Media, Mind-Control, & Meditation: Plato’s E-Cave Panopticon and Beyond

Posted on February 3, 2017 by Reid Mukai

By Mankh (Walter E. Harris III)

“Relax,” said the night man, ”We are programmed to receive. You can check-out any time you like,  But you can never leave!”

– The Eagles, from “Hotel California”

In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, people saw a shadow play on the wall and perceived it as reality. Today that Cave has morphed to provide umpteen TV channels and mini-screen gadgets; and the once sanctified living room cave has expanded into a free-range bubble of consciousness – heads bowed before an electronic altar, seemingly oblivious to the outside world.

“The “panopticon” refers to an experimental laboratory of power in which behaviour could be modified, and Foucault viewed the panopticon as a symbol of the disciplinary society of surveillance.”[1]

In Plato’s E-Cave, not only are the people watching a shadow play, they, and the shadows they watch, are being watched.

HyperNormalization
With a veneer of calm aplomb, the masses communicate 24-7, often in a frenetic urgency of the mundane, hence one interpretation of HyperNormalization. In all the years of overhearing cell-phone conversations in public, I can’t recall one snippet of philosophy or practical advice, rather stuff like, ‘yeah OMG I’ll get the chips!’ and ‘I’ll be there in like 30 seconds!’; if you’re old enough, you’d remember the days when, you got there when you got there! That said, a cell-phone can be a helpful even life-saving device.

The USEmpire election appears to have both proven and disproven the main theory of Adam Curtis’ fascinating new documentary “HyperNormalization.”

“Curtis argues that since the 1970s, governments, financiers, and technological utopians have given up on the complex “real world” and built a simple “fake world” that is run by corporations and kept stable by politicians.”[2]

The California cyber-tech-boom was a love-child of LSD-consciousness that found refuge in E-wizardy all the while looking to escape repressive politics. In his book “2030” Pepe Escobar describes it as: “Digital network capitalism would then shape post-modern globalization, from the New Economy before the end of the millennium to every digital wall to be broken beyond. California cosmology forged our world.”

According to Wikipedia:

“The term “hypernormalisation” is taken from Alexei Yurchak’s 2006 book Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, about the paradoxes of life in the Soviet Union during the 20 years before it collapsed. A professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, he argues that everyone knew the system was failing, but as no one could imagine any alternative to the status quo, politicians and citizens were resigned to maintaining a pretence of a functioning society. Over time, this delusion became a self-fulfilling prophecy and the “fakeness” was accepted by everyone as real, an effect which Yurchak termed “hypernormalisation”.”[3]

First off, I see HyperNormalization as a half-truth because while the self-referential, gossipy world is fake, it is a veneer for a very real world of resource extraction and the violence perpetrated to maintain the status quo – and that is what the fakers ignore. As far as the election, many expected the Clinton dynasty to prevail as the corrupt, business as usual lesser of two evils. Breaking snooze: Where’s the headline news that Melania Trump plans to focus on helping women and children?; I saw that mentioned on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, such a perfect antidote for Hillary’s loss and The Donald’s anti-feminist track record.

Even though WikiLeaks revealed the DNC (Democratic National Convention) was rigged against Sanders and leaks of Podesta/Clinton e-mails may have been proverbial straws for Hillary’s campaign camel, the prevailing media sentiment was that she would win – despite the fact that the day before the election some polls indicated a shrinking 3-4 point lead, thus with the typical margin of error, it was, in effect, tied. Yet the mass hyper-surprise!; and all that after the corporate media and comedy shows had simultaneously bashed Trump and given him more air-time than a kite on a windy day – both disdaining and elevating him, a media-mindfuck if ever there was one.

And there was little uproar when Gary Johnson and Jill Stein were excluded from debates and virtually banned from all corporate news, thus proving (if you didn’t know already) that it’s not a truly democratic election. Yet carry on we must and do the best we can with what we got, was the general sentiment, in other words, “the “fakeness” was accepted by everyone as real” aka HyperNormalization.

Yet the non-coastal, poor and middle America White working class (with sides of KKK and minorities!), which reportedly was the key demographic for The Don’s victory, was voting out of bare-bones needs; in effect they were not HyperNormalized. Then again, if Trump, who promises to challenge the status quo, caves-in to Deep State pressure, we will have an answer to an interesting article’s titular question: “President Trump: big liar going to Washington or Tribune of the People?”[4] And if that answer is the former, then the mostly White working poor will also have been duped/HyperNormalized.

You see, it’s hard to know what’s what; which all seems to prove HyperNormalization as the dominant societal charade; which screen is real, if any?

What you perceive is what you get
Another key phrase in Curtis’ documentary is “managed perception” – akin to Chomsky and Herman’s “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media” (1988) which showed how opinions and desensitized agreement to the status quo became a product to be mined and marketed. Witness CBS Chairman Les Moonves’ comment from February 2016:

“Man, who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now? … The money’s rolling in and this is fun. I’ve never seen anything like this, and this [is] going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going.” [5] And, if i might satirically add, like an orangey topped Duracell battery, The Don does seem to have a lot of energy.

HyperNormalization is also akin to Sheldon Wolin’s theory of “inverted totalitarianism,” where the faceless corporate machine wields so much entertainment and bureaucratic power that the people barely notice they are being played hook, line, and sinking feelings.

Some of Curtis’ info, however, is inaccurate or questionable. For examples, he blames the demise of the Occupy Movement on lack of vision and planning yet neglects to mention the FBI coordinated systemic crackdown on the ‘camps’ across the country. [6]

About Syria he says that President Bashar al-Assad retaliated with a “vengeful fury,” whereas Assad has defended his actions as self-defense for his people; numerous journalists back the Syrian President’s claim.

Post-election, I wonder: Why were so many liberals, lefties, and women more surprised that Trump won than that the DNC/HRC rigged it against Sanders? Were they simply feeling impotent due to HyperNormalized shadow play? Whatever the case, his victory revealed a crack in the smooth screen of HyperNormalization.

According to Patrick Caddell’s survey before the election, the populace seems to be hip to what’s happening:

“Powerful interests from Wall Street banks to corporations, unions and political interest groups have used campaign and lobbying money to rig the system for them. They are looting the national treasury of billions of dollars at the expense of every man, woman and child. AGREE = 81%; DISAGREE = 13%…

“The country is run by an alliance of incumbent politicians, media pundits, lobbyists and other powerful money interests for their own gain at the expense of the American people. AGREE = 87%; DISAGREE = 10%

The real struggle for America is not between Democrats and Republicans but between mainstream American and the ruling political elites. AGREE = 67%; DISAGREE = 24%.” [7]

This makes it seem it is the ‘how-to bring about change’ that is the deeper conundrum of the HyperNormalized world. Then again, people too often seem to have only their own best interests at heart. Approximately 90% of Americans want their food labeled so as to know if they contain GMOs etc. or not, yet hardly a peep out of anyone that climate change or the “environment” aka Mother Earth & Nature-beings were deliberately excluded as a main topic of the presidential debates. This makes it seem that, in general, Americans want clean food for themselves, they want a clean environment so they can go ‘play in the park’ by themselves. And that brings us to the Great Disconnect and Standing Rock.

Flow like water, be steady as a rock
Part of HyperNormalization is a disconnect from Nature and from being self- and community-guided, and therefore disconnected from the Original Peoples of Turtle Island. While many people are certainly aware of what’s happening with Standing Rock, the corporate media’s lack of attention, let alone empathy, fosters lack of concern for the outcome, lack of being outraged by the violent and racist treatment of those in prayer and peacefully protecting the main source of water for the Standing Rock Sioux and other Natives as well as approximately 17-million people downstream. The real-fake outrage is over the outcome of a fake election.

