And so, what this has done… what it does is it creates a two-fold situation: (1) this way of living has constructed this belief-in-fantasy so rigidly, so regimented, that the fantasy has inserted itself inviolably into the collective psyche so to predetermine the behavior of the very culture. The fantasy is so ensconced in the daily activity of the dominant culture that it cannot even be recognized as a fantasy, but as, what Jean Baudrillard implied with his theory of the precession of simulacra, a consensus reality. (And stand outside this fantasy, point to its insanity, point to the realities [read, atrocities] that exist so to maintain the fantasy of infinite growth, and notice how the culture will respond to you, alienate you.) And (2) to continue living the fantasy of infinite growth as an assumed reality requires the routine importation of resources, and this, as is apparent as it ever has been, requires a military… the most efficient and effective instrument of terror to have ever exist. What the culture is essentially doing here, and has been doing, is deploying terror around the globe to send a message, but that message is also an education, and this creates what Hedges calls a “death spiral.”

The events of 9/11, as is widely understood now, came about because of a certain anti-American (thus anti-Western) sentiment engendered by particular extremist groups.¹ It is without question that these particular extremist groups were, at least in their formative stages, assembled with the guidance, finances, and weaponry of US forces so to keep the Soviets out of Afghanistan. When US victory was achieved in Afghanistan in the late Eighties, it set in motion a series of events that would allow for the West, primarily America, to set up military base after military base throughout the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and its surrounding oil exporting regions over the ensuing decades. It’s important to note that ongoing resource wars have been needed to maintain the fantasy that the dominant culture can continue living the hyper-consumptive lifestyle it has been conditioned to perceive as normal; that we can continue consuming the resources needed to maintain this hyper-consumptive lifestyle forever, despite the fact that the requisite resources needed to do so are finite, are running out, and, will run out; that we can continue living as if we can grow forever on a finite planet, by any means necessary. And for decades we have reinforced this belief through, what Stanley Diamond described as, “brutal conquest abroad and repression at home.” The latter statement immediately unravels the reality of the atrocities committed around the globe, albeit under the guise of a multitude of varying motives. But at the crux of it all is this essential predicament: Empire needs energy and resources not only to grow, but to maintain itself as well. As an empire grows, its demand for energy and resources needed to maintain its complexity exceeds what the immediate landbase has to offer. So begins the colonization of other lands in order to funnel resources back to centers of growth. But as empires expand, resources shrink, and landbases become infecund. And eventually, an entire way of life that has been predicated on the expansion of empire cannot sustain itself. It becomes severely vulnerable, weak. And then it implodes.

And so when an empire attempts to send a message to other communities… a message that says—We need what you have and we will take it if you do not hand it over—well, the message better be pretty convincing. The message better ensure success; after all, the existence of an entire empire is at stake. And that is why terror works. It is traumatic. It gets the message across. But what it also does is it leaves an impression on those it hurts. And some people who are deeply hurt indeed reach a point of rage; and to foment rage, and, to show those who are left with nothing but these feelings of enmity and vengeance, how to terrify others, creates a “death spiral.” It is nationalism against nationalism… Fanaticism versus fanaticism… A way of life versus another’s way of life… all dancing the same dance: a pas de deux of terror. And this reciprocal terror dance doesn’t necessarily make our culture become, as Nietzsche understood it, “the monster that we are attempting to fight,” but merely reveals that this culture has always been that monster we are attempting to fight.

However, what terrifies me more than anything… more than al-Qaida… more than this seemingly self-perpetual terror dance, is the day resources become too unaffordable to continue allowing militaries to convey this culture’s messages around the globe. And if all this culture can identify with is consumption, if all it can turn to in an era of ecological devastation, resource scarcity and global conflict, rising food costs and unemployment… if all it can turn to in the wake of all this is commerce and entertainment that only reflects to the consumer culture the very fantasy it is living… if all this culture can turn to in the wake of damaging earthquakes and unprecedented damaging weather patterns is the Royal Wedding and disputes over the president’s birth certificate—if this culture views the reported killing of Osama bin Laden as confirmation of its delusive fantasy’s promise of infinite growth and consumption and not as merely another act of violence in an endless salvo of terror, if this culture cannot for the life of itself see the physical reality of the planet’s limits and the human lives inextricably dictated by these very limits beyond the fantasy of construction and synthetic ephemeral value, I fear not only the strange appetite, nor the perceptual misguidance of such a strange appetite this fantasy has brought into being, but I truly fear the message it will try to convey when that appetite has no where to go but inward.

1. And I want to make clear that I am only using these terms “anti-American”, “anti-Western” and “extremist groups” in the sense that mainstream media does. The overall message of this essay, for the reader to take away, is to understand that the real extremist group is the one that is rapaciously plundering the planet for resources to keep a particular way of life, one that is destructive and unsustainable in all respects, going. As for “anti-American” and/or “anti-Western” sentiment, we are dealing with a very intricate and convoluted mixture of behaviors and aspirations that pull in different directions. All in all, the essence of “anti-Americanism” and/or “anti-Westernism” encompasses an opposition to draconian regimes morally and financially backed by Western powers, an opposition to US military bases on native land, and the opposition to the theft of endemic resources.

In this interview, Mickey Z provides some possible answers to such a dilemma. “If we were to view all living things—along with ourselves—as part of one collective soul,” Z puts forth, “how could we not defend that soul by any means necessary?”

Frank Joseph Smecker: With today’s social arrangements, every two seconds, somewhere in the world a human being starves to death; every 46 seconds a woman is raped; every day 150 animal species go extinct, 60-70-million plastic water bottles get impetuously discarded (ending up in an ocean already tainted with islands of refuse, sheen with oil), 200,000 acres of rain forest are destroyed, 29,158 children under the age of five die from preventable causes, and 13 million tons of toxic chemicals are released across the globe – all of this, day-to-day… And yet, so many of us are aware of these atrocities. Can you talk about the alarming disconnect in this culture between awareness and change for the better?

Mickey Z: The disconnect may be alarming but it’s not really surprising and definitely not accidental. I just walked in the door and on my walk, I saw a bumper sticker that read: “Spread my work ethic, not my wealth.” In a way, we’re all subjects in an immense social engineering experiment. It’s almost as if the top 5% (economically speaking) want to see how much they can fuck us before we realize who is doing the fucking. They point us at women, gays, ethnic minorities, and “socialists” and we voluntarily choose to aim our anger in those directions. It’s much, much easier, say, to blame so-called “illegals,” than to accept that our very way of life is nothing less than a global crime scene.

FJS: What do you mean by “our very way of life” being “nothing less than a global crime scene?”

MZ: Due to our compliance and/or silence and/or inaction, we’ve played a role in bringing our culture to the brink of social, economic, and environmental collapse.

FJS: You know, some would say we’re not at all on the brink of economic, social and environmental collapse, but, rather, the collapse of it all has already begun. That this is the endgame. And the most important thing to do now is to mitigate the impact of civilization’s collapse and protect what’s left of the natural world by any means necessary. What are your thoughts on this outlook?

MZ: I don’t know. I’ve found that even on a personal level, I can’t always recognize the signs of decay. I guess, whatever stage of collapse we’re in, it’s collapse; thus, all the more reason to get busy, like, yesterday.

FJS: With regard to climate change and ecological collapse, in my opinion it’s very difficult for people to align themselves with an effective outlet when capitalism has co-opted environmentalism and stolen the “green movement” (capitalism has a nasty way of either co-opting, deriding, subverting or eliminating any system of values that poses as an alternative to its own). Here’s my take on why many “activist” groups have such minimal success: a.) they’re too entrenched in the bureaucracy of the dominant system b.) most are “fighting” to preserve civilization in the wake of crisis– refusing to accept that civilization is the problem and root cause c.) not enough activists and groups are radical enough, e.g., the Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club, EPA, et al. are ineffective often due to venality and espousal of dominant cultural norms, values and privileges d.) too many groups and individuals are insular and afraid to align themselves with more militant and radical environmental and animal rights groups (whom haven’t harmed a living being because they’re fighting for the preservation of life) – when clearly both parties want the same ends e.) too many folks don’t want to part ways with their cheap perks the dominant social arrangements “award” them. And the reasons continue. What’s your take?

MZ: I’d say you covered most of the proverbial bases. We’ve gotten so used to corporate propaganda, we no longer recognize it for what it is and we’ll even give our lives to defend it. If only the sharp minds that conjure up such myths and hype were to aim their intellects in the direction of unity…

FJS: Back in March you attended the Left Forum. There you explained why the Left must come to grips with Animal Liberation movements. Can you talk a bit about that?

MZ: Attempting to separate violence against humans from violence against animals (and all nature) is like trying to disconnect the human circulatory system from the respiratory system. The Left’s absence on issues of animal rights, veganism, and darker shades of green is not just inexcusable. It’s suicidal. Industrial civilization is the enemy here, not this particular president or that particular gender or those particular laws. And single issues are not the path to a more sane culture. We need a far more holistic view of radical activism and that cannot happen until most of us recognize the connections between humans and animals, humans and nature.

In the book (and movie), The Grapes of Wrath, Tom Joad sez: “Maybe we’re not all individual souls, but maybe we’re all part of one big soul.” Incredibly basic, yes… but within that simplicity lies what I see as the secret: If we were to view all living things — along with ourselves — as part of one collective soul, how could we not defend that soul by any means necessary?

For more, this podcast plays the talk I gave with some added conversation.

FJS: What impact does factory farming have on the planet?

MZ: We can start with it being the number one cause of human-created greenhouse gases, toss in deforestation, water pollution, antibiotics, hormones, etc., rampant exploitation of workers, and a health holocaust for humans… and we still would not have gotten to the heart of the matter.

FJS: Wow, that’s just the tip-of-the-iceberg huh…

MZ: Yeah. If we strive for justice and freedom, we must extend those goals to all living things. To ignore the ethical nightmare we call factory farming is being a “good German” in the truest sense.

FJS: Do you see any way either to reform or get rid of big-business agriculture?

MZ: Reform? No. Get rid of it? Absolutely. Stop participating in it, educate others about it, organize around the need to end it, and then smash it with everything we’ve got.

FJS: What is the relationship between this culture’s violence against women, the indigenous and the poor, and violence against everything that is wild?

MZ: Control, I guess. It’s much easier to control a homogeneous culture.

FJS: Explain.

MZ: What better way to align yourself with some factions of the masses than to divide those masses based on ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, etc.? There’s a reason why this is the oldest trick in the book: it works like a charm almost every time.

FJS: What is so important about the wild?

MZ: What we call the wild is usually what things looked like before we embraced “civilization” and what good has civilization ever done in the name of peace, health, freedom, justice, and solidarity?

FJS: You’re a pretty radical dude, as am I – but radicalism can imbue almost anything, and nowadays the term is often conflated with terrorism, regressive extremism, Right-ulp(!)-wingism and religious fundamentalism, etc & c… But there’s also a very progressive, exciting and beneficial side to being a certain kind of radical. Explain.

MZ: The Latin origin of the word “radical” is the same as for the word “root,” so I subscribe to that interpretation. Radical, for me, means bypassing the surface impressions and digging deep to the root of… well, everything.

Two “radical” quotes that inspire me:

Lenin sez: “Be as radical as reality.”
MLK sez: “When you’re right, you can never be too radical.”

FJS: You wrote a book back in 2005 titled 50 American Revolutions You’re Not Supposed to Know: Reclaiming American Patriotism. Without giving away too much about the book, care to expound on a couple of those revolutions?

MZ: That was the only book (of 10 and counting) that I was asked to write so it was, at first, a challenge to match visions. Once we settled in, I was able to blend well-known characters and episodes (Thoreau, Betty Friedan, Stonewall, etc.) with lesser-known, but more radical events like Lolita Lebron and others shooting up Congress in the name of Puerto Rican independence, American Indians occupying Alcatraz Island, and American soldiers switching sides in the Mexican-American War. Something must’ve clicked because it’s by far my biggest seller.

FJS: We need more revolutionaries in these times, don’t we?

MZ: Whatever we decide to call them, we need lots more folks who recognize the urgency. If you or I were to see a child wandering toward a busy intersection, we’d likely knock people down to rush over and stop the tyke from walking into traffic. No one would call us too radical or extreme. Well, if more humans could only accept that the global crises all around us represent an emergency no less urgent than the kid/traffic scenario, the actions needed would be more obvious.

FJS: What sorts of resistance are most effective and exciting?

MZ: Whatever works as quickly and effectively as possible, using the skills and gifts unique to each of us. No matter what George W. Obama declares, the truth remains: Action is always better than hope.

FJS: Howard Zinn once suggested we should acknowledge that real social change takes time, and that we all be long-distance runners about it, as it were, not sprinters; but in a time like this, when urgency and opportunity are colliding with inexorable force, what about – to stick with the whole running analogy – the idea of all of us, together, doing a relay, in a marathon? then we can all sprint and do the long-distance run, so to speak.

MZ: Love it… but I’d add in that while we’re waiting for the baton to be passed to us, we must stay busy.

