"Time to End War Against The Earth", a speech delivered by Dr. Vandana Shiva on the Occasion of Her Receiving Sydney's Peace Prize, 3 November 2010

image is from here

News of Dr. Vandana Shiva being the recipient of the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize is contained in this post as is an edited version of the speech she delivered there.

It all seems so terribly, terribly obvious, doesn't it? I mean what part of what is excerpted here is incomprehensible. It's not written in language that is elitist and inaccessible, confusingly post-modern, or remotely academic. It's pretty straight-forward, no? So why don't those allegedly intelligent male leaders around the world get this:

Will we obey the market laws of corporate greed or Gaia's laws for maintenance of the earth's ecosystems and the diversity of its beings?

People's need for food and water can be met only if nature's capacity to provide food and water is protected. Dead soils and dead rivers cannot give food and water. -- Dr. Vandana Shiva

There are some women, many, many women across Asia, who President Obama and the G8 leaders need to sit down and listen to, shutting up their own yaps, staying silent, in a posture of listening and receptivity until the rightness and obviousness of what she's saying soaks through their corruption-protecting layers of delusion, denial, or dominance-hunger. Did President Obama make time to meet with any of the women who might offer him a new paradigm, worldview, set of values, to privilege above the ones he's been playing out in policies both domestic and international? Will the G8 leaders meet with women who are fighting for human and environmental rights and responsibilities, for economic and sexual rights and responsibilities?

I wish the male leaders, most of 'em white and wealthy, would sit down, shut up, and listen. More than that, I wish their minds were capable of truly hearing what women activists around the world, who are neither neoLiberal or neoConservative (yes, there are other points of view on everything), are saying about what needs to stop happening, and what needs to start happening ASAP.

The Earth is in a state of emergency that it will recover from, in its own time. But for now the emergency will be experienced by the human and non-human animals, especially the vulnerable. Those human cultures on Earth that have lived here the longest are being threatened with genocide, extinction, mass death. What part of this reality registers in the minds of those shaped most by the Global North, the Global West, the non-Indigenous-post-industrial societies and cultures? How can it be that non-Indigenous people will learn of this, or already know about it, and think only: "Oh, well"? The male supremacist mind--denied as such by those who most embody it--is shaped and supported by habituated and compulsive actions called by those who know best: "sexist" and "misogynistic".

The sexism and misogyny is not only habit and compulsion, however. It is also consciously and strategically planned. I wonder what it will take to break through the layers of inhumane thinking and feeling, systems and institutions, created and controlled by het-identified men. How do we end these men's homosocially supported and politically sponsored actions designed to dominate and control women? How do we oppose and stop their flagrant disregard for half the planet's human population impacted by poverty, the terror of rape, hunger for food, clean water, and compassionate, empathic men? As Andrea Dworkin stated, if women fighting sexism and misogyny didn't believe men were human, the political practice of resistance to patriarchal atrocity would look very different than it has for forty years. There'd be more gunfire and a lot less talking. Those of us who call ourselves feminist and profeminist, in my experience, believe that men can be humane, if they want to be and learn how to be. The question is this: do they?

From theage.com.au, and other places online. Please click on the title to link back to The Age. And read on for more about Dr. Shiva being awarded the 2010 Peace Prize in Sydney.

Time to end war against the earth

Vandana Shiva

November 4, 2010

When we think of wars in our times, our minds turn to Iraq and Afghanistan. But the bigger war is the war against the planet. This war has its roots in an economy that fails to respect ecological and ethical limits - limits to inequality, limits to injustice, limits to greed and economic concentration.

A handful of corporations and of powerful countries seeks to control the earth's resources and transform the planet into a supermarket in which everything is for sale. They want to sell our water, genes, cells, organs, knowledge, cultures and future.

The continuing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and onwards are not only about "blood for oil". As they unfold, we will see that they are about blood for food, blood for genes and biodiversity and blood for water.

The war mentality underlying military-industrial agriculture is evident from the names of Monsanto's herbicides - ''Round-Up'', ''Machete'', ''Lasso''. American Home Products, which has merged with Monsanto, gives its herbicides similarly aggressive names, including ''Pentagon'' and ''Squadron''.This is the language of war. Sustainability is based on peace with the earth.

The war against the earth begins in the mind. Violent thoughts shape violent actions. Violent categories construct violent tools. And nowhere is this more vivid than in the metaphors and methods on which industrial, agricultural and food production is based. Factories that produced poisons and explosives to kill people during wars were transformed into factories producing agri-chemicals after the wars.

The year 1984 woke me up to the fact that something was terribly wrong with the way food was produced. With the violence in Punjab and the disaster in Bhopal, agriculture looked like war. That is when I wrote The Violence of the Green Revolution and why I started Navdanya as a movement for an agriculture free of poisons and toxics.

Pesticides, which started as war chemicals, have failed to control pests. Genetic engineering was supposed to provide an alternative to toxic chemicals. Instead, it has led to increased use of pesticides and herbicides and unleashed a war against farmers.

The high-cost feeds and high-cost chemicals are trapping farmers in debt - and the debt trap is pushing farmers to suicide. According to official data, more than 200,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide in India since 1997.