For many Native reservations where poverty and PTSD are prevalent, the people are anything but HyperNormalized; they are struggling to survive – as with Standing Rock, they are not asking for much: clean water and the space to live their lives with ancient traditions timelessly connected with the land, the water, the stones…

Plato, imagining a prisoner getting outside of the Cave, wrote: “Slowly, his eyes adjust to the light of the sun. First he can only see shadows. Gradually he can see the reflections of people and things in water and then later see the people and things themselves. Eventually, he is able to look at the stars and moon at night until finally he can look upon the sun itself .” [8]

Standing Rock is bringing people together, raising consciousness at many levels. As one example from a little over a week ago:

“In a “historic” show of interfaith solidarity, 500 clergy members prayed along the banks of North Dakota’s Cannonball River on Thursday where they “bore witness with the Standing Rock Sioux Nation,” which has faced intimidation, violence, and arrests for protecting their sacred land and water supply from the threats of a massive oil pipeline. According to the Episcopal News Service, “The interfaith group spent more than five hours on site, marching, singing hymns, sharing testimony, and calling others to join them in standing with the more than [300] tribes who have committed their support to the Sioux Nation as they protest the route of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).” [9]

This solidarity is in stark contrast with the election where a typically 51/49 system determines an outcome for a society literally programmed for exciting close-call winners – think sporting events,
reality shows, awards ceremonies.

Outside in and inside out
There are many ways to get outside the Cave. One of those is by going within. When I first started to meditate, as is common, I became aware of the constant chatter in my head and soon realized that the mind left unattended will rattle on endlessly. Meditation then showed me that once the chatter quiets, one then has access to other frequencies, other ‘channels’ – what happens then is a very personal matter yet also impersonal because one becomes connected with another source of thinking-seeing-feeling. Chatter, like cell-phones, has it’s usefulness, say, if you forgot to turn the stove off. My point to the personal anecdote is that the corporate media is too much chatter, endlessly looping itself. The gadgets, too, though useful, seem hard-wired for HyperNormalization.

Some of the chatter we must live with, yet by learning to follow our intuitions, listening to and connecting with Nature, talking with elders and little children we can better tune-out from the shadow-play, we can find new and ancient ways for more people – and that includes trees, rivers, etc. – “to look at the stars and moon at night” and “look upon the sun itself.”

“Sin filo ya y derrotada se quejó: Soy más fuerte que ella, pero no le puedo hacer daño y ella a mi, sin pelear. me ha vencido.’”

“Without sharpness and defeated, it [the sword] complained: ‘I am stronger than the water, but I cannot harm her. And the water, without fighting, has conquered me.’” [10]

NOTES:
1.    Panopticism here and here.
2.    Ibid.
3.    HyperNormalization
4.    See here.
5.    “Les Moonves: Trump’s run is ‘damn good for CBS’”. See here.
6.    “Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy”
7.    “Patrick Caddell; The Pollster Who ‘Got it Right’”
8.    “Allegory of the Cave”
9.    “A Prayer for People and Planet: 500 Clergy Hold ‘Historic’ Mass Gathering for Standing Rock”
10.    “Questions & Swords: Folktales of the Zapatista Revolution” as told by Subcomandante Marcos, Cino Puntos Press, El Paso, Texas, 2001, p.82.

To watch “HyperNormalization”, click here.

Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is an essayist and resident poet on Axis of Logic. In addition to his work as a writer, he is a small press publisher and Turtle Islander. His new book of genre-bending poetic-nonfiction is “Musings With The Golden Sparrow.” You can contact him via his literary website.  

Review: The Utopia of Rules, by David Graeber

Posted on February 2, 2017 by Reid Mukai

By Jonathan Woolley

Source: Gods & Radicals

Reading a book about bureaucracy may not sound like an exciting way to spend a weekend off with my family. And yet, having just started David Graeber’s latest – A Utopia of Rules – when I wasn’t making tea for my elderly grandmother, I curled up in a comfy chair with this little pink book, mocked up to look like one of the forms it excoriates, and excited by each new page. Although many of the ideas Graeber presents here aren’t new, the clarity and force with which they are drawn together and set out is a rare pleasure – a contrast with turgid official paperwork that was almost certainly intentional.

Graeber – a social anthropologist, anarchist, and prominent leftist thinker, based at the London School of Economics (LSE) – develops his argument, in part, by thinking ethnographically with his own personal experiences of officialdom, beginning with a heartbreaking account of his own struggle to deal with his elderly mother’s Medicaid application. In response to this, he introduces the book as a series of short essays on different facets of what he calls “total bureaucratisation” – defined as “the gradual fusion of public and private power into a single entity, rife with rules and regulations whose ultimate purpose is to extract wealth in the form of profits”. Bureaucracy is not a simple matter of red-tape created by the state tying up private enterprise, as right-wing pundits would have us believe: Graeber points out that bureaucratic forms have become intrinsic to both private and public spheres.

While the Left has been largely unable to produce a critique of bureaucracy, the Right has such a critique – but efforts to “roll back” the state by the Right have had the opposite effect, producing even more paperwork than ever. This leads Graeber to propose what he calls “the Iron Law of Liberalism”, which states that “any market reform, any government initiative intended to reduce red tape and promote market forces will have the ultimate effect of increasing the total number of regulations, the total amount of paperwork, and the total number of bureaucrats the government employs.”

In stressing the coeval nature of the free market and an expansive state, Graeber directs his analysis away from shallow criticism of big government, towards the common institutional basis of all inequality, found at the heart of neoliberal governance. Given the extent to which the general public in the English-speaking world continue to view the expansive state and the “free” market as antithetical to one another and synonymous with the Left and the Right of politics respectively, this is an important point to make.

With the foundations laid, Graeber’s lucid prose carries the reader briskly through a sequence of stand-alone essays, each of which engages with a particular aspect of total bureaucratisation today. Each of these, Graeber claims, will need to be addressed by any critique of bureaucracy the Left might develop. Dead Zones of the Imagination utilises feminist theory of imaginative labour to develop the argument that bureaucracy – in addition to being stupid – exists to create stupidity. Its impersonal procedures, backed up by threat of violence, ensure that those in positions of authority – especially the police – are able to avoid doing the imaginative labour of empathising with others, while forcing those others to engage in imaginative labour towards the authorities, simply in order to avoid physical harm. Police insist upon being able to “define the situation” – those who contest this, rather than violent criminals, are the ones who are routinely meet with physical violence. This serves to emphasise a very basic point: don’t underestimate the importance of physical violence, even if it takes place behind a veil of paper.

In Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit, Graeber turns his attention to the trajectory of technological development in the modern world. Why is it, he asks, that in the 1950s we were able to explore space, and expected to be surrounded by robotic servants and flying cars by now, but that this awesome potential has not been realised? The answer, he suggests, is that rather than cause social change by itself, the direction of technological innovation is directed by financial interests – so that instead of pursuing automation and space travel that could disrupt existing economic relations on Earth, major funders have prioritised less disruptive research lines, such as information technology. The greatest achievement of the late 20th century – the Internet – is revealed as decidedly chimeric; both a tool for enhanced communication, but also a means of surveillance and manipulation on an industrial scale. The promise of technology has been broken in favour of labour discipline and social control; R&D budgets have been slashed in favour of boosting executive pay and shareholder dividends. Instead of being allowed to pursue their research interests, academics are increasingly forced to spend more and more of their time doing paperwork. Rather than a driver of social change, technology is itself subject to the demands of capital.

The Utopia of Rules, or Why We Really Love Bureaucracy After All concludes the triptych, by exploring the ways in which bureaucracy can, in fact, be deeply enchanting – when it works well – providing human beings with a sense of predictability and certainty that can be deeply seductive. While the second essay uses science fiction to reflect upon the curious falling short of innovation, this essay turns to magic and fantasy fiction in an attempt to understand how the appeal of bureaucratic rationality is generated. Graeber argues that the elaborate angelic hierarchies and formulaic modes of ritual address, developed in the Rennaissance but that now enliven Western Ceremonial Magic, actually reflect a political imaginary – a vision of the chaotic, violent world of the Middle ages reordered according to a spiritualised version of the old, lost, Roman bureaucracy. Nowadays, however, this vision is inverted – fantasy fiction today constructs a pseudo-Medieval world, where bureaucracy is almost entirely absent, where creativity is directly channelled into reality via magic, and where leadership is acquired on the basis of personal virtue and conquest, rather than through impersonal qualification or graduate recruitment. However, while giving us an opportunity to vicariously enjoy a world without bureaucracy, medievalist fantasies – with their perennial sense of threat and danger – nonetheless reinforce our sense that it’s probably preferable to live with the devil we know. Just as the gruesome spectacle of Gladitorial combat both beguiled and repulsed the populace of Rome from the idea of democracy, the blood-soaked cities of Westeros instil in us a fear of a world without bureaucratic order.

