couldn’t post this on longtime, well-visited blog, soooo…

Tried to post a story here (on my blog on theicarusproject.net ) and the next thing i know i got multiple messages saying that i no longer even HAD this account!! Does it have anything to do with my using the tor network? Hmm. Tried three times, and while on the third time it (or someone monitoring my wireless tor use) didn’t kick me directly off, and led me to think that i was ABLE to successfully post there, i was eventually logged out, anyway. With the oh-so-dangerous post blocked again. So, i’ll try to post this here and see if i can try reposting it again, from another computer sometime (heh).

Anyway, tried to post the following article intro and links (let’s try this again! Persistence sometimes proves fertile!):
The psychiatrization of our children, or, an autoethnographic narrative of perpetuating First Nations genocide through ‘benevolent’ institutions

Academia at its finest, for those able to use a dictionary (or dictionary.reference.com) to look up the more mystifying words! This article (and others on the topic of decolonization!) will be sure to KNOCK YOUR SOCKS OFF!

Intro Excerpt:

“I enter the discussion on madness and psychiatrization through breathing the air and walking the halls of ‘benevolent’ institutions, such as child protection and psychiatry, institutions that produce “mental illness” through the psychiatrization of the people they are meant to support. This narrative provides an example of the ways in which child welfare organizations are both sanist and racist in their organizing principles and in their interpretations of the needs and desires of marginalized people. (…)”

http://decolonization.org/index.php/des/article/view/18687 (note: my link tech doesn’t work here anymore…hmmm)

Having shared this, be sure to NOT tell too many about reading this (unless you are of we few TRUE CHAMPION DARERs!), since the ideologically-challenged (i.e. liberal or conservative reformers) will most likely send some major shunning your way, since “the personal is political” in colonial realities today. Best to THINK ABOUT IT for a month or so, if you’re new to it all, and make as “clear-headed” a decision as you can. Then again, is there any other real choice? (re: do groups like http://www.mindfreedom.org REALLY award one AUTHENTIC community, or even close???)

Case in point as far as shunning: awhile back, this blog was receiving hundreds, even thousands of ‘reads’, and then of late, the number appears to be waning. (Appears, i say, because at the same time, Icarus boards ebb and flow like a tide with visitors speaking up there, as well, so hard to know for sure…)

Yes, i can make assumptions as hellishly (not religious-stuck, btw) as i need, of course, or i can imagine that the few left who ARE STILL READING this blog, are crucial “high-ranking” human beings (on par with or above the calibre of “general” or other “commanding officer”). Nice ideahh, eh?!! Ah, i see that i “need” a mix of the two thinking approaches, while basking in my solopathic reality (so far); to translate: some of us have to walk solo-ly because we are the bringers-in of neo excellence, not understood yet.

For further insight into the depth excellence of the website in more general terms, check out this mouthful of an intro blurb (some REAL DEAL NUTRITION for us if we let ourselves explore beyond the meta-corrals of free-dumb/freedom):

“Drawing on textual modes of fictional representation first valorised then disseminated by British imperialists, this story appropriates then abrogates Eurocentric ideals of normative creative expression. By appropriating the rhythm of lyrical poetry into the descriptions of this fictionalized Jamaica as well as the structure of modernist prose into Akúa’s psychical shift from colonial subject to postcolonial agent, “Me Nuh Choose None” inverts these narrative conventions historically used to systematize and exclude in order to puncture the imperious myth that complex writing in English primarily concerns itself with gratifying the colonial centre. Moreover, by treating the textual approximations of the Jamaican storyteller Miss Lou’s oral folktales with equal depth and sophistication as the instances of alliteration and onomatopoeia, this story abrogates the autocratic standard of “proper” spelling and pronunciation…”

(source: http://decolonization.org/index.php/des/article/view/18711 )

Wow, huh?!!

Now, how about a SONG to touch your heart in ways you may’ve forgotten existed as realistic alternatives?!:

http://decolonization.org/index.php/des/article/view/18684

Me, i’m looking forward to listening to the WHOLE album coming out in the fall! A-heY!

