For the Eastern Ghats

 In these hills

there is stupendous green

tamarind trees

herbs

wild grasses

In these hills

there is inspiration

a wide sky

spontaneous waterfalls

heat soft to the skin

In these hills

there are villages

‘two houses or more make a village’

the British law said

(for the purpose of collecting revenue)

In these hills

there are steps of growth

from pulses to banana trees

twenty food varieties

made possible by rich soil

and small canals branching waterfalls

In these hills

there are some train tracks

some roads

state tourism plans

bio-prospectors

attempted mines

In these hills

there are people

who’ve lived with these hills

from heights of time

before the revenue-villages of the British.

They are still living here

Let them live.

From breathing for breadth, by Salimah Valiani (TSAR: 2005)

Photo by Salimah Valiani

From the international liaison office of the Green Committees Movement

Oppressed peoples around the world, the battle has begun. Do not despair, help is nigh. Do you realize that this is the Night of Power? What is the Night of Power? It is better than thousands of other nights, it is the destiny, when the heavens are open to receive your prayers thousands fold.

Watch what is happening now in America. Did we hit them with our missiles? No, they came and struck us, 64 hits on Bab Al-Aziziya which is now destroyed, and finally I had to leave my home, where they killed many innocents. But I will never leave Libya and in this fight, it is either victory or death.

Those of you in the United States of America, I am not your leader. If you are in that failed state you should be preparing to leave. Go to Venezuela. If you remain, you must follow my deputy, spiritual leader Minister Louis Farrakhan. Listen to him. He will tell you all you need to know about what is unfolding.

Those of you in Europe, you too should prepare to be drowned in events and calumny. Not enough of you have risen up. You will have to accept the consequences. The good among you should head to Africa. Go to West Africa. North Africa is not safe now that the region is all a battle field. In West Africa you will find homes and good work.

Those of you in Serbia, true friends of Libya, you are with me. Do not despair of the rat flag on only one house out of one million. All of you can cut pieces of green cloth, measured exactly two by one in dimension; that is your flag, the flag of people’s power, of hope, of truth, of the future. 

All you in the world who support truth, freedom, Jamahiriya, hang it on millions of homes and cars. The green flag is yours and belongs to all the masses of the world. With the dawn of people’s authority and the end of governments, we chose the green flag and made its colour and dimension easy for all. Choose any green. Cut it one by two, exactly, and hang it everywhere, carry it with you. 

Soon the green flag will fly all over the world, as governments collapse. They failed their people; I alone did more than all of them. They served different masters. They did not intend to serve the people, never. They are owned by others. They do nothing for you. Ignore them and they are gone. Prepare yourselves by forming committees, openly or in secret, set up your local mathabas to meet and share. Chart the way forward. The green flag belongs to you all. 

The future is the Jamahiriya, everywhere. The masses self-governing societies. Basic popular congresses and people’s committees. Green committees to guide, defend, expose, call, show the way forward to people’s power. It’s all there in The Green Book, read it, copy it, share it. Use your own communication systems, don’t rely on the enemy. Make your own communications. Take back your resources to your hands, do not be afraid of power – possess it. It is your power, wealth and arms that the governments, banks and militaries stole from you.

You cannot ask others to represent you. You cannot entrust thieves with your wealth. You cannot ask others to fight and die on your behalf, to defend you. This is your human responsibility. When you do this, the world will be free, organized, a jamahiri system, freedom and happiness, abundance of wealth for all.

The era of the governments is coming to an end and they are fighting their last gasp. They are desperate. But they are bankrupt, not only financially speaking, they are bankrupt in morals, religion, education, intellect, ideas, they have no way forward. They are on the stage of collapse. That collapse is good for the world peoples who are suffering because they are not free.

O all good people of the world, know that Islam is not what is being put to you by the ignorant who make a public show of prayer but in reality are serving the devil. Islam is submission to the will of Allah, the One God of all humanity. This is the night of prayer. Your prayers are being answered. You are the Muslims, all those who pray and do not associate partners with Allah.

