This blog exists to support liberatory collectivist activism that seeks to uproot patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism. It also acts to center the experiences, theories, and agendas of radical and feminist women of color.
image is of A Radical Profeminist's visitor map from ClustrMaps
To all the readers of this blog, thank you so very much--from North America, India, and Australia; to the Ireland, Mexico, and Spain; to Malaysia, Sweden, and South Africa; to Egypt, Iceland, and Vietnam; to Nigeria, Jamaica, and Jordan; to Sudan, Fiji, and Ecuador; to Benin, St. Lucia, and Paraguay; to Anguilla, Liechtenstein, and Ethiopia.
Without you, I would have given up communicating years ago. A very special thank you to my 120 followers. ((HUG))
I hope this blog supports and encourages your activism and ability to resist all forms of oppression and inhumanity. Power to us all.
Current Country Totals
From 29 Sep 2010 to 6 May 2011
Let's hope Western/European/North American white men will also pay the right price for trafficking raped girls and women and for raping trafficked girls and women. Please click on the title below to link back to AsiaOne News, where I found the following article.
The Kathmandu Post/Asia News Network
Tue, May 10, 2011
NEPAL - Three years ago, when Indra Bahadur Sinjali of Nawalparasi returned after a weeklong trip to Baglung, daughter Lok Maya was not home. With help from local schoolteacher Yam Gurung, Raju Chhetri had trafficked her to the Indian city of Mumbai.
Chhetri sold Lok Maya for IRs 45,000 (S$1,240) to a Mumbai-based trafficking agency which later supplied the girl to the Middle East.
Chhetri, whom the Nawalparasi District Police Office is watching, admitted to have trafficked the girl to an Indian agency owned by one Taufik. Mahesh Bhattarai, another Nepali trafficker said to have helped Chhetri in Mumbai, is currently in the Nawalparasi jail.
On April 17, the Nawalparasi police gave the traffickers-Chettri and Gurung-month to trace the girl's whereabouts. If Gurung and Chhetri fail to find and hand over the girl to police within the given time, they will be arrested and prosecuted.
Anti-trafficking agencies in Nepal, including Esther Benjamins Memorial Trust Foundation (EBMTF) and Maiti Nepal, say this case represents the agony of hundreds of trafficked women as well as that of their families.
According to the agencies, the trend of selling Nepali women to Indian brothels has altered.
Maiti Nepal Information Officer Achyut Nepal said traffickers these days do not choose Indian brothels. They sell Nepali girls to Indian manpower agencies which in turn sell them to Arabian agents as housemaids.
"A survey conducted of girls who returned from the Middle East shows nearly all of them are subject to sexual violence," he said. "The trend has increased. Thus, Nepali agents are not only highly paid, this also prevents their arrest as the crime is committed under the veil of foreign employment." Executive Director of Foreign Employment Promotion Board Sthaneshwor Devkota agreed with Nepal.
"We have also come across some such cases, leading to speculation that the trafficking trend might have shifted from brothels to Middle East," said DIG Parbati Thapa, chief of Nepal Police Women Cell. "The reason behind this is the lack of employment opportunities in Nepal. All the government can do to prevent this is increase awareness campaigns."
Moreover, Nepali racketeers have apartments in Indian cities of Mumbai and Delhi, among others, where girls sold to Indian agencies by local agents are kept for about two weeks while the agency manages their visa and passport.
"The girls are provided with luxuries for 12 to 15 days," said Bhaskar Karki of EBMTF, who reached Mumbai while investigating into Lok Maya's case.
"Ignorant that they have already been sold like animals, the girls are taken to movies and beauty parlours. This shift in trafficking trend is even more dangerous. It was easier to find girls sold to brothels. Now that they are being taken to a third country, it is very difficult to trace their whereabouts."
"They had assured me that my daughter would be back in two years," said Sinjali, Lok Maya's father. "She's not in contact." His wife died last year hoping to see her daughter again.