Challenge to Unsettling America Collective, re: allyship

This post was sent to unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com today. Since they’ve never replied to anything i’ve posted (and often don’t publish my comments), i’m deciding to go a little more “proactive” in my views. Of course, i welcome dissent, and will join anyone in dialogue either here or on the forum of your choice (www.firstnations.com/forum anyone?)

Specifically, this post is responding to the following text:

https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/allyship/

entitled “Allyship and Solidarity Guidelines”

i think your collective is foolish to seek subordinates from the anti-authoritarian (a.k.a. anarchist) crowd –or anyone else you aim your otherwise crucial excellence towards. Isn’t that the underlying truth of some of these points you put on your site?

As guidelines (like Tai Alfred pointed out about what Indigenous traditions are meant to be), yes, crucial. But when it becomes rigidized? When it becomes absolutist? Anti-authoritarians that i find inspiring have challenged this difficulty. For example: Ron Sakolsky writes in his article “Mutual Acquiescence or Mutual Aid?”
( http://modernslavery.calpress.org/?tag=critique-of-ideology )

An excerpt:
“…an analysis of how mutual acquiescence prevents and immobilizes individual and collective forms of direct action allows for a more nuanced model of domination and resistance than can be afforded by merely referencing the devastating effects of conformity imposed from above.”

Of course, you all are seeking to create the best possible energy for a generalized group of outsiders to enter into decolonizing work, but i wonder, are your assumptions caught up in dominator logic too much, yourselves?

When i think of decolonizing excellence, i think of all as equals (while optimistically expecting elders’ praxis to be possibly deeper than my own), all as champions (of our lives, of seeking our bests, with what we’ve found around us). i think of ALL having crucial importance in the power of villages which can speak freely and deeply with each other. i also think of places made for we who do not have our excellence “up to snuff” (because we have been kept separated from tribal powers, and largely have had to teach ourselves). i think of places (in community) where differing levels of awareness are encouraged to go through their processes, in ongoing ways (i.e. rituals and ceremonies which communities design together which allow our power to become together).

Okay, so you have a mix of Indigenous champions whom have organized y’all; but do they get to be forever “more equal”? iT seems to me that WE ARE ALL in this together, ultimately. So what do you do if a non-Indigenous champion comes along who has been able to see deeper or further than the Indigenous champions you have been able to amass? Do you drum her/him out????

So, yes, i think your collective is missing something in its push towards creating what feels to me like a “cadre” or “conscript class” of unsettling settler champions. Maybe this is a first step kind of thing, with intended provocations meant to instigate people such as myself? Or maybe it is what happens when an entire collective isn’t thinking things through enough (and continually).

iT is my prayer that your collective will think about what i am saying today. i am age 47 and have stood up many times, putting my life on the line for truths that have to be spoken and heard. i will continue to do so. It would be great to be able to come together with some of you somewhere. Or maybe i will see you out in the proverbial “field”.

To conclude, i’ve likely forgotten if i’ve responded to this text before. Maybe i have. And maybe it’s a good thing that you all get multiple responses from me.

some new art(e) to share

Okay, the art about Code Pink is from a Democracy Now report, about that group going up to Paul (?) Brennan’s HOUSE and challenging him, at least 5 times (!) to give a response to their enquiry.

Took a grey-color copy of the original and made it into an original color!

some new art(e)

This art was made to honor the Oklevueha Native American Church, and was published on one of their sites. Tho i am a member, i have not yet had the privilege (?) to actually meet any other open members of this church, nor be a part of any of the proceedings. Perhaps that will change in the coming year?

Worth thinking through ‘smash pacifism’ critique of nonviolent tacts

There has been a small increase in a valid discussion centering around nonviolence that i think i have much to add to, but which, for some reason, is being ignored by the two camps involved. One, the camp of the middle-class-values-challenged comes with no surprise. But the other, the anarchic/anti-authoritarian camp, well, that is puzzling. Perhaps both camps are tooled by “tried and true”-type agendas, i’m not sure. But one thing remains, all nonviolence is being reduced into curiously superficial categories, and confrontational types of nonviolence (certainly not ‘passive’) remaining in a sort of meta no-man’s-land space. i figure.