People of Bosnia, many of you are misguided, Arabs, the useless and weak. The people of Serbia who are Christians and others would be closer to God. There is only one God. That God is with the truth wherever it is found. Read the Qur’an to know the truth, do not listen to those who would mislead you. If God is with you, who can be against you? 

What Sharia are you looking for other than the one which we have, since I was the first to bring Quran as the Law of Society in the Jamahiriya. Is it the Sharia of injustice? Oppression? Cowardice? Murder? Insanity? Drugs? Is it the Sharia that elevates the rat with his gun that allows torture, rape and theft? No! That is not the Sharia, ignoring all that is in the Qur’an.

Prayers are being answered. More than forty armies have gone against me, only because I spoke the truth, because I would not let the thieves pass me into Africa. I have promised Africa I will not betray you. I promise the world, the millions who have me in your hearts, that I am fighting to the finish.

Do not believe their trumpets. Whoever listens to the trumpets is making a mistake. You have your own mathabas to go to for information and to meet and deliberate. Pay no heed to them. By now this should be clear to you. Fire is water, water is fire. Know that the future is yours, governments are finished, a new era of the masses is coming, as predicted in The Green Book.

I hear you. Many of your messages reach to me. I cannot answer you individually but I feel your pain. Some of you were so affected by the lies in the recent days that you even contemplated suicide. No! Never. Suicide is not an option when we are in front of great victory. The costs will be high but we must not waver.

I see you Africans around the world, even in Australia, your pictures reach me. I see you collecting money to help East Africa. It is the whites who brought these problems and cut us off from helping our brothers and sisters. Thank you for your prayers. But keep your money. Instead use it to fight those oppressors.

Form among you green committees, meet in secret or in open. Proclaim your allegiance to the Green Charter. Study The Green Book. Register your people’s conferences, provide encouragement to others around the world, prepare for a future world congress on crimes against humanity, you have six months to prepare.

March next year can be the biggest congress of the people, you can make it happen. Prepare already. Make a web site so all the crimes can be registered. While we fight to defend our nation, you fight on the battle field of truth, for the pen is mightier than the sword.

Some of you arrived to our western border, but had to return. You have families to take care of. Now the way is clear, but NATO will not allow for peace. They fear the example of the Great Jamahiriya. They can destroy our physical achievements but they cannot destroy the truth. The more they try the more we will be victorious. Victory is with the people, never with the oppressors.

Thousands of you are waiting at various stations. I see you in Tanzania, in Congo, Ghana, Nigeria, and many other parts of Africa. How will you cross the deserts to Libya? Instead group yourselves where you are. The fight if it is not won in Libya will be coming to you. Prepare for it. Prepare traps for the invaders. You must defend your corners.

African governments are not strong. They control only a few centers of cities. They often provide no services and the people live without them. They will not stand in your way when the time comes. They are poor. They have been robbed by the racists, the colonialists, the white thieves from the north. Oppose them only if they oppose you. Be prepared. Build your mathaba. Defend your continent.

They can attack with their bombs, but we defend with truth. They can never fight us man to man. They are only cowards, sick, demented, hiding behind machines. They can never face the African one to one. African children can defeat any white mercenary – that is why they hide and destroy with hatred from far.

Do not let them use you. Be united. Build your defenses for they are coming if they manage to pass Libya. If they destroy Libya then attack them from behind.

Avoid fighting if you can. The enemy wishes us all to be bogged down on their battlefields; they want to engage us all in war. Afghanistan is now with us, Iraq is with us, Venezuela is with us. We want peace. We want justice. Work for conferences on crimes against humanity, use your mathaba networks, the mathaba is the headquarters of the green committees, go forth, victory is ours!

Muammar Qaddafi

   Libya
   August 2011

Where I am not allowed to

Pick-up a basket or use a cart

At the grocery store

(too many peoples’ germs have made contact)

I can only buy

The things I am able

To carry in my hands (and arms).

The other day at the store

My hands and arms were full

And we desperately needed

Some toilet paper at home

So I put the package of toilet rolls between my legs

And made my way to the cash register.

People must’ve thought I’d gone crazy

How could I explain to them

That it wasn’t me

But my wife who’s gone crazy

Crazy with worry

Now that I’ve been diagnosed with colon cancer.’

