Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 01.16.09

[David Shove (shove001]

             P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R    01.16.09

1. Food garden      1.16 7pm
2. NOW/oceans       1.16 8:30pm
3. Antiracism reg   1.16

4. Peace walk       1.17 9am Cambridge MN
5. Eco gardening    1.17 9am
6. Work justice     1.17 10am
7. Banana republic  1.17 10am
8. Cam fundraiser   1.17 1pm
9. Northtown vigil  1.17 2pm
10. Gaza            1.17 2pm
11. Copwatch/rights 1.17 4pm
12. Economy/why/CTV 1.17 6pm/10pm
13. Guilt/assoc/CTV 1.17 9pm

14. ed          - Progressive radio schedule
15. Greg Burris - Dems & bloodbath in Gaza: in sync with Bush Inc
16. Juan Santos - The lessons of Gaza in a time of collapse and rebirth
17. ed          - bumpersticker

--------1 of 17--------

From: christine gamm <cmgamm14 [at] yahoo.com>
Subject: Food garden 1.16 7pm

Explore the theory, practice and design of cold climate permaculture.
Learn how to create a food-producing backyard ecosystem.

Gardening Like The Forest: Home Scale Ecological Food Production, An
Evening with Dave Jacke
Friday January 16, 7pm to 9pm
Minneapolis College of Art and Design, 2501 Stevens Avenue, Minneapolis,
MN 55404
Cost: $10 Suggested Cover charge. All are welcome.


--------2 of 17-------

From: t r u t h o u t <messenger [at] truthout.org>
Subject: NOW/oceans 1.16 8:30pm

NOW | Our Oceans: What Could Happen   Ch 2
http://www.truthout.org/011509U
NOW: "A rise in sea levels isn't the only impact global warming is having
on the world's oceans. A growing body of evidence suggests that climate
change is also affecting ocean currents and the chemistry of the seas,
with potentially catastrophic results."


--------3 of 17-------

From: Margery Otto <motto [at] hobt.org>
Subject: Antiracism reg 1.16

Antiracism Circles  1.16 registration

Register now to participate in an Antiracism Study-Dialogue Circle.  An
ASDIC Circle is a community of 10 to 12 people who meet once a week for 12
weeks.  The upcoming Circle will be meeting on Tuesday evenings in the
West Side neighborhood of St Paul, starting on February 3rd.  Together
members of the Circle will create supportive relationships as they explore
the ways our social behaviors and identities are formed in the context of
³race² and racism in the United States.  Relationships are built on
honest, informed and deep dialogue that leads to formation of Action
Plans.  Through the ASDIC experience we create antiracist patterns of
relationships in the settings of our own lives and advocate for
relational, antiracist policies in the wider systems of our society.
Members of past ASDIC Circles report the Circles to be deeply
transformative.

The Tuesday evening ASDIC Circle will meet from 6:00 to 8:30pm, with a
shared meal at 5:30.  Address:  371 West Baker Street, Saint Paul 55107.
Suggested donation is $150 which includes textbook, Manual and all meals.
Kindly pay what you can ­ all are welcome without regard to financial
circumstances.

To register or FFI:  Tim Johnson, 651-227-4275 or cpuc [at] usfamily.net.
www.cherokeeparkunited.org <http://www.cherokeeparkunited.org> - ADSIC.
Although this ASDIC Circle will be held in a community church building,
ASDIC Circles are not based on any religious tradition and are
non-sectarian in nature.

ASDIC ­ Fostering wholeness ­ Spinning webs of relationship ­ Untangling
knots of oppression.


--------4 of 17--------

From: Ken Reine <reine008 [at] umn.edu>
Subject: Peace walk 1.17 9am Cambridge MN

every Saturday 9AM to 9:35AM
Peace walk in Cambridge - start at Hwy 95 and Fern Street


-------5 of 17--------

From: christine gamm <cmgamm14 [at] yahoo.com>
Subject: Eco gardening 1.17 9am

Gardening Like the Forest: Fundamentals of Ecological Gardening, A
Workshop for Gardeners, Designers and Students

Saturday, January 17 OR Sunday, January 18, 9am to 5pm
Minneapolis College of Art and Design, 2501 Stevens Avenue, Minneapolis,
MN 55404
Register: Fee: $125 or the Workshop Kit: $185 - Includes PRI Cold Climate
Annual Membership, Workshop and Introduction to Permaculture by Bill
Mollison Online Registration at www.pricoldclimate.org


--------6 of 17--------

From: Erin Parrish <erin [at] mnwomen.org>
Subject: Work justice 1.17 10am

January 17: Workplace Justice Support/Networking Meeting. 10 AM - Noon at
the Minnesota Women's Building, 550 Rice Street, St. Paul. For more
information call: 952-996-9291.


--------7 of 17--------

From: Stephanie Bates <Stephanie.Bates [at] americas.org>
Subject: Banana republic 1.17 10am

RCTA Coffee Hour Sat 1/17 10 am
Join the Resource Center of the Americas for a Banana filled Coffee Hour
as Kirk Anderson talks about his book "Banana Republic: Adventures in
Amnesia the small backwards Third World nation with hearts of silver and
mines of gold."

