It is especially difficult to hold back when the theme of the movie has to do with socio-political reality or history. I barely saw Avatar last night…spoiler alert. Avatar was well received in the progressive community internationally, and Filmmaker James Cameron, become recognized as a champion of indigenous and environmental rights almost overnight.

Perhaps it was this acclaim that allowed me to begin watching Avatar with a generally open mind. I usually expect the worst when Hollywood picks up such a theme, but I thought I would give the movie a chance.

The movie acts as a mirror for today’s corporate-driven imperialist politics. It is an allegory for what is happening today in Afghanistan and what has happened historically at the hands of white imperialism.

In the film, it becomes clear early on, and in no uncertain terms, that the invading, white human army is after a mineral deposit which sits under the tree that the Na’vi, an alien race, inhabit. The tree is miles tall and houses thousands of Na’vi families.

One of the techniques used by the humans to get the Na’vi to leave the tree is to create a Na’vi look-alike with some human DNA. This creation is called an Avatar. This Avatar is controlled by a white human counterpart named Jake Sully.

This was a reference to the racial politics of early Spanish and English colonization, where explicit imperialist strategies were to inter-marry invading men with native female royalty. One northern native elder called this strain of imperialists, “liberal” imperialists. The goal of the liberal was very much to take land, gold and women from the natives. They only disagreed with their conservative counterparts as to the most useful strategy.

This Avatar was to ingratiate himself with the Na’vi and influence them to move elsewhere. It was clear that if the Avatar was unsuccessful, the corporate contractor would then authorize the military to move in and blast the tree and the civilization to Mictlan. The corporate administrator, played by Giovanni Ribisi, says something along the lines of, “Shareholders are greatly bothered by media images of natives being slaughtered, but they are bothered much more by quarterly losses, so hurry up an get them to move.”

Long story short, Jake fails to persuade the Na’vi to move, and he falls in love with an alien native. He never warns the natives that they will be under attack. It is only until the military begins its assault that Jake bothers to protest.

The army does come in and does blast the Tree of Life and the Na’vi to Mictlan. The Na’vi leave and mount a conventional counter-attack on the invading whites. Some Na’vi die, but in the end, Jake is successful in uniting different clans of the alien race, and under his leadership he defeats the white humans. The Na’vi goddess permanently transfers his soul from his human body to his Avatar body, and he becomes a hero of the resistance and a recognized leader of the Na’vi.

Generally, the movie did an adequate job in portraying the imperialist culture as one which has no problems with trading the lives of “savages and their children” for corporate profits. For all of the leftist acclaim, I found it surprising that it was, at essence a white savior film. It took a white alien human to unite the Na’vi and create the new technology (the domestication of a large bird) to defeat the white aliens. I mean, come on, really? For being a darling of the left, Avatar sure played into this tired ass theme. The white savior complex has been done almost everytime there has been a story about uplifting minorities: Wildcats, Dangerous Minds, The Last Samurai, Dances With Wolves, Gran Torino, The Blind Side, Mississippi Burning, but the list is really endless.

I also took issue with the fact that the liberal imperialist ended up as the hero. Jake conspired to have their society destroyed, and he never for one minute before the invasion tipped off the Na’vi that it was coming. He was an agent for liberal white imperialism and ended up as the hero of the film.

The film also fetishizes the response of the Na’vi. In the white mind, the only honorable way for an oppressed, obliterated, colonized society is to pull itself up from it’s bootstraps and engage in a conventional warfare response. Even in this Hollywood version of resistance, the response of native people is held to a higher, double standard. In reality, most colonized people have beaten the colonizer not by engaging in conventional warfare, but by being elusive and using effective, guerrilla tactics, by tiring and exasperating the invaders so much that they lose their will to occupy.

Finally, in the Hollywood version of colonial resistance, the native army simply rounded up the invaders and sent them back home with not so much as a handcuff to inconvenience them. The white psyche only wishes that the resistance would be so forgiving, even though the invaders themselves are guilty of intentionally killing unarmed civilian children. Deep in the white psyche, it is just for them to be strongly reprimanded and sent home. wrong. Think more along the lines of scorched earth.