FJS: Absolutely. If we all just wait around ‘til the next Great Revolution, nothing will happen–

MZ: –Oh, something will happen but wow… it’ll be uglier than we ever imagined.

FJS: I’ve had many conversations about all this with many different people – writers, activists, conservationists, friends and family, artists, bands in vans, everyday workers and so on; across the board, the consensus is: We’re screwed. Times are tough for sure. The question so many want to know is: Are we gonna make it through this?

MZ: We can win even if we define winning as creating a softer place to land… but every day lost is making things exponentially worse. When else in all of human history has there been a time when we were in a better position to shape the future? What we do (or don’t do) in the next few years will tilt us all toward either the point of no return or a far more sane form of society. Each and every one of us can take part — right now — in creating the most important social changes ever imagined. As I wrote above, we’re on the brink of economic, social, and environmental collapse. What an extraordinary time to be alive. How lucky are we? We’ve been trusted with the most vital mission of all time: survival.

FJS: What will it take?

MZ: As Derrick Jensen often explains: “The Jews who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had a much higher rate of survival than those who went along. We need to keep that in mind over the next ten years.” Participating in sustained direct action is not a popular choice. It could put us at odds with our friends, family, and community. It could jeopardize our careers. It could even lead to direct conflict with law enforcement officers. Scary stuff, for sure. But ask yourself this: What frightens you more, being judged for getting ticketed for disorderly conduct or comprehending that 80% of the world’s forests and 90% of the large fish in the ocean are already gone? There are good reasons to be afraid. There are better reasons to be bold. It’s time to blossom, comrades. Even with all the fear, pain, dread, and uncertainty we may (or may not) experience while blossoming, remaining tight in the bud is no longer an option for us or for the planet. Just leap and the net may appear.

If we don’t want our legacy to be one of inaction and shame, we must create drastic, permanent change very, very soon… because here’s the most inconvenient truth of all: it’s time to embrace a much darker shade of green.

Mickey Z’s up and coming novel, Darker Shade of Green, will be published by Raw Dog Screaming Press some time soon. Here are two blurbs for it:

“Mickey Z has crafted a novel that is distinctive in both structure and message. The characters’ mission is no less than saving the world, and they pursue this with passionate determination. Written in a compelling collage style that combines a wide variety of forms of narrative, journalism and stirring polemic (including graffiti!), Darker Shade of Green makes us question our assumptions on every level, and inspires us to action.”

– Stephanie McMillan, cartoonist (Minimum Security and Code Green), and co-creator of graphic novel (with Derrick Jensen) As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial

“Mickey Z. has created something the bizarro genre has not yet produced: a thought provoking call to arms. If this book doesn’t make you want to rage for justice, you might want to check your pulse. The people killing this planet for profit and greed will hate this book, all the more reason you need to read it.”

– David Agranoff, author of Screams from a Dying World and co-editor of the Vegan Guidebook to Portland

Frank Joseph Smecker: You began reporting from the front lines of Iraq in November of 2003.  What brought you there?  

Dahr Jamail: Basically frustration and outrage with the “mainstream” media and their almost complete failure to report honestly about the illegal and brutal invasion and occupation. I mean, we clearly had all the facts from the UN on the table from the beginning. It was a no-brainer: It was a sell-job by the Bush administration at the time to get into Iraq. And for some reason I took it personally, and I really wanted to be responsible, as a person living in the US, for what all this meant. I’ve described in the past of my going over there that it was almost for my own mental health. I wanted to see it, write about it, share it with folks – it was something I could do to help the situation.

FJS: What was it like being one of the few unembedded reporters investigating the Iraq war?

DJ: Wow! Well, it was my first experience in a war zone. It was really amazing to be on the ground over there watching, writing, and still reading the media via the Internet and being able to see how the war was portrayed back in the US versus how I was seeing it first hand. The mainstream media was really misleading the American public, spewing out propaganda, cutting and pasting info for articles, like, for example, Judith Miller of the New York Times and her ilk who had a penchant for putting out unverified facts if not blatant lies about what was happening.

FJS: For a while, journalists in Iraq were being detained, harassed, threatened by the US-installed interim government… Can you talk about this? And what sort of daily routine did you maintain to stay safe?
 
DJ: You know, I didn’t encounter much of that myself, thank goodness – didn’t really experience any repression while I was over there. Safety was a huge concern, and I was pretty lucky. I was pretty removed from where US troops were stationed and steered clear of other official sites that made for usual targets. I had minimized my time spent on the streets, stayed in cheap motels. I worked with one interpreter, who had a beat-up car. He was my driver, my interpreter and fixer all in one. He was great, excellent. He would pick me up every morning, and we’d head out to interview folks; half the time I’d head out the door with a particular story in mind, but, oftentimes, entirely different stories would come about. That’s just the way it was. Aside from that I had no security.  Just ‘fitting in’ with the locals was my security, and it worked.

FJS: You had written once that the Iraqi resistance refers to themselves as “patriots.” Explain.  Are we seeing this same phenomenon transpire in Afghanistan?

DJ: OK, with Iraq first. In the initial couple years the general local perception was that people involved in the resistance to the occupation were patriots. Simply put, these are people who are simply resisting the occupation of their country by a foreign power. They have had family members brutally killed, detained, tortured, and humiliated by the illegal occupying forces.
    
Early on it was pretty clear who was pro or anti occupation, but as the years went on, the US bought off much of the resistance, brought in death squads – did the whole divide and conquer racket, and attitudes quickly changed toward the resistance. And still today the resistance has been bought off. For example, there’s the Awakening. And, of course, there’s still a resistance in Iraq, but not like it was the first few years, before the guns went from being pointed at the occupiers to each other.
    
As for Afghanistan, I haven’t reported there, but I do have friends there who are reporting, and there are indeed parallels. In some areas of Afghanistan the people actually prefer the Taliban to the occupation forces, they’re just less brutal… But Afghanistan is a lot more complex than Iraq. I mean, Iraq is complex too, but because I haven’t reported there, and the fact that the country is as complex as it is, it’s harder to make generalizations about Afghanistan.

FJS: Iraq has now, for the most part, disappeared from the mainstream news. Why is this?

DJ: Last time I was in Iraq was in Jan/Feb of 2009. I still have friends over there, and I still follow what’s happening in Iraq – it’s what I’ve been doing for the last seven years. The country is still a mess: Forty-percent of all Iraqis have no clean drinking water; unemployment is ridiculously high; people are still being killed – even today something like 40 people were killed. And on top of all this, virtually no reconstruction is underway: What was that latest headline? Something like $8.7 billion of reconstruction funds, missing (!)… this is the second or third time this has happened. The occupation has been nothing short of a train wreck. The US has gone in there, raped, raided, and pillaged for corporate profit, and will continue to do so as long as it takes to continue to get Western companies in there, and, you know, in that regard, it’s been a success, and so there’s no need for the media to report on Iraq like it had been doing. The US has a permanent beachhead there, the oil companies are in, and all of this is being dutifully followed by the complicit Obama administration, and sadly, that’s the norm.
   
The media says “mission accomplished,” but they don’t talk about Obama’s officials – security advisors before he was even elected, who had decided that they’ll be keeping at least between 50-70,000 troops in Iraq until the end of Obama’s first term (Jan 2013) and, you know, they’re right on track for that. They’re reclassifying troops as noncombat troops to keep them there on small-scale air-force bases called lily pads, to keep a strong military presence there for – ahem – Iran, and, to monitor and control access to Iraqi oil.
   
In Afghanistan, it’s just as bad there now as it was in Iraq the first few years: three-Americans-a-day being killed. Now Afghanistan, from a media perspective, is like Iraq in 2003 through 2005, and that’s where we’re at with Afghanistan.

FJS: Journalism is an institution that’s supposed to monitor the Establishment, but the irony is that the journalism the majority of people experience these days is often propaganda spun by the very corporate and financial interests that have an overwhelming influence on the Establishment. As an independent journalist, can you talk about this conundrum, and what sort of problems arise around corporate media regarding honest reporting?

DJ: Well, OK, when someone is being paid well, and that someone has a job with a big network, like, say: e.g., NBC, the reporting will be limited. I bring up NBC for a specific reason – they’re owned by GE, and GE specializes in weapons manufacturing, has ties with the military, Big Oil, etc. It doesn’t behoove GE if you portray the war for what it is: an illegal and brutal occupation.
   
Also, in most journalism schools throughout the country the myth of objectivity is a whole new thing.  You’re supposed to report both sides without personal feelings, to have no personal perspective, and that is bullshit. The second we decide to cover one story and not another there goes objectivity. Let’s be honest here.  As journalists we give a damn about what we’re reporting.  We care about the people and the places we are reporting about, or at least we should, and that makes for honest reporting. And so there goes objectivity.
   
The myth of objectivity that is propagated so heavily in journalism school, coupled with such strong corporate influence and control over the media, has crippled honest reporting. I mean, remember two or three years ago when NBC aired Karl Rove and his cohorts dancing on stage?

FJS: Right. I remember that.  What a fool!

DJ: Right.  Is that an example of journalism?

FJS: What do you make of the recent switcheroo from McChrystal to Petraeus?
 
DJ: Well, I think Petraeus is another media-created phenom. If you look at what he did in Iraq, he was in charge of the area around Mosul.  He wanted to make Mosul a modern city, use it as a model for how we’ll transform Iraq. To date, right now, Mosul is one of the most violent areas of the country, yet he, Petraeus, keeps getting promoted up the chain in the military. He’s credited with bringing about the surge, but all he really did was bought off the resistance and used death squads and, in turn, got the guns turned from the occupiers to each other.
   
And, really, replacing McChrystal with Petraeus is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter who’s in charge. Petraeus will surely continue buying people off. And you know, like I said, Afghanistan isn’t Iraq.  Look at the history: Khan, the Brits, Russia – all have failed in their attempts to occupy that region. The US is trying to occupy a country that has never been occupied, and we think we can do it because of our hubris and technology alone, and at the end of the day, those two things won’t get the job done.

FJS: Many of us are starting to realize that much of the reconstruction funds for Iraq and Afghanistan end up unaccounted for (like the recent $8.7 billion in Iraqi reconstruction funds that, well, are, lost…) and/or finding its way into the pockets of private contractors, military operations and local counterparts to the former and latter. Do you want to expand on this?

DJ: Well, first off, does anybody actually believe that this country [the US] would spend hundreds-of-billions-of-dollars to invade and occupy simply to help people? If you think so, then you need to go through puberty again, grow up, and look at the world more clearly.  Governments and corporations don’t operate that way. We’re there because of US economic interests. In the case of Afghanistan, there’s a big fat oil and natural gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea running through Afghanistan and part of Pakistan to the coast. If you look at where four of the main US bases in Afghanistan are, they’re right along the pipeline route. The major corporations in Afghanistan are the same that were in Iraq: DynCorp, Blackwater [now known as Xe], Halliburton, etc. etc. The occupation is about making money, maximizing profits, and it’s also – if you look at the geographic placement of the US military bases – part of the strategy of isolating and surrounding Iran. And, again, the Russians, the Brits… they were bled in Afghanistan, and the same will happen to the US. The US is not going to win this.

FJS: The US invasion and occupation of the Middle East extends far beyond just Iraq and Afghanistan, doesn’t it?

DJ: Yes. If you look at the national security strategy for the US, it’s all about using the military to protect what the US views as “national security interests”, which includes other countries’ oil and natural gas sources and reserves, and the shipping lanes of those resources. You can read the Quadrennial Defense Review report in which it explains having a military capable of annihilating any and all adversaries that refuse to toe-the-line regarding US interests; i.e., anyone “hostile” to US interests-security, like, e.g., Iran, Syria – really anyone not bought off becomes a target.
   
When we talk about the Middle East like Iran and further into Asia, such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, all areas possess vital resources and routes for shipping and transport, and in a time of peak resources the war machine is enhanced because the US economy and military machine cannot exist without oil. The US in Iraq is a great example; Russia now, or China, India or the EU will not and cannot access that oil without going through the US. It’s the US Empire project.

FJS: What sort of ecological and cultural damage has the war caused thus far?

DJ: Iraq has been devastated. In a report earlier this week, scientists showed us that so much depleted uranium and other weapons deployed in Fallujah has created a cancer rate higher than what exists in Hiroshima.
   
If you look at what was done during the first Gulf War in Basra, all the way up to Baghdad recently, it’s been total devastation. And now look at Fallujah. It’s a town that’s unlivable. If I was living there and had a family and had means to leave living there, I would’ve left, no hesitation. And that can be said about much of Iraq.
   
Iraqis have been complaining about toxic waste being left by the US military as they pack up and leave smaller bases and move into larger bases. The place is trashed. And historically, from the beginning, when there was looting of cultural centers allowed, on up to things like the ancient city of Babylon being destroyed and becoming Camp Babyl (a US base)… these places have suffered severe damage, looting by US soldiers, and much more. The US has allowed archives to be destroyed; much of the world’s cultural heritage has suffered extreme damage related to the occupation.

FJS: It’s been said that the money used to deploy 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan ($59 billion the House OK’d recently…) is enough to invest in agricultural reconstruction, something that would fare better for their economy moreso than militarization and minerals exploitation… what gives?

