tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44751461660745091992024-03-12T23:14:25.326-04:00The Agüeybaná TimesThe opinionated tome of a Visual Artist (painter) shuttling between New York/Tokyo/Paris and everywhere in between with his trusty MacBook and pet Opinicus, Onyx. Honest. Opinionated. Genuine. Imperfect...Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom...Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.comBlogger141125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-45099080954509176392016-07-22T23:51:00.001-04:002016-07-23T05:57:31.684-04:00jumping bones...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We met on a street comprising four right angles while i was breaking coconuts at the crossroads of hope, praying for change and a visa. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">With a mouth full of chiclets, your light was confirmation that the sun indeed rose in the East.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Your lips, tasting of tobacco and sea salt, turn every kiss into act of rebellion against reason. Where have you been my love? The table has been set for years. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #b45f06; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I imagined your body an undiscovered wilderness where upon my love will gently anchor, quietly..completely. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #b45f06; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The warm waters and blue lagoons, a welcome a respite from the arduous journey. </span><span style="color: #b45f06; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">For fear of missing out I trek deeper into the darkness- there, an extra set of footprints, strange whispers in the wind, “halt”, a macaw quickly darts across the horizon, we are not alone on this island. </span><br />
<span style="color: #b45f06; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #b45f06; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ghosts of lovers past cling tightly to your heartstrings. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #b45f06; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Passionate words stiffen, falling ineptly to the ground like stray arrows, Eros is not the marksman he once was at his advanced age. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #b45f06; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The volcanic sands, shimmering unapologetically like obsidian, with the confidence and quiet dignity of timelessness, now smell of sulphur and tar. The seashells howl mockingly at the moonlight, morphing into landmines of doubt.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #b45f06; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A Paradise deferred, you are a beautiful danger.</span></div>
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Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-45357980253158523072016-06-17T14:25:00.000-04:002016-06-17T14:28:55.119-04:0034...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">34 feels like open fire hydrants on Spanish Harlem streets; my mothers love; the sand park; black eyes during street fighter tournaments; my guardian spirit; folded-up love notes and kisses behind bleachers; cigar smoke, Aqua Florida and Oshun before she was in formation; collect calls and prison plexiglass.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">34 feels like my fathers eyes, my mothers smile and my grandfathers appetite for women; it tastes like arroz con salchichas at the end of the month bought with the last food stamps; it feels like my aunts loyalty; my lovers hair and my brothers bloodshot eyes.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">34 feels like tv and soda before dinner; pulling my sisters hair and my grandfather thinking candy money could ever replace the hug I never received. 34 feels like uncles you admire; stepfathers that you respect and principles that you would die for.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">34 is Super Nintendo at 2am, power naps and chu-his on Tokyo streets. 34 feels like forgiveness; like healing; mediation..but throwing the hands if necessary. It is life and death; the sacred and the profane; the Sun and the Moon; Chichen Itza and Ingapirca. 34 feels like triangle slave trades and family DNA with red hair, blonde hair, and Afros. Negros, mulattos y blancos. Pelo bueno, pelo malo y pelo grifo.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">34 feels like picnics at the beach with your ancestors eating caramelitos and pasteles. It is both La Playa de Ponce and Jones Beach. 34 has the texture of Mámá's wrinkles; 34 sounds her voice in the wind and the weight of the infinite on your shoulders.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #b45f06; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">34 hits the ear like a song of liberation.</span></div>
Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-88947647546247836472016-05-05T08:44:00.000-04:002016-05-05T09:04:22.383-04:00careful with that axe, eugene..<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Obsidian blades on the temple mounts indiscriminately cut through bone and Blood.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The easterly winds of the huracán whisper lullabies of a divine vengeance.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My Native DNA is etched with emotional checks and balances </span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">that would put Sumerian tablets to shame.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Tread lightly on this barren landscape, </span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">as you dance upon your future burial grounds.</span></div>
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Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-52642774506892415182016-05-01T08:25:00.000-04:002016-05-05T09:04:38.340-04:00uma pequeno homenagem aos trabalhadores (a homage to the workers)..<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #073763;">Uma homenagem aos trabalhadores. Pinturas tendo como temas as diferentes atividades profissionais. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Alguns artistas como Picasso, Diego Rivera e Van Gogh retomaram o tema seguidamente.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b style="text-align: justify;">Diego Rivera </b><span style="text-align: justify;">(1886-1957) </span><i style="text-align: justify;">The Flower Seller, </i><span style="text-align: justify;">1928.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b style="color: #222222; line-height: 18.4px; text-align: justify;">Pablo Picasso </b><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 18.4px; text-align: justify;">(1881-1973) </span><i style="color: #222222; line-height: 18.4px; text-align: justify;">La Repasseuse, </i><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 18.4px; text-align: justify;">1904. Guggenheim Museum, New York.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tBPwGEhg0J8/VygeRT8Ts7I/AAAAAAAAFjw/pFyD_gtG6dckNkpxm9tt6T7rTGzouUrUwCLcB/s1600/AISTHarvesterPietr0Bruegel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tBPwGEhg0J8/VygeRT8Ts7I/AAAAAAAAFjw/pFyD_gtG6dckNkpxm9tt6T7rTGzouUrUwCLcB/s320/AISTHarvesterPietr0Bruegel.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><strong style="color: #222222; line-height: 18.48px; text-align: justify;">Pieter Bruegel </strong><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 18.48px; text-align: justify;"> O Velho (1525-1569) </span><em style="color: #222222; line-height: 18.48px; text-align: justify;">The</em><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 18.48px; text-align: justify;"> </span><em style="color: #222222; line-height: 18.48px; text-align: justify;">Harvest</em><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 18.48px; text-align: justify;">, 1565. The Metropolitan Museum of New York.</span></span></div>
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Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-88515361380442448252013-06-29T12:03:00.000-04:002016-05-05T09:05:04.490-04:00speak to me...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #073763;">I am human.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;">Bearing many burdens not my own as the oldest son in a relatively large family. I did not choose this role but was rather born into it.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;">Having to juggle the personal, financial and emotional traumas of others wears down your patience and compassion, renders the spirit restless, and your passion short. I have left alot of lovers sobbing at airport security or taxi stands as I rush of to the destination or the other. At times they join me on various trips and they are usually disappointed by my inability to put aside art and work and be absolutely present.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;">Work is never finished for an artist. Even the way we perceive the world taxes our brain and constantly serves as distraction. Colors, shapes, forms and shadows all form part of our visual repertoire allowing inspiration for filter through at any time.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #b45f06;">But how about love? That all-important element of the human condition. Where does one find the time when juggling time zones and multiple cell phones?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #b45f06;">There is something very jarring seen a woman cry in front of you. Because of your stupidity, bad decisions, lies, lack of empathy. Even more so in Asia where the tears stream down without warning.. unrestrained by a double eyelid, they fall unimpeded. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #b45f06;">Love me at a distance for I am always seeking horizons but know that wherever I am you are there with me, right there, always.</span><br />
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Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-52306899127875341812012-04-28T11:48:00.000-04:002016-04-29T08:37:33.453-04:00goodbye blue sky...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #0b5394;">The Grande Dame.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394;">Hong Kong with all its beautiful intricacies and grimy glory.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394;">This is now (sort of) home. An Asian metropolis on the fringes of the South China Sea reminiscent of my beloved island of Manhattan..with a mountain in the middle.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394;">Hopping around week to week, Tokyo/Shanghai, with a new cell phone number, apartment, roommate and no official resident visa to speak of.</span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #0b5394;">All things considered I am blessed beyond measure and only wish I could share this joy with my loved ones. The joy of evolution, transformation..the sweat and tears that are shed pursuing your dreams and goals in a foreign land.</span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #0b5394;">¡Pa'lante!</span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span>
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Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-44822912327645062722012-02-20T08:33:00.000-05:002016-04-29T08:35:35.310-04:00close to me your like my mother...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7-kfUH4pwWo/VyNU-rZL8FI/AAAAAAAAFi0/eIU0nXlTJMwTPIdrr1myFGuvW_3uxH6tgCLcB/s1600/10403314_786380231406236_1486381968340297801_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7-kfUH4pwWo/VyNU-rZL8FI/AAAAAAAAFi0/eIU0nXlTJMwTPIdrr1myFGuvW_3uxH6tgCLcB/s320/10403314_786380231406236_1486381968340297801_n.jpg" width="250" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c; font-family: "georgia";"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c; font-family: "georgia";">I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c; font-family: "georgia";"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c; font-family: "georgia";">This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; my philosophy is kindness.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c; font-family: "georgia";"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia";">I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "lucida grande" , "tahoma" , "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
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<span class="UIStory_Message"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia";"><br /></span></span></span></span></h3>
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<span class="UIStory_Message"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c; font-family: "georgia";"><br /></span></span></span></span></h3>
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<span class="UIStory_Message" style="color: #b45f06;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia";">Dear Omnipresent/benevolent God(s),<br /><br />I just made a promise to my other half that she will be fine flying over the Atlantic tonight since you have carelessly placed two storms in her path...<br /><br />...I don't care if your Yaweh, Ra, Inti, Ameratsu or any other form, cross me and it will be an eternity of Hannibal/Rome, "300", Nag</span></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia";">asaki-style battling amongst us...and your not built for the persistant, unending wrath of brokenhearted mortals...</span></span></span></span></h3>
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<span class="UIStory_Message"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06; font-family: "georgia";"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="UIStory_Message"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06; font-family: "georgia";">Sincerely, </span></span></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #b45f06; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The Lovers</span><br />
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Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-80084249092079161492011-01-31T07:48:00.000-05:002016-05-07T03:36:46.705-04:00Ground Control to Major Tom...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lJWdEHprqCc/VyCmPITEcMI/AAAAAAAAFiY/6O3ze9_QDp4h0BbJkmk-u7jeViIjq9sqgCK4B/s1600/IMG_1034.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lJWdEHprqCc/VyCmPITEcMI/AAAAAAAAFiY/6O3ze9_QDp4h0BbJkmk-u7jeViIjq9sqgCK4B/s320/IMG_1034.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #0b5394;">Off the grid. Moon beams.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #0b5394;">Outer space. Far East.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #0b5394;">It has been awhile y'all.</span></div>
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #0b5394;">I took a one-way flight to Hong Kong to celebrate Chinese New Years and decided to stay on this little island of hyper-consumption and Dim Sum.</span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #0b5394;">Why not? New York City was in recession. Problems were rearing their ugly head and though women were plentiful, living parallel lives at 28 isn't as fun as when you are 18..and neither is having all of your lady friends encounter one another at a prestigious gallery opening in which you are featured. </span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #0b5394;">But that is neither here nor there. When it comes to fight or flight I throw sand in the eyes of fate and take off like Usain Bolt. </span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span>
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<span style="color: #0b5394;">Until next time lovebugs.</span></div>
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Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0Hong Kong22.396428 114.1094970000000321.9265115 113.46405000000003 22.8663445 114.75494400000004tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-76793264310227422052010-03-14T01:35:00.002-05:002010-03-14T15:40:24.248-04:00i call you 'sun' because you shine like one...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5zB3OA-eUI/AAAAAAAAFHA/dUekd-e6Xuw/s1600-h/photo-7.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5zB3OA-eUI/AAAAAAAAFHA/dUekd-e6Xuw/s400/photo-7.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them"... ~Benjamin Jowett </span></span></div>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">I have had the privilege to cross paths with some of the most brillant and influential individuals in the art, education, and business community in New York, the United States and in Europe. Most encounters have been merely passing conversations at events, openings, or galleries, while some have blossomed into mentorships and lasting friendships. However, on one's own personal road to becoming someone of a certain intellectual and social standing I have learned one thing: you must often defer to those who are in higher positions, and in many instances, you will not receive the same amount of accolades or acknowledgement during joint ventures/projects. It is to be expected. Every cause needs a leader, a figurehead, a spokesperson/persons that represent the group.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">I view this situation in this regard. For the privilege to stand so close to the overwhelming glow of the sun, the stars exist largely hidden from view here on Earth for the greater part of the day. They are always there, they never quite "disappear" but rather their shine is washed out by the brillant presence of the sun. Not only must stars abdicate their own brillance in the presence of the sun, but often their own light is millions of (light) years in the making. What we actually witness on Earth is light that has been travelling thousand or even millions of years throughout the galaxy. Rays of light that began their journey long before humanity as we know it even existed on this Earth. Light that emminates from solar sources that may have been extinguished long ago but whose radiance is still travelling throughout the universe.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br /></span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5zATuzDy-I/AAAAAAAAFG4/ojDvcPVaKUM/s1600-h/explodingstar.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="292" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5zATuzDy-I/AAAAAAAAFG4/ojDvcPVaKUM/s320/explodingstar.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Too often I have witnessed collaborate efforts fail because people involved in the projects were more concerned with the "I" rather than the "we". Many people do not realize that involvement in any grassroots effort that is built up and executed successfully is a reflection of the collective brillance of the group AND of the individual. Too often, ego gets in the way and people will rather bring the whole project down, they become stars that implode into black holes that prevent the light of anyone involved with the venture from shining and destroying the entire endeavor in the process. I can only imagine how many brillant projects humanity never had the privilege of witnessing because of the self-destructive tendencies of man. If you have talent, drive, and work ethic your time will come, even if it is not at this moment, this generation or this lifetime. As an artist I am more concerned with creating </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">objects d'art</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"> that are timeless and will remain relevant for future generations. Plenty of individuals have received postmortem accolades and that has not made their contributions to their craft and to the greater canon of the creativity of man. Don't allow your "star" to collapse within itself before it has the opportunity to shine its brillance upon the world. Genius is eternal and cannot be denied. </span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #4c1130;">¡Pa'lante Siempre!</span></div>
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<img src="http://signatures.mylivesignature.com/54488/103/B85570451D54DEB3823D48DF140E702F.png" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-color: initial !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-top-width: 0px !important;" /></div>Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-47269819256306896372010-02-18T23:51:00.000-05:002010-03-14T03:42:55.538-04:00picking up the pieces (re: haiti)...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5yEzdSdc2I/AAAAAAAAFFQ/gjch7mERFQ4/s1600-h/HAITI_EARTHQUAKE_6_23095f.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="232" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5yEzdSdc2I/AAAAAAAAFFQ/gjch7mERFQ4/s400/HAITI_EARTHQUAKE_6_23095f.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">The big news at the moment is the devastating earthquake in Haiti and reports on casualties vary widely. Certain news outlets estimate upwards of 500,000 deaths, while more conservative number put the figure at nearly 100,000. Whatever the number, it’s a huge loss for a country of nearly 10 million individuals. However, the great loss of life and devastation witnessed in Haiti, however has been seen by some NGOs and multinational organizations as a means to rebuild Haiti anew from the rubble.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">In fact, there is great opportunity in catastrophe, or so some would have you believe. Out of every tragedy comes a silver lining. But opportunity for who, one might ask. And while the main focus at the moment is on the catastrophic earthquake that has devastated Haiti, the one glimmer of optimism to be gleaned from this disaster is the possibility that Haiti might one day emerge from the rubble as a state reborn.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Even before the earthquake struck, Haiti was in dire straits. Haiti has remained since its inception one of the world’s poorest and most underdeveloped countries, even though it is located in close proximity to the world’s richest, the United States (trickle down economics, huh?).</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Haiti has made considerable strides towards economic recovery and political stability since democratic elections were held in 2006 (and both Bush Presidents stopped overthrowing Haitian President Jean-Baptiste Aristide). In 2008, the rise in food and oil prices hit the Haitian population disproportionately and led to social unrest and political crisis. Subsequently, the country was hard hit by a succession of hurricanes and storms that left a trail of devastation, destroying livelihoods and infrastructure with damages estimated at 15 percent of GDP. Now, the global recession poses further threats to the country’s stability through declining export earnings and remittances.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Does I see the preferential U.S.-Haiti trade treaties HOPE I or II as purely altruistic gift for the creation of menial, low-skill, low-wage jobs for Haiti?</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5yGDWkr3rI/AAAAAAAAFFY/ixOlZox4v7o/s1600-h/a_Doc_Duvalier__www_latinamericanstudies_org.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5yGDWkr3rI/AAAAAAAAFFY/ixOlZox4v7o/s320/a_Doc_Duvalier__www_latinamericanstudies_org.gif" width="237" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">One is justified in wondering, 22 years after the overthrow of the Duvalier dictatorship, how it is that the current government's economic policy is that of Jean-Claude Duvalier? Here's what the Duvalierist newspaper "Le Nouveau Monde" wrote in 1984: "All the conditions are right for the country to become a platform for exports to the American market. Haiti has a workforce that is disciplined and accustomed to hard work since independence, a young and intelligent force, which provides labor at a cost well below its productivity".</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">This policy of the United States, called two decades ago the "American Plan" for Haiti, was in reality emptying the countryside of its people by flooding the Haiti market with subsidized American foodstuffs (refer to the Documentary </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Life-Debt-Belinda-Becker/dp/B00008NNPK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1268547518&sr=8-1">Life and Debt</a>, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">for further information on the causes and effects of such migration) who then migrate to the capital to form a low-skill sub-proletariat, ready to be exploited by the subcontracting bourgeoisie, thus destroying native agricultural production and threatening the ability of a nation to sustain itself. Indeed, even the few jobs created remains very precarious because they</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">depend totally on demand in the United States, which, as it so happens, is in the midst of recession.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">As Haiti begins digging out from under 60 million cubic meters of earthquake wreckage, U.S. firms have begun jockeying for a bonanza of cleanup work. In the town of Leogane, about 30 miles outside Port-au-Prince, shows the massive destruction of buildings. At least two politically connected U.S. firms have enlisted powerful local allies in Haiti to help compete for the high-stakes business. It's unclear at this point who will be awarding the cleanup contracts, but there is big money to be made in the rubble of some 225,000 collapsed homes and at least 25,000 government and office buildings. We used to have vulgar colonialism, now we have sophisticated colonialism, and they call it reconstruction. It can be assured that the firms will not be Haitian-owned and these foreign companies are more than likely to repatriate to proceeds to their respective countries.</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5yGlAscUcI/AAAAAAAAFFg/vvJAg_a_6A4/s1600-h/3620721359_0fccf68cef.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5yGlAscUcI/AAAAAAAAFFg/vvJAg_a_6A4/s400/3620721359_0fccf68cef.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Randal Perkins, the head of Pompano Beach-based AshBritt, has already met with President René Préval to tout his firm's skills. To press his case, Perkins, a big U.S. political donor with a stable of powerful lobbyists, has lined up a wealthy and influential Haitian businessman, Gilbert Bigio, as a partner. Perkins isn't the only hard-charging contender for cleanup work. Another is Bob Isakson, managing director of Mobile, Ala.-based DRC Group, a disaster recovery firm whose résumé includes hurricanes, wars, ice storms and floods. He's also met with Préval since the earthquake.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">How the work is delegated and who ends up awarding the contracts remains to be seen, but Préval is expected to play a pivotal role in setting priorities, even if others hold the purse strings. The United Nations designated former President Bill Clinton to coordinate Haitian relief efforts, and an international forum to coordinate plans is expected to be held this spring.