The film did a good job of characterizing colonialist tendencies, which admittedly I did not cover in depth in this post, but it did a characteristically poor job in characterizing native response to colonialism. In the end, I give the film the score of fifty out of a hundred, which is higher than all other Hollywood films of a similar nature.

Finally, Diane Feinstein hobbled together an answer to the question at hand. Success, in her eyes, would be the creation of an independent Afghan government that would be able to sustain itself.

Then, Zakaria, the host pulled out the stats. Nine out of ten military recruits could not read the manual for their assault rifles. I don’t remember the other stats exactly, but they went something like this: A quarter of the recruits went AWOL in their first leave, a tenth of the weapons given to recruits got back into the hands of the Taliban, millions are being made from poppy and the drugs that come from them, etc. etc.

It became clear that as bad as the Taliban might have been, they were probably amongst the most skilled and disciplined in the country, being overwhelmingly militant in their commitments and schooled in military tactics. I’m guessing that they were generally more literate than the new recruits.

What else, oh yeah, there was that little matter of a trillion dollars worth of minerals being found in Afghanistan. From the Huff Post

Yes, it is true that these minerals do exist in Afghanistan but it is by no means news. The U.S. Geological survey made the discovery back in 2007. However, the U.S. government is pushing the story now because the coalition here has been rocked by some particularly bad press here the past week (Ironically from the New York Times. This causes me to wonder if the Times is attempting to buy its way back into the good graces of the Embassy in Kabul.)

It kind of like reminds me of that whole 1849 “magic discovery” of gold in California, one year after the US seized the state from Mexico by force…

Herminia Balli De Chavana (Mama Mine) and Rogerio Chavana (Papa Roger)

I have to admit that I got a little emotional last night discussing the DREAM Act on my other post.  I think many people have the impression that because I have had the benefit of some material privilege, that my arguments are somewhat based on scholasticism or pure ideology.  It is true that I am an ideologue.  I believe in nationalism and progressive leftist values. 

Take a look at that sweet, teddy bear of a man in that picture up there.  This is my Papa Roger.  He is a man by which many others should be judged, but I guess most of our grandparents are.  If you look closely enough, you can see that even at his age, he is peacocking for the camera.  Look at his left hand, and you will see that he has removed his glasses to take a good picture.  He is a Chavana after all.

He went to the Mexican school, and he went with no shoes.  I interviewed him on his deathbed, and asked why he had joined the army during World War II.  He answered simply, “because I was hungry.”  There was no talk of fighting fascism, no talk of saving democracy or hating the Third Reich.  My grandfather joined because he was hungry and found no other option to alleviate his hunger.  He told me that General McArthur would nickname his squad “His Pancho Villa Boys.”

When I talk about a de facto draft, I don’t talk out of some theory.  No, my grandfather was not “forced” to join the army, but he was the victim of a system which created such pressures, that in effect, there was a de facto draft for him.

That young, hungry man went on to burn other men alive in WWII with flamethrowers.  Sometimes instead of being burned alive, his enemies died because they were deprived of oxygen by his flamethrower.  He was too dignified to tell me, his grandson,  about what happened over there, but I have heard the story from other family members.  His friends fell next to him, and when he came back, he had “shell shock,” now referred to as PTSD, which he did discuss with me.  He went under medical care, but I think that even his grandchildren have had some effect from what he was made to do to other humans, and for what?  Because he was hungry. 

Incidentally, my mother’s father and his six brothers also fought in WWII. 

After coming home, my uncle Tony would get drunk and make his hands into machine guns and re-live the death of his “enemies.”  In a trance, he would return to the battlefield and take his family with him.

It kind of touched something in me when in my other recent post on the DREAM Act a DREAMer friend asked me not to destroy her by fighting against the DREAM Act.  Then I realized that while I might have some material priviledge now, others have the priviledge of not having an ancestor who was the victim of a de facto draft.

DREAMers are hungry. Some are literally hungry like my Papa Roger.  Some are not.  But that is exactly my point.  There are many people for whom college is not a reality.  It has nothing to do with intellect or capability, as one of the other comments suggest on my other post.

For those hungry youth, this DREAM Act, with no work or community service provision, can be their WWII.  I don’t take the phrase “de facto draft” lightly.  I apologize to my good friends whom I might offend, but this is not something that I can sweep under the rug.