DJ: Again, when we look at massive amounts of money being dumped into the occupation, one of the reasons it’s so expensive is due to privatization, which is in accordance with the influx of corporate interests in the region. Private mercenaries are being paid over $1000 per day, of taxpayer’s money mind you, and that’s much more expensive than using the military. Combat pay is maybe 100-bucks-a-day, maybe that. But that’s the whole point: to maximize the profits of companies that make money on war. With regard to the Iraq War, Halliburton, in the first 2-3 years, was posting records of profits regularly. And still right now there are at least 600 Western companies with contracts allowed to operate in Iraq, and that’s what it’s all about – the corporate bottom line. And that’s how it is with the war in Afghanistan. To paraphrase what someone once said: As long as these companies are profiting from war the way that they are, we’ll always have war. The reality of this makes Heller’s Catch 22 look like kids’ stuff.

FJS: OK, let’s switch tracks here.  You’ve been reporting on the BP oil spill as of late. Oil disaster response workers are facing some damningly harsh conditions. Care to explain?

DJ: In the context of everything we’ve discussed so far this is the same war, just a different front. Big corporations are being allowed to do whatever the fuck they want to do; regulations, safety-measures, emergency response plans — all have been given a pass by the government because it’s so clear now who’s running the whole show – not the government but the corporations comprised of the same people running and influencing the government.
   
The first thing that survivors were asked to do when they were helicoptered out from the BP disaster-site was to sign a release form saying they don’t know what happened and that they don’t hold BP reliable. BP could care less about the environment and citizens; all they care about is maximizing profits. And that should not come as a surprise. Corporations have personhood, and their charters hold them down to producing profits for their shareholders, which means minimizing all liability, paying out as little as they can and assuring the operating of business-as-usual. As a result the Gulf of Mexico, assuming these relief wells are successful – and that’s a huge assumption – right now, we’re looking at 2-3 decades to get the Gulf back to where it was before this spill happened, which wasn’t really all that good in the first place. The Gulf was trashed even before the spill. There’s something like 20,000 abandoned wells, deteriorating, leaking oil, and at least three other well accidents in that region have occurred since the BP accident –

FJS: Really?

DJ: Oh, yeah, really! Just recently a tugboat hit a well in Barataria Bay. It sent a 20-100-foot plume of oil into the air, created an oil slick more than a mile long; in a bay that is already one of the most heavily affected bays from the BP oil disaster…

FJS: At mandatory HAZWOPER (hazardous waste operations and emergency response) classes, required by OSHA, disaster response workers are being told the work-to-be-done is “harmless” – wtf?(!), we all know that’s as far from the truth as Neptune is from the Andromeda galaxy… right?

DJ: Right. People in those classes are being told that nothing is harmful. But it makes sense if we understand the logic of corporate charters.  They’re legally obliged to operate that way.  It makes no sense for a corporation with corporate personhood to operate in any other way other than to maximize profit. It’s never about doing what’s good for the people, for the environment – never about the moral thing. Period. 
   
The other problem is that we have a government so bought off, so corrupted, a government that is nothing more than a fucking sock puppet for corporations, and that is why the Gulf is being demolished and why there’s no intellectual honesty about real change in the future.

FJS: We’re led to believe that all these seemingly discrete current events; i.e., the Iraq War, the War in Afghanistan, the BP oil spill, etc & c. are all separate, not interconnected – no matter how tenuous. If it’s possible, would you like to take a crack at connecting these dots, viz. what is the relationship between the culture of Empire, oil, and the ethnic destruction and ecological degradation happening the world over?

DJ: It just so happens that across the world, the areas rich in resources are populated by indigenous cultures. When the US Empire wants those resources the people will either be bought off or eliminated. The same can be said about the natural environment.
   
Just look at the logic behind the BP oil spill. Here was this endeavor entailing the drilling of an oil-well head 5,000 feet beneath the water and, I believe, another 19,000 feet below that… The drilling of this well, and other wells like it, is just another facet of natural resources being in a place where Empire is going to get them no matter what. Here was this giant oil reservoir, it was extremely dangerous to drill there, with a high likelihood for disaster, and, you know, the attitude was: ‘Well, that’s too bad.  We’re gonna drill anyway, ‘cause look at all the money we’ll make…’ And for the record, I think all this talk is horribly depressing, but we have to look at all this clearly if we’re going to behave accordingly, and that means understanding that writing a letter to a senator, if we think that’s gonna change things, well, we don’t have all the facts.

FJS: What will work? What will change things?

DJ: I don’t really have an answer for that. But we all have to realize that we’re all complicit in this. We all have to start looking at what we can do to withdraw our support for this economy. Buying less crap, driving less, growing our own food – and, of course, more radical direct action targeting corporations and the officials who represent them. A message needs to be sent to these people expressing that they will pay a price if they keep behaving the way they are. I’ll leave the rest to peoples’ imagination.

If one were to apply the same metrics used during the Great Depression to measure today’s unemployment numbers, nationally, the rate would look more like twenty-five percent. In other words, these days the BLS conveniently excludes the homeless, part-timers seeking full-time employment, those who want a job but have ceased their job-hunting out of ready-to-drop frustration, and then some, from its routine employment evaluations.  

To assess (read: fudge) the numbers so to generate data purporting to show a not-as-bad-as-it-really-is economy, the CPS (Current Population Survey) measures employment solely by “work-related and job-search activities during a specific reference week.” Moreover, because “unemployment” is a relative term, to explain it one must first define it. And so seeking a clearer definition during the Clinton Administration, “discouraged workers” was expunged from official US unemployment statistics altogether; “discouraged workers” a rubric consisting of: any person of legal employment age not currently looking for employment, or, in other words, folks “marginally attached to the labor force…” And there you have it – official employment mensuration that intentionally leaves out a large portion of the potential workforce; that is to say, the thing’s invalid, artificial.    

Since 2004, the wealthiest ten percent of US households owned 81 percent of all stock, the lower 80 percent of the US, according to the Economic Policy Institute, owned a paucity of “less than eight percent of US equity.” Nothing has changed since ’04. The Ruling Class does indeed hold a monopoly on productive property. Writing in the July/August 2010 issue of Z Magazine, in his article “Hitting the Class Ceiling”, Rob Larson explains that, “higher unemployment puts employers in a stronger position relative to workers, who are afraid to join the jobless.” What this means, Larson avers, is: “higher productivity and lower wage growth for workers and, therefore, higher profits” for private industry – giving some vertical mobility to the stock indexes.    

So, OK, recent rises in stock indexes only reflects how well the Ruling Class is doing these days. And unemployment numbers are bad, they’re probably, in all likelihood, far much worse than what we’ve been told, broadcasted incessantly via “specialists,” citing verbatim, contrived reports. But if you think about it, what’s really so bad about high unemployment numbers? Considering job losses in all sectors of the U.S. economy – i.e., white and blue collar, manufacturing and service sectors, both private and public spheres – if continued unabated, we can count on lowered consumption rates; less production of toxic chemicals; less worker-exposure to toxic chemicals; less PAHs (polyaromatic hydrocarbons) belched out into the atmosphere, absorbed into tree-leaves; encumbered productivity and more pressure on private producers (read: exploiters) and so on…     

Think about it, with an economy slowing down to a snail’s pace, burgeoning with unemployment, collapse and the end of the Age of Imperialism is so close we can all taste it. Centuries of capitalism, corporatism, industrialism, governmental abuse, and the massive cultural and ecological damage perpetrated by those who have benefited from all the above, has finally come up against a wall. The era of “limitless” growth fueled by fossil fuels – a scheme as pyramidal as the culture that propounded it, has proven itself fallible, bankrupt, immoral, unsustainable – outright stupid. And now it is time to surf the decline, as it were, weathering economic caprice as mercurial as the climatic vagaries global climate change presents us. So surf’s-up (!)     

And fret not. The more unemployment there is, the more funemployment there is. Simple. Don’t let the rhetoric of production (e.g., What’s wrong with you, get a job…) get the best of you. The word “unemployment” may have some pejorative connotations – but only according to the standards by which the Ruling Class measures the bottom majority. Conveniently, They (the Ruling Class) i.e., the top five percent who own two-thirds of American capital; i.e., those who control productive property, want you to believe that working for them for suppressed wages is much better than joining the (ulp) Unemployed. But when unemployment becomes funemployment, then never mind those greedy tycoons, who, don’t forget, are culpable for this mess in the first place.    

And so like unemployment, “funemployment” must be defined: The fun employment of the unemployed and/or those marginally attached to the labor force to partake in cooperative endeavors, esp. endeavors entailing sustainable management of sustainable social arrangements, viz. social arrangements characterized by dynamic equilibrium and convivial reciprocity with the landbase upon which they rely. (Which we’ll get to in further detail, in a moment, down below.) Or, really, “funemployment” can just be any ‘ol fun-to-be-had, in a time of sociopolitical ataxia, in direct unequivocal spite of the Power Elite and the imbalanced, socially-stratified experiment we identify as civilization.

Like, say, e.g., you’re unemployed, collecting government money, and you’re just sitting around surfing the Web, using a pirated Internet connection, maybe in California, maybe smoking marijuana, legally, that you bought with government money issued to you via unemployment services (whatever it takes to stick it to ‘em). Don’t feel ashamed, you’ve just entered the “funemployment” pool. Keep going, or not going. The point being – you’re not your job. And don’t ever let some Talking Head make you think, feel or believe otherwise.    

It’s absurd for anyone to allow his/her life to be characterized by an economy that has severely damaged the ecological infrastructure of this planet, imperiling our collective future; immiserating our communities while profits flee elsewhere and natural environments suffer degradation (e.g., Appalachia). It’s perhaps that era, now, in which our lives become characterized by the relationships we foster, between each other and the land, and, just as important, by the work we do. Not occupation, but work, good ‘ol Bruno Bauer-blessed work.    

Here is where the good times roll. In an era of declining fossil fuels, and talk of the total collapse of entire economic and industrial infrastructures and institutions (the recent BP oil spill [along with the thousands of other oil and toxic chemical spills that occur per annum the world over] is testament to the fact that, in the words of Yale professor Robert Shiller, “we’re just plunging headlong into the future without knowing what we’re doing…”), one can flock to the very corporate institutions that are at fault for impoverishing the cultural, ecological and economical capital of the world, and toil in high-intensity production jobs for peanuts… or, one can turn the other cheek, completely ignore the industry behemoths for a change, and navigate the terrains of collapse within one’s immediate community. Practice endogenous growth (growth from within); create walkable, bike-friendly downtowns; turn lawns into gardens and/or participate in your local community garden; pick up a trade; barter; join your local Transition Town movement; forage for wild edibles; make musical instruments out of things you find in the trash and start a band; boycott the corporatocracy… The things one can do in a time of (f)unemployment are endless.     

With all this (f)unemployment going around, there is now more time to get out in the local community, relocalize, meet new people, foster new relationships, grow food together, find food together, restore land bases, take a break, hop on a bike, go swimming, watch the land come alive with animated life and then, resume community-based work. Now is not a time for belligerent bigoted Rightwingism (you wacky T-Partiers, you… look what it’s done to Arizona: elimination of all-day kindergarten statewide, 4-day school weeks in some parts, an 80% budget reduction for state parks [2/3 of which are on the brink of closure], a deficit as bad as if not worse than Cali’s…). No, rather than allaying fear and grievances with patriotic nationalism, it’d be wise to turn inward toward the local community – think Gemeinschaft folks, not Gesellchaft. As famed anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski once put it: “The gardens of the community are not merely a means to food; they are a source of pride and the main object of collective ambition.”    

Just as Chris Keating from the band Yeahsayer croons in the song “2080”: I can’t sleep when I think about the times we’re living in, I can’t sleep when I think about the future I was born into”… Seriously, I, too, can’t sleep when I think about all that. But not out of fear inasmuch as excitement, because these are compelling times. Just the other day I exchanged with my neighbor some chanterelle mushrooms I picked in the woods by my home for a week’s worth of produce grown from her garden. The only thing it cost the two of us was time. Time well spent outdoors, in the fresh air, in the soil, re-learning how to self-sustain, how to share, how to cooperate – not toiling indoors somewhere for some impersonal competitive corporate abstraction for some green paper we all perplexingly agree holds real pecuniary value.

Kirkpatrick Sale, commenting in 2007 on the dollar’s value, warned of the imminent collapse of the American dollar. Because constricted by a national debt of nearly $9 trillion and showing “no sign of declining —in fact, rising enormously since 1995 and precipitously since 2002 — and by a trade deficit of $545 billion,” Sale points out, the dollar does not have a bright future. “Whether the trigger will be China’s switch to euro investments, or Iran and Saudi Arabia’s opting for a petro-euro instead of a petro-dollar, or a general worldwide distrust of the American cockeyed economy, is hard to say — but it could be one or all,” admonishes Sale, “and our economic bubble will collapse in a heap. And then the only useful currencies will be those based on real worth, calculated at a basically local level, and precious metals, which are primarily useful at local levels as well.”