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">In his Jan. 28 meeting with Préval, which was attended by a Miami Herald reporter who was chronicling a day in the president's life, Perkins made a hard sell, boasting of AshBritt's $900 million U.S. government contract to clean up after Hurricane Katrina and promising his firm would create 20,000 local jobs. "It does no good if you bring in predominantly U.S. labor and when it's done, they leave. This is an opportunity to train thousands of Haitian people in skills and professions,'' Perkins, a 45-year-old Sweetwater native, told The Miami Herald. "If you don't create jobs for Haitians, your recovery is going to be a failure.''</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">AshBritt, Perkins said, also has clinched a coveted contract to handle future disaster cleanup work for the U.S. government in California and several other states.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">"First and foremost, we have the experience,'' Perkins said.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">That experience has come with controversy.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">After Katrina, some questioned whether AshBritt's political donations or lobbyists paved the way for its huge federal contracts. The lobbyists have included: Barbour Griffith & Rogers, a firm founded by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour; Mike Parker, a former Mississippi Republican congressman who also was a senior official with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; and Ron Book, a South Florida power broker.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Congressional hearings after Katrina aired objections that local contractors were passed over in favor of AshBritt. A 2006 congressional report examining federal contract waste and abuse noted AshBritt used multiple layers of subcontractors, each of whom got paid while passing on the actual work to others. Even now, AshBritt is under scrutiny by the Broward school district after an internal audit found the company allegedly overbilled by $765,000 for work after Hurricane Wilma in October 2005.</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5yHVxFMh7I/AAAAAAAAFFw/xgi3xHEWzaA/s1600-h/hurricane-katrina-9.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="311" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5yHVxFMh7I/AAAAAAAAFFw/xgi3xHEWzaA/s400/hurricane-katrina-9.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Haiti should be helped, not pitied. For decades much has been done to weaken the Haitian state, and it should be no surprise that the State has been unable to response to its own needs. The question now should be: how to develop Haiti's self-sufficiency as well as the nation at the same time. In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti’s long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in the region, notes The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington, DC-based think tank that formulates and promotes conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense (re: a completely Republican-based ideology).</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Immediately following the Haitian earthquake The Heritage Foundation outlined some "Things to Remember While Helping Haiti," itemized briefly below:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">-- be bold and decisive;</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">-- mobilize US civilian and military capabilities "for short-term rescue and relief and long-term recovery and reform";</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">-- US military forces should play an active role interdicting "cocaine to Haiti and Dominican Republic from the Venezuelan coast and counter ongoing efforts of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to destabilize the island of Hispaniola"; (Whatever that means)...</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">-- US Coast Guard vessels should stop Haitians from trying "to enter the US illegally";</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">-- Congress should authorize "assistance, trade and reconstruction efforts;" and</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">-- US diplomacy should "counter the negative propaganda certain to emanate from the Castro-Chavez camp (to) demonstrate that the US's involvement in the Caribbean remains a powerful force for good in the Americas and around the globe".</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Such rhetoric from powerful and influential lobbying groups such as The Heritage Foundation serve as an example of psuedo-imperial policy thinking that advocates predation, exploitation, and redevelopment for profit, not for desperate people to repair their lives. It disdains democratic freedoms, social justice, and envisions a global economy "where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish" solely for the privileged, the chosen few, not the disadvantaged or greater majority.</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5yKoR4_6bI/AAAAAAAAFF4/5uSzrYEcAtY/s1600-h/trickledownimg1033.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5yKoR4_6bI/AAAAAAAAFF4/5uSzrYEcAtY/s400/trickledownimg1033.jpeg" width="300" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">It's for free market plunder, regulatory freedom, tax cuts for the rich, exploiting the majority, corporate handouts, and militarized control for enforcement. For the moment the focus is Haiti, and now Chile, ripe for plunder, like the second tsunami that hit coastal Sri Lankans. The one that occurred on December 26, 2004 took 250,000 lives and left 2.5 million homeless throughout the region. After the disaster, Sri Lanka's east coast that was showcased to developers, hoteliers, and other business interests to exploit, a blank slate for what the tourist industry long wanted - "a pristine beach (on prime real estate), scrubbed clean of all the messy signs of people working, a vacation Eden. It was the same up and down the coast once rubble was cleared....paradise" given the profit potential.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">New rules forbade coastal homes, so a buffer zone was imposed to insure it. Beaches were off-limits. Displaced Sri Lankans were shoved into grim barracks, and "menacing, machine-gun-wielding soldiers" patrolled to keep them there. Tourist operators, however, were welcomed and encouraged to build on oceanfront land - to transform the former fishing village into a "high-end boutique tourism destination (with) five-star resorts, luxury chalets, (a) floatplane pier and helipad".</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">It was to be a model for transforming around 30 similar zones into a South Asian Riviera to let Sri Lanka reenter the world economy as one of the last remaining uncolonized places globalization had not touched. High-end tourism was the ticket - to provide a luxury destination for the rich once a few deprivatization changes were made. Government land was opened to private buyers, labor laws were relaxed or eliminated. Modern infrastructure would be built, and public opposition suppressed to let plans proceed unimpeded.</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5yLp9TaoDI/AAAAAAAAFGA/d-Y_4fGVGP8/s1600-h/sri-lanka-reveries-l-ile-emeraude-242169.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="263" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5yLp9TaoDI/AAAAAAAAFGA/d-Y_4fGVGP8/s400/sri-lanka-reveries-l-ile-emeraude-242169.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">The same scheme followed Hurricane Mitch in October 1998 when Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua were hardest hit. In Sri Lanka, Washington took the Mitch model to the next level, beyond individuals, to corporate control over reconstruction. Business ran everything, while affected people were shut out. Powerful business interests constructed a blueprint from housing to hotels to highways and other needed infrastructure. Disaster relief went for development. Victims got nothing and were consigned to permanent shantytowns like the kinds in most Global South cities and Global North inner ones. Aceh and other affected areas adopted the same model.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">A year after the tsunami, the NGO Action Aid surveyed the results in five Asian countries and found the same pattern, residents barred from rebuilding and living in militarized camps, while developers were given generous incentives. The same scheme played out in New Orleans with unfettered capitalism given free reign. Prevailing wage rates for federally funded or assisted construction projects were suspended. So were environmental regulations in an already polluted area, enough to be designated a superfund site or toxic waste dump. Instead, redevelopment was planned. As a result, the inevitable happened, affecting the city's least advantaged, the majority black population, targeted for removal. The storm wiped out public housing and erased communities, letting developers build upscale condos and other high-profit projects on choice city land.</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5yMVMX_WHI/AAAAAAAAFGI/R1f_-lhEGWc/s1600-h/chicago_school_4001.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5yMVMX_WHI/AAAAAAAAFGI/R1f_-lhEGWc/s400/chicago_school_4001.jpeg" width="302" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">It was right out of the Chicago School's play book, what economist Milton Friedman articulated in his 1962 book, "Capitalism and Freedom". His thesis:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">"only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change. When a crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around...our basic function (is) to develop alternatives to existing policies (and be ready to roll them out when the) impossible becomes the politically inevitable".</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Friedman believed that government's sole function is "to protect our freedom from (outside) enemies (and) our fellow-citizens. (It is to) preserve law and order (as well as) enforce private contracts, (safeguard private property and) foster competitive markets".</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Everything else in public hands is socialism, an ideology he called blasphemous. He said markets work best unfettered of rules, regulations, onerous taxes, trade barriers, "entrenched interests" and human interference, and the best government is practically none because, in his view, anything government does business does better...so let it. Ideas about democracy, social justice, and a caring society were verboten because they interfere with free-wheeling capitalism.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">He said public wealth should be in private hands, profit accumulation unrestrained, corporate taxes abolished, and social services curtailed or ended. He believed "economic freedom is an end to itself (and) an indispensable means toward (achieving) political freedom". He opposed the minimum wage, unions, market interference, an egalitarian society, and called Social Security "the biggest Ponzi scheme on earth". He supported a flat tax favoring the rich, and believed everyone should have to rely on their own resources to get by financially.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">In a word, Friedman preached unrestrained market fundamentalism. "Free to choose," he said with no regard for human needs and rights. For him and his followers, economic freedom is the be-all-and-end-all under limited government, the marketplace being the master. Applied to New Orleans, it meant permanent changes, including removing public housing, developing upscale properties in its place, privatizing schools, and destroying a way of life for thousands of disadvantaged blacks expelled, and then priced out, from their communities.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">For affected people, it was economic and social disaster under Friedman's prescription for mass-privatizations, deregulation, unrestricted free market predation, deep social spending cuts, and harsh crackdowns against resisters. It's disaster capitalism, business is booming.</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5yMn3M9NqI/AAAAAAAAFGQ/-_uUXzugfyk/s1600-h/y178245143640433.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5yMn3M9NqI/AAAAAAAAFGQ/-_uUXzugfyk/s400/y178245143640433.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Since the 19th century, America dominated Haiti. Before the quake, a proxy paramilitary UN force occupied the country, dispatched not for peacekeeping but for control. Worse still, it was the first time ever that UN forces supported a coup d'etat government, the one Washington installed after US Marines kidnapped President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, forcibly exiled him to the Central African Republic, and ended the political, economic and social reforms he instituted in areas of health, education, justice and human rights. Ever since, conditions for Haitians have been nightmarish, and now the quake and further misery ahead from the Pentagon's iron fist and greater-than-ever exploitation.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Obama's top priority is control, underway immediately after the Pentagon took over the Port-au-Prince airport, reopened it after its brief closure, and set up a temporary air traffic control center. Military personnel now decide what gets in or out, what's delivered and how fast. As a result, trapped Haitians perished, whereas a concentrated, sustained airlift, including heavy earthmoving and other equipment, might have saved hundreds or thousands more lives.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">On January 15, Reuters reported that the Port-au-Prince 9,000-foot runway escaped serious damage and could handle big cargo planes easily. Immediately, food, water, medicine, rescue crews, and other specialists began arriving from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, China, and elsewhere, but very little from America, including vitally needed heavy equipment.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Instead, the Pentagon sent in thousands of Marines and 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers (a 15,000+ force contingent once in place), armed soldiers, not humanitarian personnel and regular supplies to sustain them. Larger numbers may follow, to be supplemented by UN Blue Helmets and Haitian National Police under Pentagon command. A long-term commitment for militarized control is planned, not humanitarian relief, reminiscent of the 20-year 1915-1934 period when US Marines occupied Haiti.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Throughout the country, the lives of thirteen million people are at stake. Of immediate concern, are the three million in Port-au-Prince and surroundings, devastated by the quake and unable to sustain themselves without substantial outside help. The government is inoperative. Port-au-Prince is in shambles. People are struggling to survive, 100,000 or more likely dead, a toll sure to rise as disease and depravation claim more. Those in poor communities are on their own. On January 15, Al Jazeera reported that aid agencies are struggling under difficult conditions and inadequate supplies, let alone how to distribute them throughout the capital. As a result, frustration is growing with little help, no shelter, decaying bodies still unburied, the threat of disease, and the stench of death everywhere with no power, phones, clean water, food, and everything millions need.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Sebastian Walker, Al Jazeera's Port-au-Prince correspondent said:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">"A lot of people have simply grown tired of waiting for those emergency workers to get to them. Thousands of people are streaming out of the city towards the provinces to try to find supplies of food and water, supplies that are running out in the city".</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">On January 16, Al Jazeera headlined "Haiti: UP to 200,000 feared dead". About 50,000 bodies have been collected, according to Haiti's interior minister, Paul Antoine Bien-Aime, and he anticipates "between 100,000 and 200,000 dead in total, although we will never know the exact number," nor how many more will expire in the weeks and months ahead, unnoticed and unreported.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">On January 17, Al Jazeera headlined, "Aid teams struggle to help Haitians....amid difficulties in distributing relief supplies to those who need it most".</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Sebastian Walker said delivering supplies stacking up at the airport has been extremely problematic:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">"This comes down to the complex issue of who is in charge here. The US military has a great deal of control over the number of flights that are landing here. We heard that a UN flight carrying aid equipment had to be diverted because the US was landing its own aircraft there. The question of just who makes the decision over how to distribute the aid seems to be what is holding up the supplies."</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">The Pentagon decides, of course, and that's the problem. Obama also urges "patience," saying "many difficult days (are) ahead," without explaining his obstructionist uncaring role.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">The result is reports like this:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">-- from Canada's CBC "As It Happens" broadcast interview with an ICRC spokesperson saying he spent the morning of January 15 touring one of the hardest hit areas, and "In three hours, I didn't see a single rescue team;"</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">-- a same day BBC interview with an American Red Cross spokesperson complained about aid delivery - that arriving planes carried people, not supplies, and amounts at the airport weren't being delivered;</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">- the Canada Haiti Action Network calls Port-au-Prince a city largely without aid because areas most in need aren't getting it; further, in nicer neighborhoods, dogs and extraction units arrived, but 90% of them are just sitting around, perhaps because of no earthmoving equipment to reach victims;</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">-- another report said a French plane carrying a field hospital was turned away, then later allowed in; and</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">-- various reports say US forces are preventing flights from landing; prioritized are landing US troops, repatriating American nationals, and perhaps starving poor Haitians to death; dozens of French citizens and dual Haitian-French nationals couldn't leave when their scheduled flight to Guadeloupe couldn't land; an angry French Secretary of State for Cooperation, Alain Joyandet, told reporters that he "made an official complaint to the Americans through the US embassy."</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Major health concerns include untreated trauma wounds, infections, infectious diseases, diarrhea, lack of safe drinking water and sanitation, and Haitians with pre-existing condition like HIV/AIDS, diabetes and cancer aren't being treated. Up to a million people need immediate shelter and non-food aid, including clean water, blankets, kitchen and hygiene kits, plastic sheeting and tents.</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5yNcndiEGI/AAAAAAAAFGo/sX7yTI3cRpk/s1600-h/2h-cuban-doctors-la-higuera.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5yNcndiEGI/AAAAAAAAFGo/sX7yTI3cRpk/s400/2h-cuban-doctors-la-higuera.jpeg" width="300" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">One nation delivering help is Cuba, but little about it is reported. Despite its own constraints, it's operated in Haiti for years, and now has over 400 doctors and healthcare experts delivering free services. They work every day in 227 of the country's 337 communes. In addition, Cuban medical schools trained over 400 Haitian doctors, now working to save lives during the country's gravest crisis. It's no small achievement that Cuba, blockaded and constrained, is responsible for nearly 1,000 doctors and healthcare providers, all of whom work tirelessly to save lives and rehabilitate the injured.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">According to China's Xinhua News Agency:</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">"Cuban aid workers have taken charge of (Haiti's) De la Paz Hospital, since its doctors have not appeared after the quake", perhaps because many perished, are wounded, or are trapped beneath or behind rubble themselves.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Cubans are working despite a lack of everything needed to provide care except for what its government managed to deliver. Dr. Carlos Alberto Garcia, coordinator of its medical brigade, said Cuban doctors, nurses and other health personnel are working non-stop, day and night. Operating rooms are open 18 hours a day. Independent reports now say Washington is trying to block Cuban and Venezuelan aid workers by refusing them landing permission in Port-au-Prince. The Caribbean Community's emergency aid mission is also blocked. On January 15, the US State Department confirmed that it signed two Memoranda of Understanding with the remnants of Haiti's government putting Washington in charge of all inbound and outbound flights and aid offloading in the country.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5yQproyj_I/AAAAAAAAFGw/sP5AlvPCjg0/s1600-h/685917fe56.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5yQproyj_I/AAAAAAAAFGw/sP5AlvPCjg0/s400/685917fe56.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Above all, Haiti needs democratic governance freed from US control, military occupation, and the kind of oppression it's endured for centuries so its people can breathe free. It doesn't need two past and a current US president allied with Haiti's elites, ignoring economic justice, exploiting Haitian labor, ignoring overwhelming human desperation, militarizing the country, crushing resistance if it arises, and implementing a disaster capitalism agenda at the expense of essential human needs, rights and freedoms.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">The only good news is that the Obama administration granted undocumented Haitians Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 18 months. They can now work legally and send remittances to family members. It affects 30,000 ordered deported and all non-US citizens. During the Bush administration and throughout Obama's first year in office, repeated calls for it were refused. Now after 80 representatives and 18 senators, Republicans and Democrats, and the conference of Roman Catholic bishops sent appeals, Obama relented for Haitians in America as of January 12. New arrivals will be deported unlike Cubans under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act (as amended), a "wet foot/dry foot" policy under which those interdicted at sea are returned home, but others reaching shore are inspected for entry, then nearly always allowed to stay. TPS aside, Haiti faces crushing burdens- deep poverty, vast unemployment, overwhelming human needs, severe repression, poor governance, Washington dominance, a burdensome debt, and much more before the January 12 quake. It has been Haiti's plight for generations, the poorest hemispheric nation in the area most under Washington's iron grip and paying dearly for the privilege. Haiti...so far from God, and so close to the United States (apologies to Porfirio Diaz).</span></span>Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-84856270791543031492010-02-10T12:40:00.002-05:002010-03-11T00:47:25.522-05:00open letter to the world bank (re: haiti)...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5hpUoShk0I/AAAAAAAAFEQ/gtYY9IRmFEU/s1600-h/21625_112207088327.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5hpUoShk0I/AAAAAAAAFEQ/gtYY9IRmFEU/s320/21625_112207088327.jpeg" width="231" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">"In overthrowing me, you have cut down in Saint-Dominigue only the tree of liberty. It will spring up again by the roots for they are numerous and deep"... </span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">~Toussaint L'Ouverture</span></div><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b>How to completely kill a country with an annual GDP of roughly $300 million...</b></span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">First you establish an economic embargo against a country. You prevent international financial institutions from providing loans to a legitimately and democratically elected government. (For the time being, ignore the fact that development loans and monies were ok'ed during dictatorships and military rule in said country). For example: When the American representative to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) writes a letter to the President of the Bank urging non-disbursement of an approved $500 million dollar loan, while forcing Haiti to servicing the interest and debt related to funds never received (2002).</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Furthermore, though the United States claims to have provided Haiti with over $850 million dollars in aid over the last decade, there is a fundamental difference between bilateral aid that goes directly to a given foreign government and the funding of non-governmental organizations. Over the course of that decade (the 1990s) no funds were given directly to the Haitian government.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Additionally, a U.S. imposed economic embargo, upheld by the European Union and Canada, meant that financial bodies such as The World Bank, The International Monetary Fund, and the Inter-American Development Bank were essentially banned from providing grant or developmental loans to the Haitian Republic. Without such aid you do not have money for the infrastructure, no money for police forces, fire, no money for improving water systems. So while former President Aristide and others has been blamed for the dire poverty witnessed in Haiti that preceeded the recent Earthquake, the state was essentially strangled financially.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5h-k5cWPcI/AAAAAAAAFFI/tBoP_wsYApM/s1600-h/GloboPosterSet.