The Dalai Lama (who turned 75 yesterday) on U.S. Wars and Tibet

All that follows is from Democracy Now, *here*.

As Dalai Lama Marks 75th Birthday, A Look at His Views on the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Tibet

The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama turned 75 years old yesterday. The Nobel Peace Prize winner addressed a crowd of thousands gathered to celebrate the occasion at a temple in the Indian Himalayas where he as lived since fleeing Chinese rule in Tibet in 1959. At a recent event in New York, Amy Goodman asked him his thoughts on the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the status of Tibet. We also speak with Dr. Robert Thurman, professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies at Columbia University and president of Tibet House US.

Guess Who's Making Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, a Much Wealthier Man? Yup, the U.S. Government's Defence Department

 All that follows if from The Washington Post *here*.

BP has steady sales at Defense Department despite U.S. scrutiny

Gallery

BP oil spill cleanup and containment

BP, the government and an army of volunteers are fighting to contain and clean the millions of gallons of oil spewing from the site of the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

By R. Jeffrey Smith

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 5, 2010 

 

The Defense Department has kept up its immense purchases of aviation fuel and other petroleum products from BP even as the oil company comes under scrutiny for potential violations of federal and state laws related to Gulf of Mexico well explosion, according to U.S. and company officials.

President Obama said last month that the company's "recklessness" in the gulf contributed to the disaster, and he promised that BP will "pay for the damage." Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said on June 2 that Justice Department lawyers were looking into possible violations of civil and criminal statutes. "If we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be forceful in our response," he said.

BP, meanwhile, remains a heavy supplier of military fuel under contracts worth at least $980 million in the current fiscal year, according to the Defense Logistics Agency. In fiscal 2009, BP was the Pentagon's largest single supplier of fuel, providing 11.7 percent of the total purchased, and in 2010, its contracts amount to roughly the same percentage, according to DLA spokeswoman Mimi Schirmacher.

"BP is an active participant in multiple ongoing Defense Logistics Agency acquisition programs," Schirmacher said, without providing details. BP spokesman Robert Wine said he was aware of at least one "big contract" signed by the U.S. military after the oil rig explosion on April 20, involving the supply of multiple fuels for its operations in Europe.

So far, members of Congress have discussed barring BP from any new oil and gas drilling leases, not from fuel sales to the government. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who co-chairs the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, said last week that he would introduce legislation to shut BP out of such leases for the next seven years, as punishment for what he described as "serial" legal violations. But Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on oversight and investigations, said in a statement that "the U.S. government needs to look at all possible options when it comes to showing BP, or any corporate bad actor, that a continued culture of cost cutting and increased risk taking will absolutely not be tolerated."

Even before the gulf debacle, the Environmental Protection Agency had begun to explore cutting off BP from all federal contracts -- including those with the Defense Energy Support Center (DESC), which buys all fuel for the military services. The EPA plays the lead role in debarment proceedings related to the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, and its probe was sparked by BP's 2006 oil spill in Alaska and a 2005 explosion at a refinery in Texas.

The EPA's deliberations, however, are suspended until the gulf spill investigations conclude, according to an EPA spokeswoman. The agency may decide to shut off federal contracts with specific divisions within BP, or with the whole company "if it is in the public interest to do so," it said in May. Any such action would be meant to punish "environmental noncompliance or other misconduct," it said.

Jeanne Pascal, a former EPA lawyer who until recently oversaw the review of BP's possible debarment, has said she initially supported taking such action but held off after an official at the Defense Department warned her that the Pentagon depended heavily on BP fuel for its operations in the Middle East. "My contact at DESC, another attorney, told me that BP was supplying approximately 80 percent of the fuel being used to move U.S. forces" in the region, Pascal said. She added that "BP was very fortunate in that there is an exception when the U.S. is involved in a military action or a war."

