreds of thousands of personal experiences with drugs, with people on drugs, that mix up the conversation.

It’s a big topic. It effects us all more than we can know: people, friends or even ourselves with addiction; increased crime; increased health costs; increased violence; increased decimation of inner-cities, ghettoes and slums; increased and shocking incarceration rates; increased terrorism and developing country instability etc, etc.

Be good to yourself if educating yourself on the topic. It’s a stunner, to be sure. Facts sometimes run contrary to self-righteousness and morals. Then again, when hasn’t that been true?

Lots of love,

Pete

Dambisa Moyo, who wrote Dead Aid, said in a debate in May of 2009:

“The question then becomes, over the past 60 years—during which over one trillion dollars of aid money has gone from the Western world towards Africa—have we seen an increase in growth? The answer is no. Have we seen a decline in poverty? The answer is no.”

Paul Collier, in contrast, said:

“Dambisa says that we’ve had 60 years of aid and that it has been a failure, but actually, over those 60 years, aid has had periods of amazing success.

If we go back before 60 years, which is when aid was invented, we see that it was invented by North America in order to restore my own region, Europe. Europe in the late 1940s was a fragile mess, both politically and economically. It was a ruin. And North America knew that it had to get serious, which is the difference between then and now. North America got serious by combining the aid with intelligent trade policies, with security policies, and with efforts at governance. That worked [He's talking about the Marshall Plan, to help Germany and Japan etc. recover].

And we then got into a period where aid, instead of being used to reconstruct societies, was used to buy them onto our side instead of the Soviet Union’s side. Right through until the early 1990s aid was diverted into a different agenda. Of course, it didn’t develop Africa. It wasn’t meant to. It was meant to buy the support of a bunch of dictators. It doesn’t have to be like that.”

The foreign aid debate is so fraught with hope and hell—and unanswerable in so many ways. I just saw what’s called the Munk Debates—with de Soto, Moyo, Lewis and Collier—which I think gives a lot of insight and viewpoints on the subject. It also showed to me that sometimes simply unclear definitions of a word (ie aid) put people at odds, when they’re much closer on ideas than they might have thought.

In fact, I thought at times that de Soto and Lewis would make a damn good team.

PAN AFRICA

Oh, just for the record, I always get my back up when the term Africa is even used as if Africa is some sort of collective whole. This seems to me to be a paternalistic—even subconsciously racist—insult to the countless cultures (already sliced up by colonialism), and the respective possibilities and unique aspects of sovereign nations.

I know, because I do it myself sometimes.

PROPERTY IS THEFT: PROPERTY IS CAPITAL

Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, I thought, was interesting and, had his debating partner Dembisa Moyo been more gracious, in general, the four could have actually turned the debate into a joining of forces. That said, I got more out of Moyo’s arguments than ever before. Basically, her point is, if you keep giving money to governments who feel no real compulsion to serve the people (you mean some do?), they’ll just keep taking the money, and doing very little or nothing to set up situations that “incentivize” the people to be more industrious.

But Moyo still definitely needs the more expansive thinking of de Soto on her side to fill out her argument—in my (not always) humble opinion.

De Soto’s argument about the essential nature of property rights are powerful—give indigenous people the same rights over their property as everyone else—yet I think it can be understated (although de Soto understates it) how to do this and how threatening to the Power order this obviously just idea would be to implement.

For there is more than one reason de Soto’s idea of property justice has not yet unfolded (and it’s more than just because of European ‘guilt’ for what’s been done to indigenous cultures all along, as de Soto suggested). Indeed, I would suggest the lack of justice today is made sense of not by ‘guilt’ or ignorant aid, but precisely because of what has been institutionalized and practiced all along: cruelty, exploitation, greed and racism. This in turn may have created today’s guilt among some, and contributed to the ongoing push of sometimes dumb, if not dead, aid, but guilt didn’t cause the problem.

What also remains unaddressed by the ongoing economic push measured by ‘growth’ and addiction to the market, is the increasingly stressed and always finite fact of natural resources, and the effects of pollution, toxic sites, our own untreated shit even, etc., from what we do—climate change being only one of so many deathly side-effects (Stephen Lewis does mention climate change in his closing argument). The world population is expected to rise, I think, from 6.5 billion now to 10 billion by 2050, with 95% of that growth being urban.

