#i say it over and over again: indigenous folks really be struggling to hold on to certain cultural activities

[darkwood-sleddog]

I love that my Apayauq posts are getting traction again! It's always great to see so many of you appreciating transgender people being unapologetically trans in sports.

That being said: Apayauq is on a break from competitive mushing due to the expenses of the sport. I've said this many times, mushing even recreationally is very expensive. You don't make money doing this sport (Apayauq credits her family's polar bear tour business for helping with costs for 2022).

Aside from the average musher's financial struggles, indigenous arctic mushers face inequalities in the very sport that they originated. Lots of this has to do with income and opportunity inequalities that make financing a dog team even more difficult than average. A true shame considering that mushing is a cultural activity. While there are many Alaskan Native organizations fighting for other aspects of equality for their populace, not many focus specifically on dogsledding. Consider supporting the Frank Attla Youth Dog Sled Program (teaching dog care to native children) or if you choose to take a tour in an area where dog sledding is relevant please consider booking that tour with an indigenous musher.

Additionally due to inequalities in medical care it is often more difficult for indigenous transgender people to get the gender affirming care that they need AND transgender Alaskan Natives have been shown to have a startling level of discrimination against them. Consider supporting LGBTQ+ organizations in Alaska such as Choosing our Roots (helps families host LGBTQ+ youth in need), Identity Alaska (youth programs but also has programs about coming out as an elder), and Alaskans Together.

In the meantime I highly suggest supporting Apayauq's other hobbies such as her photography, and polar bear tour business. You can also keep an eye out for her upcoming documentary about Iditarod 2022 in partnership with Zeppelin Zeerip.

[mystic-writes]

I hope this is the right place haha. Could you do a female Eivor and female reader. The reader goes on a raid but it doesn’t go a planned. Maybe captured and tortured (sounds rough I know. A damsel in distress situation) then Eivor comes and rescues her. Thank you!

Thank you so much for sending in a request! This is not only my first request, but also my first kidnapping (kinda) fic! I feel like I'm officially a fanfic writer now! Also, happy pride month everyone, happy indigenous history month to all the indigenous folks out there! As a side note, my requests are still open, so feel free to send them to my askbox everyone!

CW: water torture, knifes, blood, brief mention of hot metal torture situation (none of the above are in a lot of detail!), angst, fluffy ending

Possible spoilers (very vague mention of storyline related thing)!

It had been days, maybe even a week since you had been captured during a raid that had gone rather poorly. While you were striking down soldiers with your bow from a nice, high branch at the top of a tree, you were spotted and a group of soldiers came after you. You had no choice other than to jump down from your high vantage point, and in doing so you sprained your ankle. Because you were injured and unable to really run away, the group of soldiers eventually caught up to you. Since then, you’d remained in the cell you had been placed in that night, hands and feet chained, the metal beginning to cut into your flesh. You had been questioned a few times, usually regarding what Eivor knew about the Order. You never answered any of the questions they asked you, partly because you usually didn’t know what to tell them. Eivor told you very little about her work dismantling the Order of the Ancients because she didn’t want you to get involved with it somehow, which would greatly endanger your safety. When they didn’t get the answers they so desperately wanted, they would either pour buckets of freezing cold water over your head, or slowly drag a knife along your flesh in a spot of their choosing. Though the cuts were not deep, likely in order to keep you from bleeding out, they stung when the water was poured over you, and were quite painful. Not to mention that having water repeatedly poured over you left you almost permanently wet, or at the very least damp, leading you to not be able to produce any body heat.

Though the days of torture and going with little to no food or water passed on, you knew that Eivor would find you eventually. She loved you, and had promised that no matter what happened, she would always keep you safe. Though the raid had not gone as planned and you had been captured, you knew she would keep her word; she always did. You trusted your lover, and knew she would do whatever she had to in order to get you back.

At some point, you had either passed out or fallen asleep (you weren’t sure which), and now someone was shaking you awake rather violently. You opened your eyes, hoping that it was Eivor, but instead saw one of the soldiers who had captured you. You felt tears spring to your eyes as you were hauled off to another room, dreading what was to come, and not knowing how much more you could take.

As usual, you were placed in a chair, your wrists strapped to the arms of the chair, and your ankles to the legs. You knew what to expect at this point; question after question, and you giving them no answer, then either being cut or having freezing water poured over your head. However, you noticed today that there were no buckets of water in the room today, and that there was a brazier sitting next to you. You had an idea of where this was going, and you did not like it. Though you knew it was of no use, you began struggling against your restraints.

“Now, now, darling. There won’t be any escaping happening here,” one of the soldiers says, directly in front of your face. You take the opportunity presented to you, and spit at him. This gets you a slap in the face that leaves your skin tingling and your ears ringing. But, you don’t regret spitting at him; not at all.

“Well, now that the spitting is hopefully out of the way, time for some questions. You might want to cooperate today, love. We’ve got a new toy to try out on you and I don’t think you’ll like it very much,” he says, lighting the coals in the brazier sitting next to you. He then places a long, metal poker into the fire, and you watch as the metal turns bright red.

“Now, what do you know about the Order? Who is that heathen’s next target, huh?” he asks you. When you don’t answer he goes to grab the metal poker. He holds it just above the skin on your collarbone, and says “Are you sure you don’t want to ans-,” before getting cut off by a door slamming open, and a knife slitting his throat. As the body of the soldier is pushed to the side, you see the person wielding the knife, and it’s just who you had hoped it would be. Eivor drops the knife, now covered in the blood of one of the men who had taken you, and falls to her knees, begging to unfasten your restraints. You try to speak, to tell her how thankful you are, but she hushes you, telling you to save your strength. Once your restraints have been severed, she takes off her cloak and wraps it around you before picking you up. You’re grateful for the warmth of her large cloak, and even more grateful that you’ll soon be back in Ravensthorpe.

You begin to wake up and notice that you’re snuggled up in several soft furs, being held by who you can only assume is Eivor. The last thing you can remember before you passed out is the jostling from being on top of a horse, and Eivor holding you closely, whispering to you that you were safe. You open your eyes and see Eivor looking down at you. Once she realizes that you’re awake, she pulls you even closer to her, and whispers “I’m so sorry, my love. I have failed you.”

You reach up and wipe away a tear that has slipped from one of her eyes and say, “But, you haven’t! I’m back home thanks to you.” You wrap your arms around her middle and squeeze as tight as you possibly can, so happy to be back in the arms of the person that you love the most.

“I thought you would be safe if you were further away. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed that,” she says, her voice strained.

“Eivor, I’m usually fine. There was no way for either of us to know that someone would spot me. None of what has happened is your fault, nor do I blame you. I’m just glad to be back here, with you, in your arms,” you whisper to her, leaning up to kiss her cheek. You press your head to her chest, suddenly feeling tired again.