The critique of nonviolence that first came to my attention was Ward Churchill’s book (admittedly authored by two others, but he’s the most well known). Entitled

Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America

. I read it, and couldn’t help but to bring up my above reaction, as he did not mention it.

Next, and only of late, i came across an interesting analysis by the infamous zig zag of warrior publications (
http://warriorpublications.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/smash-pacifism-zine.pdf
. In it, zig zag goes over, apparently quite thoroughly, the work and thinking of both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Definitely something to chew on.

Recalling an article i came across in , there was a case for armed self-defense even when Black folks (my generation’s normalized name for African Americans) were out-numbered in the bigger picture of things. The article discussed, at some length, someone by the name of Robert F. Williams and his leading (?) several defense situations where people duped into racial hysteria got very much out of hand. A norm for the South at that time, and in some cases, the North (i.e. Chicago).

In all these cases, you can gather a portion truths which ought very much to be thought through carefully.

And yet, the insights of people like Gerald Taiaiake Alfred (apparently a leading voice in Idle No More thought) make loads of more sense, at least to me. In his book

Wasase

(which for curious reasons, zig zag totally dismisses), on page 130 and 131, Gerald hits the proverbial nail on the head. Basically, if visionary peoples (i.e. Indigenous, and decolonizing settlers) take up a paradigm of “the master” (not Gerald’s words), then such peoples become that. In fact, they have to do it WORSE in order to “win”.

Very well said (the exact words are much better!).

On the other hand, when the white hot stupidity of a group of vigilantes is shooting off its severe alienation AT you and your neighborhood, as Robert F. Williams was exposed to, we all need to find ways to respond which change that kind of stupidity. To at least run it off, or, better yet, to touch it in its heart.

And what better way to touch people in their hearts than via the power of creative, confrontational types of nonviolence?

Saul Alinsky, the 1940s-1960s “back of the yards” organizer had some nifty ideas which gets more at what i’m talking about. He basically counseled “mass jiu-jitsu” kinds of tactics, including in response to racist mindset. i’ve mentioned him before, so i won’t mention his tactics specifically, but basically he “went outside the experience of” those hyped up to hate and fear the groups he helped organize to defend themselves, “while remaining inside the experience of” those doing the defending.

Major in his strategy was the power of humor.

And this is what i think has some true excellence. And i’m saying this as one WHO HAS TRIED THESE things! Yes, radically so, in fact. So radically so that i’ll only discuss such privately! (heh) But, yours truly DID find ways to both surprise the hysterically mobilized AND survive their duped wrath long enough to get through the heart of their activity (i.e. while marching in various mass marches in several large cities out East). And that was no “bullshit” situation, either. No bullshit! i was literally putting my life on the line, or, at least, into a VERY LARGE UNKNOWN in which none of my colleagues at the time dared (tho a few marched with me at different times, they were all non-key colleagues, so to speak).

Now, as an artist-type i also did my share of creative cartoons along these lines. You might look for the Pleasure Power Comix zine i did (look for it in this blog), which gave out an interesting idea. Basically, using some sort of whip cream as a way to humiliate (or at least change the intense hysteria) adversaries. And while it may be true that gathering and maintaining large amounts of dairy-based whip cream isn’t realistic, there was an alternative substance that i saw demonstrated at the Seattle Hemp Fest a few years ago: Dr.Bronner’s! Soap! Made into a whip cream substance! Wow! Now, add a little sweetness to it…?

The bottom line for me on this topic is, yes, Ghandi and MLKj were superficial champions. But, they served a key purpose, to basically advance the cause of a people COMPLETELY marginalized and sidelined. Yes, their advancements appear to have given most value to the middle classes (of india and the u.s.a.), and helped strengthen the larger picture that is Alienation, Inc. today. Pacifism, or passive resistance, does prove to have a limited merit.