Saturday January 17, 10am-11:30
Resource Center of the Americas
3019 Minnehaha Ave S, Suite 20 Minneapolis, MN 55406 612-276-0788
www.americas.org

Banana Republic will be available for purchase at the Coffee Hour

BANANA REPUBLIC follows the mischievous death squads and hilarious junta
hijinks of Amnesia, a zany Third World dictatorship that is the polar
opposite of America! In Amnesia, Generalissimo Wally engages in
roughhousing practices we would consider low-class in our own country,
such as torture, warrentless surveillance, and imprisonment without
charge! Why, even secret prisons are not unheard of! Unlike the advanced
American system, the Amnesian regime only serves the wealthy elite, not
the peasant classes; in fact, politicians openly take money from wealthy
businessmen with direct financial stakes in pending legislation! From the
Amnesians' overflowing prisons to their state propaganda, from their
crippling foreign debt to their questionable elections, from their
privately contracted paramilitaries to their millions without basic health
care, you'll be chuckling, "Thank God we don't live in a banana republic!"


--------8 of 17--------

From: Cam Gordon <CamGordon333 [at] msn.com>
Subject: Cam fundraiser 1.17 1pm

Campaign event: fundraiser this weekend at Fast and Furless, Saturday,
January 17 from 1 - 3, www.fastandfurless.com - 2615 E Franklin Ave. This
is a great new business on Franklin Ave. and I think this will be an event
you will enjoy.  -Cam Gordon Ward 2 CC


--------9 of 17--------

From: Vanka485 [at] aol.com
Subject: Northtown vigil 1.17 2pm

Peace vigil at Northtown (Old Hwy 10 & University Av), every Saturday
2-3pm


--------10 of 17-------

From: Women Against Military Madness <wamm [at] mtn.org>
Subject: Gaza 1.17 2pm

Rally and March for Gaza
Saturday, January 17, 2:00 p.m. (Rally), 2:30 p.m. (March)  Loring Park,
Lyndale and Hennepin Avenues, Minneapolis. Join in a community
demonstration to show support for the people of Gaza, to say no to U.S.
military aid to Israel, and to demand a ceasefire. Please help spread the
word and encourage your friends, colleagues, and family members to come.
Organized by: the Minnesota Coalition for Gaza. WAMM is a member of the
Minnesota Coalition for Gaza.

-
From: Meredith Aby <awcmere [at] gmail.com>
Rally & March for Gaza

Our hope is to organize a large community demonstration to show our
support for the people of Gaza, to say no to US military aid to Israel,
and to demand a cease-fire.  Please encourage your friends, colleagues,
and family members to come!  Organized by the MN Coalition for Gaza.
Endorsed by the Anti-War Committee.

If you can be a marshall or peacekeeper, please meet at 1:15 @ Dunn
Brothers next to Loring Park (329 W 15th St, Minneapolis, MN 55403).  We
will need folks with experience so please help out if you can!


--------11 of 17--------

From: Michelle Gross <mgresist [at] visi.com>
Subject: Copwatch/rights 1.17 4pm

COPWATCH/KNOW YOUR RIGHTS TRAINING
Saturday, January 17
4:00 p.m.
Walker Church, 3100 16th Ave S, Minneapolis

Given the lack of formal police accountability mechanisms in the Twin
Cities CUAPB is starting off the new year teaching the community how to
document police conduct, which will allow us to hold police accountable
ourselves.  Documenting police conduct is a completely legal activity but
the documentation only has value if it is done correctly.  Join to learn
about your rights and how to capture police conduct on film and by other
means.


--------12 of 17-------

From: Suzanne Linton <bahiabaubo [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Economy/why/CTV 1.17 6pm/10pm

The Economy - What happened?  Cable tv.  1-17 mpls 10pm St Paul 6pm

Karen Redleaf, or better known locally as `The People“s Economist“, is
interviewed by Suzanne Linton on the weekly cable tv show, Our World
Today.  Karen explains in layman“s terms what actually happened that led
to our economic crash ...with the changes from regulation (FDR) to
deregulation (beginning before Reagan), the problems with free trade and
especially the exact explanation of the housing market crash. Very
informative and interesting.  Unless you are also an economist, you are
guaranteed to learn alot.

SPNN 6:00pm Sat. 1-17   11:00 Sun 1-18
MTN 10:00pm Sat 1-17    8:00am Mon 19 (after Democracy Now


--------13 of 17--------

From: Eric Angell <eric-angell [at] riseup.net>
Subject: Guilt/assoc/CTV 1.17 9pm

Masterful Minneapolis Television Network (MTN) viewers:
"Our World In Depth" cablecasts on MTN Channel 17 on Saturdays at 9pm and
Tuesdays at 8am, after DemocracyNow!  Households with basic cable may
watch.

Sat, 1/17, 9pm and Tues, 1/20, 8am
Robert Meeropol: Guilt By Association

Meeropol, the son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, spoke recently in St.
Paul.  The Rosenbergs were Communists executed by the US government during
the Red Scare for "conspiracy to commit espionage". New records have
recently been released to the public regarding the most important trial of
the Cold War.  Meeropol relates how the case relates to our society today.