"Environmentalism", to me, is the White Man's term to describe something that is part of non-defiled Indigenous traditions called "living". The White Man seeks to defile and destroy everything he possibly can about Indigenous life--including the people. But also the ways of being, the values, the worldview, the practices, and the spirituality and religions. When people tell me "I'm anti-religion" I wonder what religions they are speaking about--well, I don't, actually. I already know: they mean one or two of three religions--the Ibrahimic/Abrahamic ones: Islam, Christianity, Judaism, named here in reverse chronological order. They never, ever mean Indigenous religion, because they don't think of Indigenous people as having a religion. They don't think of Indigenous people, usually.
Environmentalism is what white men have done with Indigenous ways of being, pretending it is the White Man who must save the day, and the Earth. These men ignore not only the on-going work of Indigenous activists globally, but of ecofeminists. Environmentalists are a notoriously sexist/misogynist bunch of men; virtually all bunches of men are sexist and misogynistic. They ought not be listened to, made into heroes, leaders, given awards, proclaimed as the new Messiah, and so on. The White Man must follow, not lead. He has led us into hell and he doesn't know how to get us out.
In case it isn't yet clear, I don't have faith in the White Man's ways of being, his values, worldview, practices, or spirituality and religions. He appropriates and exploits everything he touches. It's like The Midas Touch story except that everything he touches turns to CRAP.
There are very few white men I hold deep respect and regard for. Most of the activists I feature on this blog are neither white nor male, for a reason. I believe both whiteness and manhood, as socially constructed and politically acted out, are poisonous and inhumane. One of the white men I believe is doing good work is Derrick Jensen, and he is one of the key people involved in the production of a new film called End:Civ Resist or Die.
Derrick asks: “If your homeland was invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air, and contaminated the food supply, would you resist?”
The answer is that many people have been resisting all along, but not nearly enough people who are white and male, and those who are activist resisters who are white and male do not usually hold themselves accountable to activists who are women of color.
I am drawn to watch this movie because it is not a movie about the experiences of white men only, as most films are in North America. This means that actual human beings who are not white or are not male are spoken to and with as if they had something important to say. You won't find that happening on CRAPitalist media, unless the women or men of color are saying exactly what the White Man wants them to say.
Please click on the link below to return to the film's web page. All that follows if from there. At some point I may offer a review of the film here. But for now, please watch it.
END:CIV examines our culture’s addiction to systematic violence and environmental exploitation, and probes the resulting epidemic of poisoned landscapes and shell-shocked nations. Based in part on Endgame, the best-selling book by Derrick Jensen, END:CIV asks: “If your homeland was invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air, and contaminated the food supply, would you resist?”
The causes underlying the collapse of civilizations are usually traced to overuse of resources. As we write this, the world is reeling from economic chaos, peak oil, climate change, environmental degradation, and political turmoil. Every day, the headlines re-hash stories of scandal and betrayal of the public trust. We don’t have to make outraged demands for the end of the current global system — it seems to be coming apart already.
But acts of courage, compassion and altruism abound, even in the most damaged places. By documenting the resilience of the people hit hardest by war and repression, and the heroism of those coming forward to confront the crisis head-on, END:CIV illuminates a way out of this all-consuming madness and into a saner future.
Backed by Jensen’s narrative, the film calls on us to act as if we truly love this land. The film trips along at a brisk pace, using music, archival footage, motion graphics, animation, slapstick and satire to deconstruct the global economic system, even as it implodes around us. END:CIV illustrates first-person stories of sacrifice and heroism with intense, emotionally-charged images that match Jensen’s poetic and intuitive approach. Scenes shot in the back country provide interludes of breathtaking natural beauty alongside clearcut evidence of horrific but commonplace destruction.
END:CIV features interviews with Paul Watson, Waziyatawin, Gord Hill, Michael Becker, Peter Gelderloos, Lierre Keith, James Howard Kunstler, Stephanie McMillan, Qwatsinas, Rod Coronado, John Zerzan and more.