On the other hand, the CONTEXT is also key. The Black Panthers were crushed (were they not?). Any group which stood up with any violent self-defense methods got crushed. Great programs to help their communities, aside.

On the other hand, AIM (American Indian Movement) seems to have made some advances, in a similar stand. Though, after their biggest stand (Wounded Knee, 1970s), at least 65 AIM supporters and members were murdered. And some leading thinkers of the movement, such as John Trudell, who was the AIM chairman for a few years, and persists to this day in promoting Indigenous excellence and ‘thinking things through’, think that the guns aspect of AIM was a plant. A planted means to allegedly defend their people.

Did it work?

Depending on how we look. On the one hand, the media actually covered their Wounded Knee stand…and Indigenous truths suddenly became something powerful to think about.

Certainly, there are a lot of grey areas to explore and think through on this topic, but the bottom line is, what is most meaningful to the spirit which first brought us into our critical thinking and desires for sanity? What feeds that? And what cannot?

One thing no one mentions in the dialog on this topic is that timing is key. If you wait until vigilante groups come to your door, then violent response seems to be “the only possible” response (tho i think if vomit bombs went off suddenly, drenching the vigilante mob outside your door, violence would be heartily messed with). But if you “nip” violence “in its proverbial bud” early on, with creative tactics of nonviolence, another reality rears its head!

To conclude, even tho i am a member of a community under intense siege (and ignored categorically by all forms of media–except for the anti-authoritarian press), and must look forward to extreme violence and death if and when i am ever put into prison, i maintain the desire to “solve the problem” rather than perpetuate it, via the stupidity of maiming and killing violence. Or any violence which blocks possible bridge-making.

We want more Norma Jean Almodovars and John Stockwells (whistleblowers of the status-quo); we want to inspire their standing. And if we are stuck in “Us vs Them” dogmas (absolutes), then how are we going to truly advance anything remotely human??!?

Think it through, folks, think things through!!!!

Understand the mentality of alienation (a.k.a. Misery Loves Company, Inc.)

One especially important video, I think:

How did the land of the free and the home of the brave arrive at a place where citizens could be manipulated with such efficiency and on such a massive scale?

Managing Public Perception
Psywar
The real battlefield is your mind

Includes original interviews with a number of dissident scholars including Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, Peter Phillips (“Project Censored”), John Stauber (“PR Watch”), Christopher Simpson (“The Science of Coercion”) and others. http://metanoia-films.org/

courtesy informationclearinghouse.info

But, shall we respond with MORE alienation? I don’t think so! Besides being obsolete and adding to the insanity of things, problems of this magnitude cannot be “solved” by perpetuating stupidity! We must explore and experiment with (and add to others’ work) our creative intelligence in UNPRECEDENTED styles!

Not against people, but challenging Alienation, Inc. Challenging dogma. Challenging ideology! Challenging how people’s beliefs about each other are the real groundwork that lays the basis for the insanity we have to face up to (like it or not) in this time.

Our forebearers could not, for whatever reason, so now it’s left to us.

This blog explores (if you look deeper), different approaches that may inspire you to your own desires of such great spirit!

a visionary’s report: our obligation to defend victims of war: the CHILDREN!

Posted this all over the indymedia network (in the u.s.). You are hereby invited to share it all over the rest of the world! Start with indymedia.us, look to the left side of the page, scroll down, and begin opening up various links, to your heart’s desire! Then look for the “publish” button, and follow the directions. You don’t usually have to sign up in order to post, tho that seems to be a trend, at least in the u.s.a.

====
Note: this post was originally inspired by indigenous people daring to speak despite all manner of crap they have to live in day in and day out (see: http://www.firstnations.com ). i honor their spirit as it manifests within each of us settlers! May we have the courage to stand in our myriad creative intelligence!
====

A visionary way to bring warriors to their knees before the next war (tho war is perpetual)

Was watching that video entitled
“A VIDEO US MILITARY DOESN’T WANT YOU TO SEE !”