--------14 of 17--------

   PROGRESSIVE RADIO Schedule

 MONDAY
 12noon-1pm   Democracy Now KFAI
 7-8pm        Ron Reagan    AM950
 8-11pm       Mike Malloy   AM950

 TUESDAY
 12noon-1pm   Democracy Now KFAI
 7-8pm        Ron Reagan    AM950
 8-11pm       Mike Malloy   AM950

 WEDNESDAY
 11am-12noon  Andy Driscoll KFAI
 12noon-1pm   Democracy Now KFAI
 7-8pm        Ron Reagan    AM950
 8-11pm       Mike Malloy   AM950

 THURSDAY
 12noon-1pm   Democracy Now KFAI
 7-8pm        Ron Reagan    AM950
 8-11pm       Mike Malloy   AM950

 FRIDAY
 11-11:30am   Lydia Howell  KFAI
 11:30-12noon Don Olson     KFAI
 12noon-1pm   Democracy Now KFAI
 7-8pm        Ron Reagan    AM950
 8-11pm       Mike Malloy   AM950

 SATURDAY
 4-7pm        Ring of Fire  AM950

 SUNDAY
 9-10am       Atheists Talk AM950
 3-4pm        James Mayer   AM950
 7-10pm       Ring of Fire  AM950

 KFAI FM 90.3 and 106.7

 If you have additions to suggest
 email me at shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu

 The most recent big change is Mike Malloy on live from 8-11pm instead
 of 12midnight-3am delayed. Thank 950AM for this.


--------15 of 17--------

Democrats and the Bloodbath in Gaza: In Sync with the Bush Administration
by Greg Burris
January 15th, 2009
Dissident Voice

Support for Israel in her time of need, from both Democrats and
Republicans, is not just the logical choice. It is both a strategic and
moral imperative.
- Congressman Steny Hoyer (D-MD)

I want to commend the Bush administration for its support of Israel during
this difficult period.
- Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA)

Since Israel launched its massive, deadly, and completely asymmetric
blitzkrieg against the impoverished population of the Gaza Strip, an
operation that represents a continuation of Zionist policy since the
British mandate period and has so far left over 900 Palestinians dead
including some 400 women and children, Ohio Congressman and two-time
presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has carried on his practice of
consistently speaking truth to power, reprimanding both Israel for its
criminal behavior and the United States government for enabling it. In
addition to sending letters of protest to Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Kucinich has also
made numerous public statements about the massacre, and on January 7, he
rose to his feet on the House floor to deliver the following words:

Wake up America. We have trillions for a war machine and banks while our
government stands by and sniffs at the slaughter of innocents in Gaza,
where Israel is blocking aid for wounded Palestinians. [.] Today U.S. tax
dollars, U.S. jets and U.S. helicopters provided to Israel are enabling
the slaughter in Gaza. The [Bush] Administration enables Israel to press
forward with the attack against defenseless civilians; blocks efforts
promoting a cease-fire at the UN; and refuses to make Israel comply with
conditions that arms shipments not be used for aggression. Israel is going
to receive $30 billion in a ten-year period for military assistance,
without having to abide by any humanitarian principles, international laws
or standards of basic human decency. Wake up America.

While Kucinich's urgent pleas seem to have fallen mostly on deaf ears, he
has managed to arouse the ire of at least one pro-Israel organization.
Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, founder of the Washington-based NGO The Israel
Project, chastised the Ohio Congressman saying, "He is not a friend of
Israel; he doesn't understand the security concerns of the Israeli people;
he doesn't understand what it's like to live under rockets that are coming
down constantly. If Dennis Kucinich were at all consistent with what
voters wanted, he would be the president-elect as opposed to one of many
people who tried to be the president-elect".

But what exactly is it that American voters want? Do they, as Ms. Mizrahi
insinuates, fully support Israel's wanton destruction of the defenseless
in Gaza? Do the American people truly stand behind the butchery of
innocents including police school graduates, ambulance drivers, and
sleeping children?

Despite the entirely slanted and dishonest coverage the calamity has
hitherto received by mainstream media outlets in the United States, it
turns out that, contrary to what Ms. Mizrahi would have us believe, a
substantial segment of the American population does not actually support
Israel's criminal actions. A recent Rasmussen poll has found that
Americans are almost evenly split on the issue with 41 percent against the
operation compared to 44 percent in favor.

The divide, of course, is even starker when examined along party lines;
while some 62 percent of Republicans polled support Israel's actions, a
clear majority of Democrats oppose them by a 24 percent margin. One can
only assume that, were the treatment of the ongoing calamity by the
mainstream US media not so horribly skewed against the Palestinian
victims, these numbers would reveal an even stronger rejection of Israel's
iron-fisted militancy by the American people.

Unfortunately, opposition to Israel's shock and awe campaign by a majority
of Democratic voters does not translate into action or even rhetoric by
Democratic leaders. In this respect, Kucinich stands virtually alone
amongst a party of Democrats - or, for Denis Perrin, a party of "Savage
Mules" - who seem to be vying with their Republican colleagues to see who
can best cater to the demands of Washington's pro-Israel lobby.

