Capitalism
Enclosure of Land and Ideas – the death of the people!
Everywhere in the world people are dying. It has been characteristic of the capitalist revolution and the transition into the anti-social, market-only based mode of production that today control globalisation from above that people suffer tremendously. They suffer as land and ideas are enclosed to be brought under the private control of a self-interested, rational agent. The death of land and the death of ideas – the death of the people.
Yesterday a suicide note began circulating in cyberspace. Shri Govinda Zeetruji Junghare, an Indian farmer, had killed himself; no more seeds, only debts – no idea
His note concludes:
“I think over this crisis, lot of time and then decided, I should die instead of living.
Should I hang myself or take poison to die ?”
…. and he continues: Read the rest of this entry »
Correa and Lula plot to cut down the forest and scoop out the rivers
In yesterday’s el Comercio, as in the other major Ecuadorian papers, the headlines were Correa’s visit with Lula in Brasil, which culminated in the signing of fifteen economic convenios (agreements) ordered in three categories: (i) to widen the energy cooperation; (ii) widen the financial integration (in Latin American, one of Correa’s main points); and (iii) a commission that shall analyse the situation of a corridor from Manta to Manaus.
!these are not tree-huggers, but loggers!
The corridors – and the devastating effect it is likely to have on the environment and the culture and livelihoods of the people who live along the roads and rivers to be turned into commodity highways – has been a topic in previous entries and this entry shall serve only to reiterate where Mr. Correa is taking his neo-socialist movement: to the destruction of the forest while ignoring the land and culture of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon.. Read the rest of this entry »
Cultural Corridor Letter to the world!
Hi World,
This letter was sent in an email to a conference organiser, but it looks like it could be read by anyone interested in these matters:
One of the projects that I am fiddling with here (on the side of my PhD) concerns a network of community-based botanical gardens in the Napo-Ucayali corridor.
As you might be aware, Correa, Lula and Chavez (for instance an oil pipeline to Argentina), as well as of course the Peruvian state, have great plans for “corredores inter-oceanicos” which will essentially, finally, cut the Amazon apart in order to bring cheap consumer goods, in the short term, to the Brasilian cities, and in the long term to all of the continent, of course, –and the last trees and oil and other natural resources back to China, so that they can produce the plastics to come here….
An Inconvenient Truth: Al Gore and the domestication of dissent!
Just saw Al Gore’s self-important, self-glorifying even, documentary film about global warming. Some good presentations about the complex and often paradoxical and scary chain effective nature of, well nature. If it had not been interspersed with his own claim to fame, if Gory Al-Narcissus would have not dabbled so melodramatically in his own childhood and career as a statesman with “integrity”, it could have been quite a good first half of the film.
Correa and Econofascism: a mere rant with grains of truth.
The Econofascist writes, as compiled by Ecuador Rising:
“With his enormous popularity rating of more than 70%, Mr Correa can be expected to vigorously pursue his radical reform plans. The referendum is likely to take place as planned, probably with the support of at least one opposition party, the Partido Social Patriótico (PSP, of former President Lucio Gutiérrez), the second-largest party in congress. Moreover, the public is apt to vote overwhelmingly in favour of the constituent assembly and reform of the constitution, in a clear victory for the president.
Yet Mr Correa now is likely to find it difficult to achieve consensus on the specific responsibilities of the constituent assembly and the finer details of the reforms. Moreover, even if the PSP backs the process, this support will be fragile, as its leader, Mr Gutiérrez, seeks concessions that will increase his own political influence. Absent these, he could withdraw his support.
Finally, the main features of Ecuadorean politics—social and regional tensions, weak and divided institutions, and frequent popular protest—will keep the risk of instability, and the threats to Mr Correa’s ability to govern, very high.”
Navigating the fractral geometry of emotions on wings of clarity.
On reading the previous entry on Ayahuasca a good friend speculated on the plant spirit’s helpfulness in the context of creativity – the big question: what to do next?
This is a kind of reply.
The big questions about taking steps, and about moving through time and space as a creative being, can indeed be reflected on, for want of a better term for the kind of clarity that the plant spirits induces, with Ayahuasca.
A Road of Destruction: the Manta-Belém corredor
The projected trade route from the Pacific port town Manta in Ecuador to the Atlantic port Belém in Brasil is a serious threat to the rain forest and its humble inhabitants. The main purpose of the corredor is to bring commodities from Asia to Brasil, the “justification” that this poor under-developed area needs improvement (= capitalist, economic development).
The world is already criss-crossed by roads, covered in a thick crust of asphalt, which is “sticky, black and highly viscous liquid or semi-solid that is present in most crude petroleums and in some natural deposits.
But this road is not made of asphalt alone.
Ayahuasca: not the fire next time!
Reflections on the second encounter with the spirit of Ayahuasca and visions of much more to come. The point of departure is transgression, destination unknown.
James Baldwin wrote The Fire Next Time in a transgressive manner, one of coming to terms with the white man’s (and woman’s) oppression of themselves and of all other races, who consequently are subjected, also, to the oppressing force’s self-afflictions, thus a double terror, manifesting throughout history in atrocities that leave fiction no place to roam for novel horror. It was in a revolutionary voice that he wrote, in an oppositional and confrontational voice. It was a call for action:
–a burnt out skeleton from the closet–
How to make a Mars bar: mix cocoa beans with slavery and add capitalism to taste.
Mars bars are here used as a general signifier of industrial chocolate for the sugar craving masses. This blog entry concerns the recipe of chocolate. What does it take?
Let us begin with the basic ingredient, the raw cocoa. This is how it looks:
Let chocolate reveal itself…..
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