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3oziRJ46k0 ), and i was forced to remember a vision i had some days ago that i had planned on sharing elsewhere, but it didn’t seem like the place for it.

Well, this may be the place, i don’t know.

Imagine if people around the world began printing out color pictures of kids harmed by war. Imagine if they then put them in an organized way, as altars. Everywhere. And also put up (or on the ground) pictures of happy kids, nearby, or within the ghastly ones.

Imagine if each of us put LARGE-sized text quotes with these pictures, to help speak what has to be said. Say, something like: WE DON’T HAVE TO PERPETUATE THE KIND OF ALIENATION THAT MAKES THIS REALITY! YOU ARE NOT ALONE! WE CAN BUILD SANITY TOGETHER!

(a new movement evolving occupy? –Sanity Together!?! Could more easily mix in with decolonize occupy!)

i’d share links like http://www.ic.org as a gift to passerby who feel particularly overwhelmed by such a sight. A way to invite people to put aside their perpetually-alienated habits, and start to be a part of the solutions!

And think about this:
If women were able to meaningfully organize, they could start with-holding sex with them with their men. But they can’t do it alone, as any reality of women beaten by such men in most of society exposes! And no professional will usually go out of their way (“too risky”) to be in such a solidarity…so, informal it is. (tho watchout, they WILL try to infiltrate with their state-subordinate ideologies, working to promote scapegoats for you all to fear and hate, but nothing that really gets to the core of things!)

NONE OF US CAN DO IT ALONE!

Imagine WHOLE CAMPUSES carpeted with such images. Imagine WHOLE STREETS. Imagine. Up to your imagination. To your best. Do you dare step up to such a test?

stop alienating the houseless! AND start strengthening your community’s defense! (posted on Santa Cruz Indymedia)

(Note: I am not a Santa Cruz-area houseless advocate. I have spent quality time living beyond houses for more than 10 years, including on the california coast. And I feel that my experiences are an important addition to this article. Am reposting this, with some editing for this particular thread: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/08/23/18720157.php?show_comments=1#18721238.)

The danger
…is that all these “nice” liberals (which make up most of Santa Cruz) fear people they don’t really understand at all, people that their trusted media lie about and take things out of context on. They will go to their liberal churches and give token aide to people down on their luck (or wanting to live FREE OF tyranny in its diverse forms), but beyond that is emptiness. We thank them for tolerating us, and their token gestures, but without more meaningful relations, without going out of your way to empathize and see us as equals (!) no matter how “little” formal education we could tolerate, the bottom line is that alienation persists in a most unhealthy direction.

Which means, I think, a most dangerous setting of precedents in the long run.

As things get worse (i.e. on the one hand, all our posessions are stolen by cops, and on the other, police continue to be less accessible to us as citizens –i.e. “not paying their salaries via taxes”– on diverse grounds), we’ll likely take it. (Do we have a choice??) …For awhile.

But if some fascist group comes along saying they want to help us, and then wants us to do their ideological bidding?? Where do you think they get their recruits? (from the ranks of those MARGINALIZED by all manner of humanity, of course!!)

Look how popular fundamentalist/dogmatic church groups are becoming, filled with homeless people seeking to survive. Their ranks swell, and pretty soon, women don’t have the choice to have an abortion even if they’re raped, and such things. Maybe I’m wrong, but don’t you see the likelihood that your alienation from us will only make things WORSE in the long run??!

Citizens living in towns and cities on the coast of Africa, say Sierra Leone, all would not and could not imagine that their towns and cities might be attacked by fascism, but that happened. It has happened systematically. I read a book about it (A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah), about the child soldiers, which was quite popular in a liberal bookstore and in a liberal town’s public library (a big waiting list to read it). They touched on what happened in coastal towns and larger cities when violence began to arise more and more, albeit the more organized variety.