Perhaps the most fascinating contestation made by Graeber – albeit, only in passing – is that bureaucratic rationality rests upon a resolutely spiritual set of commitments. The idea that numbers and their rational appraisal can help one to understand and manipulate reality, reaches back to the Pythagoreanism of ancient Greece. They, in turn, directly inspired Plato, the father of Western formalism, and in turn the Medieval angelic hierarchies mentioned above. This commitment to the power of logic and pure numbers conferred upon bureaucracy a utopian air; bureaucrats envision a world of perfect harmony, governed by well-designed, efficient institutions, and develop frameworks that attempt to make that world a reality. The fact that the complexity of the world-as-lived rarely fits these lofty ideals ensures that bureaucracy requires constant enforcement – with the force in question being the threat of violence meted out by private security, the police or the military.

But it is in the Appendix – Batman and the Problem of Constituent Power – that we find some of Graeber’s most timely observations for the present moment. In a playful analysis of the cultural and political significance of superheroes, Graeber points out that – building upon his analysis of medievalist fantasy in the previous chapter – comics teach the same kind of lesson. In pitting basically passive superheroes who seek to preserve the status quo against endlessly creative and scheming villains who wish to unseat it, comics allow the reader to vicariously enjoy the thrill of unfettered creative potential, only to enforce the idea that such potential necessarily leads to violence, and that violence is in turn the only way that it can be controlled.

In the Marvel and DC Universes, the only alternative to bureaucracy is violent creativity of villains – in short, fascism. This, in turn, allows Graeber to highlight a broad distinction between the left and the right: “Ultimately, the division between left-and right-wing sensibilities turns on one’s attitude towards the imagination. For the Left, imagination, creativity, by extension production, the power to bring new things and new social arrangements into being, is always to be celebrated. It is the source of all real value in the world. For the Right, it is dangerous; ultimately, evil. The urge to create is also a destructive urge. This kind of sensibility was rife in the popular Freudianism of the day [1950s]: where the Id was the motor of the psyche, but also amoral; if really unleashed, it would lead to an orgy of destruction. This is also what separates conservatives from fascists. Both agree that the imagination unleashed can only lead to violence and destruction. Conservatives wish to defend us against that possibility. Fascists wish to unleash it anyway. They aspire to be, as Hitler imagined himself, great artists painting with the minds, blood, and sinews of humanity.”

Following from the magistral philosophical treatise Debt: The First 5,000 years (2011), The Utopia of Rules is a more modest project. Graeber does not attempt to propose a leftist critique of total bureaucratisation within its pages, though he argues such a critique is long overdue. Nor does he advance a singular argument – his goal is simply to prompt a conversation. With the rise of the populist right, this conversation is more important than ever. The mainstream Left, Graeber points out, has for too long positioned itself on the side of state control, leaving critiques of bureaucracy to the Right. As the pro-market efforts of neoliberalism have done nothing but concentrate capital in the hands of the rentier classes, the frustration is now boiling over. And yet, in unveiling the mystical roots of stultifying modern paperwork, Graeber reveals a way forward for us – if total bureaucratisation is a spell laid over the world, that spell may be broken. We need not live out the fevered dreams of Renaissance mystics; we can awaken. Nor shall the dark blood and bone portraits of fascists necessarily hold sway over the human imagination, for the Left is just as creative as the right; indeed, unlike them, we can create without fear of creativity. The Right may aspire to break this world, but it is the birthright of the Left to make a better one.

Millions Around the World Fleeing from Neoliberal Policy

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Reid Mukai

Source: The Real News Network

Economist Michael Hudson says neoliberal policy will pressure U.S. citizens to emigrate, just as it caused millions to leave Russia, the Baltic States, and now Greece in search of a better life.

A research team from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York estimates 875,000 deaths in the United States in year 2000 could be attributed to social factors related to poverty and income inequality.

According to U.S. government statistics, 2.45 million Americans died in the same year. When compared to the Columbia research team’s finding, social deprivation could account for some 36% of the total deaths in 2000.

“Almost all of the British economists of the late 18th century said when you have poverty, when you have a transfer of wealth to the rich, you’re going to have shorter lifespans, and you’re also going to have emigration,” says Michael Hudson, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Many countries, such as Russia, the Baltic States, and now Greece, have seen a massive outflow of their populations due to worsening social conditions after the implementation of neoliberal policy.

Hudson predicts the United States will undergo the same trend, as greater hardship results from the passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, changes to social security, and broader policy shifts due to prospective appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court and the next presidential cabinet.

“Now, the question is, in America, now that you’re having as a result of this polarization shorter lifespans, worse health, worse diets, where are the Americans going to emigrate? Nobody can figure that one out yet,” says Hudson.

Transcript

SHARMINI PERIES, TRNN: Its the Real News Network. Im Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore.

After decades of sustained attacks on social programs and consistently high unemployment rates, it is no surprise that mortality rates in the country have increased. A research team from Columbia Universitys Mailman School of Public Health in New York has estimated that 875,000 deaths in the United States in the year 2000 could be attributed to clusters of social factors bound up with poverty and income inequality. According to U.S. government statistics, some 2.45 million Americans died in the year 2000, thus the researchers estimate means that social deprivation was responsible for some 36 percent of the total deaths that year. A staggering total.

Now joining us to discuss all of this from New York City is Michael Hudson. Michael is a Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri Kansas City. His latest book is Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy. Michael, good to have you with us.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Good to be back here.

PERIES: So, Michael, what do you make of these recent research and what its telling us about the death total in this country?

HUDSON: What it tells is almost identical to what has already been narrated for Russia and Greece. And whats responsible for the increasing death rates is actually neoliberal economic policy, neoliberal trade policy, and the polarization and impoverishment of a large part of society. After the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, death rates soared, lifespans shortened, health standards decreased all throughout the Yeltsin administration, until finally President Putin came in and stabilized matters. Putin said that the destruction caused by neoliberal economic policies had killed more Russians than all of whom died in World War II, the 22 million people. Thats the devastation that polarization caused there.

Same thing in Greece. In the last five years, Greek lifespans have shortened. Theyre getting sicker, theyre dying faster, theyre not healthy. Almost all of the British economists of the late 18th century said when you have poverty, when you have a transfer of wealth to the rich, youre going to have shorter lifespans, and youre also going to have immigration. The countries that have a hard money policy, a creditor policy, people are going to emigrate. Now, at that time that was why England was gaining immigrants. It was gaining skilled labor. It was gaining people to work in its industry because other countries were still in the post-feudal system and were driving them out. Russia had a huge emigration of skilled labor, largely to Germany and to the United States, especially in information technology. Greece has a heavy outflow of labor. The Baltic states have had almost a 10 percent decline in their population in the last decade as a result of their neoliberal policies. Also, health problems are rising.

Now, the question is, in America, now that youre having as a result of this polarization shorter lifespans, worse health, worse diets, where are the Americans going to emigrate? Nobody can figure that one out yet. Theres no, seems nowhere for them to go, because they dont speak a foreign language. The Russians, the Greeks, most Europeans all somehow have to learn English in school. They’re able to get by in other countries. Theyre not sure where on earth can the Americans come from? Nobody can really figure this out.

And the amazing thing, whats going to make this worse, is the trade, the Trans-Pacific trade agreement, and the counterpart with the Atlantic states. In todays news theres news that President Obama plans to make a big push for the Trans-Pacific trade agreement, essentially the giveaway to corporations preventing governments from environmental protection, preventing them from imposing health standards, preventing them from having cigarette warnings or warning about bad food. Obama says he wants to push this in after the election. And the plan is the Republicans also are sort of working with them and saying okay, were going to wait and see. Maybe Donald Trump will come in and hell really do things. Or maybe we can get Hillary, who will move way further to the right than any Republican could, and bring the Congress.