And, of course, the ideas of labour and labour movements are never mentioned. It’s just aid, or commerce. Heaven forbid, solidarity amongst the slum and ghettoed masses!

Either way, de Soto’s ideas bring up many questions of what this would really mean, and how would it be implemented?

TO OWN YOUR OWN

The provocative nature of the importance of property ownership even garnered a friendly concession from Stephen Lewis (whom I’ve interviewed), who admitted that he had, as a strong Leftist, always had an affection for Pierre Proudhon’s anarchist motto “Property is theft!”, from the mid-1800s. I would suggest that perhaps such a notion in the modern world is a romantic yet impoverishing condition (that last concession is me putting words in Stephen’s mouth). I would also bet a decent chunk of arable land (if I had it) that Stephen owns property.

And I should like to add that Proudhon, by the end of his life, saw property from two angles, and this is worth listening to. Although Proudhon was once against property ownership of all kinds (1840) and, still, near the end of his life, against both capitalist and state property, he wrote in Theory of Property:

“…property is the greatest revolutionary force which exists, with an unequaled capacity for setting itself against authority … [The] principal function of private property within the political system will be to act as a counterweight to the power of the State, and by so doing to insure the liberty of the individual.”

This could be described as getting practical and wise with one’s anarchism with age. It also would have been a great moment for de Soto with Stephen Lewis had he known this.

De Soto’s argument, it must also be admitted, may be necessary simply as a counterbalance against ongoing exploitation of resources and people as has been ongoing now for, well, pick a date. But were we living in more just, sustainable times, perhaps de Soto’s push for everything being owned—what about the beauty of the commons?—would be less extreme, or less necessary (assuming there is merit to his proposal).

And here is an article in opposition of de Soto’s ideas. An excerpt:

[Rodrigo] Montoya [a so-called Amazonian expert] said de Soto’s approach is overly simplistic with use of interviews [in a documentary de Soto narrated with the same title similar to his book, The Mystery of Capital Among the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon] that were convenient for his position and that de Soto lacks any knowledge or respect for Native Peruvian beliefs. He said those communities and Natives he interviewed are not representative of all communities.

For example, de Soto argues land titles should be given to Native individuals to ease the exploitation of land, but Montoya said that approach ignores the Native American beliefs – “the territory is in first and last instance a mother” – and that vision’s implications influence the type of activities carried out in the soil.

“De Soto does not say a word about the 1,228 forestry concessions with 7.8 million hectares nor the 81 oil blocks which include 56 million hectares,” Montoya said. He also said de Soto should not try to make Peruvian Native leader Alberto Pizango, who recently returned from being in exile in Nicaragua, look like a violent leader stuck to archaic values.

And this article from Slate, Jan 29, 2005 is damning, but the Munk debate is in 2009, and de Soto is going strong, so perhaps the results have been good. That said, a popular, celebrated idea is tough to let go of just because it doesn’t work. Hopefully, it has helped:

Reports from Turkey, Mexico, South Africa, and Colombia suggest similar trends. “In Bogota’s self-help settlements,” writes Alan Gilbert, a London professor of geography who has done extensive research on land issues in Colombia and other parts of Latin America, “property titles seem to have brought neither a healthy housing market nor a regular supply of formal credit.”

This is probably because banks realize they don’t stand to gain much from repossessing shanties in rotten locations. Faced with a massive surge in legalized but tenuous properties owned by poor people, banks have simply adjusted their criteria for lending, and in some cases care more about stable employment than a land title. Not only that, but the actual real estate markets in many of these shantytowns on urban outskirts are stagnant, which puts a serious damper on any potential gains on capital—live or dead.

“You cannot accumulate capital if there is no market in which to trade your asset,” Gilbert writes.

And this article in the Guardian points out what de Soto supposedly leaves out. Indeed, in one documentary de Soto said rural people began to migrate to the urban centres forty years ago because they wanted a piece of the modern pie, they wanted to be part of a division of labor, they wanted to be part of the market system. I would suggest a lot of them left because Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), like the forced growing of cash crops (and with their collapse—either market-wise or harvest-wise, for whatever reason) leads to problems like starvation and hopelessness. Migrating to the urban centre was (and is) for many more likely a desperate last resort, not a love for market principles.