Remember Yugoslavia? I recall hearing from Yugoslavians who said that such things could NEVER happen there!

Could it happen here?
Seems impossible, but look how taken by surprise so many ‘modern’ Africans were (along with their european aide workers!). But then I recall how many people were shooting guns off, quite randomly (on all days of the week, not just for new years’), and nearby public roads, along the coast of California and Oregon this last winter and spring. I was living in the woods. Such shootings were commonplace in Northern California, especially. Even in the fancy, liberal towns north of Eureka, though just outside of them. All the nice Unitarian Universalist liberals and their kind, didn’t seem to know what was going on, or couldn’t “deal with it”, I guess.

They fed us well, but beyond that? What “business was it of theirs”, after all? (plenty!)

Now, as things get more Rightwing, you think Rightwingers are going to continue to play nice? Call me off-my-rocker, but I’m sensing something developing in all of this hysteria mongering. They’re being systematically hyped-up (read or listen to various marginal rightwing media), and the bottom line is that there’s never any context or empathy allowed for people who have to (or choose to) live outside –or for any other “anti-social” group!

Yes, I’m over in SW Michigan right now (if you’ve looked up my IP), but that doesn’t mean anything. I’m still seeking to speak up about a trend that I’m afraid is going to continue to get out of hand, and only make things worse for ALL (including duped rightwingers). Unless we all begin getting in touch with our informal powers to make meaningful community with each other!

(for basic, foundational info on such: http://www.ic.org)

More and more shootings are happening. More and more people are willing to sacrifice themselves to “make their voices heard” in these last-ditch-seeming ways, in “any way” they possibly can–even by shooting people. You know the news, you’ve seen how things are going. You really think the police are going to protect you???

So, isn’t it about time that all you “nice” liberals start to go out of your way to BE HUMAN BEINGS with we who are being treated so stupidly and evil-ly by “the powers that be”? WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS JUST LIKE YOU! It’s just that being in survival mode (and being forced to deal with state authorities and their stupidized rules) takes a lot out of us. You try living with that sort of threat hanging over you all the time, for awhile, and see how you do, psychologically!

You show your humanity to us, and in no time, we’ll show you ours right back!

Don’t be deterred by the provocateurs and the few who are already so lost that they can only react with the pain they’ve gotten to know too well in their experiences! Invite us out to EAT with you (when I had money I used to do that, and wow, people couldn’t believe I didn’t have some ulterior agenda!), even if it’s “just” a picnic in a public park! And as you get to know us, invite us to stay on your land or something like that! You’ll be surprised! I bet you’ll meet plenty of folks who know how to fix stuff, and such things! We’ll end up saving you lots of money!! (you CAN’T AFFORD NOT to befriend us!!)

You’ll have allies, that’s for sure. And the more allies you make amongst we who know how to survive in bad situations, the more strength you’ll bring to your efforts of community defense!

Think about it!

p.s. I used to be a regular vendor with Street Roots in Portland, OR before I left that town (it is always really “hairy” around big cities, mostly because the cops are especially volatile).

p.s.s. This article was originally posted here:

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/08/23/18720157.php?show_comments=1#18721238

decolonizing: some discussions, dialogues!

i think i’m going to post a number of dialogues i’ve had over the years here, at least once in awhile…Thanks to the THOUSANDS of you who read this blog regularly! Wow! Great to feel like i’m getting the word out!!

This from a website apparently no longer running: http://www.tribe.net

intro comments:

i was searching for some of my old art online, and searching tribe.net when i came upon some of these old threads! Neat-O! This one, where i’m challenging people to think through how the settler mentality over-arches settler thought, across the spectrum, here poetry.

