In post-war Sri Lanka it is important to acknowledge that ethnic tensions may still remain even after the end of the conflict in 2009. An end to the fighting does not target the roots of the conflict or the protracted ethnic consciousnesses of the Sinhalese, Tamils, and muslims. Thus peacebuilding which acknowledges the roots of the conflict and tries to prevent further conflict is essential in achieving a durable positive peace.

Trauma and experiences endured by both ethnic groups become affected by ‘selective forgetting and remembering’ and this forms a constructive past in order to validate emotions and threats felt in the present. In a protracted social conflict, ‘us’ and ‘them’ both construct their own threatened world; this dichotomy is a result of constructive memories, traumas and threats. 

In September of last year, one of tens of thousands of annual “mass incidents” in China took place in a fishing village named Wukan. Several hundred local citizens marched to the county government seat, protesting what is now a disappointingly familiar story in towns and cities all across the country: illegal land seizures by local officials, who evict residents and sell the land to developers or corporations, pocketing a percentage. However, with greater awareness of their property rights, Chinese citizens have grown increasingly active in the past decade, fighting back against local corruption—with mixed results. Wukan was another example of this ongoing stratification of rich and poor in China, but, in December, what started as a local protest mushroomed into an international event.

After a village negotiating team was kidnapped and one of the village heads died suspiciously while under police custody, thousands of citizens gathered and took to the streets. Police in riot gear were sent in to quell the protest, beating dozens, but they retreated after citizens refused to back down. Local party officials fled the village as well, and police cordoned off the newly autonomous town, laying “siege.”

What I believe isn’t important.  The fact that I can put order to my thoughts, sort them into opinions and fan them into beliefs is hardly impressive.  In fact, such thinking is unavoidable.  It’s what our highly evolved human brains do.  They compare and contrast and judge in an endless attempt to make sense of the world around us.  Believing is as automatic as walking or talking or sneezing, and about as noteworthy.

There was a time when I considered my beliefs to be something more than just an assemblage of thoughts.  I mistook them for something much more important.  I thought they were me.

One of the great achievements of the Occupy Wall Street movement, after only six weeks of protest, has been its unmasking of some deeply entrenched illusions about our rights of free speech, access to public spaces and the meaning of democracy. OWS has done this not with words alone (truth-telling tends to be consigned to the fringes of respectable opinion), but through mostly peaceful public confrontations of Power. 

As we saw in the Sixties, it takes such direct confrontations to force Power to reveal ugly truths that otherwise must be masked.  In the case of the Occupy protests, it is the truth that public spaces do not really belong to the citizenry; that private powers can curb dissent through procedural pretexts notwithstanding the First Amendment; and that democratic accountability as now practiced in the American empire is mostly a charade. 

To all those in the United States currently occupying parks, squares and other spaces, your comrades in Cairo are watching you in solidarity. Having received so much advice from you about transitioning to democracy, we thought it's our turn to pass on some advice.

Indeed, we are now in many ways involved in the same struggle. What most pundits call “The Arab Spring” has its roots in the demonstrations, riots, strikes and occupations taking place all around the world, its foundations lie in years-long struggles by people and popular movements. The moment that we find ourselves in is nothing new, as we in Egypt and others have been fighting against systems of repression, disenfranchisement and the unchecked ravages of global corporatism: a System that has made a world that is dangerous and cruel to its inhabitants. As the interests of government increasingly cater to the interests and comforts of private, transnational capital, our cities and homes have become progressively more abstract and violent places, subject to the casual ravages of the next economic development or urban renewal scheme.

NextGov.com is reporting that the FBI will begin rolling out its Next Generation Identification (NGI) facial recognition service as early as this January.  Once NGI is fully deployed and once each of its approximately 100 million records also includes photographs, it will become trivially easy to find and track Americans.

As we detailed in an earlier post, NGI expands the FBI’s IAFIS criminal and civil fingerprint database to include multimodal biometric identifiers such as iris scans, palm prints, photos, and voice data. The Bureau is planning to introduce each of these capabilities in phases (pdf, p.4) over the next two and a half years, starting with facial recognition in four states—Michigan, Washington, Florida, and North Carolina—this winter.

An excellent #OccupyWallStreet clip that gives hope, whilst illustrating the hypocrisy in our world leaders worlds, depending on what group they are talking about

Read more...

Not long ago I received in the mail a slender envelope with international postage on the front. Inside was a small card-paper placard bearing my name, handwritten, confirming my citizenship in what is apparently the world’s newest nation – neither South Sudan nor Kosovo, of course, nor even a nascent Palestine, but rather nowhereisland. This decidedly more postmaterialist undertaking is the brainchild of British artist Alex Hartley.

While traipsing about the Arctic seas on a 2004 expedition with Cape Farewell, a group that works to forge a “cultural response” to climate change through various artistic endeavors, Hartley discovered what is now called Nyskjaeret, a soccer field-sized island of frozen rock and grit. Previously uncharted, the island was only recently revealed in the wake of receding glaciers around the Norwegian archipelago of Svlabard. In accordance with his stated desire of “taking everything through to a ridiculous level,” Hartley eventually managed to register his newfound island with the Norwegian Polar Institute, ensuring its inclusion on all subsequent surveys and maps of the area.