"Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43BC), Roman writer, senator and outspoken critic of power; executed for offending the ruling triumvirate.
It's been going on since then!
Thursday, 10 April 2008
Monday, 7 April 2008
The Real Martin Luther King!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b80Bsw0UG-U
Listen from 12 minutes if you want the most important part for today.
He was not just about black rights but about defeating our economic system for the survival of mankind. Against a war no less justifiable than that of the war of terror in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The triple evils of exploitation, militirism and racism."
This is a denouncement of the western world and our irrational concept of progress, aid and development.
Listen from 12 minutes if you want the most important part for today.
He was not just about black rights but about defeating our economic system for the survival of mankind. Against a war no less justifiable than that of the war of terror in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The triple evils of exploitation, militirism and racism."
This is a denouncement of the western world and our irrational concept of progress, aid and development.
Wednesday, 5 March 2008
What's changed.. 22 thoughts about the world!
I have been in Latin America for most of the last 2 years.
I have met people from all over the continent all over the world along the way. My thoughts about the world have changed during this time. I started this trip because I suspected that something was wrong with the world. It had been something that always existed in me from the time when I learned that children are starving to death everyday. This knowledge left questions unanswered. The last 2 years and $15 000 or so that I have spent have taught me many things that I didn't come across or care to acknowledge in the first 23 years of my life.
While I enjoyed my travels immensly, went to beautiful places and met thousands of amazing people, what I saw also hurts. Meeting people who have been looking for a job for a year and a half who have kids to feed is common in Colombia, living in Chiapas with kids with distended bellies eating all day but staying skinny because of the parasites living inside them, knowing that the children I was teaching at school in Guatamala have almost all suffered a degree of stunted growth and clinical brain damage because malnutrition as babies. (50% of babies suffer from anemia in Chiapas.) Seeing disabled peope and people who need medical attention living in the streets all across the continent. All this hurts and has led me to understand the need to reject the current system. The first step to a better world.
Here are a few things I came across.
1. Poor people are not lazy. Generally they are working more hours for much less pay and complain a lot less about it than those at the other end of the scale. That means there is no justification for poverty.
2. Producing any raw material is only lucrative for massive companies. Producing coffee, corn or bananas is back breaking work that doesn't provide enough to eat well in most parts of Latin America. (In Chiapas Mexico its $3 a bag of coffee which is about 40kg an amount I was unable to pick in a days work and that people here pick in about 6 hours, when wages are raised to $10 like in Oaxaca (neighboring state) its no longer viable to pick!?
3. Forced economic migration is extremely destructive. People are seeping towards cities all over the world basically because of the above reason. When they get there they are cheap easily exploitable workers that generally have enough savings for the bus and a few days food. This phenomenon is destroying cultures, causing languages to disappear, making cities more dangerous and in themselves destructive places.
4. Education is not considered a right in most of the world. Nowhere is education of the poor anything like what it is for the rich. This phenomenon extends statistically though less drastically to all countries apart from Norway and maybe Sweden although there citizens say that they are embracing the "adjustments" needed for a "competitive economy" which will surely bring them back to the field in the coming years.
5. The rich world is wrong. This is one of the most important realizations of the trip. Many residents of the US are ready to defend there country or if they are "radicals" that believe in human rights they condemn it. Most Europeans don't have the same enlightenment. Germans think that they are doing well because they are one of the leaders in environmental reform in Europe. Western life in its very nature of consumerism is wrong. Its wrong because it cannot exist beyond the next 50 to 70 years. If I have kids the world will cease to exist during there lifetime.. pretty hard to give a pat on the back for that. Furthermore if the whole world were to live like Germans in would be more like 20 years.
6. We have too much stuff. Self imposed poverty has taught me.. we only need decent food and somewhere safe to sleep. There is nothing material beyond this that is really essential. Of course to provide health care and education will always use some resources but the disease of consumerism and consumer vanity to appear to be wealthy is the biggest problem the world faces today. Advertising and other propaganda has destroyed our ability to reason in terms of needs. This phenomenon has to change for the world to continue. I'm not talking about the desire for beauty because that will always exist but its what we decide is beautiful and how much of it that must change.
7. Action is not easy. Realizing many things that are wrong with the world has taken my mind to many places and many courses for action. History and present situations in many parts of Latin America say that if you start to do anything to achieve change in the areas I'm talking about you will be repressed. In Colombia and Mexico if you get any sort of importance in a political movement that isn't capitalist and what the ruling class want you are likely to be killed or at least threatened with death.
8. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights are Universally ignored. This abuse of human rights of almost the whole world is rarely acknowledged. The US, Israel and Colombia amongst other countries regularly break the rules of war with preemptive strikes and disproportionate acts against civilians. The fact that we don't know these laws generally is one of the greatest failures of our morally bankrupt education system. http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
9. Most justifications given for economic change, like privatization or removal of the right to strike and organize which has never existed in the poor world and is disappearing in the rich world is justified by inhuman factors and produce a decrease in quality of life for all but those changing the rules.
10. The need to be competitive is a lie and a competition for where in the world companies can find the cheapest way to get their job done. This pressure is literally destroying the world and forces factory lock-ins and repression of union leaders. Raul Reyes was a union organizer who joined the guerrilla in response to threats on his life for organizing as a nestle employee. The company which won the prize of most unscrupulous in the world for encouraging African women to stop breast feeding with free product to later charge them once their milk dried-up. Breast feeding is much better than any powder for the first 6 months to year of a babies life and often saves the life of children in situations where drinking water is not safe (like many parts of Africa).
11. Guilty don't feel guilty, they learn not to. *NOFX* Even those who make weapons to kill millions learn that it's OK.
12. Change is hard and takes time. The change we need to not live in a morally corrupt, war mongering, individualist, consumer driven world is massive. It starts with education and will not be a achieved quickly. We are all guilty of these flaws but all capable of change and improvement as people.
13. Advertising is destroying the world.
14. Movies and TV teach perceptions we are not even aware of. A harvard study associated with race proves its more difficult for US citizens to associate good with black people. Responses are slower. People like Coke for the advertising because in blind tests they chose pepsi. Image is everything. Protect your mind! TV installs thousands of these associations which are destructive.
I just did it and got a moderately favors white score.
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/EndTask?tid=3
explains why..
http://www.thepreparedmind.com/pm/index.php/2006/02/01/understanding-clients-in-a-blink/
15. De-constructing learned prejudices is the most important thing that I think traveling has done for me.
16. Constructing a new educated reality is very slow and dificult. Teaching poor and rich not to base worth around posessions and superficial factors is an extremely difficult process that cannot be achieved by force. I think creating an economic, social, cultural and educative environment for development and individual emancipation is the path to a better world. This is not easy. We are very well programmed by the way we are taught to exist.
17. We are all hypocrites to some extent because even actions of pure intentions have a balance of positive and negative effects. We need to try to act according to our own truths. Acknowledge and understand weakness and failure without accepting it as truth.
18. Education of the rich is much more difficult. The poor generally have a much better understanding of the realities of the world and it's systems. They often can't articulate it with the vocabulary of the wealthy but the wealthy often describe fantasies of open markets and decreasing corruption as the paths to a better standard of living. The poor have learnt that these paths don't work.
19. Being white is easier. Not a good thing. Most people are more willing to help and have less learnt fears and prejudices about white travellers and are willing to help them more than fellow country men and women. Blacks and indigenous are often lumped into stereotypes of lazy and ignorant by those who holiday in Miami.
20. Poverty is misery. While poor communities often have higher degrees of social and family integration and may suffer less from depression, seeing your child die from malnutrition or diahroea is not something to envy. Distended bellies and lack of drinking water are all realities I have spent far too much time close to.
21. Trying to create change creates an opposite pole. As things change the oposite pole resists more. I think we saw this with things like workers rights in the 30's. But with persistence change can be accepted (like we have seen for the most part with the removal of rights like, free education, health, pensions etc.) This gives us hope for the opposite to one day be true.
22. Creating sporting and cultural spaces are equally important along with access to doctors and food. In Venezuela you can see these spaces being created and usedto create a more cooperative, better functioning society.
Change is possible but its very difficult. On an individual and organizational level its hard. It must happen.
Revolution starts with rebelion and needs to be followed by construction of a world that doesn't use money in the same way.
I hope the movements in Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Zapatista's in Chiapas and many other movements in Latin America can create a new reality and a world which we can be proud to exist in.
I have met people from all over the continent all over the world along the way. My thoughts about the world have changed during this time. I started this trip because I suspected that something was wrong with the world. It had been something that always existed in me from the time when I learned that children are starving to death everyday. This knowledge left questions unanswered. The last 2 years and $15 000 or so that I have spent have taught me many things that I didn't come across or care to acknowledge in the first 23 years of my life.
While I enjoyed my travels immensly, went to beautiful places and met thousands of amazing people, what I saw also hurts. Meeting people who have been looking for a job for a year and a half who have kids to feed is common in Colombia, living in Chiapas with kids with distended bellies eating all day but staying skinny because of the parasites living inside them, knowing that the children I was teaching at school in Guatamala have almost all suffered a degree of stunted growth and clinical brain damage because malnutrition as babies. (50% of babies suffer from anemia in Chiapas.) Seeing disabled peope and people who need medical attention living in the streets all across the continent. All this hurts and has led me to understand the need to reject the current system. The first step to a better world.