“A fierce critique of systematic violence and industrial civilization, End:Civ is not intended for garden-variety environmentalists. If you are anywhere below, say, an 8 on that sliding scale of pissed off, then this film is going to scare you — which means you should watch it.” -Eugene Weekly
.”A tour de force film from Franklin López which does more than justice to Derrick Jensen’s thesis that industrial civilization is destroying life on the planet. Employing all the contemporary audio visual techniques our digital world makes possible for a single brilliant penurious filmmaker, López harvests sounds and images from our demented world to relentlessly show the rape of the mind and the earth. To those outside the small choir who see the message of resistance as obvious, this powerful film makes them deal with it either by denial or acknowledging, yes I see it is obvious.” James Becket
-Director of The Best Revenge
“Franklin Lopez is a fantastically talented filmmaker, who has created a powerful and important film about the most important topic ever: how to stop this culture from killing the planet.”
-Derrick Jensen, Author of Endgame
“By far the most routinely praised contemporary media activist is Franklin López. His shows and films not only possess a distinctive look and feel, but they also contain a wicked sense of humor that is often sorely lacking among alter-globalization activists. López’s work engages in constructing a new vision where popular culture serves the interests of the poor and dispossessed, where humor is reignited within activism, and the D.I.Y. ethics of punk and hip-hop allow those with talent and gumption to be the media, once again.”
-Chris Robé, Pop Matters
“Franklin Lopez’ END:CIV is a labour of love, a stunning 75 minutes film…”
John Zerzan, author of Future Primitive
“It brought me to tears…” “I recommend it to people”
-Alex Smith, Host of Radio Ecoshock
“Franklin Lopez’s END:CIV project is awesome.”
-Shannon Walsh, Director of H2Oil
“Both the quantity and the quality of this movement’s filmmaking is increasing. This is the big battlefield on which we fight right now.”
-Michael Rupert, CollapseNet.com
Franklin López will be touring with END:CIV in 2011.
SHIPPING NOW END:CIV DVD’s can be ordered in several ways.
1. US and Canada orders – $19.95 + $5.00 shipping.
2. International orders – $19.95 + $10 shipping
3. Pack of 10 DVD’s – $150
4. Community Screening Kit – $200*
5. For Institutions, libraries and Universities – $200
All prices include shipping world wide.
*The community screening kit includes 10 DVD’s, 10 promotional posters and a press kit.
Region 0 DVD-NTSC
Total running time: 75 Minutes
Subtitles: Spanish, English, German, Slovak, Italian and Romanian
The END:CIV DVD is published and distributed by PM Press
It should go without say, but must go on being said, that women comprise the brains, brawn, and organising abilities to create and maintain social justice, human rights, and liberation struggles all over the world. Yet, men take the credit and are given the credit, time and time again.
There use of the female body, turned into something utterly unnatural, to sell magazines is nothing new. The use of white and Asian women, and Black and Brown and Indigenous women, presented in sexist ways to sell magazines is nothing new. What's new for me is seeing a white-Western magazine which promotes itself as "The Asian Issue" wherein a white woman is made to have three heads, one of which is Asian. I suppose I'm supposed to think about dragons, what with the issue being about Asian people and all. Even if the dragon as a symbol is specific to only some ancient and contemporary Asian cultures.
Ableism, ageism, sexism, heterosexism, racism, and classism combine to form this image. Take those elements out, there's nothing left but the grey background.
The cover image alone--without venturing into the interior of the magazine--is enough to make you wonder what ever happened to human rights struggles for dignity and respect. I'm not sure there's much else to say about this image, other than, "shame on V". I don't expect them to get it. I do hope you won't get it--the magazine, that is.
With thanks to Lauren for letting me know about her work. Thanks, Lauren!! And thank you, Chellis, for writing about CRAP and dissociation. I'm only now beginning to familiarise myself with Chellis's work.