Making peace with the earth was always an ethical and ecological imperative. It has now become a survival imperative for our species.

Violence to the soil, to biodiversity, to water, to atmosphere, to farms and farmers produces a warlike food system that is unable to feed people. One billion people are hungry. Two billion suffer food-related diseases - obesity, diabetes, hypertension and cancers.

There are three levels of violence involved in non-sustainable development. The first is the violence against the earth, which is expressed as the ecological crisis. The second is the violence against people, which is expressed as poverty, destitution and displacement. The third is the violence of war and conflict, as the powerful reach for the resources that lie in other communities and countries for their limitless appetites.

When every aspect of life is commercialised, living becomes more costly, and people are poor, even if they earn more than a dollar a day. On the other hand, people can be affluent in material terms, even without the money economy, if they have access to land, their soils are fertile, their rivers flow clean, their cultures are rich and carry traditions of producing beautiful homes and clothing and delicious food, and there is social cohesion, solidarity and spirit of community.

The elevation of the domain of the market, and money as man-made capital, to the position of the highest organising principle for societies and the only measure of our well-being has led to the undermining of the processes that maintain and sustain life in nature and society.

The richer we get, the poorer we become ecologically and culturally. The growth of affluence, measured in money, is leading to a growth in poverty at the material, cultural, ecological and spiritual levels.

The real currency of life is life itself and this view raises questions: how do we look at ourselves in this world? What are humans for? And are we merely a money-making and resource-guzzling machine? Or do we have a higher purpose, a higher end?

I believe that ''earth democracy'' enables us to envision and create living democracies based on the intrinsic worth of all species, all peoples, all cultures - a just and equal sharing of this earth's vital resources, and sharing the decisions about the use of the earth's resources.

Earth democracy protects the ecological processes that maintain life and the fundamental human rights that are the basis of the right to life, including the right to water, food, health, education, jobs and livelihoods.

We have to make a choice. Will we obey the market laws of corporate greed or Gaia's laws for maintenance of the earth's ecosystems and the diversity of its beings?

People's need for food and water can be met only if nature's capacity to provide food and water is protected. Dead soils and dead rivers cannot give food and water.

Defending the rights of Mother Earth is therefore the most important human rights and social justice struggle. It is the broadest peace movement of our times.

Dr Vandana Shiva is an Indian physicist, environmentalist and recipient of the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize. This is an edited version of her speech at the Sydney Opera House last night. 

*          *          *

Please also see this:

Vandana Shiva wins 2010 Sydney Peace Prize

Submitted by admin on Mon, 11/08/2010 - 17:15

• News & Events

"Time to End War Against The Earth" says one of Gaia's most outspoken advocates for the rights of small farming communities.

"Time To End War Against The Earth" - says Vandana Shiva, winner of 2010 Sydney Peace Prize

What follows next is from *here* at The Gaia Foundation's website.

Vandana Shiva has been recognised for her work on the empowerment of women in developing countries, her advocacy of the human rights of small farming communities, and her scientific analysis of environmental sustainability. She was presented with the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize on 4th November.

Vandana is a long-term Gaia Associate, founder of the Navdanya movement and the Bija Vidyapeeth learning centre in India.

Sydney Peace Foundation director, Professor Stuart Rees, said Dr Shiva was an inspiring recipient of the award. "Many communities are threatened by the consequences of global warming, yet in Australia the movement to address this issue has gone to sleep," he said. "Vandana's presence in Sydney in November should wake them up."

Other distinguished recipients of Australia's only international prize for peace have included previous Nobel recipients Professor Muhammad Yunus, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Aboriginal leader Patrick Dodson.

Mary Kostakidis, chair of the Sydney Peace Foundation, said governments around the world sought Dr Shiva's counsel on issues of sustainable development. "Vandana Shiva's work highlights the fundamental connection between human rights and the protection of the environment," Ms Kostakidis said. "She offers solutions to some of the most critical problems posed by the effects of globalisation and climate change on the poorest and most populous nations."

Click here for "Time to End War Against The Earth", the City of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture delivered by Vandana Shiva at the Sydney Opera House, 3rd November 2010.

More information & Useful Materials

• Is Genetic Engineering Liberating Women?, by Vandana Shiva
• Industrial Agriculture: Perilous for the Planet - podcast from a Gaia Evening with Dr. Vandana Shiva and Patrick Holden, March 2010.
• Community Resilience: Mitigating and Adapting to Climate Change - podcast from a Gaia Evening with Dr. Vandana Shiva, June 2009.

Are You Sitting Down? I've Got Some SHOCKING News About the Safest Homes for Children. (Hint: "Zero and No Half Het Dads" Not Starring Charlie Sheen)

image is from here

From the Huffington Post, *here*.

Below HuffPo asks, "What's your reaction?"

My reaction is "Well DUH! Get the primary perpetrators of incest, battery, and rape out of your home and guess what? Less domestic violence!"

And this isn't a slight against gay dads because the biggest perps, by far, are het dads and het men who stand in for them in those oh-so-hetero nuclear-reactive families.

Child Abuse Rate At Zero Percent In Lesbian Households, New Report Finds

First Posted: 11-10-10 01:30 PM   |   Updated: 11-10-10 01:59 PM

What's Your Reaction?