“Y/N, I would have done anything to get you back. Your safety will always be more important to me than anything else, and I love you more than words can say. Now rest my love, you have been through a lot,” she says before placing a kiss on top of your head.

You return her affections, and feel yourself begin to drift off. You’re comforted by the warmth and the safety of being in Eivor’s arms, and allow yourself to be lulled to sleep by the beating of her heart.

[nothorses]

heyy! first of all i hope you're doing well. thank you for taking the time out to read and respond to this (if you choose to). this has been bothering me for a while and i'd like your opinion on it.

i read these two articles recently - the first one is about a lesbian professor of gender studies + sexuality arguing why women should be allowed to "hate men"; the second is an interview with her about the article in which she addresses some of the negative responses she got to that article.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-cant-we-hate-men/2018/06/08/f1a3a8e0-6451-11e8-a69c-b944de66d9e7_story.html

https://outline.com/ttKscw

i have a lot of questions about this.

firstly, i cannot tell whether this is the sort of reductionist, radfemmy, "fuck all men" feminist you've been talking about. i understand her sentiments but i disagree with her statement, and i want to get better at identifying shallow feminism. i don't think my personal opinion is credible enough (yet) to draw any conclusions right off the bat. are there any 'tells' or signs that indicate what sort of feminism someone is speaking about (in the same way that there are certain idenitifiers of TERF ideology even when it is not explicitly mentioned)? for example, in the interview, she explicitly says "Where is discrimination? Where are men being excluded? Where are men being abused? Oh, come on." as well as her implied praise of kamala harris as 'the feminist we need in office'. are those things indicators of whether her position on feminism is credible/an appropriate portrayal of how Feminism™ should function? in short, do i take this woman entirely seriously about all this?

secondly, how do you feel about gender being a social construct, as she states? does that not contradict the very real physical dysphoria that a lot of us experience? doesn't it invalidate almost all the experiences of struggle against transphobia and cissexism, as well as our identities, by painting gender identity as 'not a big deal' or 'fake' by virtue of being a social construct? also, is gender identity not influenced by biology to some extent?

thirdly, along a similar vein, how do you feel about gender abolitionism? i don't exactly have a v specific question about this one, i just want another trans person's opinion on how that sort of society would affect them. i do not wish to be stripped of my identity, and i am opposed to gender abolitionism because of that. is this sentiment a product of some misunderstanding i have?

if you have any other thoughts at all about the articles, i'd love to hear those. thank you!

Oooh, anon, these are such good questions.

Why Can’t We Hate Men? by Suzanna Walters

Follow-Up Interview with Walters

Walters does a weird sort of dance in both articles: her argument is that “hating men” is okay and even good, but she has to completely misrepresent what “hating men” is, does, and means in order to make her point align with what she actually believes is defensible.

“Hating men” is not actually about hating men, she says; she doesn’t hate men at all, in fact. She knows they’re not the problem, but rather the systems of patriarchy in place. She knows racism and other intersections make “hating men” complicated at best, and harmful at worst. She just wants men to “lean back” and understand the power they hold; to be feminists. She thinks it’s a good thing to welcome men into feminism.

So then what the hell does “hating men” actually mean, to her? Why make that the hill to die on, if nothing in her argument has anything to do with that hill?

I don’t think she really believes any of the arguments she’s making in the first place. Walters pays lipservice to racism and intersectionality in a brief comment, then never brings it up again. Her view of feminist issues is narrow and shallow, dealing mostly with “the safety of women” and the representation of women in positions of power; both of which fail to address the structural issues of the patriarchy and how it functions, and prioritize Making Women Powerful over dismantling the systems of oppression giving people power over each other in the first place. She believes that all men are universally and inherently benefiting from the patriarchy, and that men in fact are the system to be fought.

Some of this pings as TERFy, too. Walters never really argues against radical feminism. Her argument against gender-essentialism is, as you said, that gender shouldn’t exist at all- but she claims the patriarchy discriminates based on genitalia.

You caught that as well; “where are men being oppressed/abused?” she says, after her performative gesture toward intersectionality. Walters also compares the oppression of women to racism at the same time, which... holy shit.

I’d personally peg her as a mainstream liberal feminist. She’s a successful white professor who sincerely believes that her experiences as a woman are universal. Her takes are surface-level and shallow at best, and edging dangerously close to radical feminism and quiet TERFism at worst.

TL;DR: The Author

She’s a mainstream liberal feminist who makes a string of confused, contradicting arguments because she chose to die on a hill she doesn’t really understand. Her arguments stray TERFy and racist on multiple occasions.

RE: Gender questions

What gender is and where it comes from is a complicated question, and I don’t think there’s a simple answer to it. The major arguments are that it’s social, biological, or psychological; either it comes from how you’re socialized, what your genitals look like, or it’s something built into your brain chemistry (think “wrong body” trans theory).

I personally think it’s a bit of a mix, leaning toward the social and psychological, and that where gender “comes from” is a little different for each individual. Biology has a bit to do with it; we’ve had somewhat consistent ideas "man” and “woman” across various cultures.

But what gender means in each society is different, and how people conceptualize it has been different. What gender someone feels they are may be influences by their culture’s gender expectations. Some indigenous cultures even have anywhere from two to five distinct “genders”, and I can say personally that my conceptualization of my own gender relies pretty heavily on how other people perceive and treat me.

Not to mention that trans people have existed for as long as people in general have, even in societies that lack any formal gender concept for trans folks. So psychology must play a role, too.

So if we strip away all social expectations of gender, we’re still left with psychological and biological influences on gender. Which is part of why I don’t think we can abolish gender to begin with; people will always have internal understandings of gender to some extent, and they’ll always express them, and therefore there will always be a social element to gender. We can, however, work toward abolishing restrictive, binaristic, oppressive gender structures that limit and punish expressions of gender.

And as a sidenote, the whole “gender is just a social construct, but genitals are real” and “we should abolish all concept of gender” thing is extremely TERFy. There are thoughtful and trans-inclusive ways of approaching the question, but usually we’re talking about gender as part of a system of power and oppression. Walters is using the TERF framework that their “gender critical” comes from: gender isn’t real, therefore trans people aren’t real. Patriarchy is just based on biological realities and sex, and we should abolish the idea of gender (as code for abolishing trans rights and theory).

TL;DR: Gender

I personally believe that gender is a synthesis of biological, psychological, and social influences that is highly unique to every individual. There’s no real way to “abolish” it, only systems of power and oppression that rely on and enforce it. Walters’ way of discussing it is extremely TERFy, and her arguments should be heavily scrutinized.

