Know Your Food

Chilean Author Isabel Allende on Haiti, Immigration, and Latin America

Solidarity in Martinique and America

"Our solidarity is first with our brothers of the neighboring islands and secondly with the nations of South America."

-The Martinican Creolists: Jean Bernabe, Patrick Chamoiseau, & Raphael Confiant

Featured Painting

Las Meninas
by: Diego Velazquez

Thinking versus Doing

Don't spend more time thinking about doing something rather than doing it.

Technology & Civilization

Technology is not a sign of civilization, even the most barbaric of cultures may have the greatest of technologies.

Creoleness

"Creoleness is the interactional or transactionnal aggregate of Caribbean, European, African, Asian, and Levantine cultural elements, united on the same soil by the yoke of history."
-Jean Bernabé

The Key to Success

The key to success, whatever that may entail, is self discipline.

Featured Painting

Tiger Drinking from a Raging River
by: Kano Sansetu

Wisdom

Wisdom is gained through the accumulation of experience, of pain.

Future

Future.
An extreme respect and disregard for tradition
and the past.
An obsession and distrust for novelty
and the future.

Victims, Victors, & Transcendence

The victors write and control history, and it can be assumed, every other discourse in the history of mankind. The victims are left behind, without a voice, left to fend for themselves in the struggle for victory. Recently there has been more attention given to the victims of history, a subject called history from the ground up. However, this revolutionizing of discourse, while staying within the traditional space opened for the discourse, does not go beyond the cycle of victims becoming victors.

In order for the victim to become the victor, the victim must do whatever was done to them to another people. They must learn to victimize others, and grasp proudly there victory. This is the cycle of violence visible in our history up to the present.

To become victorious means to victimize, this must be transcended.

The Realization of Beauty

Is the realization of beauty possible? The realization of beauty is without comparison, as beauty is not a measurement.

Featured Painting

Takiyasha the Witch and the Skeleton Spectre
By: Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861)

Featured Poem

Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino y nada más;
caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.

Al andar se hace camino
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino
sino estelas en el mar...

Todo pasa y todo queda,
pero lo nuestro es pasar,
pasar haciendo caminos,
caminos sobre el mar.

-Antonio Machado

Collateral Murder

Newly leaked video of civilians being killed in Iraq.

Political Language

Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind.
-George Orwell

Featured Painting

Flower Seller by Diego Rivera

Kant on Race

"Humanity exists in its greatest perfection in the white race. The yellow Indians have a smaller amount of talent. The Negroes are lower and the lowest are the American peoples."

-Immanuel Kant, Physical Geography

Walcott on Love

"The traveller cannot love, since love is stasis and travel is motion."

By Derek Walcott, Nobel Prize winning poet from St. Lucia.

Featured Poem

The white man killed my father
Because my father was proud
The white man raped my mother
Because my mother was beautiful
The white man wore out my brother in the hot sun of the roads
Because my brother was strong
Then the white man turned to me
His hands red with blood
Spat black his contempt into my face
And in his master's voice:
"Hey boy, a pastis, a towel, some water."

Author: David Diop
Title: Le Temps du martyre

Terrorism

Groups like Eta, Al Qaeda, FARC, Tamil Tigers, and others around the world are labeled "terrorist groups" by the European Union, the United States, and other countries and governmental organizations. But what qualifies as terrorism? NATO operations in Afghanistan, for example, continue to kill countless civilians, yet is NATO labeled a terrorist organization? China continues its long history of human rights abuses, yet has any nation had the courage to label it a "rogue state" or accused it of terrorism? The answer to both questions is no, and one has to beg the question as to why.

Truth, History, & Hate

As to the Laws of the New Love Movement, we refuse to hate anyone, proclaim hate for anyone, or assume violence upon anyone. But this does not mean we ignore the truth, are afraid to tell the truth, or have short term memory loss when it comes to human history.

On Communism

Communism is first and foremost an economic theory. Because of the powerful systems of propaganda in place in the United States, many people do not, and cannot accept this fact. Communism does not dictate political relationships, it does not claim a political system, and it does not seek to create and control government. Communism is solely a theory of capital, an idea for the best system of economics for a nation.

In the United States, we see quite clearly that the government does not mirror the economic system (formally) and vice-versa. If you think of the concepts of Representative Government, voting, Democracy, and Republicanism, it is hard to see this visible in the economic system of the country. Are corporations democratic? Is a C.E.O. elected? Do workers get to vote for their supervisors? The answer to all three of this questions is frankly, no. That is because the system of economics in America, Capitalism, is not the same, and is in fact an entirely different subject from the governmental one, Democracy.

It should be clear, then, that just as in the United States, where an economic system exists apart from the governmental one, the same is true of Communism. Democracy and Communism are not opposed to one another. They can co-exist side by side, one being the effective political process, and one being the economic one.