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Los Angeles, CA -- The Williams Institute, a research center on sexual orientation law and public policy at UCLA School of Law, has announced new findings from the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS), the longest-running study ever conducted on American lesbian families (now in its 24th year). In an article published today in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the 17-year-old daughters and sons of lesbian mothers were asked about sexual abuse, sexual orientation, and sexual behavior.

The paper found that none of the 78 NLLFS adolescents reports having ever been physically or sexually abused by a parent or other caregiver. This contrasts with 26 percent of American adolescents who report parent or caregiver physical abuse and 8.3 percent who report sexual abuse.

According to the authors, "the absence of child abuse in lesbian mother families is particularly noteworthy, because victimization of children is pervasive and its consequences can be devastating. To the extent that our findings are replicated by other researchers, these reports from adolescents with lesbian mothers have implications for healthcare professionals, policymakers, social service agencies, and child protection experts who seek family models in which violence does not occur."

On sexual orientation, 2.8 percent of the NLLFS adolescents identified as predominantly to exclusively homosexual.

The study was conducted by Nanette Gartrell, M.D., Henny Bos, Ph.D. (University of Amsterdam), and Naomi Goldberg, M.P.P. (Williams Institute). Principal investigator Nanette Gartrell, M.D., is a 2010 Williams Distinguished Scholar, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at UCSF, and affiliated with the University of Amsterdam.____
Online: http://www.nllfs.org.

BUT WAIT!!! Those scowly, bitter het men will surely have a fit over this report. They'll argue something really stupid like "Well, how are they measuring abuse??" Or, "Just because they aren't abused doesn't mean they're HAPPY and HEALTHY!!!"

Read on, people. Read on...

From The Advocate, which is where the top image is from, we have this:
Posted on Advocate.com June 07, 2010

Study: Children of Lesbians Happy and Healthy

Advocate.com Editors

The largest study of its kind to date finds that the adolescent children of lesbian mothers rate above their peers in areas like academic competence, social behavior, and psychological adjustment.

The results of the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study were published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, according to a news release from the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School.

“The NLLFS has been studying the same group of lesbian families since 1986; it is the only study to have followed the daughters and sons of lesbians from conception to adulthood,” said the news release. “The results released today are based on data gathered when the adolescents were 17 years old. The report also found no differences in the psychological adjustment of NLLFS adolescents who had been conceived by known and unknown donors, nor between those who reported homophobic stigmatization and those who did not.

“Although there are over 40 studies on young children with same-sex parents, data on adolescents reared by same-sex parents are very limited. The current NLLFS report shows that despite homophobic stigmatization, the adolescent daughters and sons of lesbians demonstrate more competencies and fewer behavioral problems than age-matched peers. These findings support the position statements of all major professional associations concerning the well-being of children growing up in lesbian and gay families.”

The United States of America Is The World's Largest Seller of Weapons of Mass Destruction: So Are We Terrorists Yet?

image is from here

 [12 Nov. 20101 update: The original image has been changed to the one you now see, 

due to an insightful comment posted below by vluk. Thanks, vluk!]

If we imagine them with their clothes off, do they become less or more scary?

There's so much blood on rich U.S. white men's hands that you'd think THEY'D be called "the red man". And why not? They have sports teams called "The Braves", "The Redskins", and the "Indians". Why not give the vampiric and bloody white man the color he seems to want all to himself. Oh, because he's a palien. And a pale-faced vampire. And a terrorist who makes everything go white due to blood being drained out from fear or fatality. Yeah, "The White Man" fits.

Just two more questions, for now:

How many guns and other weapons does a nation have to sell before it's considered a primary source of terroristic activities? The answer is firing in the wind.

How much death and destruction does one country have to participate in, covertly or overtly, in wars declared and denied, to be considered TOP TERRORIST OF THE WORLD? I'm just asking.

What follows is from PressTV. Please click on the article title to link back to them.

'US world's biggest arms seller'

Wed Nov 10, 2010 3:1AM

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F-22 Raptor fighter jet

The United States has topped the list of global arms sellers, with Israel, UAE and India purchasing the bulk of arms including fighter jets, says a think tank.

According to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the US sold 341 combat planes between 2005 and 2009, up from 286 jets sold during the previous five-year period, while Russia sold 219 planes followed by France, China and Sweden, AFP reported on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the biggest buyers of fighter jets are Israel, United Arab Emirates and India, collectively accounting for nearly one third of all global arms purchases.

The independent Swedish institute has also warned that the spiraling sales of fighter jets could further destabilize many parts of the world.

"While combat aircraft are often presented as one of the most important weapons needed for defense, these same aircraft give countries possessing them the potential to easily and with little warning strike deep into neighboring countries," said Siemon Wezeman, a senior fellow at the SIPRI Arms Transfers Program.

The study has pointed to the Israeli airstrike against Syria in September 2007 as the prime example of such threats hanging over the peace and stability across the world.

SIPRI also turned the spotlight on lucrative contracts as well as stupendous amount of cash being transacted for selling and buying the combat aircraft, saying "the more advanced aircraft cost over 40 million dollars (29 million euros) each and often substantially more."