Here are a few things I came across.
1. Poor people are not lazy. Generally they are working more hours for much less pay and complain a lot less about it than those at the other end of the scale. That means there is no justification for poverty.
2. Producing any raw material is only lucrative for massive companies. Producing coffee, corn or bananas is back breaking work that doesn't provide enough to eat well in most parts of Latin America. (In Chiapas Mexico its $3 a bag of coffee which is about 40kg an amount I was unable to pick in a days work and that people here pick in about 6 hours, when wages are raised to $10 like in Oaxaca (neighboring state) its no longer viable to pick!?
3. Forced economic migration is extremely destructive. People are seeping towards cities all over the world basically because of the above reason. When they get there they are cheap easily exploitable workers that generally have enough savings for the bus and a few days food. This phenomenon is destroying cultures, causing languages to disappear, making cities more dangerous and in themselves destructive places.
4. Education is not considered a right in most of the world. Nowhere is education of the poor anything like what it is for the rich. This phenomenon extends statistically though less drastically to all countries apart from Norway and maybe Sweden although there citizens say that they are embracing the "adjustments" needed for a "competitive economy" which will surely bring them back to the field in the coming years.
5. The rich world is wrong. This is one of the most important realizations of the trip. Many residents of the US are ready to defend there country or if they are "radicals" that believe in human rights they condemn it. Most Europeans don't have the same enlightenment. Germans think that they are doing well because they are one of the leaders in environmental reform in Europe. Western life in its very nature of consumerism is wrong. Its wrong because it cannot exist beyond the next 50 to 70 years. If I have kids the world will cease to exist during there lifetime.. pretty hard to give a pat on the back for that. Furthermore if the whole world were to live like Germans in would be more like 20 years.
6. We have too much stuff. Self imposed poverty has taught me.. we only need decent food and somewhere safe to sleep. There is nothing material beyond this that is really essential. Of course to provide health care and education will always use some resources but the disease of consumerism and consumer vanity to appear to be wealthy is the biggest problem the world faces today. Advertising and other propaganda has destroyed our ability to reason in terms of needs. This phenomenon has to change for the world to continue. I'm not talking about the desire for beauty because that will always exist but its what we decide is beautiful and how much of it that must change.
7. Action is not easy. Realizing many things that are wrong with the world has taken my mind to many places and many courses for action. History and present situations in many parts of Latin America say that if you start to do anything to achieve change in the areas I'm talking about you will be repressed. In Colombia and Mexico if you get any sort of importance in a political movement that isn't capitalist and what the ruling class want you are likely to be killed or at least threatened with death.
8. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights are Universally ignored. This abuse of human rights of almost the whole world is rarely acknowledged. The US, Israel and Colombia amongst other countries regularly break the rules of war with preemptive strikes and disproportionate acts against civilians. The fact that we don't know these laws generally is one of the greatest failures of our morally bankrupt education system. http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
9. Most justifications given for economic change, like privatization or removal of the right to strike and organize which has never existed in the poor world and is disappearing in the rich world is justified by inhuman factors and produce a decrease in quality of life for all but those changing the rules.
10. The need to be competitive is a lie and a competition for where in the world companies can find the cheapest way to get their job done. This pressure is literally destroying the world and forces factory lock-ins and repression of union leaders. Raul Reyes was a union organizer who joined the guerrilla in response to threats on his life for organizing as a nestle employee. The company which won the prize of most unscrupulous in the world for encouraging African women to stop breast feeding with free product to later charge them once their milk dried-up. Breast feeding is much better than any powder for the first 6 months to year of a babies life and often saves the life of children in situations where drinking water is not safe (like many parts of Africa).
11. Guilty don't feel guilty, they learn not to. *NOFX* Even those who make weapons to kill millions learn that it's OK.
12. Change is hard and takes time. The change we need to not live in a morally corrupt, war mongering, individualist, consumer driven world is massive. It starts with education and will not be a achieved quickly. We are all guilty of these flaws but all capable of change and improvement as people.
13. Advertising is destroying the world.
14. Movies and TV teach perceptions we are not even aware of. A harvard study associated with race proves its more difficult for US citizens to associate good with black people. Responses are slower. People like Coke for the advertising because in blind tests they chose pepsi. Image is everything. Protect your mind! TV installs thousands of these associations which are destructive.
I just did it and got a moderately favors white score.