I hope that you can see, that I am not simply putting my ideology before your need for documentation.  I am driven by my own family’s experience too. 

May the creator bless all of you on your quest.  May the creator bless our unity.  Y que en paz descansen los abuelos.

In his interview with Candy Crowley, Allen confirmed my initial thoughts: the government is acting so permissively, because they don’t have the power to do otherwise. I don’t mean the formal, regulatory power. What I mean is that the government does not have the technical power to oversee what is going on. Neither did they have the power to properly regulate the rig before the spill.

What those at the top do not openly dare admit is that private industry has surpassed the abilities of the US government in several sectors. Private industry has more technology, more creativity, more discipline and more knowledge than the agencies which pretend to regulate them.

The Admiral admitted that in the instance of the oil spill, BP had the technology required to work on the spill and the government does not. He said that “partnering” with BP to shut off the oil spill was the “necessary modality” which will be used to shut off the spill. He was later asked if he trusts BP. If the Admiral does not have the technology to do his own work, what choice does he have but to trust BP?  He is required to trust BP because he can’t do his own verifications.

Private industry has surpassed the ability of its regulators in many industries including, finance, weapons, computer tech and energy. I don’t say this to argue for the free market. I say this to warn against my previous prediction that the decline of government’s authority could one day make democracy irrelevant to the “masters of the universe,” the CEOs of these multi-nationals.

In this case, the government serves only as the guy in the room saying, “um do you think you can kind of hurry up? Do you need some water uh or help or something?”

In the end, the Admiral was forced to answer the question, “Do you trust BP?” He responded something like, “I trust Tony Hayward (BP’s CEO). I even have his cel phone, and he picks right up when I call him.” For real? That’s why? He answers your phone calls and answers your questions? He kind of sounded like a teenager bragging that they had spoken to one of their singing idols. Let’s hope Hayward doesn’t change his cel phone number.

Their change in perception was unintentional, but it made me aware of the power and efficacy of propaganda.  Admittedly, the speed with which this propaganda took root caught me off guard, as jaded as I am about the machinations of politics, conspiracy and media manipulation.  The original rationale for invading Iraq is important, to be sure, but more shocking is how quickly national media outlets can skew the public’s perception of what happened only a few years ago.  I have not seen any polls, but I am more than certain that the vast, vast majority of United Statesians now believe the original cause of the Iraq invasion to be the War of Terror. 

It made me think a little bit about the great shift if public perception that the Texas State Board of Education might be responsible for by changing the curriculum standards in the text books.  History is replete with forgotten movements and unnoticed heroes, especially our history and our heroes.  These movements and heroes are intentionally forgotten by curriculum writers and boards.  It is a shame that these handful of people might have the power to completely erase the Civil Rights movement from scholastic discourse within few years.

I remember looking up Chicano Movement once in my high school history book’s index.  There was only a “Chicago Movement,” listed.  When I looked up this “Chicago Movement,” I actually found what I was looking for, or at least a portion of it:  two paragraphs on the Chicano Movement existed in the book after all.  The index was mislabeled.

It will be a sad day, indeed, when I will wish that at least the Chicago Movement would still exist in the book’s index.

UPDATE: Stace Medellin from DosCentavos.net did a post on the specifics of how the board’s mandates will take its toll on our history.

What has a society become, if it is forced to militarily occupy its own community to “control” the youth? A police state.

I thought I’d just post the CNN file, so that you’d believe me.

We take a look at the threat of deportation that non-citizen veterans of American wars continue to face despite US military promises of citizenship. We talk to Rohan Coombs, a Jamaican-born US vet who was in the US Marine Corps for six years and served in the Persian Gulf War. He spent eight months in prison for a marijuana-related conviction. The day he was to be released he was told he would be deported. He speaks to us from an immigration jail. We also speak with immigration attorney Craig Shagin. [includes rush transcript]

The repeal of Glass-Steagall removed the legal prohibition on combinations between commercial banks on the one hand, and investment banks and other financial services companies on the other. Glass-Steagall’s strict rules originated in the U.S. government’s response to the Depression and reflected the learned experience of the severe dangers to consumers and the overall financial system of permitting giant financial institutions to combine commercial banking with other financial operations.