 For Sadru Teja, Yasmin Teja, Jack Layton and Olivia Chow.

 August 2011

At Jarvis and Carlton

Going west

7:50 am

mid-August

People are hot

Tired of standing

(Not unlike any other major city

where public transport is underfunded

though in high demand)

A younger man who got on later

Grabs a newly-freed seat

And a slightly less young man

who got on earlier says

Thank you, really

The younger man springs up

says FINE, take the fucking seat

The street car door opens

An elderly man gets off

Muttering loud enough to hear

Now Now Boys.

I look out the window

as a cockroach crawls the frame

(another witness)

A trim young woman

in white fine-lined dress

with just a touch of colour,

thick brunette bob

tucked around the ear

Catches my eye and

Keeps it.

(Just can’t count how many times TTC drivers have thanked me for smiling)

With love to all drivers of the Toronto Transit Commission.

August 2011

published in VIKALP Alternatives, February 2004. Vol. XI, No. 4, pp.71-76. 

For the past few decades, the world economy as we know it has been shifting to something new through radical restructuring and reorganization. Within this context, the unfolding “anti-globalization movement” – which may be seen as a response to this restructuring and reorganization – is an important field within which to identify and define current theory and practice. According to Antonio Gramsci, questions of theory and practice and the identity between them are raised particularly in transitional moments of history, that is, when the movement of historical transformation is at its most rapid. The point of such questioning, as Gramsci says, is to make the “practical forces unleashed” more efficient and expansive and the “theoretical programmes” more realistically justified.

Unlike most critiques of the “anti-globalization movement”, this analysis draws from two years of work within the economic policy sector of the ‘NGO-world’; two years of habitual consumption of new information, meetings with community groups and non-governmental organizations in Canada and various parts of Asia working to change socio-economic policy, and earnest attempts to precede and follow ‘action’ with careful reflection on goals and objectives. It should be noted that though for the social scientist, two years in the field is a long time, for the social activist it is merely a beginning.

SHORTCOMINGS IN THE POLITICAL ECONOMY ANALYSIS OF NGOs

Marxists and socialists have long viewed capitalism as a global process. The starting point of this process has been a topic of debate, with some arguing it began as far back as the 16th century and others arguing for sometime in the 19th century. Within such a historical frame, changes of the last few decades can be seen in perspective and linked to underlying contradictions or/and cycles in the world capitalist economy.

Giovanni Arrighi, for one, traces four ‘systemic cycles of accumulation’ in the history of the capitalist world economy. These are: the Genoese cycle (beginning circa 1450-1640), the Dutch cycle (circa 1640-1790), the British cycle (circa 1790-1925) and the American cycle (circa 1925-present). [See The Long Twentieth Century, Verso, 1994]

Within each cycle of accumulation, a phase of ‘material expansion’ is followed by a phase of ‘financial expansion’. A phase of material expansion consists of continuous change whereby the capitalist world economy grows steadily along a well-defined path. A phase of financial expansion consists of discontinuous change whereby the established path has reached its limits and the world economy shifts onto another path via radical restructuring and reorganization.

The financial expansion of Arrighi’s ‘American cycle of accumulation’ begins circa 1970. In more concrete terms, the surge of large loans made to Southern states by Northern banks during the 1970s, the move by large pharmaceutical corporations to research and patent Southern seeds and medicinal plants from the early 1980s, and the ‘Uruguay Round’ of negotiations under the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) beginning in the late 80s – can all be seen as instances of restructuring or reorganization resulting from limits of the material expansion of 1925-1970.

In terms of  ‘practice’ or  ‘action’, rather than simply opposing the neoliberal trend of the past few decades, this type of theoretical formulation encourages us to uncover the limits and contradictions of what is referred to in Northern countries as the ‘Golden Age’ of capitalism (1950-1970). These limits and contradictions are at the heart of the shift to neoliberal policy by the early 1980s. Recognizing and examining these contradictions in their specific forms (for example, industry by industry) in turn allows us to search for alternative structures of production and trade, ones which have the potential of undoing the inequality of wealth and well-being between North and South – a historic feature of the world economy which was far from dismantled in the so-called Golden Age.