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5h-k5cWPcI/AAAAAAAAFFI/tBoP_wsYApM/s320/GloboPosterSet.jpeg" /></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Worse, Haiti's foreign exchange reserves were depleted as the Haitian State was forced to service its debt to international institutions, leading to a collapse in the currency exchange rates as the base upholding the value of the Haitian Gourde (gold reserves and American dollar reserves) eroded, inflation rates rose and the value of the Haitian Gourde collapses (apples that cost 100 $HG yesterday costs 150 $HG today while the daily pay of the average Haitian fails to rise in a similar manner); needless to say, the economy will eventually fail. And in the case of Haiti, it has. From the year 2000 to February 29, 2004, the Haiti government received no foreign assistance. None. Without such ban, including a ban on the sale of police equipment to the Haitian state, a group of 200 armed rebels supplied with American-made M-16's would not have been able to overthrow the Haitian government in 2004.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Immediately after its struggle for independence, Haiti went back to being an invisible nation- until the next bloodbath, the next dictatorship, the next disaster. Since its revolution, Haiti has been capable only of mounting tragedies. Once a happy and prosperous colony, it is now the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Revolutions, the desire of Haiti to free itself from bondage, certain specialists have concluded, lead straight to the abyss; others have suggested, if not stated outright, that the Haitian tendency to fratricide derives from its savage African heredity. Pat Robertson, the influential American Christian televangelist stated as much after the recent Haitian earthquake:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d;">"They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said 'We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince'. True story. And so the devil said, 'Ok it's a deal'. And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got something themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another".</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">The rule of the ancestors. The black curse that engenders crime and chaos. Of the white curse, nothing was said. The drive for insatiable profits in raw materials and goods that developed the economic centers of Western Europe for hundreds of years.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">The French revolution in the metropole had abolished slavery, but Napoleon revived it.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">"Which regime was most prosperous for the colonies?", he asked.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">"The previous one".</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">"Then reinstate it".</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5hxXO8X6DI/AAAAAAAAFEw/oQZkcWV0QLQ/s1600-h/napoleon_bonaparte_1175088533032877.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5hxXO8X6DI/AAAAAAAAFEw/oQZkcWV0QLQ/s320/napoleon_bonaparte_1175088533032877.jpeg" /></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">To reinstate slavery in Haiti, France sent more than fifty shiploads of soldiers. The country's blacks rose up and defeated France and won national independence and freedom for the slaves. In 1804, they inherited a land that had been razed to grow sugarcane and a land consumed by the conflagrations of a fierce civil war. And they inherited "the French debt." France made Haiti pay dearly for the humiliation it inflicted on Napoleon Bonaparte. The newly born nation had to commit to pay a gigantic indemnification for the damage it had caused in winning its freedom for their former colonizers. This expiation of the sin of freedom would cost Haiti 150 million gold francs.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">The new country was born with a rope wrapped tightly around its neck: the equivalent of $21.7 billion in today's dollars, or forty-four times Haiti's current yearly (2008) budget.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">In exchange for this fortune, France officially recognized the new nation. No other countries did so, not even Simon Bolivar. Bolivar received a supply of weapons and ammunition and was granted permission by the Haitian Government to enlist Haitian volunteers who wanted to join in the struggle against Spanish rule in South America. The only condition President Petion requested in providing assistance was for Bolivar to free the slaves in all the countries that he would set free from Spanish domination.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5hsFQZaTII/AAAAAAAAFEY/SVahIonRiu8/s1600-h/bolivar.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5hsFQZaTII/AAAAAAAAFEY/SVahIonRiu8/s320/bolivar.jpeg" /></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Not even Simon Bolivar recognized Haiti, though he owed it everything.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">Haiti was born condemned to solitude...</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">In 1816, it was Haiti that furnished Bolivar with boats, arms, and soldiers when he showed up on the island defeated asking for shelter and help against the Spanish. Haiti gave him everything with only one condition: that he free the slaves- an idea that had not occurred to him until then. The great man triumphed in his war of independence and showed his gratitude by sending a sword as a gift to Port-au-Prince. Of recognition he made no mention.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Over the years, international economic experts have proved far more destructive than invading troops. Placed under strict orders from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Haiti obeyed every instruction, without wavering. The government paid what it was told to even if it meant there would be neither bread nor salt. Its credit was frozen despite the fact that the state had been dismantled and the subsidies and tariffs that had protected national production had been eliminated. Today Haiti imports its rice from the United States, where international experts, who are rather distracted people, forgot to prohibit tariffs and subsidies to protect national production within the country. Rice farmers, once the majority, soon became beggars or boat people. Many have ended in the depths of the Caribbean, and more are following them to the bottom, only these shipwreck victims are not Cuban, their plight never makes the papers.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5hyiWBu5LI/AAAAAAAAFFA/xcum4otdOMM/s1600-h/t1larg.haiti.boat.minustah.gi.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5hyiWBu5LI/AAAAAAAAFFA/xcum4otdOMM/s320/t1larg.haiti.boat.minustah.gi.jpeg" /></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">To put it simply, debt kills. Rather than invest in education, the environment, or health care, Haiti’s people are forced to repay a debt they did not ask for or benefit from. Debt undermines democracy and national sovereignty, forcing democratically-elected leaders and citizens to follow debt repayment or specific economic policies imposed by international organizations. Debt structures the relationship with foreign powers, keeping Haiti under foreign control, even if there weren’t a multinational force.</span><br />
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</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5huuVObsoI/AAAAAAAAFEo/N0mbggWxIsE/s1600-h/polyp_cartoon_DEBT_G8.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S5huuVObsoI/AAAAAAAAFEo/N0mbggWxIsE/s320/polyp_cartoon_DEBT_G8.jpeg" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Haiti’s people have more than paid for the debt, in terms of actual payments and in terms of Haiti’s extreme underdevelopment. But despite promises made to annul billions of dollars of debt for 18 low income countries at the 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles, canceling Haiti’s debt was not even considered. Now, following the destruction wrought by the recent earthquake in Haiti, canceling the debt of Haiti should be one of the first measures taken by the international community to assist in allowing the Haitian state to rebuild itself rather than relying on the "charitable" donations of first-world nations.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">On the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, there is a large sign that reads: Road to Ruin. Haiti is a country that has been thrown away, as an eternal punishment of its struggle for dignity. There it lies, like scrap metal. It awaits the hands of its people.</span>Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-26606109696134724312010-02-01T03:18:00.001-05:002010-02-12T03:48:14.650-05:00water (re: haiti)...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S3USJjXseRI/AAAAAAAAFD4/aeFcqEkzI7w/s1600-h/Water+Carriers+Rev.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S3USJjXseRI/AAAAAAAAFD4/aeFcqEkzI7w/s400/Water+Carriers+Rev.jpeg" width="332" /></a></div><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">“Water is life's mater and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water.”</span><br />
<div style="text-align: right;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, 1937 Nobel Prize Winner for Medicine</span></div><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Many factors contributed to the inability of the Haitian state to respond effectively to the immediate needs of its citizens following the devastating earthquake that occurred on January 12, 2010, outside the capital city of Port-au-Prince. Years of accumulated debt and the systematic destruction of the Haitian state apparatus by the Papa Doc/Baby Doc Duvalier dictatorship left Haiti in a precarious economic and political position for much of the post-Cold War era. The Duvalier family, it is estimated, misappropriated more than $900 million USD in multinational and bilateral loans supplied by such agencies as the World Bank and The International Monetary Fund, leaving the Haitian state responsible for debt obligations while the actual funds were largely invested in the regime’s totalitarian “tonton macoute” death squads and funneled into Swiss bank accounts of the bourgeoisie class. In addition, the period of post-Duvalier Haiti (1986 to the present) has bore witness to the overthrow of four democratically elected Haitian Presidents, including Jean-Bertrand Aristide twice, and the gradual deterioration in the ability of the Haitian state to respond to natural disasters such as Hurricane Jeanne (2004) and Hurricane Hanna (2008) as ever-increasingly portions of its treasury funds have gone into servicing its debt obligations rather than infrastructure development that may provide sustained economic growth.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">By the time the 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck Port-au-Prince this January, Haiti had the unfortunate distinction of being the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere, with a per capita income of approximately $400 USD per citizen. But then again, mere poverty, political instability, and economic indicators such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) have never been the best variables to predict the likelihood of an effective responsive to a natural disaster by any given government (e.g. the U.S., Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans; the annual GDP in 2008 of the USA was $14.2 trillion, Haiti in 2008 had a GDP of $7.01 billion). Despite the myriad of resource shortages faced by the Haitian Republic, perhaps most dire and immediate to the needs of its citizens is access to an adequate supply of clean water. </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S3USSqtOEUI/AAAAAAAAFEI/jPEzV3e1ERI/s1600-h/haitian_child_carrying_water1rv.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><img border="0" height="244" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S3USSqtOEUI/AAAAAAAAFEI/jPEzV3e1ERI/s320/haitian_child_carrying_water1rv.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Water is involved in all bodily functions: digestion, assimilation, elimination, respiration, maintaining temperature (homeostasis) integrity and the strength of all bodily structures. A number of scenarios have been developed based on the most recent United Nations population projections (2008) and the future for many parts of the world looks bleak. The most alarming projection suggests that nearly 7 billion people in 60 countries will suffer from water scarcity by 2050. Even according to conservative projections, just under 2 billion people in 48 countries will struggle against water scarcity in 2050. Currently, nearly half of all Haitians lack satisfactory access to clean drinking water, and more than two-thirds live without adequate sanitation. Water poverty has been noted as one of the main reasons for Haiti’s abnormally high levels of preventable illness and early mortality rates. The Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) reported in 2006 that more than half of all deaths (at any age) in Haiti were due to water-borne gastro-intestinal diseases. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">The immediate need of clean water in Haiti had been known by Western governments as early as 1990, when The US Army Corps of Engineers observed that epidemics in Port-au-Prince such as malaria, typhoid, chronic diarrhea, and intestinal infections are caused by water contaminated by rubbish and fecal matter. Haiti's coverage levels in urban and rural areas are the lowest in the hemisphere for both clean water supply and sanitation, and these facts reflect a pre-earthquake reality. Within the country, contaminated water is the leading cause of infant mortality and illness in children. Sewer systems and wastewater treatment outside of the capital and Cap-Haïtien, the second-largest city in Haiti, are largely nonexistent. During the period of 1990 and 2006, Haiti experienced a 34% decrease in the number of sanitation facilities (which include piped sewer systems, septic tanks, pit latrines) adversely affecting an estimated 162,000 Haitians. With an estimate of 19% of the Haitian population having access to adequate sanitation facilities, the majority of citizens (81%) utilize sanitation facilities and methods that did not ensure hygienic separation of human excreta from human contact. Undoubtedly, a majority of these individuals reside in urban centers such as Port-au-Prince and with the current state of sanitation infrastructure and water-delivery systems in the Haitian capital, it is certain that this problem has only gotten worse following the recent earthquake.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S3UPI5xJ1wI/AAAAAAAAFDo/ubRxMPc8a0g/s1600-h/Screen+shot+2010-01-30+at+8.27.12+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S3UPI5xJ1wI/AAAAAAAAFDo/ubRxMPc8a0g/s320/Screen+shot+2010-01-30+at+8.27.12+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: right;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Source: UNICEF, 2008</span></b></div><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">The absence of ample sanitation facilities is further complicated by World Health Organization (2006) statistics that suggest 67% of Haitian households did not treat their water before consumption and 30% of those who do, utilized bleach or chlorine as a treatment method; only 1 percent use a water filter. Prior to the earthquake, only 52% of the urban population in Haiti had any consistent access to clean water in the general sense, with only 24% having access directly from their residences. The numbers fared a little better for those in rural communities with 56% having access to water but only 3% having direct access from their homes. When inadequate sanitation systems are coupled with untreated water, one can only imagine the health ailments resulting from the lack of access to clean water. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">The time taken to collect water (travel to the source, stand in line, fill water containers and return home) is critical in determining whether a household can obtain enough water for drinking, food preparation and personal hygiene. Studies have found that if the time spent collecting drinking water is between 5 and 30 minutes, the amount collected is fairly constant and suitable to meet basic needs. However, if the total time taken per round trip exceeds 30 minutes, people tend to collect less water, thus compromising their basic drinking water needs. Women are more than twice as likely as men to go and fetch drinking water; children more likely than men. The daily struggle for basic sustenance exacerbates the grind of persistent poverty by consuming time that could be spent more productively on activities such as schooling, homework, or tasks that may supplement household income, such as growing crop or selling goods in the market.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Before the earthquake, the René Préval administration was working to expand its already modestly successful water initiatives in rural areas, including the local management of simple well pumps. This form of local water management both inside and outside the cities is a necessary condition for rebuilding all of Haiti. The objective of any effort to provide water filtration equipment is to increase access to and use of a clean water supply and sanitation services in participating rural communities. The specific objectives are: increase the sustained and effective use of safe drinking water in participating communities; to improve use of effective sanitation and hygiene practices in participating communities; strengthen the capacity of the implementing agency, local water committees, and professional operators in cooperation with local communities and municipal governments.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S3USNDw9hnI/AAAAAAAAFEA/9iLC9jY0_Y8/s1600-h/haiti-earthquake-water-dropjpg-2e13e05d02fc1685.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S3USNDw9hnI/AAAAAAAAFEA/9iLC9jY0_Y8/s320/haiti-earthquake-water-dropjpg-2e13e05d02fc1685.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">In rebuilding Haiti’s water systems, it is imperative to focus on simple and affordable local projects that communities can assume their own agency and take responsibility for themselves in the event of subsequent collapses of the state. The Haitian government has been nearly paralyzed by the earthquake, which destroyed its infrastructure, including the Presidential Palace, and caused the death of many governmental officials. The Haitian Parliament collapsed. The tax office collapsed. Schools and universities collapsed. Penitentiaries were destroyed. Hospitals broken. So far the Haitian government has concentrated its efforts on appealing for foreign aid and holding dozens of meetings with potential outside contractors to discuss debris removal, sanitation and other long-term needs. However, it still has not produced detailed emergency response and immediate recovery plans. Efforts have focused upon moving people from areas around the capital prone to more aftershocks and landslides, into tent cities that have sanitation and security, but these resettlement camps have yet to be built. </span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d;">THE CITIZENS OF HAITI DO NOT HAVE THE LUXURY OF TIME</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">While efforts made by the international community have been admirable, the basic need for clean water is a persistent and immediate need for more than 3 million people within the Haitian capital and its surrounding suburbs. Walking through Mexico City this past week I was amazed at Mexican Government’s efforts to turn their city’s largest plaza into a drop-off center for supplies destined for Haiti. Piles of clothing, medical supplies, and water, positioned behind barricades and guarded by Mexican federal police in the Plaza de la Constitución, even the “third-world” was offering help, a wonderful sight to behold. But what good was all this water and assorted supplies sitting in a plaza in Mexico City? Such efforts by other governments for the people of Haiti is certainly admirable and should be acknowledged and commended, but eventually the tragedy in Haiti will fade from the consciousness of nations well before Haiti’s need for assistance will end. The citizens of Haiti would benefit immensely, in both short and long-term need, from tools and equipment that will provide a consistent and sustainable supply of this indispensible resource.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S3UQ5DGm4XI/AAAAAAAAFDw/iXFTKBJbZpg/s1600-h/foto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S3UQ5DGm4XI/AAAAAAAAFDw/iXFTKBJbZpg/s320/foto.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Mexico City- Haiti Relief Collection Point, January 25, 2010</span></b></div><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Water is</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span>essential to life and civilization yet one in five people worldwide lack access to at least one gallon of safe water to drink per day. Additionally, two in five do not have access to the mere 13 gallons needed for basic sanitation and hygiene, mainly due to the deficit of existing infrastructure and competent, institutional governance within their respective countries. Water is an essential resource in the promotion of human life, engendering prolonged community building and development. Historically, water has served as both uniter and divider, a barrier and a conveyance, but always a great transformer of civilization, vital in nearly every aspect of human society. The manner in which each member of the world community acts in response to the crisis in Haiti, is not just a matter of economic and political history, but also a judgment on our own humanity and the ultimate fate of human civilization. After all we are, as living organisms, predominantly water. Every drop counts.</span>Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-17347286663944128112010-01-24T01:49:00.006-05:002010-02-12T03:12:39.609-05:00truth be told: the haitian earthquake in retrospect...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S3UD7YlnHPI/AAAAAAAAFCY/pHFRYNSs7o4/s1600-h/haitianrevzz.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S3UD7YlnHPI/AAAAAAAAFCY/pHFRYNSs7o4/s400/haitianrevzz.jpeg" width="348" /></span></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the latter decade of the 18th Century, the British attempted to wrest control from the French of the richest colony in the Americas, Hispanola. The French Revolution, this epic transformation of feudal, aristocratic, and religious privileges, was considered a window of opportunity by the British. The Revolution and the British incursion combined to destabilize Saint Domingue (the French half of the island), creating the conditions necessary for the only successful slave revolt in modern times, and the only successful slave-led revolution in history, the Haitian Revolution.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Haiti was only the second independent nation in the Americas (after the United States) and the first independent modern African state. Both the French maritime bourgeoisie (re: Napoleon) and the plantation-based colonial bourgeoisie had powerful vested interests in the institution of slavery, the former in the actual slave trade and the latter in the profit margin they sweat out of free labor. Loyalists of the French monarchy in the colony formed an alliance of convenience first with free blacks and </span></span><q><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">mulattos</span></span></q><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, and finally with rebel slaves, for added strength to resist the rebellious bourgeoisie.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It should not surprise anyone who understands history that the revolutionaries of France and America fought for their economic emancipation from feudal monarchs at the same time the clung ferociously to the institution of slavery on which they had built the very fortunes and power they needed to overthrow feudalism. For example, in August, 1862 Lincoln wrote a letter to Horace Greeley, an editor of the New York Tribune, who published an open letter insisting President Lincoln free the slaves immediately. In Lincoln's reply he wrote "If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also so that". Lincoln objective was to save the Union, not to either save or abolish slavery.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The terrifying example, from the point of view of slave holders from the United States to Brazil, of a slave revolution, and the dismemberment of slavery’s supporting ideology by this dazzling display of African brilliance in the systematic defeat of three powerful white Western European nations, led slave-dependent Britain, France, and the United States to economically isolate Haiti. This further stifled Haiti’s economic development, and rendered Haiti vulnerable to a variety of forms of economic blackmail that continually drained her treasury. This was the first in a series of external factors contributing to backward development in Haiti.</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.5em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S3UDdxSpiPI/AAAAAAAAFB4/ACgHeP26Ff4/s1600/114954.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S3UDdxSpiPI/AAAAAAAAFB4/ACgHeP26Ff4/s400/114954.jpeg" width="255" /></span></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The former slaves who fought for their freedom in St. Domingue were not historical materialists, and the question of whether capitalism was progress over feudalism did not enter their thinking. Consequently, when Jean-Jacques Dessalines lashed the revolution forward to independence, he declared a kingdom, and a semi-feudal economic system was adopted. Toussaint L'Ouverture and Dessalines quickly realized that the key to Haitian development throughout colonial rule had been the plantation system, and for many, post-Indepedent life in Haiti remained much the same.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Haiti’s post-revolutionary economic system placed a vast number of peasants on land owned by gentry. Landowners collected a share of the land’s produce in exchange for tenancy-a sharecropping system. In many respects, it was a system like that in the Southern United States. To understand political forces in Haiti today, it will be helpful to draw some further comparisons to the history of the Southern United States. Former slaves in the South who adopted sharecropping were beholden to a land-holding class in a relationship that was feudal in the sense of the tenant proffering </span></span><q><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">a share</span></span></q><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. Wage labor was not employed in the production process. The instruments of production were simple, and the rate of accumulation remained slow to stagnant.