President-elect Barack Obama, whose entire campaign hinged on the vague
notions of hope and change, has refused to weigh in on the subject,
claiming that he is not in any position to take a stand until after taking
office on January 20. Anyone with any degree of influence or power who
remains silent while masses are slaughtered is a coward, and indeed,
Obama's shirking of responsibility in this time of upheaval and gross
injustice is cowardly in the extreme. Moreover, the fact that he felt free
during the primaries to ponder invading Pakistan and did not hesitate to
condemn the recent attacks in Mumbai only reveals the extent of his
hypocrisy.

In recent days, both houses of Congress have passed resolutions expressing
the utmost approval for Israel's aggressive acts with overwhelming
bi-partisan support. These shameful resolutions represent two of the first
acts of the new Congress. The contentiously worded resolution passed by
the House of Representatives expresses "vigorous support and unwavering
commitment to the welfare, security, and survival of the State of Israel
as a Jewish and democratic state with secure borders, and recognizes its
right to act in self-defense to protect its citizens against Hamas's
unceasing aggression" and calls on all countries "to lay blame both for
the breaking of the 'calm' and for subsequent civilian casualties in Gaza
precisely where blame belongs, that is, on Hamas". Only five congressmen
voted against the measure: one Republican (Ron Paul) and four Democrats
(Kucinich, Gwen Moore, Nick Rahall, and Maxine Waters).

The powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has
celebrated both of these legislative victories by posting on its website a
104-page pdf file containing quotes from over one hundred American
politicians - including such leaders as Representatives Steny Hoyer and
Barney Frank and Senators Evan Bayh, Bob Casey Jr., Christopher Dodd, Dick
Durbin, and Bill Nelson - who support Israel's "right to self-defense"
against the downtrodden and dispossessed in Gaza. The voices gathered
together on this document are almost identical in the intensity of both
their boisterousness and their ignorance, and one can be forgiven for
being unable to distinguish between Republicans and Democrats. Once again,
it seems that AIPAC has provided further evidence to Jack London's
disparaging characterization of lobbies as "peculiar institution[s] for
bribing, bulldozing, and corrupting the legislators who were supposed to
represent the people's interests".

Speaker Nancy Pelosi - once so feared and vilified by the right - has
proven herself to be lockstep behind the Israeli occupiers, saying that
the Gaza Strip "cannot be allowed to be a sanctuary for attacks on Israel"
and that "[t]he United States must continue to stand strongly with its
friend and democratic ally". Similarly, California Congressman Henry
Waxman proclaimed that "Israel's operation in Gaza is an act of self
defense. It is a blatant double standard for those who criticize Israel to
expect any nation to stand idle as its cities and citizens are
indiscriminately shelled".

By placing the blame for the current escalation of violence squarely at
the feet of Hamas and the Palestinians, our elected Democratic
representatives are repeating that old charade of blaming the victim for
the actions of the victimizer. In the words of New York Congressman Joseph
Crowley, "Hamas had a choice this past December: extend the cease-fire or
continue hostilities. They chose war over peace". Illinois Congressman
Jesse Jackson Jr. too has weighed in on the conflict saying, "We in the
United States must continue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in support of
our friend and ally Israel as it defends itself against Hamas' unrelenting
rocket attacks from Gaza".

Can our Congressmen be any further removed from reality? Unfortunately, it
appears that they can. In one of the more revealing statements of support,
New York Congressman Eliot Engel points to cultural affinity between the
United States and Israel as a justification for his pro-Israeli
sympathies. On the House floor, he declared, "I rise this afternoon in
support of the beleaguered people of the State of Israel. I rise in
support of the only democracy in the Middle East. I rise in support of the
country in the Middle East that has the same values that our great
country, the United States of America, has: principles of democracy and
principles that are so important to every man, woman and child".
Apparently for Mr. Engel, the people of Gaza living under Israel's iron
heel do not share such values, and his callous dismissal of them only goes
to prove Howard Zinn's assertion that "[i]t is easier to explain
atrocities if they are committed against infidels, or people of an
inferior race". The late Samuel Huntington would be proud.

Not to be outdone by their colleagues in the House, our country's
Democratic Senators have likewise risen up to express their solidarity
with the occupational forces. New York Senator Charles Schumer finds it
"naive and unrealistic that some say Israel should 'sit down and talk' to
Hamas, a group sworn to Israel's annihilation, that broke the recent
ceasefire by flinging missiles at Israeli cities". Similarly, New Jersey
Senator Robert Menendez communicated his support for Israel's bombardment
of Gaza by way of an analogy: "If I am sitting in New Jersey, and rockets
are landing around my house, near my children, and near our schools, my
number one goal, my immediate goal, is to stop the rockets. So in December
of 2008, Israel sent its military to Gaza to achieve a direct goal: stop
the rockets".

One cannot look to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for any courageous
leadership on the issue. Reid, who cosponsored last week's Senate
resolution condemning Hamas, was recently featured as a guest on NBC's
Meet the Press. During the course of his interview, he expressed his
solidarity with Israel saying that the Israelis "gave it [Gaza] to the
Palestinians as a gesture of peace, and all they got are a bunch of
rockets in return". When asked if he was "in sync with the Bush
administration" regarding the conflict, Reid responded succinctly: "Yes, I
am".

