hyperborea

This blog has moved...

2009-04-07T21:43:00.000-07:00

This blog has moved:

Utopia Or Bust, is the new location.

Voices of Madmen in Authority Distilling Their Frenzy

2009-03-30T15:20:00.000-07:00

“When policy-makers have already witnessed a significant move in asset values, and are confident in what that move means for the outlook, it should be prepared to adjust policy accordingly. The central bank must be responding to its assessment of what an already observed movement in asset prices will mean for output and inflation.”

- Timothy Geithner, at the NY Association for Business and Economics.

“Monetary policy itself cannot sensibly be directed at reducing imbalances.”

- Timothy Geithner, at the Global Financial Imbalances Conference in London.

“To do otherwise would run the risk that monetary policy would be too accommodative, pulling resources from the future in a way that would alter the trajectory for the growth of the capital stock, perhaps amplifying the imbalances, and compromising the price stability.”

- Timothy Geithner, at the Japan Society Corporate Luncheon in New York City.

"...in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."

- John Maynard Keynes, General Theory

Images of the Recession

2009-03-30T09:54:00.001-07:00

Thousands of people at job fairs, construction cranes, closed factories, cul de sacs with no houses, foreclosed home-buying tours, unused freight containers, etc. What does this all mean? - that we are in a recession. Take a look at the photographs.

What kind of capitalism is this that images from times of down and out look identical to images from times of up and coming? These photographs look like they could have been taken at any point in the business cycle. Creative destruction? Accelerating change? The law of uneven development?

Understanding Media...

2009-03-29T19:35:00.000-07:00

"Obama sets new standard for managing the news". - McClatchy Newspaper.

In the past week, Obama has done the following.

Spoke with Iranians through video conferencing.
Spoke to viewers of a Latin American music awards ceremony through video conferencing.
Appeared on Jay Leno's "Tonight Show".
Appeared on "60 Minutes".
Wrote an opinion column that appeared in newspapers around the world.
Held a prime-time news conference aired on television.
Held an online town hall meeting.

A former Google manager is Obama's new director of "citizen participation". Obama has directors of new media, directors of online programs, broadcast media, regional media,
African-American media, Hispanic media, research, and "message events". All of this has created - in the words of McClatchy - a "symbiotic government-media relationship".

The gift of Television

2009-03-29T14:07:00.000-07:00

"I call a cat a cat."
- Boileau

Because of the Treaty of Lausanne, the Turkish Republic only officially recognizes two special ethnic groups: Jews and Greeks, because of a long-standing animosity between Jews, Greeks and ethnic Turks. These ethnic groups are protected under special provisions that give them the same rights as Turks.

The question remains what Turkey has to say about Kurds, Nogais, Zazas, Ossetians, Laz, Arabs, Georgians, and Armenians who officially are not recognized by the treaties. Minorities in Turkey are discriminated against not just in practice, but also in legal writing. Did you know that speaking Kurdish was still an illegal practice in Turkey until 2003? The Turkish penal code has many other problems, which is why Turkey cannot enter the EU. But what to make of the new 24-hour Kurdish-speaking television news station?

It may seem like Kemal is smiling upon the Kurds at last, but the Turkish Republic is full of secrets and many disguises. This is probably the most salient feature of the country I realized when I visited in July of 2007: the country is rife with conspiracy theories. For every Turk I talked to, I heard at least three conspiracy theories. The generals did not trust the politicians, the politicians did not trust the intellectuals or the military, and the intellectuals did not trust anybody. Everybody else is caught in the crossfire of propaganda.

The ruling political party, AKP, chose to use wicked brute force to invade the Eastern region settled by the Kurdish separatists about a year ago. Now they want to give Kurds a television station, just before an election cycle. Is it not the case that this television station is merely a way to create divisive feelings amongst those Kurds who see it as an act of kindness and Kurds who see it as an act of appeasement? Those who see it as an act of appeasement truly believe that Kurds must be separate from Turks politically. Those who see it as an act of kindness can be bought by the government into the Turkish political system.

You cannot look at the situation and say, "Either way, Kurds win", because even though they have a television station, it comes at the expense of many Kurds turning to the statist and corrupt Turkish government. It comes at the expence of political capital. The AKP party is set to win these elections again, which means the Eastern Kurds will have to endure more bombings. The TV channel, since its state-owned, might then become just another mouthpiece for the government. And that, my friends, is why the government is kicking your asses.

Separatists will never get anywhere if the people they defend are constantly giving into to concessions.

Supply Chain disruption

2009-03-28T10:34:00.000-07:00

On any given day, millions of containers carrying up to 32 tons of goods each are moving on trucks, trains and ships in and out of ports. This movement has become remarkably affordable and economically expedient for global supply chains of manufacturers, retailers, and until now, the US military.

The possibility that "foreign terrorists" would seize control of a public port, or bring in a dirty bomb to explode it inside a port facility near a large city, would haunt Homeland Security ever since 9/11. In the past port security compromised port efficiency by constantly packing and repacking at checkpoints. This proved very costly. As a practical matter, some considered that process a non-tariff barrier to trade.

Today only about 5% of containers entering the US are inspected like this, and the Department of Homeland Security is suggesting upgrading its ports to operate much like Hong Kong's port where every container passes through a gamma-ray machine and a radiation portal to detect nuclear weapons. Just one bomb that sneaks in through a port could prove disastrous - not just for the city affected, but for the entire economy afterward. In the words of author and policy analyst Stephen Flynn, "The entire intermodal container system will grind to a halt."

In effect, every guerilla warfare operation has realized that one of the most effective ways to cripple an empire is to disrupt its supply chain security, and make every movement of goods and commodities extremely risky.

It is for this reason that protesters, playing on the government's fear of 'homegrown terrorists', would find that supply chain disruption in their own backyards could prove costly for the occupying forces as well. In the past just a group of about 40 people has proven very costly, up to $500,000 for just sitting and blocking traffic. These are, in effect, non-tariff barriers to trade. So much so that the Army will not use the sea-port system for the future shipment of military vehicles. Instead, it will fly all of the military vehicles to Afghanistan for the upcoming surge.

But is this because of activists in the US? And if so, is it a victory or an acknowledgment of Port Militarization Resistance (PMR)? Difficult to say.

Guerrillas are busy disrupting the military supply chain in Pakistan as well, and the US and NATO forces may be using air travel as a way to get supplies deep into the land instead of driving them through port cities.

A pensioner's capitalism

2009-03-25T11:41:00.000-07:00

Peter Drucker argued in Post-Capitalist Society (1993) that Western economies are no longer capitalist because ownership of the means of production is largely in pension funds, and the pension funds are owned by the workers, not the capitalists.

However, capitalism does not necessarily involve two mutually exclusive social classes, where each individual can be unambiguously assigned to one social class or another. For example, some theorists in the 'agorist' tradition like Samuel Konkin argue that each person is a worker-capitalist-entreprenuer. But in Konkin's conception, there are in fact three mutually exclusive social classes - statist capitalists, non-statist capitalists, and entrepreneurs. Workers simply do not exist in this theoretical framework are considered a "relic from a previous Age". As for the 'non-statist capitalists' Konkin considers them as "relatively neutral drone-like non-innovators." This is partly how Konkin distinguishes the "new libertarian left" from the "Marxoid" theories.

However, whether capitalism can unambiguously assign individuals to one of two (or three, or four, or possibly zero) social classes or not, it is evident that capitalism is an economic structure with two important sources of income: one from the ownership of the means of production, and the other from employment for a wage salary. These two categories can be conflated, and this leads theorists like Drucker to say that capitalism is now in the hands of "the people", a kind of utopian Thatcherite vision that has long existed in the US and UK.

But it has always been possible in principle for individuals to receive income from both of these sources. I can grow my own vegetables and sell them, whilst taking a wage salary from a grocery store to supplement my income. I am suddenly a capitalist, a worker, and an entrepreneur all at once. This does not mean I live in a post-capitalist society, and does not imply that the contradictions of capitalism have been supplanted. Still, if I receive a substantial income from both selling vegetables and working at the grocery store, then this may put difficulties in the way of attaching the single label "capitalist" or "worker" or "entrepreneur" to me, although these difficulties are only misunderstandings.

But even still, if I am a pensioner this does not even qualify me as a capitalist. Typically, pension funds are not even under the direct control of their owners, nor subject to their free disposal. The argument that pension funds have "democratized" the stock market is completely false, by disallowing worker control or decision making. Besides that, most people derive the majority of their income from wages and not from stock options or pensions, and the rich minorities still derive substantial income and power from property outside of pension funds altogether. A pension is just like any other investment in the stock market, only most of them are held in the tight hands of fund managers.

Saving income has always been a necessary tool for surviving under capitalist conditions. There is nothing particularly revolutionary about this, only that it allows skilled workers to be further divided from unskilled workers, and younger workers from older ones. But if the stock market crashes, pensioners find their futures at risk, just like the capitalists who own the production, thus intertwining their interests and upending the potential for radical change.

FBI informant guilty

2009-03-25T11:06:00.000-07:00

The Star Tribune:

Andrew Darst, 30, who is said to have played an important role in an undercover investigation of anarchist protesters at the Republican National Convention, was found guilty of third-degree damage to property, a gross misdemeanor, and two counts of assault in the fifth degree, which are misdemeanors. He was found not guilty of two counts of first- and second-degree burglary, both felonies.

You don't hear very often that FBI informants are being tried for the same activities they're informing the FBI about. What's interesting also is the case Darst's defense attorneys came up with to prevent Mr. Darst from going to jail like many of the protesters he and the institution he worked for incarcerated.

Michael Colich, a prominent Minneapolis criminal defense attorney, said Darst would be labeled a "snitch" if he goes to jail and might be potentially at risk, so his attorney will likely strongly argue for an alternative to jail such as home detention and community service.

Historical Legacies of the IWW and Workers Control

2009-03-24T11:46:00.000-07:00

Howard Kimeldorf, Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan, speaking in Seattle on the 90th anniversary of the Seattle General Strike. The audience cheers when Kimeldorf talks about the legacy of the IWW in the Pacific Northwest, and boos when he talks about the AFL leader, Samuel Gompers, who believed in "pure and simple unionism". Gompers described capitalism as the best economic system that ever existed.

The Seattle AFL was clearly out-of-step, however, since the only votes cast against Gompers were from the Seattle chapter. When the IWW came under attack from local employers, the AFL came to its aid. This was "unthinkable" anywhere else in the US.

Kimeldorf gives three reasons as to why the General Strike happened in Seattle - (1) the post-war strike wave, (2) the unified and radical character of the Seattle labor movement, and (3) and the international influence of the Bolshevik revolution. The Seattle AFL sent a delegation to the Soviet Union to investigate the new conditions and to offer assistance. There was so much "dry tinder" in the Pacific Northwest, and all they neeed was a spark.

Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter?

2009-03-23T17:57:00.000-07:00

Tacoma will never be a destination

2009-03-23T13:28:00.000-07:00

Why Tacoma will never be a destination, TAKE ONE.

The City of Tacoma wants more than anything to get white upper-class residents from Seattle to move into its newly-renovated apartments and gentrified condominiums. In so doing, it realized that there is a vast hole in the city's culture and none of their traditional methods of beautification work. Or more accurately, the artists realize this. On a big wall in Portland I saw a large mural which said, "Art fills the void" with a big banana next to it. Art clean-up, homeless person eradication, racial profiling, and building pointless highways have gotten the City of Tacoma nowhere. No one wants to put their feet on the street, if that was ever the goal, and the city is even shittier because now there's more condos and cops and very few small business districts.

Even though they hire professionals from Community Development Corporations and consultants to tell them where they got it wrong, the city cannot do a damn thing to get its house in order. They should have listened to the consultant Lars Gemzoe who came all the way from Copenhagen to say that pedestrians (not to mention bicyclists) in Tacoma are obviously "invisible in the planning process" and that "people, life, and vitality are the biggest attractions of a city." But instead of hearing out the wisdom from that successful public art architect, the city council and mayor seem to take their advice from successful fascist mayors like Rudy Guliani and bankers who think they can be like the Medici family - moneymen of the Italian Renaissance - by only funding "high art" for the rich and famous.

"People, life, and vitality" are the biggest reasons why most people even want to travel at all, or get out of the house, or explore new cities. I was excited to go to San Francisco again last week because of the people, life, and vitality there. Nobody complains that the weeds are overgrown in Golden Gate Park. In fact, the vegetation is half the charm. My friend and I ooed & awed at the overgrown brushes and trees and envied their verdant walkabouts. The ganjaweed dealers deal out in the open and the cops don't seem to be needed at all. Adults must be "accompanied by children" in order to step foot on the kids' playground. The kids know best. People from all over the city come to the park to enjoy the day.

Tacoma's parks, sadly, are like golf courses. If that's the case who would want to come out of their offices for their lunch break? This weekend for our antiwar march, the city would not allow the Food Not Bombs group to cook food in the park. We either had to have a business license or $1,000,000 in insurance to do this. Yet another reason to stay home. The City thinks art means building more art museums for stagnating, glass-enshrined exhibitions you'll need to pay to see. Art has a department. It's someone's responsibility. It must not interfere with commerce, unless it is commerce.

The recession is causing an exodus in the Tacoma art community. Artists say want to live in cities like Portland where their work is appreciated. In Tacoma city henchmen claim to "work with the community" to solve problems, but I have never seen any of these people, and I work with the community too. They don't advertise these community groups because they want to autonomously take action to eradicate art and sterilize the city when no one is looking. So the message to everybody in the community is: this is simply not a good time to venture into new and uncertain territory, like art. In the words of artist Chip Van Gilder in the Tacoma Volcano:

“I‘ve pretty much dropped out of the artist community. I found a minimum-wage day job... I put a few years effort into getting my work out there and helping others, but the foundation didn’t produce any long lasting results. My personal feeling is that the good ole boy society of the Tacoma business has done everything it can to eradicate art as a culture in Tacoma.”

Eradicated art as a culture. That's what Tacoma did. That's why it will never be the great city it imagines itself, in its wildest dreams, as "the city of destiny".

Economic Draft

2009-03-23T11:27:00.000-07:00

From the Tacoma News Tribune:

“When we first deployed (last fall), a lot of them didn’t want to re-enlist,” he said. “They’d tell me, ‘Oh, Sergeant Frazier, don’t come talk to me about that. Don’t even bring it up. I’m done with the Guard after this.’
“But a few months later, a lot of those same guys came back up to me and said they were worried about the economy, about paying the bills. They catch me going to my hooch, to chow, to the gym. They tell me they’re looking for more work because there’s not much back home.”

In the army, there is no recession, because the war machine keeps churning.

Iraq and Afghanistan are ...

2009-03-10T20:39:00.000-07:00

Over the years people have come up with lots of analogies just for Iraq. For example, I have heard that Iraq is like... "a quagmire," "a deep hole," "a descent into hell," "an oil fire," "embers in the night," "a cancer patient," "Vietnam," "South Korea," "a teenage pregnancy," "a variable-rate mortgage," and the list goes on.

Guantanamo also have a variety of analogies too. People have said it's like a Soviet gulag, which actually originated with London Amnesty International, and plenty of people have chimed in on that. Turks call Guantanamo "Silivri," after the largest prison in Europe located in Turkey.

But what's the use comparing something to something else when the original is just as bad or worse? I'm not sure if any one thing can capture all aspects of the war on terror. But this weekend two of my friends and I decided the war on terror is like a game, a board game, the goal of which is total global domination. Like a game of Risk.

We used that concept to create a commercial for television to advertise a protest in Tacoma on March 21st. We used the concept of playing a game of Risk to frame the expanding war on terror under Obama's administration, so that it more closely resembles imperialism. As Obama announced on February 27th, the war in Iraq is as of now - "over" - but 30,000 to 50,000 troops will remain in order to "advise," "equip," "support," and "train" Iraqi security forces. He said "all" combat missions in Iraq will end in 2011, but there will still be American "counter-terrorism missions" which will most likely happen under the radar. So the occupation will not end, it's only getting bigger.

He also said there will be a combat troop surge in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the next few months, and according to budget research group, the National Priorities Project, Obama will actually spend more on military defense expenditures than George W. Bush. There are not a lot of details on how the new military budget will be spent, but he asked for a 75 billion dollar war "supplemental" budget, making 2009's military budget a new spending record.

John Stewart breaks down Obama's foreign policy here.

Our friend who works for a Tacoma-based cable provider, Click!, helped us get access to cheap ad space, so that our 15 second and 30 second ads can be seen on CNN, the Discovery Channel, MTV and USA. Here is the ad. Go to demonstrate253.org for more information about the march.

Fuckin thieves

2009-03-09T15:00:00.000-07:00

Came home Sunday morning to find that my house had been robbed the night before.

It's such a bad feeling, to know that you have been punked by a band of high school boys roaming the street. Around 11 o'clock Saturday night I left the house to stay the night at a friend's house and watch a movie. When we walked got outside, we saw a group of boys skulking around aimlessly by our mailbox. One asked if we were having a party at the house. They must have heard my housemates' band playing downstairs, I thought.

But he asked the question like a bratty teenager would ask his mom for the car keys, as if he was entitled to a party if there was one. I said it was just band practice. This was supposed to sound like it was nothing exciting, friendly but parsimonious at the same time. Instead it probably came off sounding too generous. He said, "Oh, ok," and they all left. I noticed one of them was carrying a big case of golf clubs, but I did not think anything of it. Four people were downstairs, and another person upstairs. The house should be safe.

When I came back home the next day my housemates asked me if I knew where all their stuff was. I said no, and went to my room to discover that a $4,000 video camera I had been using for the past two years was stolen. I knew right away what happened. I said to myself, "Those fuckin thieves."

Looking back, it was so obvious! I should have caught on to their suspicious behavior. But who ever does until it's too late? I figured the boys might have stopped at our house to check out the anarchist newspaper/zine box we have sitting outside, which was intended to attract pedestrian attention. I figured they might have been looking for college parties, which happen nearby every weekend. I figured they could have been playing night-golf, because I have seen frat boys play golf at night before. And I figured the music downstairs attracted them to our house. I guess I was proud to live in an "interesting" house, and so it seemed not worth paying attention to.

"Well, at least you learned your lesson," some friends told me. But what lesson? Maybe people who read this blog can help me out.

One obvious lesson is that you should be vigilant and lock your doors even when people are home. Maybe that is inconvenient and maybe you'll seem paranoid. If you have expensive stuff then your friends will understand. But how friendly should you be to your extended neighbors? Should you be friendly and invite Oliver fucking Twist into your house? Or should you tell him to get the fuck away from your mailbox and if you see him again you're getting out the shotguns? Should you ask him where he lives and what he's doing? Or would that only make friendly people suspicious, instead of making suspicious people fearful? Should you lay booby traps? How many? And if you catch the fucking bastards red-handed, how much (if any) mercy should you give?

As I told my housemate, so long as these thieves steal from us and thereby stop us from being effective community organizers or activists etc., they are no better than the police. Are we supposed to think of this crime as driven by class oppression - as if they're the proletariat stealing from the bourgeoisie? Yes, we have "wealth" in terms of computers, lap tops and cameras. Yes, we are college-educated and make food with quality herbs and spices. Yes, we have a painting by Jean Honoré Fragonard in our living room. Does that make us petite bourgeoisie?

In one analysis, we own the means of production because we make propaganda. We have our own means of production. But this analysis is incoherent. Since the thieves have the means now - it would make them the bourgeoisie and now our roles are switched. Anyone who ever published or created intellectual content is the bourgeoisie. No, we should have a better class analysis than that. If we think of ourselves as petite bourgeois consumers with surplus wealth for the taking, then we must really be confused.

And is it true what Machiavelli says, that it is better to be feared than loved? Some people are simply not interested in what they can gain mutually from friends in a relationship and would rather take from you, no matter who you are, no matter which side you are on. How do you scare the shit out of those people, while making new friends and maintaining your mutual respect for others? How can you tell friends from enemies and what do you tell your enemies?

...

Afghanistan opium

2009-03-02T12:56:00.000-08:00

According to a UN Office on Drugs and Crime 2007 opium survey in Afghanistan, the region produced 8,200 metric tons of opium - twice the annual estimate of global opium consumption. Afghanistan produces more opium than anywhere else in the world. But the price of opium is not being driven down by overproduction. Antonia Costa for the Washington Post writes,

"The (unweighted) national average price of dry opium at the farm gate in Afghanistan is dropping, but not significantly -- it was $125 per kilo in December 2006 compared with $150 per kilo a year earlier. Prices differ across the country, not surprisingly, since Afghanistan is not a unified territory or market, even for opium. But overall, the drop in prices is modest when compared with the massive increase in opium production, 50 percent, in 2006."

Opium also has a longer shelf-life than cocaine, and can be used as a store of value. It is considered a source of liquidity and is used as collateral for credit. But if this is so, why aren't Afghan farmers using their collateral to build up capital? Why isn't Afghanistan more prosperous? Something is not adding up. An alternative explanation is that the estimated annual global demand, thought to be 4,500 metric tons, is not actual demand. The real demand for opium could be much higher, or could be growing as fast as the production, as the illicit market spreads to new places.

But if new markets were absorbing the surplus, Costa writes, "we would expect an increase in seizures of the drug and overdoses in these countries. That hasn't been happening." She offers another alternate explanation.

"Drug traffickers have a symbiotic relationship with insurgents and terrorist groups such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Instability makes opium cultivation possible; opium buys protection and pays for weapons and foot soldiers, and these in turn create an environment in which drug lords, insurgents and terrorists can operate with impunity."

"I suspect," she concludes, "that the big traffickers are hoarding surplus opium as a hedge against future price shocks and as a source of funding for future terrorist attacks, in Afghanistan or elsewhere." She warns that Afghanistan's neighbors are "either accomplices or victims in the opium trade, so they need to be part of the solution."