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As industrial production was more rapidly introduced into the South, a conflict developed between the up-and-coming industrial bourgeoisie and the planter class over access to labor. There was a period of rapprochement in which planters were ceded black labor on tenant farms and poor whites were the province of industrial capital. But industrial capital is restless. Like a shark, if it stops it expires, and eventually industrial capital needed to reach into a new pool of black labor. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The government, led by George Washington, advanced the French planters $726,000, sold them arms and ammunition, American merchants sold them food, and some Americans even fought against the rebels. But “the official government aid, however, came to an end in 1793 when the planter regime in the colony collapsed and the blacks established control over most of the island.” And in 1798, at Toussaint’s request, the Congress even authorized President John Adams to reopen trade with Haiti, a provision embraced by the Federalists, even southerners, and opposed by Republicans. All of that began to change when Thomas Jefferson became president.</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Jefferson was terrified that the creation, and flourishing, of a black republic in the New World would serve as a model for the rebellion of America’s own slaves; and that, at all costs, would be unacceptable. “When news of the slave revolt reached the United States,” Hickey writes, “the first impulse of the Federalist administration was to aid the white planters”. As early as 1793, Jefferson wrote to James Monroe that “Never was so deep a tragedy presented to the feelings of man...I become daily more and more convinced that all the West India Island will remain in the hands of the people of colour, and a total expulsion of the whites sooner or later take place. It is high time we should foresee the bloody scenes which our children certainly, and possibly ourselves (south of the Potomac), have to wade through and try to avert them”. Two years later, in a letter to Aaron Burr, Jefferson compared the Haitians to assassins and referred to them as “Cannibals of the terrible republic”.</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span> </span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Slaveowner himself, Thomas Jefferson feared that a successful Haitian revolution would threaten the stability of slavery: “If something is not done, and done soon, we shall be the murderers of our own children”. By 1802, Jefferson’s worst fears had come true: the “course of things in the neighboring islands of the West Indies,” he wrote to Rufus King in July, “appears to have given considerable impulse to the minds of the slaves...a great disposition to insurgency has manifested itself among them”.</span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By 1804, Jefferson told John Quincy Adams that he was determined to end trade with Haiti. Having helped the Haitians gain their freedom, he then sought to strangle the new-born nation. He sought to quarantine the island and opposed official trade because that would mean recognizing its independence. And that could inspire slave insurrections throughout the American South. The embargo on Haiti remained in force until the spring of 1810; trade fell from $6.7 million in 1806 to $1.5 million in 1808. Non-recognition of the republic remained official American policy until 1862. What happened in the 1804-1820 period set the tone for Haiti's future and is directly responsible for much of her misery. The former slaves ran away from the lowlands, the plantations, away from the cruel rulers who would have effectively enslaved them again. They ran to the mountains where they would be safe from the soldiers and police of the realm. And here they have in large measure remained. This pattern of relocation has defined several aspects of Haitian life which undermine the development of a healthy economy. Today, only a mere 5% of the population control an estimated 80% of the Haiti's wealth.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To make matters worse, in 1825 France, which was being encouraged by former plantation owners to invade Haiti and re-enslave the Blacks, issued the Royal Ordinance of 1825, which called for the massive indemnity payments. In addition to the 150 million franc payment, France decreed that French ships and commercial goods entering and leaving Haiti would be discounted at 50 percent, thereby further weakening Haiti's ability to pay. The abolishment of tariffs and special treatment of goods from certain countries is a technique still utilized by World Bank and International Monetary Fund structural readjustment plans to devastating effect. According to French officials at the time, the terms of the edict were non-negotiable and to impress the seriousness of the situation upon the Haitians, France delivered the demands by 12 warships armed with 500-plus cannon.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The 150-million-franc indemnity figure was based upon profits earned by the colonists, according to a memorandum prepared by their lawyers. In 1789, Saint Domingue (all of Haiti and Santo Domingo) exported 150 million francs worth of products to France. In 1823 Haitian exports to France totaled 8.5 million francs, exports to England totaled 8.4 million francs, and exports to the United States totaled 13.1 million francs, for a total of 30 million francs.The lawyers then claimed that one half of the 30 million francs went toward the costs of production, leaving 15 million francs as profit. The 15 million franc balance was multiplied by 10 (10 years of lost revenues for the French colonists due to the war for liberation), which coincidentally totals 150 million francs, the value of exports in 1789.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To make matters worse for Haiti, the French anticipated and planned for Haiti to secure a loan to pay the first installment on the indemnity. Haiti was forced to borrow the 30 million francs from a French bank that then deducted the management fees from the face value of the loan and charged interest rates so exorbitant that after payment was completed, Haiti was still 6 million francs short. The 150-million-franc indemnity also happened to represent France's annual budget and 10 years of revenue for Haiti. One study estimates the indemnity was 55 million more francs than was needed to restore the 793 sugar plantations, 3,117 coffee estates and 3,906 indigo, cotton and other crop plantations destroyed during the Haitian struggle for independence.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By contrast, when it became clear France would no longer be in a position to capitalize on further westward expansion in the Western hemisphere, they agreed to sell the Louisiana Territory, an area 74 times the surface area of Haiti, to the United States for just 60 million francs, less than half the Haitian indemnity. Even though France later lowered the Haitian indemnity payment to 90 million francs, the cycle of forcing Haiti to borrow from French banks to make the payments chained the nascent Black nation to perpetual poverty. In fact, Haiti did not finish paying the indemnity owed to until 1947.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">According to the Haitian government's reparations booklet, the immediate consequence of the debt payment on the Haitian population was greater misery. The first thing President Jean-Pierre Boyer did to help pay the debt was to increase from 12 to 16 percent all tariffs on imports to offset the French discount. The next step Boyer took was to declare the indemnity to be a national debt to be paid by all the citizens of Haiti. Then he immediately brought into being the Rural Code. The dreaded Rural Code laid the basis for the legal apartheid between rural and urban society in Haiti. With the Rural Code, the economically dominant class of merchants, government officials and military officers who lived in the cities legally established themselves as Haiti's ruling class.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Under the Rural Code agricultural workers were chained to the land and allowed little or no opportunity to migrate within the country. Socializing was made illegal after midnight, and the Haitian farmer who did not own property was obligated to sign a three-, six- or nine-year labor contract with large property owners. The code also banned small-scale commerce, so that agricultural workers would produce crops strictly for export, similar to the post-Civil War sharecropping methods of production in the American South. The Haitian Rural Code was all embracing, governing the lives not only of farmers but of children as well. The Rural Code was specifically designed to regulate rural life in order to more efficiently produce export crops with which to pay the indemnity. The taxes levied on production were also used predominantly to pay down the debt owed France rather than school construction or providing social services to the Haitian populace.</span></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The imposition of French language within the country is an immediate cause of Haiti's misery. French is the official language of the country. All state business is carried on in French, the schools educate mainly in French. Social prestige and mobility is related to the ability to speak French. Yet only about 10% of the people can even get along in French, with less than 5% knowing the language fluently. Creole is the language of the masses, with nearly 100% of the Haitians speaking and understanding it as their mother tongue. The road to social, economic and intellectual development is reserved to the speakers of French, while the masses are kept in their misery because their language is not recognized nor allowed as an official language. Creole is not a patois or dialect of French. It is a recognized language in its own right, with its own syntax which is significantly different from French. The Creole grammar is rooted in Central African languages, though most of its vocabulary is influenced by French.</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S3UEC3Xi32I/AAAAAAAAFCg/ArMt_NPHSv4/s1600-h/Port-au-Prince+haiti.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="281" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S3UEC3Xi32I/AAAAAAAAFCg/ArMt_NPHSv4/s400/Port-au-Prince+haiti.jpeg" width="400" /></span></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Haiti state following Duvalier included a nation trying to deal with repression on a scale most never know. The Duvalier dictatorship was allowed to expropriate approximately $900 million USD over the 29 years of their reign. After their departure former </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">tonton macoutes</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> agents fought over control over the vacuum of power that occurred. Haiti, following Duvalier’s exile, was placed into a state of chaos, something it had been used to in the years leading up to Aristide’s election. In 1971, the US restored its aid program to Haiti to ease suffering, but outbreaks of disease and the epidemic of AIDS only unleashed a furthering of the decay to a fragile society. Duvalier had used the treasury as his own and left Haiti poor, a remnant that Haitians are still trying to deal with to this day.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Tens of thousands imprisoned, tortured, wrongfully accused – and seething. This has a snowball effect into education, literacy (only around 25%), job creation and growth and stability of the family and culture norms. This created the military-industrial-complex of sorts on Haiti following Duvalier’s collapse. The military was intimately tied with the ruling aristocracy and became, for some, a way out of the slums. This was the Haiti that ratified its constitution in 1987, setting up a fairly predictable representative government based around a bicameral government with a president and prime minister. Haiti, following the dictatorships, was the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. As mentioned above, the elite from which “Papa Doc” Duvalier came from, constituted 5% of the Haitian population and controlled most of its wealth (an epidemic which still exists today- recent clashes occurring as late as April of 2008). The business deals and natural resources were secured for the elite at the expense of the civilian population, it would not be too much to call them “the poor”.</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S3UGRAuMoKI/AAAAAAAAFDQ/4wfauePpL2A/s1600-h/a_Doc_Duvalier__www_latinamericanstudies_org.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S3UGRAuMoKI/AAAAAAAAFDQ/4wfauePpL2A/s400/a_Doc_Duvalier__www_latinamericanstudies_org.gif" width="297" /></span></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This money, to the tune of $550 million in 10 years, was used to fund trips, homes, yachts, and parties (85% of the population of 7 million [in 1992] lives in poverty). Haiti had long been exploited, by foreign powers, neighbors and its own rulers. France not only milked Haiti for coffee and sugar production but also extracted an indemnity from it: the young nation had to pay a burdensome sum to its former colonizer in order to achieve France’s diplomatic recognition. This was the setting for a country that waded through an equally autocratic and unstable series of interim governments in preparations for elections in 1990. This was the country that elected, with 67% of the vote, Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest, who would become the country’s first democratically elected president, ever. Leading Haitian activists in the U.S. claim that between 1804 and 1990, when President Aristide was first elected, a grand total of 32 high schools were built in Haiti, all within urban settings. Since then, more than 200 have been built, they say, most in the countryside. To this day, the discrimination between rural and urban areas takes the form of color discrimination by light-skinned Blacks toward darker-skinned Blacks, and it remains entrenched.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the end I am left to ponder what role did the world’s super powers play in burying Haiti before the Earthquake, and what sort of role will we now play in digging her and our own collective human soul out of the rubble? The use of the military and intelligent sources in order to keep authority. Truth be told, The United States does not believe in popular democracy that challenges the economic authority of the United States. Pentagon official says there are some 11,500 U.S. military personal in Haiti or offshore and 16,000 are expected by week’s end. What you have in Haiti is a well-funded and armed elite that controls the major industries of Haiti. Industries such as sweatshop manufacturing where laborers are paid approximately 50 cents USD a day; industries that thrive upon political instability and weak infrastructure that prevent effective tax collection and financial distribution. Aristide representing a threat to the hegemonic global economic status quo that would threaten U.S. economic interests.</span></span><br />
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A shift from abject misery to dignified poverty- The Promise of Jean-Baptiste Aristide</span></b></span></i><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S3UEl5JXA1I/AAAAAAAAFC4/EX_nzu0hbX0/s1600-h/jba.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S3UEl5JXA1I/AAAAAAAAFC4/EX_nzu0hbX0/s320/jba.jpeg" /></span></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Haiti was supposed to turn 200 years old in 2004 with pomp and celebration as the first black republic in the history of the world. In addition to trying to raise the daily minimum wage in Haiti, former President Aristide attempted to secure reparations from France, in the amount $21,685,135,571.48, at 5 percent annual interest. In this era of multibillion-dollar bailouts of private banking institutions, $22 billion should scarcely raise a Western European eyebrow. But to Haiti, the sum would be a godsend. In 2004, at the time of the 200th anniversary of Haiti's independence, the Haitian government put together a legal brief in support of a formal demand for "restitution" from France. The sum sought was nearly $22 billion, a number arrived at by calculations that included a notionally equitable annual interest rate.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Yet things turned out differently, and the 200th anniversary of Haiti holds the same overtones as Haiti in 1804, as Saint-Domigue in 1680. It began with unrest in the cities in the Fall of 2003- some could see it as a response to prices or food or, as the people of Haiti should be, just fed up with the system. But this unrest broke out into violence in the days leading up to January 1- the date that Haiti became an independent nation. In accords, as if on schedule, CARICOM members (members of the Caribbean community) all abstained from the celebration- boycotting the events in response to the regime of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Former president Mbeki of South Africa, one of the major CARICOM members who attended, compared Aristide to Nelson Mandela to much criticism. Haitian artists including Franketienne, Gary Victor, Lannec Hurbon, Dany Laferriere, and Michel-Rolph Trouillot boycotted as well, stating:</span></span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the face of this slide toward totalitarianism, we, artists, writers, intellectuals, and educators, declare: that we refuse to associate ourselves with official celebrations through which the government seeks in vain to legitimize itself. This refusal to associate ourselves with the government is not an opposition to Haitian unity, but on the contrary a defense of it.</span></span></i></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">On February 5, 2004, the city of Gonaives was taken over by a gang known as the “Cannibal Army” (now National Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Haiti) in retaliation for its believed involvement of Aristide in the death of their leader Amiot Metayer. From this takeover came support, as Dominican Republic convoys rode into Gonaives and other cities to offer assistance, something it is believed the rebels did not predict. On February 22, the rebels took over Cap-Haïtien, Haiti’s second largest city. They were closing in on Port-au-Prince.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A crisis was declared. CARICOM tried to mediate this conflict with the US, Britain, France, and Canada. On February 29, President Aristide resigned the presidency, was flown to the Central African Republic on a U.S. military aircraft, and has been in South Africa ever since late 2004. He told viewers in Haiti that his leaving was “a modern way to have a modern kidnapping.” He told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!: “No, I didn’t resign. What some people call ‘resignation’ is a ‘new coup d’état,’ or ‘modern kidnapping.” According to Peter Hallward, who immensely cites evidence in his book Damning the Flood, the events in Haiti were indeed a modern coup backed by the US government.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In a sense, despite the leftist intentions and solidarity with the poor and the international sanctions – these past 5 years have only risen Aristide’s standing within Haiti. President Aristide demanded land reform, alienating the weakening but still powerful grandons, and he demanded that corporations pay their back taxes and raise the minimum wage from $5 a week approximately to $5 a day, thereby igniting the wrath of the bourgeoisie. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">He paraphrases Toussaint L’Ouverture:</span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I declare in overthrowing me they have uprooted the trunk of the tree of peace, </span></span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">but it will grow back because the roots are Louverturian.</span></span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(the original: “In overthrowing me, they have uprooted in Saint-Domingue only the trunk of the tree of the liberty of the blacks; it will grow back because its roots are deep and numerous.”)</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #110000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #110000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That being said, there is enough blame to go around. Both internal and external forces within Haiti have led to the current sociopolitical and economic status of Haiti relative to the rest of the Western hemisphere and the world. In this one superpower age, it’s important to identify those struggles which have the most capacity for effective resistance. Haiti is one of those places. Not only because it is the home of the world’s first successful slave-led revolution, but because today the Haitian people have been able to maintain the will to resist on every level, politically, culturally, and economically. Through a combination of both high-intensity and low-intensity warfare, the will to resist has been diffused for the time being throughout most of the Americas. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Earthquakes alone do not create disasters of the scale now experienced in Haiti. The wealthy nations have for too long exploited Haiti, denying it the right to develop in a secure, sovereign, sustainable way. The global outpouring of support for Haitians must be matched by long-term, unrestricted grants of aid, and immediate forgiveness of all that country’s debt. Given their role in Haiti’s plight, the United States, France and other industrialized nations should be the ones seeking forgiveness.</span></span></span>Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-24459927646835245152010-01-07T00:16:00.002-05:002010-01-08T04:01:16.127-05:00death in two parts (part two)...<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0Q35cAwOKI/AAAAAAAAFAw/13BW8c1j-kc/s1600-h/3842876813_98db934028_b.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423521311172343970" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0Q35cAwOKI/AAAAAAAAFAw/13BW8c1j-kc/s400/3842876813_98db934028_b.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 267px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">Death has always been a subject that has fascinated me and has recently become a focus of my painting and my writings at university. Not on some obsessive 2pac "I feel death around the corner"trip, but I have had friends that have passed away at my young age and, more importantly, loved ones whom have passed on. Am not scared of it but rather cautious and, much like anyone else, I would like to confront those final moments and years on my own terms. So I have imagined how best to confront death in a battle we will all lose, 300 (the movie) style.</span><br />
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<div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0RQNJELWGI/AAAAAAAAFBI/KBIvEkyifmo/s1600-h/024.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423548037962881122" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0RQNJELWGI/AAAAAAAAFBI/KBIvEkyifmo/s400/024.jpeg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 274px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><span style="color: #666666;"><br />
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</div><div><span style="color: #666666;">Fast forward to the late 2000's, perhaps 2060 or so...</span><br />
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</div><div><span style="color: #666666;">1) I will go to Paris, if I am not already living there at the time,</span><br />
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</div><div><span style="color: #666666;">2) I will head to Pont Notre-Dame (or Le Pont Mirabeau), with one of my children, grandchildren, assistant, or by myself if need be,</span><br />
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</div><div><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0Q3fURxnSI/AAAAAAAAFAg/J_JYROywXC8/s1600-h/File:France+Paris+Pont+Notre+Dame+01.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423520862419655970" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0Q3fURxnSI/AAAAAAAAFAg/J_JYROywXC8/s400/File:France+Paris+Pont+Notre+Dame+01.jpeg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 122px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><span style="color: #666666;"><br />
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</div><div><span style="color: #666666;">3) If I am able-bodied enough I will climb to the edge of the bridge, which stands approximately 20 meters from the water and I will jump off..</span><br />
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</div><div><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0Q0uIqVsSI/AAAAAAAAFAY/_PGcoG2EnDk/s1600-h/paris-black-and-white.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423517818464612642" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0Q0uIqVsSI/AAAAAAAAFAY/_PGcoG2EnDk/s400/paris-black-and-white.jpeg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 250px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><span style="color: #666666;"><br />
Simple as that. But come on, is that anyway for an artist to die on his own terms? Maybe, but not this artist. </span><br />
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</span><br />
</div><div><span style="color: #666666;">I have a favorite color. It's Cerulean Blue and until the last month I was the only person I knew that held that same color in similar regard. While technically not exactly a shade of blue that qualifies as a primary color, who cares? Am going to take Cerulean Blue, Cadmium Yellow and Cadmium Red, either acrylic or oil or even tempura paint, and strap it to my body in some form or fashion. And then I will jump in the Seine. Oh wait, before that happens I need to add some small explosive charges to the tubes. And one large one for myself. There's no way am going to drown, or hit the water and then suffer a broken and slow death. Not I. </span><br />
</div><div><span style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span><br />
</div><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0RQ-NkQtwI/AAAAAAAAFBQ/knRWUSqeJ44/s1600-h/Cerulean-blue-on-orange.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423548880984782594" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0RQ-NkQtwI/AAAAAAAAFBQ/knRWUSqeJ44/s320/Cerulean-blue-on-orange.jpeg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 148px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a><br />