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/EndTask?tid=3
explains why..
http://www.thepreparedmind.com/pm/index.php/2006/02/01/understanding-clients-in-a-blink/
15. De-constructing learned prejudices is the most important thing that I think traveling has done for me.
16. Constructing a new educated reality is very slow and dificult. Teaching poor and rich not to base worth around posessions and superficial factors is an extremely difficult process that cannot be achieved by force. I think creating an economic, social, cultural and educative environment for development and individual emancipation is the path to a better world. This is not easy. We are very well programmed by the way we are taught to exist.
17. We are all hypocrites to some extent because even actions of pure intentions have a balance of positive and negative effects. We need to try to act according to our own truths. Acknowledge and understand weakness and failure without accepting it as truth.
18. Education of the rich is much more difficult. The poor generally have a much better understanding of the realities of the world and it's systems. They often can't articulate it with the vocabulary of the wealthy but the wealthy often describe fantasies of open markets and decreasing corruption as the paths to a better standard of living. The poor have learnt that these paths don't work.
19. Being white is easier. Not a good thing. Most people are more willing to help and have less learnt fears and prejudices about white travellers and are willing to help them more than fellow country men and women. Blacks and indigenous are often lumped into stereotypes of lazy and ignorant by those who holiday in Miami.
20. Poverty is misery. While poor communities often have higher degrees of social and family integration and may suffer less from depression, seeing your child die from malnutrition or diahroea is not something to envy. Distended bellies and lack of drinking water are all realities I have spent far too much time close to.
21. Trying to create change creates an opposite pole. As things change the oposite pole resists more. I think we saw this with things like workers rights in the 30's. But with persistence change can be accepted (like we have seen for the most part with the removal of rights like, free education, health, pensions etc.) This gives us hope for the opposite to one day be true.
22. Creating sporting and cultural spaces are equally important along with access to doctors and food. In Venezuela you can see these spaces being created and usedto create a more cooperative, better functioning society.
Change is possible but its very difficult. On an individual and organizational level its hard. It must happen.
Revolution starts with rebelion and needs to be followed by construction of a world that doesn't use money in the same way.
I hope the movements in Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Zapatista's in Chiapas and many other movements in Latin America can create a new reality and a world which we can be proud to exist in.
Friday, 16 November 2007
Why I'm intersted in politics!
Being in Latin America there are basically two options as a foreigner. You can be blind to everything, visit the tourist sites and take cheap drugs or you can talk to people and become enraged by the injustice of the world. I was coming to Latin America on the back of 2 years of reading about political history from people like Howard Zinn, Bill Blum and Noam Chomsky. I also read motorcycle diaries and a biography of Che Guevara which gave me insights into Latin American history.
When you talk to someone here they will tell you .. I'm earning less than minimum wage but there are so few jobs that there is no better option. Unions have been paralysed, foreign companies are buying up everything. Most people don't have health or life insurance nor will they ever retire. These things have all come about in the recent past. There are some people that are extremely rich while minimum wage would be around $1.20 an hour if they weren't forced to work 80 hour weeks. My girlfriend just got a job for minimum wage 70 hours per week for $55, she starts at 8 and finishes between 8-10pm. she's not allowed to leave for lunch an gets 2 Sundays off a month if she works well. The shop has massively over staffed because labour is so cheap.
I just walked around the block in the town centre. I saw an indigenous woman with her kid getting ready to sleep in the street after a day of begging. 10 prostitutes. A midget playing a banjo for cash. I smelt the rock that many of the people who live in the street smoke. I saw about 5 guys carrying sacks with their only possessions. 2 police men (police and military forces are massive) they get pensions and opportunities for education. Uni's are being privatised and education is each year more for the rich. You have to pay $50 a year to go to school which for many families with many children means they don't send their kids to school.
There are posters for 5 people who have disappeared in the train station. They change every couple of weeks. If you want to be a union leader or ask a multinational company to pay it's taxes or its workers here you have to be ready to seek asylum and hide your family. Companies have all the power. Even professionals get 2 weeks a year holidays and people are scared to take more because there is so much unemployment. Only 8 million of a 22 million person workforce have real jobs. Lots of the others are "occupied" selling mobile phone minutes, fruits, newspapers, cleaning windscreens or one of hundreds of other ways to keep a roof over their heads and full stomachs.
Each reform is making the situation worse. They are looking to get a free trade agreement with the US which in other countries has lead to a spike in poverty.
There are 4 million displaced people in the country because of the paramilitaries (private armies of rich land owners) and army who have killed and forced poor people off their land so that it can be used for mass industry. That is part of why they have had 40 years of civil war here. The people in power at the moment by 60% majority are all linked with these movements and are major land holders. People hate the guerrilla army who fight for the land to be returned. Recently one paramilitary admitted to knowing of 5000 holes where poor land holders and guerrillas (the same thing really) have been buried. He is getting 4 years in jail for being honest about his genocide.