But lets say that we dont know whats happening after the elections, and the Republicans dont want a risk. Theyre going to do a number of things. Theyre going to approve Obamas Republican nominee to the Supreme Court that hes already done, figuring, well, maybe Hillary will put in someone worse, or even Trump may put in someone worse. They may go along, at this point, with ratifying a trade agreement thats going to vastly increase unemployment here, especially in industrial labor, turning much of the American industrial urban complex into a rust belt. And they’re also talking about an October surprise or an early November surprise. Its the last chance that Obama has, really, to start a war with Russia.

And theres Stephen Cohen and a number of other sites have warned that theres going to be a danger when they put in the atomic weapons in Romania. President Putin has said this is a red line. Were not going to warn. We dont have an army. We can only use atomic weapons. So you have danger coming not only from domestic decline in population, you have a real chance of war. And Obama has stepped things up. Hillary has, I think, almost announced that she is going to appoint Victoria Nuland as secretary of state, and Nuland is the person who was pushing the Ukrainian fascists in the [inaud.] assassinations and shootout.

So it looks, this trend looks very bad. If you want to see where America is going demographically, best to look at Greece, Latvia, Russia, and also in England. A Dr. Miller has done studies of health and longevity, and hes found that the lower the income status of any group in England, the shorter the lifespan. Now, this is very important for the current debate about Social Security. You’re having people talk about extending the Social Security age because people are living longer. Whos living longer in America? The rich are living longer. The wealthy are living longer. But if you make under $30,000 a year, or even under $50,000 a year, youre not living longer.

So the idea is how do we avoid having to pay Social Security for the lower-income people, you know, the middle class and the working class that die quicker, and only pay social security for the wealthier classes that live longer? Nobodys somehow plugged this discussion of lifespans and longevity into the Social Security debate that Obama and Hillary are trying to raise the retirement age, to ostensibly save Social Security. By save Social Security she means to avoid taxing the higher brackets and paying for Social Security out of the general budget, which of course would entail taxing the higher-income people as well as the lower-income people.

PERIES: All right, Michael. Thank you for your report today, and we look forward to seeing you next week.

HUDSON: Thank you.

PERIES: And thank you for joining us on the Real News Network.

End

Michael Hudson is a Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He is the author of The Bubble and Beyond and Finance Capitalism and its Discontents. His most recent book is titled Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy.

Two for Tuesday

Posted on January 31, 2017 by Reid Mukai

Remo Conscious

Nonviolent Action: Why and How it Works

Posted on January 31, 2017 by Reid Mukai

Nonviolent action is extremely powerful.

Unfortunately, however, activists do not always understand why
nonviolence is so powerful and they design ‘direct actions’ that are
virtually powerless.

I would like to start by posing two questions. Why is nonviolent action
so powerful? And why is using it strategically so transformative?

When an activist group is working on an issue – such as a national
liberation struggle, war, the climate catastrophe, violence against
women and/or children, nuclear weapons, drone killings, rainforest
destruction, encroachments on indigenous land – they will often plan an
action that is intended to physically halt an activity, such as the
activities of a military base, the loading of a coal ship, the work of a
bulldozer, the building of an oil pipeline. Their plan might also
include using one or more of a variety of techniques such as locking
themselves to a piece of equipment (‘locking-on’) to prevent it from
being used. Separately or in addition, they might use secrecy both in
their planning and execution so that they are able to carry out the
action before police or military personnel prevent them from doing so.

Unfortunately, the focus on physical outcomes (including actions such as
‘locking-on’ and its many equivalents), and the secrecy necessary to
carry out their plan, all functionally undermine the power of their
action. Why is this? Let me explain how and why nonviolent action works
so that it is clear why any nonviolent activist who understands the
dynamics of nonviolent action is unconcerned about the immediate
physical outcome of their action (and what is necessary to achieve
that).

If you think of your nonviolent action as a physical act, then you will
tend to focus your attention on securing a physical outcome from your
planned action: to prevent the military from occupying a location, to
stop a bulldozer from knocking down trees, to halt the work at an oil
terminal or nuclear power station, to prevent construction equipment
being moved on site. Of course, it is simple enough to plan a nonviolent
action that will do any of these things for a period of time and there
are many possible actions that might achieve it.

But if you pause to consider how your nonviolent action might have
psychological and political impact that leads to lasting or even
permanent change on the issue in question but also society as a whole,
then your conception of what you might do will be both expanded and
deepened. And you will be starting to think strategically about what it
means to mobilise large numbers of people to think and behave
differently.

After all, whatever the immediate focus of your action, it is only ever
one step in the direction of more profound change. And this profound
change must include a lasting change in prevailing ideas and a lasting
change in ‘normal’ behaviour by substantial (and perhaps even vast)
numbers of people. Or you will be back tomorrow, the day after and so on
until you get tired of doing something without result, as routinely
happens in campaigns that ‘go nowhere’ (as so many do).

So why does nonviolent action work?

Fundamentally, nonviolent action works because of its capacity to create
a favourable political atmosphere (because of, for example, the way in
which activist honesty builds trust), its capacity to create a
non-threatening physical environment (because of the nonviolent
discipline of the activists), and its capacity to alter the human
psychological conditions (both innate and learned) that make people
resist new ideas in the first place. This includes its capacity to
reduce or eliminate fear and its capacity to ‘humanise’ activists in the
eyes of more conservative sections of the community. In essence,
nonviolent activists precipitate change because people are inspired by
the honesty, discipline, integrity, courage and determination of the
activists – despite arrests, beatings or imprisonment – and are thus
inclined to identify with them. Moreover, as an extension of this, they
are inclined to change their behaviour to act in solidarity.

It is for this reason too that a nonviolent action should always make
explicit what behavioural change it is asking of people. Whether
communicated in news conferences or via the various media, painted on
banners or in other ways, a nonviolent action group should clearly
communicate powerful actions that individuals can take. For example, a
climate action group should consistently convey the messages to ‘Save
the Climate: Become a Vegan/Vegetarian’, ‘Save the Climate: Boycott
Cars’ and, like a rainforest action group, ‘Don’t Buy Rainforest
Timber’. A peace group should consistently convey such messages as
‘Don’t Pay Taxes for War’ and ‘Divest from the Weapons Industry’ (among
many other possibilities). Groups resisting the nuclear fuel cycle and
fossil fuel industry in their many manifestations should consistently
convey brief messages that encourage reduced consumption and a shift to
more self-reliant renewable energies. See, for example, ‘The Flame Tree
Project to Save Life on Earth’. Groups struggling to defend or reinstate indigenous sovereignty should convey compelling messages that explain what people can do in their particular context.

It is important that these messages require powerful personal action,
not token responses. And it is important that these actions should not
be directed at elites or lobbying elites. Elites will fall into line
when we have mobilized enough people so that they are compelled to do as
we wish. And not before. At the end of the Salt March in 1930 Gandhi
picked up a handful of salt on the beach at Dandi. This was the signal
for Indians everywhere to start collecting their own salt in violation
of British law. In subsequent campaigns Gandhi called for Indians to
boycott British cloth and make their own khadi (handwoven cloth). These
actions were strategically focused because they undermined the
profitability of British colonialism in India and nurtured Indian
self-reliance.

A key reason why Mohandas K. Gandhi was that rarest of combinations – a
master nonviolent strategist and a master nonviolent tactician – was
because he understood the psychology of nonviolence and how to make it
have political impact. Let me illustrate this point by using the
nonviolent raid on the Dharasana salt works, the nonviolent action he
planned as a sequel to the more famous Salt March in 1930.

On 4 May 1930 Gandhi wrote to Lord Irwin, Viceroy of India, advising his
intention to lead a party of nonviolent activists to raid the Dharasana
Salt Works to collect salt and thus intervene against the law
prohibiting Indians from collecting their own salt. Gandhi was
immediately arrested, as were many other prominent nationalist leaders
such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel.