<div><span style="color: #666666;">So this is how I imagine it, right before hitting the water perhaps a second or so at the least, which is approximately nine feet from the surface, I would ideally have someone detonate all four explosive charges so that I disappear into a mist of primary colors. "Man Jumps Off Bridge, No Splash!" will read the headlines of </span><i><span style="color: #666666;">Le Monde</span></i><span style="color: #666666;"> and </span><i><span style="color: #666666;">Le Figaro</span></i><span style="color: #666666;"> the next day. Eat your heart out David Blaine! Top that Dalí! Ideally, it would be filmed and will live on as an ultimate expression of performance art and sacrifice for my craft. The final triumph of three primary colors that have haunted my efforts since the age of three to bend them to my will and create art.</span><br />
</div><div><span style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span><br />
</div><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0Q5mOGk7KI/AAAAAAAAFA4/AST8ePH6cwo/s1600-h/3842310842_516e85b0bc_b.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423523180044414114" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0Q5mOGk7KI/AAAAAAAAFA4/AST8ePH6cwo/s400/3842310842_516e85b0bc_b.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 267px;" /></a><br />
<div><span style="color: #666666;">These events all presume that I have some incurable disease, which as a resident of the United States, is a very real possibility since most of us NEVER go to the doctor since we cannot afford it. Hopefully no random taxi, bullet, heart attack, stroke or other anticipated event rushes me off the stage of life unexpectedly. But that being said, these are my wishes. In the meantime I shall live fearlessly and travel the world with reckless abandon in pursuit of my dreams. Imagining the day when I will float down the Seine as colored pigments, travelling along the banks of my favorite arrondissements, then out to the sea, travelling freely as i did in life, without a need for visas or passports, the hassle of stupid airports security agents or confined to the timetables and schedules of commercial airlines. In death, I shall experience a true sensation of freedom, fuck a constitution or national/religious doctrine. </span><br />
</div><div><br />
</div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: small;">From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity...</span></span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: small;">~Edvard Munch</span></span><br />
</div></div></div>Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-20832568893763880492010-01-06T09:30:00.000-05:002010-01-06T09:30:00.388-05:00death in two parts (part one)...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0Rg2WdIbmI/AAAAAAAAFBg/fpBYGhFJkaA/s1600-h/gwalkinga.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 342px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0Rg2WdIbmI/AAAAAAAAFBg/fpBYGhFJkaA/s400/gwalkinga.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423566338117889634" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Death is never a trick; nature doesn’t play a comedy; instead, </span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">it’s a tragic, colossal and unstoppable drama"...</span></span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">~Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach, German philosopher</span></span></div><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">I went to Canada the last week of 2009, it was beyond cold, the kinda cold where you imagine you might die from the elements. So I thought about it and I realized, almost to my surprise, that I would not have traded it in for another life. There had been disappointments, to be sure, but my life appeared to me to have been a meaningful one, a life I did not regret. This is not to say that I was not nearly paralyzed with fear by some of the close calls I have had in my life. Episodes in El Barrio in the early 1990s, encounters in Brasil, drama in Barcelona with some Moroccans that could have ended ugly. I was. At the same time, strangely, my life appeared to me as worth having lived.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0Rf46165KI/AAAAAAAAFBY/XlZPYts7UfU/s1600-h/PabloPicassoSkeleton.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 290px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0Rf46165KI/AAAAAAAAFBY/XlZPYts7UfU/s400/PabloPicassoSkeleton.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423565282733647010" /></a><br />There are two lessons here. The first, and most obvious one, is that death is terrifying. Here in the United States, we have the technology to defer death, so we often pretend it will never really happen to us. There is always another procedure, always a cure in sight if not in hand besides the whole "I cannot afford it because I do not have health care" thing. But in our sober moments we recognize that we will indeed die, and that we have precious little control over when it will happen. But if we did not die, if our existence did not unravel in the endless darkness of death, would life be quite so precious, so extraordinary, so moving?<br /><br />The harm of death goes to the heart of who we are as human beings. We are, in essence, forward-looking creatures. We create our lives prospectively. We build relationships, careers, and projects that are not solely of the moment but that have a future in our vision of them. One of the reasons Eastern philosophies have developed techniques to train us to be in the moment is that that is not our natural state. We are pulled toward the future, and see the meaning of what we do now in its light.Death extinguishes that light. And because we know that we will die, and yet we don’t know when, the darkness that is ultimately ahead of each of us is with us at every moment. There is, we might say, a tunnel at the end of this light. And since we are creatures of the future, the darkness of death offends us in our very being. We may come to terms with it when we grow old, but unless our lives have become a burden to us coming to terms is the best we can hope for.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0RiGNkAIqI/AAAAAAAAFBw/Jh43gxuEaQ0/s1600-h/keith_xmasfront3s_FB_.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 394px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0RiGNkAIqI/AAAAAAAAFBw/Jh43gxuEaQ0/s400/keith_xmasfront3s_FB_.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423567710120321698" /></a><br />The second, less obvious lesson of this moment of facing death is that in order for our lives to have a shape, in order that they not become formless, we need to die. This will strike some as counterintuitive, even a little ridiculous. But in order to recognize its truth, we should reflect a bit on what immortality might mean. Immortality lasts a long time. It is not for nothing that in his story “The Immortal” Jorge Luis Borges pictures the immortal characters as unconcerned with their lives or their surroundings. Once you’ve followed your passion — playing the saxophone, loving men or women, traveling, writing poetry — for, say, 10,000 years, it will likely begin to lose its grip. There may be more to say or to do than anyone can ever accomplish. But each of us develops particular interests, engages in particular pursuits. When we have been at them long enough, we are likely to find ourselves just filling time. In the case of immortality, an inexhaustible period of time.<br /><br />And when there is always time for everything, there is no urgency for anything. It may well be that life is not long enough. But it is equally true that a life without limits would lose the beauty of its moments. It would become boring, but more deeply it would become shapeless. Just one damn thing after another. This is the paradox death imposes upon us: it grants us the possibility of a meaningful life even as it takes it away. It gives us the promise of each moment, even as it threatens to steal that moment, or at least reminds us that some time our moments will be gone. It allows each moment to insist upon itself, because there are only a limited number of them. And none of us knows how many.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0RhAxsf4tI/AAAAAAAAFBo/jvK3MY3fiWA/s1600-h/SalvadorDali.jpeg"><img style="text-align: left;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width: 281px; height: 400px; " src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0RhAxsf4tI/AAAAAAAAFBo/jvK3MY3fiWA/s400/SalvadorDali.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423566517228790482" /></a><br />I prefer to think that the paradox of death is the source not of despair but instead of the limited hope that is allotted to us as human beings. We cannot live forever, to be sure, but neither would we want to. We ought not to mind the fact that we will die, although we really would rather that it not be today. Probably not tomorrow either. But it is precisely because we cannot control when we will die, and know only that we will, that we can look upon our lives with the seriousness they merit. Death takes away from us no more than it has conferred: lives whose significance lies in the fact they are not always with us. Only Life will reign supreme, the Life of the Beyond, the Life of the ever transcending Beyond. This life is not and cannot be the sole monopoly of an individual. No. Each human being is to be flooded with this Life of the ever-transcending Beyond, for it is here in this Life Divine that God will manifest Himself unreservedly-here, here on earth. Our happiness lies in being able to inhabit that fact..."For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?" (Kahlil Gibran).</span><br /></div>Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-60167462724440150712010-01-04T14:00:00.001-05:002010-01-06T05:20:46.142-05:00cercle et carré (or circle and square)...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0KnrHiqfII/AAAAAAAAE94/szrS-4Yw1pM/s1600-h/image_6.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 301px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0KnrHiqfII/AAAAAAAAE94/szrS-4Yw1pM/s400/image_6.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423081260508150914" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;">My formal art education consisted of the "greats". That meant Picasso, Dali, Degas, Monet, Velázquez...all European, all men. That is what Cooper Union in New York City taught me. Art was never the graffiti I saw in books like Subway Art or at the NYC Graffiti Hall of Fame, which was in the courtyard of my high school. The art of NYC in the 1980's was that of Basquiat, Haring, and Kenny Scharf. Not only the downtown art scene of Warhol but also Case 2, Phase 2, Crash, Ezo, Seen, Taki 183, Dondi, Haze, and Burn1. What is considered "classic" could also serve as a dividing line between the "classist" world of art dealers, agents, galleries, and museums and the art brut, naïve art, and art primitif of "urban" (re: non-European or conventional) artist. </span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;">I grew up buying fat and skinny caps from stores in Queens and Montant paint markers from Bomb the System/Scrapyard NYC in Lower Manhattan before acrylic paints and linen canvases ever entered my life. I was fascinated by the graffitied trains from the early 1980's, the colors, burners, whole cars, throw-ups, tags and the skill required to control the flow of condensed/pressurized paint. But most of all, these graffiti artists, which include Basquiat, looked like me and spoke like me. Even as a young child I was aware of the inferiority complexes that mass-mediated culture and the status quo tried to push upon individuals. I knew of, and lived within the world described by Frantz Fanon before being aware of who a Frantz Fanon was.</span><div><br /><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0PBm7TZuYI/AAAAAAAAE-I/5XfN4iWsd40/s1600-h/4199911757_a632b5f8c2_o.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 180px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0PBm7TZuYI/AAAAAAAAE-I/5XfN4iWsd40/s400/4199911757_a632b5f8c2_o.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423391250782468482" /></a><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;">But by the late 1990s, after NYC trains were replaced by stainless-steel exteriors and the dreaded "buff monster" acid bath that tagged trains were given daily, meant that achieving artist notoriety would have to be achieved in some other form. So on to the next one...did an internship with James</span> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_De_La_Vega">DeLaVega</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;">, out here in New York City and began painting on canvases, eventually studying art in Madrid in between Marketing degrees and grad school. But who would be the prototypical third-world genius who I would refer to, and claim as my own. Not necessarily the most well-known or popular but one that would constantly serve to inspire me throughout the years. I found him while out studying abroad in Barcelona at</span> <a href="http://www.mnac.cat/index.jsp?lan=001">El Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya</a>.</div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0PTToAg46I/AAAAAAAAE-4/UCyy3fImzYQ/s1600-h/front_b.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 272px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0PTToAg46I/AAAAAAAAE-4/UCyy3fImzYQ/s400/front_b.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423410710394758050" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;">There he was on the wall (well, his work at least): a pioneer of modernism, Joaquin Torres-García who was born in Montevideo in 1874 of a Catalan father and Uruguayan mother. His family moved to Spain in 1891 and settled in Barcelona. Torres-García studied at the Escuela Oficial de Bellas Artes de Barcelona (the "Llotja"), (where all the bourgeois Catalans hung out) and at the Academia Baixas. He was a contemporary of Pablo Picasso and Ramon Casas, part of the bohemian milieu of the café </span><a href="http://www.4gats.com/">Els Quatre Gats</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;">. In 1903 Torres-García assisted Antoni Gaudi with stained-glass windows for the cathedral of Palma de Mallorca and later with the windows for the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.</span><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SxjFfb-OqvI/AAAAAAAAE8M/-bzS9PSP22E/s1600-h/joaquin_torres_garcia_-_america_invertida.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 378px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SxjFfb-OqvI/AAAAAAAAE8M/-bzS9PSP22E/s400/joaquin_torres_garcia_-_america_invertida.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411292096161032946" /></a><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;">On April 30, 1934, when he arrived in Montevideo after forty-three years of absence, Torres-García told the press that he had returned to Uruguay in order to "develop a wide range of activities, to lecture, to teach courses, to achieve...on walls what I have already achieved on canvas...to create in Montevideo a movement that will surpass the art of Paris." Soon after arriving in South America, Torres-García made a drawing of the map of the continent upside down. This radical image illustrates how important it was for him to establish his place in the world. This illustration became a centerpiece in the history of Latin American efforts at reclaiming themselves in a world vision. He placed the South Pole at the top of the earth, thereby suggesting a visual affirmation of the importance of the continent, and in an effort to present a pure revision of the world. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><br /></span></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0PfVHkYEeI/AAAAAAAAE_A/fn0w03QakkE/s1600-h/383Torreslr.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 329px; height: 388px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0PfVHkYEeI/AAAAAAAAE_A/fn0w03QakkE/s400/383Torreslr.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423423930186076642" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;">His ambition was to create with the students of his workshop an independent art movement in Uruguay which he hoped to export to the rest of the Americas. By stating that the South was from now on his North, he was challenging the supremacy of European culture at the time in peril due to the second world war. The South because it is our North. We place the map upside down, then we have the right idea of our hemisphere, not the way they want it on the other side of the world. The tip of America points insistently South, which is our North. The same with our compass: it leans irremissibly always South towards our Pole. When ships leave from here going North, they go down not up as they used to. Because North is now under, and Levant is to or left.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0RHWpasQrI/AAAAAAAAFBA/boNDwcCbH9M/s1600-h/foto.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0RHWpasQrI/AAAAAAAAFBA/boNDwcCbH9M/s400/foto.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423538305661420210" /></a>The zeal and joy in art making that Torres-García inculcated in his students, gives evidence of what a vibrant creation Latin American modernism was. It was technically at least as accomplished as its counterpart in the pre-Abstract Expressionist New York of the 30's and 40's, but improved upon it in one crucial respect: it transformed a borrowed European style into one deeply expressive of a New World culture. By Torres-García's standards, the work produced by El Taller was the genuine utopian article, and for anyone interested in modernism today, it is certainly an art to be reckoned with. Recently, I paid homage to Torres-García as part of my series of artists that have influenced me, a series that includes Joan Miró, Basquiat, and Dalí (painting shown above). </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><br /></span></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0PBHuz9Z1I/AAAAAAAAE-A/4SwIq35ExQ4/s1600-h/d5203842l.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 340px; height: 303px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0PBHuz9Z1I/AAAAAAAAE-A/4SwIq35ExQ4/s400/d5203842l.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423390714853418834" /></a><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><br />After a long development, during which his painting evolved from the Mediterranean classicism of his Barcelona frescoes of 1913 and passed through periods of Vibrationism, Cubism, and Fauvism, culminated in 1929, what was to become his characteristic incorporation of symbols into a geometric grid based on the golden section. For Torres-García, the symbol was a way of synthesizing idea and form while bypassing narrative, which would interfere with the unity of the work. He called this conjunction of idea and form the nexus between the vital (or living) and the abstract. By inserting a symbol representing humanistic values into the antithetical rational structure of neoplasticism (which was devoid of human references), Torres-García succeeded in creating a style that constituted a major contribution to modern art, that of Constructive Universalism.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0PBvFukZwI/AAAAAAAAE-Q/EVHvXIQxXWk/s1600-h/joaquin-torres-garcia.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 271px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0PBvFukZwI/AAAAAAAAE-Q/EVHvXIQxXWk/s400/joaquin-torres-garcia.gif" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423391391019722498" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;">What Torres-García envisioned as the new art for the Americas would encompass all expressions from architecture to the most humble utilitarian object. This was not an American version of the Russian constructivist movement or the Bauhaus; his aim was to create a modern art for the new continent equal in scope to the art of the greatest civilizations of antiquity. Structure means recognition that unity is at the foundation of everything. To say structure is also to say Abstraction: geometry, rhythm, proportion, lines, planes, idea of object. These are elements of work—they act, they form, they construct and gain significance through the law of unity. The uniqueness of Torres-García's proposal consisted of his incorporation of essential elements of indigenous American art into the basic principles of European constructivism and geometric abstraction. His conception of art had a metaphysical and spiritual dimension - a faith in the spiritual value of art as a creative act bound to a universal law, and, in the independent existence of a work of art, apart from its naturalistic contents.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><br /></span></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SxjFYrC8G7I/AAAAAAAAE8E/I44UDScQZH4/s1600-h/1979_30.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 365px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SxjFYrC8G7I/AAAAAAAAE8E/I44UDScQZH4/s400/1979_30.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411291979948235698" /></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153); "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153); ">When the racial leaders of twenty years ago spoke of developing race-pride and stimulating race-consciousness, and of the desirability of race solidarity, they could not in any accurate degree have anticipated the abrupt feeling that has surged up and now pervades the centers of the third-world art scene. Neither would Torres-García know the distant impact of his own exhortations. Unlike Fernando Botero, Torres-García did not live to see the 1970s, when a significant portion of the energy that was the Latin American Arts Movement emanated from the geographic centers that he had indeed awakened.</span></div></div></div></div></div></div>Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-813632578134011172010-01-02T18:30:00.002-05:002010-01-06T05:19:56.124-05:00measuring up...<div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#339999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">"Making abstract work involves a lot of reflection. Even in work like this, in which paint must be put down with verve and speed, the artist has to spend a lot of time looking at the results and evaluating them. An area of paint has either come to rest in an optimal shape, density, transparency, hue, texture, and relationship to nearby areas, or it hasn't, and thus something needs to be done. But what? It depends. You decide by paying a lot of attention to your gut reactions about pleasing forms."</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#339999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">~Franklin Einspruch, Catalogue essay for</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#339999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">George Bethea's "Prajna: Color and Light" at Dorsch Gallery</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0Prfauu2xI/AAAAAAAAE_I/xvg6PiGGVt0/s1600-h/pyramidgr.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 291px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0Prfauu2xI/AAAAAAAAE_I/xvg6PiGGVt0/s400/pyramidgr.gif" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423437301268011794" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3366FF;"><b>The Golden Ratio and Beauty in Architecture</b></span><br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">The Golden Ratio has appeared in ancient architecture. The examples are many, such as the Great Pyramid in Giza, Egypt which is considered one of the Seven World Wonders of the ancient world, and the Greek Parthenon that was constructed between 447 and 472BC. Not only did the ancient Egyptians and Greeks know about the magic of Golden Ratio, so did the Renaissance artists, who used the Golden Ratio in the design of Notre Dame in between the 12th and 14th centuries. Earlier I was speaking about how we can improve communication designs by looking in unexpected places. For example, by examining Wabi-Sabi concepts and sensibilities to influence our approach with designing visuals. Wabi-Sabi (demonstrated below by the Japanese Tea House) and Zen aesthetics are rooted in the natural world. The "design" of the natural world has a lot to teach us about symmetry, balance, beauty, and grace. Are these words you use to critique your presentation visuals- symmetry, balance, beauty, and grace?</span></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"><br /></span><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0Ps2-grZFI/AAAAAAAAE_g/EQbvhVbsRhQ/s1600-h/2002_kenrokuen_hanami_0123.jpeg"><img style="text-align: left;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0Ps2-grZFI/AAAAAAAAE_g/EQbvhVbsRhQ/s400/2002_kenrokuen_hanami_0123.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423438805521359954" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"><br />We are drawn naturally to visuals that exhibit symmetry, balance, and beauty in proportion. Artists and designers have for centuries emulated a proportion called the "Golden Mean" or "Golden Ratio" found in nature into their works. The golden ratio is a proportion defined by the number Phi (1.618033988...). Kimberly Elam points out in her book, Geometry of Design, that "...use of the golden section rectangle, with a proportion of 1:1.618, is documented in the architecture of Stonehenge built in the 20th-16th centuries B.C". There is evidence as well that the ancient Greeks and Egyptians applied the principle, and of course, much has been made of Renaissance artists and architects who employed the golden ratio in much of their work. Kimberly also points out at least two studies in the last 150 years or so which concluded that, given a choice, people have a significant preference for man-made objects which have proportions closest to the 5:8 ratio golden section.<br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0POZYhAuAI/AAAAAAAAE-g/XBB-t10W0qY/s1600-h/phi-spiral.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 308px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0POZYhAuAI/AAAAAAAAE-g/XBB-t10W0qY/s400/phi-spiral.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423405311757170690" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"><br />We see strong golden section preferences in the natural world, of course. The sunflower, for example, consists of 21 spirals moving clockwise and 34 spirals moving counterclockwise. This 21:34 ratio is 1:1.619, very close to the golden section. Maybe the reason we are so intrigued by the things in the natural environment such as flowers, shells, fish, etc. is because of the preference we have, at least subconsciously, for shapes that have golden mean proportions.<br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0PsGm6E5lI/AAAAAAAAE_Q/X4z8RhoYuWQ/s1600-h/sunflowers_button.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 300px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0PsGm6E5lI/AAAAAAAAE_Q/X4z8RhoYuWQ/s400/sunflowers_button.