One of these days, soon enough, there will be a stark cultural divide – those with paper money, and those surviving, co-operatively living in functional sustainable communities.

I’ve got an abstract (maybe a bit platitudinous and overworked too, but still and all…) aphorism for you: Science is the priesthood of industry worshipping the god of production in the house of economics. Always remember that. We could debate back and forth for days, perhaps even years, over whether or not science is a fundamentally good thing or not. It may create cool things and cool effects, but calculating the goodness of it requires a-whole-nother system of review.

Let’s not kid one another. Science, like religion, is a manifestation of the dominant culture at large. On one hand it’s another run-of-the-mill agent of socialization, one that seeks to conflate the powers to command and control with Truth; moreover, any door to a particular truth that science claims to open up, in turn, shuts the door to other truths, as philosopher, author and environmentalist, Derrick Jensen, apprised me of when dialoguing with him a while back.

The wrongdoing that science is guilty of is manifold. Sure, for some, this incrimination may be too ostentatious and flamboyant to be taken seriously, maybe even offensive for some others, but beneath science’s veneer of “progress” and “advancement” the allegation is sensibly legit. Need I not mention the word “Gulf” (?)

And so anyhow, ask yourself -– is not science something that emerges from a specific cultural context? And is not mathematics (which is required in order to practice scientific ritual) just a set of symbols that has arisen from that particular cultural context, affecting the ways of living it arises from? Are not symbols anything more than a notional reality intended to momentarily substitute physical reality –all of this only giving meaning to the cultural context from which it all arises? Beyond the confines of culture these practices and methods dissolve into myths, myths that don’t tell truths inasmuch as they just produce effects. Effects that serve a utilitarian purpose for the very culture, and, more specifically -– polity, from which they emerge. Think about it.

Moreover, the galvanizing forces of science are comprised mostly of theory not concrete fact (which is rhetorical phrasing in, and of, itself), and theories are always subject to change. Always. And so the rhetoric that shapes theoretical validity often shapes the way particular theories are interpreted, perceived, applied, etc. So, OK, let’s run with a really arcane example here. There’s the 2nd law of thermodynamics with its theoretical axioms of ordering, metabolic rates, entropy and so on…

Now, I’ve done my reading up on the myth that the arrow of time is putatively dependent on the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (you know the law, I know the law, so there’s no need to explain it in full detail [and if you’re not well apprised of 2LTD (= 2nd Law of ThermoD) you can always Wikipedia it these days…]). At any rate it’s been confirmed that the “science of complexity” (with a broader purview than chaos theory) has demonstrated that not all systems move toward disorder, to paraphrase scientist Roger Lewin. And most importantly, only isolated closed systems – in which no exchanges with environment are allowed – exhibit the 2nd Law’s irreversible trend. Not open systems. And I would maintain that the universal world and its material-members (viz. biomes, life-forms, matter-w/-potential-to-be-sentient [to get all Alan-Wattsian/Vedantic on you], etc. & c. that constitute the miraculous matrix of organic processes and symbiotic relationships synecdochically known as the “web-of-life”) that constitute our physical reality, here and now, are open systems not closed systems, if we want to use the whole “systems” rhetoric.

As regards the universe, I don’t know whether or not it’s open or closed. No one truly does. We really have no clue whether or not the total entropy of the universe is increasing, decreasing, remaining stationary, or forming the shape of an asshole ready to shit out more galaxies, to phrase it figuratively. (And yes, I fully comprehend that if you put into numerical mathematical expression, the metabolic rate at which complexity refines and perpetuates itself or whatever, and plot those numbered progressions in circular fashion, you end up with a spiral, like e.g. a conch shell, expanding outwards, moving farther out while still in a familiar rotational pattern, maybe picking up a little speed with each successive orbit… neat… I guess [and even neater to think about under the influence of some certain substances...]. But and so, good job for abstracting such a thing, but has anyone really experienced this? Has anyone empirical evidence of this (acid trips don’t count btw)? Didn’t think so. So, in a slightly more-than-slight sorta way, to resolutely put one’s faith into the stories of science is extremely close to being as silly as resolutely putting all one’s faith into the stories “handed” down by a omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent (which is a crock of bull – I looked everywhere for God in my jar of peanut-butter this morning and no dice) patriarchal sky God or of those stories pertaining to a revenant Christ who will restore a sacred “moral” (totalitarian) Kingdom [according to the deluded fucking-nuts power fantasies of Doug Coe et al.]).

But and so, as you can clearly see, interpretation of even some of the most complex theories are often hinged on semantics-w/-an-agenda, borne in upon skewed perception; i.e., perspective (which is shaped by culturally-endorsed stories, principles, concepts, etc.) applied to define and explicate phenomena. Even time, whether used as a constant or variable, is still an undefined quality of physics: “We can’t say it is ‘now’ in the universe, there’s absolutely no fixed interval that is independent of the system to which it refers,” avers scholar and professor, John Zerzan.

[And reasons behind results of the scientific method, like the colors-of-things, are not intrinsic to the real world but simply a matter of perception: hinged more on qualia than on physical reality -– qualia having to do with the direct experience of a quality or property.]

In the end, even these abstruse physical theories are completely characterized by subjective understandings of, and reactions to, semantics and rhetoric that are applied to convey abstraction -– not physical reality, for a specific end-goal, one which is, more often than not, politically structured.

So science is always dictated by rhetorical phrasings as mere desperate attempts to understand and substantiate, concretely, the perceived effects of matter reacting with energy. And, of course, the desperation to understand all this is facilitated by a cultural desire to control, which is pretty sociopathic -– the whole wanting-to-control thing… Not to mention, forcing an entire planet to conform to abstraction is indeed behind most of the planetary mess that exists today.¹)

If we pause and reflect on what, exactly, science (and it’s requisite mathematics) has done to/for the world, we end up with depressing analysis: Defective oil wells killing marine life and destructively suffusing wetlands with deadly petrol chemical clouds; in the US every single mother’s breast milk is tainted with dioxin. Yet, 2.2 billion lbs. of pesticides are produced and used each year by Americans alone; every single river, brook and stream is fouled with carcinogenic material; 14,000 people die bi-weekly from preventable cancers. At one time people were once able to drink straight from the now sullied bodies of fresh water. Are we not ashamed? We placate our fears and guilt with hollow misleading economic progress indicators and casuistic claims to longer lives; with innovation frivolously miscegenating with college education, but the truth is, we are only one out of millions of beings, alive, sharing this only planet as home. It’s absurd to continue living as if human beings are the only species that matters, that civilization is the only sane way to live, and that science is the ultimate and supreme and putatively infallible method of inquiry. When, in fact, this is all rather an insane way of living. Apparently.

It’s true that, in essence, we are all just energy in meta-stable state. But we are also subjective social beings with real emotions, with agency and willful volition, whose actions and interactions have repercussions that pervade the world we inhabit. To deny this is either ignorant or pathological or perhaps both.

Truth be told, none of us need to understand math or, say, e.g. neuroscience to know that it is wrong to befoul and/or destroy one’s Place.²) Nor do any of us need to learn how to apply propositional calculus to rhetorical phrasings for utmost persuasive logic to stop this culture from e.g. erasing the mountainous climes of Appalachia forever with ammonium nitrate mixtures so to power microwaves and television sets via burning powdered bituminous. And all the while college bio-students are taught the Hardy Weinberg equation (p²+2pq+q²=1) to discern particular allele frequencies to determine whether or not evolution is occurring in a given population, 120+ species go extinct each day. And we definitely don’t need conservation biology to protect the remaining intact landbases (although, at this point it sure as hell doesn’t hurt, so go nuts).

All it really takes is an active and defensive stand against the entire Megamachine. Deep down we all know this in our hearts. And it pains us to know this, to admit this, so we repress it -– continue weeding the garden, so to say. Business as usual. We continue with our classes, our jobs, ignoring, denying, repressing what we already know and hoping that there are better employment or cash rewards and a fortuitous fix for us at the other end. All responsibility jettisoned onto the Icarus — wings of hope.

And so speaking of that slippery bugger known as Hope, science has fomented a precarious hope that despoils all agency and responsibility intrinsic to being a human being. People tend to rely on science to fix the problems that science “discovers” (or rather, creates) do they not? Here we are, on a tiny planet whose fragile ecological infrastructure is being systematically destroyed through extractive industries and latter’s instruments and expedients and their byproducts, all born from the progenitor that is science — or rather, Science™. Instead of taking the responsibility to clean up the mess this culture has created of the only known planet that supports complex life, most are delegating that appointment to science and technology — both of which requires a growth economy, fossil fuels and extractive industries et al. in order to maintain, let alone advance. There is much illogic embedded in the latter system. (And let’s not forget how much profit and power such a system generates for a privileged few, btw.)

Too, science is far from democratic. Fragmented into specialized interests, its atomization of the world’s information is handled hermetically within exclusive spheres of academia and intellect. The generalist is often castigated as too subjective or whatever; the critic either too spiritual or superstitious or, conversely, an unscrupulous picaroon (i.e. a F’n-nutcase-gone-bananas); the disbeliever too stupid and so on. There is much more I could expatiate on, but for the sake of time and word limits, let’s jump a track or two and discuss the science of “race.”

The idea of biological race is a social construct, a societal organizing principle fabricated in order to confer power and privilege on one group through the disenfranchisement, oppression and exploitation of another group. The notion of racial superiority has been around just about as long as civilization has been around (another great reason to replace civilization with a saner way of being in the world). The idea of race was “scientifically” used to erroneously and egregiously justify slavery (which says a lot about justice) — an institution that has been behind civil engineering since day one and, is still extant today (there are more slaves today than traversed the Middle Passage, btw).

“[David] Hume allowed that Black people might be able to develop certain attributes of human beings in much the same way that a parrot picks up a few words.”³

Thomas Jefferson posited about Blacks in his day: “Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid [how could they TJ Euclidean geometry was never central to their culture (?!), besides, the Yaqui Way explains that not all of physical reality’s dimensions conform to Euclidean geometry and spacial relations…]; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless and anomalous.”⁴

Other examples of racist scientific sophistry encompass Buffon’s classification schemes; Blumenbach’s phrenological conjectures; Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s contemporary and insular theory of the “tangle of family pathology” in which he argued that multigenerational, matrifocal familial arrangements (which are beautiful arrangements, and far more saner than patriarchal arrangements — it’s upsetting to know that in this culture matrifocality is radically attenuated and suppressed by incorrigible patriarchy) were responsible for Black economic problems.

The Tuskegee Experiments is another testament to science’s cruel, casuistic and unwavering racist logic. And so was the countless other physiognomical and anatomical reasoning applied during the 18th, 19th, and 20 centuries (read Zygmunt Bauman’s Modernity and the Holocaust for an incredible indictment for the depraved cruelty and horror made real by the mechanistic rationalistic instrumental scientific worldview: a Weltanschauung endemic to the dominant culture) to rationalize the slavery-inducing and social-engineering/controlling instrumentality over non-whites, underprivileged whites, social deviants, et al. — all borne in upon “scientific” thought, as mechanisms and means for productive ends (and, oh yeah, don’t forget about eugenics either… which still exists today in some places in the US [reconnoiter the program CRACK]).

What’s striking is that, while “enlightened” Europeans were expanding westward in the age of exploration, systematically murdering, with the steadfast intent to permanently remove the indigenous peoples of the “New” World, the occupying Europeans were routinely admonished by their victims that what they were doing was wrong — that they were all “brothers” and “sisters”; “all children of the earth,” lamented the natives. Such reproach was met with depraved indifference and the native population of North America was reduced by 98%. If there is any Holocaust being denied today that demands indemnification of the highest order btw, it’s the one through which the United States (and Canada too)⁵ was founded upon.

The same culture that carried out the most horrifically successful genocide in the history of human development is the same culture that conceived the religion of science to supersede the traditional, indigenous tenets of being-in-the-world. The native tribes of North America did not need an AAA peer-reviewed disquisition on whether or not biological race is real or contrived to “discover” that, in fact, all human beings are naturally equals. Such a belief was intrinsic to their worldview to begin with. Fancy that. It’s perplexing to ponder that after centuries of racist terror, endorsed by scientific/philosophical/cultural ideology and panegyrics, it took rigorous objective investigation and observation for the Western social sciences to eventually (re-)”discover” that: ‘whoa, hold up now – whites and nonwhites are not disparate races, but are, in fact, genetically, biologically and, ipso facto, socially equal.’ Whaddya know (?) Europeans are F’n geniuses (!) …so this all implies. This ‘logic’ is so ridiculous and insane, it’s mind numbing.

