Traditional Cambodian Music and Flute playing
Sunday, January 29, 2012 10:30am
Today's journey starts with the movie The Flute Player; the moving story of a Cambodian man who as a young teen was held hostage by the Khmer Rouge and to preserve his life obeyed their commands to commit atrocities against his own people. The story if one of the most tremendous examples that I can remember; a person's life centers around antipathies that leave him with a an inward gulf of guilt and remorse. He works through this by spending his time educating people in the ways of the classical music of Cambodia. Watch the video so you will be moved to feel in a way that is deeper than you thought possible.
Part of the movie is filmed amongst the temple and ruins of Angkor Wat; once an ancient capital of the Khmer Empire and now a Buddhist Sanctuary. The unique characteristics of Angkor Wat are just being discovered; the urban center that was in the middle of a huge complex comprised over 1,000 sq. Km. An astonishing fact is that the urban center collapsed as the elaborate hydraulics of the surrounding infracstructure were neglected and fell into disrepair. A recent assessment of the whole complex shows that there is a close relationship between the temples and the areas agricultural production; temple building was spread rather evenly throughout the whole cosmopolitan area; all if tied together by a huge complex of pond, artificial lakes, canals, dikes and other waterways.
The politics of oppression and identity; the intersection of economics, race, politics, class and gender identity
Monday, January 16, 2012 15:32 Updated on Sunday January 29, 2012 17:32
Whew! Kind of a long title there but I had to fit it all in. While researching today's list of topics and readings I was struck by the title of this one in particular and will start here:
Punks, Bulldaggers and Welfare Queens; The Radical Potential of Queer Politics is a scholarly article by Cathy Cohen that outlines briefly what Queer Politics is, its shortcomings and yet how its basic premise can be applied to the whole larger arena of combating oppression-which is basically the subject of this website. Cohen points out that while the roots of Queer Politics was to fight for gay rights, by offering only a binary theme (Queers vs. the Heteros) much was lost. All people live in a world that is more complex-say the struggle for racial equality was boiled down to Racial Minorities vs White Oppressors. I give a longish quote below and then continue on with some ideas on how the struggle for freedom can be furthered.
On the eve of finishing this essay my attention is focused not on how to rework the conclusion (as it should be) but instead on news stories of alleged racism at Gay Men’s Health Crisis (CMHC). It seems that three black board members of this largest and oldest AIDS organization in the world have resigned over their perceived subservient position on the CMHC board. Billy E. Jones, former head of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and one of the board members to quit, was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “Much work needs to be done at GMHC to make it truly inclusive and welcoming of diversity .... It is also clear that such work will be a great struggle. I am resigning because I do not choose to engage in such struggle at GMHC, but rather prefer to fight for the needs of those ravaged by H.I.V (Dunlap).
This incident raises mixed emotions for me, for it points to the continuing practice of racism many of us experience on a daily basis in lesbian and gay communities. But just as disturbingly it also highlights the limits of a lesbian and gay political agenda based on a civil rights strategy, where assimilation into, and replication of, dominant institutions are the goals. Many of us continue to search for a new political direction and agenda, one that does not focus on integration into dominant structures but instead seeks to transform the basic fabric and hierarchies that allow systems of oppression to persist and operate efficiently. For some of us, such a challenge to traditional gay and lesbian politics was offered by the idea of queer politics. Here we had a potential movement of young antiassimilationist activists committed to challenging the very way people understand and respond to sexuality. These activists promised to engage in struggles that would disrupt dominant norms of sexuality, radically transforming politics in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered communities.
Despite the possibility invested in the idea of queerness and the practice of queer politics, l argue that a truly radical or transformative politics has not resulted from queer activism. In many instances, instead of destabilizing the assumed categories and binaries of sexual identity, queer politics has served to reinforce simple dichotomies between heterosexual and everything “queer.” An understanding of the ways in which power informs and constitutes privileged and marginalized subjects on both sides of this dichotomy has been left unexamined.