Pascal then sought a settlement to allow contracting with BP while forcing the company to elevate an internal office dealing with health, safety and environmental issues within its corporate structure. She also demanded that the company keep an ombudsman, retired federal judge Stanley Sporkin, whom BP first hired after the Alaska spill but had sought to let go. BP resisted both demands, and the talks were stalemated when the Deepwater Horizon rig sank, Pascal said.

"At some point, debarment attorneys throughout the government need to look at BP's record," she said. "This is one of the wealthiest corporations in the world. . . . Do we want to do business with this foreign corporation, which has a horrendous record of chronically violating U.S. law? You have to look at the overall behavior pattern."

A spokeswoman for the Defense Department, Wendy L. Snyder, gave a different account of the internal debarment discussions. She said the Defense Logistics Agency "informed the EPA that there are adequate procedures and processes to protect the U.S. military missions should EPA determine that BP should be debarred." That claim was reinforced by Schirmacher, who said that "none of BP's current energy contracts are in direct support of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan" and that the department could meet its requirements without BP fuel. But she indicated that the Pentagon had no intention of taking such action in the absence of an EPA decision.

Wine, the BP spokesman, said that although he is not familiar with details of the company's negotiations with EPA, Sporkin's tenure was extended earlier this year until the middle of 2011. He did not challenge Pascal's claim that BP's health, safety and environmental unit had been moved lower on the corporate structure before the gulf spill, reporting to the head of a business unit instead of directly to the top executive. But, Wine said, "what difference does that make?"

"Safety comes through the organization through every root," he said, and remains "paramount in every part of the business."

Several federal agencies have continuing contracts with BP, although none worth as much as the Pentagon's. Since 2008, the Federal Aviation Administration has contracted to spend at least $2.26 million to station weather, communications and aerial surveillance devices on several BP platforms in the gulf, including the Atlantis oil production platform roughly 100 miles from Deepwater Horizon's former location. Critics, including a former BP contractor, have alleged that the Atlantis was built without proper safety controls, which BP denies.

FAA spokeswoman Laura J. Brown said that BP's environmental and legal record was not a consideration in her agency's contracts. The Atlantis platform was selected "based purely on how it would support air traffic," she said.

Who Will STOP the Homo Paliens?

[image above is from here]

[image below, from my dreams, is from here]

While one branch of the U.S. government has sued the state of Arizona for its illegal law against Mexican citizens and Chican@s, another branch continues to lash out genocidally against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, keeping pace with the U.S. project of controlling, exploiting, poisoning, or destroying all people of color. And if you think for one second that is not one of the main functions and promises of the U.R.A., then get your head out of the increasingly oily sand.

The Homo Paliens (aka WHM) are in charge and several groups of people who aren't THEM are going to have to oppose them, their values, their policies, their practices, their ideologies, their institutions, their customs, and their ways of being human. For they are mass murderers and serial rapists first, and whatever else they are is built on and depends on that horror show.

As noted in the A.R.P. Glossary, Homo Paliens, aka Rapus Palien Erectus, is in charge while they bemoan the fact that "everyone is out to get them". I wish that were true. I wish their simultaneous delusions of grandeur and persecution were shattered by a reality that he needs to go. Now, if they have any humanity, they'll take themselves out of commission. They'll go away; they'll go back home to whitelands from whence they came. They'll get off lands they stole. They'll get off of women, rather than getting off in and on women. They'll stop bashing trangender people, lesbians, and gay men. They'll stop destroying the Earth and making millions of non-human species extinct. They'll do this if they've got any humanity left. And if they don't do all of this unilaterally, without being asked politely, we must organise to take them down and chain them together. It's that simple.

We can't sit back and watch the planet and all its life be destroyed by Homo Paliens just because we were taught they were the ones who are most fit to lead. They'll lead us to a mass grave, and while the palest Chisto-fascists among them proclaim their immanent deliverance to Heaven, there's a special place in Hell with a table reserved for several hundred million of 'em. May they feel the pain of every flame, for eternity, or until they understand how perverted and predatory they've been, and give up all rights and rituals supporting their rule of any and all other Life.