Her last statement echoes a longtime NATO accusation. NATO, with 55,000 troops in Afghanistan, accuses Iran of allowing weapons and drugs to be smuggled into and out of the region, and giving money to 'insurgent' farmers and fighters. The UN International Narcotics Control Board says Pakistan is also a popular trade route.

If the supply of opium does not affect the price, then buyers are willing to pay a lot for it. But while the price of opium has not significantly dropped (even though production is twice the expected demand) farmers are entering the cannabis market instead. The UN's International Narcotics Control Board said in its annual report that because of overproduction in opium there has been a rise in the production of cannabis in Afghanistan. Many provinces which had been declared by the post-9/11 Afghan government and NATO to be free of poppy cultivation have switched to cannabis. The report went on:

"The lack of security in Afghanistan has severely hampered government efforts to eradicate illicit opium poppy; a total of 78 persons involved in the eradication efforts lost their lives in 2008, a six-fold increase over the previous year. The increase in illicit cultivation of cannabis in Afghanistan is also a worrying development."

Another law of economics commonly touted is "comparative advantage", which says that countries should produce in whichever products they have a comparative cost advantage over other countries. Afghanistan has comparative as well as an absolute cost advantage over other countries in drug production. And while Afghanistan is considered one of the least-developed countries in the world, with the lowest standard of living, their most traditional and cost-effective ways of industrial organization is outlawed, which leads to prohibition-style murder. The UNINCB does not see it this way. They say,

"The large-scale smuggling of Afghan opiates has resulted in a wide range of social ills, including organized crime, corruption and high illicit demand for opiates. For example, the Islamic Republic of Iran has, for a number of years, the highest rate of abuse of opiates in the world."

The same could be said about US energy firms, whose large-scale operations result in a wide range of social ills. The United States has, for a number of years, the highest rate of abuse of oil in the world; oil money leads to massive corruption, and the propping up of imperialist regimes; world government leaders have been trying for years to switch oil producers to more legitimate ways of life, but the oil drilling persists. In addition, many of the legalized US agricultural commodities harm other countries in the same way the US claims opium harms it, through policies like dumping. What if the overproduction of these crops were banned by the international community? Oh wait, they are.

As occupying Western armies have learned, from Winston Churchill to the Soviet Empire, controlling Afghanistan is much harder than invading it. Alternative solutions to Afghanistan's illicit drug "problem" should include the legalization of its drug trade.

Hummer, no returns!

2009-02-27T17:29:00.000-08:00

Every good American played the game slug bug as a kid, where if you spotted an old VW bug you would shout "slug bug!" and hit your brothers or sisters in the arm. "Ouch!" they would complain and vengefully hit you back even if there wasn't a slug bug around.

On the other side of the size spectrum are Hummers. They're big, ugly and easy to spot. Since around December, I swear I have seen more H2s and H3s around than before. So I started hitting people out of anger.

With the US economy finally reaching where Detroit has been for the past quarter century, you would expect gas-guzzling hummers to fade away like consumers' income. It's true, new H3 sales were down by nearly 50% from 2007 to 2008. But used Hummer vehicles sales from 2007 to 2008 have increased by 71% according to General Motors. All GM luxury vehicles - Saab, Cadillac, Hummer, etc. - have seen strong year-to-year increases in the certified, pre-used market.

Hummers also get tax breaks for their weight. Vehicles over 6,000 lbs are tax-deductible items for small business owners. Besides a $25,000 write-off for to a basic equipment deduction, and another $25,000 write-off for for a bonus depreciation loophole, all SUVs qualify for bonus depreciation, an added write-off of 30 percent of the purchase price above $25,000.

HybridCenter.org illustrates:

"For example, a business owner purchasing a Hummer H1, with a sticker price of $106,185, would be able to deduct $60,722 in the first year under the revised rules: a $25,000 equipment deduction, $24,356 in bonus depreciation, and $11,366 in regular depreciation."

Combine that with the unusually low, election year gas prices this Winter, and it makes sense that rich, capitalist swine who support dictators, don't believe in global warming, love militarization and human rights abuses and ozone depletion, who support CIA coups, and oil spills, and preemptive war, and the Apocalypse, and human extinction, are out driving their big beasts more often.

How to address climate change with Business ethics

2009-02-25T12:22:00.000-08:00

This is a follow up from the previous post on the way business marketing authors approached the Viread retro-viral drug and its use in Africa during clinical testing trials. In the chapter on business ethics in this textbook, International Marketing, the authors subtly discuss environmental ethics and its effect on business.

Activists are the bane of a marketer's professional life. They are constantly working to destroy the image of a business and expose its innermost flaws. This is something the business class needs to reply to with skill because it could tarnish the image and the profit of the business. Exxon Mobil, for example, funded climate change skeptic groups - the Heartland Institute, Advancement of Sound Science Center, etc. - in order to refute the claims of environmental activists who were making it difficult for the oil industry to ignore climate change.

"Business ethics" comes to the rescue. It provide business professionals with better rhetorical skill and strategies to further exploitation. The study of "business ethics" is an excuse to teach the student of marketing how to get around ethical norms, how to promote an image of ethical leadership, and how to make business as usual viable for the business.

Here is a section of the book that discusses global warming.

"The Ethical Nature of Promoting Large SUVs

Cars emit carbon dioxide, which is thought to contribute to global warming. Such emissions can be reduced when fewer people purchase large SUVs, which are generally fuel-inefficient vehicles. CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) rules are set at only 20.7 miles per gallon for SUVs as compared to 27.5 mph for full-size cars. Hence, SUVs have come under attack as making the United States more dependent on imported oil, as well as for their poor safety record. The industry, by manufacturing and promoting more fuel-efficient cars and trucks, could help reduce dependence on energy imports. Should car companies, therefore, promote fuel-efficient cars and encourage to buy them at the expense of pricier, more profitable, large, fuel-guzzling SUVs? In Canada, the answer has been a resounding "yes." Canadian automobile companies signed an agreement with the Canadian government, agreeing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent over five years, which would involve using fuel-saving technologies and alternative fuels such as ethanol, clean deisel, and biodiesel."

The book says that when there are multiple stakeholders, corporations need guidance as to how to deal with and prioritize values.

"A puzzle for corporations is that there are many worthy causes and constituencies. A firms' consumers and its shareholders might ask what it is doing about global warming, terrorism, governmental corruption, and poverty, among other issues. An automobile company might well argue that its products have little to do with terrorism, governmental corruption, and poverty. The company may go on to state that it is working on reducing emissions and is devoting funds to research to develop an engine that is clean-burning, thus helping to reduce global warming. In rebuttal, activists might point out that the company imports thousands of containers full of parts every year and that its manufacturing processes in other countries, coupled with these shipments, contribute to pollution and global warming."

In the Questions and Research section, the book asks students to consider a few points from the chapter and discuss them in groups. The question relevant to this portion of the textbook is not, "What is the role of business in addressing climate change?" or, "What are some ways the automobile industry can address climate change?" or something along those lines. The question is,

"How does the presence of multiple stakeholders affect conduct? Focus on the issue of reducing environmental pollution globally to discuss how the green lobby affects global business practices."

Business ethics - just an excuse to act up

2009-02-25T11:09:00.000-08:00

It is becoming more and more common for philosophy professors to teach business ethics. The University of Pennsylvania, for example, has four philosophy professors in its business ethics school within the philosophy department. Robert Solomon at UT Austin, better known for his work in existentialism, in his later years started teaching business ethics too.

The problem with business ethics is that is forces the same criteria it uses for business management down the throats of ethics professors. Because of this, ethical standards are viewed as a means to an end; they are determined by their 'performance' in the marketplace, and are scrutinized under cost benefit analysis.

Business professionals learn to think of ethics as something which serves their business, rather than the other way around. When ignoring ethical norms would prove disastrous for the business, your business should speak up about the company's reputation for high ethical standards, or how the company goes beyond compliance with the law, or how any unethical actions do not reflect the company's code of conduct, etc.

Philosophy can lend itself easily to this problem because philosophy is not instructive, and other academic pursuits are. More often, what business professionals glean from philosophy is how to argue their way out of nasty moral dilemmas. A philosophy professor typically will not want to pontificate "the answer" to a difficult moral dilemma, unless they want to defend or entertain a particular perspective. Philosophy does not teach teach truths and values, but to puts them into a perspective, and argues for the superiority of that perspective.

On the other hand, the business ethic perspective frames ethics in terms of business - "How valuable are ethics to my business?" This is not philosophy, it is business. The superiority of the business perspective is totally taken for granted. What happens, then, is that philosophy becomes the handmaiden to business professionals - the age-old sophist tendency.

To illustrate this point I want to mention the work of HIV/AIDS activists and the effect it had on business practices. The group Act Up - originally started by the friends of Michel Foucault to raise awareness and dispel myths about AIDS - made its way into an International Marketing textbook authored by Terpstra, Sarathy, and Russow, in a chapter titled "Ethics and Global Marketing".

A little bit of background. Africans account for 25.4 million of the 39.4 million people around the world who have HIV/AIDS. Naturally, the place to bring HIV/AIDS prevention drugs would be Africa. In 2005 the US drug manufacturer Gilead needed to determine whether its drug, tenofovir (marketed as Viread), could prevent HIV/AIDS in a similar way to a vaccine. The drug was thought to prevent an exposed person from contracting HIV/AIDS. Once Viread passed the clinical trial test, it would then be sold globally at a premium prices. African prostitutes would be the proverbial guinea pigs in the clinical trial process.

The cost of AIDS "cocktail" drugs, which stop the progress of AIDS and allows patients to achieve some level of stability, averages over $10,000 a year. This is well beyond the reach of most Africans. Viread, while cheaper than some, costs around $17 a day and must be taken daily, which is roughly $6,400 a year. Still beyond the reach of many AIDS-affected Africans. Remember, a billion people in the world live on a dollar a day, many of them live in Africa.

The group Act Up-Paris, after perusing Gilead's clinical trial's research reports, decided that this needed to be protested, stopped, and added that the African trial participants "got too little information and care for their participation" - a legal claim that would stop the trial. The Wall Street Journal reported that "Act Up claims that by holding trials in Africa, '[Gilead knows] they will find...women willing to let them carry out a trial at minimal cost.'"

A probable side-effect of the drug is kidney dysfunction. It was not known whether the drug would cause kidney problems, or worsen existing kidney trouble. Gilead decided it would go ahead and test female prostitutes from Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi, Cameroon, and Cambodia. The unfortunate five women who contracted HIV/AIDS in Cameroon during the study were promised long-term access to therapy.

On the flipside, WSJ commentator, Roger Bate, said,

"Act Up is being flat-out hypocritical in its attempts to keep the trials from being conducted in low-cost environments. Activists are always complaining about the high price of drugs, and the best way to keep prices down is for trials--the most expensive part of any drug development--to be as cheap as possible."

Now, as a student of marketing, let's look to our textbook to learn more about this ethical problem.

Our International Marketing textbook says that "ethical conflicts can arise when the only access to health care for low-income patients is through participation in such clinical trials." This was certainly the case for Viread. But other than this, the text doesn't come close to a stance on whether this practice set ethical standards high or low, or whether Gilead went "beyond compliance with the law." It does not even provide a list of key international legal frameworks to judge Gilead's practices by.

Instead it ends the section on ethical international research with a quote from a pro-Africa-testing AIDS group called Treatment Action, which decried Act Up-Paris's actions as "ethical imperialism", and backs up the study by mentioning that the clinical trials were supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Certainly, if other activists are complaining about the work of activists in Paris, it must not be legitimate. And certainly if philanthrocapitalists support the AIDS research then it must have been carried out in an ethical way, or at least had the right intentions.

In the next section, the authors advise that an ethical move would be to employ market segmentation for poorer people, or what author K. Prahalad calls "inclusive capitalism", so that "companies can do well financially and and develop new sources of value." This means lowering the price of products in emerging markets, in order to find an entry path into that market. Proctor & Gamble (their example) sells bottles of shampoo in India for a penny a piece, which allows them to outsell competitors and maintain dominance. By including Africans in its clinical trial, by analogy, they are saying it was an act of inclusive capitalism.

On one hand, I can appreciate the moral complexity of the problem Act Up-Paris and Gilead Sciences have dealt with. Eventually the clinical trial was canceled due to pressure from Act Up-Paris. But is providing 400 prostitutes with a little bit of retro-viral drugs, just to take them away and sell them to rich people in the First World, a fair practice? Who is John Rawls? Who is Ronald Dworkin? Who is Derek Parfit? The only question I have boggling in my mind is, "Is this 'inclusive capitalism'??" Do the authors really think Gilead would have provided 25 million people with affordable Viread? But isn't that what they should have done? And what about the four people who got AIDS from the clinical study itself? Where was Immanuel Kant when all of this went down?

On the other hand, what is the value of a textbook that proclaims to know something about business ethics, when it cannot provide a solid philosophical basis for judging the right course of action? Instead, the text is more like a set of clues to form better strategies for further exploitation. It teaches the marketing student how to get around ethical norms, how to promote an image of ethical leadership, and to think in terms of what is better for the business, without ever explicitly mentioning that this is what the text is here for.

If we say that the textbook neither agrees nor disagrees with those activists who criticize certain business practices, we're right about that. It only tells the reader how the business operation was affected by the activist criticism, and then asks the reader to form an opinion. The point I am making is subtle. The textbook wants you to see its literature reviews as objective information, but by limiting the scope to the business perspective, they imply that the only implied ethical criterion is the business's reputation and profit.

Here are a few questions at the end of the chapter related to this problem.

Questions and Research

How can concerns over ethical behavior affect global business practices? Provide examples.
Why should a firm be concerned about ethics in international marketing activities?
How can a firm connect moral principles to the development of ethical standards that would govern its international activities?
How do ethical issues affect the clinical testing of new pharmaceutical drugs in emerging markets?

Upgraded BlackWaters: Information Sharing and Analysis Centers

2009-02-23T22:51:00.000-08:00

BlackWater - or Xe as it's now called - was only the beginning of modern private mercenary market. Today there are corporate intelligence community networks springing up in large numbers, providing "intelligence" to the intelligence community while trading its shares on the market.

I stumbled across these organizations as I was breezing through this document, which a homeland security group - the Highway Watch and Information Sharing and Analysis Center - drafted in preparation for the RNC 2008. The document was recently leaked from TwinCities Indymedia. Homeland Security had ranked the anti-war and anti-capitalist groups who would attend the convention in terms of 'power centrality' and mapped places where members of the RNC Welcoming Committee had been scoping out for protest.

The HWW-ISAC also included a social networking analysis of the groups involved, which measured the groups' "betweenness", or how embedded they were with other organizer groups. The document links directly to two anarchist websites, including one from a North Austin, TX bookstore. (It would later be revealed that DHS infiltrated an Austin anarchist group, provided them with molotov-making material, and is now charging them with terrorism using the Minnesota Patriot Act.)

What do ISACs do? Where did they come from? The HWW-ISAC document revealed that these "Information Sharing and Analysis Centers" are operating under the radar to spy on people, not just in select areas. There is a much broader organizational framework involved. I was able to find a number of ISACs in operation. This includes:

Highway ISAC (defunct, is now the Trucking ISAC)
Supply Chain ISAC
Aviation ISAC
Surface Transportation ISAC
Food and Agriculture ISAC
Chemical Sector ISAC
Coast Guard ISAC
Critical Infrastructure ISAC
Communications ISAC
Elecricity Sector ISAC
Emergency Management and Response ISAC
Financial Services ISAC
Health Care ISAC
Information Technology ISAC
Multi-State ISAC
Public Transit ISAC
Real Estate ISAC
Research and Education Networking ISAC
School Bus ISAC
Telecom ISAC
Water ISAC
World Wide ISAC
ISAC Council

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about these ISACs is that they are publicly-traded corporations. Some say they are "not for profit", others do not explain anything. But each combines law enforcement-type searches, seizures and investigative work with private enterprise. Read the "About us" on each of their pages to get a sense for how each sector ISAC operates.

ISACs are "private entities", says the Surface Transit ISAC website. They gather reports from academia, vendors, government, local, federal, state, and international law enforcement agencies. The Seattle-based Supply Chain ISAC, for example, says it is a "federally-sanctioned", "information-sharing community" whose goal is to receive "actionable intelligence" to protect the supply chain infrastructure. Among their tools include "the world's most comprehensive covert cargo monitoring".

As if being driven by profit weren't enough, through mergers these federally-sanctioned spy networks are teaming up with private security corporations. In 2006, the Supply Chain ISAC joined forces with another private corporation, LoJack, which is "globally-respected" and has "unrivaled, proven solutions and direct integration with law enforcement" according to their own website.

The Telecom ISAC has members that have "secret" or "top secret" security clearances. It has operated 24x7 since September 2001, and its lines of communication monitoring include email, alternate email, secure message forums, phones, cell phones, faxes, pagers, and in-person briefings.

Under executive orders and presidential directives, the government has authorized these ISACs to work with its DHS people. From EO 13231, October 2001, the document states via REN-ISAC,

"The President shall designate a Chair and Vice Chair to enhance the partnership of the public and private sectors in protecting information systems for critical infrastructures and provide reports on this issue to the President, as appropriate; and propose and foster improved cooperation among the ISACS, the NIPC, and other federal government entities."

Arthur Miller, IWW

2009-02-21T09:10:00.000-08:00

Recently I had the opportunity to meet an important labor organizer with the IWW, Arthur J. Miller. A friend of mine who organizes with IWW is working on a Pacific Northwest labor history zine, in which Miller is a prominent figure for the Tacoma region.

As we drank cup after cup of coffee, Miller explained that he didn't want to be treated like a famous object in any academic historical analysis. Nonetheless, he acknowledged a deficit in labor history, especially the industrial history of South Puget Sound, and a lack of inspirational literature written by workers.

Miller stressed the importance of workers writing their own publications, because workers tend to have their own language - their own "shop talk" as he called it - with which to exchange ideas with one another. Each industry is a bit different. And with today's explosion of new service industries, it's likely that a young worker today would have experience only working with service jobs like waiting tables, or doing customer service. It's very important to organize these industries, and the workers who have experience organizing need to write about it.

My friend and I explained that, as young people ourselves, we only had experience with the service industries. We've waited tables, worked in bookstores, we taught students, we were consultants, and in every job we have been in the store-fronts rather than in the back. We've always provided a service instead of the raw material.

To get an idea for Arthur Miller's own writing, check out his pamphlets "Making Anarchist Revolution Possible" and "Principles of Solidarity". In light of anti-union government tactics in the US, such as the Taft-Hartley Act, which allows the President to suppress strikes with police power, and the various decisions of the NLRB, Miller suggests that labor, as a class, should openly defy anti-labor laws in order to break them open. As he explained to us over coffee, solidarity between industries during a strike is key to preventing scabs, thus key to winning a strike. If a business is on strike, but the delivery service workers keep delivering goods for scabs to work with, it defeats the purpose of the strike. The principle there would be for the delivery service workers to stop delivering to the strikers, being openly defiant toward the scab policy of the other business.

Miller has written longer pamphlets too, and tried publishing a book on labor organizing. But the publishing industry wasn't interested in what he had to say. Even publishers who put out leftist literature, he said, only seemed interested in what academic writers had to say. Miller is not impressed with academic leftist writing. He protested that their work is often disengaged from real worker organizing, and tends to get wrapped up in Marxian analysis. Other workers generally don't understand class struggle from the pages of Das Kapital, but through direct experience being under the thumbs of the ruling class.

The academics stay far away from real organizing, and analyze the workers as if they were ants in an anthill. He described it as a class division, but with some degree of solidarity between. The academic leftist's job is to be an academic leftist, which means nothing more than academia, and nothing less than academia. You cannot count on them to really be interested in worker ideas, worker culture, let alone labor organizing.

I can post my friend's labor history zine onto this blog when it's finished.

Linguistic condottieri

2009-02-19T09:24:00.000-08:00

Companies that supply services to military contractors make up the third largest contributors of forces in Iraq, proof that mercenary work is highly profitable. A company like DynCorp will supply national armies with civilian police forces, drug eradication services, and linguists, for whatever cause and for the most pay. Its Global Linguists Solutions division works in Iraq with the US Army, but the company also works for the UAE, Australia, Nigeria, and anybody else it can please.

There are new rewards for ESL mercenaries working for US after recent modifications to US immigration rules. The Pentagon recently announced it will be recruiting from the ranks of immigrants with temporary visas, and "accelerating" mercenary routes to US citizenship. The immigrant recruits are valuable to the military if they speak any of 35 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Igbo (a Nigerian language), Kurdish, Napalese, Pashto, Russian, and Tamil. Immigrant mercenaries can apply to become citizens on the first day of active service, will have all their naturalization fees waived, and they can take an oath of citizenship in as little as six months. But if they do not serve in the military, says the NY Times, citizenship is uncertain and "at best agonizingly long, often lasting more than a decade."

"The Army will gain in its strength in human capital," General Freakley said, "and the immigrants will gain their citizenship and get on a ramp to the American dream." ... If the immigrants do not complete their service honorably, they could lose their citizenship.

The message is, 'fight for us and then you might become citizens.' This is the new bargain. Rather than the CIA paying groups of armed rebels in remote places to fight against enemies of the West, the military instead will hire them from its own backyard, as its own soldiers, on its own payroll.

In Renaissance Italy, wars were fought by mercenary soldiers recruited by the condottieri, partly as a business venture, partly as a political speculation. City-states and principalities had to rely on these recruits because the political culture of the time did not allow for efficient coercion. There were no conscript armies. Essentially, the immigrant recruitment mechanism is efficiently coercive, and a politically acceptable form of conscription today.