(also mentioned were “new agers”, which i think when critiqued, needs to be thought through more carefully than many are thinking it through, so far; why? Because the political police are sure to exploit our different “camps” even when there is authenticity amongst them and try to paint them as negatively as possible so that we never are able to even organize our internal thinking (!) enough to organize outwardly (i.e. in defense of humanity in general).

excerpted dialogue:

Unsubcribed wrote:
Re: above post is meant to reply to…
Fri, October 26, 2007
informality and formality don’t equate with innocence and guile. – well, there’s nothing innocent about the informal discourse you’re using, or that anybody uses for that matter - it’s all culturally loaded. no talk exists in a cultural vacuum. even for children (who, by the way, tend to be a lot more concise than adults). the good thing about the stream of consciousness approach to writing or chatting is that it reveals the ideologies that drive you. that’s great for self-reflection, to read back over that stuff. that’s a good starting-point for people considering decolonizing.

i’ve found the most startling things reading such texts – one is that new-ageism seems to be grounded in exactly the same colonial discourses as the mainstream culture it claims to oppose.

both forage in the indigenous world for validation and new ideas. and both excuse it by dredging up and reframing indigenous practices as negative or “dark”. a whale hunt, a driving of a herd over a cliff, a twelve-year-old bride, etc etc etc.

wow! maybe it’s true! maybe all people really are the same!

Sun, November 11, 2007
My reply to: Unsubscribed…um,
while i agree that “poetry” generally is yet another vehicle for the status quo, and that its mechanics *also* reflects that value system and its assumptions, i disagree that those who utilize the craft are *always* tooled; as if they *can never* wake up to the realities of this corrall and learn to exit it, and even tool it in thoughtful ways –well, that is something curious to me.

Perhaps there’s something i’m missing, but if someone who “writes poetry” wakes up to the colonization game that plays most “poets” and how the “market” (or whatever other reductionist name and value-loaded “rules”) tools them, i say that has crucial significance, and cannot be reduced into simplisitc ideological confines.

Significant also is the fact that colonized people take on frames of reference like “poetry” and its identity, because such is the only *category* they know of. If they want to write creatively, they “naturally” take up that reference. Most never question it as a form, and subordinate to its rules, and don’t see the politics/polytricks of warfare just under the surface, at least until they’ve been “poets” for a lengthy time, and intuitively begin to question and rebel; “luckily” for colonizers (and others who unquestioningly implement its confines), even the drunken “poets” and others intuitively questioning, don’t usually validate their intuitions and experiences, simply, i think, because they don’t want to lose even the small sense of “community” that they’ve found. So they learn to “shut their mouths” and go along with the program.

And of course, they won’t take up pre-colonized and decolonizing ways of seeing, because they’ve been so well programmed to not validate this other realm of truth/alternate paradigm as well!

(Hey, anyone feel free to post this portion of our discussion on poetry lists/tribes!)

The link this is originally from:

http://nativepeoples.tribe.net/thread/e0b88430-b783-4e80-9679-b92f50249f16

entitled:
“Arrogant europeon assumptions? Or?” (scroll down a ways to this particular post in the thread)

Mysterious, ghosty photos!

The following pictures come from various places i’ve been in recent years and i think they are examples of ghosts or spirits which sometimes show themselves in photos i’ve taken with my digital camera. Others have thought they were merely dust, but for them to show up in wet conditions, outside? I don’t think so! And how about those that are “swiftly moving” (a few photos show one or more apparently moving)?

Enjoy!

This is the original photo i got while taking pictures around a place that my parents like to go up in northern Algonquin country. What do you think about this one? Incidentally, no other photos of this area showed this kind of thing, and i never noted this kind of thing in any of the other hundreds of photos i took with that camera!

Isn’t this interesting that this one showed up right where it is? And how about how the ferns are dried in certain areas, especially just under this curious orb of light…reflecting in the flash of my camera, yes, but…

This photo taken in wet weather in TN

Note that if you look closely, the alleged dust particles are all not similar! They all have intricate designs in them! And i noted that one even had eyes and a face! Whoa!

Can you find the face? Or faces?

Anyone know of other images like these?? i’d like to take a look at such!

So, what’s your thoughts on this phenomena?? Can all cameras pick this kind of phenomena up? Why might digital (with flash) be able to pick these up? Pros/cons, critical thoughts sought!