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423437974551717458" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">Below, using a Bayen painting from the 12th century Japan, golden section grids are applied over the image to see what would happen. The width of the image is multiplied (line A) by 0.618, which gives me line (B) and (C). Here we can see that (A) is 1.618 times (B) and (B) is 1.618 times (C). What is interesting about this painting is that the sight line of the fishing line (including that which we imagine under the water), pole, fisherman and boat roughly run along a line that is .618 times the length of the entire image. The image is powerful and we can feel the sabi of the fisherman and the vastness of the ocean. If the subject were placed exactly center would we still get an appreciation of the waves gently carrying the boat from left to right?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"><br /></span></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0POvxoIMZI/AAAAAAAAE-w/FJkzsM7119k/s1600-h/Golden_bayen.jpeg"><img style="text-align: left;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width: 350px; height: 188px; " src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/S0POvxoIMZI/AAAAAAAAE-w/FJkzsM7119k/s400/Golden_bayen.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423405696455029138" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">Attempting to design visuals according to the golden mean proportions is impractical in most cases perhaps for us. However, the "rule of thirds" which is derived from the golden mean, is a basic design technique that can add symmetry, beauty, and professionalism to your visuals. The rule of thirds, which is not a "rule" at all, is something you can use. Photographers, for example, use the rule of thirds when framing their shots and artists to construct composition. The objective is to stop the subject(s) and areas of interest (such as the horizon) from bisecting the image, by placing them near one of the lines that would divide the image into three equal columns and rows, ideally near the intersection of those lines.<br /><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">The Golden Ratio has a great impact on art, influencing artists' perspectives of a pleasant art piece. Have you ever wondered why DaVinci's Mona Lisa is aesthetically pleasing and considered so beautiful? Da Vinci, a sculpture, painter, inventor and a mathematician, was the first one who first called Phi the Golden Ratio. And scientifically, her face actually appears in a golden rectangle, which also makes her face appear more beautiful to human eyes. Also another of his masterpieces, <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Leonardo_da_Vinci_(1452-1519)_-_The_Last_Supper_(1495-1498).jpg">the Last Supper</a>, contains Golden Ratios. The French Impressionist painter George Seurat is famous by his technique of drawing, Pointilism, and he is said to have "attacked every canvas by the golden section".</span></div></div></div>Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-61996630159558780182009-12-27T08:29:00.004-05:002010-02-02T15:36:27.680-05:00and they say "these are our heroes"...<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SzrdLNnkm8I/AAAAAAAAE9E/Yd5wk92895o/s1600-h/tiger-woods_Elin_No_269381s.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420888286197750722" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SzrdLNnkm8I/AAAAAAAAE9E/Yd5wk92895o/s400/tiger-woods_Elin_No_269381s.jpeg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 273px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #000099;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">"Let's hear it, one for the coons on UPN 9 and WB</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #000099;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Who 'Yes Massa' on TV, what ever happened to Wheezy? </span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #000099;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Red Fox's? Never got Emmy's but were real to me</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #000099;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Let's hear it, two for the spooks who do cartwheels</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #000099;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">'Cause they said they played they parts well</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #000099;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Now they claim caviar, hate that oxtail</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #000099;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Lambda Sigma Phi badge on lapel</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #000099;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Whitey always tell him, "Ooh, he speak so well"</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #000099;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Are you the one we look to, the decent Negro?</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #000099;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The acceptable Negro -- hell nah</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #000099;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">But they say, "These are our heroes"...</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #000099;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> ~Nas</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Since 1998, Tiger Woods has taken over the role of the world’s most popular and widely-recognized recognized athlete, amassing earnings of more than $1Billion USD since turning professional in 1996. However, while Mr. Woods may enjoy worldwide name recognition, he has always maintained a detached relationship with the general public, rarely allowing his thoughts or opinions to deviate from the corporate image carved out for him by agents and handlers. After Tiger Woods won the Masters Tournament, in 1996, the 21-year-old golf phenom was touted as the Great Black Hope, the putter-wielding equivalent of Martin Luther King Jr. Pundits waxed poetic about the cosmic social significance of Woods' feat. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary celebrations of Jackie Robinson's breaking of baseball's color line, Woods' coronation as the Black Prince of the Country Club gave America a chance to engage in its favorite ritual, the recitation of warm racial platitudes. While blacks celebrated the triumph of one of their own in a lily-white sport, whites wiped away tears and congratulated themselves on their remarkable progress.</span></span></span><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
And then Tiger Woods said he wasn't actually "black" at all -- he was "Cablinasian", a term of self-definition he completely made up. Woods made his remarks on "Oprah," when asked if it bothered him to be called an African-American. "It does," he said. "Growing up, I came up with this name: I'm a 'Cablinasian.'" As in Caucasian-black-Indian-Asian. Woods has a Black/Native American/White father and a Thai/Chinese mother. "I'm just who I am," Woods told Oprah Winfrey, "whoever you see in front of you." Woods' remarks infuriated many African Americans including Colin Powell who, responding to Woods' comments stated that "In America, which I love from the depths of my heart and soul, when you look like me, you're black". </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Yes, Tiger Woods is a brand name. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Woods is certainly the world's greatest golfer and arguably the world's greatest athlete, the head of Tiger Inc., a celebrity without parallel with the money that comes with that.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"> Only lately has the negative fallout from his secret infidelity begun to hit home: lost corporate sponsors, a stunning golf career on hold, and most of all, a marriage and family in jeopardy. </span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">His media image is inflated beyond his real self. Commercially, he has become less than he really is.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span> <a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Szrf-uIjFtI/AAAAAAAAE9k/WS5DPn4POoE/s1600-h/king+james.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420891370122581714" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Szrf-uIjFtI/AAAAAAAAE9k/WS5DPn4POoE/s400/king+james.jpeg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 300px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left; width: 400px;" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
A cardboard representative on primetime television ads always dressed in Nike sportswear, holding a bottle of Gatorade and shaving with a Gillette razor. These are banal activities. Tiger took every bit of the money his image delivered. And not to sound too cliché: but with great rewards come great responsibility. That's the deal. You can't have one without the other. You can't have your image beamed relentlessly into everyone's living room, magazine, airport lounge and then expect people not to be intrigued with your life. But more troubling than the mere reality of existing in the public domain solely as a corporate characature is the lack of any relevant opinion or political stance in anything relevant in any sociopolitical realm. And Tiger Woods is certainly not the only athlete not to take a marked social stance on important global issues. When presented with the opportunity during the 2008 Beijing Olympics to comment upon China-Sudan relations, in which China supplies the Sudanese government with money and weapons ans China, in turn, imports Sudanese oil, Lebron James chose to remain silent.</span> </span></span><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span> </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Sure, big-name athletes always have endorsed products since Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle. Wheaties boxes have features athletes for decades. But in his groundbreaking shoe deal with Nike, Michael Jordan became the first true athletic corporate figure.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span> </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SzrfawEP-_I/AAAAAAAAE9c/9idBjhC-fM8/s1600-h/michael-jordan.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420890752166132722" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SzrfawEP-_I/AAAAAAAAE9c/9idBjhC-fM8/s400/michael-jordan.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 387px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 326px;" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
In 1980s, when asked about his thoughts on the Senatorial race in his home state of North Carolina that featured a black democratic mayor from Charlotte named Harvey Gantt, whom was an acquiantance, Jordan offered: “Republicans buy sneakers, too”. To stand for nothing in society, to function as a blank slate, a mere tabula rusa for corporate interests, has severe consequences when the behavior of athletes runs counter to their Madison Avenue image. Little is known about the thoughts, views and opinions of an individual like Tiger Woods so it is hard to be sympathetic to an individual who has maintained such as inhumanely distant façade during his professional career. His very public fall from grace has been the only semblance of non-scripted behavior in his entire public life.</span> </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span> </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Szre1x-3z1I/AAAAAAAAE9U/4uZ93ezdpQo/s1600-h/jordan.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420890117025288018" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Szre1x-3z1I/AAAAAAAAE9U/4uZ93ezdpQo/s400/jordan.jpeg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 266px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span> </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Woods’ exile may last three months or it may last three years. But one thing is certain: Unlike the 24-hour wall-to-wall sleaze that’s dominated the airwaves since the initial revelations of Woods’ infidelity, this is actual news. After 14 years of being protected by the press, the Tiger has become carrion. And now, the greatest golfer in history is walking away. Unwillingly or unable to relate to his fans or the general public en masse, while shilling product after product in hopes of getting this very same public to buy merchandise, Tiger Woods has elicited less sympathy, while simultaneously being abandoned by some of his corporate sponsors and the media.<br />
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The jury is out on whether Tiger’s retreat makes him more sympathetic. But years from now when we look back at this saga, I hope we remember that Woods didn’t choose to leave golf until his sponsors left him. Woods announced his departure on Dec. 11. He hadn’t been on a prime time commercial since Nov. 29, three days after the accident, according to the Nielson Company. The “global consulting company” Accenture dropped him from the homepage of their Web site. AT&T told him not to call. Gillette similarly has severed ties. Nearly every part of Tiger Woods Inc. sized up his moment of desperate need and, instead of offering solidarity and support, ran for cover, except for Nike whose Nike Golf sales and Tiger Woods branded apparel are almost entirely dependent on him.<br />
</span> </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Tiger’s partnership with the habitual toxic waste dumpers Chevron and the financial criminals in Dubai deserves far more scrutiny from the sports press than it’s received (none). Then there was the Philippines. As detailed in the documentary “The Golf War,” the Filipino government, in conjunction with the military and developers, attempted in the late '90s to remove thousands of peasants from their land, known as Hacienda Looc, to build a golf course. They resisted and three movement leaders ended up dead. Where was Woods? He was brought in by the government to play in an exhibition match and sell golf (though not explicitly the course), all for an undisclosed fee. The government called it “The Day of the Tiger”.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">“The Golf War” filmmakers show clips of Woods saying to kids, “I want all of you to learn and grow from this experience. Invariably you’re gonna learn life, gonna learn about life because golf is a microcosm of life.” "I reach out each and every day with my foundation," Woods said. "We don't focus on golf, because that's not the sole purpose of life. Life is not about hitting a high draw and a high fade. It's about being a better person each and every day and helping others. That's what life is all about. Is golf a part of people's lives? Yes, it's part of my life. But it's not the end of all things in my life."</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span> </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Szred4w25MI/AAAAAAAAE9M/uAabaeEu1wc/s1600-h/TigerWoods.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420889706528695490" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Szred4w25MI/AAAAAAAAE9M/uAabaeEu1wc/s400/TigerWoods.jpeg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 323px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left; width: 400px;" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
He can be politically correct all he wants. But we're talking about golf, which he can directly influence. And the fact remains, there's fewer people of color playing golf at the highest level than when he started. Duke University anthropologist Orin Starn notes that "People have talked about this idea of Barack Obama as the so-called 'Magic Negro,' as a sort of black man who's expected to fix everything and to make everybody feel good about themselves with a magic wand to eliminate and make disappear the problems of racism, and poverty and conflict in America...And I think there's been this idea that Tiger should somehow be a kind of 'Magic Negro' for the PGA Tour, and that he should lift up his wand and somehow make golf into a more diverse and inclusive sport. I don't think this should be on him, at least exclusively". It's a shame that the person who can do the most to bridge the gap says, 'I made it. Now you make it,'" Payton says. "Instead he could say, 'Well this is what my daddy taught me. These are the drills. There are people that can be motivated to be Tiger Woods with a little help and encouragement from him. The people you idolize and emulate can have the greatest influence on what you're doing. </span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span> </span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">My father has taught me few things in life, partly due to his absence and partly due to his incoherence at times when speaking but I remember telling me "if you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything". I also remember hearing this in a song as well, probably Khujo from Goodie Mob, or maybe my mom said it, who knows. Point being, that a man with seemingly great amounts of influence, all the money in the world, and social power has chosen to not stand for anything. Nothing. Not even the wrong things. Let me take that back- all people know of Mr. Woods is that he can hit a golf ball, has two kids and a wife and cheats on her. That's it. And for that, I do not pity his fall from grace. There is something shallow in people who remain silent to remain beholdent to corporate partnerships while already possessing all the money in the world. </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span> </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Szrg_LxxzpI/AAAAAAAAE9s/BLsQkArMhVo/s1600-h/33693117_61f0bb1c9f_o.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420892477591768722" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Szrg_LxxzpI/AAAAAAAAE9s/BLsQkArMhVo/s400/33693117_61f0bb1c9f_o.jpeg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 300px;" /></a></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span> </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Of course, the well-off want to maintain the status quo because, quite frankly, the status quo is working for them. But then stay the hell off of the tv's and magazines hawking products no one needs like some sort of prostitute. MJ or Tiger Woods doesn't give a damn that excessive drinking of gatorade can cause damage to kidneys or that their products continue to be made in sweatshops. But I can deal with that, I fly on planes made by companies such as Boeing and Airbus that manufacture weapons that kill people half a world away. We are all guilty of buying and associating with products and brands have questionable ties in a global economy (Mercedes-Benz and Nazis, American/English multinational banks and the Slave Trade). But in a global society that is rapidly becoming divided upon class lines (whether a disproportionate number of higher class people also have a disproportionately similar skin tone and ethnic heritage) these global figures have the means to empower children who look similar to them even though their experiences and cultues may be different. So while Tiger has neglected the underprivledged youth that may revere him, his corporate sponsors who have crafted and molded his Tiger persona have abandoned him. Every corporate icon thinks their moment in the spotlight will last forever. </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><br />
</span> </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">I am a marketer by education, my whole training was to create an image associated with a brand or product, out of nothing if need be. Marketing is high-class prostitution, go out there make me money and I will pay you a percentage what you bring in to the company. They can create new Tigers out of the most timid sheep. Black stripes on mocha-colored skin that often resembled Nike swooshes and shareholder stock options. Although shaped by Madison Avenue wolves since a youth, the wolfpack is now predictably abandoning its own (weakened) progeny. It is wolves' nature, what else could you expect? How is the public supposed to embrace a 'Cablinasian' that has fallen from grace? I don't know. He has handlers and agents and image consultants. There's real life to worry about, Nigerians and airlines, a country that is too indebted to provide people with health care but apparently can spare the loose change to launch campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Pakistan simultaneously. Plus, am more of a Pelé soccer fan anyway.</span></span></span></div></div></div>Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-51162274043263066072009-12-18T02:27:00.010-05:002010-01-06T00:14:27.848-05:00peau noire, masques blancs...<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF6666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#33CCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">“Out of the blackest part of my soul, across the zebra striping of my mind, surges this desire to be suddenly white. I wish to be acknowledged not as black but as white" ~Frantz Fanon</span></span><br /></span></span><br /><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SysMuRQIAJI/AAAAAAAAE8U/HQQQ18MjW34/s1600-h/sammy-sosa.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 270px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SysMuRQIAJI/AAAAAAAAE8U/HQQQ18MjW34/s400/sammy-sosa.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416436965887705234" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFCC;"><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#339999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Dedicado a Sammy Sosa:</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFCC;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#339999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFCC;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#339999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">From the leaders of early slave revolts on to W.E.B. Dubois, Carter G. Woodson, Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon, we have been passionately informed that the most devastating impact of the White man has been psychological. In their writings and speeches, they consistently cautioned us that, </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;">“The key to the White man’s power and the major strategy used by him to remain dominant in the global power struggle of the modern world, has been in his uncanny ability to influence other people’s minds (cultures), and how they live and relate to one another”. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFCC;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#339999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFCC;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#339999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I am constantly reminded by interacting with different and travelling that the upper-class in Haiti teach their child French, not Kreyol, Puerto Rican elites send their children to Madrid or New York, not San Juan or Ponce, with it's distinctive tone and pronunciation of Spanish. Artists like Yinka Sinobare, of Nigerian descent, whose work critiques Victorian era British decadence and imperial policy, yet proudly an accept awards such as Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) and display it prominently after their name.<br /><br />The intellectual assaults or the psychic violence aimed at controlling Black minds has surprisingly been well documented from at least 1829 when David Walker's "Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World" was first published in Boston. In the book "The Psychology of Blacks: An African Centered Perspective", authors Parham, White and Ajamu state that “The most daunting challenge that we face as African American people is not White supremacy ideology but a need for collective mental liberation". This is not to say that lives are not enriched by the collective cross-cultural exchange that has occurred in our era of Globalization. </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFCC;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#339999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFCC;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#339999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">However, when only one culture, when only one system of governance, language, "way of life", and customs are championed as the ultimate hegemonic prototype, you defeat the very diversity that is made possible by such as fluid, global exchange of ideas and thoughts. When you have predominantly one race, culture, or background in the seats of power, where one dialect or manner of dress is afforded a superior social power, the result is a denial of individuals outside of this power paradigm disavowing their own culture, their own history, their own phenotypical realities, to sometime dramatic effect.<br /></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#339999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SysPMz9DZTI/AAAAAAAAE8c/HO-c9IvoL6k/s1600-h/hattie.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 276px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SysPMz9DZTI/AAAAAAAAE8c/HO-c9IvoL6k/s400/hattie.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416439689622283570" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;">Nigger, Coon, Jigaboo, Buck, Darkie, Pickaninny, Jezebel, Mammy, Aunt Jemima, Sambo, Buckwheat, and Uncle Tom are all powerful examples of negative racial stereotypes imposed on the psyche of African descended people from the outside. No other American group has suffered as many racial epithets as have Blacks generally. Whether in America, Brasil, or even Iraqi (yes, Iraq, there is an African-Iraqi population, read more about it, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/world/middleeast/03basra.html?scp=1&sq=african-iraqis&st=cse">here</a></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;">) So who or what can honestly heal our deeply inflicted psychological scars? Who can really pay “reparations” on the Souls of Black Folk? Now, individuals like Sammy Sosa and the late Michael Jackson can do whatever they want to themselves. Companies like Vichy of Switzerland and Nivea of Germany can sell their Whitening products with advertisements such as the one below, toting the benefits of "whiteness" but unfortunately the schisms created by the systematic "lessing of" the beauty of the "other" leads to tragic consequences.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><br /><br /></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Syshc7Hs_BI/AAAAAAAAE8k/1wrEvdrwDQY/s1600-h/vichy-skin-whitening21.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 281px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Syshc7Hs_BI/AAAAAAAAE8k/1wrEvdrwDQY/s400/vichy-skin-whitening21.