I query in this essay whether there are lessons to be learned from queer activism that can help us construct a new politics. I envision a politics where one’s relation to power, and not some homogenized identity, is privileged in determining one’s political comrades. I’m talking about a politics where the nonnormative and marginal position of punks, bulldaggers, and welfare queens, for example, is the basis for progressive transformative coalition work. Thus, if there is any truly radical potential to be found in the idea of queerness and the practice of queer politics, it would seem to be located in its ability to create a space in opposition to dominant norms, a space where transformational political work can begin. Choen 1997, p 438
Cohen goes on to give us a brief summary of Queer Politics, the basic premeise being that if Gays wanted to find an identity they had to be out and in folk's faces about their ‘Queer Nature’ and thus the concept of a Queer Nation was put forth. Queer activisits protested and gave loud vocal opposition to the idea of static sexual identity catagories like straight, gay, lesbian or yes even queer. In summarizing her paper Cohen makes the point that the definition of queer could be applied to punks, bulldaggers, Welfare Queens and many others in society whose identity does not fit the preconceived notion of what an upstanding citizen should be. It leaves at least 97% of the country under the thumb of oppression; the members class of people in the the top 3% are not exactly safe in their bubbles either should they make a wrong step.
And, unfortunately, often it has been the work of professed liberals like William Julius Wilson, in his book The Truly Disadvantaged, that, while not using the word “pathologies,” has substantiated in its own tentative way the conservative dichotomy between the deserving working poor and the lazy, Cadillac-driving, steak-eating welfare queens of Ronald Reagan’s imagination. Again, I raise this point to remind us of the numerous ways that sexuality and sexual deviance from a prescribed norm have been used to demonize and to oppress various segments of the population, even some classified under the label “heterosexual.”
The policies of politicians and the actions of law enforcement officials have reinforced, in much more devastating ways, the distinctions between acceptable forms of heterosexual expression and those to be regulated—increasingly through incarceration. This move toward the disallowance of some forms of heterosexual expression and reproductive choice can be seen in the practice of prosecuting pregnant women suspected of using drugs—nearly 80 percent of all women prosecuted are women of color; through the forced sterilization of Puerto Rican and Native American women; and through the state—dictated use of Norplant by women answering to the criminal justice system and by women receiving state assistance . Further, it is the “nonnormative” children of many of these nonnormative women that Newt Gingrich would place in orphanages. This is the same Newt Gingrich who, despite his clear disdain for gay and lesbian “lifestyles,” has invited lesbians and gay men into the Republican party. I need not remind you that he made no such offer to the women on welfare discussed above. Who, we might ask, is truly on the outside of heteronormative power—maybe most of us?
Finally, my research shows the the world of corporate power may not be openly gay friendly because of the issue of property rights. If gay marriages were recognized (and I will show in a 2 minute display of the laws that there is no reason they should not be legally binding) benefits given to employees would have to be extended to those who are party to contracts commonly known as marriage.
In his State of the Union Address of December 1833, Jackson remarked (Woolley & Peters, 2005),
In this point of the case the question is distinctly presented
whether the people of the United States are to
govern through representatives chosen by their unbiased
suffrages or whether the money and power of a
great corporation are to be secretly exerted to influence
their judgment and control their decisions.
Thirty years later, Abraham Lincoln, who had done
much (first as a lawyer and then as president) to
transform railroads into the first modern corporations,
voiced similar concerns. As the Civil War drew
to a close, Lincoln wrote to Colonel William F. Elkins
(cited in Hartmann, 2002),
We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is
nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure
and blood. . . . but I see in the near future a crisis
approaching that unnerves me and causes me to
tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of
the war, corporations have been enthroned and an
era of corruption in high places will follow, and the
money power of the country will endeavor to prolong
its reign by working upon the prejudices of the
people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands
and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment
more anxiety than ever before, even in the midst of
the war. God grant that my suspicions may prove
groundless. (p. 88) “Corporations, Democracy, and the Public Good” Stephen R Barley
Stanford University p 203
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens, of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall have the same right, in every State and Territory in the United States, to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, to the contrary notwithstanding.
SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That any person who, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, shall subject, or cause to be subjected, any inhabitant of any State or Territory to the deprivation of any right secured or protected by this act, or to different punishment, pains, or penalties on account of such person having at any time been held in a condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, or by reason of his color or race, than is prescribed for the punishment of white persons, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction, shall be punished by fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both, in the discretion of the court.
SEC. 6. And be it further enacted, That any person who shall knowingly and wilfully obstruct, hinder, or prevent any officer, or other person charged with the execution of any warrant or process issued under the provisions of this act... [shall] be subject to a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, and imprisonment not exceeding six months....
There you have it, legal contracts are binding before the law. Next problem is; how to construct a legal marriage contract in the common law, so I guess there is the reason the state laws have to be changed because the common law is often based on old fashioned tradition.
Stop the press! I just re-read this Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at Riverside Church in New York City, here is a long excerpt, amphasis added:
Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible. As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.
There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.