It is the perfect political and military solution to US problems with 1) immigration, 2) imperial overstretch, and 3) human capital. New waves of immigrants to the US can be molded into pawns for the empire, easily, and asked to prove their allegiance by going above and beyond. The government does not have to rely on middle class whites to go to war for its own sake. Instead it draws from the poorest, and most vulnerable sections of its population: the most efficient type of coercion imaginable.

But mercenary recruits who fight in wars against successful anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist armies usually get wasted by aftermath courts. This is the take-home message. Recall the Luanda trial of 13 British and American mercenaries towards the end of the successful Angolan war of independence from 1961 to 1974, which ended in death sentences. Americans put ads in papers like Soldier of Fortune - a magazine for mercenaries - declaring their willingness to fight for hire "anywhere in the world" against independence movements and rebels.

The US State Department denied that it had condoned the hiring of any mercenaries. Two US lawyers who attended the trial accused the Ford Administration of violating the Neutrality Act by allowing mercenaries to fight overseas. The prosecutor in that trial, Mr. Montiero, scorned the U.S. as "the home of the CIA and the mother of mercenaries" and Henry Kissinger as "the traveling salesman of the international crime syndicate."

Hold on to the Feeling, Streetlight People

2009-02-17T14:07:00.000-08:00

The myth of Obama's "change" is essentially providing protective cover for entrenched forces of racism, sexism and class domination. Barack Obama is a political figure who wants to unclench your fist, whose presidency will highlight the indeterminacy of change and the paradoxical tendency to legitimate oppression by creating a false sense of formal neutrality and equality.

Mark Tushnet wrote that, "It is not just that rights-talk does not do much good. In the contemporary United States, it is positively harmful." He and the other critical legal theorists argued that just having new laws that instated equal rights for people creates fertile "protective cover" for a deeply embedded social hierarchy to thrive underneath.

The obvious example is the 14th Amendment to the Constitution - a paradox which the civil rights movement had to confront many years later. The law is either not enough, or it could never be enough under the existing political conditions. Just so, a president - any president - is either not enough, or could never be enough under the existing political conditions.

Barack Obama is constantly saying that he needs your help to change America, that he cannot do it alone, that change comes from below. He is wrong about this. If he wanted to push America in an undemocratic direction he could get away with it, easily, because he does not operate in a democracy. What he really means is that he cannot democratically change society at all, and that he needs your help entirely. Without a decisive attack on public consciousness through popular action and mutual aid, then liberal legalism - the false hope of protective cover rhetoric - reinforces the myth that social progress still comes from the top.

Don't believe the hype. Liberal legalism creates a sense of 'the self' that is illusory and ultimately destructive, by empowering corrupt institutions as the agents of change rather than participant cooperatives. But how, we should ask, can change come from below in a system that only invests in a hierachy? In the words of Journey, "Don't stop believin'. Hold on to the feeling, streetlight people!"

Does Tacoma have music history?

2009-02-17T09:00:00.000-08:00

It's 9pm and that means its time for band practice at my house. I live just above the basement where two bands, Head Bangs and Rituals, play every other night. So I hear all the songs. The other night we were talking about how Tacoma's music scene is not well known, and its history is too often jumbled with Seattle's history instead. After all, Nirvana wasn't from Seattle either - they were from Aberdeen, WA. This prompted me to see what bands, if any, had come out of Tacoma. I found three bands from the 50s and 60s that still are chart-toppers, so I wanted to share. Tacoma's music scene is built on a strong backbone.

The Ventures

In 1959 a band known as The Ventures burst on the scene with what was called "surf rock". Their music was purely instrumental, but topped the charts. Their songs were used in Quentin Tarantino films, and the group is the most popular American rock group in Japan to date, having outsold the Beatles 2 to 1. This band is, in fact, the best-selling instrumental band of all time - having sold over 100 million records. And they're from, of all places, Tacoma. Here is a taste.

The Wailers

From the same era as The Ventures, The Wailers (not the reggae group), is known to many people as "the first garage band", and the group that gave rise to the Seattle grunge scene. The song "Louie Louie" comes from this group originally. One of their hits is, "Tall Cool One". Here is a short documentary about The Wailers.

The Sonics

Another group from Tacoma - The Sonics - are considered the first punk band. I could not believe this, so I found the Seattle PI newspaper agrees, saying The Sonics "foreshadowed the punk era", which is a bit different. Still, this is big news. Here is a taste of their music.

According to these sources, then, Tacoma is home to the first garage band, the first punk band, and the most popular American instrumental band in Japan. There haven't been too many female artists from Tacoma, but I found one diamond in the rough who goes by the name Junkyard Jane. If you like the sounds of Head Bang, they will be playing in Olympia and in some Tacoma house shows next month, check out their myspace.

More sounds from Tacoma's past.

Vonnegut- Don't Tell Sophie

Olympic Bobsledding Advertisements - a case study

2009-02-16T18:00:00.000-08:00

Perhaps you are not watching the 2009 Utah Olympics. But I did for a very, very brief moment and here is what I noticed.

Your vantage point is not exactly the one most suitable for watching sports, so much as watching ads. To view your favorite Olympic team get the gold, you must experience this event as they maneuver around - not the slope of a mountain - but around numerous advertising apexes. The goal is exposure. Okay, so this is really obvious, I know.

There is another thing, too. Capital and the state are two thing you confront when watching the Olympics. The reporters and announcers are constantly comparing nationalities, getting the audience to identify with an imaginary community - not a bad thing in itself - but one that exists within the confines of imaginary legal borders, with a false unification.

For the Olympic Games, advertising creates the frame, creates the experience, creates a spectacle. The ads actually block our view in most scenes. But they are necessary, integral to the experience, and we don't even need to respond to them. They didn't really ask a question in the first place, and so they get no response. What is their use - who can say? This is something Marshall McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard noticed about mass communication in a simulation economy.

Frame by frame, the fantasmagoria is lining up to greet you. A camera patiently waits at the next station, carefully placing another ad into the centerpiece of its broadcast - this time for KONICA MINOLTA. The bobsled finally comes into view and passes by swiftly enough, in a neck-breaking blur. But the whole time the logo KONICA MINOLTA is staring you directly in the face.

Things last no longer than the time it takes for them to happen. From the very beginning to the very end of this one-and-a-half-minute experience, you might have been exposed to thirty or more advertisements. Many of which you probably did not notice. Through your viewfinder you see a little red spot appear at the bottom of the screen, announcing "OMEGA".

It's the perfect mixture of exhilaration and deception.

But to tell you the truth, I don't see how bobsledding can be deceptive. The ads do not deceive. The slope of a mountain does not deceive. Nothing here is deceptive. Everything is pure fact. At bottom there is this truth: nothing deceives, there are no lies, there is only simulation.

Simulation is the separation of value from fact. This is the way I understand it.

Political economy has a strategy of using exchange values and use values as "alibis" for one another when it is convenient. But the new political economy can do no such thing. When the only thing being exchanged are simulated experiences, value is arbitrary in a political economy of signs.

I can spy with my little eye, an INTERSPORT ad... whatever that is!

If we stay with this line of thinking, we become suspicious of reality. But here there is no suspicion, the facts are there before us, "ADIDAS", "KONICA MINOLTA".

The critique of simulation is not a complementary critique of political economy - it is the new critique of political economy, because simulation has already replaced reality.

ADIDAS, by the way, stands for "all day I dream about simulation".

Advertising is just a system of objects, just a technology. Or is it?

By reinventing capital in each successive phase of capitalism, (1) counterfeit, (2) production and (3) simulation, the ads confirm the latest initiative capital has enjoyed since the dawning of the simulation economy. It is a way of life!

The lonley slope of a mountain, an event that was made for television, and one advertisement. There are no accidents here, no catastrophes, no terrorism, no traffic-jams, no panic, and no Soviets. It is just surplus time. But it is still a 100 percent advertising event. This is a desert in real-time, a scenery full of value, and the clock is ticking.

At least we know it was a good day for KONICA MINOLTA.

And America!

The bobsled team see their whole lives flashing before them in one big whooosh! For you it is a moment of truth. To quote Jean Baudrillard from Symbolic Exchange and Death:

"Reality itself founders in hyperrealism, the meticulous reduplication of the real, preferably through another, reproductive medium, such as photography. From medium to medium, the real is volatized, becoming an allegory of death. But it is also, in a sense, reinforced through its own destruction. It becomes reality for its own sake, the fetishism of a lost object..."

Who will have the final word? Let's talk to the bobsledding team and find out.

With the ubiquity of ads here, it's amazing these sports channel announcers have the audacity to say they will return once again to the Olympics after a short "commercial break".

But the American bobsledding team's colors are red - the world about to dawn! - and black - the night that ends at last! - and he's got his fist up in the air, so who can really complain...

Why Israel targets the kids

2009-02-13T14:58:00.000-08:00

The direct and witnessed experiences of children in Palestine:

There is a famous photo of a young boy strapped to the hood of an Israeli jeep, to protect the soldiers from Palestinian stones, and hundreds of photos documenting Israeli soldiers' deliberate targeting of children in street attacks. A popular punishment for Palestinian kids who throw rocks at the occupying army is to smash their fingers to pieces. To break the hand of a stone-thrower, the soldiers reasoned, would stop them from throwing stones for at least a month. But few people really have a sense for the scale of state-condoned violence against Palestinian children.

The reason why Israel targets children is because the Palestinian children are active participants in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza's struggle against Israeli military occupation. During the first and second Intifada young kids threw stones, erected roadblocks, burned tires, marched in demos, became lookouts, wrote political slogans on walls, and confronted settlers and soldiers during raids on refugee camps and neighborhoods. Between December 1987 and December 1993, Palestinians under sixteen were 40 percent of an estimated 130,000 Palestinians seriously injured by Israeli soldiers. Essentially one of out every twenty Palestinian children. In order to crush the Intifada, it seemed, all Israel had to do was crush the spirit of the youth.

The IDF violates human rights and the 'rights of the child' as sketched out in the UN declaration, Rights of the Child. But in the few cases where the IDF was tried for their 'unauthorized' assaults, soldiers are punished lightly, and the charges are swept under the table in kangaroo courts. The IDF imposes curfews and other collective punishments on local Palestinan populations, but looks the other way when settlers set out on vigilante rampages against affected Palestinian communities. Thirty seven children were killed during the first five months of the First Intifada from the excessive use of tear gas in confined places. PTSD among children is common. This brutality is summarized in a pithy UNRWA brief, and added to a mound of UN briefs documenting the devastation of an entire people.

Afghanistan Surge

2009-02-12T12:00:00.000-08:00

The so-called "anti-war" President is going to escalate the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan and Pakistan by 23,000 in the coming months. The total number of soldiers from Western military powers in Afghanistan will then be around 100,000. Plans to increase the number of soldiers in stages are in the air, this being the second phase in a plan that already increased the number by 4,000 since Obama took office. 50,000 U.S. troops will remain in Iraq after the first 16 months according to the "pull out" time-table.

Have you noticed that Obama has never criticized the invasion of Iraq because it was illegal, immoral, unjust, or imperialist, or for any of the reasons you might expect from an anti-war President? Look at the criticism he does raise, and one perspective stands out. Obama's reasons for opposing Bush's policy in Iraq come from a decidedly chauvinist viewpoint of what's best for America - that is, the U.S. empire. He gives us the cost-benefit analysis, saying on television that the costs of excess U.S. presence in Iraq have outweighed the benefits for America.

America knows Iraq won't fit in her pocketbook. This is why the U.S. is moving further East: the central front in the War on Terror are small mountaintop villages nestled among rocky, sparse passages. The Kandahar province and the Southern provinces in Afghanistan, and on federally-administered tribal lands in Pakistan is where the Pentagon, Barack Obama and the New York Times, says the new global war on terror is located.

As Obama said in the Presidential debates, the reason why America should stay out of Iraq is not because it's wrong, not because it destroys peoples' lives, not because Iraq was only about oil. It's because America cannot control the people there.

"I warned that the invasion of a country posing no imminent threat would fan the flames of extremism, and distract us from the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban."

And in his own writing, he says the mistake the U.S. made was to stretch out its power and spend its money unwisely.

"More than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched."

"The situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted."

"Nearly every threat we face—from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran—has grown."

"Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been."

So Obama is talking realpolitik, and Obama right about one thing: his position on the war on terror has been consistent; his position has always proceeded from the interests of U.S. imperialism.

They Re-scrambled Africa

2009-02-11T15:05:00.000-08:00

It is not only in the Middle East where the empire of oil is seeking to regain lost territory, look at Africa:

View Larger Map

George Bush said Africa's greatest resource is "not its oil, it's not its diamonds, it is the talent and creativity".

But the reason why the U.S. military setup the new African military command station in 2007, called AFRICOM, was to control oil in the region, which means defending oil extraction. This project is praised by policy insiders. It was "long overdue" given that Africa supplies the U.S. with "nearly 20 percent of its petroleum needs" according to a writer for World Defense Review. Today, ExxonMobil operates in Angola, Cameroon, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, and Nigeria, and is set to begin work in Libya. Its African holdings account for nearly 17% of the company’s global oil reserves. Africa is the final frontier as far as the world's energy and natural supplies are concerned.

Review of African Political Economy:

"In the next 15 to 20 years, most of the new oil entering the world market is going to be coming from African fields."

As radical indigenist groups like MEND, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, have an armed populist resistance movement ready to strike against all foreign oil companies in their land, especially Shell and Chevron, AFRICOM has been arming and training the militaries of Angola, Algeria, Botwana, Chad, Cote d'Iviore, Republic of Congo, Equitorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan and Uganda.

What Africa has is a classic overseas expansion of American military and economic power, whereby the business interests control the military interests, whereby global military competitiveness is an extension of global business competitiveness. The connection between military and economic power are even more entangled: alliances within the core of the developed OECD economies, permitted by organizations like the G8, the World Bank, NATO and various military cooperation structures, make domination of the global "periphery" inevitable. Political scientists Leo Panitch and Samuel Gindin hold variations of this view.

Being the U.S. military means your duty is to ensure a subdued and supportive African continent. It means expressing the interests of the global economy in terms of Africa's economic and humanitarian needs. Just to be fair, the U.S. will provide professional military assistance against rebellious African separatist and indigenist elements. It will "enable" democracy, and facilitate oil exports. The American military is there to rebuild, assist, and ultimately help the people of Africa improve their standard of living. Can they keep a straight face?

Being Exxon or Shell or Chevron or BP means never having to apologize for the kind of work you do. It means divvying up African into boundaries along pipelines and labor divisions, bypassing people and made-up national borders. It means asking friendly military powers to protect your professional practices. Big Oil wants to take an active role in the exploitation of global resources against the determination of the people who have historic entitlement, but the people there have no means of justifying their argument under the imperialist rubric.

Hence, it's safe to say the new scramble for Africa is an oil and military scramble. But the story of the scrambles are as old as the European fascination with Africa: resources - whether human or natural - will always take priority over anything else so long as white people with flags and guns have anything to do with it.

Rebellious Pixels:

Post-Hussein Oil

2009-02-11T14:07:00.000-08:00

Despite the recession and stock declines last September, Exxon Mobil has earned the highest profits in world history in 2008 - a record $45.2 billion. In assets, Exxon is worth around $375 billion which is more than General Electric, Bank of America and Google combined. It's the world's largest corporation.

The size and asset value of a corporation alone does not tell you very much about conduct, only performance and market structure. The real ambitions of the oil industry as a whole, however, are not very secret. With its political and business clout, Exxon has been urging the Oil Ministry of Iraq to issue it the first contracts for oil field service in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003. New York Times, June 2008:

"[The International Energy Agency] estimated that repair work on existing fields could bring Iraq’s output up to roughly four million barrels per day within several years. After new fields are tapped, Iraq is expected to reach a plateau of about six million barrels per day, Mr. Fyfe said, which could suppress current world oil prices."

These no-bid contracts were supposed to be awarded to Exxon, BP, Shell, Chevron and Total, as well as some smaller ones like Hunt Oil Company from Dallas. A total of 46 leading companies from China, India and Russia, had memorandums with the Oil Ministry, but were not awarded contracts. Continued:

“These are not actually service contracts,” Ms. Benali said. “They were designed to circumvent the legislative stalemate” and bring Western companies with experience managing large projects into Iraq before the passage of the oil law.

By legally increasing the oil production in Iraq, these contracts circumvented OPEC rulings on member-state oil output. In fact, the increase in oil output from Iraq in the contracts is by the same amount OPEC decided to decrease output: 2.9 million barrels a day.

By severing Iraq from OPEC, the oil industry can now increase output and earn more profits, while pleasing U.S. politicians with a lower price for oil.

The no-bid contracts were eventually canceled by the Iraq Oil Ministry since June. Instead they will be competitive bids, which Exxon and the others are surely to win, being the most eligible and capable of bidding on them. They will soon bid on long-term service contracts for 90 percent of the oil fields in Iraq. The United Press International says Shell has already won a contract to control most of the Shiite oil in Southern Iraq for 25 years.

All of these corporations have a history of manipulating politically unstable markets in order to gain control. For example, after a dispute with the Venezuelan government, during which Exxon persuaded a British court to briefly freeze $12 billion in government assets to fight what it considered an expropriation, the Venezuela's oil minister accused the company of "judicial terrorism."

The contracts are structured as "service" contracts, which means the companies will repair fields, drill, export oil and train Iraqis to work in the fields. This means, essentially, hiring Iraqi labor instead of bringing in workers from further East. These are "reconstruction" contracts. The companies will be paid for their work, rather than offered a license to the oil deposits. As such, they do not require the passage of an oil law setting out terms for competitive bidding. Since the summer this legislation has been stalled by disputes among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties over revenue.

Oil Sand Trade between Canada and the U.S.

2009-02-10T09:25:00.000-08:00

As oil prices climb, tar stand oil extraction in Canada is increasing. Tar sand oil, or bitumen, has a higher price premium than drilled oil - because its harder to produce and is higher quality - and is the dirtiest solution to U.S. "energy independence".

Even though "methods of separating oil from sand leave behind huge waste ponds of thick, caustic sludge", this is already a major oil production method. Since the 1980s, patents touting new extraction methods as "environmentally friendly" - by using chemical solvents and naphtha as opposed to boiling water under the tar- cannot live up to the expectations. All methods have a negative net-energy use. U.S. and Chinese demand for the tar oils, and the business's rapid expansion in Alberta, is the main reason why Canada has "no chance" according to Canadian environmental ministers at meeting its Kyoto commitments.

OPEC: a divided power

OPEC has always been divided over price. Its members differ strongly on the urgency with which to increase its prices because two different kinds of nationalized oil-producers operate in the cartel. One group of members - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE for example - have small populations, high GNP per capita, and ruling elites who benefit from slow modernization. For them, the best way to use their large oil reserves is to extend oil revenue for a long period of time into the future. This means a higher price today, and oil production that is slower than demand.

On the other hand, OPEC members like Indonesia, Nigeria, and Algeria have large populations, smaller GNP per capita, and smaller oil reserves. Their best strategy would be to decrease the price of oil in order to maximize oil revenue in relation to other OPEC member states. This would last a shorter period of time, and since the stronger members reject this idea, it would be "cheating" against the OPEC cartel. The U.S. has supported member-states who cheated on the cartel before, evidence by the First Gulf War when Saddam Hussein sought to punish Kuwait for lowering prices on OPEC. Then the U.S. stood by its defecting ally.

However, the U.S. does not necessarily want low prices coming from OPEC nation-states anymore. Because the largest oil reserves are located in mainly three Middle Eastern countries - Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia - it is reasonable to assume that the U.S. wants to see lower oil prices coming from places it has good political relations with, such as Canada.

Andrew Nikiforuk, author of Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, says oil companies want to see Canada as "the next Saudi Arabia".

What OPEC wants is not what the U.S. wants

High oil prices negatively affect the 'consumer surplus' in the United States: being so dependent on petroleum imports, the higher the price of petrol, the less product the U.S. economy as a whole is able to produce and consume. A decrease in world oil supply, easily enough, raises the price of oil and sends all prices in the U.S. economy higher.

Walter Adams and James Brock, two economists who take a structure-conduct-performance approach to industrial organization, believe the U.S. policymaker's preferred outcome is that the U.S. receives a lower price of oil, but consumes less of it - at least from OPEC producers.

However, OPEC wants a position that - according to Adams and Brock - the market would not allow. OPEC wants a higher price for oil and even more consumption of it. Over time, producers of oil substitutes would earn more revenue from consumers in the U.S. and elsewhere because consumer demand is not as inelastic as OPEC wishes.

The reason why the U.S.'s preferred quantity of oil demanded is so low according to Adams and Brock, is because of the need for national security. Dependence on Middle Eastern oil, a politically unstable and unfriendly region, is too challenging to continue. Diversification of energy resources will provide the best substitute for Middle Eastern oil, they say.

Canada

Though Adams and Brock like the idea of diversifying into new forms of energy consumption: solar, wind, "green energy", it is more likely the the U.S. will diversify by expanding its resource base into Canada through trade and security agreements.

Canada and the U.S. have the largest and most comprehensive trade relationship in the world. Both are G8 members, founding OECD members, NATO members, joint members in the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), members of the new Security and Prosperity Partnership, and have dozens of agreements like the Business for Economic Security, Tourism and Trade (BESTT) and the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI). The tendency, then, for the U.S. to view Canada's oil-rich resources as close to a domestic resource as possible, is inviting. Importing dirtier oil from a friendlier source is a more viable option than dependence on Middle Eastern oil, in the eyes of the U.S.

That means Canadian bitumen will be the future of oil consumption and production in North America, regardless of the environmental impacts.

Barack Obama ends clenched fist period

2009-02-08T09:40:00.000-08:00

This post fuses critical legal theory with my analysis of Barack Obama's presidency.

