The Border is an Imaginary Construct

I haven't gotten to address some of the "big topics" of the last couple months. "The Border" and "Immigration"are probably ones that have gotten the biggest nudge from corporate media. Some say the coverage is just distraction from issues the powers that be would prefer we forgot. Hundreds of thousands of people are taking to the streets to say we are here and we have the same inalienable rights as you .

I've seen and heard all sorts of takes on this topic, but the one I haven't seen is what I'm writing about today. Borders are not real. They are imaginary constructs drawn up by high level political entities to advance some aspect of a political agenda. Rain is real. Soil is real. People are real. Borders are not. We must remember this! I live in the Sonoran Desert. It is a real place with distinct patterns and types of soil, rainfall, flora and fauna that sets it apart from other distinct ecological zones in the world. We have an invisible, negotiated construct that runs smack dab through the middle of it. I love the place. I was married on top of one of its mountain peaks and gave birth to my daughter in one of it's valleys. But I am not of this place, I am but a migrant though I call this place home. The water saturated dense earth of the lower Great Lakes Basin will always be the place by which I measure all other places--home.

Migration used to be easier here. Rivers flowed. This Old Village released the heat of the day to the night. The Marana Agave Fields grew crops irrigated with water that flowed from the North. Oodham boys ready to become men showed they knew the ways of the world by traveling from here to Mar Bermejo, better known now as the Sea of Cortez and back. But then the Sea was undoubtedly called something else as this was before Europeans migrated to, then occupied, then claimed the area as their own and imposed their own place names. I don't say "we" because my ancestors were busy pillaging the Northeastern Coastal lands of El Norte at the time. And none of my ancestors traveled much further to the west than the Great River the Mississippi.

At some point, if we humans as a species do not want to become extinct, we need to get over the testosterone driven need to claim ownership of places and peoples and intangibles. One of the main hindrances to getting over this possession driven patriarchal tendency is a real Frankenstein called the corporation. The corporation has been given the status of a person, but it is an intangible level of organization, a process, that has no ethics, emotions, sense of well being, and can never appreciate the wonder of a newborn child -- yet it is driving the policies and practices of almost all governments and determining life and death for billions of people. These corporations were constructs created by men of power, the same men that divided Mother Earth into little fiefdoms with political structures that fed on the many to the benefit of the few. Most political systems with weapons of mass destruction such as the nuclear powers on the Earth are in male dominated societies. Just because countries are big or powerful doesn't make their power plays right. Just because men are bigger and are aggressive doesn't make it right to try to bully others. But that is just what men and the countries they have created do. Corporations and borders are creations of such societies .

The really sad thing is that the most pathetic puppets of the corporations are the ones who rabidly support the constructs of the those institutions. The vigilantes, the wackos who have the signs such as "GITMO Rocks" in support of the military recruiters across from the protest that happens every week across . These are the folks who would bequite happy to shop in WalMart the rest of their lives. Sad. They really think that being patriarchal and white somehow magically gave them the potential pathway to being rulers... and now they are pissed that they are powerless and want to kick any any dog they can corner. These folks are no different than the KKK and the John Birchers. They have testosterone and no territory to defend so they mistakenly support and defend that of the political and corporate powers apparently believing that when monarchy and state religion are restored that they will somehow benefit. They will still be slathering dogs gratefully licking the hands of their masters. And when unleashed they will gladly kill. These are the sortof people who do hate crimes. The sort of people who burn the flags of neighboring countries not realizing that the powers in those countries want to combine in order to create a better system of exploitation.

The rabid regular joes shooting off their mouths are Nazis, they are just mentally ill or misguided. The ruling folks are just fascists. Most folks don't understand the difference. The Nazis and the Fascists were allied with each other during WWII but they were not coming from the same place at all. The same still holds true. Lew Rockwell a central figure in conservative, libertarian circles explains below,

But what, in Heaven's name, does any of this have to do with "right-wing" theory? By "right wing," the media can mean one of these killer Nazi thugs, or they can mean someone who believes in private property, free enterprise, and bourgeois social norms. The blurring of the difference -- they are really polar opposites -- is wildly dishonest but obviously purposeful.

I doubt things are as purposeful as he thinks. Most people simplify the world into absurd dichotomies. I was reminded of this at Earth Day. The range of folks there was amazing. Diverse. There were liberals and conservatives, vegetarians and hunters, all sides of the immigration issue. Andrew Weil talking about the need for nuclear energy. People talking about animals as though we aren't animal. Wildlife live in habitats, not countries. We cannot stop animals from moving with shifts in prey, vegetation, and water and spacing themselves in the most optimal manner they can find. We cannot stop ourselves from doing this. If we could I guess we'd all be autralopithecines before any of us did the old out of Africa thing.

Because of these borders animals and people die. Lives are drastically altered and ended. 279 people died on my doorstep between 10/1/2004 & 9/30/2005 because of these human constructed concepts. How many animals would be stopped from migrating as they have for countless millenia if a border fence was erected? These are complex issues that cannot be solved simply and perhaps not at all unless we start thinking outside the box. Maybe only people with boxes can think outside of them. Others are too preoccupied with getting in them and drawing them. Of course not all women think holistically. Many have fallen into the sexist dichotomy thing only in an inverse fashion. Women who will only vote for women. Democratic women who are more corporate than religious neocons.

Constructs, constructs, constructs. They aren't real. They aren't interconnected in a logical or ecological fashion. If we as humans are going to allow our lives to be governed by constructs shouldn't the constructs be good ones. Perhaps all should just live the way we want to and allow others to do the same. Maybe we need to build another system altogether--one that is built upon a near universal, simple and inclusive principle: The Golden Rule. The vast majority of all the worlds religions and spiritual perspectives agree.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someyou will join me and the world will live as one. -- John Lennon

There are those who would have us hate, harm each other, and have us all descend into the depth of darkness they promote. We can be better than that. Calmness and love be with you.

