Global Spin

You and Cancun

Why You Should Come to Cancun
By Starhawk

   From September 10-15, the World Trade Organization will attempt to hold a ministerial in Cancun, Mexico.  They will be opposed by campesinos, students, international activists, NGOs, and a strong contingent of the Mayan Gods and Goddesses  (at least, in the form of giant puppets.)  Here's why you should be there, too, if you possibly can-or in one of the many support actions around the globe if you can't get to Cancun itself.
   

The WTO is the most ambitious and far-reaching of the various trade agreements and institutions that have codified and imposed corporate globalization on a reluctant world.  The WTO''s reach is global, and its power immense.  It is, in a sense, an institution of global governance, making rulings that override the laws we make as citizens and that establish parameters for our policies not just on trade but on how we will feed and educate our children, care for our sick and elderly, provide for our common security, reward those who labor, develop or conserve our resources, and interact with our environment.  Its agreements are hammered out in meetings which are not open to the public and in which the rich and industrialized countries hold inordinate power, and its rulings on disputes are made in secret tribunals by trade bureaucrats who are not accountable to the public, and who provide no public record of their deliberations.  
On the agenda for this ministerial are some of the basic issues of life: food, agriculture, services.  To simplify the complexities of tariffs and subsidies and all the rest of it, the vision put forth by the corporate globalizers is like a bad science fiction film.  In their version of the world, no country will produce its own food, devote common resources to provide for human needs or the nurturing of the next generation.  All food will be grown in large, industrialized farms for export, using chemicals and herbicides on patented, genetically engineered crops that are further packaged, irradiated, branded, and shrink-wrapped before being sold to you at your corner large corporate supermarket.  Profit, not health or sustainability, will be the determining factor in agriculture as in every area of human endeavor.  Should you get sick from the chemicals, a privatized medical establishment will minister to your every need as long as you can pay, just as you will pay for your drinking water and your children's private school.   And not through taxes, those subversive drains on the rewards of economic aggression, but through simple fees for the privatized services which can now be more 'fairly' distributed: that is, those who have money will get them, those who don' t, well, hell, they don't deserve them anyway. Every service that human beings have provided for each other or organized governments to provide will now be privatized and become arenas for corporate profit-making-from teaching our children to running our prisons.  The single exception, the last remaining role for government, is the police and military-and private security companies are even making inroads into that.  A small elite will hold all the power and the bulk of the world's wealth, and for the rest of us, the maquiladora, the prison, or a fine career in the military await.  Environmental standards, labor laws, worker safety-forget all that!
   The vast majority of us don't see that world as desirable.  We hold another vision, one that has something to do with community, with valuing human relationships of caring and nurturing, with a love for nature and the diversity and wonder of life.  We want a world where everybody has enough:  healthy, organic, locally grown food, clean water, comfortable shelter, opportunities to express our creativity and realize our dreams.  We know that world is possible.  We would like to get on with creating it, with healing the planet, raising our kids, and planting our gardens.  But in order to do even these simple things we need to stand up and fight.  And the place to do that is Cancun.

   The Cancun ministerial has every chance of failing.  The project of U.S. global hegemony has become so blatant and aggressive that it has alarmed even our allies.  The U.S. is at odds with the E.U. on agriculture and other issues.  The less developed countries are tired of being dictated to by the U.S. and the E.U.  There is rebellion in the ranks, and we can further that with a massive presence in the streets.
   Moreover, there's currently a rift in the ruling classes, a subtle but real difference between the corporatists, who want to see corporate rule backed by U.S. military power, and the militarists, who want to see U.S. military hegemony, backed by corporate wealth.  Take this simple test:
   Do you believe the purpose of life is:
A. Tp produce corporate profit.
B. To produce weapons and consolidate military power.
C. Any of the following: love, human relationship;, art; beauty; balance; harmony with the natural world; spiritual growth; to live in praiseful relationship with the sacred; fun; freedom; a mystery that no one can define.
   