Another Independence Day is Needed: July 6, 2010 ECD, for people resisting colonisation and genocide in South America by Homo Paliens

The Adolph Award for July goes to the Brazilian firm Yaguarete Pora S.A. Read on for details. (This isn't the only award they've gotten.)

To be seen or not to be seen. That is the question. If you are seen, you are exploited and probably killed. If you are not seen, vicious companies will deny your existence and try and commit genocide without anyone else knowing. And, to be clear, removing a people's homeland is an unambiguously genocidal practice.

Some of the context for what follows:

DEFORESTATION IN BRAZIL: 60-70 percent of deforestation in the Amazon results from cattle ranches while the rest mostly results from small-scale subsistence agriculture. Despite the widespread press attention, large-scale farming (i.e. soybeans) currently contributes relatively little to total deforestation in the Amazon. Most soybean cultivation takes place outside the rainforest in the neighboring cerrado grassland ecosystem and in areas that have already been cleared. Logging results in forest degradation but rarely direct deforestation. However, studies have showed a close correlation between logging and future clearing for settlement and farming. [Português | Español | Français]

Why is the Brazilian Amazon being Destroyed?

In many tropical countries, the majority of deforestation results from the actions of poor subsistence cultivators. However, in Brazil only about one-third of recent deforestation can be linked to "shifted" cultivators. Historically a large portion of deforestation in Brazil can be attributed to land clearing for pastureland by commercial and speculative interests, misguided government policies, inappropriate World Bank projects, and commercial exploitation of forest resources. For effective action it is imperative that these issues be addressed. Focusing solely on the promotion of sustainable use by local people would neglect the most important forces behind deforestation in Brazil. 

Some of what follows is from *here* @ survivalinternational.org. I offer some critique and analysis, and protest, in bold and in brackets interspersed in the report.

Spotted: the tribe that hides from man 6 July

[No. They weren't "spotted". The White Man was. Anyone who knows better would destroy him at once, if possible. And, no, he isn't hiding. He's avoiding genocide. BIG difference. Anne Frank, her family, and some neighbors, weren't just "hiding" from anyone they didn't know in an attic, were they? They weren't, as it were, shy people. They were trying to keep out of view of their people's sadistic murderers. Yes, they were. And the member of Ayoreo-Totobiegosobe society was doing that too.]

A man belonging to the only uncontacted tribe in South America [and how would The White Het Man know if there are other societies that have eluded confrontation with The White Het Man, if he hasn't "spotted" them?] outside the Amazon basin has been sighted near a region targeted for deforestation by Brazilian cattle-ranchers. ["Sighted": again like a rarely photographed bird. Nothing against rare birds, of course. The issue is who possesses a kind of subjectivity, a humanity, that is understood as "universal" or just like anyone ol' white man's, and who is identified as "other" and "marginal"? The White Het Man only identify as "marginal" when being racist and antifeminist, believing themselves to be "an endangered species" [while he is also perpetually normalised, centralised, dignified, undegraded, unraped; while he is not exploited by another group of people; while he is not enslaved or destroyed by another group of people; while he is statused in every conceivable way, not stigmatised socially in any way, relatively wealthy in ways defined as such by The White Man. As if. And: If only.]

When spotted, the man hid behind a tree [as opposed to what? An SUV? A Starbucks?], and later fled. [Given what The White Het Man wants to do, "fled' is the politically appropriate term to use. He was saving his people from genocidal murder.] The next day an abandoned camp, a clay dish, and game ready for cooking were found nearby. [And who says that white het men are the smartest men on Earth"? Not me.]

The man is one of an unknown number of uncontacted Ayoreo-Totobiegosode Indians living in the dry forests of northern Paraguay. [Not unknown. They know each other. They know how many people they are. They aren't uncontacted. They resist contact with The White Het Man. Big difference.] The Totobiegosode have lost huge swathes of their land in recent years to cattle-ranchers, such as the Brazilian firm Yaguarete Pora S.A.