Nevertheless, having planned for this contingency, under a succession of
leaders (who were also progressively arrested) the raid went ahead as
planned with hundreds of Indian satyagrahis (nonviolent activists)
attempting to nonviolently invade the salt works. However, despite
repeated attempts by these activists to walk into the salt works during
a three week period, not one activist got a pinch of salt! Moreover,
hundreds of satyagrahis were injured, many receiving fractured skulls or
shoulders, and two were killed.

But an account of the activists’ nonviolent discipline, commitment and
courage – under the steel-tipped lathi (baton) blows of the police – was
reported in 1,350 newspapers around the world. As a result, this
nonviolent action – which ‘failed’ to achieve the stated physical
objective of seizing salt – functionally undermined support for British
imperialism in India. For an account of the salt raids at Dharasana, see
Thomas Weber. ‘”The Marchers Simply Walked Forward Until Struck Down”:
Nonviolent Suffering and Conversion’

If the activists had been preoccupied with the physical seizure of salt
and, perhaps, resorted to the use of secrecy to get it, there would have
been no chance to demonstrate their honesty, integrity, courage and
determination – and to thus inspire empathy for their cause – although
they might have got some salt! (Of course, if salt had been removed
secretly, the British government could, if they had chosen, ignored it:
after all, who would have known or cared? However, they could not afford
to let the satyagrahis take salt openly because salt removal was illegal
and failure to react would have shown the salt law – a law that
represented the antithesis of Indian independence – to be ineffective.)

In summary, nonviolent activists who think strategically understand that
strategic effectiveness is unrelated to whether or not the action is
physically successful (provided it is strategically selected,
well-designed so that it elicits one or other of the intended responses,
and sincerely attempted). Psychological, and hence political, impact is
gained by demonstrating qualities that inspire others and move them to
act personally too. For this reason, among several others, secrecy (and
the fear that drives it) is counterproductive if strategic impact is
your intention.

If you are interested in planning effective nonviolent actions, a
related article also explains the vital distinction between ‘The
Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions’.

And if you are concerned about violent military or police responses,
have a look at ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent
Repression’.

For those of you who are interested in planning and acting strategically
in your nonviolent struggle, whatever its focus, you might be interested
in one or the other of these two websites: Nonviolent Campaign Strategy and Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.

And if you are interested in being part of the worldwide movement to end
all violence, you are welcome to sign the online pledge of ‘The People’s
Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

Struggles for peace, justice, sustainability and liberation often fail.
Almost invariably, this is due to the failure to understand the
psychology, politics and strategy of nonviolence. It is not complicated
but it requires a little time to learn.

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘ His email address is flametree@riseup.netand his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

Robert J. Burrowes
P.O. Box 68
Daylesford
Victoria 3460
Australia
Email: flametree@riseup.net

Websites:
Nonviolence Charter
Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth
‘Why Violence?’
Nonviolent Campaign Strategy
Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy
Anita: Songs of Nonviolence
Robert Burrowes
Global Nonviolence Network

“Why Don’t You Just Get a Better Job” and Other Dumb Shit People Say to Low-Income Earners Stuck in Precarious Work

Posted on January 30, 2017 by Reid Mukai

By Chloe Ann King

Source: The Hampton Institute

For most of my working life I have been stuck in the hospitality industry which is lowly paid, painfully precarious and poorly regulated. In New Zealand, where I live, hospitality employers mostly treat you as nothing more than an easily replaceable unit to turn-over-profit. I have spent over a decade in this industry and as such I have become acutely aware of the fact that no matter how many shifts I work or how many poorly paid jobs I undertake; I will never have enough money to meet rising living costs.

Sometimes, my life is a bit depressing. You know what I mean? I get up, I go and work one of my multiple jobs and I come home. Each week I check my bank balance and I feel pretty put-out about how low my pay is as compared to how hard I worked for it.

Obviously, working hard at minimum wage jobs is never going to land me economic security. No matter how hard I have worked in the hospo industry I have never ever received a pay-rise, not once. The lie of “hard work” serves to convince us that if we fail to achieve happy, healthy and joy filled lives which are economically secure thanks to well paid jobs, it is because we failed to work hard enough for it. Constantly we are told that external factors do not affect us. This type of pervasive ‘positive’ rhetoric isendlessly used by many self-help Gurus such as Tony Robbins, one of America’s most well-known motivational speakers.

The lie of “hard work” is pitched to us – those from the working and lower classes, by not only self-help gurus and spiritualists but politicians and well intentioned high school teachers and even our parents, as being one of the best paths to prosperity. This myth is perpetuated and disseminated by the mainstream media as motivational newsworthy ‘human interest’ stories. However, there is very little which is human about these types of stories. The core of these news pieces has nothing to do with humanity or being human and everything to do with selfishness and individualism and play on insecurities and our need to compare our lives to others who we think or we are passive aggressively told, have it better than us.

A few months ago the NZ Herald (New Zealand’s most read newspaper which controls the national narrative) ran yet another one of these “motivational” articles on a young landlord named Gary Lin. Who has managed to buy up a staggering eleven properties citing “hard work” as a reason for his success. He told the NZ Herald,

“Work hard, work smart, save hard, and invest smart. Wealth creation is not rocket science – perseverance and hard work can get you there.”

As if wealth creation is something we should as young people, be aspiring to. In times of great wealth inequality, we should be demanding wealth dispersal not setting out to create and covet wealth for ourselves. Gary, unlike most of us, was given a hefty “leg up” or what we poor folk call a “handout” by his father in the sum of $200,000 as a wedding gift which allowed him to buy his first home which cost him $175,000. I guess for some people money really does grow on trees.

I hate to break it to you Gaz – can I call you Gaz? But “hard work” had nothing to do with your successes in life.

Gaz got lucky. He won the genetic lottery and was born into wealth – he did not earn the money that helped him buy his first home. It was given to him. Instead of using his unearned wealth to help others he made the choice to punch-down and profit off the growing number of people stuck in the rental trap by hoarding properties. Gaz has engaged in predatory behavior by renting his properties out at market rental rates. In an unregulated rental market the odds are never in favor of tenants. As George Monbiot wrote for the Guardian, “Rent is another term for unearned income.”

People like Gaz rarely acknowledge their economic success is at the expense of those from the lower and working classes. To recognize this Gaz, might have to feel a little bit bad about how he came into his millionaire property portfolio. He might have some kind of world shattering epiphany that he is not as smart as he believes and his successes are owed more to an ability to stomach the ruthless actions and attitudes needed to ‘make it’ in a society that is quickly turning into a dystopian one. Which makes The Hunger Games, look like child’s play. Sociopathy and luck had more to do with Gaz’s successes in life than actual “hard work”, talent and intelligence.

Lawyer and anti-poverty activist David Tong, responded to Gaz’s flawed belief that anyone can own property if they just “work hard” enough, with these words:

“Motivational read from the NZ Herald: You too can be a rich property investor. If dad gives you a $200,000 gift”

“Hard work” and motivation don’t mean shit in a broken economy that was built on the blood, backs and bones of the working class and the most marginalized and vulnerable. Increasingly, accessing upward mobility – which buying property can help you obtain as well as a better quality of life, is becoming an impossible task because of low wages, insecure work and a flooded job market. People are just struggling to get off minimum wage let alone save for a house.

***

The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions states that “At least 30% of New Zealand’s workers – over 635,000 people – are in insecure work. We believe it may well cover 50% of the workforce.” No matter how hard you work it is impossible to get ahead when your employer only offers you inconsistent hours and denies your basic right to a guarantee of minimum hours.

Casual contracts are used widely within the hospitality and service industries and state that your employer owes you “no minimum of hours.” But the expectation is that you will cover and come in when needed and if you refuse you are often faced with penalties. Such as having your shifts cut the next week. Having the stability of a salary as opposed to waged work is a far off dream for so many of us. You can’t budget let alone save money for a house when you never know what your pay-check is going to be from one week to the next.