Stop the Hostile Take-over of the Internet!

I just became aware of this attempt by telecommunication giants to take over, privatize, corporatize and basically make the internet a non-regulated utility so they can screw us like the oil industry has done. This fits in as a great follow-up to my earlier rant on the need to focus on media and taking back the Democratic party. This is a media related urgent action item that came into my awarenes via Arizona's PDA (Progressive Democrats of America).

Do it! Sign!

Congress is now pushing a law that would end the free and open Internet as we know it. Internet providers like AT&T and Verizon are lobbying Congress hard to gut Network Neutrality, the Internet's First Amendment. Net Neutrality prevents AT&T from choosing which websites open most easily for you based on which site pays AT&T more. So Amazon doesn't have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to work more properly on your computer.

Many members of Congress take campaign contributions from these companies, and they don't think the public are paying attention to this issue. Let's show them we care -please sign this petition today.

I'm Ba-aack...

Where oh where oh where do I start?

Over the next couple weeks I will have a fair amount of time to write so I will be blogging about lots of things that have happened in the last few weeks when I have not been able to post, but before I start playing catch up I thought I should warn regular readers about my state of mind and what has been going on with me. There are three key things I have to work toward: taking back the media, taking back the religious discourse, and taking back the Democratic Party. I'm hot under the collar about these things. These are processes which we have to regain control of or authority in before any change can really occur.

I came to a realization that my personal situation had some parallels with our political situation. I have to take care of myself and fix some major problems inside myself (such as the gall stones that have convinced me to let them cut my gall bladder out early next week) before I will be able to truly be effective in my interactions with the world. Similarly we have to remove the corrupted elements of our representative democracy before we can be an effective player on Team Gaia.

At the end of February I awakened one night with horrific pain under my ribs on my right side that shot through all the way to the back that I can only describe as on par with the severity of pain involved with labor & birth. A few days later I found out my elderly (over 90) mother fell and broke her hip. This was while I was attempting to organize an International Women's Day vigil, a progressive fast between that day and the Tucson's March 18th rally and march on the 3rd anniversary of the war in Iraq for which I was also hoping to stir up a significant pink presence. I was also planning a stop in Tucson by one of the Iraqi women who began a speaking tour of the U.S. in March and April as a part of the Women Say No To War campaign. I dropped everything and went back to the Mid-West. Women's lives (and many men's lives too) get very complicated when the squeeze of career, children, and arranging for or providing the caretaking of an elderly parent really tightens down.

At some point, as I was sitting in the wifi connected coffee shop in the rural town in which I grew up, I experienced an epiphany and realized that not only do I detest the actions of the entire Bush Oligarchy (oil-igarchy?) I am personally pissed off at Bush because he is forcing me to put so much energy into pro-peace activities to counter their evil doings that I am not able to do the things I'd really like to be doing . I would really like to be arranging my poetry into a coherent manuscript, researching and continuing work on a biography of Gene Stratton-Porter, finishing several art projects, hanging with my teenage daughter in these blink of the eye moments before she heads off to college, doing sorely needed repairs on my home, getting several of my websites either up and running or back up, and countless other really important things. Not only are the policies of these vile men and women screwing up the world I live in to levels that may well signal the end of life as we know it, but my personal life and well-being within the moment are being impinged upon.

I need to act. It is a real need that has to be fulfilled. The only way I can explain it is in the colloquial language of the place where I was raised. I heard a call. And paraphrasing my folksinger friend Carrie Newcomer says, "when you hear/feel this type of call, you have to answer." It is that simple. Who places that call and how it is placed are up for debate, but for me it is connected to those spiritual level things that are based in belief systems and not in logical & scientific systems of knowing.

I'm not hiding my religious beliefs any longer. I've always thought that my religion, how I interact with the world of spirit and flesh, was nobody's business but my own. I still think that. But my beliefs that come from that personal understanding of religion (I'm very Protestant in that sense, I guess.) That understanding translates to my morality and my concepts of worth, my values if you will. I am sick and tired of corrupt, carpet-bagging, war-mongers calling me morally bankrupt and insinuating that my values are somehow tainted. I am a good person, at peace with the deity as I understand her, and I am gonna get righteous on people's asses when they try to pull that crap on me! Conflict resolution is a good thing, but be cannot compromise on our beliefs. Negotiations necessary to the ultimate declaration of peace will require great diplomacy, but no one should have to compromise their faith and bend to the will of another person's faith in the pursuit of that peace.

I'm tired of imposition by others into my right to believe and act in virtuous ways as dictated by my religion. Bush and his cronies are not only occupying Iraq, they are attempting to possess my soul. They are demons. Am I going too far? Okay, okay, but I do like theatrics. But you get my point. Gonzales, for example, doesn't give a *bleep* about child pornography, he is orchestrating a campaign to restrict internet freedom and privacy and is using an issue with a moral hair trigger to do it. The method is the same one used by this administration time and time again. They justify an action by inciting a mob mentality and then turn around and lynch the folks who were in the mob. Family values and the "abortion issue" were mere propaganda tools to divert the populace from stolen elections, illegal consolidation of power in the presidency, steering away from combating the real terrorist threats against our country, destroying the Bill of Rights, and setting up a completely corporate ruled fascist state. This has been enabled by Democrats who don't stand for anything and journalists who value their checks cut by corporate media more than their integrity.

We've got to multitask, keep the faith, and recognize that we are working on product and process simultaneously.

I am the walrus.