   If you checked C, you need to be on the streets somewhere when the WTO meets.  We need a mobilization approaching the scale of February 15, in Cancun and around the world.  It is time for the world's second superpower, the aroused ordinary people of the planet, to raise our voices again.  This ministerial could become the third failure in a row.  The Seattle ministerial dissolved in dissension, and the meeting two years ago in Qatar was merely a sequestered holding action.  A WTO failure in Cancun would be a serious and possibly fatal setback for the WTO as an institution, and the entire project of global corporate rule.
   In Cancun, we need numbers to fill the streets and to counter a very challenging tactical situation.  A small turnout in Cancun could lead the globalizers to the mistaken conclusion that the people of the world have ceased to care about their activities.  With large numbers, we can derail the meeting.  Without numbers, our role will be merely symbolic, although still important.  Cancun is expensive and hard to get to, very far away from most centers of population in Mexico.  If you can't come to Cancun yourself, students and campesinos need support to get there, and there will be mobilizations at borders and in cities around the world.  
   There will be forums beginning on September 8th, days of action starting on the 9th, and a legal march on the 13th.  Ecologists and permaculturalists from the US and Mexico are working to set up the campgrounds as models or sustainability.  Cancun is a chance to connect and meet with people from around the globe who are working for the same values of life and freedom.  
   So come if you can, and if you can't, help someone else get there.  Organize an event in your home town, or join one of the local or regional mobilizations.  This is a crucial moment in history, when the tide could turn.  And the moon is rising.  Come dance on the shore!

   
For our report on organizing in Cancun, and to donate to help students reach Cancun

For information and updates on Cancun:
Indymedia Cancun

To find out about mobilizations and actions, or for suggestions for organizing your own

To donate online to help campesinos and indigenous people get to Cancun

Starhawk

The Bush Administration's Senseless Need to Retaliate

The following is a quote from an Al Franken interview I read this morning, with an explanatory link thrown in. I don't like this at all:

"So this is the mindset of the right, that they have to punish you. Joe Wilson, the former Gabon ambassador, was sent to Niger by the CIA and came back and said the uranium claims weren't true. And when the controversy started broiling again about the 16 words in the State of the Union address and Wilson wrote the piece in New York Times, senior administration officials blew the cover on his wife, who was a covert [CIA] operative. And it jeopardized the lives not only of her contacts but every American, because she was a covert agent in weapons of mass destruction. And it's a way of intimidating other analysts who might come forward, and there's a parallel here: You will be punished if you come after us.

I really think the Wilson thing is the most disgraceful action of any White House since Iran Contra."

More on breastfeeding and photos

Apparently it has been decided in Texas that pictures of breastfeeding are "lewd." Ah. Obviously. Chris and Karen had best be careful, when the time comes, not to shoot anything that is "equivalent to sex". This will make Karen very, very angry (if she hasn't heard about it already).

Micro World

It's all about your microorganisms, baby!

Microorganisms, micro-details. I fixed the "=". ~deb

Instant Runoff Voting

Since there's all this interest in voting in California, you might want to take a moment to get to know the proposed Instant Runoff Voting idea. It won't make it into this recall election, but it should.

The basic idea is that instead of having just one vote for one candidate, I rank them in order of preference. If no candidate gets a 50% majority, low-scoring candidates are knocked out of the race from least to most, and their votes are reallocated to each voter's next choice. This repeats until one candidate has a 50% majority.

The point is to keep votes from being "split", basically wasted when two similar candidates lose to a dissimilar candidate. (see Gore v. Nader v. Bush) Since the winner always gets a majority vote in a runoff, it also adds legitimacy to the win. It would be a big help in the recall race, because I can easily see the vote split among a dozen of the 135 candidates, with the "winner" squeaking by with 10-20% of the vote.

Too bad we won't get it in time. Perhaps by the 2004 elections...

VICTORY cigarette, anyone?

Our beloved John Ashcroft is touring the country to campaign for the PATRIOT Act, extolling it's virtues in protecting us from terrorism. Why campaign for an act already enacted, you ask? Not only would he like to extend it, but soon we'll see the new, improved VICTORY Act which elevates his power to that of a full-fledged police state. (There's no little irony that Victory is the brand of choice in Orwell's 1984.)

Angry? Then do what I did and oppose the VICTORY Act before it even has a chance to rear its ugly head. It's an online petition, yes, but it's one that has the Dean campaign behind it, so it'll get press.

I'm a Dean girl, myself...

My brother Carl sent me this neat test to determine which presidential candidate (who has declared candidacy) is my best match for election 2004. I was 100% with Dean, but only 19% with G.W. Bush. Go figure!

Corporateering: the Gangs of America

Two new books worthy of our attention.

A new book by Ted Nace that you can read online.

From the Gangs of America website:

Corporations are the dominant force in modern life, surpassing even church and state. The largest are richer than entire nations, and courts have given these entities more rights than people. To many Americans, corporate power seems out of control.

And another book by Jamie Court with a forward by Michael Moore.