As opposed to basing their policy demands in far-reaching economic analysis of which the above may be one example, NGOs, especially in the North, tend to rely on the sketchy analytical tools of standard economists. A rarely defined “globalization” is thus identified as cause and effect of a wide range of phenomena: from neoliberal trade agreements, to the over-exploitation of natural resources, to structural adjustment plans. The solutions proposed are, in a word, a return to the Keynesian economics of the Golden Age.   

With regard to large corporations, NGO analysis tends to posit the political influence of large corporations on economic policy making as a recent phenomenon. It thereby overlooks the historic power of large corporations and leads to an  underestimation of the challenges involved in trying to oppose them. From the very early 20th century, large corporations of Western Europe, North America and Japan have been key in shaping what is now taken for granted to be ‘productive activity’, and indeed, ‘economy’. Economic wealth aside, this historic power of large corporations is one of immense cultural force, particularly in developed countries, where populations depend on mass produced goods to satisfy all of their basic needs. It is also a power built on long-standing political connections and know-how. To give just one example, strategizing by large corporations made for the abandonment of United Nations negotiations for a Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations (TNCs), talks which began as far back as 1976. The negotiations broke-down because of the reluctance and hostility of some developed states, which opposed the obligations placed by the Code on TNCs.  

Instead of highlighting the role of particular developed country states in advancing corporate interests in various venues like the UN, and making these states the targets for action, NGOs tend to focus on entire institutions (IMF, WTO, etc). What is perhaps the most detrimental political outcome of this over-simplification is that it perpetuates the myth that multilateral institutions have forced all states to adopt neoliberal ideology and policies. This is a myth which the most powerful states – developed states of the North – are happy to have their citizens believe because it absolves these states of their responsibility in initiating the neoliberal shift, first at home and then within multilateral institutions.

The transformation of the International Monetary Fund provides the most vivid example of this. In the early 1980s, attempting to draw money capital back into their economies, the US Federal Reserve Bank and other central banks of Northern states increased interest rates. This also had the effect of increasing the cost of debt servicing for Southern states having accumulated large debts when interest rates were very low. To deal with the consequent debt crises, as well as to increase speculation opportunities for large investors, Northern states moved to transform the role of the IMF. This entailed reshaping the IMF from a minor lender of last resort providing short term financing, into a major enforcer of foreign debt service and the leading advocate for liberalization of Southern financial markets. New roles for the World Bank and other development banks – such as the imposition of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) – were all part of this shift.         

Along with poor analysis combined with Keynesian solutions which are usually ill-suited to the realities of our times, many NGOs champion a rhetoric of social justice and democracy. The latter is very palatable and the former easily dismissed in pacifist Northern countries like Canada, the net result being that politicians adopt the social justice rhetoric of NGOs while continuing to quietly pursue aggressive liberalization goals in multilateral settings. Knowing that this rhetoric reflects  public sentiment, the Canadian government now almost regularly invites NGOs to ‘consult’ with relevant officials, giving the impression that the concerns raised by NGOs are being considered. What is lost in these gestures is that more often than not, NGOs are the very last to be consulted, usually in the final instances before or during international conferences. These are the instances, of course, when photo opportunities translate into important political capital for the Canadian government.

NGO GOALS, STRATEGY AND TACTICS

Most NGOs employ a variety of strategies and tactics to achieve three principle goals: to raise awareness around issues, to attract media attention, and to effect changes to specific policy positions.

Beginning with the last goal in the list first, the main strategy used to effect changes to specific policies is the mobilization of individuals and organizations to support the policy change. Tactics here include: the publication of reports (often containing original empirical data and fresh approaches to standard data) to substantiate the policy change, and national or/and international letter-writing campaigns to relevant government officials. Effective organizations are strategic in their use of this strategy because it is near impossible for individuals and organizations to keep-up when the specific policy changes being chased are too numerous. Taking the movement as a whole, this underlines the importance of unity: if NGOs, community groups and coalitions do not come together on a few objectives in the medium to longer-run, several short-lived efforts will exhaust great energies while accomplishing little.  