In his classic text The Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon wrote that "the
European masses must first of all decide to wake up, put on their thinking
caps, and stop playing the irresponsible game of Sleeping Beauty" if the
criminal and racist practice of colonialism were ever to end. The same can
also be said today of those in the United States who seem to believe that
the answer to today's problems lies in the triumph of one establishment
party over the other on election day. The shameful Democratic response to
the ongoing bloodbath in Gaza illustrates this point; it is a tragic
reminder that the two-party political system of the United States is
fundamentally flawed. In the words of Congressman Kucinich, perhaps the
sole voice of reason and integrity remaining the Democratic Party, "Wake
up America".

Gregory A. Burris is a former Fulbright recipient who holds degrees in
Hebrew, Jewish studies, and Middle Eastern studies. His other articles
have appeared in such publications as the Journal of Popular Film and
Television and Middle Eastern Studies. Originally hailing from the East
Texas town of Texarkana, he currently resides in Istanbul, Turkey.


--------16 of 17--------

The Lessons of Gaza in a Time of Collapse and Rebirth
Apocalypse No!
by Juan Santos
January 15th, 2009
Dissident Voice

In loving memory of the late Mayan priestess Jo'b No'j Chomiha (Rosa Maria
Cabrera)

It can no longer be hidden. What is happening in Gaza is, transparently,
ethnic cleansing - genocide.

That genocide has been ongoing for sixty years, sometimes in intense,
rapid, and explosive junctures, sometimes more slowly, routinely - but
always, methodically.

To see clearly the historical and cultural trajectories toward genocide in
Palestine or elsewhere, one has only to map the intersection of stated
intentions of the perpetrators and their actions over time - or experience
a sudden revelation or flash of deep insight.

I was one of those who saw it all at once. At sixteen years of age, it hit
me with an indescribable force, one that would require an essay in its own
right; I had been watching a documentary on public television about the
Nazi Holocaust. Then it hit me: What happened in the Holocaust was not the
exception to the rule - it was the most profound expression of the rule;
it was a concentrated expression of the way things are in everyday life,
in the blind cult of everyday life. The Holocaust could not have come from
nowhere, it was not an aberration, it arose from certain conditions, like
a pimple from oily skin - and, like the blemish itself, the Holocaust was
only a symptom of what underlay it - the conditions from which it arose.
Outbreaks of genocidal horror in concentrated form arise from the norms
that underlie them. If there is no basis for a thing to exist, it cannot
come into existence.

What is happening in Gaza today is no accident; it is an expression of
underlying logics, of underlying and all-permeating attitudes and feeling
tones in Israeli culture; logics, attitudes and feelings that rest on a
set of fundamental premises.

First among these premises is one shared by every civilization and empire
on Earth over the historical period of the last several thousand years:
that the members of a given culture are vulnerable, whether that
vulnerability is to human enemies or the conditions of nature, and that
this vulnerability rightly translates into a mindset of kill or die, kill
or be killed, conquer or be conquered. Every empire culture has determined
to be the killer rather than the one who dies or who is killed, the
conqueror rather than the conquered, and the ruler rather than the ruled.
Every empire faces what it considers an existential threat (indeed, each
embodies a mentality that existence - life itself - is a threat.)

Without that threat, the empire cannot justify its existence. Almost all
"progress" is measured in terms of overcoming perceived threats. It is
important to understand, for example, that Israelis today view the
genocide in Gaza as "progress". That's why opinion polls show their
overwhelming support for it. Likewise the Nazis had made "progress" in
dealing with the "Jewish Question," until they reached the point where it
seemed possible to progress to the point of a cure for the "Jewish
disease" they said threatened the German people. Call it the promise of a
Final Cure, a Final Solution, a Final Progress. Call it the promise of a
Final Redemption, a cultural Liberation from the existential threat, the
promise of the ultimate "success". There is nothing at all unusual in it.
Every aspect of our daily lives is permeated with such promises, and every
one of them is a lie. It is the job of politicians to make such promises,
and that is why we tend to despise them, even though every one of us is
looking forward to the "final solution" of something or another.

Every TV commercial is a walking, talking final solution, a new "miracle"
cure, real progress.

Every time we buy an advertised commodity we aren't buying an object, we
are buying an idea, a culture, a promise, a solution; whether the solution
is to the "threat" of bad breath or the "threat" of "global terrorism". As
we make our purchase we are also buying into the basic notion that life is
a threat and that civilization is its cure. For most Israelis, excluding a
tiny conscious minority, the white phosphorous Israel is raining on the
people of Gaza is not a burning poison - it's medicine - it's a cure, a
solution.

But listen - don't blame them; you're not immune, either; you buy into the
same lie, in some form or another. "They" are not different; you are not
different. They are from the same culture as you and I; one of the Empire
cultures - in this case, the West. In the West, as in all Empire cultures,
"threats" are dealt with by eliminating them. So, the Nazis sought to
eliminate the Jews; The Jews in Israel now seek to eliminate the
Palestinians - they call it the Palestinian "threat," so that the very
name "Palestinian" has come to represent a threat in the emotional
subtexts of Western empire culture.

Israeli writer Uri Avnery, writing on the genocide in Gaza, makes it
plain:

"Every baby metamorphosed, in the act of dying, into a Hamas 'terrorist'.
Every bombed mosque instantly became a Hamas base, every apartment
building an arms cache, every school a terror command post, every civilian
government building a 'symbol of Hamas rule". Thus the Israeli army
retained its purity as the 'most moral army in the world'".