I thought a little bit about the meaning of the report, but the wheels of my mind started turning when I heard this little tidbit, which is also on the blog post:

Then, in 1998, in an act of corporate civil disobedience, Citicorp and Travelers Group announced they were merging. Such a combination of banking and insurance companies was illegal under the Bank Holding Company Act, but was excused due to a loophole that provided a two-year review period of proposed mergers. The merger was premised on the expectation that Glass-Steagall would be repealed. Citigroup’s co-chairs Sandy Weill and John Reed led a swarm of industry executives and lobbyists who trammeled the halls of Congress to make sure a deal was cut.

It painted the picture that the corporate chairs basically did whatever they wanted and that they would have to deal with a little matter of those people over on the hill later. Congress and federal law were basically reduced to a detail in the transaction, a detail that would have to be worked on later, but not something that could actually stop these two mammoths from doing whatever they wanted.

We have become accustomed to corporations essentially buying votes, and execs doing things under the table, but to hear that two major corporations openly disregarding federal law, premised on the thought that they would make Congress come around, is a new one on me. I know that I am twelve years late on this, but this was the first that I had heard of such an overt act of “civil disobedience” by major corps. It made me think hard about the future of corporations overtly disobeying laws. It was almost as if they did not recognize the authority of Congress.

That’s when it hit me. The government only has authority because we recognize this authority. No, that was not the epiphany.

I finally began to understand the decline of the Roman Catholic Church’s authority over sovereign nations. But more importantly, I began to understand why they ever had such control over nation-states in the first place, a concept which I understood academically, but could never relate to.

The Catholic Church could command countries simply because these countries, and their sovereigns, allowed The Church to do so. Period.

The Church was the recognized moral authority. Once nation states were no longer dependent or fearful of The Church, they began to disobey its orders, especially when such orders were no longer convenient.

Today, the recognized authority is the government.  The moral authority has changed from God to “the people,” at least in propaganda.

The Swiss Guard: Today's Ceremonial Guard at The Vatican. Their forces were not needed by England.

I began to see the corporate executives of Traveler’s and Citi as today’s version of Henry VIII. By the time Henry VIII disobeyed Rome by taking his new wife, Anne Boleyn, Rome seems to have become more dependent on nation-states than vice-versa. The pope could no longer offer the defense to the nation-states, after each country had organized its own military. Sure they had the Swiss Guards, but c’mon. The sovereigns, after all, could muster loyalty among the people without the consent of the pope. Basically, The Church had become superfluous, unnecessary, and maybe a little pesky to the captains of countries.

And it dawned on me that as these corporations become more powerful, bloggers in four or five hundred years, or maybe even one hundred, might wonder why on earth, corporations would have ever sought the approval of democratic governments in the first place.  It seems silly to us, in these days, that a sovereign might have to seek permission from a foreign pope for anything.  It might seems silly to our future generations that these theoretically democratic institutions supposedly by the people (however fraudulent it may be) might have had sway over private enterprise.

England had its own powerful, loyal constituents at the time it left The Church.  After all, it was the House of Commons who banned Rome from making decisions in England.  Today, corporations have their own powerful, loyal constituents.  They are called lobbyists and politicians.

At the time it left The Church, England has its own “national” army.  Today, corporations have their own “private” armies.  As of March, according to the Christian Science Monitor, 57 percent of the Pentagon’s Afghanistan personnel were private contractors.

Obviously, the members of Congress are far more dependent on corporations than are corporations dependent on Congress for anything.

Finally, as the sovereign and his apparatus controlled a great deal of the communication in England, so do the corporations control the vast majority of mass communication in the US.

It seems that it is only a matter of centuries before captains of industry get it into their heads that this whole rule by the people thing is too inconvenient, and perhaps, yes, a little pesky.  Sure, goverment will continue to exist, for those who wish to believe in it, but today’s US Marine might look as ceremonial to our future generations as the Swiss Guard do to us.  In fact, they might just be that-ceremonial with the contractors of Blackwater/Xe holding the real force for the new sovereigns: the corporate executives.