I wanted to just give you a taste of what it's like to be here but I guess a bit more came out.. I have learnt more about other countries. I am interested in politics but I'm increasingly cynical about the world. We are doing everything wrong. I still have faith in the human race but the forces that hold it in it's misery and injustice will go to any extreme to maintain it. When you are here you can see the multinationals like Coke or fruit companies will pay to kill union leaders to keep profits up and kill indigenous to rape their land.. ..they are the same companies that operate in the rich world they just can't get away with the same shit. The US has planned, authorised and payed for genocides and massacres in almost every country in Latin America.
To answer the question. Reading the paper and books here as well as talking to people have been the most valuable things.. some Internet articles. Mostly its being close to the lives that are being ruined by this system and knowing that something different is easily possible if the propaganda was different. The lies of mass media and our education are the most important reasons for the injustice that we live.
My role ?
Keegan
http://www.soberania.org/Images/hambre_1802.jpg
http://www.soberania.org/Images/hambre_1802.jpg
Monday, 24 September 2007
President Iran University Colombia speech
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/protests-at-columbia-over-iran-leaders-speech/
(Iranian president's discourse ^^)
The more people that read this the less likely a Iran being destroyed by US and Israeli bombs.
Peace.. the real motivation for the war is the economic changes that he is making and the links with Latin America and becoming independent from the imperialist capitalist economy. If it was about human rights they would be after Saudi Arabia and China and Burma. If it was about nuclear weapons they would stop giving them to more countries like neighbouring India and Pakistan along with Israel and would have signed the many anti-nuclear proliferation acts that the US has vetoed at the UN. If it was about terrorism they would attack Saudi Arabia.. the country where the majority of the attackers of 9-11 came from. If it is about interfering in Iraq.. also a big factor .. they have no justification. If Mexico was overtaken by Colombia or China or Russia would the US sit back and not take any involvement. If it were Canada would there not be a brotherly call for help. Iraqi's want the US forces to leave and let Iraqi's rule the country.. neighbouring countries also desire this. Reagan said that the US had to invade Nicaragua for self defence! (A tiny country trying to rise from misery with some USSR links).. how then can Iran be expected not to be concerned about Iraq!
Any thoughts?
No war.. no civilians deserve it.. not even the perpetrators of all this capital driven misery.
Peace through a new economy and understanding we are all of the same land. We are all family of the same mother earth.
Peace through understanding.
(Iranian president's discourse ^^)
The more people that read this the less likely a Iran being destroyed by US and Israeli bombs.
Peace.. the real motivation for the war is the economic changes that he is making and the links with Latin America and becoming independent from the imperialist capitalist economy. If it was about human rights they would be after Saudi Arabia and China and Burma. If it was about nuclear weapons they would stop giving them to more countries like neighbouring India and Pakistan along with Israel and would have signed the many anti-nuclear proliferation acts that the US has vetoed at the UN. If it was about terrorism they would attack Saudi Arabia.. the country where the majority of the attackers of 9-11 came from. If it is about interfering in Iraq.. also a big factor .. they have no justification. If Mexico was overtaken by Colombia or China or Russia would the US sit back and not take any involvement. If it were Canada would there not be a brotherly call for help. Iraqi's want the US forces to leave and let Iraqi's rule the country.. neighbouring countries also desire this. Reagan said that the US had to invade Nicaragua for self defence! (A tiny country trying to rise from misery with some USSR links).. how then can Iran be expected not to be concerned about Iraq!
Any thoughts?
No war.. no civilians deserve it.. not even the perpetrators of all this capital driven misery.
Peace through a new economy and understanding we are all of the same land. We are all family of the same mother earth.
Peace through understanding.
Monday, 17 September 2007
Venezuela Vs Colombia where is the hope?
OK after a little over two months on mark 2 Latin America at 3 am in Bogota central bus terminal I feel like it´s time to send an update. Firstly I should say that life is treating me well. I enjoyed teaching and I'm planning on staying for a while longer in this part of the world, next stop is Ecuador to visit Ro (my bro) and then I think I will do some volunteer farming/teaching before looking for paying work. I hope this email finds you well and as always I would love to hear from you either about the subject matter below or anything else that's going on. What follows is my passion that seems to dominate any attempt at a tourist recount of quirks of my adventure. .. ...
Venezuela was amazing for me. From the first few days in Caracas spent with my friend Sara and her family who I didn't get to meet the first time I came through Venezuela, onto Valencia where I taught English to business people, it was always interesting. Looking back I learnt a lot and already feel a desire to return someday.