But even more unsettling is that, despite the Triple-A findings of ‘98, racism still exists today as severe as it always has. Robert Jensen wrote in The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege: “[The] third racist holocaust perpetrated by the United States…[is] the attack on the Third World to extend and solidify the US empire…”⁶ and that, “The United States continues to pursue an economic and military policy abroad that offers as its underlying assumption a simple but quite bizarre assertion: The primary beneficiaries of the resources, both human and natural, of developing countries – that is, the countries of the ‘black and brown and yellow’ peoples of the world – should not be those people but corporations and wealthy investors in the United States.”⁷

If W.E.B. DuBois were alive today, he’d ridicule the US’s self-aggrandizing “triumphalism” regarding its conceited and erroneous claims to having “transcended racism.” What DuBois stated in The Souls of White Folk, an essay he scribed following WWI, still rings true today:

It is curious to see America, the United States, looking on herself, first, as a sort of natural peacemaker, then as a moral protagonist in this terrible time. No nation is less fitted for this role. For two or more centuries America has marched proudly in the van [sic] of human hatred…Instead of standing as a great example of the success of democracy and the possibility of human brotherhood America has taken her place as an awful example of its pitfalls and failures, so far as black and brown and yellow peoples are concerned.⁸

I’ll adduce these words uttered by Lawrence Summers, Obama’s Chief Economic Advisor:

Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]?…The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings of the increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that…I’ve always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted…Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.

One more time: Science is the priesthood of industry worshipping the god of production in the house of economics.

I opine that science, as it has been and is practiced today is not a method of inquiry insofar as a method to rationalize the effects of an irrational system. Logic, as many famous mathematicians (driven mad) have made incontrovertibly clear (like e.g. Kurt Gödel), is not infallible– but rather, fundamentally flawed (e.g., the whole if-a-system-is-consistent-it’s-not-complete-therefore-the-consistency-of-propositions-can’t-be-proven-w/in-the-system thing). Sure we can do manipulations with numbers that assume each and every thing that they – numbers – correspond to is identical. But in the real world, nothing is identical.

And so what are the costs of teaching people that the world is made up of generalized objects to be manipulated, counted and exploited? One-plus-one does not equal two. If one were to die in an automobile accident along with a passenger, two people don’t die. An entire web of relationships is altered, an entire history goes too. This applies to everything the world is comprised of; ‘1’ or any other mathematical symbol denoting value does not and cannot accurately account for a web of relationships, personal history, propensities, proclivities, affinities, emotions and so on. Why? Because all these things are not fixed in space and time, not 3-D Cartesian coordinates, not static — they’re dynamically fluid, always in a state of flux. It becomes silly to invest everything in the assumption that numbers can and will reveal what’s possible, probable and necessary. The world already teaches us that without symbols through direct experience. I’m not saying that we should forgo these studies altogether – I appreciate science and mathematics as much as the next Snoot (myself being one heck of a Snoot) — but there is a level of responsibility one must bear out when deciding to embark upon enlightenment. In other words, the hidden abhorrent capability of numbers is that it is much easier to exploit and/or rub out a number than it is to do so to a living being whether it be hectares of forest for prefab homes; thousands of metric tons of bituminous coal to power microwaves, or to keep fridges cool for Mountain Dew and stuff; tons of sardines, blue fin and Atlantic salmon for the consumers’ diet; or fleets of disenfranchised immigrant workers, etc and c. And that’s the crux. It’s so damn important to remember that there is deadly danger in ascribing numbers to the lifeworld.

But and so given the breadth and scope of the impersonal, indifferent, heinous, precarious and pernicious tendencies of numbers and mathematics, one must ask: What are the implications of an entire economic system based on the presumption that the world is comprised of objects to be counted and used? What about an entire belief system — science?

Let’s be clear here. Math and science undoubtedly produce effects, but let us not mistake effects for truths lest we reduce what’s left of a living world to a spectrum of objects and forced-effects, synthesized by science and production, and lay total waste once and for all to an entire field of experience this planet affords us. Science, in many ways, is an investment in matter hedged by the fallacy of materialistic indemnity against invariable organic processes and ecological exigencies and adverse repercussions ricocheting against the thresholds of these limits in response to the hyper-exploitative behavior of this culture. This. Is. Not. Sustainable.

Science has had centuries to prove itself as neutral, as beneficial. It has yet to do so and time has run out. Our global climates are in irreversible change; our ecological infrastructure is irrevocably damaged; and life on this planet is vanishing faster than ever before. At this juncture in time we have to decide: science and technology? or an animate planet with intact ecosystems with all sorts of life and culture arising from unique places, each year becoming more diverse and enriched than the last? We can steward the latter into happening, if only we take on the responsibility.

1. E.g.: requisite industrial production to meet the demands of particular economic theory; q.v. “Against Prometheus: An Interview With Derrick Jensen.” (Too, I could go off on a tangent about Ayn Rand and her despicable objectivism, but let’s just leave it at this: Mother of Objectivism battled depression and an amphetamine addiction her whole life.
2. (Duh.
3. wtf
4. Supra.
5. The entire contingent of the West is, to a fair extent, complicit in the crimes against life on Earth. But since I am a citizen of the US, by virtue of my proximity and nationality, it is my obligation to decry US policies and the latter’s effects and implications first and foremost.
6. Q.v., Robert Jensen, The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege, (San Francisco: City Lights Publishers, 2005), p. 35.
7. Ibid., p. 63.
8. W.E.B. DuBois, Darkwater: Voices From Within the Veil, (Mineola. N.Y.: Dover, 1999), p. 28.

Year after successive year, analysis shows more species gone, more preventable cancer rates ascending, more ecological and climatic havoc caused to the planet, etc & c. Here in Vermont one could drink from the mountain streams no more than fifty years ago. These days you’d be a fool to attempt it without some kind of water-purifying mechanism. Unless action is taken to reverse the démodé trend of globalization and latter’s ensuing planetary destruction, the next generations may not even have running water to purify. Apparently.
   
In this postmodern era of globalization (which is really the extenuation of colonialism, or better yet, the management of postcolonial assets perpetrated and secured by the violence of Empire and its omnicidal program euphemized as “civilization”) it’s important to see the concessions for what they really are.
  
Let’s start with the Internet. For example, Google’s search engine isn’t some benevolent ethereal wish-granter. Server plants require tremendous amounts of energy to allow search engines to function. Every Google search, every Yahoo! search – at the click of a mouse, requires the burning of fossil fuels. The amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere by server plants rivals that of the car-manufacturing industry, btw. Too, there are riparian server plants along the Colombia River. Chinook salmon is disappearing from this river. And what about computers? These gadgets use 1500 kg of water and 10X their own mass in fossil fuels and other chemicals, and then some in their manufacturing process. To go paperless is not to ‘Go Green.’
   
Then there’s coltan (columbite tantalite) that, refined to tantalum, is necessary for capacitors, which store an electrical charge in every electronic device imaginable (e.g., laptops, DVD players, cellular telephones [yes, even your iPhone boyz’n’galz], Playstations et al and so on). The mining of coltan along the DRC (= “Democratic” Republic of Congo)/Rwandan border has been behind seemingly endless civil war between tribes, claiming more than 5 million lives. Prepubescent children are handed guns and forced to partake in the raping and murdering of entire village communities. Mining for this mineral is also erasing the Eastern Lowland Gorilla from the planet. All this beautiful life is being lost in exchange for a cheap handset, for another pixel-in-motion PS3 RPG, or for that stupid iPad or something…
   
The construction of undersea cables disrupts the benthic ecosystems of the ocean floors. Cell towers and their wacky EM waves are killing migratory songbirds. Technological advancement requires cheap energy. We are running out of cheap energy. Besides, cheap energy may be a bargain in the pecuniary sense, but it’s costing us real physical life on a grand scale.
   
It’s true that globalization is “making it easy for anyone to do remote development,” rejoices the imbecile Thomas Friedman. But what that really means is corporate CEO’s can now manage their industrial plants in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, China, Indonesia, India, Nicaragua, et al from the comforts of their own homes, offices and conference rooms without having to witness first-hand, the environmental degradation they are causing, or the abject living conditions they are creating: the despoliation of water and air quality, the acidification of ocean waters, the lengthening of the endangered species list, the birth defects of children, the civil unrest and hunger, the wars being fought, women being raped, subsistence and small-scale farmers crying, thousand-year-old trees toppled, chopped – vanished. They don’t see the polar bears drowning in gelid waters, a tragic end to the searching of food in an area rapidly melting on account of this culture’s negligent indulgence in fossil fuels and industrial production.
   
Or on a more domestic front, e.g., King Coal doesn’t notice the tops of mountains missing in Appalachia – their CEO’s too busy teeing-off on the golf courses that replace them. These f***kers only notice the large subsidies the US supplies them; they don’t hear the heavy sobs of distressed mothers piercing the darkest hours of the night as they cradle in their laps children who are coughing incessantly and choking violently on their own spittle, suffering from blue-baby syndrome caused from inhaled coal ash. King Coal execs don’t care about the more-than-750-miles of watershed choking on the detritus of mountaintops, scarring the miraculous matrix of organic processes and symbiotic relationships synecdochically known as the “web-of-life.”
   
Meanwhile, when inundating floods aren’t shuffling toxic coal-slurry everywhere, drought continues to plague the surrounding Appalachian regions, and the water bottle industry persists in extracting copious amounts of groundwater faster than can be replaced by the hydrologic cycle. The bottled water is then sold to exploited miners who work all day, who live in abject poverty, while Texas burns all the coal to power death row, where they hold the record in executions of mentally ill prisoners.
    
Globalization has affluenced the upper hierarchy, while below, people and forests die and disappear. Ninety-five percent of North America’s original forests have been clear-cut. Gone. And every stream and river in the continental US contains carcinogenic material. What once was a population of 60 million “genetically pure” buffalo grazing the Great Plains has been decimated to a federally controlled population of less than 15,000. The rate of species extinction is presumably “10,000 times faster than what has historically been recorded as normal”; and there is a “trash-vortex” the size of the continental US drifting in the Pacific.
   
Essayist and novelist Arundhati Roy reveals that overseas, the Indian government let sixty-three million tons of grain rot while twelve million tons were “exported and sold at a subsidized price the Indian government was not willing to offer the Indian poor.”  Since 1989, police and security forces have killed approximately 80,000 people in Kashmir. Women have been gang-raped by security forces; Muslims and Sikhs have been beaten and murdered; and in the police stations it isn’t rare to see: “people being forced to drink urine to being stripped, humiliated, given electric shocks, burned with cigarette butts, having iron rods put up their anuses to being beaten and kicked to death,” writes A. Roy.

These abovementioned atrocities, all of them, have been employed under the auspices of ambiguous and dubious anti-terrorism acts such as POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act), the Armed Forces Powers Act and more (similar to the domestic PATRIOT Act and the Homeland Security Act). To paraphrase Roy, such acts allow security forces to charge individuals as “terrorists” (while corporate private enterprises and government back the removal of people by force to dismantle intact fecund landbases, mind you) for: acting out civil disobedience; speaking out against and/or petitioning the establishment; opposition to free trade, privatization, and globalization; alongside other varieties of dissent against the establishment, capitalism, Western ethics, and/or for just being poor. Even young children have been imprisoned and held without bail under POTA.
   
Meanwhile, CEOs, shareholders, developers, and (obviously) private and national security forces inflict massive violence on citizens and land without any accountability (think back to the horrific 1984 incident in Bhopal when poisonous gas leaked from a US-owned pesticide company killing thousands of people), perseverating in the psychopathy of hyper-exploitation to funnel resources back to the epicenters of “culture” and growth.
   
Where’s the justice? It is found in resistance to global corporate privatization and in defense of a rekindled love for the natural world we are a part of. Make every day a damn Earth Day and fight like hell for the future of this planet. Step 1: Start deglobalizing and begin relocalizing.

What worries me is the current milieu of The Country. Like all other empires before the US, over-extension of assumed power through the use of Imperial military might and misperceived economic privilege is thinning out the foundation; fulcrums are deteriorating; substructures are moldering; the plinth is crumbling.

This can be interpreted figuratively and/or literally. Anyhow, presumably, the parabolic rate at which Zero is reached invariably speeds up along the descending curve, following a zenith period. And like anything that rides Gravity’s Rainbow, the ride ends with a bang. If we apply this law to (geo) politico-economics then history, or rather, the archival anecdotes of civility’s economic persistence, or, OK, let’s refine this and call it cliometrics, illustrates that Political Zero is no fun to attain.

In the last days of Rome, G.A. Diocletian, faced with economic woes and one military imbroglio after another, decided to divide the empire, and, executed the final persecution of the Christians. This wasn’t a novel tactic but, rather, (N.B.) a veteran stratagem to maintain power by any means necessary. Division, persecution, coerced/co-opted assimilation, exodus, et al. blights the stories of civilization since latter’s beginning.

Gilgamesh murdered the Keepers of the Forest and seduced the Wild Man with prurient concessions; interpret that as you may. The Fertile Crescent dried up as quickly as the ziggurats went up. Cedar forests and bogs gave way to sprawling densities of people, later replaced by Saharan desertification.  The story of the Hittite empire narrates the Battle of Kadesh and subsequent civil war and coups galore. And it’s safe to say that that entire region’s early empires were rife with social turbulence, reaching a terminal period of economic decline piggybacking ecological problems; the two go together like beans & rice.