The man was seen just to the south of the area [ILLEGALLY, CRIMINALLY] owned by Yaguarete. In a letter to the Paraguayan government about the sighting, already-contacted Totobiegosode leaders said, ‘We are very concerned about [our relatives still in the forest]. They’re threatened by the deforestation in that region.’

Yaguarete was recently fined $16,000/£10,500 by the Paraguayan authorities for concealing the existence of the Totobiegosode in the area where it was given a licence to work. [BULLSHIT. THEY WERE CONCEALING THEIR GENOCIDE OF THE TOTOBIEGOSODE PEOPLE; if they had enough time, they'd have succeeded and no one from the dominant culture would have found out, if that savage company had its way.] Earlier this year, the company won Survival’s ‘Greenwashing Award’ 2010 for ‘dressing up the wholesale destruction of a huge area of the Indians’ forest as a noble gesture for conservation.’ [Just to be clear, it's not "a good thing" to get an award like that. One ought not give an acceptance speech thanking all the little people who helped make it happen.]

Survival director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘This is further proof the Indians exist. It’s going to make things even more difficult for cattle-ranchers like Yaguarete in the future.’ [Let's hope that any Indigenous peoples' existence makes it IMPOSSIBLE for The White Het Man to commit more genocidal mass murder, and ecocidal destruction of the Earth's otherwise sustainable ecosystems.]

Jake Pavelka vs. Vienna Girardi: Who is Telling the Truth? Is it in the Eye of the Beholder, or Not?

 [photo of Vienna Girardi and Jake Pavelka,
when allegedly happy together is from here]

What do you see, below? Video can function as a sort of Rorschach test. And in this instance, I think there is gendered distinction as to what people see, but that's a hunch on my part, and I'm checking in with y'all to see if that's the case. I believe masculists (antifeminists) will see one reality, and feminists will see another. I'm not saying ALL masculists will see the same thing, nor that all feminists will see the same thing.

I'm going to analyse these videos soon, but wanted first to hear from friends, colleagues, and visitors of A.R.P. Who, if anyone, do you see as being at fault in this break-up? Who do you feel is being more truthful, and who appears to be lying? Who do you believe and why? And what behaviors do you identify as abusive, if any? You can only watch one and comment on that, if you don't wish to watch all three.

I welcome you to name their behaviors, or identify character traits, or describe troubling interpersonal dynamics. I fill you in a bit on the history of  Vienna and Jake below the videos. The host of the program is Chris Harrison.

Part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3:


The TV show currently airing is called "The Bachelorette". For me, this is a hetero/sexist term that I wish would go away, along with the term "bachelor"*.

This season Ali Fedotowsky, a strong, adventurous white woman, is choosing from among many hopeful men, each striving to form a lasting connection with her, which presumably will lead to marriage. (As you may know, heterosexual marriage is legal in all 50 U.S. states. Everyone on this season's show is white except one man who is Latino. Last season Ali was one of the many women--all white--who was being "courted" by a white man named Jake Pavelka, (aka, "The Bachelor" in early 2010). When he eventually narrowed down number of women to whom he was most strongly drawn, one was Ali and another was Vienna Girardi. (There were two other women, Tenley and Gia, who were among those Jake seemed to be considering as his future mate.)

Ali decided to leave the show for the sake of her career, and Jake ended up falling in love (in an unreal way that the production team of the program encourages) with Vienna, a woman from the East Coast who eventually moved in with him on the West Coast. Following the program, they were engaged and he kept his face in the media by performing as a celebrity contestant on another ABC-TV program, Dancing With The Stars. Vienna generally appeared in the audience, supporting her fiance to do well. They certainly seemed to be getting along well.

Recently, news broke that they've broken up and her story has been in the media, with less information from Jake about what happened. Last night they appeared together on TV for the first time since the break-up, to be interviewed by the host of "The Bachelor/ette", to find out what went wrong.