Critical legal theorists argued that the "myth of rights" from classical rights theory is essentially providing protective cover for entrenched forces of racism, sexism and class domination. These critics highlight the indeterminacy of rights and their paradoxical tendency to legitimate oppression by creating a false sense of formal neutrality and equality. This is why the election of Barack Obama, the protective cover, should concern you.

For example, the phrase "all men are born equal" was embedded into the the founding documents of the United States. But today, as it was before the 1860s, this promising phrase holds little in terms of actual practice. Barack Obama is black, but so are over 1 million out of 2 million in the American prison system. The prison system is expanding to hold 5 million by 2010. The promise of equality pacified populations hurt by discrimination, and helped the oppressing population turn a blind eye to the harm done. "All men are born equal" gave the promise of change without following through. African Americans fought wars under regimes that mistreated them horribly. Though the promise of freedom and equality was present, it still is not practiced.

The critical legal theorists do not attack the 'constitutive' effects of having rights in a liberal democracy per se. What they do is examine the actual effects of the law on consciousness and action. Whereas classical rights theorists - Locke, J.S. Mill, Hart, etc. - provide the cornerstone for liberal legal theory, they cannot abolish social forces that inhibit equality. Liberal legalism much of the time creates a sense of 'the self' that is illusory and ultimately destructive, because ordinary citizens can find themselves locked out of the formal capacity of the law to safeguard their rights.

The Supreme Court's anti-discrimination law "normalizes the existing patterns of inequality and hierarchy," argued critical legal theorist A.D. Freeman. Mark Tushnet wrote that "It is not just that rights-talk does not do much good. In the contemporary United States, it is positively harmful." Feminist and critical race scholars also address the more explicit effects of rights, rather than the constitutive (promised) effects of rights on individuals.

On the other hand, the effect of the civil rights movement's confrontations with American society on the identity of African Americans was positive. To the extent that rights were associated with a "powerful combination of direct action, mass protest, and individual acts of resistance, along with appeals to public opinion and the courts", they were successful. Without a decisive attack on public consciousness through action, the classical rights theories actually reinforced myths and stereotypes about social differences.

With the election of Barack Obama, there is a connection between critical legal studies and the 'constitutive' effect of embracing the first African American as President of the U.S. The implication that Barack Obama is part of - or somehow is a leader in - the civil rights movement, could not be more damaging. A figure within the political system cannot take the place of or be a leader in any popular movement. That is co-option. The election of Barack Obama will most likely bring an end to confrontational approaches to social difference before it ameliorates real social differences. And if confrontational approaches have historically won decisive political victories in areas where liberal legalism has failed, the election of Barack Obama would soften the confrontations, and hence have little or no effect on society.

picture/text from photoblog on fffff.at

An inclusive recession?

2009-02-07T15:41:00.000-08:00

The people hit hardest by the global capitalist downturn of the late 2000s are the disabled. When a recession happens, they are the first people to be laid off, they are among the first in social spending to be cut, and they are the most likely to be overlooked.

The global unemployment rate, 5.7% in 2007, could rise to 6.5% in 2009, estimates the ILO. Therefore,

"The number of working poor – people who are unable to earn enough to lift themselves and their families above the US$2 per person, per day, poverty line, may rise up to 1.4 billion, or 45 per cent of all the world’s employed."

The International Labor Organization recommends Keynesian relief policies, which are in vogue everywhere. In the United States, however, some states have decreased the number of welfare recipients by the end of 2008.

Whereas every state has increased the number of food-stamp recipients:

The reason the NY Times article gives is that cash assistance is viewed as "dependency", whereas food assistance is viewed as "nutritional support".

A big reason why people with disabilities do not obtain the rights that they have claim to in many developing countries is because the disability has not transformed the self-perception of the disabled or the workplace. Having a disability is viewed as a burden and possibly something that will prevent them from employment, stopping the disabled before they take an active stance and asserting their rights. Many of these obstacles are viewed as personal shortcomings rather than the products of discrimination.

A series of interviews from Americans with disabilities, chronicled in Rights of Inclusion, has a common theme throughout: workers and the unemployed with disabilities feel that the stigmatizing effects of receiving assistance are too problematic for them. They feel that having a disability decreases their reliability, is a burden on business, and this makes them reluctant to think about themselves as disabled people. Unwilling to modify their identities as people with disabilities, they do not receive the aid they could have under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

One disabled person remarked that his charm and persuasive skills, as opposed to explicitly invoking the law, was the key to make others appreciate the benefits of having a person with a disability as an employee or an associate. The authors, David Engel and Frank Munger, believe that "rights become active" when a formal claim is lodged with a government official, and when the person's self-perception is transformed.

"Rights are the vehicle for achieving equality, but to invoke rights one must first identify oneself as unequal - in a sense that one's abilities fall short of an imagined 'norm'."

Martha Minow, at Harvard Law, says that "disability" has no inherent meaning because what is considered a disability in one setting is not a disability in another. It is meaningful only as a comparison. An exclusion based on a disability is a signal that someone has not been provided for as others are. The blame is on the institutions that create the disadvantage. So when rights are thought about in terms of social relations, their effect on identity are - in theory - no longer stigmatizing.

The latest BLS jobs report found that unemployment is 7.6 percent in the U.S. and 13.2 percent for those with disabilities.

a whole 6 hour film on the Paris Commune

2009-02-03T07:46:00.000-08:00

La Commune (2001) - a self-reflective film about the short-lived commune that arose out of social tension and upheaval in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. This is a groundbreaking film that did not show up on too many radar screens.

The film asks you to imagine you're walking in the shoes of Paris communards during a massive revolt, and reflect on your own experiences and what it means to live a revolutionary life. And over the course of six hours, you are invited to share the experience of filmmaking with cast members themselves. At times they wonder out loud why they couldn't get support for this film by any television channel or media business. They also wonder what the role of humanitarian organizations should be in relation to revolutionary organizations.

Karl Marx wrote a tract on the Paris Commune, called Civil War in France. Lenin wrote a tract, The Paris Commune. Kropotkin also wrote a tract, The Commune of Paris. Bakunin has one, The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State. As well as many others.

How did the 1871 Commune start?

After Napoleon III declared war on Prussia, Otto von Bismarck drove the French forces back, and would eventually siege and destroy Paris. Bismarck and the Prussian army figured the "soft and decadent" French workers would be easily overcome. After the occupation, Prussia allowed Parisians to hold onto their weapons because of their persisting autonomist spirit. They installed a conservative pro-Prussian and monarchist French assembly, located at Versailles, with the repressive Adolphe Thiers as the chief executive.

On March 18th, 1871, when Thiers tries to regain power over the Paris workers violently, the soldiers were overcome by the women of the working class, and refused to fire on the Parisians. Soldiers and workers fraternized. When popular resistance broke out and spread among the working classes all over Paris, class war took place. This is where the film La Commune begins.

French workers took control of the factories, setup barricades throughout Paris to block the invading army, and initiated a municipal council with a state-like structure known as the Commune.

In the film, the story is told by two television reporters for "Commune TV". The reporters tell us that this anachronistic narrative is actually a critique of the bourgeois media. Instead of showing us clips from newspapers from the time period, La Commune caricatures the media establishment by showing the bourgeois media and the Commune media on separate television channels. We watch the revolution through the television, literally. We see that the bourgeoisie watch the bourgeois news; while the proletariat watch Commune TV. Each social strata debates what they learn from the TV, and decide what needs to be done from their class perspective. Some say nothing can be done, others want to see more revolt. The bourgeoisie say the communards are severely outnumbered and stupid.

Here is an example of the bourgeois television broadcast, with a guest "expert" discussing and criticizing the statecraft schemes of the commune, in opposition to the monarchist state system. Following that is a short segment from Commune TV, discussing with workers the role of abandoned workshops.

At other parts in the film, the cast steps out of character, and ask each other if they are representing these events truthfully. They reflect on what the 1871 commune means to them and what they have learned from it for the future. The director goads the audience to action throughout the film with provocative questions and situations. After one scene emphasizing income inequalities in France, director Peter Watkins places this narrative onto the screen to sum up the impressions we have of Paris in 1871:

"In 1870, the wealthiest 20% of the world population had 7 times the income of the poorest 20%. In 1997 the difference was 74 to 1."

In 1870, the French proletariat and Blanquists, who held that a socialist revolution must be carried out by small group of highly-organized conspirators, demanded the overthrow of the French government and the establishment of a commune beginning in Paris. In La Commune, there is an extensive bourgeois debate about the "foreigners" who have taken advantage of the revolutionary spirit in France. These Blanquists - among them are Polish and other Eastern European soldiers, generals and revolutionaries - are talked about as non-French outsiders who cannot be trusted, and must be killed because they are manipulating the French working class. The bourgeoisie becomes even more nationalistic as the film goes on.

Among the proletariat, other debates break loose. The women discuss their role in workings of a revolutionary society, and question gender hierarchies: their duties, their restrictions, the way they are treated by the men, etc. Many women question religious authority and place the Church within the context of the creation of the new social model - they call for a "separation of church and state".

The newly-created commune bureaucrats, too, question their role in an increasingly authoritarian and uncaring state structure that neglects the needs of workers and helpless proletarians. At first this bureaucracy was merely a "sub-committee" of the commune body. It takes increasing control over the political structure until it has monopolized all power. The Jacobin vote had assumed the power over the wishes of anarchists who desired a system of de-centralized cooperatives.

One of the strongest characteristics of this film is its ability to engage the viewers and their views about their political beliefs and aspirations. At certain breaks in the narrative, the cast members get together around one of the bar tables and discuss what is happening in today. The following scene is a good example. One actor says that more people should vote, and all we need to do to help the situation in Africa is open the phone book and call an NGO. Another actor then criticizes him for this shortsighted view on international political hierarchies and how to make real change.

Free to Choose, alternatives to the framework

2009-02-02T06:40:00.000-08:00

I have an idea that I would like to put into practice. In the 1990s, Milton Friedman teamed up with the Free to Choose Media network to create the made-for-TV economics series "Free to Choose", titled after Friedman's second-most popular book. I think there has been a lack of radical organizations interested in made-for-TV presentations like the kind that the 'right' or 'conservative' establishment has been. The kind of program I would be interested in describes radical social, political and economic theory. Of the few that I have seen, most of them focus solely on climate change.

The program would not necessarily be radical in every aspect, but it would explain new areas where globalization studies, gender studies, and political economy are moving to - largely from a radical perspective. The series would not be academic in every aspect either. The goal would be to interest the viewer and the encourage them to pursue radical scholarship or practice, to think about the world as a radical would, to provoke a radical perspective shift.

"Free to Choose" presented Chicago economics as the new economic truth - hands down - and highlighted Friedman's analysis of the Federal Reserve policy during the Great Depression (based on Anna Schwartz and his book on the subject, Monetary History of the United States), including freedoms to enter into voluntary contracts, migrate, work, and condemned the vagaries of government programs and spending. The film series, and the books, and the enormous campaign behind it - helped bring Chicago ideas and practices to the forefront of American political and economic thought for over two decades.

The television narrative is simple, repetitive, and effective. Friedman starts by telling the story of immigrants coming to the US in search of free markets. People came because they went looking for work, and so they came to America and sold goods on the street. Most of the were very poor, but today they are wealthy, he says. Bit by bit Friedman makes the case for small government and market capitalism, using China and Hong Kong as an example of communism turning to capitalism for stability. "We need to discover the old truths, what the immigrants knew in their bones," he says, and to learn that we must know "what economic freedom is."

His statements are very agreeable - because he's not telling the whole story. By letting people choose the things they want, Friedman says, and have the freedom to do what they want with their lives, they will be happier than if a commissar ordered them around and told them what to make and for what price, ect. ect. Exactly! Freedom is a good thing. Except that Friedman stops the narrative after that. The program - and his books - exercise in the logic of the free market, but without externalities, without labor organization, without other ways of using the means of production, and pithy excuses for the environment. That way we only need to think as far as Friedman is thinking. How dare we talk about gender or gentrification or poverty cycles?

It is very easy to agree with Friedman. (Maybe some people don't agree with me on this.) It's a clever framework. The trouble is, a radical television series would make these issues complicated. Friedman has done so much to uncomplicate capitalism, but the issues we deal with are more complicated than him and his colleagues often present them.

What's more interesting is that the "Free to Choose" series, in a sense, is mostly concerned about motivating the viewer, getting them excited about the possibilities in a free market. Its chief advantage is that it provides us with such a grand story that an objector would not want to think of anything better than capitalism. (If you have ever seen Kent Hovind's creationist science video series, perhaps you feel the same way I do: like asking, "Ah, where do I begin?" You should have stopped him when he was talking about dinosaurs roaming modern sub-Saharan Africa, but you let him babble on and he started talking about the myth of vestigial appendages. I think the same about Friedman.)

A radical television series would have to avoid these types of logical screw-ups. We have to assume our audience is more intelligent and will question the assumptions. We want them to question the assumptions. We pride ourselves in being non-dogmatic, so we have to present, problematize, and create a unitary body of knowledge that we construct for our own use but invite others to partake in it. ("Critical Thinking as an Anarchist Weapon").

The ten-part series Free to Choose is comprised of the following chapters.

The Power of the Market (Abstract) (Video)
The Tyranny of Control (Abstract) (Video)
Anatomy of Crisis (Abstract) (Video)
From Cradle to Grave (Abstract) (Video)
Created Equal (Abstract) (Video)
What's Wrong with Our Schools? (Abstract) (Video)
Who Protects the Consumer? (Abstract) (Video)
Who Protects the Worker? (Abstract) (Video)
How to Cure Inflation (Abstract) (Video)
How to Stay Free (Abstract) (Video)

Not too many radical academics or filmmakers have embarked on a mission to create a film campaign to disseminate their ideas besides a few notable people (Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, etc.) That kind of program could be a very valuable and effective collection of ideas. A lay out of the chapters could be something like this:

Why inequality matters
Analysis of the business cycle
Neo-colonialism, the highest stage of imperialism
Collectivists, communists, and syndicalists
Theory of the general strike
Mutual aid & agriculture
Land rights
Cities & Situationism
Gender, identity, harm
Insurrection in practice, how to live free

Smart Power

2009-02-01T07:05:00.000-08:00

"I guess the buzz word around here is 'smart power'," said a senator at the hearing for Hilary Clinton's initiation as the US Secretary of State two weeks ago. It's true, all everyone kept saying at this hearing was "smart power".

Sometimes the phrases IR studies professors come up with are unnecessary. Smart power is supposed to be a mixture of "hard" and "soft" forms of power, as a CNN correspondent explained it: military and diplomatic. Hilary Clinton was praised by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for her "smart power" approach, in particular, with regards to Iran.

Smart power. Every US secretary of state uses smart power - a carefully planned mixture of arm-twisting and smiling - in order to be a successful imperialist. No secretary has ever been totally hard or totally soft.

The difference between smart power on the one hand, and hard/soft dichotomy on the other, is supposed to be a shift away from aggressive unilateralism, toward a rhetorical entanglement of dominance and institutional hegemony in the UN, WTO, World Bank, and IMF - all of which is backed up by threat of military power. The goal of smart power is to "rally the world behind U.S. goals" according to the seminal author on the topic, Suzanne Nossel, in a Foreign Affairs article, "Smart Power".

Practical implications of Nossel's smart power, she says, would require (1) developing a branch of the US military design to rebuild civilian societies, ostensibly for places under a form of martial law; (2) having other nation-states share the world-policing burden, insofar as they are compatible with U.S. goals; (3) the U.S. maintains its privilege to act unilaterally, leading the world in education, training, and militarism; and (4) reforming the UN to be more pragmatically beneficial for the U.S.

To maintain the international dependence hierarchy, with U.S. goals at the top, requires the logic of smart power to prevent imperial overstretch. Nossel explains,

"Although the military's weapons systems have been calibrated to conserve firepower and minimize collateral damage, the same cannot be said of U.S. foreign policy. Instead, Washington is currently creating new sources of friction, turning friends into antagonists, damaging once-valuable policy tools, and impairing its own ability to harness the power of its citizenry, bureaucracy, and allies. It must reverse course and embrace a smarter, less draining brand of power guided by a compelling and coherent conception of national interest...."

With the right kind of package seal on the agenda, American "progressives" could be easily won over. This way, the United States can combine humanitarian imperialism [liberal internationalism] and anti-terrorism together into one ambiguous project. This will require some genuine commitments.

"The revival of a genuine commitment to spreading freedom and liberalism, conversely, would unite progressives in the fight against terrorists and rogues."

"... by incorporating into the agenda a genuine commitment to free trade and economic development, liberal internationalism can impress Latin American, Asian, and African countries that otherwise view the U.S. antiterrorist agenda as neglectful of their priorities."

etc.

What is a "genuine commitment" to any of these principles? Nossel restates exactly the same goals the U.S. already has. But why Condoleeza Rice did not have "smart power" and why Hilary Clinton does, however, is largely mysterious: it is only a matter of diplomatic style and imagery - not a fundamental shift in policy. This is why I don't find this term particularly helpful. It's useful or interesting only because it's a new promise.

The goal of smart power is imperialist like other political strategies, it's just a more effective way of doing it. What smart power can do, though, at least according to Nossel, is use its pretty face to rally more domestic and international support for imperial expansion and domination by using humanitarian rhetoric and combining military force with economic stimulus. Eventually, however, these ideas result in depletion of others' sovereignty and greater domination by the U.S. and "liberal democracy" over all other forms of political and social organization.

What's so smart about that?

Impatient job-searching

2009-01-31T05:41:00.000-08:00

"Individuals who are more impatient search less intensely and set a lower reservation wage. The effect of impatience on the exit rate depends on the relative strength of the two contrasting forces: lower search implies lower exit rates, while a lower reservation wage implies higher exit rates."

On-the-job Search and Wage Distribution, Journal of Labor Economics: 2005.

The less money you have, too, the more impatient you'd probably become. In this job market, if you thought working at a union-busting Starbucks would be a last resort in a pinch, it turns out Starbucks is laying off over 6,000 employees and are closing or already closed about 1,000 stores.

The recession and the bad job market have led to more college graduates turning to "altruistic" jobs, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal, like Peace Corps, Americorps, WorldTeach, Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and Teach For America. More and more applicants are turning out.

"The Peace Corps is expecting a 16% increase in applications for the [2009] fiscal year ending Oct. 1."

As this recession prolongs, unemployment rises, it would seem more job-seekers become impatient with the process. They would set a lower reservation wage, and eventually take jobs that are available. But as college graduates are becoming more impatient at job-searching, they take more jobs that aim at alleviating these woes. So joining the Peace Corps is like lowering a reservation wage? I think these concepts are related, perhaps not in the exact way the authors in Labor Economics suggest.

Since actions of an individual are largely determined by socio-economic class, for college graduates, impatience with a job market might not result in lowering a reservation wage so much as looking for a new line of work. Government jobs become particularly more attractive, and so it seems, do 'altruistic' jobs.

Sustain our future, Evergreen

2009-01-30T06:14:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine is taking a course on propaganda at The Evergreen State College, Tacoma campus. Students created propaganda posters for whatever cause or idea they wanted to for one of the projects. The posters are displayed in the hallway outside the classroom for other students and faculty to see.

I recently went to the Evergreen Tacoma campus for a community group meeting, Food Not Bombs. Afterward I perused the different posters students designed and drafted. Some of them are ironic, some are artsy, all of them are creative. I think the creativity which Evergreen campuses inspire students to develop is one of the school's greatest successes. One of the posters, a very simply one, I wanted to blog on here because it made me laugh.

Look at the kid picking his nose!

The Evergreen State College, however, is in a perilous situation since Washington State began a massive budget cut that dipped severely into education funds. Evergreen, a public institution, will loose $3.5 billion in public school funding. Tacoma public schools are supposed to be hit harder than other cities in the state. Higher education will experience large budget cuts too. The administration at Evergreen has decided how it will spend its new budget, and the planners decided to eliminate the following programs, according to a budget leak which was emailed and sent to Evergreen students.

Among the programs are: the entire Evergreen Tacoma campus (which is a valuable resource to the mainly poor, inner-city African American community in Tacoma), the Olympia Labor Center (which is a center for unionization and labor justice in Olympia), some or all of the Reservation-Based Programs (which work with the indigenous populations), the NW Indian Research Center, The Longhouse (another native tribe project), and the Center for Community-Based Learning and Action. There is a larger list floating around.

There is no doubt in my mind that this school has been an incredible and valuable resource for justice movements and community-building, capacity-building, not to mention a school that provides resources and space for labor, native tribes and poor communities. Having visited the school plenty of times and attended functions, I say Evergreen is more broadly a place where students set their minds free, vigorously pursue their passions and interests, and take courses that always spark my interest. And if you want to pick your nose, it's okay because social norms were meant to be deconstructed. To see these resources disappear would hurt the communities already most effected by financial imbalances.

Evergreen aims the brunt of its budget cut at the poor and excluded. This would make matters worse. These groups obviously rank very low in the TESC administration's priorities, which does not come as a surprise. The staff have increasingly adopted a more "business model" approach to education matters in recent years. Instead of hiring educators with degrees in political science or education, Evergreen increasingly hires MBA graduates to take care of business things.

The Evergreen State College should take the advice of the propaganda poster, stop cutting community programs which are viewed as unnecessary accessories, and embrace real change: "Sustain your future - Invest in a child". Build up the communities which will be crushed by the wobbly situation, instead of sweeping the rug out from under them.

Painterly cats

2009-01-29T06:42:00.000-08:00

Museum of Non-Primate Art

It's hard to eschew concepts like "genius," "creativity," and even "author" when you discover that the painters behind these works of art are cats. Those were, after all, concepts postmodern art tried to relinquish. But these surface-oriented paintings wouldn't be as significant to us if it weren't for the fact that cats with special abilities sat down and painted them.