[writingwithcolor]

Destroying Imperialism to avoid Discussing Racism

Hello! I wanted to write a mostly light-hearted story about cowboys escorting a mysterious stranger to the Atlantic and the weird encounters they have along the way. I know how racist the Western genre normally is but I didn’t think I was the right person to write about the racism Native Americans faced since I’m not Native. To get around this I created a backstory for the world to explain the lack of it:

A century ago during the Age of Imperialism alien asteroids struck the earth, destroying most of Europe and mutating Earth’s flora and fauna. In the ensuing confusion the Native nations banded together and pushed the invaders out, with the freed slaves staying with the Natives. The cowboys are all descended from these former slaves, with the only white person in the entire story being the escort. Since the story involves traveling the cast will meet a lot of Native people on their adventure.

At first I thought this was okay but as I this was okay but as I thought about the idea more I grew less confident in it. I didn’t feel like it was okay for me to attempt to side-step a very serious issue like this. Is there a way to repair this premise or should I just scrap the entire story since I seem to be coming at it from the wrong angle?

I wouldn’t say “wrong angle” so much as “potentially ahistorical to a fairly extreme degree,” which might not be possible to mitigate. There’s a lot of points in here that need addressing for it to be even plausible, and I’m only covering the major ones.

Point the First: Natives Owned Slaves

Part of it was to get in good with the white man, but this is something that happened. I’m not Black-Indigenous, so I won’t speak for their struggle, but I will say that anti-blackness is fairly large in Native communities, and many Black-Indigenous people are denied any sort of place in the tribe. 

I’m not very well versed in that history, and I would rather pass the mic to Black-Indigenous folks who have in some cases experienced generations of tribal disenfranchisement thanks to prevalent colourism and anti-blackness in Native communities.

I’m sure some tribes were anti-slavery. But others very much weren’t. This is something you will have to explore, extrapolate, and listen very closely to Black-Indigenous folk for their experiences and preferences.

Point the Second: Some Nations (temporarily) Benefited A Lot

The Metis were a nation with a lot of political power and a lot of wealth, all thanks to the fur trade. They came about through political and/or love marriages between white men and Native women, then grew into their own distinct thing with an intermingling of French, Scottish, and primarily Cree settlers in Canada’s Prairie. 

This isn’t counting how relations between Quebec and the Natives in the region were actually very good for a time, the Iroquois were war allies to the British in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Texas has a treaty that has not actually been broken. 

These nations/confederacies would be hard pressed to want to throw Europeans out, because for a long period of time, they got a lot of perks. They got money, the ability to expand their territory, help against their enemies, guns, horses, metal, and resources in general.

Point the Third: Colonialism Was Slow To Boil, Or Devastated Quickly

There is no one exact spot where you can pinpoint it got bad for everyone all at once. When America got its mind on manifest destiny, that was terrible for the Plains, Mountain, and West Coast Natives. When the Spanish came (well before the Age of Imperialism in the 1400s) and enslaved practically all of Mexico and Florida, it very quickly destroyed many, many, many nations that are working on revitalization efforts but will never truly exist as they were again. 

Canada’s Prairies got hit hard from the 1800s, onward, but the Inuit were slow to connect with Europeans so their colonialism is very recent and very sudden. The Maritimes in Canada got hit devastatingly before the Age of Imperialism really took hold, but then Quebec Natives hardly had that happen until everything soured. The Iroquois might’ve had even longer in a place of status.

As a result, you cannot assume everyone would either be hurt or feel hurt. In some cases the Natives only realized how toxic settlers were when America actively cheated them out of land. Others when their children were taken to residential schools.

Point the Fourth: Cowboys Existed Because of Colonialism

Cows are a European animal, primarily, as are horses. Ranching began as Spanish and then American people wanted to buy/steal large swaths of land from Natives in both Mexico during early colonialism (I reiterate: before the period your supposed asteroid hit Europe), and the Plains during the manifest destiny era. 

Ranching and Native peoples have a hard time coexisting together, because in the plains, you’ve got rancher needs fighting with buffalo needs, just to name one example. 

It might be possible to create a respectful cowboy situation, but you’d have to think pretty long and hard about how to not push out Native peoples from their territory, and how to share the land for two very large animals and their different needs. 

Also, you’d have to account for how ranching is a Spanish thing, so if Spanish people hadn’t had a chance to import all of their practices, then the whole concept of cowboys in North America would be bust. 

Is it possible to have cowboys be adapted, maybe be influenced from a few places in Asia or Africa  (because Africa does have pastoralists) instead of the Spanish, and make them respectful? Probably. How? You’d have to do your own research on the needs of cowboys, animal husbandry in East Africa, and what tensions existed between them and Native/Indigenous peoples in both North America and whatever region you’re borrowing from.

Point the Fifth: Colonialism Became Self Sustaining Very Quickly

Aka, they wouldn’t have been impacted much at all by Europe getting wiped out, especially the older colonialism like New France (1500s), Mexico (1500s), Rupert’s Land (1670), New England (1600s), etc. They might have lost some trading partners and a reason to over-produce goods, but they wouldn’t have been devastated. These people:

1- did not rely on Europe after a generation or two, maybe 3-4 at most

2- were often already genocidal

It took all of a generation or two for colonial structures to be self-perpetuating (when families came over like in America, or the active sponsorship of girls to come such as the Files du Roi in New France), and to have killed off major swaths of Indigenous people in the area (although New France did take longer to get bad). The Pequot village massacre that is the reason Thanksgiving is annual was in the early 1600s, after all.

This is not getting into the Caribbean, Asia (British shadow-rule of India started in the 1700s, but they had been trade partners for longer), or Africa, or South America. Colonialism was a long, long, long buildup, and the Age of Imperialism was just a small portion of that. 

The likelihood of the Indigenous numbers existing to remove cities that had purposely spent all of their early time “clearing” the land of unwanted Indigenous people is… possible, but low. 

This is why non-violent colonialism is an oxymoron, which I’ve discussed at length this week. Many were violent from day one, so unless you change Europe’s history to remove their manifest destiny attitudes and just have them expand to new lands and not be colonists, then your solution is too little, too late.

Also, news travelled a lot slower at the time. People might not’ve even found out about the asteroid for months if not years.

In the End

I highly doubt it will be possible to get the kind of story you want without discussing racism of some sort. The fact you’ve only targeted the Age of Imperialism, and as a result have kinda majorly glossed over the Spanish era (starting in the 1400s), which was majorly devastating to Mexico/Florida and resulted in many peoples being rendered extinct, plus being the root of cowboys… yeah.