And, if only Israel would smile as they kill, send in a few doctors and
some medicine to anesthetize the pain, they would be both "moral" and
"nice". And no one could object. The slaughter could continue undiluted.

Just as Israel is out to eliminate Palestinians, you, cowboy, sought and
still seek to eliminate Indians. Yesterday's "savage" is today's
"terrorist" threat.

In the US, Black people are a "threat," so their elimination is sought in
other, diluted ways, ways that don't look like genocide - through mass
incarceration of millions under the guise of "fighting crime" or the "War
on Drugs", or the "War on Gangs," anything that can be made morally
justifiable and enlist the support of "nice" people. But the undiluted
reality is that we, the descendants of Africans and Native Americans, are
your Gazans. And your perception of us as a threat operates in your
culture in just the same way as the Israeli perception of the
Palestinians. You stole our land, our bodies; just as Israel is built on
stolen Palestinian land; only in this case we are talking magnitudes of
scale far beyond a small strip of land on the coast of the Mediterranean.
We are talking two continents in this hemisphere, and the enslavement and
Conquest of Africa, and Australia as well.

Here in the Americas, your ancestors killed 95% of my ancestors. David
Stannard in his seminal American Holocaust, published by Oxford University
Press, puts the numbers at around 100 million dead. And you thought the 20
million the Nazis killed was unprecedented. That's what you were taught,
that The Nazis were an evil exception to "civilized" rule.

No, the Nazis were not an exception to the rule any more than Israel is an
exception to the rule. Neither are the Europeans in the Americas.

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Conquest of the Americas, The Conquest of Africa,
with its fifty million dead, The Nakba (the initial Conquest of
Palestine), the US / Mexican War of conquest - all of them are made of the
same dynamics: "Progress" and expansion, the elimination of the "Threat",
and the need for internal cultural coherence against the threat.

Your upbringing was little more than an indoctrination into that internal
cultural coherence, and a way of aligning your life-purposes toward your
culture's promise of the elimination of the threat. To be a "success"
means that you have eliminated threats in a way that can be construed or
falsified as "nice". That's what you buy into with every product and lie
you buy. You buy into genocide; you buy into ecocide. You buy into the
elimination of life on Earth. Life itself, after all, is the most
fundamental existential threat; life embraces its complement, death. Life
is full of wild things, threatening things. The word "wild" in its
origins, pertains to life which is unbroken, untamed, undomesticated,
uncivilized. In its origins, "wild" means self-willed. Life itself is a
threat that must be eliminated. That's the final logic of the final
solution.

The "dark" "wilderness" is simply full of threats, you know. We were
taught that, too. And if you are a white "American" it is manifestly your
destiny to conquer the wild threat, to tame it, to break it - to eliminate
it. If you are part of Nazi Germany, your purpose is not so different; if
you're Israeli, Greater Israel is your manifest destiny; or South Africa;
or Australia. Name your colonial settler state. It may shake you to look
at Gaza as a mirror: but, regardless, you are part of the same genocidal
and ecocidal pattern.

This is the most elementary of understandings necessary for an honest
approach to and assessment of our current global crisis. It is the single
most important factor in understanding white European culture and its
dynamics in the Americas and as a global Empire. It is fundamental to any
understanding of the basic cultural assumptions that guide our daily lives
and understandings of one another. It is an understanding so important, it
describes a reality so all pervasive, that without it one simply cannot be
an ally to oppressed peoples - in Gaza or anywhere else.

Without this understanding one has understood nothing. One's "compassion"
reduces to do-good-ism and elite rescue missions to the poor miserable
brutes beneath one. Without this understanding one cannot be an integral
part of the healing that we as humans, the Earth as a living being and the
animals we love, so urgently need. Without this understanding one cannot
conceive of the actual realities of the "old mind" vs. the "new mind".
Without this understanding one doesn't even know what the old mind is.

Thank the spirits that the denial that has shaped us is, as we speak, at
last, beginning to shatter.

Without having immersed oneself in fundamental understanding of the
culture driven realities of genocide and ecocide, one does not know where
we are, the conditions we face, or the depths of denial that surround us
about our current crisis. In fact, without this understanding having been
deeply integrated into one's world view, one is by definition in denial.
One is by definition part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Without this understanding one hasn't a clue about the indigenous
experience so many would like to emulate. Much less has one approached
anything akin to indigenous American "wisdom" - or, for that matter,
African experience and wisdom. If that is what you are looking for, then,
here is some indigenous wisdom:

In the US today, Lakota men's life expectancy on the rez in the US doesn't
just "happen" to be 44 years - the lowest on Earth. Lakota teen suicide
rates don't just "happen" to be 150% of the norm in the US. The Lakota
unemployment rate and the extremities of Lakota poverty don't just
"happen" to be the case. Native Americans don't just happen to have the
highest incarceration rate on planet Earth, higher, even, than that of
African Americans. These conditions are all are a direct result of having
been conquered and being kept in subjugated state by an enemy people who
promised and intended to wipe Native Americans off the face of the Earth -
just as the Nazis intended to wipe the Jews off the face of the Earth. The
rez is white America's Warsaw ghetto (by the way, they don't call the
Black ghetto a "ghetto" for nothing) and people of indigenous descent, be
they Lakota or Mexican, are, along with Black people, the "Jews". Better
put - the Palestinians.