Then there was Rome’s political ataxia. And more to come. Skip forward a ways and Britain basically screwed over, big time, India to screw over China, also immiserating the Irish, claiming Ireland as cantonal farmland for British Commonwealth’s aristocratic collation. Spain’s monarchical tyranny persecuted Moorish tenants. Ringing up some nasty debt, Spain commissioned some seriously bloody pogroms in search of gold, coming home not empty handed but with Columbus’ “discovery” of lands rich with slave labor and Amerigo Vespucci’s unearthing of Brazilwood. Now Europe could have a surplus of sugar and red dye.

Colonialism brought with it Imperial Teamwork; i.e., proto-globalization. The Caribbean Basin was emptied of culture by the millions, and then, too, the same for the American continents. The concentration camp entered the scene. Calvinist Boers felt the wrath. (So did Kenya’s Mau Mau much later on in the 20th Century.) And the entire Global South was ravaged for resources.

Revolution spread like stochastic wildfire throughout Europe in the mid-Nineteenth Century, bringing us philosophical Badasses like Mikhail Bakunin and critiques of Marxism that couldn’t be defined as Slanted-to-the-Right (thank you Mik) because the whole political-spectrum/obstinate Humanism is a sham that sunders us all from the nurturing care of a miraculous birthing Nature; away from being true stewards of ecological Place.² The despotism of czarist Russia ended with a Bolshevik victory that culminated in the gulag. And around the same time European economic woes and gripes and feuds and feints and démarches – that incontrovertibly began as a result of Imperial Teamwork – erupted into WWI followed by an interregnum of “Armistice” only to recrudesce into WWII.

It was circa this period that technology and science and rationality cloaked in their Cool Logic made persecution efficient and bureaucratic and sanctioned by the State, insisted by the political voice, chanting in lumpen unison. Jews, homosexuals, Roma gypsies, Russians, Slavs, intellectuals, anarchists, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other social deviants were all persecuted. ID cards that later became train passes that later ferried the persecuted out of the ghettos to you-know-where is how bureaucracy, science, technology, and persecution miscegenated with economics and politics. (Himmler’s Final Solution was managed under the Economic Administration Section of the Reichsicherheithauptamt.)

It was an orgy of the utmost depravity to say the least. But evil is banal, no doubt. And this kind of dark banality spiraled diffusively outward and into the space-time continuum. In no particular chronological order, there was Japanese systematically killing Chinese; Turks v. Armenians; Americans slaughtering Koreans and Filipinos and N. Vietnamese; Israel v. Palestine and the UK v. the IRA, the Cold War, Chile’s 9/11, etc & c.

And the ratio of civilized to indigenous alludes to the unjust centrifugal forces of modernization; a hegemonic agenda defined euphemistically by globalization and latter’s misnomer pal, Freetrade™, climaxing atop a post-modern pinnacle of some seriously ubiquitous social & environmental alienation.

But — and so what is there to say about today’s integration of industry, economics, surveillance, incarceration, and militarism? Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben avers that the salient feature of the post-modern world is the concentration camp. No matter where one goes in the world today, one is indeed navigating the panoptical terrain of a surveillance culture. (And most definitely one probably has a financial stake or two in the whole gamut as well.)

Though, one need not wield Asimovian psychohistory to attempt to predict the political patterns yet to transpire. With nifty things like NARUS STA 6400s³ and recent administrations’ floccinaucinihilipilification of important things reputed to have exclusive authority like, say, FISA, while shamelessly indulging in warrantless wiretaps and data mining and drift-netting⁴ and “classified Continuity Annexes” alongside the incessant attempt to apply juridico-political power to normalize proactive strategies of preemption – with shit like this, fuck a crystal ball, the future is now.

But let’s not kid ourselves; this isn’t entirely new water we’re treading. These tricks have been up Empire’s sleeves since the get-go, and, predictably, the tricks will get flashier the tighter Empire grips its waning power in a desperate attempt to maintain order; Weed the Garden, as it were.

Last Year Barak Obama appointed one William Lynn as deputy secretary of defense. And Lynn is no stranger to the field of defense.⁵ This ace was Raytheon’s chief lobbyist; Raytheon being the defense darling that recently brought us the Death Ray, or in more technical cant: The Active Denial System (ADS). Delivering a laser-type beam of electromagnetic radiation (like a microwave does), penetrating 1/64th-of-an-inch of the target’s outer epidermal layer, warming subcutaneous molecules (like a microwave does), effecting a sensation that’s been described as burning from the inside out, Raytheon’s “nonlethal”⁶ crowd control gadget is right up there with other prized innovations such as e.g. rubber bullets, immobilizing nets and foams and sprays, chemical agents, and laser weapons that, as Ando Arike expounds upon in his recent piece for Harper’s, “cause dizziness or temporary blindness…”

Oh and there’s more, ohhhh so much more! Like, for instance, the vertiginous and bilious LED Incapacitator (no kidding around); the MEDUSA⁷ that also uses a microwave beam (I couldn’t make this stuff up) to deliver unpleasant auditory sensations inside one’s map; and there’s also Pulsed Energy Projectile (go ahead, put it into an acronym), which is just as F’d-up as all the other aforementioned items.⁸

Let’s also shine the illuminating kliegs on InfraGard. “InfraGard chapters are geographically linked with FBI Field Offices.” Neato. InfraGard is private business deputized.

According to Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, “InfraGard is a child of the FBI.” It is an FBI operation, with FBI agents in every state “overseeing” local InfraGard chapters (there are 86 chapters, VT has one). In Nov. 2001, IG had approximately 1700 members. There are now 23,682 and steadily climbing. FBI Director Robert Mueller spoke at an InfraG convention on 9 Aug. 2005, stating: “To date, there are more than 11,000 members of the InfraGard. From our perspective that amounts to 11,000 contacts … and 11,000 [now spilling over 23,000] partners in our mission to protect America. Those of you in the private sector are the first line of defense.”

You catch that? The private sector is now America’s first line of defense. He went on to urge IGard members to get in touch with the FBI if they “note suspicious activity or an unusual event.” And also said they could “sic” [sic] the FBI on “disgruntled employees who will use knowledge gained on the job against their employers.”

The funny thing is, in Bush’s NSPD 51 “National Continuity Policy,” the Commander in Chief dictates the Secretary of Homeland Security to coordinate with “private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as appropriate, in order to provide for the delivery of essential services during an emergency.”

InfraGard members are also being prepared for martial law scenarios, being told that it is their responsibility to safeguard their portion of the infrastructure, and, if need be, use deadly force to protect it.

Holy Smokes! This is heavy-duty. And go ahead and fact check this, you’ll find all the IG info in Matthew Rothschild’s article “The FBI Deputizes Business” scribed for The Progressive back in ’08.

Interpolation:

For a more global perspective just muse for a bit on the expansion of NATO, pushed further east than Russia prefers; NORTHCOM and latter’s complementary AFRICOM … and the 2008 reactivation of the US Fourth Fleet (demobilized in 1950) immediately following Columbia’s blitz into Ecuador.

Given the recent connubiality between the belligerent Right and populism in addition to the terrifying rise of popularity of this terrifying phenomenon, imagine what a US with all of its weaponized crowd control gadgets, surveillance apparatuses, and defense & securitization networks (domestic and abroad) would look like with another GOPish president. Yikes!

If financial institutions and their anaclitic significant others – the corporate institutions – heavily influenced Obama’s election in order to finish arming the Empire at the behest of a consenting populace blindsided by the advertisements of Hope & Change®, it is safe to bet that those same industrial influences will want to put a Good ‘ol Boy Patriot RWinger in the ring when it’s time to start swinging.

And so removing Seldon’s calculator pad from its belt-hung pouch and gazing at the prescient red diodes flashing and blinking on its screen representing the condition of the Empire at present … add to this all the known probabilities of a popular Rightwing movement with a successful election in two years, culminating in vice-regal revolt against All Sworn American Enemies, “the contemporary recurrence of periods of economic depression, the declining rate of planetary explorations, the…”

Oh Boy – each input makes those diodes flash crimson fast. A field-differentiation makes the numerical probability of Total Horror 92.5%.And, so, what to do? Some may say it is time to cast away the Right v. Left dialectic – that it serves our lovely planet and us no Good. Some would also opine it is time to invoke the essence of true Badassism and call upon the spirit of Bakunin and his ilk if we want to defend a real Democratic tenet as well as the health of our one and only planet.

1. (!)
2. Boromir: “How many hundreds of years needs it to make a steward a king …?” Steward of Gondor: “Few years, maybe, in other places of less royalty … In Gondor ten thousand years would not suffice.” Viz. kings are not stewards and being a steward does not warrant one to be a king.
3. (semantic traffic analyzer)
4. And I don’t mean the kind of drift-netting used to catch herring by weighting the bottom of a net and buoying the top so to allow the net to drift w/ the tide, no sir, not that kind of drift-netting.
5. And I’m not singling out Good Cop Obama here. His Bad Cop predecessor Bush.2 was way worse, no doubt. And you know, while we’re down here at FN4, taking a break from the main text, what is up (?!) w/America getting all hyper-Rightwing on everybody in the wake of an ostensibly Democratic/Liberal takeover of the same old duplicitous machinations that were set in motion decades and decades ago that have been expanded and hot-potatoed back&forth between cabinets, gaining kinetic force and mass that clearly benefits one Super Class of cambists and corporate nonpareils (which was rubbed in our face w/explicit and unwavering Whatchoo-gunna-do-about-It oligarchic juridico-politico-corporate hubris recently by a 5-4 majority Supreme Court ruling)? Seriously, the Right contingent is angry over stuff they claim is ‘O’’s Big Err, suffering from that salient U.S.Amnesia and doltishly forgetting that Bush.2 and Clinton et al. and Bush 1.0 and preceding RWR and so on to the -10 have been conveying all of these problems into the present. But really, this incessant yearlong Rightwing paroxysmatic reaction to the Most Moderate President Ever, as if (this is where I’m really perplexed) he’s a Leftist radical etatizing the US is fucking bonkers, if not just downright stupid.
6. Which, in all actuality, the DoJ tries to steer clear, at-all-costs, of using the term “non-lethal,” opting for “less-than-lethal,” probably for liability reasons. But this doesn’t cotton well with the Tough Guyz over at DoD who stick inveterately with “non-lethal.”
7. [= Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio]
8. And don’t think I’ve forgotten about the Taser. Oh this menace, the Taser. Just recently, here in my home state of Vermont a homeless 58-year-old woman was Tasered by a Barre City police officer in a Cumberland Farms parking lot … for loitering. For the record, there have been 600+ deaths heretofore in the US from Taser attacks by Coppers. I have a hunch most of these law-enforcing proles-w/-‘tudes don’t even know that Taser is an acronym, (So true: Thomas A. Swift Electric Rifle. Laser, for the record, is also an acronym. And so is Maser.) not a word for a constabulary weaponized electro-laser.

Of course, we could go much deeper into the analysis. And we should. So we will. A Civilized education caters to the dominant power complex. And, at a deeper level, Civilization, in general, and, among other things, is a manifestation of, or better yet, an agency for power and control — it’s encoded in its very structure: Pyramidal hierarchy and the development and growth of city-states. More importantly, one should ask why any group of people is inclined to extend economic intercourse beyond the subsistence, face-to-face level (the answer is to grow cities, silly). One will find that sustainable and sane ways of living are endemic and common to subsistence economies. Anything beyond that engenders power relationships predicated upon the exploitation of human and nonhuman resources so to maintain the routine importation of goods into epicenters of growth (there are more slaves today than traversed the Middle Passage, btw).⁴ And in order to exploit someone or something you must first silence them; strip them of their innate freedoms and agency.

When dialoguing with Jensen, he was quick to expatiate on this detail to a great depth. In his words, “this culture is based on the assumption that all of the world is without volition, is mechanistic, and is therefore [for the most part] predictable.” According to Jensen, “the existence of the willfully unpredictable destroys a foundational assumption of this culture. The existence of the willfully unpredictable also invalidates this culture’s ontology, epistemology, and philosophies, and reveals them for what they are: Lies upon which to base this omnicidal system of exploitation, theft, and murder: It’s much easier to exploit, steal from, or murder someone you pretend has no meaningful existence (especially if you have an entire culture’s ontology, epistemology, and philosophy to back you up).

“The existence of the willfully unpredictable…” Jensen opines, “…reveals this culture’s governmental and economic systems for what they are as well: Means to not only rationalize but enforce systems of exploitation, theft, and murder (e.g., effectively stop Monsanto’s exploitation, theft, and murder, and see how you are treated by governments across the world). If nonhumans are not in any real sense beings and are here for us to use (and not here for their own sakes, with lives as meaningful to them as yours is to you or mine is to me) then using (or destroying) them raises no significant moral questions, any more than whether you or I do or don’t use or destroy any other tool — which means right [in an ethical sense] is what you decide it is, or more accurately, it’s irrelevant, right is whatever you want it to be, which means it’s really nothing at all. But this malleable notion of right means that you can fairly easily talk yourself into feeling good about exploiting the shit out of everyone and everything else. If all of this sounds sociopathological, that’s because it is. It finds logic through the power of command. It makes us all insane.”