How to Grow Shiitake Mushrooms

2009-01-27T00:06:00.000-08:00

This is a step by step guide to growing your own mushrooms from plug spawn, which is a small capsule that contains mycelia and will spread the mushroom's spawn all over a food source.

For this tutorial, the mushrooms will be planted outside in a log. There are a few things you'll need in order to do this.

plug spawn
an outdoor area
cheese or wax
electric drill, and
a log

Step 1)

The first step is to get plug spawn. There is a medicinal mushroom research facility in my region, near Olympia, WA, called Fungi Perfecti. This company researches the medicinal benefits of mushroom intake and environmental uses of mushrooms, such as bioremediation of oil spills. If you watched the Leonardo di Caprio film, The 11th Hour, (about climate change), you would have seen the interview with Paul Stamets, the leading researcher at Fungi Perfecti.

You can order plug spawn from their website for about $13 for a container with around 100 dowels (or small capsules). There is no precise estimate for how many mushroom fruits each dowel will yield. But after a log is inoculated well, it will produce mushrooms for years. Each log should be plugged with around 30 - 50 dowels.

You can store your dowels in a cool, refrigerated place until you are ready to impregnate some food sources. As you can see by the picture above, I have been refrigerating my shiitake plug spawn for quite a while and the bag has begun to turn white with mycelia. (If you open the bag while its white you could have mushrooms grow right outside the bag.) But you don't want to break up these mycelium networks once they have begun spreading. You want this to happen inside the food source (not the bag).

Since, despite being delicious, shiitake has many medicinal benefits as well, and for this guide I will assume you are cultivating, like me, shiitake spawn. Shiitake mushrooms have anti-viral properties which come from particles within the mushroom that behave very much like viruses themselves. An important compound in shiitake, called leonthionine, creates a healthier blood circulation systems, and prevents blood buildups and clots which lead to strokes, heart attacks, thrombosis, hemostasis, and platelet deficiencies. Shiitake is also anti-carcinogenic, will slow cancerous processes, and can also help prevent allergies and arthritis.

Step 2)

After you have the plug spawn dowels in your possession, you must either find a cut log or cut one yourself. For all mushroom types, the log should have been cut at least 1 to 3 months prior, but not too much older than that. Since the log itself is the food that will feed the mycelia, you do not want the food source to be full of runny saps and other anti-fungal juices. The more sawdusty the better, given that many mushrooms will inoculate very easily in sawdust. The more sugar content the better, so you don't want the log to be too old. The log pieces should be 3 to 4 feet long.

The two types of logs that Fungi Perfecti recommends for shiitake spawn are alder and oak, because they have thicker barks and are hardwoods. Hardwood are less porous. I will be using a Douglas Fir log, which is a softwood - albeit more less porous than many softwoods. (This was the only thing I could scavenge.) Generally, the thicker the bark and the more cracks the better, since the mushrooms must find little cracks in the bark to burst out of when its time to shroom.

Step 3)

Once you have your log pieces cut, drill small holes to put your dowels into. Generally 2 inches deep, just enough to penetrate past the bark a little ways. The holes should be no less than 4 inches apart. 30 - 50 plugs per log.

After your plug spawn is placed nicely in its hole, give it a good whack with a hammer or punch it a little with the drill bit. This breaks open the dowel and makes colonization happen much faster. However, with my dowels already bursting at the seams with mycelia, I carefully pried them apart and made sure what bits and pieces of mycelia attached were left intact.

*Note* because shiitake is sensitive to anti-fungal compounds that can be found in the soils, do not let your spawn or the mushroom fruits come into contact with the soil directly.

Step 4)

This part is optional. To guard against adverse weather conditions or curious insects one thing you can do is plug the holes with either beeswax or cheese. The best time to plug your spawn will be in late Winter or early Spring, typically after the last hard frost. And there you have it. Wait six to nine months and your logs will begin spawning delicious shiitake outgrowths, which you can use for all sorts of recipes.

The varieties of mushrooms I am growing in my *new* backyard are shiitake, reishi and lion's mane. I can post more pictures once they begin to spawn.

Tyranny of Oil

2009-01-22T19:50:00.000-08:00

Author of "The Tyranny of Oil", Antonia Juhasz, spoke at King's Books in Tacoma not too long ago. I used to live right behind the bookstore, so when she came I recorded the talk, and spiced it up with archived footage and video from oil industry commercials and propaganda. At any rate, I hope you like this 26-minute piece.

Website for the book, "The Tyranny of Oil"
Website which Antonia is a contributor, The Oil Drum.

The video footage comes from lots of places, most notably the documentary about Enron, "The Smartest Guys in the Room" - and the PBS Frontline documentary, "Heat". I also used an old VHS program called "Economics USA: Monopolies". Here is a list of the music tracks I used.

Burial, "Prayer"
Skream, "Midnight Request Line"
Greg Merrell, "Clash Valian"
Benga, "Wobblers"
N-Type, "Quantum (remix)"
Thomas Felhman, "Feat"
Skream, "Stagger"

The Koto

2009-01-14T00:15:00.000-08:00

If there was one instrument I would love to learn how to play, it would be the koto.

The koto is to Japanese society what the piano is to Western societies. The instrument has thirteen silk or nylon strings, each with a movable bridge, stretched over a hollow sound board that is about 6 feet long. The strings are plucked with ivory plectra worn on your thumb, index finger, and middle finger. The koto player can also strike and scrape the plectra on the strings to produce different tone colors and other effects. Sometimes a finger will waver on the strings to make a tremolo effect.

Most of the koto masterpieces - usually solos like this one - are from the Edo period (1615 - 1868). This is when Japan isolated itself from foreign cultures and developed new kinds of art, like Kabuki theater and color woodblock prints. This incubation period gave time to change the cultural ideas and inventions that it had received from China: the koto was something Japan gained through trade with China. Edo period koto-playing was mostly for entertainment rather than religion and aristocratic events as was the case in the preceding periods. Blind musicians became really good at playing the koto and began forming their own special guilds. Someone who was considered a master of the koto was known as a kengyo. Japanese musicians mastered koto-playing.

The most famous kengyo in Japanese culture of all time is Yatsuhashi Kengyo, whose most famous piece is known as Rokudan. Rokudan uses a specific kind of koto music style that is known for "themes" and "variations" - called danmono. The theme is presented in the first section of the piece. Then, in all the other sections there are variations of that theme, each time speeding up the tempo. Rokudan has six sections. This is what it sounds like:

When the koto is part of a chamber ensemble, no instrument is supposed to outshine the others. They are supposed to blend together without losing any individual qualities. The heterophonic texture, as it's called, has a very mellow sound to it. Sometimes, however, when the individual instruments start drifting off in different directions, they start to create a polyphonic texture.

Ebay - 21-stringed Guzheng, a Chinese zither koto harp: $250.00. hmmm.

Enter - ShadowHawk

2009-01-13T07:43:00.000-08:00

While selling some books on Amazon, I came across an old 90s comic book that my cousin had collected, called ShadowHawk. I opened it and began reading...

It was New York City in the early 90s.

Crime was everywhere.

Police were either lazy or prevented from doing their jobs by the silly court rules and bullshit watchdog services.

Paul Johnstone, the protagonist, was a good kid. He stayed out of trouble even though he lived in Harlem. As a good black kid in a bad black neighborhood, he wanted to do something about the distraught social forces he saw around him. What can he do about it? He became a district attorney.

But one night a group of thugs beats him up, steals all his money, and then injects a syringe with HIV into his arm. That's so fucked up! What's he going to do about it?

In the early 90s people thought HIV was the most contagious disease on the planet. Hence Paul Johnstone looses his job after altercations with co-workers over the condition. The comic's creator, Jim Valentino, spread HIV myths and misconceptions throughout the illustrations. Some issues of ShadowHawk were aimed at dispelling the myth that HIV only affected gays and IV drug users. The 'progressive' point Valentino was making was that it affects "innocent" people too.

Needless to say there were more myths about HIV that needed dispelling, but given the level of hysteria at the time I suppose all Valentino could do was point out the differences between guilty and innocent victims of HIV. But there is another hidden "narrative" I am trying to expose within this comic.

Back to the story: the courts had become an impossible environment to be in; Paul becomes severely depressed. While walking the streets to clear up his mind one night, gang-members jump him and steal all of his shit again. How fucked up can it get for this guy? When has he had enough?

He ends up in the hospital, where a friend from the police force comes to visit him. Christina, who was fired that day for "excessive force", conspires with Paul about justice. They're both fed up with the system, they can't take it anymore. Driven by their desire to see justice prevail, they design a super exo-skeletal system that Paul wears at night when he becomes ... "ShadowHawk"...

"You used to believe in the system.

You can't anymore."

"It has failed you."

"You feel a certain amount of satisfaction as his spine breaks."

"No matter what the courts decide...

You're ShadowHawk.
And you're taking back the night."

Okay, okay, wait a second. What is the difference between superhero and vigilante, really? What is the difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist? What's the difference between ShadowHawk and Rudy Guliani?

This was the same time-period in New York City history when a new paradigm for crime intervention grew in support, the "zero-tolerance" policing that exists still today. Civil liberties were suspended and still are as the New York Police Department began a new campaign inspired by the "broken windows policing" theory. This was done under the reign of mayor Rudy Guliani.

In theory, by cracking down on all forms of "criminal" activity, such as j-walking, spitting, graffiti, ordinance code violations, littering, loitering, and the like, you would significantly decrease violent crimes and property crimes. The economic results are generally in support of the thesis and - whether causally-related or not - NYC has seen a decrease in crime since the early-90s. Sociological authors have cast serious doubt on the theory and its merits.

At the same time Rudy Guliani increased the number of police on beat patrol, the number of those working on the civilian complaint board decreased or were replaced by former police officers. Thus, the number of complaints and the number of cases brought against the New York Police Department have seemingly dropped. The police now enjoy superhero vigilante status, and with fewer oppositional forces within the city government, and less criticism.

Such that, when the NYPD see something they do not like in their city today, this is how they respond:

In Oakland last week - a white police officer is caught on tape executing an innocent black man, Oscar Grant. Several video angles of the shooting available on Indybay make it impossible to deny that the police officer in fact shot the man execution style. He was not resisting and was lying flat on his face.

These are the ShadowHawks of today: the spine-breakers who patrol the streets and are above the law. The courts and the system have "failed them", and no matter what judges decide, they are ShadowHawks, and they don't give a damn about "excessive force". They enjoy, through widespread propagandistic media, a blanket of support from bourgeois society.

I have more comics to browse through. Batman is another example of a superhero rogue cop who, when the Joker and his bad guys do not admit the truth, tortures the lunatic criminals until they make a confession - with plenty of parallels to the War on Terror.

One thing the ShadowHawk comic was did brilliantly, however, was disguise a racist and anti-social tendency as something that looked at the time like racial and gender equality. By having crime-fighting ShadowHawk be a black man and by having his brutal sidekick be a woman who worked a traditional male job, it would seem to make criticism more difficult. As if having a Jew play the role of the SS would make Nazi Germany seem any more just. (There always has to be a Nazi analogy.)

Surely we have already seen parallels with this and the Barack Obama presidency.

Warrior ethos

2009-01-10T13:05:00.000-08:00

Robert Fisk, British correspondent for the UK newspaper The Independent and credited by the phrase 'fisking', has in his new book "The Age of the Warrior" brought attention to two separate and very distinct US Armed Forces creeds. The first was originally created after the My Lai massacre in Vietnam to encourage 'professional' conduct in war. The original was scrapped in 2003 and replaced with what the military calls The Warrior Ethos to encourage an abject obedience to the mission of the armed forces.

The original text can be found in the older versions of the Soldier's Handbook and also this Field Artillery NCO Study Guide.

I am an American soldier.

I am a member of the United States Army - a protector of the greatest nation on earth.

Because I am proud of the uniform I wear, I will always act in ways creditable to the military service and the nation that it is sworn to guard.

I am proud of my own organization.

I will do all I can to make it the finest unit of the Army.

I will be loyal to those under whom I serve.

I will do my full part to carry out orders and instructions given me or my unit.

As a soldier I realize that I am a member of a time-honored Profession, that I am doing my share to keep alive the principles of freedom for which my country stands.

No matter what situation I am in, I will never do anything for pleasure, profit or personal safety, which will disgrace my uniform, my unit or my country.

I will use every means I have, even beyond the line of duty, to restrain my Army comrades from actions, disgraceful to themselves and the uniform.

I am proud of my country and it's flag.

I will try to make the people of this nation proud of the service I represent for I am an American soldier.

This is the version that Donald Rumsfeld created to be the new 'Warrior Ethos', via The Independent:

I am an American soldier.

I am a warrior and a member of a team.

I serve the people of the Unites States and live the Army values.

I will always place the mission first.

I will never accept defeat.

I will never quit.

I will never leave a fallen comrade.

I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough, trained and proficient in my warrior tasks and drills.

I always maintain my arms, my equipment and myself.

I am an expert and I am a professional.

I stand ready to deploy, engage and destroy the enemies of the United States of America in close combat.

I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life.

I am an American soldier.

The differences are obvious. The second version says nothing about disgraceful conduct. It says nothing about ethical standards. It emphasizes total obedience to the military chain of command. It lent itself to Abu Ghraib, to Guantanamo, and Bagram. It lent itself to war crimes.

The older version has problems too - the same problems are in the second version. In the My Lai version, for example, "greatest nation on earth" already shows signs of extreme nationalism. Both creeds reinforce subservience, domination, and unquestionable submission to hierarchy. Both appeal to professionalism, and easily give rise to the same problems that Hannah Arendt pointed out when it came to Nazi professionalism.

The second version certainly goes further than the first; Robert Fisk considers the first one acceptable, and the second one deplorable. But there is another creed that the Army has on hand, for civilians, called the Civilian Corps Creed. This creed is worse than the others in my opinion, because the civilian creed extends "Army values" onto civilian populations, and encourages the same hierarchical obedience to non-warriors. Perhaps in the wake of 9/11, everyone became an "Army civilian" and a member of the "Army team".

I am an Army Civilian - a member of the Army Team.

I am dedicated to the Army, its Soldiers and Civilians.

I will always support the mission.

I provide stability and continuity during war and peace.

I support and defend the Constitution of the United States and consider it an honor to serve the Nation and its Army.

I live the Army values of Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Professional Courage.

I am an Army Civilian.

Recorded speech - Robert Fisk in Seattle, September 2008.

Cathode Ray Mission

2009-01-08T05:28:00.000-08:00

There is one short scene that I really like in Videodrome (1981). In David Cronenberg's alternate timeline universe there is a Catholic style inner-city "mission" called the Cathode Ray Mission. Its purpose is to help what looks like homeless people get reintegrated into normal, everyday working life. But you soon learn that the people go to the mission are not really without homes so much as without televisions. What possible reason could there be for that? In order to patch the "derelicts" back into the world of normalization, they must be treated by exposure to television. So they come to Cathode Ray for their TV "fix".

"You look like them, like one of father's derelicts," says Bianca O'blivion, the mission operator who is also the daughter of Videodrome's first victim.

"I think it's a style. It's coming back," says Max Wren, the main character.

"In that case, Mr. Wren, it's not a style. It's a disease forced upon them from lack of access to the Cathode Ray tube."

Wren - "You think a few doses of TV will help them?"

Bianca - "Watching TV will help patch them back into the world's mixing board."

"The world's mixing board" - what is that? A gigantic network of information and signals which inform the teeming masses with socially acceptable discourse. Getting patched back in is like reading up on the day's news in order to have everyday conversation with other people: what products are being consumed, what TV shows people are talking about, what political ideas should you be having, etc. The parallel today is like checking Facebook or Myspace in order to feel more connected to the drifting social discourse that takes place beyond real physical events. You can come back to the "real world" having felt as if you are completely informed, less naive about various aspects of social life.

But what is the real world? The "world's mixing board" is an arena that is more and more "realistic" everyday, and the video seers are saying that video reality is more real to them than reality in the flesh.

This Cathode Ray scene in the film is short, but provides a lot of background that helps you understand the hypothetical world that people live in, and David Cronenberg's social commentary. You notice that each derelict person in the mission is sitting alone in front of a television set, completely alienated from the rest of the world, detached from the other people who share the same class consciousness as they do. As an alienated force, they absorb a new form of 'classless' consciousness that imports the values and emotions they must have to survive in a rigorous environment. In Marx's term, an opiate of the masses.

Here's the other part. Massive doses of Videodrome's signal - a mind-altering television show that broadcasts unedited torture, and still being tested in a Pittsburgh laboratory - causes a tumor in the brain that brings about hallucinations when it receives the Videodrome signal. (This is the farfetched version of how the "society of the spectacle" works, but it isn't too far off.) These surreal hallucinations can be recorded, broadcast, and also controlled. It's the ultimate brainwashing machine.

Since the creators of Videodrome - a government-contractor - have 'benevolent' intentions they dreamed that Videodrome would supposedly bring about an ideal social situation for a new world order. And for the first time ever it is possible to exert political and social power over the proletariat without having to convince them by traditional means. The "disease" that is forced upon the proletariat by lack of access to television is their class consciousness, and the television, helping them consume imaginary commodities, is the cure. This will give them a false consciousness. In the mission Bianca remarks that Wren is beginning to "look like them." He is beginning to look more proletariat: someone who has no control over their own life.

The ability to exert the power is also, what I find interesting, a philanthropic mission with just one simple idea. Just as 19th Century philanthropist and philosopher Jeremy Bentham, convinced that his "simple idea in architecture", a panopticon, could solve the most vexing problems of Enlightenment social thought, so a Videodrome device could solve the most vexing problems of class struggle. By harmoniously coordinating self-interest with social duty in a capitalist system, Videodrome enforces as painlessly as possible a sense of social cohesion.

Video hallucination, and because the film has mild Cold War undertones, is the way to control the public mind away from the dangers of communism. "The battle for the mind of North America," says Brian O'blivion, a video prophet, "will be fought in the video arena." The company called Spectacular Optical - where Videodrome originates - also makes missile-guidance systems for NATO and products for use in the Third World. The interconnected interest between war with Soviet Russia, Third World dependence, and the need for greater public control in the liberal regimes is not something Cronenberg tries to disguise.

But Cronenberg's more obvious intention was to suggest something more along the lines of Baudrillard's simulacra. The transition of a society from industrialism to "hyperreality", marks a decisive turning point. Imagine, says Baudrillard, that a gigantic empire created a map of its own territory, and that map was so detailed that it was as big as the territory itself. When the empire eventually declined and disappeared, all that is left is the map. Baudrillard suggests that in the hyperreal transition, people merely live in the map. Beyond this horizon, value takes on a new meaning. In Baudrillard's object/value system - the sign value of an object can be considered more real than its functional, exchange, or use value. The real object, even if erased, is not as important as the sign.

Videodrome was designed to create this turning point in human history, to push us into the world of signs. The brain tumors caused by Videodrome would create a new outgrowth, a new evolutionary step in human history. Instead of being so enamored with reality in the flesh, humans will elevate their consciousness to a higher plane, the video arena. In Baudrillard's term, hyperrreality.

"Your reality is already half video hallucination," says Brian O'blivion in a video dispatch to Max Wren. "If you're not careful it will become total hallucination. You'll have to learn to live in a very strange new world."

This advice is not heeded. "Long live the new flesh!" is a slogan Max Wren starts saying once he is totally brainwashed by Videodrome. He is convinced, like others before him, that "public life on television" is more real than "private life in the flesh," in Bianca's words.

What I find the most creative on behalf of Cronenberg's vision was to use the Cathode Ray Mission as a way to explain the turning point from industrial to hyperreal forms of society. The fact that the derelicts in Videodrome's world are in need of objects that have greater sign value than functional values, describes with great surrealism the kind of warped and twisted place a late capitalist society is. Objects in the system of signs are fetishized to such an extent that they have more value than anything else.

Bamboo Garden

2009-01-03T16:47:00.000-08:00

Probably one of the best vegan/vegetarian restaurants in Seattle is the Bamboo Garden. I was in that area eating with a friend not too long ago. When we first walked in and took a look at the menu, we get excited that literally everything on the menu is something we want to order. We're used to dismissing entres with words like "chicken" in them, and for at least the first minute we overlooked quite a bit. We had to remind ourselves that Bamboo Garden makes tofu imitations of everything: chicken, salmon, shark fin... it's very amazing and delicious.

Next time I go to Portland there are several vegan places I want to check out. Including the anarchist Red and Black Cafe.

Beneath the Pavement, the Beach

2008-12-30T00:01:00.000-08:00

Three years after the 2005 riots in the suburbs of France post-Marxist sociologist, Slavoj Zizek, wrote that the rebellion was meaningless and without "any positive utopian vision."

Enter: a post-ideological era.

It's not that we no longer have ideologies, of course, but the dominating capitalist ideology has disguised itself so well that the ruling class can get away with unfounded impassés. We say "economy" instead of "capitalism"; we say "journalism" instead of "spectacle"; "community policing" instead of "racial profiling", etc.

Above all, what better proof is there of capitalism's triumph in the last three decades, Zizek asks, than the disappearance of the very term "capitalism"? Or perhaps the disappearance of an anti-capitalist narrative? And the disappearance of an "anti-social" narrative, where social unrest - especially 'violent' unrest - is "anti-social", and violent social stratification is ordinary.

"The fact that there was no program in the burning of Paris suburbs tells us that we inhabit a universe in which, though it celebrates itself as a society of choice, the only option available to the enforced democratic consensus is the explosion of (self-)destructive violence."

This is the most difficult task for us. To be able to explain why - what looks like "self-destructive violence" - is actually a tremendous breakthrough. There is a tendency, however, to see unplanned explosions of revolt as "without program". Zizek contrasts the suburb riots with May 1968's positive utopian vision in France. But it is true that even in 1968, the social rupture had no clear objectives most of the time either.