De Soto’s work is an elaborate smokescreen to hide the uglier truth. The power, political and economic, lies with the globalised elite in developing countries who are often employed or bullied by western multinationals, and who run those countries for the maximum extractive benefit of the west. We import their raw commodities at rock bottom prices, and export back to them manufactured goods; we restrict their manufactured exports and we charge high levels of interest on their debts. None of that, of course, gets a hearing in de Soto’s work, which is no doubt partly because his CV includes a stint as an economist for Gatt (the precursor of the WTO) and as the chief executive officer of “one of Europe’s largest engineering firms”. This is touchy, feely capitalism with a heart. Handle it with care.

I get the feeling that de Soto would not argue with a lot of these points. He would simply say that although land titling is not everything, it is an essential and necessary and missing step (of many parts) on the road towards greater justice and parity for indigenous people, and those outside the formal economy.

The conclusion of this paper, a study on de Soto’s ideas, is worth looking at. In short, it says, titling as a form of credit increaser has proved ambiguous, perhaps. But there are other positive effects.

BUY LAND

Anyway, communal and even nomadic dreams aside, the world of Power in 2010, for capitalists and the state, and rich individuals, is based, at least in part, in and on property ownership (recall the American Declaration of Independence and the right to property ownership for the pursuit of happiness). If that’s a given, should not one then ask: what would truly help increase justice amongst the four billion very poor, so many of who are so-called indigenous peoples?

If it took place, property ownership and sovereignty would possibly begin to speak of a level playing field, at which point, maybe then, finally, a somewhat balanced market system could be honestly talked about. Right now, talk of free market, it seems to me, is actually largely propaganda for those with all the rights and power already.

De Soto once said, elsewhere:

“[The poor] haven’t been able to be included [in the globalization market system] for among other things because they have found a large paper wall that obstructs their entry [bureaucracy]. In other words, the legal systems are simply unfriendly to poor people. Legal complications are what history is made of. Simplification is relatively recent. Two-thirds of the worlds population, four billion people, are locked out of the capitalist system. They want to participate but they can’t because participating means being able to make safe contracts with everybody. Being able to get credit. Having an identity that will be recognized on a broad scale throughout the world. And having the possibility to organize production so that they can enter foreign markets. They can’t. So what they’ve done is created their own legal system—what we call the extra-legal system. That’s why we don’t term it illegal. Extra-legal does not mean lawlessness.”

De Soto’s point in the debate is here below, and in his closing remarks. It’s about giving sovereignty to indigenous groups. That their capital is found in their land.

“When you touch sovereignty people don’t like it. So you go in and, which I know you’ve tried to do, you say, look, we want to assimilate you. They’ve resisted. They have said, we don’t want to be assimilated. We have our own pride and our own identity.

What you should have told them is, you have your pride, and your identity and your sovereignty. What we’re going to give you is property, so that inside your sovereignty you can convert your assets into capital.”

CANADA

De Soto added that Canada should stop sending mixed messages—a clash between so-called Right and Left ideals (market vultures and fantasy developments)—to developing countries, but first off do the right thing by the indigenous people of Canada, and abolish the Indian Act. To Canadian aid donors, he said:

“Go see your own Indian reservations. That’s dead capital. You’ve got people there who own a whole bunch of things, but not with the same instruments. They’re frozen into an Indian Act of 1870 where they can’t transfer these resources around. So they’ve got dead capital but it can’t become live because of your guilt. Sure, you did terrible things to them. But because you think you did it through property mechanisms, you’ve deprived them of those mechanisms.“

Manny Jules of the Shuswap nation said this before the House of Commons in Canada:

“If a credit crisis can do this to your economy in one year, think of what a 130-year credit crisis would feel like. That is precisely what we have faced since the 1876 Indian Act.”

What de Soto doesn’t mention is just how many Canadians probably don’t agree that land and sovereignty rights should be simply transferred to indigenous people to use as their own, to be used as capital in the modern system. But these same people believe, say, corporations—even foreign corporations!—should be (and are) able to buy up this land regardless of indigenous peoples’ demand for rights and title (I think this would be called, by Canadiens who believe this, ‘being conquered’).

In Canada, battles for indigenous rights have a chance on so-called crown (or government) owned land. There are more difficulties where land has already been bought by corporations. This from the Globe and Mail, Jan 4, 2010:

The Hul’qumi’num ancestral lands, which were converted to railway lands, are now privately owned by forest companies. That means B.C. and Canada won’t even discuss most of the land the tribes’ claim as their traditional territories because it is no longer Crown land.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found Canadian courts “do not seem to provide any reasonable expectations of success, because Canadian jurisprudence has not obligated the state to set boundaries, demarcate and record title deeds to lands of indigenous peoples.”