It sounds like you’re trying to avoid learning about our struggles/putting in the work to write respectful background characters. You’re too hung up on trying to make it all better instead of learning how to write situations without making the whole story about that situation. I’d take a look at our Can I Write About X? tag for more information on how to write background stuff.

Like I said. It might be possible to create a respectful cowboy/Western story… but I really doubt that this solution is enough. It just doesn’t account for the sheer length of time colonialism happened, and by the time Native peoples have supposedly banded together, colonialism would’ve been self sustaining in many of the regions you’re discussing.

~ Mod Lesya

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

Scandalous Thoughts: A Few Notes On Civil Anarchism

Every so often, cyclically, collective or social anarchism becomes restrictive to some anarchists and an anarchist individualism reasserts itself. It happened at the turn of the twentieth century when some of the great anarchist thinkers began to question some of the more communistic dogmas. It is happening once more, and once more we witness some of the social anarchists writhe in panic as their comfortable dream is disturbed and they wittingly or unwittingly reinforce the stranglehold of the State by condemning their unruly sisters and brothers who appear to threaten the pursuit of what one comrade has aptly described as ‘civil anarchism’.

It is a horrible creature, this civil anarchism. A slathering, craven and despotic monster with eyes in the back of its head which tries to be what anarchism will probably never be – palatable to the modern consumer masses.

One of the major qualities that those engaged in making attacks seek is to recover knowledge of themselves and each other, to recover personal power, to enact a radical and dramatic break from Society, with its intolerable cage of the social norm and the consequent deadening of individual sensibility. Some communiqués from this tendency are flowery and poetic in the extreme, and are not to everyone’s taste, but reading an Anarchist Federation statement is deadening. It is the materialist death-march of politics against life, the patriarchal voice of ‘political reason’ against the wild rebel spirit, of the political against me.

The combatants seek to recover volition and dispel the inauthentic. This can only start from your experience, not from the experience or dogmas of others, although it involves your relationship with a few comrades within “the mass” or the “working classes”. Until it is active, on the street, there is little genuine struggle to be found in some abstract crowd of people you have no relationship with. It seems incredible to read the thoughts of those that identify as (Formal) Federation anarchists and even more pointless to have to critique it. It is a bit like critiquing the performance of a clown by the standards applied to a serious drama. The issue for me here is the same denial of individuality that the State imposes – some herding of unique human beings into some utilitarian category by pedagogues and masters who find the individual unwieldy and dangerous, but find an abstract ideological cage immensely comfortable.

This lack of authenticity and the somewhat anachronistic politics of their “revolutionary organisation” as a whole, is reflected in the Federation’s outrage at the shooting of Italian nuclear boss, Roberto Adinolfi and the letter bomb sent to the Chief of the Italian tax office Marco Cuccagna. The Federation disingenuously manipulate the facts with regard to the latter in order to prostitute their particular ideology by describing the boss of the tax department as a ‘worker’. Not only is this insulting to anyone’s intelligence, who can see quite clearly that the target was one of the bosses who rob them every day of their hard-earned wages, but it is puzzling because they pretend to ‘care’ about the suffering of these targets and to state categorically that ‘the working class’ care too. If I am being authentic to myself, then I can say I do not care a bit if this bureaucratic robber is attacked, injured, killed. Actually, I am happy about it. I imagine many people would also not care and may even feel some satisfaction and even joy at the news.

Some basic questions of the Federation which do not really require answers: who are these “working class” people you speak of; how many individuals who make up the “working class” do you personally know; how do you know that all these people disagree with attacks on capitalist infrastructure, bosses and tax collectors; what gives you the right to speak for anyone but yourself; what do you say about the “working class” people who rioted in London in August 2011 (and throughout history)? To even ask these questions seems ludicrous, but a quick look at Federation discourse seems to necessitate them since they seem so sure of themselves.

The Federation/Libcom mindset continues with its psychometric assessment of supposed “terrorist tactics”. They borrow another meaningless spook from the hostile media and the State – the mindless, indiscriminate anarcho-insurrectionalist-“terrorist”. Again, how many of these individuals does the Federation know, and how does the Federation know that such acts are not part of a rich and more complex life. Furthermore, to state the obvious, insurrectionist methods are widespread amongst the disaffected of the world, as widespread as ‘organising’, and sometimes have more in common with “working class” rebellion than anything the Federation comes up with. The Federation is tellingly silent on this reality in the main, preferring only some parental nod to “working class” anger that could be so much more constructive if only the unruly would acknowledge the wisdom of Federation physicians and swallow their prescriptions.

Here the Federation again reveals itself to be incapable of liberating itself from the shackles of ideology: that denial again of the complex human being and its shunting into some useful abstract category. But as we look at the Federation’s reactions to other anarchists, it actually becomes more sinister, in that they are frequently almost indistinguishable from our enemies. It’s choice of forum is the internet. A brief review not only of critiques of technology, but also experience of it, reveals how destructive this form of faceless, mass interaction is. Furthermore, the language used by the Federations is akin to experiencing the fist of repression coming down on the human face of anarchism. The Federation reinforces the State, by adopting the rhetoric of the industrial-military-technological system, such as its aforementioned recent condemnation of anarchist “terrorist tactics”.

In the quest for liberation, the individual must be allowed to express itself, to follow itself. The individual is not always at odds with the collective, but to try to squash individual drives into some collectivity or society against its will is totally useless. The individual will sooner or later rebel because a mass collectivity forged at the expense of the free individual will entail rules and regulations (albeit informal or even unspoken) which are against liberty of life, feeling and thought. These tendencies have been at war before, and it is worth reading the essays of Voltairine de Cleyre on this matter with her suggestion that the individual anarchist be free to express their rebellion in their own way. Violent attacks against the bosses and the State will alienate some people, but not all. Pacifist action will alienate some people but not all. Even if we could once and for all identify every “working class” person and also get them to agree that they are “working class”, do the Federations really think that this mass of people will hold one homogenous view on social change, on the causes of misery and on the best way to liberation (if all agree that liberation is their goal). The civil anarchists are searching for a purposefully driven conscious proletarian class which no longer really exists in the manner they describe as a revolutionary subject in the West. They have embarked on a hollow search which ends in sterility at the level of the actual uncontrollable mass social clash, and anyway largely failed to follow their own politics through to their conclusions.

The separation of people into classes is in some ways a nonsense when it is not based on their individual opinions or actions. A brief look at Native American history, as one example, shows us how banal and inaccurate it is to speak of ‘the Native American people’ in one homogenous outpouring of bad breath: there were indigenous warriors fighting genocide and assimilation and there were also indigenous folks who colluded with the American State and turned on their own people to accumulate money and power.

