Good riddance.

Speaking of dancing on graves, I’ve been renting the After Dark Horror Fest’s ‘8 Films to Die For’ series.

There is one called Gravedancers that I watched last week. It is certainly one of the better ones. Apparently if you dance on a grave, that spirit comes back and tries to kill you. The one I’d recommend, however, is Darkride. It’s really bloody, which is a plus for horror fans, but it also has Patrick Renna in it….the fat red head kid from Sandlot. He’s all grown up and he’s evil.

I haven’t seen them all yet, including Snoop Dogg’s Hood of Horror, which promises to be one of the best urban horror flicks to date. I’ll be the judge of that.
I watched Reincarnation last night and, though it was made by the dude who did The Grudge series, I thought it was pretty lame.

The horror flick I’m really looking forward to is Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween. Yes, you read this correctly…and it will hit theaters at the end of August….this year! Here is the trailer.

Where was I going with all this? Oh yeah. As tempting as it might be, don’t dance on Jerry Falwell’s grave, or he’ll come back and kill you.

So last week, I’m riding down town on the ol cyclo-cross, taking my normal route through campus. Picture me riding on south San Fran by the dome. The hill goes down, curves sharply, and goes back up toward the north end of campus. Apparently a lot of people crash their bikes here. I am now one of those people.

The thing with that hill is you want to go as fast as you can down the hill so going up the other side isn’t a problem. So I’m cruising down, wind coursing through my helmet like a turbine; it’s a beautiful day, so I’m enjoying my surroundings. When I’m almost at the bottom, another biker going equally, irresponsibly, fast is coming straight at me. We see each other and smile. He slams on his breaks and goes one way (the grass) and I slam on my breaks and go another way (the guard rail).

I blow out my tire, bend the fork, and find myself bleeding where the steel cables from the guard rail graded my leg like Swiss cheese. I have an unexplainable and very painful abrasion on the lower right side of my back…think kidney; it’s still pretty swollen. A Japanese exchange student saw the whole thing from across the street and ran over to see if I was okay. When I got up, he said the wreck looked “Totally Awesome!” I also have a bruise in an embarrassing location. I think it was from my bike seat.

….Anyway, now I’m going to miss all the great stuff that the Flagstaff Biking Org. has planned this week. Yesterday, I saw a group of people playing what can only be described as grass-polo on bikes. What a crappy time for a biking injury.

ATLANTA

A vegan couple were sentenced Wednesday to life in prison for the death of their malnourished 6-week-old baby boy, who was fed a diet largely consisting of soy milk and apple juice.

Superior Court Judge L.A. McConnell imposed the mandatory sentences on Jade Sanders, 27, and Lamont Thomas, 31. Their son, Crown Shakur, weighed just 3 1/2 pounds when he died of starvation on April 25, 2004.

The couple were found guilty May 2 of malice murder, felony murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty to children. A jury deliberated about seven hours before returning the guilty verdicts.

Defense lawyers said the first-time parents did the best they could while adhering to the lifestyle of vegans, who typically use no animal products. They said Sanders and Thomas did not realize the baby, who was born at home, was in danger until minutes before he died.

I’m a vegetarian and I eat soy from time to time, but it’s really not that good for you.If anything soy milk is terrible for newborns. It’s not a substitute for real milk. It is nothing like real milk. If breast milk counts as “animal products” (which I would obviously argue that it does) than a vegan diet for a newborn doesn’t make a lick of sense. It’s like an article I read a few weeks ago about a vegetarian family that killed their dog because they wouldn’t give it meat.

A class-action lawsuit might soon settle the question: Can federal agencies conduct important business during ceremonial holidays when traditional Hopis are bound to be absent?

Former Hopi chair candidate Valjean Joshevama and religious practitioner Jerry Honawa have brought suit against the Office of Surface Mining, saying public hearings about a proposed pipeline to support mining operations at Black Mesa were ill-timed.

So crimes motivated by opposition to gender or sexual orientation would, under this proposed amendment to the hate crime bill, would be considered a hate crime and prosecuted as such.

but

The White House, in a statement warning of a veto, said state and local criminal laws already cover the new crimes defined under the bill, and there was “no persuasive demonstration of any need to federalize such a potentially large range of violent crime enforcement.”