I believe the first transfer of land allowing mortgages and normal ownership etc. (I could be wrong about that detail) happened with the Nisga’a tribe owning 2000 square kilometres on the northwest coast. In fact, de Soto’s “prescription” is mentioned in the article.

Continuing this theme in his closing remarks, de Soto says the following, and it’s hard-hitting, and important food for thought, in my opinion. How to implement the idea is another issue. Who gets the land? Why? When? Who doesn’t get it? etc. Nonetheless:

“Because of the recession, we’ve lost focus on the fact that there is a food shortage in the world. And the food shortage is because there are 1.7 billion hectares in the world that are being cultivated and that feed the whole globe. And it is obviously not enough. We’ve done the green revolution. We’ve done that and we need more land. And there’s 2.7 billion hectares left in the world, most of which are in Africa. Now, you watch. What is happening now in Africa and what is going to happen, unless you start giving indigenous Africans titles to their property, is that it will be taken over not only by the Chinese but by large corporations. And then all hell will break loose.

Then you’ll understand why it is so important to give property rights.

They may not have capital but if you’re given ownership—whether it is Hershey whether it is Unilever—whoever is coming in to invest will say, well, you’ve got the land, but you can’t do much with it unless I build a road. You can’t do much unless I move the stones away. You can’t do much unless I arrange the irrigation systems. I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you 50%. And that would be 50% more than they’ve got today. That’s how capital begins. If you don’t do that, Africa is up for grabs.

Although de Soto and Moyo are on the same team in the debate, de Soto’s views seem quite removed from Dambisa Moyo’s argument. Dambisa is highly pro-China and their involvement in Africa—which can hardly be pushing the road towards ensuring indigenous property rights, my god. Individual rights are not big on the Chinese agenda, by all accounts.

For the record, I wrote a little about this African land grab in April, here, and it is startling, bordering on criminal both from the outside, and the allowance by the governments of these countries—again, in my opinion.

The transcript of the debate is here in pdf, and really worth reading to hear views on Foreign Aid either for the first time, or further elucidated.

And here is the debate, in bits, on youtube. And here’s Stephen Lewis’ passionate closing arguments, pleading, before the babies (all over Africa) are thrown out with the bathwater.

What you or I as an individual can do about any of it, I don’t know. Still, knowledge is power, too, otherwise dictators, as a rule, wouldn’t always roll in when they take over and kill the knowledgeable.

And maybe one day some sliver of knowledge might be passed onto someone who somehow has a bigger voice!

Wishing you lots of love and freedom,

Pete

Manny Jules of the Shuswap nation, again:

“When I heard what de Soto was doing, I recognized the same arguments that I’ve been making all these years. He comes at it from education, I learned it from experience, but we’re talking about the same thing. And then I got to Peru and heard all these stories from the natives—that they are living on land they’re restricted from exploiting; that in order to gain legal access to that land, they must renounce their identity as indigenous peoples; and meanwhile foreign companies that make private deals with the government have greater legal right to the land than they do. These are stories I instantly recognized, having heard them time and again here in Canada.”

I was reading Ronald Wright’s Stolen Continents, researching for a project idea, and read this on page six. What he says here is interesting, and would probably on some level coincide with Jared Diamond’s ideas—of how the outside world, the environment (obviously), plays the major role in the development of culture, and even invention.

“Ancient America was criticized for lacking things that Europe had—things deemed epitomes of human progress. The plow and the wheel were favorites; another was writing. It never occurred to Eurocentric historians that plows and wheels are not much use without draft animals such as oxen or horses, neither of which existed in the Americas before Columbus. Far from marveling that civilization arose there despite these “handicaps,” historians took the absence of plow and wheel as proof that ancient Americans could not truly have been civilized. In the same spirit they concluded that Maya hieroglyphs were not real writing—though they looked like writing—because no white man had been able to decipher them.

Scholars of today are no longer so naive. Most Maya inscriptions can now be read, revealing magnificent achievements in astronomy and mathematics and adding a thousand years of dynastic records to the human family tree.“

What a world, mysterious, wildly.