Those of us who might be allotted the label of insurrectionist, individualist, and/or nihilists do not make perfected claims to knowing how revolution will come about. There is a great humility in the words of the emerging rebels and armed struggle groups. I would say that at this point in history, when so much has been tried and so much has failed, let us admit that we do not know what is right, what will ‘work’. People are far more complex than that and the world is huge.

The Federation’s distillation of everything down to “working class struggle” is problematic. The working class as it used to be has all but gone and anyway, like democracy, it was originally rooted in horror and lies for many. Democracy was invented on the backs of a Greek slave class and the Industrial Revolution first imposed the destruction of the individual and introduced ‘the dispossessed herd’ as it ushered in this age we hate. Focusing on the “working class” in this way is like shuffling between different forms of oppression, saying that we prefer that form of oppression over this one: people fought tooth and nail against becoming subsumed into a “working class” at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The assimilation of artisans and rural peoples into the industrial working class was bloody, so why some anarchists are attempting to reify it now, especially now that the machine has moved on and is now subsuming the traditional working class into the post-industrial consumer class, is not just questionable, it is bizarre. They are all simply stages in the grinding progress of the machine and we would do well to abandon all of these chimeras. This is not to deny that a class struggle has always and continues to be fought, but I prefer the term “social war” to “working class struggle” largely because it includes more individuals and their choices, including those who consider themselves traditionally working class. Class as a concept and as a social binder has become increasingly muddy over the years. People can be more crudely divided – if we must – into the rich and the poor, the included and the excluded, the critical and the uncritical regarding the State and civilisation.

To be denied individual autonomy, recognition and relationships causes alienation and disempowerment. The authority of a ghostly mass over the individual does nothing except assist the project of the State and capitalism by agreeing that the individual human being is nothing more than an economic unit or a vast and faceless aggregation of economic units. Is this really how we wish to define human beings and do anarchists really think that such a perspective is liberating? To negate the role of individual action in favour of a vague conception of the “class-struggle” of yesteryear is a dangerous fiction. Certainly, since it is also the project of the State to destroy the volition and value of the individual; it cannot be called revolutionary, except in the autocratic uber-political sense of being ruled by statist apparatus – none of which desire empowered individuals or like-minded groups of individuals who want freedom. It is not the role of anarchists to replace one tyranny, be it “democratic”, monarchist, collectivist or any other kind of rule, with another.

What is this ‘issuing of statements’ condemning the acts and opinions of others who consider themselves anarchists? It is to play the political game of ‘good anarchist’ and ‘bad anarchist’ for the media and the repressive machine of the police. It is to undermine the very meaning of the term ‘anarchy’; a complicated and shifting web of principles, praxis and relationship with the goal of liberation which is not a singular state of being, no more than it is a State.

Moreover, the fact that the Federation feels the need to make statements against acts of other anarchists must surely show them that their project is doomed. At the end of the day, I say to the Anarchist Federation and their fellow travellers: I do not agree with you, I do not desire the world you envision. I say I am not alone in finding your statements and perspectives antithetical to my own rebellion and my personal concept of liberation which is based on my understanding and experience of State oppression. And since your project depends on the absolute agreement of the mass of which I am a part, and since it appears from the debates and statements of the Federation that what is envisioned is a mass anarchist society, I declare that I want freedom not only from the State but from Society and you. I ask then: what are you going to do about me?

I began this article by essentially wishing to encourage those of us who call ourselves anarchists to cease mutual condemnation and to assert that actually not one of us has the “answer”. However, I end by sensing that some of “us” know so little of what it means to be liberated in heart, thought and action, and so little of what class solidarity and struggle really means, that I can only imagine an anarchist society such as appears to be the aim of the Anarchist Federation, would be as fraught with repressions and various prisons as this one. That is, unless those who would impose their faceless societies on the rest of us realise their futility.

[marshmallow-fireside-keith]

Jasico Week Human AU Part 1

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Bali’s property market in 2019 and beyond – 2/2