From the Corporateering website:

Corporateer: v. to prioritize commerce over culture; n. one who prioritizes commerce over culture

This book offers empowering strategies for counter-corporateering so we can reclaim our private lives, our right to health and safety, and other personal liberties.

Remember, knowledge is power.

Mourning the EV1

It seems like 2003 is the year that my dream cars all die. First the Sparrow, and now the EV1.

Issues with The Passion

I love well-researched overview articles. The Independent has a great one about the issues surrounding Mel Gibson's new film, The Passion. Basically, it's likely to be: hard to watch, because it's gruesome and in Aramaic; hard to believe, because it's presented as "what really happened" but has major factual errors; and hard to swallow, because it will be seen as blaming Jews for the death of Christ.

It's not the kind of film I'd watch, because the subject matter doesn't interest me. More interesting to me are Gibson's reasons for making the film and the general reaction to it. I actually like his idea of offering the film in Latin and Aramaic (with no subtitles, apparently). It will be interesting to see what kind of audience it can muster, since most Americans won't even watch a foreign-language film with subtitles.

Athens 2004 (or so)

According to an in-deptharticle in the Union-Tribune, Athens is having a particularly Greek time getting ready for the 2004 Olympics.

I love that they find ancient artifacts whenever they dig. "History? Yeah, we got history lyin' around." You can't build a thing without hitting a 2500-year-old Temple of Aphrodite complex, complete with brothel. Great stuff. I hope they can pull it off.

GMO -- Genetically Modifying Oh, About Everything and Everybody

Well, some of the studies are in and the results don't look too good.

A bit propaganda-ish, but worth the read.

Yay for the Rajasaurus!

It's true! A newly discovered carnivorous dinosaur from India has been named the "Rajasaurus". It's fun...

Action... um... Dubya?

You're not going to believe this. I have no response to it, other than picturing thousands of kids acting out this Onion article. Or something.

Sigh.

UPDATE - I just realized why the action figure's head looks wrong. They gave him eyes.

Meanwhile, back in Iraq...

Just a reminder that life in Iraq is still hell under the American occupation. Please do remember that when Bush says that war was justified for whatever stupid reason he's come up with this week.

Canadianisms, eh?

If, like me, you read For Better or For Worse this morning and wondered what Pogos and poutine are, here's a handy American's Guide to Canada. It'll help you tell the difference between a klick, a pop, and a Beep.

More from the road trip!

Since Chris is being a gull durn spoilsport and hiding our photos (claims it has to do with something about file size, but I know it's just out of spite), I have stayed up late, late putting together our very own we-don't-need-global-spin Road Trip Web Site. I don't know how often we'll be able to update it, and I figure the brilliant (read: stupid) Flagstaff photos are gone forever, but there are some Sedona snapshots right now...

The Journey Explain'd

Just to bring everyone up to speed:

Deana is moving to Michigan this week. She starts her new job as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology (yay!) at Grand Valley State University this fall.

Karen is helping Deana drive to Michigan by way of Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Cheyenne, mumble mumble Nebraska something, and Chicago. They have a pair of digital cameras and a laptop, so they're armed and dangerous.

The Journey Starts

This will make sense to no one, but so far the drive to Michigan includes lots of lightning, elk warnings, alternate air conditioning (on then off) and the "Hey young ladies. Beautiful evening." scary guy at Denny's.

This is the desert, near Yuma:

And this is us, finally at the Fairfield Inn in Flagstaff:

Exciting stuff! We'll keep you posted...

I moved the images to the globalspin.com server and reduced their file size. ~chris

More gay marriage ramblings...

My brother Carl wandered by and noted that he had listened to a bit of Rush Limbaugh Tuesday, for the sake of fun, and learned Rush was taking credit for the argument that marriage isn't about affirming one's love for another person, it's about having children. Apparently others on the right side of the pool are making the same argument and Rush wants us to know he thought of it first.

I suggested that elderly couples shouldn't be allowed to marry, by this token, and that single women should lose the right to marry as soon as they hit menopause. Carl told me to be quiet. Someone might hear me and run with the idea!

In a mood, I did some web searching and came up with this fun thing from a while ago by a heterosexual guy in Vermont. It actually is a fun thing, and it's called Civil Unions Destroyed My Marriage.

Lord, do I love Betty!

You may already be familiar with this, but here is one of my favorite (harsh) parody sites, BettyBowers.com. Betty Bowers is a Christian fundamentalist (I was going to say a caricature of a Christian fundamentalist, but I'm not so sure there's actually any exaggeration going on) with a lot to say on a lot of issues. The site always makes me happy....