Lots of love,

Pete

The inimitable Martin Luther King (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) is known, of course, for his vital, unstoppable and courageous non-violent civil disobedience work and leadership for the civil rights movement. But as time went on, in the mid-sixties, King’s conscience, by his own admission, would demand that he speak out against what he saw as an immoral war in Vietnam. His speech of April 4, 1967, a year before his death, is remarkable:

“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.

With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.”

It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.”

The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.“

Reading over that speech makes me ask: how do I become more just? See my own flaws? Build bridges instead of barriers? Grasp what is right, and stand up for it? Choose compassion and solidarity over ego? Celebrate the greatness of this world, this society, and work on what is weak, pulled apart, wanting?

LABOR PAINS

Towards the last months of his life, Dr. King began to speak out about “the dignity of labor” and against “starvation wages” in such a rich country. We hardly ever hear about this aspect of his work. I knew of the Vietnam speech, of course, and have written about it.

I don’t know if a lack of knowledge of Dr. King’s comments on poverty and labor is simply coincidental. But I am aware, of course, of the utter lack of general awareness of the countless workers (and the labour movement) who, over the decades, fought for and sometimes died for the rights for all of us to a shorter work day, weekends off, decent wages, freedom of speech, the right to assembly and so on—all heroes in their own rights.

So I either did not know or had forgotten about what Dr. King had been supporting up to the very day of his death: again, the dignity of labor, the right to assembly, to strike, to be treated fairly.

In Memphis, Tennessee, by putting his force behind the sanitation workers of Local 733, solidarity resulted in the religious community, the civil rights community and the labor community all coming together—a remarkably dangerous combination to Power. A short film of the time is here (10 min), as the strikers march with the the bayonets of Power pointed at them.

Dr. King’s last speech was given in Memphis on April 3, 1968. I believe he said:

“Somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly, somewhere I read of the freedom of speech, somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for rights.”

Martin Luther King was murdered on April 4, 1968. But what Martin Luther King stood for will never be forgotten, and will never not be fought for. His inspiration, and those who stood with him, live on, and remind me of how great it is to be human.

Sending out love, and hope, for the the world, for Canada, where I live, for Haiti, for justice—in gratitude to the countless many who have fought for everything, giving everything,

Pete

“Even before this particular earthquake and the tragic events that have been following, it has been the conviction of the international community that this time we have to go into Haiti and finish the job.”
—Stephen Harper

I know everybody is different on how they perceive a comment, and it may be said with the best of intentions, but that comment by Stephen Harper is, to me, off-putting, to say the least. How do people see things so differently? Should a leader not qualify a sentence like that? Admit at least some of the brutally imposed past? There just seems to be so little acknowledgement by the political leaders for what has been imposed, from within and without, on Haiti—and much disdain for it as a country, despite what it must have taken to achieve independence in the first place.

A BRIEF HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF FINISHING THE JOB

In an article from CBC called Haiti’s Unhappy History, and this one from the BBC called The long history of troubled ties between Haiti and the US, some of the historical invasions, occupations and Western-supported dictators are mentioned. The alleged coup d’etat—according to democratically elected leader Jean-Bertrand Arisitide he was forced out of Haiti by the Americans and flown to Central African Republic—is dismissed by someone in the American government as “absurd.”

If it is absurd, why was Aristide not helped to come back and lead the country? After all, all know Aristide was, despite a troubling reign, democratically elected—claims of mass corruption and human rights abuses are plenty—in a country that had been without any democracy for years (until Aristide’s first election win—this was his second coup).

Dr Paul Farmer’s commentary here, from 2004, is worth reading, as are some of the comments. As usual, life and politics remain unclear.

COLONIALISM INC.

Whatever the truth, both of the recent articles I mentioned curiously and conspicuously fail to mention the shocking beginning of the the nation-state of Haiti: the disgraceful reparations that the liberated slave-country had to pay France for their liberty (from the early 1800s until 1947—an then other loans that had been borrowed while paying the reparations). To recall, Haiti was the first (and perhaps only) slave nation to free itself, via rebellion. Reparations for freeing yourself from slavery—now that’s absurd, but true. And so worth remembering. In fact, shouldn’t we all just know it? In a sane world, wouldn’t this be common knowledge?