"The fact was that to anyone who asked rationally enough 'What do you want?' I had no answer," said a radical recalling the first Night of Barricades. "I couldn't say that I didn't even know who these comrades were, couldn't say that I was demonstrating for the sake of demonstrating."

In other words he couldn't say whether the outburst had any program, at least that he was aware of. The promise of a better world lying beneath the cobblestone street can seem like a surreal joke, once it failed to meet its objectives. Having expected nothing less than the overthrow of the dominant social order, the surreal then turned on itself.

Jacques Lacan was similarly pessimistic, though he and Foucault, too, befriended the '68 radicals - became themselves '68 radicals. Foucault threw the cobblestones at police from an occupied university building. Lacan's challenge to the spirit of '68 was this: "As revolutionaries, you are hysterics who demand a new master. You will get one."

That prediction came true. The Gaullist regime disappeared; postmodern times came after, and May '68 was not a revolution - at least not politically or economically. Now in the shadow of their failed expectation, we live in an age where revolt is supposedly not utopian, not positive, and is not articulated. We have a stronger master, and a more sophisticated super-structure.

A photograph from Greece this week:

Underneath the broken cobblestones there is still a beachhead, though for some the utopian vision seems a bit quaint. What is our program? It goes without saying that we want a world without presidents and prime ministers; we want worlds of our own constructed with directly democratic structures, not states. We start by breaking the spell. And then, piece by piece, regain control over our lives through cooperation.

We realize that surrealism is a success. - At least in the context of a world that has yet to be fundamentally transformed. We realize that for the most part we are playing this game, naturally, with our hands tied behind our backs.

An image from a Swedish newspaper:

Only in the context of a game where we are able to cooperate fully are we successful. The continuing delay of mass action devoted to cooperative activity, however, along with inadequacies in counter-culture, have reduced our vision to pitfalls, recuperations, and dead-ends.

Meanwhile there is a lot gossip about angry, raging youth. What do they want? We have seen tremendous increases in the amount of wealth accumulation, through trade, through the exploitation of Africa, etc. without any corresponding increase in the real possibilities of everyday life through deliberate forms of democracy. There is more stuff to fill the lives of Americans and Europeans, but less food elsewhere, and less democracy everywhere.

When tipped off, it results in outbursts without programs. We react cruelly against the cruel world we find ourselves stuck in, by burning down Christmas trees, by destroying police cars. Some riots may have lacked pretense to a particular kind of vision - one that requires privileged or experienced people to write communiques and press releases - but they still reflect the surrealist state of mind.

Underneath the police car, the pavement. And the beach? Not far away...

What happens in Athens...

2008-12-29T12:39:00.000-08:00

... does not stay in Athens ...

And revolt is everywhere, even close to home.

A Greek interviewed with Crimethinc said that some of their best direct and indirect organizing methods included indymedia and word-of-mouth. Even though the aim of the media has been to downplay insurrection, indeed, to suppress it by all sophisticated means available, it has not succeeded. Even the most tolerant of the bourgeois media such as the BBC sees its role as protective. And while some resort to name-calling, others have adopted a policy of 'no coverage'.

Curiously, the Greek National Council of Radio and Television announced during the first week of the Greek uprising that its media networks needed to:

"avoid viewing scenes of extreme violence and incidents in a way that can be interpreted as an encouraging demonstration of extreme antisocial behavior."

It goes without saying the death of the author was somehow overlooked, and now they're just being obnoxious. Anti-social behavior, such as striving towards a non-hierarchical society, will not be televised. "... Journalism is not simply a matter of switching on the cameras and letting them roll. You have to think about what you're broadcasting," said Jean-Claude Dassier from the LCI news service in France - one of France's largest TV news networks. He said during the Autumn 2005 riots in France's suburbs that LCI would not "fan the flames of violence" by broadcasting the images. So they fanned the flames of obedience and viewed nothing.

That is not a novel idea, to encourage obedience, nor one that comes only from the newscasters. A document from France's Parliamentary Assembly called Riots in European Cities: lessons and the Council of Europe response echoes the same "concern". The assembly reported it needed to research the alleged link between media coverage and riots,

"...with a particular focus on the long-term consequences of limited or recurrent coverage of violent riots in the media and in some countries the no coverage as a policy of government."

The French Parliamentary Assembly admits that no coverage could lead to further human rights abuses in some places. But it seems open to the possibility of pursuing the policy in liberal democratic regimes.

In light of this tendency, the revolution will be blogged. During the revolution, you will be put in the driver's seat. Don't hate the media - be the media.

[Edmund] Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.

- Thomas Carlyle, the Hero as Man of Letters

...Said the shotgun to the head

2008-12-26T10:36:00.000-08:00

... the name of a poem by Saul Williams, but also, a real life story.

The Nation Institute recently uncovered some brutal new stories of an older news topic: the hidden race war during the Hurricane Katrina aftermath in New Orleans, when white residents fearing black looters formed citizens' militias that systematically targeted black residents.

In one neighborhood, Algiers Point - a small, white neighborhood surrounded by a black residential area - became an explosive environment. Whites rounded up shotguns, pistols, and rifles, and prowled the neighborhood for "niggers" who looked out of place. Black residents were murdered in the street, after which the white residents stretched the bodies out on the sidewalks to scare away "looters". One vigilante described, "in this neighborhood we take care of our own." According to a government aid group, by 2006 about 2,300 people had still not found after Hurricane Katrina, 3/4 of whom were black. The Nation says probably 11 people were murdered by the Algiers Point militia.

The Algiers Point militia was praised during the time period. Once the National Guard arrived, there was a flag-waving celebration, the murders forgotten, and the motivations never investigated. The article details the accounts of black residents who searched for drop-off and evacuation points and were harassed by the armed gunmen. Some were told to run, and then shot at - regardless of whether they lived in Algiers or not.

My subverts are better than your adverts

2008-12-23T12:33:00.000-08:00

This is a story of capitalist recuperation. It begins with Saul William's song List of Demands.

Saul Williams is a spoken-word poet and hip hop activist. In List of Demands he attacks conspicuous consumption. Written in the voice of "the impoverished and oppressed," including the "factory worker," Williams said in an interview with Morphizm that the last thing the song reinforces is hyperconsumption. He wants his money back because he's drowning in McDonald's fatty burgers; he is compelled to stand; he has a better plan.

But it doesn't matter how you attack it, the commercial enterprise will figure out a way to recuperate its opposition and sell it back to you in a different package. It has perfected the art of recuperation.

a brief description of recuperation

The situationists - who were the first artists to notice what what most revolutionaries had yet to realize - articulated the importance of fighting the bourgeoisie on cultural, as well as economic and political fronts. They articulated recuperation, gave it definition, put it in context. During their heyday in the 50s and 60s the situationist-organized 'art strikes' had intensified class struggle and demoralized the capitalist spectacle to some extent.

What is the spectacle? It's everything - humor, advertising, television, and so forth - comprising today's "spectacular level of commodity consumption and hype," as Kalle Lasn wrote in Culture Jam. And to show how deep the spectacle's recuperation has penetrated social life, successors of situationist theory have been absorbed into the spectacle they fought against. Having become marketing experts, advertising consultants, and advanced campaign managers, many of the culture jammers are now the prizes and trophies of capitalist domination.

Not just an ancillary source for marketing gurus, radicalism and rebellion are the dialectical anti-thesis of capitalism and thus the perfect synthesis for "post-ideological", late capitalist domination. This Jack in the Box advertisement that I photographed is a perfect example.

(Someone I shared this ridiculous image with has since added their own recuperation to it. After vectorizing, it was underlined with pro-consumption slogans, "Submit, Conform, Consume", to emphasize the overtness of fastfood recuperation. To learn how this works download the zine How to Make Adverts Better.)

In the recent book Coming of Age at the End of History, an embittered Generation Y activist, Camille de Toledo, narrates the story of how commercial experts came to treat situationist texts themselves as troves of treasure and information which helped them understand cultural products and how to improve the commodification of counter-culture. Now 30-ish, de Toledo is unsurprisingly cynical toward this historical moment where we are all being continuously recuperated. "All that remains of the spirit of revolt are annoying slogans."

In a German film about aged-anarchists, Was tun, wenn's brent?, one of the characters is a former activist who runs an advertising agency that exploits anti-capitalist and radical iconography. It is not just radical imagery that can be recuperated, it's the radicals themselves. In this film the former radicals have to become radical again, in fact, in order to save their bourgeois social status. In so doing, they relive the experiences they had as radicals.

On Guy Debord's own account, the SI was already actually recuperated by 1972, when too many elements of its work had been co-opted against itself. McKenzie Wark details this phenomenon in 50 Years of Recuperation of the Situationist International, where she wrote, "Having invaded the spectacle,

... the spectacle invaded it in return. It was no longer a secret enemy of spectacular society, but a known one. Its theory became ideology, mere contemplation. Contemplation of the Situationist International is merely a supplemental alienation of alienated society."

back to the List of Demands...

...you know what had to happen. Given all that led up to this blog post, of course, it was bound to happen: it wasn't long before some corporation figured out a way to use Saul William's anti-capitalist art to reinforce capitalism itself. In this case, the shoe manufacturer Nike was quick to use the List of Demands song - a chart-topping single in 2007 - in an advertising campaign called "better than your better". Have a look:

After two successful commercials the advertising team added a third, using the List of Demands lyrics instead of the previous bullshit. List of Demands is now inseparable from the sporty image that Nike bestowed upon it through popular consumption.

I was curious so see what Saul Williams thought about this, whether he gave Nike permission, or whether they simply used it. So I searched and found that Nike obtained the rights to use it from the record label. Williams welcomed Nike's use of it. In the Morphizm interview he remarked that,

"My intention remains for these songs to be heard by as many as possible. They are the virus that I wish to spread. I’ve infected Nike and all within their reach with a song that raises awareness as well as fists. It is indeed written in the voice of the impoverished and oppressed, which includes the factory worker. They know its their song when they hear it. The last thing it does is make someone want to go buy sneakers, but it may encourage someone to hit their boss over the head with a tennis racket. So be it."

As a 'public pedagogy', using capitalism as a vehicle does not seem to have succeeded. Williams essentially claims that Nike's bold move to use his List of Demands to advertise the opposite of what he is demanding puts Nike at risk of being recuperated by radicalism. It risks détournement, which is when commercial iconography becomes subverted. Détournement as a way of "infecting" the world with his anti-capitalist message, he says, could work.

Through détournement, radicalism creates moments of what Julia Kristeva in Word, Dialogue and Novel called the "carnivalesque" enacted to fight against the spectacle of everyday life. The carnival, according to Mikhail Bakhtin in Rabeilas and His World, is created using folk humor positioned outside the officially sanctioned culture of those in power. According to Williams, his song is an entirely different order of détournement. But it is the same logic use to détourne the Jack in the Box advertisement.

This is the logic:

It was positioned, from the beginning, outside the spectacle.
Now it is inside because of recuperation.
The song is so powerful that it will pull what is inside back outside with it.

This is hard to believe. Nike has framed the List of Demands so firmly in consumer iconography that it's impossible to imagine that this could be realistic.

Artists seem to think the commercialization of art is the best way to reach a wider audience. Anarchist punk band Anti-Flag aggravated fans by signing with major record label, Sony BMG, for example. The music giants have a new strategy. They want to maintain the "authenticity" of their recuperated artists by encouraging independent work. Meanwhile the innovations are used for commercial purposes. KRS-ONE explains in an interview with Digital Journal that,

Today, artists like myself or Chuck D or Talib Kweli hold a degree of credibility that’s attracting companies like Red Bull, Cadillac, or Nike. Executives at these companies are our fans. And they are really sick of the state of music. So what they’ve done is spend $250,000 of their own money, in the case of Nike, to create a song with Kanye West, Nas, Rakim, and KRS ONE. We don’t rap about the shoes because they don’t want us talking about that. They just want us to create a song they can play on their website. Authenticity is the new business model and these companies need a product that’s not destroyed by an artist's shady image.

There is something else that easily results from this business model too, which destroys radicalism from two directions at once. Corporations directly use recuperation in order to sell ordinary consumer products; they indirectly use recuperation to sell consumer products that imitate radical lifestyles, resulting in hipsterism.

I don't want to end on a depressing note because while recuperation can be a source of anxiety, others take it as an acknowledgment that radical creativity threatens bourgeois production. I'd like to know what other people think about this.

Capitalism Hits the Fan - Richard Wolff's look at the collapse

2008-12-20T06:58:00.000-08:00

JCD posted this video, but I found a less grainy version of it. This is Richard Wolff, economist at UMass Amherst.

In Understanding Marx, a book by a another Marxian professor at Amherst, Robert Wolff, says that the economics faculty at Amherst are the finest of American radical and Marxian theorists...

"... the entire university is virtually unique in this country as a center of serious radical thought."

One way to study Marx is to learn linear algebra and differential calculus, he notes. In Understanding Marx Robert Wolff offers a less formulaic and more of an annotated walkthrough of Das Kapital. Here is a good excerpt from his chapter on Marx's theory of natural price, something JCD is discussing over on his blog.

"The truth, Marx asserted, is this: profit, ground rent, and interest, all originate as surplus value extracted from workers in the process of production. The total amount of surplus value generated in the eocnomy as a whole in a single cycle of production is deteremined by the difference between the number of hours of labor performed by the wage laborers and the number of hours of socially necessary labor directly or indirectly required to reproduce the work force (to feed, clothe, and house them and their families) for another time period. Competition moves capital around in search of the highest rate of return on the total money value of invested capital, with the result that natural prices in general deviate from labor values."

After that, a slew of managerial types - the bankers, landowners, retail merchants, and financiers, etc. - appropriate another chunk of the total surplus value generated by workers in the form of rent, profits, and interest. I think this is the point Richard Wolff is getting at in this video above when he talks about the American working class. More financial tools were created in this "bonanza" of capital accumulation and worker exploitation. These tools and tricks made it easier for Americans to take debt out on everything. But their wages, flat. So the overworked American takes on more debt to finance real wage stagnation, and then eventually a bubble came out of this. And we know, of course now, that the bubble is bursting.

Notes on the undercovers

2008-12-18T01:20:00.000-08:00

They look like your mom. They look like your older brother. They even cry when you doubt that they're really friends with you, and say they'll stick up for you.

Who are they? The undercover fuzz.

The Campus Anti-War Network has just exposed an informant named Jason Mumford who was informing the FBI about numerous individuals involved in the Wild Rose Rebellion group and University Of Iowa Anti-War Committee. (I would tell you that this information came from a facebook message but then I'd have to kill you, you see.)

Here's a video of him infiltrating his own rally:

Sometimes I wonder just how many people actually work for the FBI. It looks like in 2004 the FBI had 28,576 total employees, which was before a 2004 executive order created even more employment for the FBI and doubled the number of CIA employees. Needless to say, the number of FBI or CIA employees does not include the number of informants. You can be an informant who does not actually work for the FBI or CIA, and can still be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to ruin other peoples' lives.

I think this confirms that during the RNC the FBI was using technology that "would allow them to locate an individual through their cell phone." The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is one of the organizations mentioned in previous link, which means police had been using satellite photos to track people during and probably before the convention. NORTHCOM, a domestic military chain-of-command created after September 11th for Homeland Security, was involved in the security planning and operations as well. Originally NORTHCOM was given a limited role in civilian law enforcement after 9/11 - limited, that is, by posse comitatus. Now as you probably know, they're set to patrol the streets and aid local law enforcements.

An article titled 'Anarchist looked like someone's mom' in the Minneapolis Star Tribune is worth reading. It's about FBI informants who cry, pout, turn on each other, look like moms and nieces, show up for more potlucks than you do, and then eventually, rat you out without any evidence. Here is an excerpt.

Nathanael Secor, one of the RNC Eight, said "a level of comradeship" developed between activists and the operatives and it was disappointing to learn they were spies. Still, he says, "We had the feeling we were under surveillance from the beginning. It did not come as a complete shock."

...

At one meeting of various groups, "somebody made a joke that based on looks, he's the one who looks like a cop," Plotz said. "He kind of smiled and didn't say anything."

At a meeting where Hedstrom was the facilitator, a kind of chairperson, an anarchist expressed concern that he was a cop, a report said. Dugger "became emotional and told them how bad he felt, he wiped his eyes and blew his nose." He denied he was an informer.

The memo said two anarchists told him they "don't think he is a cop. They said a cop would have just walked away and never returned and wouldn't cry."

Dugger even got into the act. By August he was urging an anarchist to suspect another anarchist of being an informer.

In the reports, the anarchists talk with bravado, with occasional references to breaking windows and damaging vehicles. They told each other it was not violence, since they had no plans to injure people.

Many meetings involved no talk of property damage, or even protests. They dealt with tasks like finding places to stay. The local anarchist core was small, and the reports offer a glimpse into strains --and even gripes -- among them.

Up against the wall motherfuckers! We've come for what is ours...

2008-12-15T01:44:00.000-08:00

Students occupying the Polytechnic University in Athens may not be in classes but are writing manifestos, press releases and stories about where Greece might be going. Solidarity actions have been initiated in Europe and the Americas. The students at the Polytechnic have called out for European and global-wide actions of resistance on December 20th in the memory of all assassinated youth, migrants and all those who were struggling against the lackeys of the state.

Students in France are also protesting a conservative education reform plan announced by Sarkozy this week. From the government's perspective, now was not the best time to reveal to students that bailing out the banking system meant 'balancing' the education budget. So French politicians were concerned that the Greek riots would spread elsewhere. Well, too late.

Occupied London has been translating the Greek texts into English, German, French, and also Turkish, Spanish, and Italian for widespread dissemination. Up against the wall motherfuckers! We've come for what is ours... is the title of one - it gets its name from the radical New York anarchist and artist affinity group (they were the first to use the phrase "affinity group") from the heyday of Ben Morea and Dan Georgakas, who were known as Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers!

This communique or manifesto from the Polytechnic is on OccupiedLondon.org/blog. Here are some excerpts.

In these days of rage, spectacle as a power-relation, as a relation that imprints memory onto objects and bodies, is faced with a diffuse counter-power which deterritorialises impressions allowing them to wonder away from the tyranny of the image and into the field of the senses. Senses are always felt antagonistically (they are always acted against something) – but under the current conditions they are driven towards an increasingly acute and radical polarisation.

But these Days of Rage are certainly more exciting, and waking thousands of people from the 'imprinted memories', and bringing them toward a more antagonistic attitude - than the original Days of Rage in Chicago, which was actually just four days and only 200 people showed up. A poll in Greece "confirms" this is a wide cross-section of society who are involved in the general strike, the sit-downs and the blockades. But the media still does not have a clue. iReporters on CNN know absolutely nothing about the situation. They found an American named John to tell CNN watchers what is happening in Greece, how insightful. (I think he just wants a job with CNN). Anyways, the phrase "deterritoralisation" comes from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guttari.

...The history of the legal order and the bourgeois class brainwashes us with an image of gradual and stable progress of humanity within which violence stands as a sorry exception stemming from the economically, emotionally and culturally underdeveloped. Yet all of us who have been crushed between school desks, behind offices, in factories, know only too well that history is nothing but a succession of bestial acts installed upon a morbid system of rules. The cardinals of normality weep for the law that was violated from the bullet of the pig Korkoneas (the killer cop). But who doesn’t know that the force of the law is merely the force of the powerful? That it is law itself that allows for violence to be exercised on violence? The law is void from end to bitter end; it contains no meaning, no target other than the coded power of imposition.

This interpretation of the law as power dynamics is like what critical legal studies theorists have argued, but the point is driven more forcefully here. But this has always been a powerful critique, one that the advocates of the corrupted jurisprudence theories never adequately take on.

...The global capitalist crisis has denied the bosses their most dynamic, most extorting response to the insurrection: “We offer you everything, for ever, while all they can offer is an uncertain present”. With one firm collapsing after the other, capitalism and its state are no longer in a position to offer anything other than worse days to come, tightened financial conditions, sacks, suspension of pensions, welfare cuts, crush of free education. Contrarily, in just seven days, the insurgents have proved in practice what they can do: to turn the city into a battlefield, to create enclaves of communes across the urban fabric, to abandon individuality and their pathetic security, seeking the composition of their collective power and the total destruction of this murderous system.

At this historical conjuncture of crisis, rage and the dismissal of institutions at which we finally stand, the only thing that can convert the systemic deregulation into a social revolution is the total rejection of work. When street fighting will be taking place in streets dark from the strike of the Electricity Company; when clashes will be taking place amidst tons of uncollected rubbish, when trolley-buses will be closing streets, blocking off the cops, when the striking teacher will be lighting up his revolted pupil’s molotov cocktail, then we will be finally able to say: “Ruffians, the days of your society are numbered; we weighted its joys and its justices and we found them all too short”. This, today, is no longer a mere fantasy but a concrete ability in everyone’s hand: the ability to act concretely on the concrete. The ability to charge the skies.

Amazing!

One of my friends and I were talking about "manifestos" a few weeks ago, and she remarked that when a set of ideas has reached a point where a group decides it can be embodied into 'a manifesto', it implies that many things before it had been leading up to that point. She has a dialetical theory about how ideas get embodied into manifesto. It certainly seems true now. All of the post-modern theory I have read is somewhat depressing when you wake up from the spectacle-as-commodity fairy tale and realize what it means. But is it culminating to something? Will it be a positive culmination? Is Greece the start of something new? These are questions I am grappling with now.

If all of these, namely the extension of the conflict into the sphere of production-circulation, with sabotages and wild strikes seem premature, it might just be because we haven’t quite realised how fast does power decomposes, how fast confrontational practices and counter-power forms of organising are socially diffused: from high school students pelting police stations with stones, to municipal employees and neighbours occupying town halls. The revolution does not take place with prayers towards and piety for historical conditions. It occurs by seizing whatever opportunity of insurrection in every aspect of the social; by transforming every reluctant gesture of condemnation of the cops into a definite strike to the foundations of this system.