*          *          * 

* "-ette" means diminutive, smaller, lesser, and "more feminine" as in the difference between a statue and a statuette. It is commonly used in English to apply to terms applied to women, even when there's no male corollary. Sometimes it is tacked onto the end of a word that is generally understood to be "masculine" in order to "feminise" its meaning or the group to whom the term applies. This means, in part, making it appear subordinate and inferior to the male version. What is more valuable or "outstanding" generally speaking: a statue or a statuette?

In Western WHM supremacist society this shows up in the term "suffragette", which was not, at the time, what activist women fighting for women's right to vote called themselves. It is what men called them who wished to demean them. They called themselves suffragists. Male supremacist media and later historians changed the term to "the diminutive form" as a way to "feminise" the activists, and make them appear less credible and also less powerful, which is to say, less "masculine" and more silly. Imagine calling feminists "feminettes" and you get the idea of what the WHM supremacist media was trying to do back in the day--that it is still doing in so many ways.

Reconsider maintaining Columbus Day as a Holiday. Let's replace it with an International Day of Honoring Turtle Island's Indigenous Heroes Protecting the Borders and Fighting Terrorism since 1492

[image is from here]

The following video is posted on YouTube and is titled Reconsider Columbus Day.

The Original Illegal Aliens (aka Paliens): A Story about the Lie of U.S. Independence and the Invaders Who Took Possession of this Land By Any Means Necessary

 [image is from here]

[Two introductory notes: 
This post is not about this Independence Day.
Post script regarding the term "paliens" was added on 7 July 2010 ECD. With gratitude to Malik Diamond.]

It is called "Independence Day", with the belief that it refers to the young, brash youthful men breaking free of British royal rule to become "a more perfect union", a collection of states that would be named The United States of America. No more taxes going to the Queen. Hurray!

The actual story is a tad less celebratory and might be called a predator's idea of perfection. The U.S. story has always been oversimplified, and any tales about our independence leave a lot to white men's imagination, which white men call "the definitive and absolutely accurate telling of our history". White men are known for many things. One thing they are renowned for doing is casting themselves in the best light, meaning in a light that could blind the sighted with dangerous levels of infrared ignorance and ultraviolet arrogance. But let's turn down the dial on that inglorious glow and look around at who else is in the area.

As you know, the story begins with someone named Christopher Columbus. He is commonly referred to as a hero, or "great man", or one awesome adventurist. What he actually was known for was being a slaver, a serial rapist, and the inventor of the sexual trafficking of girls. So why is there a national holiday for a predator pimp, a mass murderer, a sadistic slaver, and an incredibly terrifying tourist? That has to do with who gets to tell history at Independence Day festivities, from Main Street Patriotic Parades to College Campus's Open Mic nights--and be believed. Needless to say, the descendants of his victims--those who survived, of course--don't get to the stage nor to the mic. And if they try, there are police officers in the wings--snipers, in other words--who will use any means necessary to off the party poopers if they try and speak truth to power too much and too often.

Colonial U.S. was comprised of Puritan patriarchs and other alien men from the UK and Europe. They sat down with Indians once upon a time, and it's been a bloodbath ever since. A sign should have been erected up and down the East Coast saying "Please DON'T FEED the European Animals!" Because these homo sapiens were extremely dangerous--because they weren't gay. To this day, you might not want to pat their heads even if they look friendly.

Talk about a high tab for feeding the hungry! Talk about a group of immigrant ingrates! Talk about greedy welfare cases! They only stopped needing Indigeous hand-outs once they had their systems of slavery set up. Then there was a steady stream of cash flowing from Europe for the resources these illegals stole, had slaves produce, and sold to royalty back home, with profits never making it to those slaves. Whips and rapes were white men's payment for services rendered.