This article, much more explicit, is actually from May of 2009, before this devastating earthquake. The dreaded word: reparations. The cruelty, hypocrisy and insanity is almost impossible to grasp. This from the TimesOnLine:

History tells a different story. The appalling state of the country is a direct result of having offended a quite different celestial authority — the French. France gained the western third of the island of Hispaniola — the territory that is now Haiti — in 1697. It planted sugar and coffee, supported by an unprecedented increase in the importation of African slaves. Economically, the result was a success, but life as a slave was intolerable. Living conditions were squalid, disease was rife, and beatings and abuses were universal. The slaves’ life expectancy was 21 years. After a dramatic slave uprising that shook the western world, and 12 years of war, Haiti finally defeated Napoleon’s forces in 1804 and declared independence. But France demanded reparations: 150m francs, in gold.

For Haiti, this debt did not signify the beginning of freedom, but the end of hope. Even after it was reduced to 60m francs in the 1830s, it was still far more than the war-ravaged country could afford. Haiti was the only country in which the ex-slaves themselves were expected to pay a foreign government for their liberty. By 1900, it was spending 80% of its national budget on repayments. In order to manage the original reparations, further loans were taken out — mostly from the United States, Germany and France. Instead of developing its potential, this deformed state produced a parade of nefarious leaders, most of whom gave up the insurmountable task of trying to fix the country and looted it instead. In 1947, Haiti finally paid off the original reparations, plus interest. Doing so left it destitute, corrupt, disastrously lacking in investment and politically volatile. Haiti was trapped in a downward spiral, from which it is still impossible to escape. It remains hopelessly in debt to this day.

Doesn’t that make you want to weep?

A link to Partners In Health, who do great work in Haiti, and have for years, and are undoubtedly in great need of support in this absolutely brutal and devastating time.

Here’s to hope, justice, compassion, and further understanding of history, and how it may play out. And may Stephen Harper’s words somehow be positive, and result in true and useful and compassionate help for the masses in Haiti who have suffered for so long at the whim of cruel and brutal politics, from within and without.

Petexo

I tried to sign the petition today for the three American hikers detained by the Iranian authorities nearly six months ago, for accidentally crossing into Iran while hiking. It’s so perverse how much illegitimate authority there is in the world. Anyway, I couldn’t sign because I already signed a few months ago. This is what I tried to write this time:

“Outrageous, cruel and yet another example of the state, geo-politics and ignorance and hatefulness trumping human rights and dignity.”

If you get a chance, and if it appeals to you, appeal back and sign it. The situation is absurd in an often demented and cruel world. Thank god for love and solidarity and kindness, and humour. Yes, thank god for humour! May Josh, Shane and Sarah come home safely, and come home soon,

Lots of love,

Pete

Haiti is an utterly marginalised state, misused and exploited for centuries, inside and out, with no thanks to Canada. Their democratically-elected leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide, exiled allegedly by a coup in 2004, has said that for their (mis)involvement in Haiti, the Canadian government have “blood on their hands.” And if all that wasn’t enough, the staggeringly poor country was hit by a massive earthquake two days ago, fifteen miles from its capital, Port-Au-Prince. From the Partners-In-Health website:

The earthquake has destroyed much of the already fragile and overburdened infrastructure in the most densely populated part of the country. A massive and immediate international response is needed to provide food, water, shelter, and medical supplies for tens of thousands of people.

In an urgent email from Port-au-Prince, Louise Ivers, our clinical director in Haiti, appealed for assistance from her colleagues in the Central Plateau: “Port-au-Prince is devastated, lot of deaths. SOS. SOS… Temporary field hospital by us at UNDP needs supplies, pain meds, bandages. Please help us.”

Aid often has a bad name, sometimes for good reasons—some sickeningly easy to understand. Sometimes definitely not. Whatever one believes, two NGO groups, often risking their lives, manifest in spades and courage what it really means to be a worker in the medical field—doctors who actually believe people should have access to medical care—and take their skills and work right to the problem, helping to save lives in battered places through medical intervention.

One of these groups is, of course, Doctors Without Borders. My friend Ivan is working in Pakistan with MSF right now. Another is Partners-In-Health, who have been doing amazing, desperately needed work in Haiti and elsewhere for years. One of the founders of that group is Dr Paul Farmer, a remarkable person, whom I have written about on several occasions.

Do what you can. Spread the word if you can. Here’s the PIH website.

Here is more information about PIH and Paul Farmer that I’ve written over the years.

There but for the grace of fault-lines, timing, and countless other variables, go all of us,

Pete