Update: I think Chuck put this news in a much more “eloquent” perspective than I did.

As everyone prepares their gardens for spring planting, I thought I would share this great video I found on how permaculture techniques have been successfully implemented near the Dead Sea. I thought it was pretty amazing that these people found a way to grow fruit there. As the planet continues to warm, these techniques willl become very important.

This video tells the story of a seemingly impossible feat achieved by permaculture designer, Geoff Lawton, in which he trained a group of locals in the principals of permaculture, and together they transformed the “hyper-arid” land until it bore fruit, desalinated water, and created fertile ground which requires very little water to be productive. If it can be done there, argues Lawton, it can be done anywhere, and it can become a real tool for addressing pollution, desertification and global warming.

Every week, in my political science class (on global human rights), we have to write a paper on the readings. I’m posting this one here, not because I received a good grade (though I did receive a good grade…), but because the topic is close to my heart. And I’m too tired to come up with something new today….enjoy….and please don’t steal without my permission.
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Sanjeev Khagram’s book, Dams and Development: Transnational Struggles for Water and Power, raised a lot of important questions for me and illuminated a lot of necessary conclusions in terms of how “development” is understood and what actions are justified in the name of progress. Khagram has also illuminated the importance of linking human rights to the environment, how the development of big dams violates both positive and negative freedoms in terms of subsistence. Lastly, and perhaps more importantly considering the dams are still standing, I felt Khagram’s analysis on sustainable development fell short in regards to solutions that truly serve the land base and ultimately the rights of those humans affected by the project.

“Development,” says Khagram, “is socially produced and reproduced as well as socially constructed and reconstructed” (Khagram 211). When it comes to the construction of large dams and the affect such construction has on local communities, human rights and freedoms, the way development is understood, as Khagram demonstrates, is contingent upon different discourse communities. Each discourse community will have a different understanding of development depending upon its affects on that community. The controversial Narmada Project, for example, will benefit politicians, involved corporations and will help supply water to and irrigate crops in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan. These benefits are not without cost, however, as 200,000 people would be displaced by the project, not to mention the affect that large scale flooding will have on the fragile eco-system along the coast of the Narmada. Therefore, depending on which side of this power dynamic one is aligned, will determine their understanding of development.

This disconnect among perceptions of development are intimately tied to power. “A range of powerful, transnationally allied groups and organizations have historically promoted the construction of these projects” (Khagram 4). Each group that Khagram goes on to mention that support proposals to build large dams directly benefit from the projects, either politically, financially, or both. These proposals come at the expense of small farmers, indigenous peoples, and the local environment that must bare the brunt of decisions made by more powerful interests and institutions. We should not be surprised by this “top-down” vision of development, whereby a few profit (either politically, monetarily, or both) at the expense of the less powerful masses. After all, the “technocratic pursuit of economic growth through the intensive exploitation of natural resources,” has reigned supreme for a long time (Khagram 4). In fact, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru solidified this power dynamic in the name of nationalism when he said, “‘If you are to suffer, you should suffer in the interest of the country’” (Khagram 37). Obviously Nehru has the power to make decisions that will not result in his own suffering, but because the less powerful will suffer at the hand of his decisions, he must justify this through nationalistic rhetoric.

Those that live alongside the dam, however, experience the world in a much different way than those who seek to exploit it. When one relies on the land for food, water, and shelter rather than on an economic system that provides these things, “big dams…become symbols of the injustice of humanity through the unprecedented destruction of nature, and the sacrifice of diverse cultures to inappropriate science and technology in the name of progress” (Khagram 5). Therefore resistance against the construction of big dams is not only morally and rhetorically justified, but it is essential to maintaining cultural traditions, rights to subsistence, and preserving human rights. People, therefore, who are displaced by big dam projects, have a lot more taken from them than just the land. If big dams do not positively benefit everybody affected by their construction, we should not view these monstrosities as ‘development” or “progress.” On page 121, Khagram notes that most politicians and bureaucrats understand big dams as synonymous with progress and that this mindset was being “challenged by the domestic movement on the ground” (Khagram 121).