Evidently, there is an underlying curriculum to the schooling process. It plays out as follows: The rich cannot continue to steal from the poor and the pathetically powerful cannot continue to destroy the planet without an unremitting centralization of wealth (i.e. power). The consolidation of wealth (or power, whichever way you want to coin it) cannot occur and sustain its continuity unless production is maintained and increased. The latter cannot occur unless work is executed efficiently and for long periods of time. And that cannot fructify unless individuals are trained to fill employment roles and inculcated to perceive the world as generalized objects to be counted, manipulated and exploited.

Moreso, no one in their right mind would ever want to spend most of their waking hours working a job they don’t particularly take pleasure in, especially when the benefits of that work enhance the luxuries of an upper class one is not a part of, let alone maintain such a perverse pattern of social inequality. However, school (among myriad other agents of socialization, but primarily school) normalizes this social imbalance and familiarizes the individual with the social strata, as well as filters out individuals based upon their productive output (i.e. Tracking), thence perpetuating the stratified social organization that maintains the production that funnels wealth into the hands of an elite few (‘few’ of course not meaning e.g., fifty or so apoplectic sexagenarians in dark-clad regalia with infernally-concaved unibrows conspiring to Rule-the-World but rather, “few’ just being thousands of top officials and business elite doing what they presume to be best for their own self-interest and all trying to culminate in a sort of what’s-good-for-my-business-is-what’s-good-for-your-business policy making, thereby, ipso facto probably not across-the-board conspiratorial behavior inasmuch as a pathetic result of very specific social arrangements, i.e., the vertical flow of wealth and its percolation into the apex of the pyramidal hierarchy that occurs like clockwork in a stratified social-construct). One need not don the tinfoil hat to acknowledge the venality infused in a system that bestows power upon a minority (see above definition of ‘few’ i.e. ‘minority’) of individuals. This pattern, appearing in different shapes and forms, has been maintained for at least 6,000 years if not longer in more subtle and transparent forms. One only needs to probe the scholarship for verification that today’s policies and laws and such are mandated and (quasi) controlled by a small coterie of elite and wealthy (white) individuals.

At any rate, without school as we know it today, the entire social construct would collapse. Knowing that, maybe the fact that kids are dropping out of school at higher rates than ever before is not such a bad situation after all. Perhaps we should save the youth from the detrimentally alienating ‘dropout’ epithet and just encourage their withdrawal altogether. Boycott academe damn-it! Boycott!

Anyhow, seeing that conventional modes of education were borne in upon nation-state and empire building and owing to the fact that contemporary academic tutelage functions as economic training grounds, existing so to attempt to immortalize the growth economy and perpetuate industrial production (all very integral to the geopolitical boondoggle we find ourselves in today in certain regions of the planet — ahem, the Middle East; as well as being part & parcel of the climate crisis and the brutal murder of an animate world and its sentient inhabitants), anyone who denies there being a seemingly inadvertent, yet unconsciously intentional (insofar as this culture Strives-to-Improve), hidden curriculum infused in the education system is insanely ignorant of historical hallmarks and dominant cultural aspirations.

With regard to rectifying this matter with a Marxist praxis (because that is where the allegation of a hidden curriculum springs from),⁵ not much would change. The Marxist concept (and don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good ‘ol idealized fancy of ultra-left socialism over obdurate right-wingery any day, but if left to choose I always opt for the social arrangement that remains within the parameters of tribal anarchy)… anyway, the Marxist concept that seeks to explain human social dynamics in terms of modes of production and division of labor is but one facet of an ideological prism. Marxism is much deeper, as it encompasses the dialectical approach to truth through totalization (viz. it “approaches experience to discover concrete syntheses”).⁶ Marxism has unwittingly, and, erroneously, metabolized humans into the idea itself rather than “searching for humans everywhere they are”⁶ (which is what capitalism does like a hungry, stalking predator). In other words, Marxism has refused to live with history and has attempted “through bureaucratic conservatism to reduce change to identity.”⁶ And of course, Marxism is a history of humans seeking to control and dominate the natural world through the use of technology. Whether one is a Marxist, a Capitalist, a Humanist, Futurist, a Christian or Scientist, the underlying worldview — that is, humans have dominion over the natural world — remains central to one’s cult of worship.

I’m not trying to brandish lavish intellectualism here, I’m only attempting to elucidate that the left v. right parley is, in many respects, nugatory — nothing more than a deflection of attention into a state of suspended meaninglessness. Even if the education system were to be ameliorated and reformed along the lines of a purely Marxist criterion, productive ‘ends’ would still be the salient motivation behind an educational ‘means,’ which is essentially no different than today’s approach and we would still be in thrall to a totalitarian system comprised of “the tyranny of an internalized and eventually self-imposed idea, or a cluster of ideas, that take precedence over everything.”⁷ This latter totalitarian system of ideas is the control center — the encephalon — of Mumford’s Megamachine, or rather: Dominant cultural-economic-power-complex. This power-complex is not a tyranny endemic to vulturine capitalism alone, but emerges from the idea of civilization itself;⁸ not to mention it is the underlying reason for most of today’s madness: The whole point of this era’s resource wars is to produce, or rather, Produce so we can Progress Civility.⁹ Industrial production is killing this planet. Industrial production is the culmination of a regimented labor force. A regimented labor force is the outcome of schooling and degree-matriculation, is it not?

So, how the heck do I come full circle here? The crux is, here we are on this very tiny planet (in contrast to an immense space that harbors significantly larger uninhabitable planetary orbs and such) and, industrial civilization is not only damaging the planet, it’s dismembering the planet. Aside from global warming, species extinction is occurring at a rate 10,000 times faster than “what has historically been recorded as normal.”¹⁰ And, as I mentioned at the beginning of this essay, our fellow human beings are being slaughtered — dying as a direct result of wars — by the millions, every decade. These wars are fought with weapons that spring forth from the manufacturing industry like toys off of an assembly line. Many students go to school to enter this work force, to learn how to function within the bureaucracy of weapons manufacturing, to operate and/or write the blueprints for the manufacturing apparatuses.

With much duplicitous claim to virtue backing economic exigency, the civilized, capitalist, industrial culture has created dead-zones in myriad areas of the world’s oceans. It has acidified the seas, blighted the planet’s rivers, brooks and streams with carcinogenic material — after damming them up (to generate electricity to make soda-pop cans and things), not allowing the world’s arterial water system to flow freely as it always had for millennia upon millennia before the pathology of civilization deluded our psyches with phantasms of utilitarian infinitude promising to suffice an incessant production-party that will rain plasma screen TVs, hot dogs and Doritos™ for everyone. This is insane. And, as R.D. Laing noted in his landmark book, The Politics of Experience, we’re driving people mad by the way we are educating them.

This thing we call Education these days, is teaching our children that this notional world of materialism is a reality that is here to stay despite its rapid egress. This thing we call Education today, is training our kids to grow up and work toward maintaining something inherently unsustainable. This thing we call Education today has fomented a culture that will go to any measure to maintain SUVs and cell-phones, homogenized box-stores and discount emporiums, genetically modified foods — deep fried and microwaved, McDonald’s and Pepsi and Mountain Dew sky diving into obesity and type-two diabetes, plastics and phthalates and other polymers that “save lives” and put smiles on children’s faces, etc. etc. etc.

And don’t attempt to refute me here with the sophistry of science and technology. The empty claims that science and tech have granted us longer life expectancies and cures for deadly diseases and such is casuistic.

The putative ‘gifts’ that science and technology have accorded the human race are 14,000 preventable cancer deaths bi-weekly, 1,900 pharmaceutical related deaths per week, dioxin in every mother’s breast milk; a ravaged planet: desiccated watersheds, treeless continents, acidified and empty oceans, melting glaciers, species extinction, dead whales, polar bears pushed to the brink of extinction, elephants and tigers disappearing as fast as production can transform ‘natural resources’ into consumable commodities and capital, trash-vortexes larger than countries driving the life out of vast seas, great schools of fish gone forever, topsoil contaminated with strontium 90 and stockpiles of nuclear waste, CFCs and GHGs and EDCs, mutagens, carcinogens and teratogens, Malthusian theory and rationalization that robs humanity of morality; instrumentality and utilitarianism and the cool logic of science that despoils the emotions that tell us through tears and rage that what this culture is doing is wrong, so damn wrong.

Education never edifies our children so that they begin to ask: What good has science and technology done for the planet and life in general? An honest answer to this question would shut this bread and circus down.

But the saddest part is, in the words of Brian Swimme, at present education renders us with “only a sliver of our original minds still operative…It is a sliver chiseled to perfection for controlling, for distancing, for calculating and for dominating…Our insistence on analysis, on computation, on categorization has blinded us to the reality of the whole.”¹¹

Today’s education process is only about job training. About perpetuating the cycle of large-scale production. The more I think of it, the purpose of school appears to be two-fold: to condition people into accepting an entire economic system that is predicated and accelerated by the transformation of the living into the dead (mountains into subsidized electricity, animals into cold-cuts, humans into collateral damage, ad nauseam) and, to normalize the violence and annihilation at the other end of industrial production. Questions arise: Why would anyone want to maintain a system that is so deleterious? What are the benefits? Who receives those benefits? And: What sort of culture would pride itself upon such a destructive system? What are the adverse effects of educating people in such a way that it metabolizes them into this fragmenting and divisive system?

In these times, departments of education do not teach individuals the acceptance of limits; do not teach individuals how to express real diversity and creativity. There is no room for limits in a growth economy. There is no room for creativity and diversity in efficiency. You want proof? Do as George Ritzer suggests, ask for a medium-rare burger with cubed — not sliced — tomatoes, with gourmet Dijon mustard from a McDonald’s. It won’t happen. You want to know why? Because it would shut the process down. Efficiency would be impinged. The widening of profit margins would be encumbered. This analogy alludes to GDP tracking and the economy as a whole, nationally and/or globally — it doesn’t matter.

There is no real diversity in America or any other nation of (post) modern conceit. Just people who have been violently uprooted out of their own communities and cultures and coerced or co-opted into playing the Freetrade™ game. Education today only teaches kids how to play this game. Kids are not learning about place, relocalization, endogenous growth, community and solidarity. Children only learn to extol the virtues of Civilization, never once minding its odious, flagitious and seamy underbelly, never once taught to ask: Can we stop this experiment? And more importantly, no one ever dares to ask why we are so adamant about Civilization. Why do we do it? Why? What is the point? Why can’t we replace it with a saner and more sustainable way of living? The latter question is perhaps the most important of all.

Believe me, it used to be difficult to bash Civilization. It used to be embarrassing. Such a cynical critique elicits from many folks anger, a scoffing laugh, or fear, or all of the above and then some. But at a time when the planet is aching from tremendous violent bursts, from plaguing afflictions that could easily be alleviated and remediated through simple choices put into action, we have to honestly approach something that, despite our attachment to it, is downright unhealthy for us and for a planet that is our place, and will always be our place. For many, it is not easy to condemn ‘civilization.’ But there comes a moment when one must step up to the task at hand and lose a little face. And as regards coming across as being eccentric or crazy, because, let’s face it, anyone who rails against Civilization is often considered as being such a way, simply say: Thank you! As Ward Churchill promulgated in his essay, “I Am Indigenist: Notes on the Ideology of the Fourth World“: “…in believing that when confronted with a society as obviously insane as this one, the only sane posture one can adopt is one that society would automatically designate as crazy.” To paraphrase the rest of his statement, it were not the natives of North America who “turned birthing into a religious fetish while butchering off a couple hundred million people with weapons of mass destruction and systematically starving another billion or so to death.” The non-civilized never had a Grand Inquisition. They never came up with a “plumbing plan to reroute the water flow on” entire continents. It is the industrialized world of sterile civility that has produced leaders “of the caliber of Ronald Reagan, Jean Kirkpatrick, and Ross Perot.” Only a culture gone completely fucking nuts will pat itself on the back with high esteem for figuring out how to turn prison construction into a lucrative growth and, seriously, what-the-F: as an “indication of social progress and enlightenment.”¹²

As the rest of the remaining natural and native world stares in horror, Civilization continues to voraciously eat in vain, its hunger never satiated, no morsel too large or unpalatable to ingest. Ready to gobble up anyone in its way, anyone who dares to leave, anyone who dares to shut it down, anyone who presents an alternative way of living, anyone who wants to return to a simpler way of being in a natural state of place. And so we keep educating our youth to parlay their autonomy and their future’s future³ (i.e. cubed) into a misguided journey that refuses to provide a cogent reason for its own pursuit. Why do this to our children any longer?

Our schools are teaching children how to be excellent employees. Excellent employees for General Dynamics, for Raytheon, for Monsanto, for Cargill, for Weyerhaeuser and Plum Creek; for IBM; for Dyncorp; for DHS, the NSA, FBI and Blackwater, whoops, I mean XeTM; for Mickey-D’s, Pizza Hut, the Olive Garden. Excellent at “being all you can be.” Oh boy the list is as long as you want to make it.

Do we ever ask if our schools are teaching our children to be excellent lovers? Excellent observers? Listeners? Stewards? Are our schools teaching children to listen to the land, to ask it what it wants from us? To listen to and trust one’s own personal and direct intuition and experience? Do our schools ever instruct our children that if we want to learn how to live sustainably one only needs to ask the land? I don’t believe these lessons are ever taught.