Returning to the first two goals, at first glance awareness-raising and attaining media coverage seem to be laudable goals, particularly in North America, where the media have little scope for topics pertaining to the economy. Upon deeper consideration, however, these goals should themselves be strategies used to achieve certain objectives or publicize well-defined demands which go beyond good rhetoric. In the absence of well-defined demands, demonstrations, international action days, shareholder actions, and even parallel forums may gain media attention, but the coverage will remain superficial and the effects in terms of awareness-raising will be fleeting. One further question with which all political actors must contend is what does raising awareness around an issue actually accomplish and how is this measured? More specific to our area of interest: even when we succeed in exposing the politics behind the economic deal-making, how does this affect the multidimensional power of capital?

A minority of NGOs – mostly in the South – begin with very specific goals at the microeconomic level, only to end-up posing significant challenges to the ongoing process of commodification which is capitalism. In contrast to the generalization that all countries have been completely absorbed into the world capitalist system, the real world offers several layers of life which have yet to be integrated into money economies or/and international exchange systems. In several parts of Asia, NGOs have set-out to work with indigenous peoples surviving in relatively self-sufficient, ecologically-sound economies. Some of these efforts have resulted in legal and political battles to safeguard ancestral land and resource rights which has meant confronting large corporations (both private and public) attempting to appropriate indigenous lands for their own profitable purposes. What these peoples’ groups and NGOs are succeeding in doing – in many cases without attracting much media attention at all – is to prevent certain corporate sectors from being able to proceed with profit-making activity at any and all costs. At the same time, these groups are affirming livelihood systems which are viable alternatives to capitalist production and consumption.    

In Orissa, India, for example, the Canadian company ALCAN has been unsuccessful in its attempts to build a massive bauxite mine and processing plant for the past 10 years. This successful resistance – on the part of residents of the area who oppose mineral production because they do not see it as economically and socially productive -  has however, meant lives: three indigenous activists were killed by state security following a peaceful planning meeting in December 2000.      

Similarly, but on a much larger scale, mining investment in Indonesia has dropped from 2 billion USD in 1999, to 170 million USD in 2002. This is in no small part due to the organizing of indigenous groups and NGOs who have recognized the full costs -social, economic and environmental – of large scale mining in ecologically-sensitive, island settings. In addition to questioning the norms of an industry which has been associated with armed protection and the violation of human rights, Indonesian activists are forcing a national debate around the Indonesian economy’s dependency on metal mineral extraction. Even in narrow economic terms, metal mineral production has not been particularly enriching for resource-rich states since the collapse of world metal mineral prices in the early 1980s.     

Another example of effective NGO activity in the economic policy sector is the information and training offered by Southern NGOs to Southern trade negotiators in the areas of investment, competition, and government procurement during the year leading-up to the September 2003 WTO Ministerial in Cancun. For these NGO actors it is clear that well-organized, well-informed Southern governments can constitute one of the strongest forces of opposition to corporations empowered by the political apparatus of Northern governments. The choice to strategize around preventing the birth of new multilateral agreements in the areas of investment, competition, and government procurement involved a practical plan originating from a larger understanding of world economic relations, coupled with the awareness that blocking the start of negotiations for new agreements in Cancun would be jumping one hurdle in a line of several.

In closing, in a moment of economic restructuring and reorganization including forceful moves toward new legal structures benefiting only profit-makers, progressives in all quarters face the challenge of using the moment to shift the reorganizing toward new structures of economic cooperation. For socialist thinkers this includes searching-out and absorbing new and original data being exposed by NGOs, and engaging with NGO analysis and actors rather than simply criticizing them for not being adequately ‘radical’. Contrary to the ambitions of some NGOs, these new structures of economic cooperation should integrate communities in decision making processes rather than elevating NGOs to be the representatives of communities. And while NGOs can be quite effective when they specialize, knock-on official doors unexpectedly, and keep focused on carefully formulated objectives – NGOs alone cannot provide a vision of an alternative global whole. This has yet to be constructed, as we take down historic barriers of gender, race and geography-and learn to respect, listen, and be inspired by each other.