[A further post on the intertwining of government, politics, and economy will be posted in the future]

Insignificance

No people are insignificant.
Not because of:
religion
country
place
region
color
creed
race
hair
eyes
politic
strength
weakness
music
or art
or history
or lack.

All people are within love for all live within the warmth of this mother we call earth.

Names?

What's in a name? Why is the concept of New Love called "new love"?
The concept of New Love is exactly that, to re-define, or re-conceptualize, love, in that sense then, the new definition/conceptualization is a new idea of love, distinct from our former and what has already been asserted, erroneous ideas of love. That love is dead, and if we are ever to try to achieve anything within our conditions as human beings living on this Earth, we need a New Love. But I'd like to be wary with this word "New" as I don't presuppose that this New Love has not existed before, perhaps the mission of the New Love Movement is to re-discover that which has been lost, to re-capture the True Love which our world and existence is in terrible need of...

The New Love Movement

I have been involved in this movement for sometime, along with close friends, at least for some years now. It involved replaced anger with sadness, hatred with love, and the ability to enter wholeheartedly the realm of Non-Judgment.
Over my, the author's, stay in Europe over the past 5 months, along with some visionary insights from the writer Friedrich Nietzsche, I have impulsively come up with a list of 10 principles for the New Love Movement.
I believe many can benefit from these Principles, but I admit they are Principles most assuredly from my mind, and therefore may be only applicable to me, my lived experience, and the associations with people I now have.
Here are the Principles:

New Love Movement
1. accept your weakness, only then can you become strong, and accept the weakness of others, so you can help them become strong

2. never judge

3. accept pain as a side effect of love and close relationship, if you only want to be made to feel good, you are only loving yourself, but if you can love another even if they cause you pain, you show that you love them for who they are

4. it is not natural to be isolated, isolation only exists in isolation, without friendship, our minds weaken, as does our heart and soul

5. deny the self's longing for self-love, learn balance and reciprocation, recognize we yearn for pleasure and for ourselves to be happy, but also recognize seeking these things is not our destiny.

6. respect yourself, then respect others, come to terms with yourself, then you can accept others

7. be rid of childish things, to crave attention is natural, recognize this impulse, and funnel it in a positive way. do not stoop to losing yourself to gain it or anything else, such as pleasure.

8. love asks nothing in return, so ask for nothing. but respect and honesty asks for something in return, and thats to be respected and given honesty.

9. be free, and allow others to be free, never try to possess another, never allow yourself to be possessed. but to give yourself to another, and for another to give their-self to you, is a different matter.

10. true love is for the Other to be free, and still to Love Them.

Featured Painting

The Garden of Earthly Delights (or The Millennium), is a triptych painted by the early Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450–1516), housed in the Museo del Prado in Madrid since 1939. Dating between 1503 and 1504, when Bosch was about 50 years old, it is his best-known and most ambitious work. The masterpiece reveals the artist at the height of his powers; in no other painting does he achieve such complexity of meaning or such vivid imagery. The triptych depicts several Biblical scenes on a grand scale and as a "true triptych", as defined by Hans Belting, was probably intended to illustrate the history of mankind according to medieval Christian doctrine.

Gabriel García Márquez

A Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. García Márquez, affectionately known as "Gabo" throughout Latin America, is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. In 1982, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He pursued a self-directed education that resulted in his leaving law school for a career in journalism. From early on, he showed no inhibitions in his criticism of Colombian and foreign politics. In 1958, he married Mercedes Barcha; they have two sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo.

He started as a journalist, and has written many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best-known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). His works have achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing a literary style labeled as magical realism, which uses magical elements and events in otherwise ordinary and realistic situations. Some of his works are set in a fictional village called Macondo, and most of them express the theme of solitude.

Dokkōdō

The precepts

1. Accept everything just the way it is.
2. Do not seek pleasure for its own sake.
3. Do not, under any circumstances, depend on a partial feeling.
4. Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.
5. Be detached from desire your whole life long.
6. Do not regret what you have done.
7. Never be jealous.
8. Never let yourself be saddened by a separation.
9. Resentment and complaint are appropriate neither for oneself nor others.
10. Do not let yourself be guided by the feeling of lust or love.
11. In all things have no preferences.
12. Be indifferent to where you live.
13. Do not pursue the taste of good food.
14. Do not hold on to possessions you no longer need.
15. Do not act following customary beliefs.
16. Do not collect weapons or practice with weapons beyond what is useful.
17. Do not fear death.
18. Do not seek to possess either goods or fiefs for your old age.
19. Respect Buddha and the gods without counting on their help.
20. You may abandon your own body but you must preserve your honour.
21. Never stray from the Way.