According to the report, more than 50 countries -- Israel (82), Jordan (36), China (45) and Yemen (37) -- purchased a total of 995 new and second-hand fighter planes between 2005 and 2009.

HA/MGH

IT'S ABOUT TIME: 40,000 years after Aboriginal people settled in Australia, a referendum is to be held on whether to amend the constitution to recognise them as the country's original inhabitants

image of protesters is from here

If being in a place for almost half of one hundred thousand years isn't enough to establish you as "the original inhabitants", while white folks have made claims to "discovering" places all over the world within the last 500 years, what makes white men so damned slow to acknowledge truth that doesn't promote the pale-faced LIE of "the white male discoverer"? (Oh, of course: the need to preserve the Great White Male Myth.)

What follows is cross-posted from The Independent. Please click on the title below to link back.

After 40,000 years, recognition for Aboriginal people beckons

By Kathy Marks in Sydney

Tuesday, 9 November 2010

REUTERS

Aboriginal Australians have long campaigned to have their status as the 'first people' enshrined in law 

About 40,000 years after Aboriginal people settled in Australia, a referendum is to be held on whether to amend the constitution to recognise them as the country's original inhabitants. The move, announced by Prime Minister Julia Gillard, follows her predecessor Kevin Rudd's apology to the "Stolen Generations" of Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families. It comes nearly 223 years after the First Fleet arrived in Sydney, heralding the colonisation of Australia by European settlers.

The vote will take place in the next three years – but it is not certain to succeed. With Australians wary of constitutional reform – and a majority required in every state as well as nationally – 36 of the 44 referendums held since 1901 have failed. There is also the obstacle of residual racism.

But some Aboriginal leaders were quick to condemn Ms Gillard's proposal as tokenism yesterday, while others said there were more pressing issues to be addressed, such as the glaring discrepancies in black and white health, living standards and employment.

Sam Watson, deputy director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland, said that if white Australia wanted to make a genuine attempt to incorporate Aboriginal history into the constitution, "you would need to incorporate a recognition of the theft of Aboriginal land, the mass genocide [of] Aboriginal people, the fact that to this day there's not been a legitimate treaty signed between the British Crown and the 500 tribal nations".

The "first people" vote has been a long time coming, but then so was the apology. Children were stolen from their families as far back as 1905.

The battle for Aboriginal rights has been slow. Land rights were recognised only in 1976; Aboriginal people have been recognised as Australian citizens only since 1967, following a referendum passed with a huge majority.

Ms Gillard said she was grasping a rare opportunity to amend the constitution to acknowledge that "the first people of our nation have a unique and special place", because there was broad parliamentary support for the change.

However, her motives are not entirely altruistic. Before agreeing to form a coalition government with her Labor Party after August's election, the Greens made her promise to hold the vote.

The Prime Minister will appoint an "expert panel" to report to the government next year on how the question should be worded. Warning if the vote did not succeed, "there will not be another one like it", she said it was vital to build a prior consensus.

Mick Gooda, the senior Aboriginal official responsible for social justice at the Australian Human Rights Commission, welcomed the referendum, saying that it "will be about us as a nation and about us being mature enough to recognise our history but then to move on from it".

However, Larissa Behrendt, an indigenous academic at Sydney's University of Technology, said: "The danger is that if... it fails, it sends a very bad message to the Aboriginal community and what is supposed to be an act of recognition of the special place of Aboriginal people in Australian society becomes a further insult."

A message from A.R.P. to President Obama, and from the Women of Aotearoa, Philippines, who Share Wisdom and Affirm Solidarity for Women’s Rights and Self-Determination

image of protesters is from here

Excerpts from what follows later in this post:

While foreign and trade ministers attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Japan discuss further opening of economies for ‘free trade,’ women activists say no to further sell-out of land, culture and sovereignty. They denounced APEC, Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other trade deals that ensure huge profits for big business at the expense of women, workers, indigenous peoples and other disadvantaged sectors.

“One hundred years after the declaration of the first International Women’s Day, the International Women’s Alliance (IWA) was founded on 16th August 2010 in Montréal, Canada immediately after the successful Montreal International Women’s Conference attended by more than 350 participants from 32 countries. Faced with global concerns including indigenous struggles, developmental aggression, violence against women, racism, discrimination and genocide, resistance to wars and imperialist aggression, IWA aims to foster the creation and coordination of local, regional and international campaigns, to promote mutual support and the sharing of resistance strategies, and to mobilize women around the world in the struggle against imperialism, violence and capitalist globalization.” -- Coni Ledesma

“Enough is enough. Neo-liberalism means theft of land, theft of identity, theft of culture. Corporate giants spend billions to save the whales. They save the whales while they shoot natives and grab their land.” -- Titewhai Harawira

As I watch President Obama make his way across portions of South, SE, and East Asia, what occurs to me to say to him is this:

Dear Mr. President,

How dare you take your lethally greedy corporate U.S. self-interest to nations who don't need anything from you, while you need so much from them. How dare you propose they engage in "free trade" with the U.S., a country in monumental debt due to you and GWBush being too embedded and indebted to the wealthy to tax the fucking rich here, to tax Exxon-Mobil and other multi-billion dollar a year earning companies, and to cut defense spending so Asia, as a continent, might, for a time, know what it is like to not have U.S.-tax-payer paid-for bombs dropped on its civilians--for maybe a whole dozen years in a row since the bombing of Japan. Let's try for two whole years in a row, shall we?