Economic insecurity because of cut shifts and insecure hours has been a major feature of my working life. For example, last year just before Christmas I had my shifts cut in half. I went from working between four and five shifts a week down to only two. I was given six days’ notice and when I pointed out how hard this would hit me economically to a Duty manager I was told, “I should go and find a second job” and reminded that “I was only on a casual contract so there was not much I could do about it.”

For the last few months I had been back-breakingly flexible for this employer. I had come in whenever I was needed and covered shifts at short notice. I had worked hard to make every customer’s experience an enjoyable one, all this for minimum wage. I spent most of December desperately scrounging around for a second job, as did two other workers who had suffered the same fate.

I popped into the same work soon after my shifts had been cut to collect my tips and one of the regulars who had been drinking, accosted me verbally and demanded to know why I was in such vocal support of the recent rolling strikes of Bunnings Warehouse workers. These workers had been subject to Zero Hour contracts, eternal bullying and harassment from managers and no guarantee of shifts or rosters. He said “why don’t these Bunnings workers just go out and get a better job”. This statement coming from a white male Baby Boomer who enjoyed free tertiary education and did not start his working life off in debt. All is crimson and gold in middle class Whiteywood, I guess.

“Why don’t you just go and get a better job?” This singular narrative epitomizes the ignorant attitudes of people like Gaz and the regular from my work whose name is ironically Gary, as well. It also puts the sole responsibility of finding well paid and meaningful work onto the worker, while absolving a government’s responsibility to push for job creation which serves their citizenry and the environment and to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, in New Zealand.

If over 30% of the workforce is stuck in precarious work and large sectors of the workforce earn below Aotearoa’s living wage of $19.25 an hour, finding “better work” is statistically impossible for a vast majority of us. There are thousands of hospitality businesses in Auckland, New Zealand, and only a handful pay a living wage and nearly none offer a guarantee of hours. As such telling people to “get a better job” is like telling them to buy a lotto ticket and live in hope they take out the jackpot.

***

No matter what the Gaz’s, Gary’s and the self-help superstars such as Tony Robbins of this world have to say on the myth of “hard work” and perseverance paying off one day, the reality is our ability to access upward mobility; buy a house; obtain a decent standard of living is tied to what type of work you can access. External factors not only deeply impact people’s lives they oppress those who do not benefit from certain types of privilege. Not all roads lead to Rome. More often than not for us poor folk they lead to roadblocks and hurdles that increase based on the colour of your skin, the class you were born into and/or your gender, how bodily abled you are and your sexuality or a combination of all of these.

People’s situations are complicated and difficult and cannot be curtailed into passive aggressive motivational “one liners” that nearly always punch-down and not up. Our working class struggles cannot be solved by a set of self-help rules or keys or steps which are meant to guide anyone to economic stability and lead you to the life of your dreams and a perfect job. In the book, The New Soft War on Women, the chapter entitled ‘Doing Well May Not Work Out So Well’, Caryl Rivers and Rosaling C. Barnett, write,

“We like to believe that the workplace is fair and that if we do a good job, we will be rewarded. After all, that’s the American way. But this belief is less true for women than it is for men. Indeed, too often women’s performance which is stellar gets fewer rewards than men do – even men who are less than outstanding.”

During a major speech at Wellesley College, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, talked about the role women can play in politics and public life, she said,

“We know we’ve got to keep pushing at that glass ceiling. We have to try and break it… Obviously. I hope to live long enough to see a woman elected president of the United States.”

Encouraging women to break the glass ceiling is all well and good but what if moving off minimum wage and accessing a living wage, is no easy feat? In America alone, 6 out of every 10 women are stuck on minimum wage.

The Glass Ceiling is so high up most of us can barely even see it. Researchers at the non-profit group Catalyst point out, “[…] when you start from behind, it’s hard enough to keep pace, never mind catch up-regardless of what tactics you use.” Both Rivers and Barnett went on to write,

“Doing all the right things to get ahead-using those strategies regularly suggested in self-help books, coaching sessions and the popular press-pays off much better for men than it does for women.”

As women, we do not struggle to “get ahead” because of personal failings but this struggle is born from structural sexism which creates gendered inequality.

Telling white women and women of colour to be more ambitious and just “work harder” if they want to smash the Glass Ceiling and obtain a decent standard of living is almost laughable. Considering many women, in particular, indigenous women and women of colour, are still struggling to make it out of the basement. Still, self-help gurus such as Tony Robbins preach to millions that none of what I am writing about actually matters: race, gender… whatever you were born as, and into, does not have to hold you back. You just have to believe in yourself and follow the Tony Robbin’s step-by-step guide to snagging a life beyond anything you could ever dream of. Which he has called: ’12 Keys to an Extraordinary Life’. You couldn’t make this shit up. He said at a recent event:

“I don’t care if you are young or old, I don’t care what your colour is, what your gender is, what country you come from, if you understand the science of building wealth you can have an abundance of it. If you violate those rules [of the 12 keys to an Extraordinary Life] either because you’re ignorant to them or you don’t apply then, you are going to have financial stress”

Tony, who sounds uncomfortably like Gaz in his belief anyone can become a millionaire, may as well have just said “we are all one”! “Everyone can make it no matter what grinding and economically depressive situations you come from”! And be done with it.

Financial stress is not brought about because you have unknowingly violated one or more of the ’12 Keys to an Extraordinary Life’ which Tony has made tens of millions off. Violating female stereotypes of passivity have a lot more to do with our failure or success in the workplace than how hard we do, or do not, hustle for top positions and top earning brackets. Rivers and Barnett write, “Competent women violate the traditional female stereotype of passivity. And that violation can trigger a reaction of fear and loathing [in the workplace].”

Financial stress is brought about because of injustices such as the pay-gap and the coloured pay-gap. Something Tony, has clearly gone out of his way to ignore. Self-help gurus and people like Gaz and Gary tend to, “displace questions of social justice and frame their rhetoric by the individualist and corporatist values of a consumer society,” as both Jeremy Carrette and Richard King wrote in the book, Selling Spirituality: the silent take over of religion.

Both Rivers and Barnett point out in relation to the American pay gap,

“Hispanic/Latino women have the lowest median earnings, earning just 55 percent of the median weekly earnings of white men; black women have, median weekly earnings of 64 percent of those of white men.”

The pay gap for America’s first nation indigenous women also sits at 55 cents in the dollar compared to white men, as non-profit AAUW reports. Indigenous women are faced with earning nearly half of what white men do in America.

Similarly, in Aotearoa indigenous Maori and Pasifika women, face significant coloured/indigenous pay-gaps compared to white men and women. TheDominion Post, reported last year, “Maori and Pasifika women are more likely to be in the lowest paying jobs, which increases the poverty in their lives and communities.” The Human Rights Commission has been tracking unfairness and inequality at work and cites that Pasifika women on average earn $57,668 while white men earn $66,900. What this data shows us is that, “Men are paid more than women overall and within ethnic groups. The effects increase when combining several factors as is the case between New Zealand European men and Pacific women. These patterns have persisted over time.”

These “patterns” of women of colour and Indigenous women being paid significantly less than white men and women, to do the same damn jobs have “persisted” all over the world from America to Aotearoa. Injustice and oppression is locally and globally connected.

A more accurate description of what the aspirational metaphor of the Glass Ceiling is made out of is to say it is made from lead. So many women are much more likely to fall off what Rivers and Barnett have labelled the “glass cliff” than triumphantly smash the glass ceiling into a million little pieces. Following Tony Robbin’s guide to obtaining some magical, fairy-tale life, or any other pseudo bullshit glittery guides to financial freedom, aren’t going to be very effective for women born into a system which was built to silence and eradicate them.

The only thing I am aspiring to “smash” is white imperial patriarchal systems that at best disempower women and at worst, brutally and often violently oppress them.

***

As workers we are criticized for our behavior whether we are told we need to be “more ambitious” or we “just need to work harder” in response to our perceived failure to land a great job with good pay and consistent hours. I am so tired of listening to people who endlessly tell me to go and get a “better job” or a “real job” (what does that even mean?!). And I have lost count of the times I have been told by people who hold anti-protester positions to “go and get a job” while I am on the picket line or the protest ground. As if the low waged work I do counts for absolutely nothing. As if service industry work is some kind of phantom job.