Property market Bali in 2019 and beyond – 2/2 - This is the second of two blogs about where we think Bali’s property market has been heading over the last couple of years. Now it’s time to revisit and look at what 2019 and beyond have in store. Adapting to change Many years ago the Javanese arrived in Bali and took over from the Bali Aga (the island’s indigenous people) who, themselves were originally from China. Today, many non-Balinese Indonesians are moving here along with expats from all over the world. Bali has always been a place embracing change (any place that doesn’t adapt eventually stagnates and dies) but it’s happening a lot faster than in the past and with greater impact. It’s all of our responsibility to deal with this in a way that creates the best solutions for as many as possible, and not just for a select few. Let’s look at some interesting facts and historical aspects, some of which may not be to everyone’s liking, but they’re all meant to highlight issues for a better future for us all. Land, developments and investments Land is being bought for developments and investments (mainly by Indonesians) and it’s happening quickly. Cliff Front land for sale in Pecatu The result is the Balinese are worried that soon they may not have any land of their own and their ancestors (leluhur) will be upset. It’s no secret, however, that some Balinese do gain tremendously on current land speculations even though they may be the ones complaining of upsetting ancestors! What triggers this speculation is economic growth and potential and, unfortunately, greed. But as time goes on the world seems to be waking up to the fact that an old fashioned capitalist mindset is out of date and needs to change. There are other modules out there and even big investment firms are talking about environmental and community impact as much as they are about profits. But back to the core issue. Land in Canggu for example, especially around the hot spots of Berawa and Batu Bolong, is being used for commercial activities and is largely owned by the Banjar or locals. Some years ago you could rent land here for next to nothing, but now the same plots are easily rented for up to IDR 60 million per Are (10 x 10-square meters) per year. Try to find a commercial spot to rent for a shop or café for less than IDR 200 million a year and you’ll see what I mean. Now people are ‘buying’ leases so they can sub-lease for capital gain. Who benefits from this? In financial terms, it’s clearly the local community. Stronger tax collection also ensures the government gets its fair share. There’s also a huge need for labor, and skilled labor especially raises salaries. This, in turn, creates better opportunities for both local Balinese and Indonesians to decide their own futures. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Tourism, property, creative economiesProperty market Bali The truth is, Bali’s economy is driven by tourism and property development … more than 80 percent, in fact. And what really needs to happen is for the island to develop alternative industries and income streams that can enhance and support these economic pillars. The Lawn Canggu by Cassie Gallegos on Unsplash This is something the current central administration under President Jokowi and the local administration of Koster-Ace are aware of and why they are encouraging the growth of something called the Creative Economy. If it’s managed correctly nobody gets left behind. Visitor arrivals Some argue markets have slowed. But in 2018 foreign visitor arrivals increased by just over 10 percent on 2017’s numbers. Official statistics from Badung Regency Tourism Office show the number of arrivals at Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport in 2018 reached 6,511,610 while domestic visitors reached almost 10-million. If you take these growing visitor numbers and imagine all of these people stayed in villas and double-occupancy rooms with an average stay of about four nights, then divide the number of rooms needed per night by the number of hotels available (with an average of 250-rooms) you soon realize the growth of hotels is not keeping up with demand. What about the price war? Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a Price War as being “characterized by the repeated cutting of prices below those of competitors” and by that definition, there really isn’t a price war. Photo by Dennis Sylvester Hurd on Flickr Serious international and domestic consultancy groups will suggest average occupancies and room rates, as well as the average visitor spend, are either at the same level as previous years and in some cases they’re actually increasing, not being reduced. This is not necessarily the case in Kuta and Legian however. The problem they face isn’t the number of rooms available but what’s on offer. According to OTA’s like Booking.com, global tourism is moving to experiential travel and more Eco-friendly tourism and that’s something Kuta and Legian struggle with. The villa market in Bali - Property market Bali Prices and occupancies in the villa market, however, are going down. I think this is largely because villas in Bali have become too dependent on OTA’s, booking engines and so-called management companies who don’t really know what to do in terms of delivering on the customer experience. Stunning Cliff Top Luxury Villa In Pandawa I predict things will change dramatically as we move forward and that change will not include the OTA’s … at least not in their present form. It’s important to remember that OTA’s and booking engines charge a percentage of the room night as a fee to the villa for the privilege of being in their global network and on their database. Nothing wrong with that really, except the fee they charge can be between 15 – 25% and can reach as high as 30% and that will hit the price the customer pays. With that in mind, remember too that most people will use the ‘price’ filter on these booking engines to look for the best deals, so keeping prices in the sensible part of realistic, while still being able to effectively manage a property and keep standards and customer experiences high, becomes more difficult. Some booking engines are trying to change this but at the end of the day, this is down to each individual owner and management to change. With the current potential of social media, it’s possible for a villa to stand out and find its own niche market. And those that do so win twice because they’ll be able to reduce prices to more realistic levels and in so doing draw more business. Different rules for different folks? -Property market Bali It is true that there appear to be different rules for different people. For example, maybe Wayan has a hotel, which he or she built on tourism zoned land, as rules and regulations demand. He (or she) is doing well and his next-door neighbor, Made wants a slice of the same pie. Made applies for the licenses to operate a hotel but is refused. How can this be? Has Made got a foreign partner? Has Wayan paid someone in the licensing department to protect his own interests? Maybe. We know both have been happening, but we believe this is a thing of the past because a protective mindset is just not possible in these days of globalization. Indonesia has recently signed several significant trade agreements with Australia and members of ASEAN as well as other non-EU countries. This will soon start having an impact as foreign investors will find it easier to set up here and gain benefits from a financial/tax point of view. Some would say it’s all to do with a corrupt government. I would agree that in the past this was partly true. But it’s also to do with a corrupt market with investors, domestic and expat alike, not wanting to follow regulations, pay taxes or think long-term for the benefit of the people in whose land they live and do business. They are like characters in the movie “Die Hard” holding on to an already gone past. But the governments of Bali and Indonesia are changing a lot faster than we think. The more we cling on to the way things ‘used to be’ the worse it will be for Bali. What are the solutions? First is to prioritize. Government, infrastructure, garbage, and water should be the main focus of our attention. When they are, we all need to come together with solutions, not just criticisms. Melati and Isabel Wijsen, from Bali’s Green School, have been campaigning to ban plastic bags locally and reduce the impact of plastic waste globally. Do a little every day, impact a little every day. Again look at what was possible with plastic bags! Can we do a similar thing with water? Many have already started. The Refill My Bottle campaign is a fine example of how to creatively deal with a plastic problem as well as being more mindful about water. What can you do? We need long term solutions. We need to realize that what has started cannot be stopped. We (as in you and me) can decide where we take Bali’s tourism … together. We need to focus on words and initiatives around being Eco-friendly, encouraging upmarket and integrated tourism, implementing real spatial and urban planning with better and more consistent zoning. The Indonesian and Balinese governments are certainly trying to focus on these things and they deserve our support. Everyone developing and operating villas, resorts, restaurants, shops, whatever it is; we all gain from this and it’s our responsibility to drive this in the right direction. I personally think Bali is finding its way and will still be that unique place that touches us all so deeply in so many different ways. My question to you is are you ready to do your part to make a positive difference? Property market Bali in 2019 and beyond – 2/2 - We love to hear your feedback on this article and you are most welcome to leave your comment in the section below Property Market Bali source Harcourts Seven Stones Read the full article