When will you stop terrorising and trying to "trade" corrupt, unsustainable economic and political policies with the entire continent of Asia? Why do you think you should be able to do that and also show up like some kind of "Good Guy"? You're the leader of what is erroneously called "The Free World": in fact, you lead a corporate, wage- and sex-slaving, raping, warring country that will never state when it is being terroristic, because, by definition, it cannot be. By some fucked up definition that makes everything the U.S. does "appropriate" and "in self-defence". Why has the U.S. government engaged in so many reckless and ruthless wars against the poorest people across the globe? Why would you permit a pimp like Bill Clinton to Haiti as if they need corporate capitalist ties to the U.S. in order to survive?

What they and every other country needs is complete independence--financial independence from the U.S. And if you truly wanted "to be the change you wish to see in the world" in the sense in which M. Gandhi meant those words, you'd stop this pro-corporate capitalist campaigning to prop up our dying economy--an economy that must die if the rest of the world is to live. And you'd start taxing the rich in the U.S., and would cut military spending so much that we can no longer terrorise the world with our unilaterally unjust warring ways. And you'd stop with this ridiculously insane idea of never-ending economic growth, and you'd support the death of an economy built on slavery and fossil fuel mining and over-consumption. You'd have taken charge of the BP oil spill instead of letting the lying pricks who run it pretend they knew what they were doing. You'd stop trying to make political friends with corrupt politicians, including the new breed from the Tea Party, who are just as WHM supremacist as any other bunch, and you'd start standing on humane, sustainable principles.

The U.S. economy is WHM supremacy in corporate clothing. It exists to pillage the Third World and to terrorise anyone who won't "cooperate" with our dirty little deeds. It exists to keep slavery alive, not freedom. It exists to promote rape and genocide, not end either one. If we don't wake up and take our heads out of the oily sand, we're lost. But the rich won't die first. And they will have access to health care. And they won't pay taxes on the money they earn from investments in genocide, slavery, rape, and ecocide.

And what kind of "humanity" is that, President Obama? You tell us. Answer to the world of women who have been sending you exactly the same message loud and clear for years. Answer to Malalai Joya, Yanar Mohammed, Ruchira Gupta, Vandana Shiva, Titewhai Harawira, Coni Ledesma, and the rest of the Women of Aotearoa. 

Do you support freedom and self-determination for women or don't you? Do you support women in the Caribbean being free of colonialist oppression and Western-controlled poverty, or don't you? Do you support ending armaments being send down from California to Oaxaca or don't you? Do you support Europe ceasing to supply conflicted regions of some sub-Saharan African countries with weapons of massive destruction or don't you? Do you support Indigenous Peoples being free from the threat and practice of genocide or don't you? Why will you not speak out against the most egregious atrocities perpetrated by the U.S. government?

In your view, is what the U.S. does that is evil, automatically "Good" and "Liberating" as long as the U.S. corporate pimps and military pillagers say so? I hope you have a bit more integrity and heart than that. I know people will tell me I am being woefully naive, and that you are owned by the white rich men who paid for you to get into office. I want to believe otherwise, against all the evidence.

Speak out against corporate wealth and greed until something is done to stop the greedy corrupt tax-evaders from getting richer at the expense of working people the world over. And stop trying to drag down every other part of the world economy by attaching ours to it even more than it already is. Asia isn't "a market", Mr. President. It's a place where people live and have a right to live without the U.S. continually waging war against it. Including economic war.

With love for justice, not corruption,

Julian Real

What follows is cross-posted from the wonderful (and visually stunning) blog, Whenua Fenua Enua Vanua: Revolutionary Anti Colonialism & Anti Capitalism in the Pacific. Please click on the title just below to link back.

Women of Aotearoa, Philippines Share Wisdom

Friday, 12 November 2010, 9:23 am
Press Release: Auckland-Philippines Solidarity

12 November 2010
Women of Aotearoa, Philippines Share Wisdom, Affirm Solidarity for Women’s Rights and Self-Determination:

No To Further Sell-Out Of Land, Sovereignty In The Name Of ‘Free Trade’
While foreign and trade ministers attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Japan discuss further opening of economies for ‘free trade,’ women activists say no to further sell-out of land, culture and sovereignty. They denounced APEC, Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other trade deals that ensure huge profits for big business at the expense of women, workers, indigenous peoples and other disadvantaged sectors.

“WISE WOMEN SPEAK,” an intergenerational - inter movement korero (forum) on the liberation of women and self determination featured Coni Ledesma, International Spokesperson of Makibaka: Patriotic Movement of New Women together with Ngapuhi leader Titewhai Harawira and activist lawyer Annette Sykes at the Auckland University, New Zealand, 10th November.