In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military “advisers” in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.
The People Are Important
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every moutain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain."
A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.
This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:
Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day
Ecomonics, Politics and Modern Deomcracy
Can this nation achieve justice and equality for all?- part III
Saturday, December 31, 2011 21:07
Earlier discussions at this site discussed Modern Money Theory and those are still available. To sumamrize in the very briefest fashion—and really the referenced page has lots of explanations that I see as sufficient to my purpose so I will not review all of that—Modern Money Theory offers our nation’s leaders a way to lead us into economic recovery; they are choosing to not use the tools at hand to do their job. The Theory tells us that if there is massive unepmployment , the government deficit spending is too low. Remember, the only way the economy can be stimulated is if people without jobs somehow find ways to earn paychecks and to spend money on needed services and goods. The phenomena of millionaires-who-create-jobs was found to be an empty set; indeed, why would any entrepneur start spending on a business that is in a state of equilibrium if the prognosis for tomorrow’s sales shows there will be fewer customers coming in the door as the unemployment numbers contine to drift through the doldrums? Customers need spare income to spend beyond rent and food items.
The Centre of Full Employment and Equity web site shows the basic ideas behind fiscal deficit spending that will move us closer to full employment.
High and persistent unemployment has pervaded almost every OECD country since the mid-1970s. Mass unemployment arises because the budget deficit is too small relative to the desires of the private sector to meet its tax obligations, to save and to hold money for transactions purposes. Unemployment is thus a macroeconomic phenomenon and can never be a "real wage" problem The solution to this problem is for government to use deficit spending to introduce a Buffer Stock Employment (BSE) policy (Mitchell 1996, 1998a).
The BSE approach to full employment is counter the current policy direction of governments in the OECD economies. The rising unemployment began with the rapid inflation of the mid-1970s. The inflation left an indelible impression on policy-makers who became captives of the resurgent new labor economics and its macroeconomic counterpart, monetarism. The goal of low inflation led to excessively restrictive fiscal and monetary policy stances by OECD governments driven by what we might call "backward" thinking (Mitchell 1996, 1998a). This has led to GDP growth in OECD countries being generally below that necessary to absorb the growth in the labor force in combination with rising labor productivity.
In addition to the normal arguments that monetarists and others use to justify their case against fiscal activism (crowding out, inefficient resource usage), it is often argued that increased globalisation imposes further restrictions on the ability of governments to pursue independent fiscal and monetary policy. In Australia’s case, it is alleged that budget deficits only result in growing current account deficits and rising debt levels. Reacting to this, it is alleged that external funds managers can enforce higher interest rates and thus even lower growth and higher unemployment in the domestic economy.
There are several testable hypotheses included in the monetarist case, which are rarely confronted with empirical scrutiny.
Is there evidence of a relationship between budget deficits and short-term and long-term interest rates? If there is no discernable statistical relationship found it is difficult to argue against fiscal activism based on financial crowding out arguments.
Is there evidence of a relationship between long-term interest rates across countries in globalised financial markets? If there is no relationship detected then the view that financial traders in the large markets like Japan and the United States can render domestic monetary policy ineffective is problematic.
Is there any evidence that the relationship between domestic long-term and short-term interest rates is unstable? Stability implies that the cash rate, which is set as a policy instrument, and the longer-term interest rates, which are influenced by market considerations, move together in a proportional manner over the long-run and that therefore the determinant is the officially controlled cash rate.
Is there any evidence to support the twin-deficits hypothesis that imposes causality from the fiscal deficit changes to changes in the current account deficit? A lack of such a direct relationship also provides further support for the use of budget deficits under the BSE policy.
The obvious point to achieving justice for all —meaning opportunities for full employment for every person who needs and wants— goes back to the idea of an earlier author:Wynne Godley who gives us the purpose of governement.
I think that the central government of any sovereign state ought to be striving all the time to determine the optimum overall level of public provision, the correct overall burden of taxation, the correct allocation of total expenditures between competing requirements and the just distribution of the tax burden. It must also determine the extent to which any gap between expenditure and taxation is financed by making a draft on the central bank and how much it is financed by borrowing and on what terms. The way in which governments decide all these (and some other) issues, and the quality of leadership which they can deploy, will, in interaction with the decisions of individuals, corporations and foreigners, determine such things as interest rates, the exchange rate, the inflation rate, the growth rate and the unemployment rate. It will also profoundly influence the distribution of income and wealth not only between individuals but between whole regions, assisting, one hopes, those adversely affected by structural change.