Off the pigs!

"Off this pigs" was a Black Panther Party slogan, and the name of that communique actually comes from a poem called "Black People" by Amiri Baraka, and the poem was used against him in trial. The poem itself was - the white jury said - enough to incite riots in Newark, because you know, free speech "contains no meaning, no target other than the coded power of imposition," in the words of the Polytechnic students. Baraka's original poem goes:

You can't steal nothing from a white man, he's already stole it he owes you everything you want, even his life. All the stores will open if you say the magic words. The magic words are: Up against the wall motherfucker! this is a stick up... We must make our own world, man, our own world, and we can not do this unless the white man is dead. Let's get together and kill him my man.

UATWMF also took part in the 1969 student sit-in at Columbia University, where members of the black community and radical university students barricaded Columbia, holed themselves in, and outfoxed the police when they tried to invade. Their goal was to prevent the university's gentrification of New York and the IDF's military weapons programs which was complicit with the Vietnam occupation, but it grew into something bigger. This photo is a screenshot from the student-made documentary film Columbia Revolt (part 1, part 2).

Thanks to Occupied London for translating these invaluable texts.

Athens: We are the Image of the Future

2008-12-13T21:16:00.000-08:00

The anarchist movement in Greece is world-renowned, especially now. Anarchist neighborhoods throughout Europe - such as Copenhagen's Christiania neighborhood or Athen's Exarcheia district - have battled with governments to maintain autonomy. Each time agents of government suppression target the neighborhoods, the anarchists strike back. But this time, all over the world.

The bullets that killed Athenian boy Alexis Grigoropoulos this week "may have hit one person, but it was meant for us all," a German anarchist banner read early in the week. The "birthplace of democracy," some people are saying, "has descended into anarchy."

Exharcheia in the 1970s

Greek politicians - from military colonels to business leaders - since the 1970s have denounced Greek rebels as "anarchists," "nihilists" and, in classic Greek disparagement, "barbarians" with no aim whatsoever. The same mantra again this week. But Greece, often considered the birthplace of democracy, is also the site of an ongoing struggle against fascism. The fascists who lost power in the 1970s did not disappear - they simply work behind the scenes. Today's political structure in Greece - "Athenian democracy" for whatever it is worth - owes itself to an anarchist and student movement which organized in the 1970s against a US-backed military regime.

History:

In the early 1970s students barricaded the National Technical University in Athens, law students used radio transmitters to broadcast anti-state communiques, and workers throughout Greece joined the General Strike. The city was in revolt and people gathered around radios to hear students broadcast from the occupied university, "This is the Polytechnic! People of Greece, the Polytechnic bears the standard of our struggle and your struggle, our common struggle against dictatorship and for democracy!"

The military, furious, crashed through the University's barricades with tanks, then beat and killed students and workers near Exarcheia and the campus premises. The military regime was eventually overthrown, in large part due to the student-worker organizing from the campus. Since then Greek campuses were deemed off-limits to government police and military. It is illegal for police to be on campuses.

The Greek anarchists who shouted "This is our life!" just before Army tanks and paratroopers stormed their campuses in 1973, as shown in these pictures, is burned into the memories of many survivors.

What did it take to topple this regime? It was the anarchists, students, and workers who toppled this regime.

Yesterday and Today

But much of what was reported then sounds like what is happening today, and the media is constantly dismissing the youth as hackneyed, easily-angered, aimless etc. Even the BBC wants things to return to normal:

"In Athens, too, shopkeepers are fed-up... there must be something in their head."

But what is in their head - who dares to ask?

While some Greeks may be confused about how this situation exploded out of thin air, the media is telling them which side of the barricades they should be on. They complain that students are "exploiting a legal loophole" to occupy university campuses where police cannot go. What does that mean: People are "exploiting"? the fact some places where the state cannot go exist. Aren't the police exploiting a legal loophole which allows them to be everywhere else?

Consciousness is Born in the Streets

It isn't only who the media calls "self-styled anarchists" getting rowdy this entire week. Workers began an Athenian General Strike early on, and the Association of Employees in the suburb of Agios Dimitrios released a statement urging all Greeks to take to the streets, saying profoundly, "Don't watch the news, consciousness is born in the streets!" and "We are in Civil War: with the fascists, the bankers, the state, the media wishing to see an obedient society."

Comparing reports from Greek media via the New York Times in the 1970s to 2008, three artifacts stand out in similarity.

Tens of millions of dollars in property damage caused by rebels;
Police shot and killed people in the street;
The government essentially took control of the media and gave the impression that anarchists were a "minority" fueled by "the communists". (This was a US-backed regime, by the way, so anarchists had to be controlled ultimately by communists. Today, of course, anarchism has to be controlled by hormones and nothing else.)

For example:

NYTimes abstract archive, April 28th, 1972:

"400 Greek physics students, in open defiance of martial law in Greece, stage silent march from campus at Goudi to main univ bldg in Athens in protest against discrimination in examinations procedures; police attempt to disperse illegal march half-way, but students persevere, advancing in small groups; police forces step in at univ, forcing marchers to flee."

NYTimes abstract archive, November 18th, 1973:

"[President Papadopoulos] asserts that he tried to lead nation toward normality, but that 'anarchist elements, aiming at overthrow of all lawful order and exploiting naivete of unrealistic people as well as self-interest of politicians,' have created dangerously explosive situation; declares his determination to take all appropriate measures for consolidation of law and order; decries Greek politicians for siding with 'subversive demonstrations of nihilistic minority'; invites politicians to recant and think of their responsibilities to nation"

NYTimes abstract archive, November 25th, 1973:

"mil judiciary is carrying out thorough investigation of events that led to student-worker riots; asserts that police estimates of damage caused to private and public property during riots are in 'tens of millions of dollars'; [the secretary of information] says he does not know when martial law will be lifted."

NYTimes abstract archive, December 12th, 1973:

"Greece's mil police asserts on Dec 11 that former politicians instigated Nov student revolt but then lost control to anarchists who attempted to seize power"

Apology

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Western bloc - specifically Britain and the U.S. - admitted that it had puffed up the military regime in Greece, which bloodily suppressed the student movement. Bill Clinton gave an apology for this in 1999. He said in Athens,

"When the junta took over in 1967 here, the United States allowed its interests in prosecuting the cold war to prevail over its interest -- I should say its obligation -- to support democracy, which was, after all, the cause for which we fought the cold war. It is important that we acknowledge that."

Each year there is a commemoration on November 17th to honor the rebellion. Athenian students and anarchists - even some politicians - pay their respect to the Polytechneio students killed in struggles mainly from the 1940s through the 1970s, but also to remember recent struggles. A march that begins every year at the Polytechnic university ends at the United States embassy compound, where the people shout anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist slogans. This picture is from 2008:

There is an old saying. Winston Churchill said "History is written by victors". The revolutionaries who successfully ousted a dictatorship in the 1970s are, because victorious, celebrated in Greek society. They faced a spectacle powerful enough to control the soldiers and the police, but the people revolted. Today that spectacle is even more powerful.

Murder in Exarchia

When state police entered the anarchist district of Exarchia looking to murder some anarchists earlier this week, it was as if the shots were "heard 'round the world". This brought loosely-connected anarchist groups in dozens of cities beyond the Aegean out into the streets.

Here is what happened.

Witnesses shown on this Greek news channel several days later said the police had walked down a street in Exarcheia with their guns drawn. A translation is available here. The police cussed at some young people, telling them to "Come here punks, come and settle this." When some kids approached, "Suddenly, without any other intervention, the patrol car abruptly departs and some time later the officers return. They stood in front of the kids and gunshots were heard. One of the kids, fell." They fired three shots to make sure they hit him, since they missed at first. Someone shouted that he was wounded, but "The police turned their backs, as if nothing had happened, and left."

"They will get away with impunity in the courts," echoed anarchists around the world, "but not on our streets."

If this murder was by "by accident" as the police said then I find excerpts from the murderer's 11-page testimony extremely contradictory. The testimony builds a case against Grigoropoulos' personal and moral character. It is a moral justification for his murder. They condemn Grigoropoulos and provide information on his family background, his education, and his friends. They say he was a corrupted youth.

"Justice is", according to Thrasymachus, Socrates' interlocutor in The Republic, "nothing other than the advantage of the stronger."

The defense lawyer for the police - whose office was burned down after this testimony - stated, "It is now only up to the Greek justice to decide whether the youth was justly killed, or not." Juridical tactics in Greece have not changed much since Socrates - who was tried and executed for "corrupting the youth of Athens".

In this picture you can see Greek police firing live ammunition at people in the street this week.

The photographer who snapped this picture for Eleutheros Typos and the Associated Press, Kostas Tsironis, was also fired from Eleutheros Typos for publishing it. The original site (in Greek) where I found that information is here, and a blogger on this site has translated it.

Firing photographers in a time like this is "police news management". In a democracy, you see, the police don't have to actually be looking over your shoulder during rebellion because even moderate sympathizers and the media will police themselves and each other. The obedient society will also look the other way as police collude with fascists.

Neo-nazis and "far right supporters" have disguised themselves as anarchists in order to get amongst them and stab people with knives this week. Most seem to be members of the neonazi group Golden Dawn, a group which kidnaps and murders migrants. Some protesters have been stabbed in Patras, Athens and elsewhere as detailed on Athens Indymedia. Yahoo! News apparently gathered some photos from the wire, but does not provide any further insight.

One student says a mysterious "shadow" state is working with police blessings.

These unreported provocateurs, instructed by police, also destroy small shops in Exarcheia and Patras, blaming it on the students and anarchists. But those people in red and black have targeted only banks and large corporations. Members of Golden Dawn were also encouraged to go ahead and stab demonstrators, many of whom are high school students.

In Patras, before demonstrators had thought about erecting barricades, members of Golden Dawn in collaboration with the police threw rocks and chased people through streets with clubs. "For this reason," says a Patras student in this account, "rudimentary barricades were put together in the streets around the University of Patras". Then: "the neonazis were running with clubs & knives towards the demonstrators." People ran away in terror. The Greek media is calling the neonazi group "infuriated citizens," (implying that the citizenry has sided against demonstrators.)

Another account says that Golden Dawn and the police were "perfectly coordinated", and that the media has also called the neonazis "local business owners" who are "taking the law into their own hands". In the picture below (via Athens Indymedia) the man holding the blue flag is alleged to be a member of Golden Dawn, and minutes later he enters a crowd of Athenians to stab people.

We are the image of the future

In just one night "normality" can die in any society.

Greece is filled with fire. Some are saying that democracy is merely an easier way to lie to people, to give them false representation. "Democracy died because it was built on the backs of slaves. In the country in which democracy was born, a grand apology and solution is being given to the world it poisoned."

If normality dies in other societies around the world, will the shadows take over under the banner of patriotism as they have in Greece? Can't fascism be disguised and rationalized? Who is the shadow? Who can you trust?

Students, future engineers, future doctors, are Greece's future. But they do not want the same future as the rest of Europe; their vision is for a better world. Now Exarcheia is barricaded, streets are barricaded, some 15 universities are barricaded. Athenian hearts, as well as over seventy police stations, burning...

A wall in Athens reads, "We are the image of the future".

The International Anarchist Conspiracy, communique #5:

Comment on "Anarchy" in Somalia

2008-11-29T23:03:00.000-08:00

Somalia is making headlines for all the wrong reasons. While international eyes scorn the recent hijackings of over 40 shipping vessels off Somalia's coast and berate the perceived "lawlessness" of the pirates who hold them for millions of dollars ransom, the pirates have accused European multi-national corporations (specifically, Swiss and Italian) of dumping toxic waste (radioactive uranium, lead, cadmium, and mercury) off the coast of Somalia.

One pirate crew is demanding $8 million for a Ukranian ship which was hijacked while moving tanks to fractious Sudan and claims the money will go towards toxic clean-up. Other ships, like the Sirius Star - a tanker carrying 2 million barrels of Saudi crude oil - are being held for over $30 million ransom.

"The Somali coastline has been destroyed, and we believe this money is nothing compared to the devastation that we have seen on the seas."

- Somali Pirate

When the 2004 tsunami hit Indonesia, it washed up toxic materials onto the shores of Puntland, a semi-autonomous region of Somalia where some of the hijackers live, exposing decades of cheap and out-of-sight dumping that took place in the Horn of Africa since the 1980s. The people of Puntland have radiation sickness now. They report skin infections, abdominal bleeding, and strange bleedings at the mouth. Animals, fish and livestock have also become sick and died. And with such an untidy brew of chemicals in the sea this may only be the beginning of a long and drawn-out health crisis. Nick Nuttall, a United Nations Environmental Program spokesperson, reiterated the pirates' point, adding that

"There is also industrial waste, and there are hospital wastes, chemical wastes – you name it."

- Nick Nuttall, UNEP

This all came to light by 2005 at the latest, and no one took action against it. A UN report was prepared and buried under dozens of other UN reports chronicling the devastation of humanity.

On the one hand we have a bunch of starving people with guns. And on the other, you have very wealthy people without guns going right past them on big boats. Any system tends to equilibrium, and so, before too long, a balance was struck whereby the hungry people got something to eat, while the wealthy people got the guns pointed in their faces.

But "the last thing the world needs right now," says the Economist Magazine, "is disruption of one of its busiest shipping lanes and a spike in insurance premiums." You can see more double-dealings with Africa glossed over elsewhere in the mainstream press. Some are saying this is the most booty ever captured by pirates anywhere at any time in history. It's worth pointing out, however, that the Sirius Star is carrying only about a quarter of the daily output of Saudi oil. Either the world business community can continue to view the disruption as an "outrageous" act of opportunistic thievery, or it can view the disruption as the price they must pay for years of negative externalities.

What else? Blood money and weapons sent by the CIA to finance secular Somali clans empowered "the same Islamic groups it was intended to marginalize" since the 1990s. And because the American chain-of-command is so impervious to criticism, when a US State Department official, Michael Zorzick, criticized the CIA-backed warlordism in Somalia, he was transferred to Chad from his post in Mogadishu. Arms, military matériel and financial support continue to "flow like a river to these various actors," according to a UN Security Council report in 2006. Even as the CIA is secretly encouraging carnage all over the country, armed American, British, Ethiopian, and Eritrean forces (as well as private security contractors) have been very openly blasting Somali fishing villages to pieces in their search for shadowy bin Ladens.

The recent leak of the Al Qaeda Network Exord stated that US forces had long been operating "frequently" in 15 to 20 countries without Congressional approval, and against ineffective UN rulings. One of those 15 to 20 countries had been Somalia. The New York Times wrote that "members of a classified unit called Task Force 88 crossed repeatedly into Somalia to hunt senior members of al Qaeda". Firing missiles into villages from remote locations, as the Times article states, American forces just "occasionally" dropped in to assess air strike results.

Curiously, the mainstream media conclude that the cause of Somalia's problems is the persistence of none of the aforementioned injustices, but "anarchy". Now that they have mine and your attention, Somalia is an opportunity for anarchists and anti-authoritarians to unveil the facade of "peace-keeping" imperialism in Africa and the effects of environmental racism all over the world. The comments of anarchists are relevant. Anarchist Derrick Jensen, in his book Endgame, writes,

"Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims."

Titling's reverse causal effects on the poor

2008-11-23T16:40:00.000-08:00

This is a conventional view advanced by the World Bank: land rights are more secure and transferable through the titling process - that is, assigning titles to parceled bits of land so that urban and rural poor can then use the land.

Titling land provides a guarantee to the informal urban and rural markets that the fruits of their investments will not be appropriated by the government or private land holders, and this can be done with a "flick of the wrist" as Hernando de Soto writes. All Third World governments and lawyers need to do is look at squatted land and write up a legal sheet documenting their formal ownership and welcome them to the private housing system.

Yet for almost every study showing that the titling process leads to greater security of land tenure, there are studies showing that causality runs the other way around. Instead of increased security of land tenure (titling is one of several ways to do that) causing long-term investment, it has been argued that investments themselves cause security of land tenure. The causality is reversed.

One example of this are the studies that have looked at investments in cash crops. Planting profitable trees - coffee, eucalyptus, for example - enhances tenure security (Atwood, 1990; Besley, 1995; Otsuka et al., 1997; Brasselle et al., 2002; Sjaastad, 1997; Place, 2001). Other findings show that tenure insecurity has little effect on the decision of farmers to plant trees and invest in the land (Holden, 2002). These findings cast considerable doubt on the need for embarking on ambitious land registration and titling policies, if the goal is increasing investments or standards of living.

Most of the literature finding a link between tenure security and long-term durable investments in the land have sidestepped the question of causality and have jumped to the conclusion that widespread titling should increase tenure security - (and do not mention titling's adverse effects on landless, indigenous and the new urban poor.)

Bluetech, like a school of fish

2008-11-22T14:10:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite downtempo artists recently came out with a wicked new set of tracks. Evan Marc is Bluetech, a Portland-based synth sorcerer, who whips up modest tunes and chords that leave my head spinning for days. Here are some samples of his older work.

In the movie Ring of Bright Water, there is a picturesque set where the hero and heroine are looking over a beautiful scene together. The hero sighs finally and says, "I really must get back to work. I can't keep idling the rest of my life." The heroine replies, "Why not, if it serves a purpose?"

Just what the purpose was is not very explicit, but that's part of the story's charm. I don't think she was against the hero having a purpose, but against the attitude the he should always have a purpose. I think she would agree that having a purpose might sometimes serve a very useful purpose, just as spontaneity can sometimes serve a grand purpose too.

I have also found it extremely hostile and destructive to ask another person what their purpose is. I am thinking of those who ask "Why would you want to learn philosophy or art?" Isn't it enough to want to learn them? The presumption is that philosophy and art are purposeless, or meaningless. Similarly, the question "What do you do?" is not "What sorts of things are you enjoying lately?" It's "What is your relation to the means of production in our society and how much social capital do you have compared to me?"

I have traveled far from the topic. What I am suggesting is that music can transcend this nightmarish duality of purpose and purposelessness. When I'm listening to a hypnotic scenescape it's as if I am unlocking the secret groove to the universe, a balancing act between work and play; a place in the mind where you can move headway through work like a school of fish. Like coffee, only less wiry... It also distracts me immensely from my work. Damn, I can't idle all day listening to Bluetech and Boards of Canada. Somebody please tell me to chill out because it's only a Saturday.

Photoblog - Stop the H8

2008-11-18T19:37:00.000-08:00

Following the Prop 8 legislation that banned same-sex marriages in California, people from all fifty states turned out to march for equal rights this Saturday in their respective cities. Seattle and Olympia were both on the march. One of my friends, Melissa, went to Seattle and brought some pictures back for show-and-tell.

ME: Even though Prop-8 was California's bad deal, why were people marching for equal rights in Seattle?

MELISSA: Although the majority of the states have motioned to define marriage as "a union between a man and a woman", Prop. 8 was unique in that it took away same-sex marriage rights that had already been granted by the California Constitution. Just because it happened in a different state doesn't mean that we can't process a thought and take action.

ME: You snapped a photo of Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels speaking at the rally on Capitol Hill. What did he say and what does it mean that the Mayor, Senator Ed Murray, King County Executive Ron Sims, and several others in government positions are supporting the cause?

MELISSA: Nickels denounced Prop. 8 as a hateful measure and said it should have never made it onto the ballot. He also declared November 15th Marriage Equality Day in Seattle. We have support from politically influential people; it means a lot to have that kind of support, especially when the viewpoint you're fighting from isn't necessarily the popular one.

ME: How did you meet Fabulous K.J.?

MELISSA: Fabulous K.J. and his two friends were the only other people I saw at City Hall that morning, the original meeting place. I didn't get the memo about the rally being moved to Volunteer Park and obviously neither did they, but I suppose it was an organized venue change because it was pretty much just the four of us. We tripped around together for a bit, confused, and then split up (they went to find breakfast while I tried to locate a few friends). My friend Leo looked things up online and messaged me that the happenings were at Volunteer Park. I don't think I would have made it if it weren't for him. I forwarded the info to K.J. and we reunited during the march.

ME: Who is the saxophone guy in this picture?

MELISSA: Oh, Kevin - he wasn't associated with the Prop. 8 happenings. I just recognized him as one of my brother's classmates and decided to be oddly extroverted. He invited me to join his band. I guess that's flattering.

ME: Who is the naked lady on the balcony?

MELISSA: I wouldn't have a clue, but everyone on the street loved her. I don't think the guys in the next balcony over realized that the sudden surge in whoo hoo was due to naked-support, rather than the usual clothed-support, but, well, you know. We'll take any support we can get, nude or otherwise.

ME: When you got to Westlake Center you were met with anti-anti-Prop 8 protesters. What was their deal?

MELISSA: Oh, the typical burn-in-hellers. They were citing Bible verses and saying we should repent or else. I know the big "or else" thing is a common thread amongst Bible-affiliated religion, but I really don't think there is any choice associated with being gay, lesbian, or otherwise.

I've heard about ex-gay programs... they're really unhealthy; the American Psychiatric Association (APA) doesn't approve of that at all - doesn't that mean anything to people advising gays to repent?

I met a Christian woman on the bus ride home and we talked pretty much the whole time. She said if people want to get married they should get married, and we've got bigger things to spend our time on than fighting over that.

ME: Beautiful picture! Last question: the Washington State Supreme Court upheld in 2006 the definition of marriage as "a union between a man and a woman", and in 2007 Governor Christine Gregoire passed the Domestic Partners Registry which explicitly bans same-sex couples from marriage. What's it going to take to win same-sex marriages in Washington State?