“In 1975 we marched to demand not one more acre of Maori land to be sold. Now more trade agreements are being negotiated above our heads without our participation,” activist lawyer Annette Sykes says as she points out that the capitalist neo-liberal agenda is the new form of colonization. Sykes challenged the participants, mostly students and young women to speak out and revive a strong women’s movement in defense of land, rights and self-determination. “With the Terrorism Suppression Act and Search and Surveillance Bill that allows installation of listening devices into our homes, the state’s actions are meant to silence us and tell us that it’s not right to demand land, rights and liberation.”

Ledesma, senior member of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) Peace Negotiating Panel was invited to NZ along with Luis Jalandoni, Chair of NDFP Peace Panel for a peace speaking tour from 26th October to 12th November hosted by Auckland Philippines Solidarity (APS), Philippines Solidarity Network of Aotearoa and Wellington Kiwi Pinoy.

Welcoming Ledesma, distinguished Maori woman leader Titewhai Harawira says, “I remember coming to the Philippines in the ‘80s where I was shocked at how women were treated. At the same time, sharing the pain of struggling indigenous women in the Philippines gave me a lot of strength.” Denouncing the latest news on mining exploration projects in NZ, Harariwa says, “Enough is enough. Neo-liberalism means theft of land, theft of identity, theft of culture. Corporate giants spend billions to save the whales. They save the whales while they shoot natives and grab their land.”

According to Ledesma, “It is important for women to find the correct analysis and understanding of the cause of oppression of women. Women's oppression is not a problem between men and women, but a matter of class oppression that began when classes in society emerged. The oppression of women will be fully eliminated, and the real liberation of women achieved when the system of exploitation and oppression of one human being by another will be abolished. Today, global monopoly capitalism operates on insatiable greed for profits at the expense of women, indigenous peoples and other marginalised sectors. Socialism will remove the conditions that have made women unequal to men.”

At the forum, Ledesma also appealed for solidarity for women activists in the Philippines currently detained on trumped-up charges including Angie Ipong, a 65-year-old church worker and veteran social justice activist who has been jailed since 2005.

Ms Ipong was arrested by the military while she was giving a seminar to peasants and women leaders on the Comprehensive Agreement on Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL), one of the landmark bilateral agreements reached in the government-NDFP peace talks. She was missing for 13 days during which time she underwent torture while undergoing interrogation. She began a hunger strike from day one of her illegal arrest to force her captors to surface her and allow her to have access to her lawyer.

Looking at the photographs of Filipino women detainees Angie Ipong and the two nursing mothers among the Morong 43 health workers, Harariwa notes, “I’m sad to see you’re still carrying placards for these women to be free. I believe that no one is free until everyone is free.”

The forum organiser says Maori have learned a lot from cross cultural korero. Helen Te Hira from Auckland Philippines Solidarity says, “Maori have been to the Philippines over the years, learnt and discussed about colonisation, militarism, deforestation, so this is women from different communities talking and exchanging their experiences and hopefully from that we will get sense of where we have come from and where we're going.”

“With the governments of New Zealand and Philippines both selling off the people’s ancestral domain and sovereignty to foreign powers and local business elite, Maori and Filipinos share a common struggle to defend the rights of women, indigenous people and all disadvantaged sectors in the face of large-scale mining and other destructive projects against the people and environment,” Te Hira noted. The forum participants affirmed solidarity on common struggles of Maori and Filipinos especially against mining corporations and big business causing massive community displacement and loss of ancestral domain in Aotearoa and Philippines. “In building women’s networks, we need to find linkages to strategies with those who have common desire to eliminate poverty and violence against women” Sykes adds.

“One hundred years after the declaration of the first International Women’s Day, the International Women’s Alliance (IWA) was founded on 16th August 2010 in Montréal, Canada immediately after the successful Montreal International Women’s Conference attended by more than 350 participants from 32 countries. Faced with global concerns including indigenous struggles, developmental aggression, violence against women, racism, discrimination and genocide, resistance to wars and imperialist aggression, IWA aims to foster the creation and coordination of local, regional and international campaigns, to promote mutual support and the sharing of resistance strategies, and to mobilize women around the world in the struggle against imperialism, violence and capitalist globalization,” Ledesma shared with the forum participants.

Ledesma enjoined the women of Aotearoa to join the first assembly of the International Women’s Assembly in July 2011 in the Philippines. The forum closed with the signing of the international petition calling on Philippine Pres. Benigno Aquino III to effect the immediate release of Morong 43 community health workers who have been illegally arrested, tortured and detained since 6th February, including 26 women, two of whom gave birth recently. Around 30 signatories include Titewhai Harawira – Ngapuhi, Maori Council NZ Annette Sykes – Lawyer and Activist, Catherine Delahunty - Member of Parliament, Green Party of Aotearoa, Lena Henry – Iwi Have Influence, Helen Te Hira - Auckland Philippines Solidarity, Ann Pala - Ethnix Links, students of Auckland University and members of various groups. #

Reference: Helen Te Hira aotearoasolidarity@gmail.com 09 280 3372 or 0272888894

An Open Letter To Yale's Social Justice Activists

Addressing Global Social Justice at

image is from here

What follows is my comment/reply to Kate McDermott, who authored a piece called "Putting the Gender Back in Trans/gender Awareness Week", which may be read in full at the Midnight at Yale website, *here*.

Hi Kate,

It's really a discouraging time. Because there's so much pain and wounding going on in queer community, from where I sit right smack in the middle of it.

