Angry White Kid

Closing up and moving on

800 posts. 2,943 comments. 481,261 pageviews. It is time to move on.

As I alluded to in my post below, I no longer feel this blog fits me. So I've started a new one, called Falling Into Incandescence, over at www.fallingintoincandescence.com. If you're interested, please join me over there. This site will no longer be updated or maintained (not that it really has been in the past few years).

As this is just a transition, I won't be writing a farewell or final reflection. As always, anyone who spends any time here has my thanks. I hope you may find something of similar worth at the new site. Take care and be well.

Reorienting and debranding

And I promise to learn to love the way I've learned to fear
To unknot all the inhibitions tangled in my hair
To let my ego mound in piles around the barber chair
And make a graceful exit from my vexed and troubled years

- Saul Williams, Sea Lion

I open up Facebook or Twitter and immediately get hit by a battering ram of bad news. My social media feeds are seeing red. Once notifications or messages are tended to, I close the pages almost as quickly as I open them.

Up until a few months ago, I would have been spending much of the day online, tweeting and posting alongside my virtual comrades. Now, I cannot afford to engage in that activity.

There is a reason. For the past two years, I’ve been in an intense struggle to address a life-threatening condition. Something that has very nearly killed me. I’ve tried many different methods of treatment, and feel through much work and assistance I have arrived at an approach that, with vigilance, will hopefully keep the disease in remission.

Part of that approach has to do with me assessing the activities I’m involved in and engaging in those which are more true to myself as I’ve come to understand myself during these past two years.

Massacre(s) in Gaza

 

 

Elbit: Exporting Oppression from Palestine to Latin America

By Scott Campbell
June 27, 2014
Upside Down World

Surveillance. It’s in the headlines and on the tips of tongues. As technology offers new possibilities for connection, it also offers new means to keep tabs on people. Surveillance has become seemingly ubiquitous, from the NSA reading emails to drones in the skies. As a nation that has for 66 years been ruling over an indigenous population by force, one of the main countries practicing surveillance is Israel. And it is the Israeli defense industry that has been reaping the profits off of the oppression and surveillance of the Palestinian people.

One of the top occupation profiteers in Israel is the defense firm Elbit Systems. The largest non-governmental defense company in the country, its revenue stood at $2.83 billion in 2010. Using knowledge and expertise gained from assisting in the occupation of Palestine, Elbit has made millions exporting surveillance and defense materiel worldwide – and increasingly so to Latin America. While Israel’s role in arming dictators and oppressive regimes in Latin America during the last century is well known, Elbit is at the forefront of a new wave of Israeli arms industry involvement in countries in the region. Elbit has a presence in at least five Latin American countries, as well as along the US-Mexico border. Far from being benign, the application of its technology should raise concern among those working for human rights in the area.

Jackass - Israeli Occupation Forces Edition

A little video I put together. Enjoy.

Some memes dedicated to the Palestinian Authority

 

"It is Time for Accountability"

Originally published by Mondoweiss.

By Scott Campbell
June 24, 2014

July 9 will mark ten years since the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s wall in the West Bank illegal under international law. The ICJ also ruled that the wall must be torn down, that Israel must pay reparations for the damage caused by its construction, and that the international community should work to ensure Israeli compliance.

None of the above has occurred. Instead, Israel has used the past ten years to complete 70 percent of the more than 700 kilometer long wall. More Palestinians have been boxed in, cut off from their land, work, families and friends, education, and healthcare. Israeli and multinational companies have made millions off of constructing the wall. And shirking its obligations, the international community has stood by the sidelines, letting impunity reign.

Gunmen attack assembly in Álvaro Obregón

By Scott Campbell
El Enemigo Común

For more than a year, the indigenous Binnizá community of Álvaro Obregón, in the Isthmus of Oaxaca, have defended their lands against the imposition of a wind park by the multinational Spanish firm Mareña Renovables. As part of that struggle, “the community became aware that the parties and political leaders have only used them for political and personal ends.” In August of 2013, the community held an assembly and decided to return to the traditional indigenous usos y costumbres form of governance, where community leaders are selected via general assembly, without the participation of political parties.

With 1,236 people participating, the general assembly to select the community’s leaders was held on December 8, 2013. Yet on February 8, 2014, Saúl Vicente Vázquez, the Municipal President of Juchitán, which includes Álvaro Obregón, announced that new elections, involving political parties, would be held in Álvaro Obregón on March 2, ignoring the popular and expressed will of the people. Ironically, Vicente Vázquez until recently served as an expert on the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. 

Self-defense groups and their critics

By Scott Campbell
El Enemigo Común

Since mid-January, when armed self-defense groups launched an offensive against the Knights Templar cartel in the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán, Mexico, much ink has been spilled evaluating the pros and cons of the self-defense movement. Critiques and speculations have been leveled from the left and right, yet what has largely been absent is an appreciation for the events in situ.

From the right (including the government and mass media), the self-defense groups have been labelled as vigilantes, taking the law into their own hands, armed by an opposing cartel, and threatening to turn into paramilitary death squads a la the AUC in Colombia. Such meritless talking points are not of concern here.

What is of concern is the predominant response from the left, where the self-defense groups have received a lukewarm reception at best. Held at arm’s length, the self-defense movement is chastened for not being like the autonomous municipality of Cherán in Michoacán or the CRAC community police in Guerrero. For not being indigenous, for not having a comprehensive platform, or for cooperating with the government. From behind computer screens, those who are dodging the bullets of the Knights Templar (and occasionally of the state) are patronizingly told what they are not and what they should be doing.

Under Attack, Mexico’s Teachers Fight Back Against Neoliberal ‘Reforms’

Originally published on El Enemigo Común.

By Scott Campbell
September 12, 2013

On December 1, 2012, while protests were being brutally repressed in the streets, Enrique Peña Nieto addressed Mexico for the first time as the country’s newly-anointed president. He outlined the five main goals of his administration and announced ten “presidential decisions” to achieve them. To reach his third goal of “quality education for all,” Peña Nieto stated he had decided to pursue a program of educational reform requiring the modification of the constitution and the establishment of a national evaluation system for teachers. And in doing so, Peña Nieto — the Butcher of Atenco and the signed, sealed and delivered choice of the ruling elite — made clear his intention to target education and take on Latin America’s largest union, the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE).

He wasted no time in getting to work. The following day, the heads of the three main political parties signed the “Pact for Mexico,” a document committing them to Peña Nieto’s five goals. With such backing, Peña Nieto’s proposed changes to the constitution easily passed both houses of Congress and were quickly approved by a majority of state legislatures. On February 26, 2013, the constitutional reforms related to education went into effect.