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416459757633207314" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;">This problem is also prevalent in Latin America. For example, Brazil has the largest black population outside of the African continent at 90 million, which amounts to roughly half of its people. Yet, despite their conspicuous presence in society, black Brazilians face discrimination, poverty, and lower education and health standards than whites. According to a "racial atlas" created by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Federal University of Minas Gerais, 65 percent of the poor and 70 percent of the extremely poor in Brazil are of African descent.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;">In the Dominican Republic, Sammy Sosa's country of origin, people are overwhelmingly black: 90 percent have African ancestry, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Yet only 11 percent identify themselves as black. And as UN experts found, there is "a profound and entrenched problem of racism and discrimination against such groups as Haitians, Dominicans of Haitian descent, and more generally against blacks within Dominican society". Such problems surfaced in the early 20th century, when Rafael Leónidas Trujillo took over as dictator in the Dominican Republic and, despite his grandmother being Haitian, systematically killed, it is estimated over 20,000 Haitians in the Dominican Republic. He is also known to have bleached his skin (and wear platform shoes-but that is neither here nor there).</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SysujCAz_LI/AAAAAAAAE88/eIpffVom7Ns/s1600-h/f_slavery_boy_map_africa.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SysujCAz_LI/AAAAAAAAE88/eIpffVom7Ns/s400/f_slavery_boy_map_africa.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416474156213730482" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;">A strong anti-Haitian sentiment is rooted in the country's history. Haiti is a former colonizer of the Dominican Republic, as was Spain. Yet, Dominicans only celebrate their independence from Haiti. The government has engaged in mass deportations of Haitians and at present citizenship is denied to Dominican-born children of so-called "illegal" Haitian immigrants. But a large reason for this hatred of Haitians is a denial of Dominicans' own African origin. Simply put, sometimes it is difficult to stare at oneself in the mirror. For years, under the Hispanidad movement, the government of the Dominican Republic emphasized the nation's white, Spanish and Catholic heritage, and conveniently left out the black part.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;">The Dominican Republic is a nation whose hairdressers are known for their hair-straightening prowess and most Dominican women get their hair straightened. Although dark folks are the overwhelming majority, black skin, wide noses and 'pelo malo' (bad hair) do not fit the standard of beauty. So, hair relaxers and skin whiteners are in, and people will call themselves a number of things, such as Indian, burned Indian, Moreno and cinnamon - anything but negro (the Spanish word), or black. This is what years of submerging your culture will do. It is only through a combination of strategic humility and strategic pursuit of self-interest in a determined effort to raise black people’s development — individually and collectively — that our millennium-old image problem will be addressed. It means recognising that we are in a hole (literally and perceptually) and then using any means necessary to climb out.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;">So what, some would argue. Sammy Sosa wants to whiten his skin and some folks want a tan. The problem with using tanning as a counter-argument to whitening is that it is a false dichotomy. If one was to assume that skin whitening and bleaching are merely exercises in cosmetics he or she would be spot-on. But skin whitening is mainly about power, as even its defenders citing "age-old traditions" explicitly concede; by this I mean the relative power of white skin in a world still dominated economically, politically and culturally by European and American frameworks of assumption of what constitutes progress, success and beauty. Even though both artificial and natural skin-tanning are growing in popularity in Asia and elsewhere (while studying in Japan, there is a youth culture called 'ganguro', which literally means 'black skin' and hyper tanning salons but black race is exoticized in Japan in a very distinct manner, more akin to France and the 1920s with Josephine Baker than to the American system, in Japan the cultural differences between the Chinese and Japanese is a more apt comparison.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><br /></span><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SysnPRfC_cI/AAAAAAAAE8s/YowU8rAl8Ag/s1600-h/ganguro+girl+tokyo.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 241px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SysnPRfC_cI/AAAAAAAAE8s/YowU8rAl8Ag/s400/ganguro+girl+tokyo.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416466120188296642" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF6666;">In his 1903 literary masterpiece, The Souls of Black Folk, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois made his case for the idea of a dual or “double consciousness” existing with the collective psyche of Africans in America. This false consciousness that Dr. Dubois wrote about really speaks to the confusion and ambivalence that Black folks experience every day in America as they search and struggle for their own meaningful sense of historical and cultural identity. Indeed the latter struggle and the problem of “The Color Line” are still with us in America more than a century later though no means only a localized phenomenon. Certainly, the U.S. is not immune from this color-coded mentality. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF6666;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF6666;">African-Americans historically internalized racism by pitting light-skinned blacks against dark-skinned ones, and using paper bag tests for admission to exclusive clubs. Black newspapers and magazines in the 1920s through the 1960s often featured advertisements for skin bleaching creams. Typically, with promises of "lighter, brighter skin," these ads blatantly associated white skin with beauty and success, and depicted dark skin as ugly. Meanwhile, people of color in America still fight against the Madison Avenue standard of beauty, which usually takes the form of a malnourished white blond fashion model with slight facial features. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF6666;"><br /></span></span></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sysoh1QiOzI/AAAAAAAAE80/rvVz2biemqY/s1600-h/I_Am_Black_and_Beautiful-756470.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 314px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sysoh1QiOzI/AAAAAAAAE80/rvVz2biemqY/s400/I_Am_Black_and_Beautiful-756470.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416467538540378930" /></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF6666;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF6666;">The once dark-complexioned, undeniably African-looking Sosa now looks more like Ricky Ricardo from "I Love Lucy". As the late Nigerian activist and musician Fela Kuti would have said, it appears that Sosa is guilty of having a "colonial mentality". Throughout the African diaspora, black people internalized the racism they experienced under slavery and colonial rule. Bad habits are hard to break, and there is still self-hatred among black and colored people today. Sammy Sosa and others must realize that try as you might, you cannot bleach out your history.</span></span></div></div></div></div></div>Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-43543574613907521402009-11-27T18:20:00.016-05:002009-11-27T19:47:18.842-05:00Munachi (to love)...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SxBsARmMOAI/AAAAAAAAE7s/QeBS0ELA4UQ/s1600/HR001588.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 259px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SxBsARmMOAI/AAAAAAAAE7s/QeBS0ELA4UQ/s400/HR001588.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408941904451352578" /></a><div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Dedicated to a heart, which for better or worse has spent much time traveling the valleys and peaks of the Andes in search of it's missing piece, learning along the way the limits of language in expressing any type of emotion worth having...</span></span><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">_______________________________________________________<br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3366FF;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3366FF;">To the hills I went looking for you<br />because it was there I saw you first<br />you were playing with the wind<br />perhaps waiting for me.<br /><br />There I found you,<br />and in that same place I lost you,<br />jealousy kills,<br />now what will become of me?<br /><br />To the hill I return,<br />intending to see you once more,<br />and if this time I find you,<br />I will never let you go...</span></div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SxBsKyZP2nI/AAAAAAAAE70/gVmeDniEfyU/s1600/56938156_4b6ec54e90.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 193px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SxBsKyZP2nI/AAAAAAAAE70/gVmeDniEfyU/s400/56938156_4b6ec54e90.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408942085054126706" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;">____________________________________________________</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">And same poem in Quechua...</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#009900;"><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SxBsbMzWhgI/AAAAAAAAE78/56eT2sPWjHY/s1600/AX929349.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SxBsbMzWhgI/AAAAAAAAE78/56eT2sPWjHY/s400/AX929349.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408942367020844546" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#009900;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#009900;">Ucsha urcuman mashcancapac rircani<br />chaipi canta ricsishcamanta<br />huairahuan pucllashpa carcanqui<br />ñucata shuyanacuimantachari<br /><br />Chaipi tuparircani, cuitsacu,<br />chaipillatac chincachircani<br />imamantachari, huarmicu,<br />¿cunanca imashi tucusha?<br /><br />Ucsha urcuman ticrani, huarmicu,<br />cutin tuparisha yuyashpa<br />canta chaipi tuparishpaca, huarmicu,<br />ña na canta saquishachu</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SxBryeyN6NI/AAAAAAAAE7k/kzOu5NiiBD4/s1600/3888246892_2683f6a8c0.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SxBryeyN6NI/AAAAAAAAE7k/kzOu5NiiBD4/s400/3888246892_2683f6a8c0.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408941667473287378" /></a></div>Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-80408232726349650022009-11-26T11:47:00.000-05:002009-11-26T11:47:00.132-05:00but did they bother to leave a tip?...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5ktQapuYI/AAAAAAAAE6k/pycwShoSDpo/s1600/Native+American+Thanksgiving.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 312px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5ktQapuYI/AAAAAAAAE6k/pycwShoSDpo/s400/Native+American+Thanksgiving.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408370931182188930" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC9933;">In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast which is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the American colonies. This harvest meal has become a symbol of cooperation and interaction between English colonists and Native Americans. Although this feast is considered by many to the very first Thanksgiving celebration, it was actually in keeping with a long tradition of celebrating the harvest and giving thanks for a successful bounty of crops. Native American groups throughout the Americas, including the Pueblo, Cherokee, Creek and many others organized harvest festivals, ceremonial dances, and other celebrations of thanks for centuries before the arrival of Europeans in North America.<br /><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#009900;"><b>The colonists didn’t even call the day Thanksgiving.</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC9933;"> To them, a "thanksgiving" was a religious holiday in which they would go to church and thank God for a specific event, such as the winning of a battle or landing on </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC9933;">terra firma</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC9933;"> after months at sea. On such a religious day, the types of recreational activities that the pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians participated in during the 1621 harvest feast – dancing, singing secular songs, playing games – wouldn’t have been allowed. The feast was a secular celebration, so it never would have been considered a thanksgiving in the pilgrims minds. During the next fifteen years, additional epidemics, most of which we know to have been smallpox, struck repeatedly. Europeans caught smallpox and the other maladies, to be sure, but most recovered, including, in a later century, the "heavily pockmarked George Washington". Indians usually died.</span></div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5mo3hGT8I/AAAAAAAAE7E/BV2aXeFW1gk/s1600/nat36.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 274px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5mo3hGT8I/AAAAAAAAE7E/BV2aXeFW1gk/s400/nat36.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408373054802120642" /></a><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;">In his "History of Plymouth Plantation," five-time governor of the [Massachusetts] colony, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bradford_(Plymouth_governor)">William Bradford</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;">, reported that the colonists went hungry for years because they refused to work in the fields, preferring instead to steal. Bradford recalled for posterity that the colony was riddled with "corruption and discontent". The crops were small because "much was stolen both by night and day, before it became scarce eatable".</span><br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;">Today we consider that event our "First Thanksgiving," but the holiday that we celebrate today is actually a combination of two different and long-standing holidays that were celebrated by various cultures around the world: the harvest-home festival or feast that was celebrated when the main crops were harvested; and a formal day of thanksgiving, which could be declared for any occasion. Various "days of thanksgiving" were declared at various times in the New World, ranging from a day set aside by Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in 1541, to a day honoring the arrival of supply ships in Jamestown, Virginia in 1610. So, competing claims for the "first Thanksgiving" have arisen. </span></div><div><br /></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5k24YW53I/AAAAAAAAE6s/cX3KMpb_kyY/s1600/actn148.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 227px; height: 319px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5k24YW53I/AAAAAAAAE6s/cX3KMpb_kyY/s400/actn148.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408371096528807794" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;">What is beyond debate is the fact that the Pilgrims did not introduce the Native Americans to the tradition; Eastern Indians had observed autumnal harvest celebrations for centuries. Thanksgiving's modern celebration dates back only to 1863; not until the 1890s did the Pilgrims get included in the tradition; no one even called them "Pilgrims" until the 1870s. Plymouth Rock achieved ichnographic status only in the nineteenth century, when some enterprising residents of the town moved it down to the water so its significance as the "holy soil" the Pilgrims first touched might seem more plausible. The Rock has become a shrine, the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayflower_Compact">Mayflower Compact</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;"> a sacred text, and our textbooks play the same function as the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, teaching us the rudiments of the civil religion of Thanksgiving.<br /><br />Indians are marginalized in this civic ritual. Our archetypal image of the first Thanksgiving portrays the groaning boards in the woods, with the Pilgrims in their starched Sunday best and the almost-naked Indian guests. Thanksgiving silliness reaches some sort of zenith in the handouts that school children have carried home for decades, with captions like, "They served pumpkins and turkeys and corn and squash. The Indians had never seen such a feast! However, the Pilgrims had literally never seen "such a feast", since all foods mentioned are exclusively indigenous to the Americas and had been provided by [or with the aid of] the local tribe.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;"><br />To most of the Pilgrims and Europeans, the Natives were heathens, savages, treacherous, and Satanic. Upon seeing thousands of dead Natives, the Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, called the plague “miraculous.” In 1634, he wrote to a friend in Engl</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3366FF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;">and:<br /></span><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by the small pox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not fifty, have put themselves under our protect…</span></div></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3366FF;"><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;">The ugly truth is that many Pilgrims were thankful and grateful that the Native population was decreasing. Even worse, there was the Pequot Massacre in 1637, which started after the colonists found a murdered white man in his boat. Ninety armed settlers burned a Native village, along with their crops, and then demanded the Natives to turn in the murderers. When the Natives refused, a massacre followed.</span></span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5k_rc773I/AAAAAAAAE60/5gvpR_9xFJs/s1600/firstThanksgiving.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 255px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5k_rc773I/AAAAAAAAE60/5gvpR_9xFJs/s400/firstThanksgiving.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408371247677173618" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC9933;">Captain John Mason and his colonist army surrounded a fortified Pequot village and reportedly shouted: “We must burn them! Such a dreadful terror let the Almighty fall upon their spirits that they would flee from us and run into the very flames. Thus did the Lord Judge the heathen, filling the place with dead bodies”. The surviving Pequot were hunted and slain.<br /><br />The Governor of Plymouth, William Bradford, further elaborates:<br /></span><i><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#009900;">Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so that they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire…horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them.</span></div></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC9933;"><br />Perhaps most disturbingly, it is strongly argued by many historians that the Pequot Massacre led to the “Thanksgiving” festivities. The day after the massacre, the aforementioned Governor Massachusetts Bay Colony declared: “A day of Thanksgiving, thanking God that they had eliminated over 700 men, women and children.” It was signed into law that, “This day forth shall be a day of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequots.”</span></div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5lIpyymiI/AAAAAAAAE68/RIsp2R6rz4g/s1600/image010.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 283px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5lIpyymiI/AAAAAAAAE68/RIsp2R6rz4g/s400/image010.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408371401850788386" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;">As human beings, I do feel that it’s important for us to approach history with honesty and sensitivity. Perhaps some of you as you set down to dine with your families today do not believe this history is relevant to you, but I would strongly argue that a history that is not inclusive is a dangerously racist and prejudice one. Yes, we should spend time with our families and Loved ones, and yes, we should be grateful and thankful for all that we have, but not at the expense of ignoring an entire race of people, their culture, and their history. The fact that history textbooks and schools try to glorify the Pilgrims while omitting significant facts about the Natives represents that there is a lot to improve in the United States. Let us not become blinded by super-patriotism or blowout sales of “Black Friday.” Let us give some thought to the Native people, learn from their struggles, and embolden ourselves to stand up against racism and genocide in all forms.<br /><br />Origin myths do not come cheaply. To solely glorify the Pilgrims is dangerous. The genial omissions and false details our texts use to retail the Pilgrim legend promote Anglocentrism, which only handicaps us when dealing with all those whose culture is not distinctively Anglo. Surely, in history, "truth should be held sacred, at whatever cost."<br /><br />They [Natives] deserve your attention...and your thanks!</span><br /></div>Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-22620547483303454202009-11-23T17:53:00.001-05:002009-11-26T05:19:07.813-05:00she's so "precious"...<object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/2BtZRCnv-NI&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/2BtZRCnv-NI&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;">Nothing quite prepares you for the rough-cut diamond that is the movie "Precious." A rare blend of pure entertainment and dark social commentary, this shockingly raw, surprisingly irreverent and absolutely unforgettable story of an obese, illiterate, pregnant black Harlem teen circa 1987 is one that you hope will not be dismissed as too difficult, because it should not be missed. Bleak, depressing, and shockingly brutal, Precious is the "feel-bad/feel-good" movie of the year. It's a film designed to pummel you with a situation that would send most humans into a weeping fetal position but to then show you that the power to overcome is greater than the tendency to withdraw one's self and die. </span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;">Sure the movie may be criticized social pornography at its worst, festering in racial self-loathing and oblivious to an economic system that routinely neglects its neediest and most vulnerable. Making those inbred white trash screen caricatures look like family values filmmaking at its finest in comparison. While certain to reinforce white prejudices related to African-American criminality, ghetto mothers as conniving, evil and violent welfare cheats, and habitual eating disorder fast food binges as sources of bad bodies and bad behavior alike. For all the darkness seen in this film it's astonishing the amount of light that is seen at the end, even though the unsettling nature of it all was still with me as the credits began to roll. Sidibe created a character so believable, she not only manages to earn the compassion of the characters in the film, but also those in the audience. It's a truly masterful performance in a film </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; font-family:georgia, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;">"Precious" is not an easy movie to watch, but it is an important one and one of the best films of the year (indeed of recent memory).</span></span></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;"><br /></span></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5J-ZWvl-I/AAAAAAAAE58/2BVSfDNJCGY/s1600/preciousposter2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 270px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5J-ZWvl-I/AAAAAAAAE58/2BVSfDNJCGY/s400/preciousposter2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408341538825541602" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;"><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF6666;">After watching the movie, I began to ask myself, "What are norms?" What can be considered a "normal" family life? The average social institution and relationships are intimately grounded in a pervasive economy of negotiation and discourse of power, which shape relations between people at all levels in a society. This idea of normalization is pervasive in our society: e.g., national standards for educational programs, for medical practice, for industrial processes and products. The movie provoked some research into the causes, sources, and possible solution to chronic, generational poverty and dysfunction, especially since many of the scenes in the movie were filmed in my neighborhood of Harlem.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF6666;"><br />Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 study, "The Negro Family" offered the argument that "the Negro family in the Urban ghetto was crumbling." This fed into other emerging contemporary ideas: such as the "culture of poverty" hypothesis. Accordingly, the culturally available and politically opportune way of explaining poverty was convincing: the poor were poor because they made bad decisions and lacked the motivation which would get them good jobs (assuming, as always that there are good jobs to be had!). The proposed solution was to reshape the poor, perhaps with programs that provide "values" education, along with the right mix of incentives and penalties which would promote "marital stability" and strong development of the familial unit.<br /><br />According to the definition of relative poverty, the poor are those who lack what is needed by most Americans to live decently because they earn less than half of the nation's median income. By this standard, around 20 percent of Americans live in poverty, and this has been the case for at least the past 40 years. Of these 20 percent, 60 percent are from the working class poor. Black children have a higher chance of experiencing poverty during their childhood (79%), compared to White children (31%).</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;"><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5KSl3YctI/AAAAAAAAE6M/u246ndDl-mY/s1600/precious.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 286px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5KSl3YctI/AAAAAAAAE6M/u246ndDl-mY/s400/precious.