This is for anyone who has ever told a service worker to go and get a “job” or a “real job”: why don’t you make your own double shot soy latte, flip your own burgers and pour your own damn beer and make your own designer espresso martini, which costs more than I make in an hour.

When as a worker, I refuse to put up with horrible workplace conditions and hit the picket line or call the Union as a form of resistance I have been called a “trouble maker”, “dirty hippy” and an “inconvenience”. I am proud to be all of those things. I am glad I stood up and was brave and risked job loss (sometimes I have lost my job for speaking out) and arrest in an attempt to better my workplace conditions. The only people who are “dirty” are those who seize on disaster capitalism and economically benefit from the oppression of others… I am looking at you Tony Robbin’s and Gaz.

We need more workers collectively rising up and following the lead of Health Care workers, Bunning Warehouse and Supermarket workers and more recently Bus drivers. Who have all relentlessly hit union backed picket lines to demand ‘fair pay for fair work’ and better work conditions, in New Zealand. And less people thinking magically one day their lives will get better if they just play by the rules and perform their duties at work without complaint. This is nothing but blind faith. It is like believing in god: no matter how long you patiently wait he is not going to come and save you.

People from the working classes and those who have been in the wake of the 2008 financial crash, disenfranchised from the middle and upper-classes can save each other. But we need to refuse to allow those who hold power to continue to pit us against one another in some kind of Capitalist Death Match. Where the only prize you get is some demeaning job where the wages are so low you have to pick between buying food or paying the electricity bill. Starving or freezing does not sound like much of a “win” to me. It sounds like bullshit.

The more people who push against injustice in staggering numbers the harder it is for the media to ignore us and distort our messages of resistance.

Many people’s grinding situations have nothing to do with individual ‘bad choices’ or laziness or you know, violating the ’12 Steps to an Extraordinary Life’. No matter how many times we hear rotten rhetoric like this we must refuse – absolutely – to accept these types of pervasive and dominant narratives. At their core these narratives use shame and ruggedly focus on the individual as a method to pacify and silence. We must disrupt language that is designed to disempower and divide workers while seeming to empower. We need to seek out ways to elevate the voices of our most vulnerable and the messages of people of conscience who can envision a better world and whose political imaginations outstretch the dominant reality.

Lastly, we need to fight and stand with other workers against employers who exploit their employees and view them as nothing more than units to turn-over capital. Jeremy Carrette and Richard King, went on to write in their before mentioned book:

“We are never obliged to accept the dominant version of reality (however conceived throughout history) without question.”

Soylent Burgers and Cockroach Milk

Posted on January 29, 2017 by Reid Mukai

Source: The Hipcrime Vocab

“The profitability of production cannot expand indefinitely. Any increase in the quantity of soil, water, minerals, or plants put into a particular production process per unit of time constitutes intensification. It has been the burden of this book to show that intensification inevitably leads to declining efficiencies. That declining efficiencies have adverse effects upon the average standard of living cannot be doubted.’
-MARVIN HARRIS, ‘Cannibals and Kings’

This comment made me chuckle: “The futurology future is starting to look worse than the collapse future.” This was on Reddit in response to an article about cockroaches providing the “milk of the future”:

Scientists think cockroach milk could be the superfood of the future (Science Alert)

This really does seem like The Onion at this point. Someone suggested that Reddit’s collapse and futurology boards should merge at some point. Believe it or not, they aren’t all that far apart.

We’ve already been treated to an endless litany of articles about how insect ranching will provide the protein of the future. Then there’s the meat grown in a petri-dish, and the nutrition shake cheekily named Soylent scarfed down by the Silicon Valley crowd so they can cram in a few more hours of work after popping their Ritalin. Now people are questioning whether the government should step in and force us to eat less meat.

And yet we are still simultaneously told that overpopulation and resource depletion are not a problem, and that more growth is good.

This is progress???

One of the things I’ve written about over the years is this idea that technological innovations are inherently good. But it’s clear what’s really going on: desperately trying to maintain the status quo in the face of increasing population pressure and declining resources. There’s a technical term for this: intensification.

Marvin Harris, whose works serve as a guidepost for this blog, warned us that intensification always leads to lower living standards for the majority of people in the long run, while only benefiting a tiny handful. This is a law of history. Over the years, I’ve tried to point out the difference between true innovation which solves problems or allows us to do things we could not do before, and intensification, which is essentially squeezing blood from a stone. In the former category are things like antibiotics and radio, which solve problems (killer infections) or allow us to do new things (communicate globally). In the latter category are things like electric cars (attempting to keep the unsustainable automobile infrastructure alive) and aquaculture (to make up for stripping the oceans bare of wild fish).

For the majority of people, there is no difference, since both are “growth” and growth is always good, full stop. GDP, the yardstick by which we measure progress in the modern world (which even its creator warned us against) is agnostic as to the source of growth, whether it is producing more food to feed hungry people or asthma inhalers to deal with the lung irritants from air pollution.

People tend to forget we’ve been here before.

Back during the Ice Age (late Pleistocene), we H. sapiens lived primarily off of herds of large fauna, especially reindeer, mammoth and bison. This was supplemented with wild salmon in season. The fattiest parts of the animal were the most prized and sought after. Bones were cracked and boiled to extract the grease. Most calories came from nutrient-dense meat and fat, while plants were consumed for their beneficial vitamins and minerals (plants are less calorie dense).

Then the large fauna started to die off. They died off due to a double-blow of a changing climate and increasing human predation. Scientists debate about which was the primary cause, but it’s pretty clear that whenever humans showed up in a pristine environment, the large animals went extinct shortly thereafter. Many of these animals had survived previous climatic changes, so it’s doubtful that climate change alone was responsible. Skeletons riddled with spear points provide more damning evidence for our species.

In response, we launched a broad spectrum revolution – using our omnivorous diet to exploit a wider variety of foodstuffs, particularly plant foods. This began with acorns and pistachios, but soon moved to grass seeds, sedges and pulses. Meanwhile, the prey animals got smaller and smaller, from reindeer and bison, to gazelles and fallow deer, to hares and waterfowl. Instead of the nutritious and diverse food sources of their ancestors, we became more and more dependent upon eating pulverized grass seeds, obtained at the cost of backbreaking labor for harvesting, threshing and grinding.

The human population became mostly vegetarian by necessity, and remained so for roughly the next 8,000 or so years. The problem is, a vegetarian diet doesn’t provide a lot of necessary vitamins, minerals and nutrients for optimal health. Today’s vegetarians can choose from a plethora of foods year round that simply weren’t available to ancient people. They don’t have to worry about what is in season and have the entire world as their larder. In the past, however, the vast majority of people ended up subsisting on a diet of weak beer and gruel. Regular meat consumption became a privilege restricted to the wealthy upper classes, while everyone else went begging. Hunting, an activity once done by all humans everywhere since time immemorial, became the exclusive provenance of kings and princes – society’s rulers. While it is true that too much meat can be detrimental to health, too little is perhaps even more damaging. Humans are meat-eaters, and a certain level of fat and protein is required for optimal health. The protein in grains and legumes is incomplete (the body needs 22 different types of amino acids to function properly; adults can synthesize 13 of those internally, but the other 9 must be obtained from food), and there are no fats (the human brain is over 60 percent fat). Grains produce an over-abundance of omega-6 fatty acids, poisonous lectins to prevent their consumption, have low nutrient density, and high acidity. They are actually a terrible thing to base a primate diet around. But we had no other choice, thanks to intensification.

And this is dramatically reflected by the skeletons of ancient peoples, who show major signs of malnutrition, disease, and stunted growth. At the same time, arthritis and other signs of wear and tear make their appearance on the bones of people who now have to spend hours a day grinding grain in a saddle quern rather than fishing and chasing after wild animals. This gruel also breaks down into simple sugars in the mouth during digestion, meaning that cavities and premature tooth decay became endemic as well.