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Paramilitaries on the Columbia Venezuela border Murders of trade unionists and social leaders, paramilitary activity, coca production… If we only paid attention to the mainstream media we would not get the idea that these problems are actually growing in Colombia, one year after the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC came into place. To get a better picture and understand how all these elements connect to US policy and corporate interests, we interviewed Daniel Kovalik, a lawyer and human rights activist who has long been involved in the struggle for peace and justice in Colombia. ***** Ricardo Vaz: The peace agreement between the FARC and the Colombian government was brought into place about a year ago. And yet, as you stress in a recent article you wrote, trade unionists, social leaders, indigenous and Afro-Colombian leaders, are actually being murdered at a higher rate than before. How do you explain this? Daniel Kovalik: Yes, that’s true. And, in fact, they are being killed at a higher rate even though the overall violence level in Colombia has gone down in recent times. I think it’s very easy to explain. The paramilitaries are still very much a factor and a force in Colombia. They are now starting to take over territory that the FARC once held, and frankly they are also feeling emboldened by the peace process. This was a fear that a lot of folks had. You probably recall that in the 1980s the FARC also signed on to a peace agreement and put down their arms to run as a political party, the Patriotic Union (Unión Patriótica, UP). And 3000-5000 of their members were killed by the paramilitaries. That’s what led the FARC back into the jungle. So there was always this fear that this could happen again, and I think we are seeing this happening again. Only this time the Colombian government and the US government don’t even admit that there are paramilitaries. But they are very much there. RV: Recently there was this indefinite national strike (paro nacional indefinido) in Colombia. What were the reasons behind it? DK: Well, again I think some of it had to do with this violence against social leaders, and the strike was to put pressure on the government to protect the social leaders. But there are also grave economic injustices in Colombia. It is one of the most unequal societies in the world. There are very few workers under union contracts, and the protests were also in support of labour rights. Displaced population in urban areas of Columbia  (photo from UNHCR) RV: As you’ve said, there are many people fearful that the peace agreement is not being upheld by the Colombian government. The FARC even submitted a complaint to the United Nations last week. What exactly are they accusing the government of not doing? DK: Part of the peace deal was that the government would go after these paramilitary groups, which again the government doesn’t admit exist.  They claim they are these criminal groups, the bacrim (bandas criminales). And the government is not doing that. Again, I think the view of the social movements, the view of the FARC, is that the government is, at best, turning a blind eye to these groups because they want to see the social movements eradicated. The fear, of course, is that, now that the FARC have laid down their arms, giving them to the United Nations, the government feels like they don’t have to make any concessions to the FARC or even follow the agreement. Because what leverage does the FARC have now? None… It’s a very cynical position to take, but I think that is the position that the Colombian government is taking. RV: Back in 2003, then president Álvaro Uribe announced that the paramilitary groups were being dissolved but it seems they are alive and well. What are the (economic) interests for them to move into these territories where the FARC used to be? DK: Well, as you say, there was this fake demobilisation of the paramilitaries. Most human rights groups, Human Rights Watch for example, acknowledge that it was not a real demobilisation. And the paramilitaries have a number of interests in the land in Colombia. For example, Francisco Ramírez, who is an attorney and trade unionist there, wrote a book that shows that, as mining interests move in to various zones, the paramilitaries tend to go in before them to subjugate the area. So the paramilitaries make money, both from their own engagement in illegal mining, but also they see their interests aligned with corporations, both domestic and international. They are basically the vanguard of these mining and agricultural interests. Buenaventura is probably the most enigmatic instance of this economic reality. This is a city on the Pacific coast whose ports were built up in anticipation of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. There the paramilitaries have really taken over the city, engaging in a real social cleansing operation, forcibly disappearing hundreds of people. They chopped them up alive in these “chophouses”, it’s a very grisly situation. But again, the paramilitaries are very much aligned with mainstream corporate interests, both Colombian and foreign. These may be from from South Africa, like Anglogold Ashanti, for example, or from the UK, but they are primarily from North America, from the US and Canada. RV: There was a story a few years ago of paramilitaries going after trade unionists in the Coca-Cola bottling plants. There was also a story about Chiquita paying paramilitaries to wipe out resistance. Therefore these groups are not a kind of isolated, lawless, southern phenomenon. They work very much hand in glove with transnational corporate interests, wouldn’t you say? DK: Yes, very much. By the way, I was involved in that Coca-Cola case, in the lawsuit and all.1 But Chiquita is probably the best example, because Chiquita has admitted to what they did. They pled guilty to paying the paramilitary groups 1.7 million dollars over a 7 year period, between 1997 and 2004, and giving them 3000 kalashnikov rifles. And while they claimed they were essentially being extorted by the paramilitaries, Uribe’s own attorney general, Mario Iguarán, disagreed with this. He said that they were not paying for security, they were paying for blood. Those are his words. They were paying for the subjugation of the banana region of Urabá. And they paid in blood, thousands of people were killed by the paramilitaries that Chiquita paid. Not only that, paramilitarism was really able to take hold throughout all of Colombia because of what Chiquita did, and Chiquita never had to pay a real price for this. They pled guilty to this crime because they had been giving this aid to the AUC paramilitaries, who were designated terrorists by the US. But the plea agreement did not require anyone to go to jail, it only fined Chiquita 25 million dollars, which they were allowed to pay over a five year period, and the 8 Chiquita officials involved in the payment scheme had their names — were actually kept secret from the Colombian government, so that Colombia could not extradite them. By the way, one of the Chiquita lawyers who helped negotiate the plea agreement was Eric Holder, who would become attorney-general under Obama. Chiquita pled guilty to paying paramilitary groups including the AUC RV: And what does this say about the role of the US government? DK: I think this is very revealing. By the way, Salvatore Mancuso, one of the top paramilitary leaders, said it wasn’t just Chiquita paying them, but also Dole and Del Monte. So we not only see the corporate links but we see the US government’s true feelings about the paramilitaries, right? If Chiquita had been paying a group like al-Qaida, or ISIS, or even the FARC, let’s face it, some of their people would have gone to jail. But they were paying the US’ guys. The paramilitaries are the “good terrorists” in Colombia, according to the US government. A few years ago there was a Washington Post story about how the CIA was crucial in helping the Colombian government weaken the FARC. The CIA helped the Colombian government track various FARC leaders, and also provided the smart bombs that were used to kill them. Meanwhile there is a little note in the Washington Post story. It says that at the same time the CIA for the most part left the paramilitaries alone. So both the AUC and the FARC were designated terrorist groups, but the AUC was left alone, because in the end they are doing the bidding of US interests. RV: You get the idea that they are there to do the dirty work… DK: Exactly. And we’ve known this, this has been true for decades! It was US General William Yarborough, who had the idea to create the paramilitaries in the first place, in 1962. This is even before the FARC was formed. That only happened in 1964. Another interesting story appeared in the New York Times more recently. It is about how the CIA helped fly at least 40 paramilitary leaders out of Bogotá to the United States, so that they would not be held accountable for human rights crimes in Colombia. Because the fear was that they would start naming names, including Álvaro Uribe and his associates. So they were brought to the US, tried only on drug charges, given very light sentences, even though they are believed to be responsible for massive human rights abuses. Salvatore Mancuso, for example, is believed to have killed himself alone over 1000 people. And they are giving amnesty, or asylum, to some of those people as well, in the United States. RV: If I remember correctly, some of them are about to go free very soon, right? They are having their sentences commuted and being released early… DK:  That’s right. These are real terrorists, people who have raped, killed with impunity. One guy, highlighted in the New York Times article, was known