For anyone who read my emails from my last trip they will know that my motivations for travelling were more than just learning about the foods and natural beauty of the world. I left Australia searching for some truth about why the world is the way it is and indeed exactly how the world is through my eyes. What is poverty? What direction in is the world going in? I arrived home with a much better idea of these concepts having spent most of my time away debating, writing and thinking about the world with whoever was closest by (or my book when there wasn't anyone.
I'm now certain that we must look for an alternative economy. Not just the poor world but much more so the rich world. That our method of wealth abstraction is not just unsustainable ecologically, it's not bringing the rich world life it should and it's completely immoral in the context of the world as a global community. Furthermore I see no hope in the "molding" of the current model because the changes are much more in propaganda than action. (For example the amount of money invested in renewable energy research is a minute fraction of that spent looking for new oil resources, beyond what we have, which we cannot if we find them environmentally afford to burn. This in mind Venezuela was the perfect place for me to get a job teaching English!
It definitely wasn't a revolutionary job nor a revolutionary life teaching the workers of Volkswagen Skoda group and Johnson Cleaning English but it did give me the chance to live in a country of change. President Chavez has started to become a world icon mostly for his statements about the George Bush being the devil at the UN and about imperialism in general. Having had the chance to listen to him speak a lot both in formal addresses and his casual Sunday 4 or 5 hour drawl Alo Presidente, I have a lot of respect for him. The criticism of him as self-absorbed may have some basis, I don't really understand his reasons for wanting to be such an icon, but to say he's self serving I think is to mis-understand what's really going on in Venezuela.
Politics are on every one's mind in Venezuela. The kids are talking about, bringing up statistics and historical precedents, mostly rehashed from their media outlet of choice. The media polarisation is amazing. The corporate media funded by advertising has a way to find an expert to criticise every single action of the government from giving aid to building hospitals. The government funded media (or the people's media depending point of view) is a constant exhibition of the projects that the government and it's new community branches. This polarisation in the media is a good metaphor for society. Those who are in the corporate world and work for multi-nationals generally hate Chavez as if he killed their dog while those who have hopes that their children will be the first generation of there family to go to University or moved from a slum house to one built by the government love Chavez in a way difficult for me to come to grips with given the politics of the rich world.
Given this polarisation you are going to get very different views on Venezuela depending on who you talk to or which media outlet you read from. Crossing the border into Colombia has helped put that into perspective. Colombia is much more famous than Venezuela (or at least I had heard more of it before I started travelling) because of it's reputation as the worlds Cocaine factory. (Incidentally the worlds biggest? heroin factory Afghanistan is another country which is also of very high strategical importance to the worlds only superpower.) It has higher levels of poverty which it's current president (Uribe) attributes to the Guerrilla groups ELN and FARC amongst others who have tried to create revolution in Colombia for many years. As such the mandate of the president is to destroy these groups with the populist goal of higher security levels and the corporate goal of being a betting investment proposition and being able to exploit the southern half of the country which has been untapped because of the success of the rebel groups in occupying these lands.
The point is in Venezuela high crime rates, people sleeping in the streets and the price of eggs in China are all Chavez's fault in corporate media where as in Colombia where "petty crime" seems to be a much bigger problem, there are more people in the streets and problems of access to health and water seem more dire the problems are not attributed to Uribe nor the economy which has maintained this misery. The contrast is striking. (It's like watching today tonight in Australia or Fox news from the US present a story or debate and then looking up some alternative sources like democracynow.org.) Also striking is the importance that each president seems to give to these problems.
In Venezuela there have been many changes to integrate informal retailers into the formal economy, through micro-financing and socialist based co-operative small businesses which have from from a few hundred to over a hundred thousand, as well public education about how to do this. Informal economy jobs have much more limited standards for quality control and working conditions and have also never had the right to a pension which means you can never retire or get sick. Obviously integrating these people into the formal economy is in every one's benefit including the governments for tax purposes (apart from that improving quality of life of the people should be the goal of any government! )
They also have pending a constitutional reform which would make the 6 hour working day law. Consider the effect that can have on a society! I think they aim is that people will become involved in more community projects along the lines of socialist philosophy. So they will be cleaning up and learning and exercising and holding community events in time that would have been used for production of goods or services. It seems that we have forgotten that is what the industrial revolution was supposed to bring. Why are we working more hours and taking less holidays and bringing more people into the workforce? This will also create more employment to maintain current output more workers will be needed. This will mean more people have to be educated to fill new positions. It's such a big change that I can't be sure how it will play out but the doomsayer's haven't really come up with anything (Venezuelan corporate media) other than that it won't create more jobs which seems like a tough argument to make but even still there would be the same number for people working for the same money with more free-time, also better.