In fact Hitler openly admired the extermination of the Indians, and the
reservation system, and consciously took them as models. The South African
Bantustans and the system of Apartheid had a similar origin, as does the
division and colonial settlement of Palestine. Gaza is a temporary Indian
reservation, "Indian Territory" only waiting to be taken, an open air
concentration camp. Here and there, it's the same.

Where did you think you were?

Palestine is everywhere.

If one hasn't faced the historical, ongoing reality of genocide and of the
US as a white colonial settler state and global empire immersed in,
permeated by, and oozing genocide from every pore, then one doesn't grasp
the pain of oppressed peoples, its daily meaning, or the context of the
daily experience of oppressed people here in the US or anywhere else on
the planet. One cannot but react - be a reactionary (and I use the term
advisedly, deliberately and consciously) when encountering the pain of
oppressed people. One cannot understand the anger engendered by utter
invisibility felt by those who face the realities of cultural and physical
genocide everyday and when who, most often, face it alone, with no
recognition from their supposed white "allies". One will fail to see that
what is happening in Gaza has a particular meaning for those who are
living through it and dying in it. The drama of the mass slaughter of an
innocent people there is only a concentrated expression of the blind cult
of oppression that constitutes their every day lives, of the cult of
everyday life.

Without conscious understanding of the dynamics of genocide, one can only
blame the victim for their pain and anger, and fail to understand that
one's own blindness to the most elementary and basic of realities of
everyday life presents a locked box to the oppressed - the same locked box
oppressed people confront with their active persecutors and overt enemies
- the locked box of denial.

Most of all, without such a conscious understanding one cannot see the
reality facing the world today, the utter congruity and continuity between
genocide and ecocide, and the ways that the denial and operation of one
mirrors the denial and operation of the other, or the ways in which the
daily details of a killing culture flow into the stream, the river and the
sea of planetary death.

Without understanding genocide, one doesn't understand anything essential
- much less is one among the ranks of the "wise". Without having faced the
fundamental reality that shapes one's culture and its daily interactions
with other cultures, one cannot fully approach "wisdom" or humility or
self-reflection, or even understand in a mature way what is happening
around and in oneself.

What's happening is that a choice is being made between life and death on
a global scale. The choice before is also an individual one to be made in
the context of one's own, particular culture. But the choice is not
between killing or bring killed, killing or dying; it's between killing
and living. And like the choices of the ancient peoples who chose Empire,
the choices we make now will affect life at every level and on every
scale. It will be Killing or Living.

Life on Earth isn't "dying". The furry ones, the four footed ones, aren't
"dying". They're being killed by a culture that is their conscious and
self-declared enemy.

Here, in the midst of the greatest mass extinction in 65 million years,
all that is "wild" doesn't just "happen" to be dying, any more than Gazans
"happen" to be dying. The Wild happens to be being killed by a culture
that has openly and confessedly intended to eradicate, eliminate the wild,
to conquer, tame, subjugate and destroy it all - a culture that is the
active enemy of all life - certainly of all self-willed - wild life.

It is a culture that uses dynamite to blow up wolf cubs in the den as if
they were so many Palestinian children; and that, death squad style,
Israel-in-Gaza style, then uses helicopters to hunt their parents down
from the sky.

If life is endangered, if "endangered" species are a symbol of that, then
this is what they are "endangered" by - conscious killers. They are not
endangered by accident, not by "well meaning" but ignorant people, but by
killers - a culture of killers - even if, by chance, it might be rightly
said that the killers do not understand, and dare not face themselves as
such. (The reason oppressed people find it a relief to deal with overt
racists is that it's a relief to face someone who knows what they are.
Most white middle class people in the US don't face the nature of their
culture. They sense that they can't afford to face it.

To do so would be to break the code of silence called being "nice". And
being "nice" is what it means to smile as you kill. One must kill. There
is a threat. But one can only continue to kill by pretending that what you
are doing is something else. Mass murder is "defending democracy";
Conquest is "spreading the word of god and saving souls". As I was told by
a dear friend, a radical white feminist lesbian, being "nice" functions
something like an anesthetic. Now that doesn't hurt, does it?)

There are layers upon layers of misdirection, obfuscation, double
entendre, doublespeak, half truths and manipulation that enable the
killing, and that make up the cultural context in which the killing can go
on without acknowledgment or feeling.

Wisdom, in this context, means, in part, being wise about how to deal with
a culture of killers. "Wisdom" cannot be divorced from context, any more
than it can be divorced from culture, or from experience within a given
culture, or how we navigate - mediate - between cultures.

Without a deep grasp of the dynamics of genocide, one doesn't even start
to get this culture, and one is utterly unfit to mediate between the
cultures of the oppressor and the oppressed, much less is one fit to guide
the creation or foundation of what is most urgently needed - a new culture
and an authentically "new" mind - which, in practice, can only be the
outcome and product of a new culture that comes into being as this one
collapses and as we consciously dismantle the consciousness that drove it.
A "new mind" will be the sign of the new culture coming into maturity over
the course of the coming generations.