Lesbianism has become a taboo word--practically censored out of any conversations as a legitimate identity, unless it exists to turn men on. I'm not surprised that it has slipped to second place in many organisations that were once "LGBT" but are now back to being "GLBT". This places one of the more privileged groups of men in our community at the top--again.

But given the organising around "what's in" these days, the order appears to be "TGBI" with I being intersex and virtually nothing at all done to educate anyone about it. And L for lesbian being off the list. And never mind discussion about intergender reality.

I support intersex and intergender people's rights to be free from surgical and political interventions, am in regular dialogue with intersex people and also maintain plenty of contact with lesbians and non-lesbian women who are actively working to dismantle the gender hierarchy rather than pretending it doesn't exist in a "post-feminist" era that is far from "post-patriarchal".

Trans activists, to date, won't engage in conversation with me because I'm calling us out on the misogyny and male supremacy in our ranks--as others do too, like Joelle Ruby Ryan.

The only response I've gotten is from a non-trans man who is very white and very privileged by class, education (Harvard Law), profession and ability. His only response is to call me names and think he's doing "good education work" on behalf of people who are structurally, politically positioned below him.

What I see is many young lesbian women being truly afraid of being termed "transphobic" when we're all transphobic, after all, just as all whites are racist; everyone internalises it and some, like whites, institutionally, systemically externalise it too against people of color. So now that we're all done with the name-calling--we're all "all of the above", when do we begin constructive conversation across differences about how to radically transform society which is disproportionately mass murdering female people who are Indigenous, Asian, Brown, and Black?

One wonders if anyone cares any more about the "gender" that is defined as being a wh*re for men, from birth to death. And about the "gender" that exists, structurally, politically, to take care of men; about the gender that is either socialised, coerced, or forced to do so, depending on where you live. The gender that is enslaved currently at rates unseen at any other time in human history--by traffickers, pimps, and slavers (who are predominantly men). That gender is called "woman".

I wonder why non-trans and trans activism in the so-called First World isn't allied with and supportive of all the battles being waged for sovereignty, safety, and survival by women and girls across Asia--from Afghanistan (Malalai Joya and the women of RAWA) to Iraq (including Yanar Mohammed) to India (including the efforts of Ruchira Gupta and the escaped girls and women in Apne Aap), to the struggles of women and girls across Malasia, Thailand, Cambodia, and East Asia.

Why, in your own experience, does trans activism tend to focus so much on those "evil second wavers"--Audre Lorde being one its more brilliant spokespeople addressing the utter importance of meaningful respectful dialogue across difference while taking radical feminism seriously? Why have new populations and generations of anti-feminist queer and non-queer folks begun to once again dominate the scene, treating activism to root out a deadly gender hierarchy as off limits to discuss? Neither the Right or the Left will take on the matter of ending rape and genocide. Why?

Who benefits by taking the spotlight off of how we all need to survive and challenge and stop the abuses perpetrated and perpetuated by men, white especially, class-privileged especially, with professional and political power, structurally, who actually do beat and rape trans women, trans men, who perform unneeded and unwelcomed surgeries on intersex people. Why is challenging the most powerful class of men in our region of the world, and beyond--the rich white heterosexual ones--who control all media, not seen as a social emergency that college campuses should be outraged by.

For one thing, all your tuition keeps going up and up because the richest five percent of U.S. Americans won't pay taxes due to loop-holes, including bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. They earned 80% of all the money earned across class over the last ten years. Where's the gendered connection to economic justice, to challenging capitalist atrocity that thinks taxing the poorest 50% of the population is acceptable--which will always be disproportionately female and of color, while Exxon Mobil which has had a banner year, pays no tax at all?

Whatever happened to challenging racist, capitalist heteropatriarchy to the roots of its atrocious existence? What happened to listening to women like Audre Lorde? To listening to Alice Walker--still quite alive. To Patricia Hill Collins. To bell hooks. To Catharine A. MacKinnon. To Sheila Jeffreys. All of whom take women's lives very, very seriously.

Why the veering off to avoid the rather financially large and looming white het male elephant in the room?

I've been trying to engage folks in conversation at my blog, A Radical Profeminist, and if there are any folks there who want to engage, I'm very willing. I'm an intergender male. White. Gay. Asexual. Disabled. Jewish. Survivor of lots of sexual/heterosexist/male supremacist abuse.

When do we challenge class-privileged people are able to discuss re-valuing a politically lethal form of femininity that was designed by pimps to control, exploit, and violate women, while seven year old girls are being told to dress like wh*res for Halloween? When do formerly trafficked and enslaved women--Indigenous in Vancouver and everywhere else, Asian in Phnom Penh and everywhere else, poor Black and Brown globally, get to weigh in on this matter of re-appropriating the language used against them while they are being raped by procurers and pimps?

I welcome your response.

And thanks for caring about social justice issues and for getting involved.