Uribe has been successful in Colombia. The guerrilla have had very few actions in the big cities in the last 4 years and people generally feel safer, including tourists like me. The government has been implicated in funding an illegal army to kill them as well as pressure poor communities in the regions they operate. Many people have been displaced from their homes including a homeless guy I spoke to a couple of times in Cartagena (another story). So it's safer but it's certain that it has been made safer by illegal means. Many consider the government and the right-wing army to be one and the same. US companies have also been caught paying these organisations to kill union leaders and generally funding an illegal armed force. Still Colombia remains the biggest recipient of US (mostly military) aid outside the middle east (Israel, Egypt, Turkey I think are the 3 biggest).
It's extremely dangerous to be leftist in Colombia for this reason. If you think that poverty is unjust or that human rights law's are important and you say it with a group of other people you are going to get death threats or disappeared. For this reason the left lives in the jungle. In upcoming local elections the corporate media is saying there is only one candidate in some areas because no one dares run for what they believe in. So they don't run. People generally feel like politics has nothing to do with them and most think it's all about lining their own pockets. Privatization has lead to huge increases in energy costs but calling for nationalisation is going to put your life at risk so what can you do but pay the bill!
Venezuela on the other hand has no militia or guerrilla war and while the upper class feel excluded by Chavez and angry that they don't gain the wage they would as a professional in Miami, they aren't being buried. They are marching in the streets and painting the walls and having there say uninterrupted in the corporate media. They feel excluded but I think in the face of this polarisation you can see the most diverse political propaganda of any country in the world. Certainly in the US, Western European media and Australian media there is no debate about the fundamentals of our economic system. In Venezuela, a government elected (more times than any other in the world in the last 9 years) it's definitely still permitted to speak about the inhumane neo-liberal capitalist model of privatisations, foreign debt, foreign investment etc. Their voice coupled with the international media in my opinion is much stronger than Chavez's voice but for those in the new house, who's kids are going to go to Uni, who's seen a Cuban doctor (their first doctors visit) there is more to the battle than propaganda.
Time will tell for the people of Venezuela. For now I see many positive things happening there and above all the possibility for change.. what I'm searching for. In Colombia it seems hope is at all time low levels and those who have will continue being scared of those who don't. Let's see how easily their political border is perforated.
I love learning about these possibilities and the fact that real change is possible in Latin America is exciting. Their are also movements for change in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua as well as some structural changes about to happen in Cuba which not only provide interesting learning but give me hope that they old ladies I have given 50c to in the streets in every country of Latin America (apart from Venezuela, probably for lack of travelling) one day will be given the dignity they deserve. Indeed it is the human cost that compels me to learn and try to share with you my thoughts. A 10 year old kid was helping people (me included) catch Taxi's last night at 4am. I gave him $5 which is like giving $50 to some one in Australia and he didn't know what to do with his excitement. BUT WHY IS HE THERE, WHAT WILL STOP HIM BEING THERE IN EVERY CITY I GO TO? I believe that what I have seen is replicated in history and present in other "developing" countries. Certainly governments in the name of communism, socialism and other ism's have committed crimes. Mostly against the people within their own borders. Are the crimes of the neo-liberal system which denies food to the 30000 people who will die today for this crime or the hundreds of thousands of Latin American's who've died in the last 50 years in the fight for change (Africa and Asia have had their battles too) any less horrific or are they just winning the propaganda war. I don't want to see the USSR or Mao china or even Cuba repeat. But not looking for change from the current model for me is immoral.
Enjoying South America. If you want some more light-hearted stories send me a reply about what you have been up to!
Our thoughts are the only thing that are ours, with that is our responsibility.
Friday, 7 September 2007
Sexo siglo XXI
Para que tenemos las normas sexuales que tenemos hoy en América Latina o cualquier parte del occidente u otra. En esta región católica la hipocresía y las mentiras sobre el sexo son frecuentes y grandes. La gente joven está mirando en sus películas, novelas y música todos los días insinuación sexual y cosas menos sutiles. En la calle es aceptable parar de caminar para ver una mujer de 15 años paseando o gritar desde su carro pero aún los padres piensan que su hija de 24 años es una virgen (puede ser pero pocas). Si las consecuencias no eran tan graves eso puede ser gracioso. Las reglas y morales de la iglesia hoy no sirven igual, no solo en la parte sexual. ¡Hoy vale mas tener una gran cruz de oro que dar dinero al niño o señor en la calle! (¿Aparte el papa de hoy?)