Big dam developments impede both positive as well as negative freedoms. Water, obviously, is a resource that everyone requires to live. Therefore, if governments and corporations, through the construction of dams, privatize the resource, these institutions are, in a sense, stealing resources from one community only to supply another. Furthermore if one, who relies on the land for water and food, is displaced by a big dam project, they are being denied their “right to means of subsistence” as well as their right to live autonomously (Gould 146). This is a violation of positive freedoms. On the other hand, this same scenario violates people’s freedom from government oppression, and corporate exploitation. These violations are virtually transparent because they are done in the name of development; that is, violations occur through an understanding of development that is held by those unaffected by the projects but powerful enough to execute them. Getulio Vargas, the first Brazilian president solidified the priorities of those in power without regard to communities or traditions. “I have come with the purpose of seeing to the practical possibilities of putting into execution a plan for the systematic exploitation of the wealth and the economic development of the region” (Khagram 142). Here Vargas characterizes exploitation as a component of “development,” which clearly illustrates the way in which the meaning of this term is dependent on the discourse from which it is uttered.

Human rights doctrines should take into consideration the way in which big dam projects require both a universal understanding of rights as well as culturally relative ones. The construction of big dams undermines a sense of responsibility to the community and emphasizes a more individualized pursuit of power over the environment and communities, and doesn’t recognize that the two are in fact interrelated. A universal understanding of human rights should be tied to the land. It should be recognized that any degradation of the environment ultimately affects those that rely on the land to live. The idea of responsibility should not be limited, therefore, towards just human relationships, but should include relationships between humans and the natural world as well. This understanding of responsibility “calls for a more continuing concern with taking care of the well-being of others, including a concern with helping to bring about good and just outcomes for them (Gould 146). A universal understanding of human rights, therefore, is necessary in promoting a foundation for equality. “We can be jointly responsible for meeting the basic needs of all the others, and this imposes some fundamental human rights obligations on each of us” (Gould 146).

It should also be recognized that the construction of big dams also result in a form of ethnocide, which prevents cultures from maintaining the traditions of their ancestors. If a culture has farmed a particular land base for thousands of years, built their religion and belief system upon it, it should come as no surprise that when the construction of a big dam results in the destruction of this culture’s community and land base, and are forced to relocate, traditions will be lost.
This brings us to the issue of sustainability. On page 210 Khagram discusses the issue of sustainable development in regards to dam construction. “Sustainable development is understood as longer-term progress toward greater public participation, political accountability, social equity, and environmental sustainability.” While democratic institutions, as Khagram states, may be more prone to promote sustainable development over authoritarian regimes, this promotion should not be viewed as progressive by any stretch of the imagination. This definition of “sustainable development” is concerned with the implicit question: what can we do to make dams sustainable? The assumption here is that dams can be made sustainable.
In Dams and Development: Transnational Struggles for Water and Power, Khagram doesn’t seem willing to connect her own “dots,” in that the large-scale dams that have characterized the last thirty years of development are not and can never be sustainable. Over and over again, she goes into detail regarding the displacement of people and traditions, the systematic extinction of fish species, and the death of the rivers themselves, yet not once in the book does Khagram say that the dams need to come down. This was problematic for me as it reinforces my own concern regarding the mainstream discourse on sustainability as only interested in figuring out how we can maintain this lifestyle in a sustainable way.

The problem is, we don’t know what a sustainable future looks like and any community, like those that rely on the Narmada, that do live sustainably are being systematically exterminated by the production of unsustainable practices like large dams. Another problem is the discourse on sustainability takes the economic system as a given and any solutions that harm the economic system (but will be good for the land and the communities that thrive there) are not taken into consideration. This mindset, at its core, is not sustainable. In fact, it is exactly backwards. It is, therefore, crucial that any doctrine on human rights must put the needs of people and the natural world above all else and recognize that they are interrelated. That is, the destruction of the natural world—through big dam projects—results in human rights violations. If you take a way a people’s river, you take away their access to water, to fish, traditions, and the freedom to live autonomously.

Source:

Gould, Carol. Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press 2004. Chap. 6

Khagram, Sanjeev. Dams and Development: Transnational Struggles for Water and Power. Ithaca and London. Cornell University Press. 2004