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408341885781045970" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;"><br />Minority women, particularly African American and Hispanic, are twice as likely to delay or have no prenatal care (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2000). Troubled pregnancies expose unborn fetuses to the potential for birth defects, low birth weight, and premature delivery that can lead to lifelong cognitive, social and behavioral problems. By the age of 4, the average child of lower socioeconomic status on welfare might have had 144,000 fewer encouragements than middle-class children and 560,000 less than upper-class children and 84,000 more discouragements of their behavior than middle-class children and 100,000 more than upper-class children.<br /><br />The effects of poverty are serious. Children who grow up in poverty suffer more persistent, frequent, and severe health problems than do children who grow up under better financial circumstances. Children raised in poverty tend to miss school more often because of illness. These children also have a much higher rate of accidents than do other children, and they are twice as likely to have impaired vision and hearing, iron deficiency anemia, and higher than normal levels of lead in the blood, which can impair brain function. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;"><br /></span></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5HHQw0pYI/AAAAAAAAE5k/TGnmEGisErw/s1600/Precious-1-550x367.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5HHQw0pYI/AAAAAAAAE5k/TGnmEGisErw/s400/Precious-1-550x367.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408338392602944898" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#33CCFF;"><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;">While strides have been made in a post-Civil Rights society, no single initiative has been able to break the fundamental correlation between poor families, impoverished communities, and low academic achievement that disproportionately affects minorities. More than forty years later, a Black child in the United States still lack a fair and equitable opportunity to live in decent housing, learn within adequate educational systems, and to prosper and excel socioeconomically. Measures taken further along the educational path to equalize the achievements of minorities, such as college enrollment quotas, achieve only small-scale affects and ignore the multitude of disadvantaged children who have failed to reach this point. As such, these policies disregard the long-term intergenerational effects of having one’s life choices limited by race. </span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#33CCFF;"><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5J265zHEI/AAAAAAAAE50/Ha7gbhuWjOA/s1600/mainimg.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 218px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5J265zHEI/AAAAAAAAE50/Ha7gbhuWjOA/s400/mainimg.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408341410391989314" /></a><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#33CCFF;"><br />A number of those in the Black middle class originally benefitted from War on Poverty initiatives themselves and were able to achieve a degree of social advancement and mobility. It has been posited that as neighborhood income increases, test scores and behavior improve significantly for white children but not for black children. However, those who are able to acquire the knowledge and skills that could influence and motivate the next generation of children moved away and left those less competent isolated in communities riddled with drugs, crime, unemployment and despair. A 1997 study in Chicago found that 79 percent of black middle-class households in Chicago live within four blocks where a third or more of the population is poor, compared to only 36 percent of white middle-class households.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#33CCFF;"><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5JwiDJFvI/AAAAAAAAE5s/5N9a47be9RU/s1600/monique-precious.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 348px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5JwiDJFvI/AAAAAAAAE5s/5N9a47be9RU/s400/monique-precious.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408341300641076978" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#33CCFF;"><br />Equal access to education is unmistakably one of the most important elements in aiding to lift those who can take advantage of such measures out of economic dependency and social mobility. Family circumstances that undercut cognitive skills such as poverty, high unemployment among family members, inadequate nourishment, overcrowded and unsafe environments, and violence continue to be present throughout many urban neighborhoods. During his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama pledged to establish a Presidential Early Learning Council to coordinate federal, state and local policies to quadruple financing for Early Head Start, provide federal challenge grants for states to use for early care and education programs, and expand home visiting programs for low-income mothers. These measures emphasize improving quality, not just reaching more children. Students at risk for the biological or social effects of poverty are also more likely to attend schools with reduced educational resources and fewer opportunities for quality instruction. The $787 billion economic stimulus package passed recently by Congress has provided an increase in funding for programs aimed at young children. Head Start and Early Head Start will receive $2.1 billion over two years, and the child-care grant program will receive $2 billion over two years. Additionally, the $10 billion Mr. Obama has pledged for early childhood education would amount to the largest new federal initiative for young children since Head Start began in 1965.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#33CCFF;"><br /></span></div></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5SJ99fBII/AAAAAAAAE6c/z3SF7rAp0YM/s1600/Picture+1.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 284px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/Sw5SJ99fBII/AAAAAAAAE6c/z3SF7rAp0YM/s400/Picture+1.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408350533723292802" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#33CCFF;"><br />In a nation with a per capita GDP above the poverty line for a family of four, it is appalling that almost 3 million people work full time, year-round and are poor, and that more than 12 million American children are living in poverty. Lyndon Johnson proposed to fight poverty "because it is right, because it is wise." In a land of vast wealth, twice as rich as America in the 1960s, can today's leaders to rise to the occasion?</span></div>Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-62086181777012493242009-11-20T05:36:00.027-05:002009-11-20T20:28:45.563-05:00low-level shit...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SwcGd74Qf2I/AAAAAAAAE5Q/O_A40ofCIWw/s1600/AudacityCover.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 374px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SwcGd74Qf2I/AAAAAAAAE5Q/O_A40ofCIWw/s400/AudacityCover.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5406296989041196898" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF0000;">“To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars </span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF0000;">is the very bottom of hardships.”</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF0000;">~ W.E.B. DuBois</span></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;"><br /></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;"><br /></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;">We live in a world where 20 percent of the population uses 80 percent of its resources, where upward of 1 billion people live on $1 a day or less, where 16,000 children die daily from malnutrition and where the people of sub-Saharan Africa, the globe's poorest region, spend $25,000 every minute servicing their massive debt to the rich countries of the North. All those markers of extreme poverty have gotten dramatically worse since the 1980s; despite rapid technological and agricultural progress in the developed world, the number of people suffering from chronic, absolute (as opposed to relative) poverty and malnutrition has roughly doubled in the past 40 years. There are places I have seen in Brooklyn, L.A., Harlem, or Chicago that look as "third world" as anything I have witnessed in Bangkok, Cairo or Rio.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3366FF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Out of all my 27 years living in New York City, in El Barrio and Harlem, I have prided myself on never having been robbed, mugged or stuck-up.<br /><br />I have had knives pulled on me...<br />I have had guns flashed on me...<br />I've been spat at, punched in the face and somehow people have never manage to get my wallet, money, or in one case, my Jordans.<br /><br />In any of the other countries I have been to I have seen people pickpocketed, robbed, beat-up and beat-down (with metal chairs) but I have managed to avoid such misfortune despite having the habit of taking random walks into different neighborhoods with the help of maps or a destination. I truly believe that New York breeds a particular type of street knowledge that is universal and allows one to analyze situations before they occur and avoid becoming a victim. It also helps that at one point during my youth I was briefly a stick-up kid in El barrio until I saw that this was a temporary solution to a larger problem and more profound needs.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;">What I "needed" in my youth was quite frankly money, because from an early age, literally when we first realize as kids that our parents can only obtained toys and candy with this "thing" called "money", we identify it as a means of obtaining our material desires. As young adults we begin to associate money with social mobility and status and the objects we can obtain with it as a means to define our worth. Even as a child I knew that the "power" that local neighborhood drug dealer had did not garner the same respect or the same power in any other context besides local neighborhood politics. Obviously long-lasting change in my socioeconomic status and social mobility would have to be achieved by other means.</span></span></span></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SwcGuKC4DuI/AAAAAAAAE5Y/anOlTuv-W9Q/s1600/burglar-pic.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 356px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SwcGuKC4DuI/AAAAAAAAE5Y/anOlTuv-W9Q/s400/burglar-pic.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5406297267721735906" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;"><br />Years later I find myself in Chicago visiting one of my dearest friends to network and politic with her in the Second City for a couple of days. A couple of spots we hit up include J-Bar, which is a lounge located in the upscale James Hotel and patronized largely by well-off minority clientele and </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;"><a href="http://www.chicagofunk.com">Funk Lounge</a></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;">, which is more "hood" with a vibe of a strip club (it has poles), though it is open until 4am on the weekdays.</span></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;">Last night I found myself at Funk Lounge </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;">posted up against the bar, watching my homegirl's purse and coat while she networked. I was busy on facebook, text messaging, emailing and doing a hundred others things besides listening to the music and checking for women. I wasn't worried, I had my black trench on with True Religion jeans on so I knew there was no way anyone could get to my wallet unless they cut a hole thru my jacket and jeans. </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SwcGX0WjqbI/AAAAAAAAE5I/Xy5PLFEXdI0/s1600/pickpocket.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SwcGX0WjqbI/AAAAAAAAE5I/Xy5PLFEXdI0/s400/pickpocket.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5406296883941583282" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF0000;">While looking 4 the "Halle Berrys", the "Mo'Niques" graviate towards my ass instead...some girl just reached 3rd base w/ me against my will in Chicago...</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF0000;">-a random tweet of mine from 19 November 2009</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3366FF;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3366FF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Sometime around 3am his heavy set woman walks up to me to dance while am text messaging on my phone. I cut her a smile and continue to ignore her. </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3366FF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;">When she gets close, I pull away; </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;">When she grabs my pants, I push her away; </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#C0C0C0;">When she grabs my dick, I elbow her. </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3366FF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 102, 255); font-family:georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I tell her am with my girl and go reach for my friend who is standing behind this woman though she is oblivious to what is going on. As I walk away the girl sticks her hands in my pockets and tries to grope me while my friend laughs thinking I am enjoying it, encouraging me to dance with her. In the process, the girl pulled out my money clip from my pocket, an empty money clip, minus a £20 British Pound, because in the struggle my American money slipped off of it. Do girls really go to clubs and damn near give dude's handjobs to locate and then remove money out of there pockets? Grown women? Come on, really? And then you have to leave the club before the person realizes it. So do you make a night of it? Just continuously club-hop until you get enough to keep your cellphone on and your rent paid? Like F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "You can stroke people with words" love, I woulda gotten you a drink and sent you home in a cab like a lady if you would played your cards right, maybe even a meal with the happy ending you were attempting to give me. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3366FF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SwcGB05JD5I/AAAAAAAAE5A/FNXCpc3VtIU/s1600/Goldman_Queen.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 277px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SwcGB05JD5I/AAAAAAAAE5A/FNXCpc3VtIU/s400/Goldman_Queen.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5406296506129518482" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3366FF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3366FF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">You can't be mad when misfortune hits. I hope she enjoys the money clip filled with a foreign currency note. I mean I did get turned on a little bit by the whole event. That being said, I hope she realizes that you can't make a career out of such low-level shit. Women possess the power to manipulate men in far greater ways than literally digging through their pockets. If I have learned anything from my business degree is that there more insidious ways of acquiring lasting wealth. Ways of gaming the system to gain influence and then using your newfound power to change the rules to your benefit (re: NYC Mayor Bloomberg). Exactly how different are these scenarios? Compare any nickel-and-dime scheme to the fraud perpetuated on Wall Street and you visualize the difference in scale that I am talking about. You can quite literally rob and deceive and have people pay you for the pleasure of being relieved on their money and belongings. If your going to hustle than be the best at it. Go all in! What that woman lacks in foresight can never be found in the pockets of men.</span></span></span></div></div></div>Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-31057076130066715532009-11-06T08:30:00.015-05:002009-11-09T17:14:40.636-05:00embracing life...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SvPKsT9zE6I/AAAAAAAAE4w/7GbeAVJ4Ky4/s1600-h/howard_embrace.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 287px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400883240769885090" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SvPKsT9zE6I/AAAAAAAAE4w/7GbeAVJ4Ky4/s400/howard_embrace.jpg" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#ff9900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">When I turned 25 back in 2007, there were only two people that I saw that entire day whom were unrelated to me. A quarter-century of life was very personal for me and I chose to spend the day reflecting and meditating, wearing a new outfit and treating myself to lunch at Jean-georges' Mercer Kitchen. However, a few weeks before my birthday I got the idea that it would be cool to meet up with the doctor that delivered me back in the 1982. So I got his information from my mom and then googled him and found out that he now had a private practice close to the hospital where I was born.</span></span> <div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3366ff;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">So on that day, the 17th of June, 2007 I went to his office, walked in and asked to see him, the receptionist looked very confused and hesitated to call the doctor to the front of the office. But he came out and I shook his hand and thanked him. Told him it was my birthday and twenty-five years prior he had been the first face I most likely saw upon my entrance into this world. Surprisingly, he offered me five minutes to sit and talk to him. He said he had never had a child come and visit him this far along their life path and thank him. We spoke for a while and I was leaving I asked him if he remember the details of my birth (he did not), then I asked, "Is there some sort of reaction common to all children as they are born, what is their most common "first reaction" to birth"?</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">His response: the first human gesture is the embrace.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">After coming into the world, at the beginning of their days, babies wave their arms as if seeking someone. He then added: </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Other doctors, who work with people who have already lived their lives, say that the aged, at the end of their days, die trying to raise their arms. Reaching out to their loved ones, or if they don't have any near them, they simply reach out to anyone. They lunge out towards the living as death pulls them in the opposite direction.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SvPKz_2TprI/AAAAAAAAE44/Hk42K7UEkh8/s1600-h/46048c9f8b6fa5.09568498frogview-gallery.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 342px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400883372808709810" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SvPKz_2TprI/AAAAAAAAE44/Hk42K7UEkh8/s400/46048c9f8b6fa5.09568498frogview-gallery.jpg" /></a> <div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#ff9900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I have had the misfortune of seeing people in my family die, quite literally in front of me. I saw my grandfather breath his last breathe as cancer consumed him. He died with my grandmother and his sister embracing him, he too weak to move, that is everything except his eyes. His eyes told his whole story, "they said continue without me, I have carried this family as far as I could, sorry for my untimely exit". My great-grandmother, unable to speak after a debilitating stroke, told me (in spanish) to find a woman who can cook me </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#ff9900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">arroz con salchicha</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#ff9900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> like she could, her kitchen had been ordered closed forever by God. She never walked again but she could move half her body and gesture, and with that one arm she gave tighter hugs that some people could give with six. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#ff9900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3366ff;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">And that's it, that's all, no matter how hard we strive or how many words we pile on. Everything comes down to this: between two flutterings, with no more explanation, the voyage occurs... </span></span></div>Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4475146166074509199.post-36702167852727190992009-11-05T08:10:00.013-05:002009-11-05T10:23:51.365-05:00a little prince in harlem...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SvKOR1vw-rI/AAAAAAAAE4I/O-xQJBm0Fys/s1600-h/pain-2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 383px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SvKOR1vw-rI/AAAAAAAAE4I/O-xQJBm0Fys/s400/pain-2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400535340306987698" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I grew up as a little prince in an old-school extended family, with multiple generations under one roof, where I was the only male. My Great-Grandmother, Grandmother, Mom, and two aunts were all my queens in our little tenth-floor, 3 bedroom kingdom in the El Barrio sky. Around 1989, things fell apart. Mom was 25 and decided she wanted to live her youth to the fullest and go clubbing, grandma moved out, titi gave up on men and was always at her girlfriend's place in the Bronx, so it was me and the eldest watching cartoons and novelas in spanish. She went to bed early and sometimes my mom didn't come home at all, although she always kissed me on the forehead before heading out the door. I never did quite understand why I took showers and dressed into pajamas whereas she did the same and put on dresses and heels and went outside. What do people do at night? You can't play basketball. You can barely see things. Adult life seemed so complicated from the perspective of a 9 year old.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SvKOcIyTnDI/AAAAAAAAE4Y/x2qpo7IIZNQ/s1600-h/12556_guayasamin-grito-30x40_large1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 302px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SvKOcIyTnDI/AAAAAAAAE4Y/x2qpo7IIZNQ/s400/12556_guayasamin-grito-30x40_large1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400535517216611378" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Fast forward 18 years:</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF6666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF6666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Grandma is still in Florida; Great-Grandma is 10 years passed; my mom is in North Carolina, still dances but has given up the clubs, one aunt had breast cancer and the other is healthy. Healthy that is until two days ago. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SvKOmhfw4uI/AAAAAAAAE4o/tgCY-R6kI78/s1600-h/pain+smh.com.au+WQ.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 350px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SvKOmhfw4uI/AAAAAAAAE4o/tgCY-R6kI78/s400/pain+smh.com.au+WQ.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400535695648416482" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3366FF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">As time passes I am constantly reminded of their mortality as their generation slowly slips away. Am an adult now, and my world has grown far beyond the borders of my childhood. I am an artist and a graduate student. In the past 3 months I have done photo shoots in Paris, had meetings in London, and went out to Munich for Oktoberfest with eight of my closest (girl)friends. But I define home as 5 square blocks in the middle of the island of Manhattan where my family lives scattered throughout El Barrio. Not so much the actual structures of NYC subsidized housing but my family themselves. They are my living, breathing homes. Residences that are never in danger of foreclosure or denying me a hug because I was short on the rent on the first of the month.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SvKOgiiPUhI/AAAAAAAAE4g/xE29nUtbqIw/s1600-h/segre_guayasamin.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 307px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SvKOgiiPUhI/AAAAAAAAE4g/xE29nUtbqIw/s400/segre_guayasamin.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400535592848019986" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">So when I landed this Sunday in JFK after another flight out of the country I turned on my phone and was greeted by text messages and voicemails from family. A stroke: sketchy details, conflicting reports as to which hospital in the city, the condition of my aunt. One of my homes was in danger, perhaps the strongest home I have left. See this particular aunt is a warrior, her spine is composed of spear points. She has never put up with any sh*t from her husbands, boyfriends, family, children, or friends. Her will was indomitable but the cemeteries of the world are filled with women (and men) just like this. She will overcome this. Her body will bear the scars of this battle. And who knows, they may be some other malady lurking, undiscovered, that will offer one final coup de grâce. </span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SvKOXq8g2VI/AAAAAAAAE4Q/vSrmSrZkfYA/s1600-h/293309_0.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 332px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KmaZKLgV2SY/SvKOXq8g2VI/AAAAAAAAE4Q/vSrmSrZkfYA/s400/293309_0.gif" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400535440486881618" /></a><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF6666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">But seeing her lying there I could see her struggles, the struggle to simply speak coherently, to move one half of her body, however even surrounded by family she was clearly leading the charge in this battle. From all the tears in the room (curiously absent from her own face) you would think the roles were reserved. After my hospital visit I was left with more questions than answers but no matter the outcome of her recent health issue, no matter where I may be in this world, whether in Harlem, NYC or Haarlem, The Netherlands my aunts can be assured that their little prince has never stopped defending the family castle...<br /><br />She will overcome this. that I can assure her of...</span></span></div>Urayoánhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16341173992507872898noreply@blogger.com0