MELISSA: What the exact logistics of getting same-sex marriage legal in Washington State are, I don't know. I think the organization and the peacefulness of the event this past Saturday speaks volumes about our community. There were tables to write to legislators and such about how people in attendance disagreed with bans on same-sex marriage. Domestic partnerships and civil unions just aren't enough.

ME: Thanks, Melissa!

Business Film Instructor

2008-11-18T08:32:00.000-08:00

This is the latest documentary I put together at the Instructional Technology office, where I work and have just finished training the next generation how to make propaganda for the university communications office. The university wants invitational and student life videos to come from the students instead of the media relations board. (Student-led propaganda would also give the impression that students have more control over the university than they in fact do.)

The video above, however, focuses on an instructor in the School of Business and Leadership who uses documentary filmmaking as an instructional device in her Entrepreneurship class.

My thoughts on business schools aside, film is an increasingly effective way to reach wider audiences. I have found that people will often watch a video before they read an article or a review. That is a rhetorical aspect. (Obviously for business students, having an understanding of film can help sell products and ideas.) But working with film also gives different insights in comparison to other instructional media since it focuses easily on emotions, moral dilemmas, and inter-personal relationships.

Sincerely, Malice

2008-11-15T13:30:00.000-08:00

It looks as if Sloth and I are the only ones who survived our Friday night. After shiraz and stout arrived, Gluttony had the upper hand, and called up his friends Tostito and creamy spinach. I'm glad I didn't see Pride, because if he was there I really would have kicked his ass. But the night had already seen enough injustice. I've come to the conclusion that there's too much Envy in the world, all kinds of Envy, and most of the time Greed is the instigator. Fuck Greed, all he ever does is ask for more shit, and when he doesn't get it he demands it. Some assholes are never satisfied. Sort of like Lust, but that's understandable. I make an exception for Lust from time to time. Okay, so all the time. (I have a huuge crush on Lust.) Am I forgetting someone? Oh yes, Anger. He stuck around and badgered Sloth about unfinished business. Together, though, they did come up with some good schemes. But Pride would never admit that. When we tell him he should "be more like Anger" he gets so snotty. That probably makes me biased because despite all the rage Anger is one of my favorites. I mean, there's plenty of stuff to be angry about. All these lowlifes, for example.

What NGOs Can't do for Squatters

2008-11-10T08:42:00.000-08:00

Since the mid-1990s, the International Non-Governmental Organizations bypassed Third World governments in order to work directly with regional and neighborhood NGOs. Some have called this "the NGO revolution".

Revolution? Well, it is clear there are now tens of thousands of NGOs in Third World cities on housing specifically: the World Bank, the UNDP, Ford Foundation, German Friedrich Ebert Foundation, UK Department for International Development, etc, etc. They have changed the landscape of urban development and aid in a way comparable to Johnson's War on Poverty of the 1960s, this time by transforming relations between Washington D.C., political parties of Third World governments, and inner-city constituencies. In the context of inner-city poor, the NGOs have had perverse effects on the well-being of the 'slums'. Let me breeze by a few good reads, bullet-style.

Diana Mitlin describes how, on one hand, NGOs "preempt community-level capacity-building as they take over decision-making and negotiating roles," while, on the other hand, they are constrained by "the difficulties of managing donor finance, with its emphasis on short-term project funds, on financial accountabilities and on tangible outputs."

Regarding the 'NGO-middlemen' approach to urban housing: "renters, harassed squatters, displaced downtown tenants," writes Peter Ward about Mexico City, "are likely to be more radical and disposed to anti-government demonstrations than are those who have, in effect, been bought-off by the government through successive housing policies" that offer tenants land titles (private property) in exchange for taxes and often legitimized evictions.

There are somewhere between one and two million NGOs operating in India. Lea Jellinek, who spent a quarter-century in Jakarta, recounts how one NGO, a neighborhood microbank, "beginning as a small grassroots project driven by needs and capacities of local women," grew into a "large, complex, top-down, technically-oriented bureaucracy" that was now "less accountable to and supportive of" the poor of Jakarta.

Frederic Thomas, writing about Kolkata, argues that NGOs "are inherently conservative. They are staffed by retired civil servants and businessmen at the top and, lower down, by social workers, from among the educated and unemployed and by housewives and others without roots in the slums."

Mumbai housing activist P.K. Das gives an even harsher critique of squatter-oriented NGOs in Manifesto of a Housing Activist.

"Their constant effort is to subvert, dis-inform and de-idealize people so as to keep them away from class struggles. They adopt and propagate the practice of begging favours on sympathetic and human grounds rather than making the oppressed conscious of their rights. As a matter of fact these agencies and organizations systematically intervene to oppose the agitational path people take to win their demands. Their effort is constantly to divert people's attention from the larger political evils of imperialism to merely local issues and so confuse people in differentiating enemies from friends."

Another rebel planner and exile from the NGO universe, Gita Verma, in her book Slumming India, characterizes NGOs as a category of middlemen who, with the help of foreign philanthropists, are usurping the authentic voice of the poor. In her view, the World Bank's paradigm of "slum upgrading" is a position which views the slums as "eternal realities" in need of quick fixes. "Saving the slum," she says, specifically referring to Delhi, "translates into endorsing the inequity of one-fifth to one-fourth of the city's population living on just 5 percent of the city's land." Although neighborhoods in Indore at one point had sewers installed after the 1998 Habitat II conference (a UN summit on urban housing for the poor) residents didn't have enough water to drink, much less to flush waste. Sewage consequently backed up into homes and streets; malaria and cholera spread, and residents began dying from contaminated water.

Verma was also irate about an award-winning resettlement project, the Habitat Improvement Project, for squatters in Aranya. Like many similar to it, it rehoused a small number of the evicted while the "slum saviors" are praised as international humanitarian celebrities. In this case, however, most of the projects achievements were literally on paper.

Arundhati Roy wrote: "NGOs end up functioning like the whistle on a pressure cooker. They divert and sublimate political rage, and make sure it does not build to a head." Talk about "enablement" and "good governance" carefully step around core issues of global inequality and debt, and ultimately become language games.

Dhaka, the world's poorest megacity, has seen intensive urban land speculation in the wake of slum upgrading, or rather, slum privatizing. Ellen Brennan writes that "an estimated one-third of expatriate remittances have gone toward land purchases. Land prices have risen about 40 to 60 percent faster than prices of other goods and services and are now completely out of line with income levels."

Referring to a Manila-based squatter association that was given land titles, Erhard Berner writes, "Now that they have become landowners K-B leaders regard their alliance with other squatter organizations as obsolete and emphasize their relation to government institutions."

Asef Bayat wrote that the professionalism of the NGOs tended to diminish the mobilizing features of grassroots activism, while it established a new form of "clientelism". In this case, it is a new form of the old "clientelism" that informed the World Bank community's decisions during the era before the 1990s' NGO boom.

NGOs monopolize on expert knowledge and middleman roles in the same way as traditional political parties, writes Ruben Gazzoli about urban Argentina. (Political parties are not friends of the urban poor unless they have to be to win votes.)

"Upwards of a million apartments stand empty," writes Jeffery Nedoroscik in City of the Dead, "there is no housing shortage per se. In fact, Cairo is filled with buildings that are half-empty." The same empty building scenario holds true in hundreds of large cities around the world.

The UN's Habitat branch of urban housing and NGO experts work in an office complex in the same city as the largest squatter settlement in the world, Nairobi's Kibera. One can almost imagine the number of conferences and short-term project reviews that take place inside as the people outside are constantly being evicted forcibly by developers under orders from the state.

The problem is, housing is everywhere and the poor have no access to it. The World Bank's favorite urban housing economist, Hernando de Soto, argues just the opposite: that there is "dead capital" everywhere and by privatizing the poor's housing settlements, international capitalists will have access to it. Theoretically, squatter associations would then have access to credit, would be able to take mortgages out on their housing structures, and make money from selling their titles to urban developers. Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums, calls this "soft imperialism".

Whether the NGOs really need governments to help do their work is not the question. Many left-ish housing authors believe more government involvement in urban housing projects is needed. The reality is that neither NGOs nor governments have succeeded in securing housing for the urban poor. In recent years both have legitimized the slow takeover of informal development by professional developers. International institutions like the World Bank have acquired their own "grassroots" (rather, a recuperated) presence through the NGOs, and their work has had perverse effects on the well-being of inner-city 'slums'.

Notes on a Police Riot

2008-11-10T07:37:00.000-08:00

Police ultimately arrested 106 very "scary-looking" anarchists after this. Click here to see the mug shot slideshow that Rocky Mountain News felt so obliged to post. But according to a use-of-force police report obtained by the ACLU of Colorado, undercover Denver detectives staged this stand-off between protesters and police.

After the struggle between a police commander and and unknown number of undercovers, the riot police unleashed their power onto the protesters who stood there penned in by six times as many riot police. The commander knew some of the anarchists were working undercover, and the plan was to pull them out of the crowd and pretend they were under arrest so protesters would be none the wiser.

The report says that the commander and an undercover detective were sprayed, but it does not indicate how many others were affected. (Oh, other people?) The report also doesn't say whether the pepper spray used on the undercover police was the first deployment of chemicals that night or whether the police riot was already underway. Then again, with a situation like this, the police riot is a dialectical necessity. It had to happen no matter what anybody did to stop it.

Protesters, witnesses, and media that I spoke to myself that night agreed that the police first agitated non-violent crowds of people in Civic Center Park by standing extremely close to the protesters in battalion-like formations, wielding their riot weapons, and walking through lines of people waiting for food and pushing them out of the way. The entire park was swarming with police and nothing had even happened, just talking and eating - you know, stuff people normally do in parks!

When a group of about 50 anti-capitalists started jumping up-and-down and chanting, "a-anti-anti-capitalista!", this aggravated the riot police for some reason, and they crashed into nearby people to get a closer look. The anti-capitalist group then locked arms and somehow marched about a block-and-a-half down the street before they were surrounded and peppersprayed as you saw in the video above. The police then severely beat and hospitalized several protesters and arrested over a hundred.

The ACLU contends videos show that protesters, as well as otherwise uninvolved onlookers, were never ordered or given a chance to disperse before they were surrounded and detained by police.

This was our report from Day 1 of occupied Denver.

The charges, some of them as silly as Noah Jacobs on behalf of Rogue Valley IMC pointed out, were either dropped later or plead to right away. If the protesters accepted their riot charges they would be fined a certain amount but let out of jail within the following days. Most protesters, still wanting to have an influence on the Democrats, the delegates, and the convention atmosphere, accepted the plea bargains and the charges. The ACLU's letter was received by the Denver Police Chief, but he refused to give a comment or return any calls.

the Circular Diagram

2008-11-08T18:44:00.000-08:00

Circular diagrams are great because they conceptualize things in a circular motion.

I have been writing a new zine with some friends called Activate! It's a monthly zine printed on a single sheet of tabloid paper, and it focuses local and national politics with an activist twist. We want to keep the ideas short and simple. We also wanted to avoid really long articles that make people shy away from reading it. I think adding more diagrams to explain our point instead of using prose could do this as well.

From the Perspective of the Broken Window

2008-11-08T11:46:00.000-08:00

After watching some video of the DNC/RNC protests, the ACLU of Washington members decided on Wednesday that "punk kids" were simply way too violent to have any effect or value in American society. The punk kids were "out of control", they smashed windows, slashed tires, stopped traffic, and who knows, maybe even threw a little urine. "Would you look at the violence of the protesters? I think they are way out of hand. You need some explaining to do," they told me. Every face in the room had a worried expression. Grumbles all around.

I was invited to speak at this ACLU meeting about my two arrests over the summer and to talk about the protests I was documenting. But instead I was harangued for not denouncing the political violence that took place in St. Paul. In fact, it seemed, I was standing up for political violence at the Republican National Convention when the protesters took to the streets, sometimes in a rowdy or boisterous fashion, to draw the world's attention to crimes committed by the Republican Party. Indeed, I was standing up for that.

There used to be, and I think still is, a term for those who feel it is legitimate and maybe necessary for people, say, in colonies and occupied territories like Iraq or Palestine and elsewhere in the Third and Fourth Worlds to fight back and even die in the struggle against international imperialism, while intellectually exempting themselves from incurring the same risks or obligations at home in the imperialist-aggressor nation. Even while your nation may be plundering nations abroad and gradually installing a police state at home, if you break one bank window, it's all over for you. I believe that word was, or maybe still is, "hypocrisy".

The recession? I heard the worst part had already passed...

2008-11-07T21:54:00.000-08:00

If you had the opportunity to look at this Friday's 'jobs report' it is only evidence that the current system continues to deteriorate in the United States.

The natural rate of unemployment - because there's always a certain amount of unemployed due to growth - has for the last 60 years been averaging around 5.4%. Some time around the first week of October the percent of unemployed workers was almost 6%, which seemed very high at the time, but today the number is actually 6.5% (see official Bureau of Labor Statistics press release). This is the highest unemployment has been since 1994. To put this number into more perspective, at the height of the 2001 recession the unemployment rate peaked at 6.3%.

Pick up any newspaper and what you read is laughable. Part of the reason we are in a recession (as the evidence will show much, much later) is because consumers and businesses have lost confidence in the stability of the financial system, and so have banks. So nearly all the mainstream press articles talk about how the worst part of the recession has already passed, and how the forecast can only be uphill from now, in an effort to encourage more financial participation and mood-swinging to lift us out of the recession. The pictures of frowning stock investors on the front page of the New York Times are disappearing, but the number of frowning faces is actually increasing and is far from "over". We should realize the perverse logic at work.

In a capitalist economy, bear market prophecies are self-fulfilling. What we are seeing now is an enormous amount of propaganda telling us just the opposite of the bear market narrative. NY Times: America needs to feel confident again; Motley Fool: everybody can win and even profit from the paranoia; Forbes: this is the best time to start living happily-ever-after in a posh, high-rise condo; CNNMoney: now is the best time to buy a new home; LA Times: time to start shopping for one of those foreclosed homes that unemployed families can no longer afford. Investor news everywhere else: bull market ahead, etc.

We know this is not the whole story. Two more federally-insured banks failed this week, bringing the total number of US banks gone under to nineteen. Pending home sales are falling rapidly. The banking industry needed a bail-out package (part nationalization), so too with the auto industry, the health-care industry, the airline industry, and now GM - the great emblem of American stability and triumphalism - says that it's hitting rock-bottom and needs a bailout, too. $50 billion to be exact.

The chief executive of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, said recently that we "have got to get out of the sense of pessimism and back into a sense of optimism". The market psychology needs to change. Meaning: we should consume more of our own production, for the executives' sake, for the banks' sake, for the mortgages' sake, for the children's sake, for the sake of the entire enterprise. For fuck's sake, Work! Commute! Sleep!

It should be pointed out that consumers can only finance payments for new goods and services - and this is certainly no big secret - by borrowing money. In order to cushion a crisis, consumers must be able to "smooth" their consumption along the same levels as before the crisis. Unsurprisingly, then, the latest data show that consumer borrowing increased during the month of September instead of decreasing as was predicted by pessimists. The demand for "non-revolving credit" - the kind of credit added to credit cards - jumped from negative numbers in August to positive numbers in September even as a major global credit crisis raged forward. Every sector of the economy has demanded a boost from the Treasury (now totaling $3 trillion altogether), unemployment is expected to increase to 8.0% by January, and we are still buying more goods and services than ever before. Contrary to the idea that the recession is now mostly over, is this not the most legendary contradiction in recent times you have heard?

Now is a good time for Propaganda

2008-11-06T08:18:00.000-08:00

I think now is a good time for propaganda. Because we have a new president, people are yearning for new ideas. Thanks to Jonathan McIntosh from Rebellious Pixels for this 10-minute culture jamming exercise which reveals the infinite possibilities and rebellious pleasures trapped and hidden by a social system dependent on the unending supply of self-reinforcing knowledge. As if inspired by a dream or a day dream, Rebellious Pixels' videos draw out the "secret appeal from within" that the surrealists praised as moments of "objective chance". Culture-jamming activity at its best - investigating the attitudes, interests, and environments that give way to the eruption of political surrealism.

Election Anecdote, some things I noticed about us

2008-11-05T09:39:00.000-08:00

I sat and watched the election results last night with a handful of liberal college students in a lounge area at yuppie university. One television was broadcasting CNN, another was broadcasting Comedy Central. In another part of the campus a television news crew from King 5 was airing students jumping up and down as the election results came in.

Before this the college students' eyes were glued to Comedy Central. What is constantly in the back of my mind as I watch the Colbert Report is how we can be so amused by it, but at the same time castigate and argue against students who organized campaigns against racism or imperialism. The response to the Colbert Report – the show which exposes neo-conservative ideology by détournement – demonstrates to me that the liberal electorate is half-scared to exist, too embarrassed to give themselves away.

If you ask them they'll probably pretend to agree with you about this or that particular issue, but they do not have an analysis of society. "...Stephen Colbert is so funny," they say. But they do not identify with any ongoing struggle against racism, patriarchy or oppression, etc. - even when these critiques are often implicit in the Colbert Report. They do not recognize that the world really is upside down, even though the critique presented before them is a complete inversion of life. What effrontery!

"The task of the various branches of knowledge that are in the process of developing spectacular thought is the justify and unjustifiable society and to establish a general science of false consciousness. This thought is totally conditioned by the fact that it cannot recognize, and does not want to recognize, its own material dependence on the spectacular system."

- Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle

The point is not to write the sociology or psychology of the television set, the point is to watch. They knew almost every advertisement that aired during the election. I found that very disturbing. They discussed the ads obsequiously and uncritically. As long as the advertisement was funny, it didn't matter what it was advertising. They could recite them, and did so out loud and sometimes in unison. If one of the students did not know the particular facts about popular culture or advertising, he or she had nothing to say to the group.

You cannot dissent. If you dissent then you’ve ruined the fun. You’ve crashed the party. You’ve made it no longer enjoyable. You’ve challenged someone to argue with you instead of just relaxing and soaking up the spectacle’s optimism in capitalism. Just relax!!!

In other news, last night thousands of people took to the streets of Seattle and celebrated Obama's victory. They stopped traffic and created a bit of frenzy. I am glad to see people celebrating and injecting their voice into the public space; it is free expression and spontaneous. Being in the street in large numbers is subversive simply because you’re not supposed to do it without warning. It’s subversive and rebellious even though it’s not dissenting.

I particularly like the part in the video featuring the singing. Being in a public space to share your joy with the rest of the society is an empowering and participatory thing to do. I hope this is never taken away from people. But compare last night's celebration to the "zero-tolerance" approach to dissidents. If these people were in fact dissenting, against Obama or dissenting in any other way, the street party would have been an "unlawful assembly" and there would have been a confrontation with the authorities.

Maybe! Maybe this is a sign that we can abolish all attacks on free speech activity and all the free speech "zones" - And! under an Obama presidency the streets will be owned by the people, gardens will spring up everywhere, people will fall in love with the revolution, and there will be massive direct action against the televisions, and a rainbow will form at dawn to greet every new day in peace and to celebrate this newfound creativity! Good times, good times. Don't stop believing! Hold on to the feeling, streetlight people!

Comparative Rioting

2008-11-02T13:09:00.000-08:00

PHILLY: This week Philadelphia baseball fans broke bank windows, flipped over cars, started numerous fires in the streets, tipped over lamp posts, took over fire trucks, and defied police orders. Police respond by arresting 76 fans.
ST. PAUL: In September, protesters in St. Paul broke bank windows, slashed tires, blocked traffic, and defied police orders. Police respond by charging protesters with "terrorism" under the Minnesota version of the Patriot Act. The police, FBI and Homeland Security also pre-emptively raid numerous homes, arrest journalists, and used heavy-handed techniques to physical hurt demonstrators. Over 700 are arrested.

PHILLY: In Philadelphia, the riot happened after a street party at the end of the World Series baseball games.
ST. PAUL: If these were "riots" that occurred, they are more aptly related to protesting. and civil disobedience. Beside the first day when protesters damaged property, the rioting was initiated by police unleashing tear gas, pepperspray and violence on crowds of people standing up to the Republican Party.

PHILLY: Philly fans are not described as "violent" and some reporters have even denied the event was in fact a "riot".
ST. PAUL: RNC protesters are indiscriminately described as "scary" or "violent anarchists", "nut-cases", and the incidents were categorically labeled "riots".

PHILLY: there was not an articulated message defending the disruption other than to celebrate a baseball team's winning performance. However, Sports columnists willingly come to their aid.
ST. PAUL: The thoughtful analysis of political culture and political issues is articulated and presented well ahead of time, but the analysis is completely avoided by mainstream observers.

Philadelphia

St. Paul

One of the things that Hyperborea loves doing more than anything else is critiquing the spectacle. The critique of the spectacle has already replaced the critique of reality.

Violins

2008-10-22T15:13:00.000-07:00

(I wouldn't normally be posting stuff like this, but since I made this video I'm linking it here.)

A violin instructor and alumna from the University of Puget Sound, Janet Utterback-Peck, teaches violin students (ages 6 - 14) by recording them and posting their videos on a private YouTube account. She and her community of violin instructors have found that video-taping their students increases the students' self-efficacy, and opens them to a wide range of violinists over the internet.

"I think the physical part - looking - and connecting - what physical motions make certain sounds is key," she says. Janet also uses YouTube to learn tricks from the professionals in her own work as a violinist with the Tacoma and Northwest Symphony Orchestras.

Staci Elliott and I created this short documentary video through Instructional Technology, which is the department that administers a BlackBoard content management system, tutorializes university software, and offers to students and educators regarding technological and pedagogical combinations. In the video I featured a documentary about Jascha Heifetz, which can be seen here, and a rendition of "Last Rose of Summer" by Hilary Hahn (which happens to be one of Janet's favorites). That video can be seen separately here.