Click on the link: GeorgeReview

Note from SV: While a very pleasing review, there are a few errors here to note. The review suggests I have a South African background, which is not correct.  George Elliott Clarke is not the first to do so. I have noticed in Canada we have a tendency to make these types of linear connections. One of the reasons why I wrote this book is to probe what is underlying such tendencies. My connections with South Africa actually involve my work in the international  anti-Apartheid movement in the 1980s, and my work in a Cape Town based thinktank and training institute in 2004-05.  Also, as you can see in this blog, Letter Out : Letter In is my second, not first collection of poetry.

Thursday, May 5, 2011, 7 pm – 9 pm

wine and snacks, readings and celebration

at Yonge & Castlefield. TTC to Eglinton station, walk or

take bus north to St. Clements, walk 1 block west.

Afrofest, Toronto

In Queen’s Park that day

A Togolese band sang the stage

and ended the show

with a Togolese cheer

Which is also a female Bedouin cry

of passion and collective resistance 

A Chilean man swirled his partner

to the Togolese tunes:

Chilean swirl turning Togolese in Toronto

A Jamaican man danced

on the grassy-dirt-dance floor

and returned to the Continent after centuries

Two East Africans and a Canadian

became South African and Central African

through beers and headbeats

And a mellow young WASP[1]

tasted the world in his toes

as he watched-on

tapping his foot

Thanksgiving, 2046

— To Wong Kar Wai

On special days

like Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve

People who are alone

(and can afford it)

Go out to the cinema

To be alone together.

For the Cape Town Train Station, 2005

at the Apartheid Museum

the only way for visitors to leave the place

Is from a traditional Apartheid train station

Regardless of who they came with 

Or where they are going

 ’African’ visitors must take the ‘African’ train

‘Coloured’ vistors must take the ‘Coloured’ train

‘Indian’ vistors must take the ‘Indian’ train

and ‘White’ visitors must take the ‘White’ train.

Letter Out : Letter In is a poetic synthesis of social commentary, political-economic analysis and philosophical meditation. Re-interpreting meanings and frames of reference by taking distance, the poems delve into the complexities of divisions, and explore the Sufi notion of love.

The first section, Letter to South Africa,  offers a uniquely Canadian perspective on post-Apartheid South Africa. Letter to Canada is a re-examination of Canada following from experiences of South Africa. Letter to All moves beyond borders, to larger frames of reference. The final section, Letter Out : Letter In,  attempts to relocate the individual within the big picture.

In Letter to South Africa Valiani holds a mirror to our faces. She shines a torch on the selves we may not wish to illuminate and on those we’d like to remodel. Blink, close your eyes, shift, crouch, turn around, hide – her words expose like the midday sun.   – Makhosazana Xaba, Poet, these hands (2005), Tongues of Their Mothers (2008)

Salimah Valiani’s work embodies a miraculous fusion of talents and perspectives. She shows us the world through a poet’s eyes but with a political-economist’s understanding of power and structure. Above all she conveys an undying respect for the dignity and staying power of humanity, and an undying hope that we will make it better. - Jim Stanford, Canadian Auto Workers

Salimah Valiani asks, “how can we know ourselves/if we don’t know each other?” Entering “a dialect of internationalism,” her poems push us to expand our contexts, to look more closely into global dynamics as home. From revisiting Inuit sculptures in a Canadian airport to a black history tour of Halifax and much more, Letter Out : Letter In responds to what’s happening in our streets and planet today with urgent love. As Valiani reminds us, “umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu. – Rita Wong, Poet and winner of the 2008 Dorothy Livesay Prize, for forage (2007).

it is the eternity of the rhythm

not the baseline

it is the warmth in the voice

not the sound of the voice

it is understanding

not knowing the language

it is the mood of the room

not the lighting of the room

it is the vibe of a crowd

not the size of a crowd

it is the chance of a moment

not whether it lasts

it is the sense of things

not things themselves.

―in memory of Michael Jackson

      dazzling, tragic

embodiment of the American Dream

by Salimah Valiani, forthcoming in Letter Out : Letter In (Inanna Publications: 2009)