Beyond that, without a firm grasp of the reality of genocide, and thus
ecocide, one cannot love the world - not with competence, and not if love
is the ability and will to extend oneself for the spiritual growth of
others. One cannot extend oneself to guide others in a terrain one doesn't
understand - not without betraying them. Not if love, like "wisdom," is a
verb; an ability in a context.

And here is our context as the world and the Earth around us are on the
verge of disintegration: it is the context of the death throes of a death
system; the orgasm of a necrophiliac.

A mature capacity to love, in this context, is typified by four
activities.

1. Guiding others to see what they are part of;

2. Guiding them to reject what must be rejected;

3. Helping them to learn that they are safe while they re-emerge and
deprogram themselves from the cultural matrix of "threat" and "solution",
and;

4. Helping to restore or lay the foundations for a culture that is utterly
different, while saving what we can, within the limits of our abilities,
of life on this Earth.

These four things will, of necessity, become part of a new mythology. They
are, fundamentally, religious tasks.

They will become and must become a foundation for the understandings of a
culture of life, and they must be encoded in the new culture that arises
from the death of this one.

A new culture must know where it came from, where it is going, where it
refuses to go, where it is on the path and in its stage of development,
and why. Otherwise, it could easily repeat and replicate the most
devastating aspects of the death culture which is now collapsing around
us.

If we don't know where we are, and where we come from, we cannot know
where we need to go, why we need to go there, and we can provide no means
for others to gauge where they are in the stages of development from the
old to the new. In other words, lacking such knowledge, we are useless to
the future as any kind of leaders or guides; rather, we represent a dead
end and a failure of understanding.

It is, by the same token, very dangerous to assume that one "knows" what
the "new mind" is or will be. That is in part because what we (both as a
species and as specific cultural groupings) do now and in the future will
become part of the myth/ story that shapes the new mind and the culture
that it arises from. Since we don't know what we are going to do, at best,
some of us who intend to help lay the foundations for a new culture can
only live as if our story might come to embody worthwhile lessons for the
coming generations, if there are to be any. But we cannot predict the
outcomes or the meanings of the stories and myths they will comprise,

In the same way, the Hopi who lived through the experiences later embodied
in their Emergence Stories could not know the outcome before it unfolded.
As they moved thru the passageway - following the destruction of the Third
world into the Fourth World, they did not know they would be followed by a
"witch" who would corrupt the new world, or other key elements of the
story that would give full shape to their culture as it deepened and
evolved.

It is such stories that deeply shaped the traditional Hopi world
experience or "mind," and our story, as it will be told by our children's
children's children, based on how we have actually lived it, will shape
the "new mind" of the coming generations. This will happen in the same way
that those who lived long ago, who lived and shaped the story of the
"existential threat" and the "final solutions" of Empire, shaped our
culture and our minds.

So, yes, Gaza is our mirror, it is the shattering mirror of a shattering
world system of Empire and domination; it is the magic mirror into which
we can look to see the truth of our cultural situation and the forces that
drive our psyches, the painful mirror that can lead us to grief and
transformation, in which we can see what is revealed, and what, and who,
must change, and how. What is happening in Gaza is a Revelation. That is
why we cannot tear our eyes - or our hearts - away.

And as we watch the drama, the tragedy of Empire, oppression, genocide and
ecocide unfold before us in Gaza, we will no doubt find occasion to feel
both deep grief and rage.

Grief over, and rage at genocide is completely justified. But it is
important - central - to remember that the worst thing oppression does to
us is make us someone we're not, to rob us of choice, to reduce us to
being reactive, limiting our ability to feel and think clearly and with
compassion about ourselves and others.

It forces us into the mindset wherein what "threatens" us determines our
being, and our existence becomes little more than a reaction to that
"threat". Then the Empire mentality has "got" us. To the extent that the
oppression reduces and limits our abilities to make conscious choices, we
have become the victims of genocide within ourselves, we have become less
than the promise of our full humanity; we are robbed of our birthright.
The ultimate freedom is the freedom to choose from the deepest place of
authenticity within us - from our hearts in right relation with all life.
We must learn to live and act from love of our peoples, of the land and
all life, and not from mere hatred of those who have foolishly made of
themselves our enemies.

This freedom - the freedom to love, foster and nurture life, can never
truly or entirely be stripped from us, as the indigenous ancestors and
elders - all of those who have handed down the still living traditions
from before the time of Empire - have shown us with their lives.

The spiritual elders and guides of the Maya of Guatemala are a recent and
deep example of this. The Maya are just recovering from a genocide that
took the lives of a quarter million of their people in the latter part of
the 1900s; but, even though the denial had not yet shattered, even though
the world was silent about their condition then, in that time just before
the internet, they kept faith with their ancient traditions, knowledge,
and prophecies, and emerged as a people who hold a deep spiritual light
for a world in crisis. They re-emerged, as if according to schedule, for
this time.

Let us live, to the best of our capacities, like them.

Juan Santos is Los Angeles based writer and editor. His work can be read
at The Fourth World Read other articles by Juan, or visit Juan's website.


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                            Had it with Israel
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