White men have always been beholden to slaves from West Africa and the Indigenous people of the Nations of Turtle Island. This used to be land of extraordinary diversity. The "melting pot" or "salad bowl" or whatever kitchen metaphor you prefer, wasn't a fantastic creation of the White Man. He's only ever wanted darker-skinned people under his lash of six feet under his feet. If female, his M.O. was to take possession, refuse to educate, not allow to vote, forcibly sterilise, institutionalise, incest, rape, sell, and kill.

The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave came to an atrocious halt when the male "pale-ians"* arrived invaded, forcibly making millions homeless (and graveless) from the Atlantic to the Pacific, torturing. Their methods included enslaving, lynching, and raping millions more Black people sadistically shuttled in shackles across the increasingly red sea. Talk about ruling "by any means necessary"!

Way more than 50 sovereign nations existed here, not as states with definitively mapped and militarily defended boundaries. The original human inhabitants may not have lived in perfect harmony and peace but they weren't racist genocidalists, non-stop wealthy warmongers, serial rapists, or traffickers in girls, and they did live sustainably with the land. They didn't proselytize and promulgate Christian-capitalist nuclear families, they practiced family planning, took care of their elderly, and practiced community values without freaking out and stupidly thinking it was "communism". They didn't want or need an oppressive form of heteropatriarchy regulating and ruling all societies. They didn't issue annual reports of the newest "endangered species" because there weren't destroying animals to the point of extinction. And they weren't dependent on wage and sex slavery, racist warfare, and environmental ecocide to boost a sagging economy, because didn't have one economy and they had a Great Spirit before which no man was greater.

Non-whites were the original "We-The-People" here. And for any descendants who have lived to this day, they are far less free now than The People were before the White Man brought a bible to sell his evidently spiritless soul to those he conquered with Christianity and many forms of disease and corruption formerly unknown. The lie of the White Man is that he is free of those slaves and those he rapes and murders: he needs them precisely as much as they DON'T need him.

White men didn't discover anything other than the fact that European men were, as always, terrible with directions, thinking they'd landed on the coast of India. To once again bring freedom to this land, in a white male sky-god we must not trust. Nor in capitalism, socialism, or any other monetary economy. Heteropatriarchal Western Civilisation is not all it's cracked up to be by white het men; and it never has been.

Sound crazy to you? What's crazier, more cruel, more callous, and more corrupt than what the White Het Man's social and religious institutions, political and economic systems, including his queer-bashing churches and sea-trashing corporations has done to humanity and the Earth and its other inhabitants? Name one thing that's worse than all that.

*          *          *

*Paliens
(Contraction for pale aliens.)
A very improper noun, plural form.
Definition:
The currently termed "white" incredibly dangerous predatory invaders, typically in the form of men, who come to places they think are "new", as in the "The New World" and plunder and pillage their way to dominance--not moral or ethical dominance, just physical, brutal, savage dominance. They accomplish this in part by forcibly infusing their ways of being into all who they encounter, with a New Testament Bible in one hand, and a sword or cannon or an army, navy, marines, and air force in the other. Locally, they may utilise a police force and taser, billy club, and gun, to subdue any perceived enemies. Oddly, paliens are unable to realise the greatest threat to their own humanity and being is EACH OTHER.

Paliens pretend that the poor have more power than the rich to steal and cheat the government, that people of color have more power than whites to take over land masses, including the Earth, that women have more power than men to run and regulate social and political institutions and commit domestic violence, and that white men are a persecuted minority. They are profoundly delusional and self-absorbed, as ignorant as they are arrogant, and are relentlessly driven to rape and/or murder anything or any one that gets in their way of taking over the entire planet. Beware of them, at all costs.

An appropriate use of this term is to be found in this sentence by Malik Diamond: "Last night I had to leave a party because it was full to bursting with rich, lifeless paliens."

Malik and Julian are discussing a possible screenplay and are considering the following actor for the featured role: Mel Gibson, with these performers in supporting roles: Bill O'Reilly and John Mayer.