¿Quien dijo que el sexo es malo? Había una época en la cual la gente se casó de la menor edad desde 14 o 15 años para que no experimenten con el sexo y para mantener su estructura comunitaria. Seguro que en esta época como hoy las reglas del sexo han sido rompidas. ¡Un signo que los tiempos cambian es que en un tiempo los hombres de mayor edad tuvieron que tener sexo con los hombres jovenes para iniciarlos en la sociedad (Heleno)! Ahora casi solo los hombres que están encarcelados en presión o por su culto religioso tener sexo así niños regularmente. Y es fuera la ley de justicia.
Estamos en el siglo XXI y hemos traído algunas ideas de sexo desde los tiempos atrás. Todavía hay cultas que dicen sexo fuera de el matrimonio es prohibido en este misma sociedad sexo todo los días sugerido por nuestro medio. El choque entre las dos fuerzas ha dejado una sociedad confundida con varias cicatrices. Seguro eso es un factor en porque tenemos muchas mujeres menores embarazadas sin compañero y sin recursos para criar a sus bebes y una epidémia de SIDA y enfermedades que nunca hemos visto.
El sexo siempre va ocupar un lugar sagrado. Los placeres biológicos y sicológicos garantizarlo. En el siglo XXI las reglas si sirvieron antes en la sociedad, hoy no funcionan. Las normas ahora son diferentes. No nos casamos hasta que tenemos una mayor edad que cualquier época por no estas madura hasta que tienes una casa, tu licencia y tu carro. Por otro lado de sociedad en pobreza mas normal a tener varios hijos por falta de educación mas que todo. La cultura de sexo ahora es plural. Pocas jóvenes van a pasar sus vidas en solo tener sexo con una persona, casarse sin tener sexo aún menos. Para las que gustan quieren seguir las reglas “super” pero eso tiene que ser una decisión individual. Para las que no eligen esta calle ahora tienen que esconderse de sus padres y sus amigos y la iglesia. Las consecuencias son fuertes.
Por esta vida inaceptable vivimos constantemente en mentiras, con vergüenza o peor con enfermedades y niños dejados por la calle. ¿Para que mantenemos en esta situación insoportable? ¿Cómo podemos combatir esos graves problemas y volver a disfrutar de una de las cosas mas pura y preciosa en la vida?
BASTA CON LAS MENTIRAS Y DISFRUTAMOS LA VIDA : )
gracias a marcella por su asistencia
¿Quien dijo que el sexo es malo? Había una época en la cual la gente se casó de la menor edad desde 14 o 15 años para que no experimenten con el sexo y para mantener su estructura comunitaria. Seguro que en esta época como hoy las reglas del sexo han sido rompidas. ¡Un signo que los tiempos cambian es que en un tiempo los hombres de mayor edad tuvieron que tener sexo con los hombres jovenes para iniciarlos en la sociedad (Heleno)! Ahora casi solo los hombres que están encarcelados en presión o por su culto religioso tener sexo así niños regularmente. Y es fuera la ley de justicia.
Estamos en el siglo XXI y hemos traído algunas ideas de sexo desde los tiempos atrás. Todavía hay cultas que dicen sexo fuera de el matrimonio es prohibido en este misma sociedad sexo todo los días sugerido por nuestro medio. El choque entre las dos fuerzas ha dejado una sociedad confundida con varias cicatrices. Seguro eso es un factor en porque tenemos muchas mujeres menores embarazadas sin compañero y sin recursos para criar a sus bebes y una epidémia de SIDA y enfermedades que nunca hemos visto.
El sexo siempre va ocupar un lugar sagrado. Los placeres biológicos y sicológicos garantizarlo. En el siglo XXI las reglas si sirvieron antes en la sociedad, hoy no funcionan. Las normas ahora son diferentes. No nos casamos hasta que tenemos una mayor edad que cualquier época por no estas madura hasta que tienes una casa, tu licencia y tu carro. Por otro lado de sociedad en pobreza mas normal a tener varios hijos por falta de educación mas que todo. La cultura de sexo ahora es plural. Pocas jóvenes van a pasar sus vidas en solo tener sexo con una persona, casarse sin tener sexo aún menos. Para las que gustan quieren seguir las reglas “super” pero eso tiene que ser una decisión individual. Para las que no eligen esta calle ahora tienen que esconderse de sus padres y sus amigos y la iglesia. Las consecuencias son fuertes.
Por esta vida inaceptable vivimos constantemente en mentiras, con vergüenza o peor con enfermedades y niños dejados por la calle. ¿Para que mantenemos en esta situación insoportable? ¿Cómo podemos combatir esos graves problemas y volver a disfrutar de una de las cosas mas pura y preciosa en la vida?
BASTA CON LAS MENTIRAS Y DISFRUTAMOS LA VIDA : )
gracias a marcella por su asistencia
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