For instance, Is Fabulous President George W. Bush a Fabulous Homosexual? analyzes the evidence! I had been whining about the word "fabulous" before, but they take it to a whole new level. Betty and co. even designed a protest letter.

"My (sci fi) crowd"

My friend, anthropologist and new mother Laura Stanley sent me the following note:

Jeff Russell's Starship Dimensions - This is a site where "science fiction fans can
now compare the sizes of various sci-fi spacecraft regardless of genre.
All models are true to scale!" For some reason, I thought you and "your
crowd" might find this amusing - if they haven't already discovered it!

So, "my crowd," have you discovered this yet? Do you find it amusing?
(It's kind of interesting, a bit techy for me....But lots of you are decidedly more tech, so enjoy!)

"Get thee to a nunnery!"

From Miramax Films:

The Magdalene Sisters, an unflinching and compelling emotional drama, charting several years in the young lives of four "fallen women" who were rejected by their families and abandoned to the mercies of the Catholic Church in 1960s Ireland. While women's liberation is sweeping the globe [I wish!], these women are stripped of their liberty and dignity and condemned to indefinite sentences of servitude in the Magdalene Launderies in order to atone for their "sins." The last Magdalene Asylum in Ireland closed in 1996, and only since has the true horror of conditions in these institutions begun to emerge.

Arr! What's your pirate name?

As you can tell, I'm going through a Pirates of the Caribbean "thing" right now. It's like my 11 year old self has taken over. Anyway, I found a rather fun quiz that asks you a bunch of questions then finds your pirate name for you. Here's what I found out about me:

Your pirate name is:

Dirty Jenny Flint

You're the pirate everyone else wants to throw in the ocean -- not to get rid of you, you understand; just to get rid of the smell. Like the rock flint, you're hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you're easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!

Proof of my sad sense of humor

So, Larry Flynt is going to run for governor of California, is he?

I find this funny because:

1. I'd LOVE to see cheap-labor conservative Issa's face if his bid to oust Gray Davis led to Flynt coming into power...ha! ha!

and

2. I'll be far away in Michigan the day of the election, celebrating my birthday and pretending I don't know any of you weird Californians.

Cheap-labor Conservatives

Oooh, Deb's going to love this one: Defeat the right in three minutes.

Be sure to read it all the way through. The argument may seem oversimplified, but it provides a lever to achieve some really astute observations. The author's weblog takes the discussion further.

If you've ever found it difficult to understand the behavior of Cheap-Labor Conservatives (and I have), this may just shed some light.

Oh to live on "O" . . .

All hail Ursula K LeGuin, one of this (and last) century's foremost writers. If you haven't read any of her work yet, you should!

LeGuin's (later*) work tells the truth with clever lies that strip western social norms to their roots in order to better shake the tree. You'll never look at the world in the same way.

(*Interestingly enough LeGuin started as a fairly conservative Sci Fi writer.)

Then, when you've cut your teeth on that, you can move on to Octavia Butler . . .

Breastfeeding man = risque?

OK, who can explain to me why a poster of a man breastfeeding at work would be controversial? I just can't see it.

Let's tick off the elements:
A man in a suit with his chest exposed. If this was a problem, most Guess ads would be banned.
A man holding his child. Can't even imagine a problem there.
A man with his child on his chest. I've seen that in Sears catalogs, for cryin' out loud.
A baby in a diaper. Um, yeah.
An office. Uh-huh.

I got it. It must be the poster of Lucy Lawless' legs on the wall.

Seriously, though, the real reason it was pulled was the same reason it was made: it makes people think about the double-standard we still have. If men needed to breastfeed at work, do you think there'd be any problem?

Come glide with me....

Oh, this looks like fun. Austrian guy Felix Baumgartner (who, of course, speaks English better than we do) jumped out of a plane in the skies above Dover, England. But he didn't just plummet to earth, or even parachute down. Felix was wearing "an aerodynamic jumpsuit with a 6-foot (1.8 metre) carbon fin strapped to his back" and glided...glid...glideded...um, whatever...22 miles across the Channel to Cap Blanc-Nez in France. And THEN he opened his parachute. And it kind of messed up, but he managed to fix it just in time. Whew! (According to a news report I saw on TV yesterday, he named his wingy thing Icarus. If he'd fallen, the irony would have been too great, eh?)

BBC news has got a terrific article about it, featuring nice photos and even a pretty cool graphic of the historic glide. Of course some of you will immediately start thinking of this as a promising new form of earth-friendly transportation, but some of the rest of us aren't sure we're willing to try it...