as “The Drill”, because in addition to killing people he was known to have a penchant for raping girls as young as 9 years-old. And this guy could be coming to a neighbourhood near you. So it’s pretty incredible, and once more this is all pretty revealing of the US’ true feelings about the paramilitaries. A U.S. Army Green Beret, center foreground, instructs members of the Colombian Compañía Jungla (photo from the US DOD) RV: Let’s switch to the drug trade for a second, because the “War on Drugs”, at least officially, is the justification for the huge US military presence in Colombia. Very often you would hear the description that the guerrilla problem and the drug problem were the same. However, after the FARC have demobilised, you saw one of the highest coca yields in years. So what’s the real story there? DK: That’s very important to point out. Namely, that the FARC was being entirely blamed for the drugs and the human rights abuses, and yet the FARC is gone as an armed group. And as we’ve discussed, more social leaders are being killed than in years prior, and 2016 saw a bumper coca crop. And I know this, I was at the US embassy in Bogotá in March of this year, and folks in the embassy were saying that the CIA, the DEA were down here and they were panicking! Because they had to announce that 2016 saw the biggest coca crop ever in Colombia. The FARC had been engaged in the ceasefire at that time. they were largely not a factor, so we see who the real drug traffickers are, and that’s the paramilitaries and, honestly, the Colombian military. I mean, the US, as we see time and time again, is not really worried about drug trafficking, per se. They just want to make sure their buddies are the ones to profit from it and how the “war on drugs” can be used to serve US interests. We saw this during the Vietnam conflict, we saw this of course with the Contra-cocaine connection, that Gary Webb from the San Jose Mercury News exposed.2 When the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban had pretty much eradicated the poppy crops. Now, post-invasion, and with all these US soldiers, the CIA and the DEA running around, Afghanistan is providing 85% of the world’s heroin. RV: There are beautiful photographs of military bases right next to huge poppy fields… DK: Yes, you also see pictures of soldiers running through the pink poppy fields. It’s a joke! There is no war on drugs. There is a war against poor people, under the pretext of the war on drugs. There was a war against the FARC, which was covered under the war on drugs. There’s a war against social leaders in all of Latin America, again under the pretext of the war on drugs. It’s a lie! It’s always been a lie. RV: Perhaps this absurdity has no example more striking than saying that you are going to fight drugs and that your biggest ally is going to be Álvaro Uribe… DK: You might remember that there was a document leaked a few years ago, in which Álvaro Uribe was listed by the US DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) as the 82nd most important drug trafficker in Colombia, and as having close ties to Pablo Escobar and the Medellín cartel. We know he’s a drug trafficker! And yet he got the presidential medal of freedom from George W. Bush. He was welcomed into the White House by Barack Obama. It’s a joke! It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic… Uribe received the medal of freedom from George W. Bush RV: In a slightly different perspective, Colombia is always painted in a very positive light, and not just political leaders but also business people always describe Colombia as being “great for business”. They might say that it’s great for business despite all these atrocities we’ve been discussing, but I would actually say that it’s great for business because of these atrocities. Would you agree? DK: That’s absolutely true. And again, I’ll give you an example of this. Years ago, we sued Occidental Petroleum for its very intimate involvement with the bombing of Santo Domingo,3 you can read about this in a great exposé in the LA Times. So we sued Occidental Petroleum and the US State Department sent a letter to the court saying that they wanted the case dismissed because it was going to hurt US foreign policy interests. And if you read the letter, the implication was that if companies were to be held accountable for murdering poor peasants, it would be bad for business. So I agree with you.  I do believe that it is good for business, because these murders and atrocities have done a great job of wiping out the union movement there, a great job of wiping out the social movements, all to make it safe for business. It’s not safe for human beings! You know, Colombia has the hemisphere record for forcibly disappeared people, at 92.000. Argentina is usually taken to be the capital of the forced disappearances, but the total there was around 30.000. RV: It also has a very large number of internally displaced people, more than Syria I believe… DK: It’s almost 8 million now, out of a population of around 50 million. Can you imagine that? And yet, the only thing we hear on the news are bad things happening in Venezuela. But nothing on this scale is happening in Venezuela. There are no mass assaults on social and human rights leaders in Venezuela. There isn’t this huge internally displaced population. In fact, what a lot of people don’t know is that Venezuela has taken in 6 million Colombian refugees. You often hear on the news that there’s a wave of Venezuelans fleeing to Colombia, but the estimates are of about half a million Venezuelans in Colombia, compared to those 6 million Colombians in Venezuela. Displaced people in Columbia RV:  Yes, it’s way beyond a “double standard”… So let me ask you about the role of the media in all of this. Why do you think there is, not only this double standard, but this kind of “kid-glove” treatment when it comes to Colombia? DK: Well, I think it goes back to what the late Edward Herman explained. A lot of people don’t know his name, he was Noam Chomsky’s co-writer in the book Manufacturing Consent. In fact, Chomsky gave him the primary billing for the book. His name came first even though alphabetically it would be the other way around. Herman was the person who came up with the idea that there are “worthy victims” and “unworthy victims” in the world. The worthy victims are those who are killed and oppressed by the US’ enemies and adversaries. So, if somebody’s oppressed in China, or Russia, we know about it. But if someone is (wrongly) killed by the United States, or by its allies like Colombia, which is the US’ number one ally in Latin America, then we don’t hear about it, because they are unworthy victims. Those that we kill are unworthy, even though, if you look at the numbers, these greatly outnumber the so-called worthy ones. In fact, according to Chomsky, after 1960 it’s very clear that the repression by the West was much greater than the repression by the East Bloc and the Soviet Union. But again, you never knew that because the press would always remain silent about those being killed by the West. Colombia is certainly a great example, but another one is Yemen, where literally millions of people, at least 7M, maybe 12M, will die because of the Saudi war and blockade on Yemen, which the US is aiding and abetting in a very real way. RV: There’s also a cholera epidemic which is unprecedented in modern history… DK: That’s absolutely right. And yet, you don’t hear about it that much in the news, and when you do, you don’t hear that the US is very much a part of that war. So it goes back to Herman’s argument about worthy/unworthy victims. I’d urge people to go back to Manufacturing Consent. RV: Continuing along these lines of manufacturing consent, do you also get the idea that if there was a brighter spotlight on Colombia, then all this military involvement, all this war on drugs would receive greater scrutiny, which in the long run would be bad for business? DK: Absolutely. In that way the media is complicit in all of this. I’ll give you an example. I actually listen to National Public Radio (NPR) every day. I don’t know why because I can’t stand it! And I interact a lot on twitter, for example, with people from NPR, like Scott Simon or Steve Inskeep, and they respond to me sometimes. I have asked them time and again “why aren’t you covering Colombia?”. They have no answer for it. Even when I present them with facts, it never makes it into their stories. They have an angle, it’s the same angle all the media have. That’s to perpetuate this crazy religious notion of American exceptionalism, that somehow America is this unique force for good in the world, that we support democracy, we support freedom, when, in fact, it’s quite the opposite. We live in an Orwellian world, where we support dictatorships and support repression in the name of freedom. And people need to wake up to that reality. • First published in Investig’Action * Coca-Cola has been accused of being directly involved in the murder of several union leaders in its bottling plants in Colombia. Daniel Kovalik led the efforts to get justice for the families of the murdered workers. For more information see here. There was also a documentary made on the issue. * The original articles published by Webb are available at this link. For more on Gary Webb and the persecution he faced from the media establishment, see here. * On December 13, 1998, a US-supplied cluster bomb was dropped by a Colombian army helicopter, killing 17 civilians. Occidental Petroleum (OXY) was involved in providing the coordinates for the attack, as it enjoyed direct links with the Colombian military and provided military aid. For more on the lawsuit against OXY, in which Daniel Kovalik represented the plaintiffs, see here. http://clubof.info/