As population pressure grew, grains, pulses and sedges, once “unpalatable” dietary supplements cultivated by hunter-gatherers for times of extreme scarcity or fermentation into medicinal beverages, became the chief dietary staple for most people. At the same time, humans found themselves preyed upon by a new class of predator: their own kind, which continues unabated to this day.

In order to keep large herbivores from going totally extinct, we embarked upon what Harris called “the greatest conservation project in history”: animal domestication. Meanwhile, cheap carbohydrates from grain are what kept most of the human population alive from day-to-day for thousands of years, such that “bread” is synonymous in all ancient cultures with “food.”

All this came from attempting to exploit resources more intensively from our environment in the face of increasing population pressure.

This sad tale, memorably spun by Jared Diamond some years ago, reflects Harris’ principle: intensification inevitably leads to benefits for the few; misery and oppression for the many.

During periods of deintensifcation, we actually recovered some of the losses. This was due to either 1.) a reduced population or 2.) new lands and resources opened up for exploitation. For example, signs of health improve after the Black Death in Europe for the survivors, due to the reduced population pressure. There were more resources to go around per head. Also, the opening up of the new lands due to colonization (and the dieoff of the native peoples), brought vast new areas of virgin land under cultivation. This led to more wealth, as well as political freedoms. Serfdom waned after the black death, and the American Revolution put Enlightenment principles of representative democracy and justice into practice. Perhaps the most dramatic result came from the harnessing of millions of years of stored sunlight in fossil fuels, combined with the scientific method. This allowed many more people a higher standard of living, even in the face of increasing population and intensifying resource use. It was during this period that “economics” became the guiding principle of our civilization, and it chalked up all benefits to “institutions”–typically capitalist market institutions–rather than a temporary superabundance of energy and resources.

Thomas Jefferson once noted that the Americans in the room were all a head taller than their European counterparts. That’s what happens when you have plenty for everybody. The first Europeans in North America also noted how much taller the Native Americans were. As this article notes, in the past, Americans ate more meat than today, and were healthier as well:

How Americans Used to Eat (The Atlantic)

Eventually, the Malthusian cycle kicked in again. Population grew, the empty spaces filled up, and the frontier was closed. Increasing competition caused wages and purchasing power to drop. People gradually lost what self-sufficiency they had, allowing the elites to consolidate power. People once again began working longer, harder, for less. Sound familiar?

We intensified again – in order to keep up with the demand for meat, we crowded animals together into feedlots in unsanitary conditions and fed them cheap corn (maize), which they are not adapted to eat. To cope with the inevitable sickness which resulted, we pumped the animals full of antibiotics (which has a side effect of increasing growth). It is these miserable and tortured animals which most of us are forced to eat now, thanks to intensification.

However, domesticated meat is less nutritious than the wild variety. The Omega-3/Omega-6 profile is altered, and there are less antioxidants. Omega-6 fatty acids reduce inflammation, which is increasingly being pinpointed as the root cause of just about every disease you care to name, from autoimmune diseases, to Alzheimer’s, to arthritis, to chronic pain, depression, and cancer. At the same time, it’s been shown that grains actually increase inflammation, and are implicated in a host of metabolic diseases:

This Is Your Brain on Gluten (The Atlantic)

While grass-fed, hormone-free beef is still available, it costs more, meaning it is restricted to those with high incomes, just like in the past. And hunting is still primarily an elite sport for the rich in many places (especially outside North America). Just like in the past, the poor people trapped in “food deserts” feed themselves with cheap carbohydrates, now in the form of processed corn and sugar products made by the industrial food system, while the wealthy can purchase boutique ‘lifestyle” products at Whole ~~Paycheck~~ Foods.Malnutrition now takes the form of obesity as well as starvation, although much of the non-industrialized world still deals with empty bellies, stunted growth and vitamin deficiencies, including many of those who produce export crops for the West. That’s on top of poverty and pollution.

When we scraped the oceans clean of fish and poisoned our air and waterways due to industrial pollutants (e.g. mercury ash is a side effect of coal power generation) we turned to fish farming, (aquaculture) – one of the favorite high-tech “innovations” of the futurist crowd. But farmed fish are nutritionally inferior to wild ones. Wild fish travel widely and get their food from a great variety of sources. This means that they have a much better Omega-3 fatty acid profile (which prevents inflammation and helps brain growth). But farmed fish have to be fed. This means their diet is far more restricted, and hence their meat less nutritious (more Omega-6’s). In fact, salmon needs to be fed a pill in order to turn them pink so that consumers will buy them since their meat does not develop its natural color from their diet. As Spencer Wells notes in Pandora’s Seed, were now doing for fish what we did for ungulates some 8000 years ago: a desperate attempt to preserve what remains. Farmed fish is replacing wild fish in supermarkets. As with grass-fed meat, the wild variety is now sold at a premium affordable only to those with high incomes (sound familiar)?

In each and every case, intensification had led to far more work for ultimately inferior products. This is always the result of intensification in the long run.

We are constantly told we can’t go back to hunting and gathering (even if we wanted to). Why is that? What’s left unsaid is the reason: too many people and too much environmental degradation as the result of 6-8,000 years of intensification, which also brought about disease, governments, wars, taxes, poverty, inequality, and so on. Now we’re told we’ve got to eat less meat (which means more grains), live in small, tightly sealed houses, use less water, take shorter showers, and so forth. In essence, that we will “innovate” our way to success. But all of these are signs of lower living standards. And no wonder: seven billion-plus people, all quarters of the earth occupied and brought under the plow, rain forests being chopped down, the most easily accessible fossil fuels plateauing, toxic pollution of the air, land and water, overpumping of ground water, and the stable climate of the Holocene threatened by carbon levels. Intensification caused all of these things; it is not the solution. The next phase of intensification isn’t going to lead to better living standards any more than the last few rounds. Yet we’ve been tricked into thinking it will, because we don’t realize that fossil fuels are what are ultimately responsible for our current living standards (us Westerners, that is), not intensification. And even then, given the levels of stress, overwork, social dysfunction, health maladies and mental disease in industrialized societies, we might be tempted to wonder if even our living standards are all that great to begin with.

Furthermore, we are told that a healthy diet centered around pastured meat, plants and nuts is just not possible because it’s too damaging to the environment, or too “expensive.” That is, “we” need to “feed the world!” But according to the elites (the ones who benefit from intensification, remember) the answer isn’t less people, or curtailing economic growth. No, instead it’s new “innovations” that are profitable to the parasitical corporate owners of this planet: lab-grown meat, hydroponics, vertical gardens, meal-replacement shakes, protein powder from ground-up crickets, steel-and-glass human anthills. “The futurology future is starting to look worse than the collapse future.” Maybe that’s because the collapse future has more room to grow actual real food, live in a house you built yourself with your friends and family, spend time in nature, work less, play more, and get in touch with what we really are, deep down, instead of what industrial society wants to mold us to be.

Now, for the record, I have no problem with eating bugs. The Permaculturist in me says we should exploit all sources for sustenance in our environment such that they work together in a sustainable, harmonious way in line with the earth’s natural ecosystems. Raising insects, as we now do with bees, makes sense. And, yes, the overconsumption of Americans is grotesque and makes us unhappy, and we’d be better off ditching it (which I already do voluntarily). So to be clear: what I am criticizing is not eating insects or deriving milk from cockroaches per se. Nor am I defending the overconsumption produced by status-driven consumer capitalism. Rather, I am critiquing the idea that these futurology trends are signs of progress rather than collapse. Which is why r/collpase and r/futurology increasingly appear to be turning into the same thing.

P.S This comment nails it.

Saturday Matinee: Wing Chun

Posted on January 28, 2017 by Reid Mukai

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“Wing Chun” (1994) is a martial arts comedy directed by Yuen Woo-Ping (True Legend, Iron Monkey) starring Michelle Yeoh and Donnie Yen. Loosely based on a true story, the film tells the story of Wing Chun (Yeoh), a talented kung fu master who lives in a mountain village with her father, sister and aunt. After rescuing a widow from bandits, she must defend herself and her village while dealing with drama related to a childhood friend Leung (Yen), who returns after many years of studying kung fu.

Watch the full film here.

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Saturday Matinee: Wing Chun