Julian

Radical African Feminist Patricia McFadden, on Sexual Pleasure as Feminist Choice

Photograph of Professor Dr. Patricia McFadden is from here.
It is a still image from this interview in Swaziland

An excerpt from work linked to later in the post:

Our starting point has to be a recognition of the need to reassert feminist agency as the most effective response to sexual violation, abuse, femicide, and all naturalised patriarchal and heterosexist patterns of behaviour that intensify the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS. Challenges to the resulting social, physiological and sexual crises must be based on our reclaiming a vibrant feminist discourse and practice.

—Dr. Patricia McFadden

I am proud and honored to make space on my puny little blog to promote the brilliant life and work of Professor Dr. Patricia McFadden. Across the globe most women who are doing great feminist work are not recognised by the West/Global North/"First" World's media—at all.

Most women—feminist, womanist, or neither—are not rich, are not white, and do not speak English as a first or second language. Most women are not professional academics or people who earn a humane income. Most are living lives at the precarious and practical intersections of gender, race, class, region, age, ability, and sexuality. Most women are socially positioned to care for other people, whether members of their families of origin, or their own children. One of the political definitional features of "being woman" is that you "take care of other people, intimately". This is not a definition of what it means to be "a man". Needless to say. To "be a man" is to exploit other people (read: women) for your own personal gain and satisfaction.

The stigmas against poor Black women's sexuality and sex anywhere in the world seem to know no bounds in the psyches and institutional practices of white men who are increasingly globalising the impoverishment, exploitation, rape, and gynocide of Latina, Indigenous, Asian, Brown, and Black women.

This means that women of color cannot be seen, really, as human beings, let alone as humane beings. Because their work is assumed to exist for others, or they are assumed to exist-only-in-order-to-disappear.

Biographical information about her life and work, from esquela de feminismo.org. (In English, Open School Feminism.)

Patricia revels in introducing herself as a Radical African Feminist who does not compromise on women’s inalienable rights—anywhere women live and struggle for dignity and integrity. Born in Swaziland over a half century ago Patricia lives and works in Zimbabwe and is based at the Southern African Political Economy Trust. Her work in the women’s movement is national and regional in addition to global work in the women’s movement on issues of Violation and Sexuality.

Patricia is a well respected feminist activist and scholar, she is presently gathering her many articles written over the past 3 decades on a number of issues impacting women’s lives and hope to publish them as a collected volume with South End Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts later in 2005. Her most recent work/writing /activism is focused on issues of citizenship and women’s engagements with the state on issues of entitlement and security.

Born in Swaziland in 1952, Patricia McFadden received her first degree from the University of Botswana and Swaziland in politics and administration, with economics and sociology as minors; she received a master’s degree in Sociology from Dar es Salaam University, Tanzania; and a doctorate from Warwick University in the United Kingdom (1987). McFadden has taught in many African countries. She has also taught in the United States at Cornell, Spelman, Syracuse, and Smith University, and in Europe. She served as international dean in the International Women’s University (IFU) from 1998 – 2000 in Hannover.

McFadden has worked in the African and global women’s movements for the past 30 years, writing, conceptualizing, teaching, training, advocating and publishing as editor of the Southern African Feminist Review from 1995 – 2000, and as a program officer in the Southern African Regional Institute for Policy Studies (SARIPS) in Harare, Zimbabwe, from 1993 – 2005. She also taught in the Masters in Social Policy (MPS) program offered by SARIPS for the past seven years, and was an adjunct professor on the Syracuse Study Abroad program from 1994 – 2000.

McFadden’s main areas of intellectual inquiry are: sexuality, reproductive and sexual health and rights (especially for young women), and identity, violation and citizenship for African women. She has presented numerous papers at universities, conferences and seminars internationally in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Namibia, South Africa, Ghana, Djibouti, Kenya, Uganda, Brazil, China, Germany Ethiopia, the United Kingdom and others.

More recently she has been working as a ‘feminist consultant,’ supporting women in creating institutionally sustainable feminist spaces within Southern Africa. The most recent initiative is the establishment of a women’s leadership center in Windhoek, Namibia. McFadden says that her priority is to provide conceptual, intellectual and programmatic support to African feminists in envisioning and supporting programs that draw on the radical political energies of African women as writers and as citizens across the continent.

McFadden has taught a course on “African Feminisms in a Globalizing World.”
 

What follows next, with another excerpt and link to the piece in full, is to me, a tremendously important piece of writing. I thank Patricia McFadden for writing it and for all the work she is doing to improve the condition and quality of women's lives.

The excerpt is from Feminist Africa, a journal dedicated to "cutting edge, informative, and provocative African scholarship attuned to feminist agendas" (URL: http://www.agi.ac.za/sites/default/files/image_tool/images/429/feminist_africa_journals/archive/02/fa_2_standpoint_1.pdf)

Sexual Pleasure as Feminist Choice by Patricia McFadden

This is the place that the HIV/AIDS pandemic has brought many of us to: the edge of the precipice of life. "Living on the edge" in terms of sexual and physical violation, unacceptably large numbers of black women all over the world face the constant threat of infection with the HI virus by males known and unknown. This terrifying existence is exacerbated by the seemingly endless spiral into poverty and deprivation for millions of women around the globe. And there is no doubt that the public debates, campaigns and health care responses generated by this deepening crisis have been underwritten by a long legacy of patriarchal and heterosexist policing of women's freedoms and rights.

Again, I thank her.