In view of the fact that school is tied to industrial production, and industrial production is tied to each and every rapacious atrocity perpetrated against the animate world that has miracled us all into existence, let’s join together in boycott until this culture starts to impart a knowledge relevant to living sanely and sustainably, a knowledge that is not predicated upon industry and large scale production, a knowledge that does not encourage exploitation and instrumentality, but one that allows us to experience the world as it presents itself to us. Life is conscious and only wants to be experienced not expounded.

During the boycott, might I add, we need to also hold that trial for crimes against life I had mentioned earlier, in which the rich and elite are arraigned for their villainy. We grant all who are disenfranchised, landless, hungry, and impoverished the power to arbitrate and assert adjudication. Then, we absolve all private land holdings and return the land to the planet and to each and every indigenous tribe that has been displaced over history. And then, and only then, can we discontinue our boycott so we can let the land educate our children once again.

Susan Griffin once admonished about today’s education: “we no longer feel ourselves to be a part of this earth. We regard our fellow creatures as enemies. And, very young, we even learn to disown a part of our own being. We come to believe that we do not know what we know…dividedness is etched into our language.”¹³ Nobel laureate William Golding said about the theories of Marx, Darwin and Freud: “The simplistic popularisation of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence. These men were reductionist… I do indeed believe that at bottom the violence of the last thirty years and it may be the hyperviolence of the century has been less a revolt against the exploitation of man by man, less a sexual frustration, or an adventure in the footsteps of Oedipus, certainly less a process of natural selection operating in human society, than a revolt against reductionism, even when the revolutionary, or it may be the terrorist, does not know it.”

When talking with Derrick Jensen, he asked me: “What is the real source of our life? Of our food, our air, our water? Is it the economic system?”

“No.” I replied. “It’s the landbase.”

“Exactly,” Jensen replied. “And those in the future will only care about whether or not we left them with clean air, clean water, and healthy intact landbases. The world is being killed and we have to stop this — by any means necessary. Thousands of years of inculcation and ideology all aimed at driving us out of our minds and bodies, away from any realistic sense of self-defense, real land stewarding, have gotten us to identify not with our bodies and our landbases, but with our abusers, governments, and civilization. Break this identification, and one’s course of action becomes much clearer. Love yourself and love the land, and each other, and you will act in the best interest of, and defend, your beloved.”

1. Mumford, Lewis, The Myth of the Machine Volume II; The Pentagon of Power, (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1970), p. 102-103.
2. Weber, Eugen, Peasants Into Frenchman: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), p. 331-334.
3. Robbins, Richard H., Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, 4th Ed., (Boston: Pearson, 2008), p. 86-88. More on this can be retrieved in Immanuel Wallerstein’s, The Modern World System III: The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy, 1730-1840s (New York: Academic Press, 1989). Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States; 1492-Present (p. 243-44, 253, 300, 334-37, 346, 381, 385-6, 397) also contains valuable information concerning the early textile mills and their social effects.
4. Taken from the Millennium Project’s 2007 State of the Future report as procured by the World Federation of UN Associations.
5. Sociologist and neo-Marxist, Phillip Jackson, coined the term ‘hidden curriculum’ to denote the “less overt functions of education;” a perspective on education through a structuralist and phenomenological lens.
6. Laing, R.D., and D.G. Cooper, Reason and Violence: A Decade of Sartre’s Philosophy, 1950-1960, (New York: Vintage Books, 1971), p. 39.
7. Jensen, Derrick, The Culture of Make Believe, (White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2004), p. 514.
8. One will find that totalitarian (and authoritarian) underpinnings inhere within any of the governing institutions of contemporary civilizations i.e., socialism, capitalism, communism, etc., thus within the latter set’s facilities such as democracy, autocracy, monarchy, etc., too. This underlying tyranny began with kingship in the formative stages of civilization c. 4000 BC and, despite kingship as being often associated with your pseudo-archetypal monarch-in-a-castle-surrounded-by-a-moat notion, it is, in essence, centralized power. And, as according to historian Lewis Mumford (as well as many others), the centralization of power is not only a complex that originated in the early formative stages of civilization but has culminated into a very dynamic, nonetheless vulnerable complex today, comprised of a constellation of institutions, ideas, and systems that galvanize a centralized worship of production that, in turn, facilitates power into the hands of a consolidated minority of beneficiaries.
9. Robert Jensen writes in The Heart of Whiteness (San Francisco: City Lights Publishing, 2005): “As for the civilizing effect of Europe, we might consider five centuries of brutal colonialism and World Wars I and II, and then ask what ‘civilized’ means.”
10. “An epidemic of extinctions: Decimation of life on earth,” Independent, 16 May 2008.
11. Swimme, Brian, “How to heal a lobotomy,” in I. Diamond and G. Orenstein (Eds.), Reweaving the World: the Emergence of Ecofeminism, (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990), p. 16.
12. ?!
13. Griffin, Susan, “Split culture,” in J. Plant (Ed.), Healing the Wounds: the Promise of Ecofeminism, (Santa Cruz: New Society Publishers, 1989), p. 7.

Before the second world war I believed in the perfectibility of social man…. [A]fter the war I did not because I was unable to. I had discovered what man could do to another. I am not talking of one man killing another with a gun, or dropping a bomb on him or blowing him up or torpedoing him. I am thinking of the vileness beyond all words that went on, year after year, in the totalitarian states … there were things done during that period from which I still have to avert my mind lest I should be physically sick. They were not done by the headhunters of New Guinea, or by some primitive tribe in the Amazon. They were done, skillfully, coldly, by educated men, doctors, lawyers, by men with a tradition of civilization behind them, to beings of their own kind … but anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head…

– William Golding

For nearly half a century the specter of wholesale nuclear devastation menaced the world during the Cold War: a pedantic cautionary narrative of retaliatory muscle-flexing politick; a spectacle of statecraft onanism — the planet and its inhabitants disregarded as nothing more than a rag to wipe the mess, provided that one nation were to stroke a little too long and actually blow it, figuratively speaking. To think that those in high enough positions of power came so close to annihilating life and precluding the chapter we all happen to be characters of this very moment is outright breathtaking, in the most horrific sense.

To acknowledge the actuality that nuclear nonproliferation is not occurring today, that nuclear exchange is always a threat so long as the weapons are kicking around, and worse, continued to be manufactured, is an even more horrifying reality. And to think that there is a recrudescence of Cold War mawkishness stoking the aged embers of Cold War hawkishness (i.e., the bellicose language and quotidian paroxysms bursting from tendentious statesmen across the political spectrum of all partisans involved), manifesting the most pernicious horizontal hostility over who-is-complicit-in-what-in-collusion-with-whom, is outright insanity in its most terrifying and pathological ensemble.

Here we are, putatively intelligent and complex higher organisms of a planet staring down the barrel of a gun. Is anyone flinching yet? Any sweat beading up along a tensely, furrowed brow? Aside from the chilling prospect of nuclear exchange (which will always menace us as long as there are stockpiled nuclear weapons at the fingertips of politically-crazed individuals), anthropogenic global climate change (induced by the industrial belching of greenhouse gas amalgams) already threatens to undermine everything we’ve come to cherish and, in tandem, the industrial culture has also initiated the largest mass extinction in the history of Earth. This culture is killing more than just two birds with one stone — it’s committing omnicide. And yet, history has shown us, time and again, that there are natural limits to surrender to; that civilization — a way of life predicated upon the growth of cities (civilization, see civil: from civis, meaning citizen, from Latin civitatis, meaning city-state) always crumbles. Always. (Please find me one civilization from the annals of human social-development that did not collapse and I’ll cancel the historicity implied in the latter sentence — promise).¹

Here we are, repeating the patterns of collapse, on the largest scale ever (i.e., hegemonic globalization) and world leaders are on the verge of celebrating with atomic fireworks. Has history just been a vanity project? Has anyone not learned that our resource wars that are about to perhaps erupt into a self-fulfilled Armageddon® are ridiculously mad and depraved? Powerful people may actually, for the second time in less than a century come close to destroying life on this planet with the push of a button — a fucking button, just to control access to resources that will allow the industrial culture to continue to destroy life on this planet. Trying to find a rational and sane reason for all of this leaves one despairingly confused. I’m reminded of Melville’s megalomaniac captain in Moby Dick who proclaimed with unwavering coolness: “All my means and methods are sane: my purpose is mad.”

Owing to the fact that the Nineties bore witness to over a hundred million human deaths as a direct result of wars occurring across the globe supports the notion that history is not only on repeat but, some of the toughest lessons we should have learned by now are recurring with ever more intensity and acceleration. Over the last decade there has been no mitigation to lower the statistics of war-related casualties and injuries, nor has there been any effective campaign waged to smash into irreparable pieces the cogs in the war-machine itself. Moreover, the US has become infamously known as the world’s leading “purveyor of violence,” acting out of a place of hostile claims to virtue and “benevolent” fights against an everlasting enemy that morphs in and out of various isms. The remaining contingent of the West is complicit as well. No country that is “civilized” is exempt from the crimes perpetrated (against non-White cultures, nonhuman animals and the planet’s ecological infrastructure) so to attain such a euphemistic status.

Spin a globe on its axis, close your eyes, stick out your index finger and place that finger upon the pirouetting orb in order to bring it to a halt. Chances are, where your finger is finally positioned there is conflict occurring. And if not, that landmass that has been abstractly demarcated into ‘territory’ is the result of social arrangements tethered to a long history of war and conflict, spring-loaded with fateful geopolitical corollaries that can be slightly steered but never directed.

Open a history textbook and across the pages one will find ostensible accounts of war (aka: hostile economics) sensationalized as obstacles to overcome in order to attain a long overdue armistice. Or as just another tragic event; one more bedraggled footfall in the long concatenation of human “progress”– progressing toward… well, can someone define the word progress for me? And where, exactly, is progress taking us to or away from for that matter?

After a while, all this war begins to look like an oblation to the God of Production so He can bestow the triumphant, the victorious, with offerings of raw materials decocted from purloined natural resources. Or after a while, it just starts to look like War™.

I’m going to jump tracks for a moment, but I assure you I won’t stray too far — besides, this will all end up within close proximity to the conclusions I’ve alluded to immediately above: that a.) War has been central to nation building b.) Our history is smeared with tendentious accounts of battles c.) Nothing has changed other than the fact that war itself has become more intense, diffused, and even further abstract over the years, doubtlessly leading into an arena where humans will be the spectators of robotic-lieutenant-&-corporal-machine-droids carrying out generals’ orders (the fact that thousands of militarized drones and robots [some of which meretriciously bear the resemblance of the irreproachable Wall-E] are roving the climes of the Middle East sneaks us a peak at the road we’re heading down and, a glimpse into the not-too-distant future where the use of robots for military and authoritarian purposes will not only be ubiquitous but, strangely normalized).² And d.) For the sake of humanity, nonhuman life, as well as art, cultural diversity and beauty in general the framing conditions that engender wars of civilized proportions must be done away with completely.

Indeed such a statement is quixotic, romantic and undeniably idealistic, and I’m sure there are other ics I could apply to define my notional triumph of a defeated war-machine. But at a juncture in time (i.e., now) when tens of thousands of nuclear weapons subject to exchange at the push of a button (despite nuclear non-proliferation treaties that, clearly, are insanely met with phlegmatic indifference from ‘civilly refined’ nations) are threatening to end life on the planet so to settle some fermented dialectic germane to abstract social concepts like Freetrade™, global-market-economic-exigency, and the requisite exploitation of ‘natural resources’³ needed to keep the dominant cultural-economic-complex growing — at this point war, wrapped in all of its modern-day accoutrements, should be disrobed, disarmed, divested, de-manned of its direct operators⁴ and put on trial (along with its direct operators) for crimes against life. Now, back to jumping tracks.

I am putting forward an international week of boycott to preface this exhorted trial for crimes against life. An international boycott against what? — you may ask. I say we boycott the education system for a week, maybe a month. Maybe longer. Perhaps forever. Be it kindergarten, high school, college, whatever. At least until we see some real fundamental changes around here. Now hear me out on this, I know I have a propensity to digress but my point will become clear, hyperbolic maybe, maybe not, but my point genuine and clear — no doubt.

In the mid to late nineteenth century, the new Industrial Age provided the impetus behind the expansion of the public school system. Reading, writing, and arithmetic were all pressed into service in order to foment a literate labor force. It was important that this new literate proletariat remained obedient and submissive to authority. Such subject matter as history was taught from the perspective of the victors of wars and, essentially, from the vantage point of the dominant culture. Mathematics inculcated the presumption that the world is comprised of generalized numbers to be counted and exploited; a sociopathic notion to say the least (viz., in a recent dialogue I had with author Derrick Jensen he pointed out to me that it’s much easier for members of this culture to kill a number for production’s sake than it is to kill a sentient being with its own web of relations, histories, potentialities, emotions and proclivities). And reading and writing silenced the languages older than words themselves.

Clocks and bells primed individuals to respond to employment itineraries — to be more proficient in efficiency. There is no room for diversity and creativity in efficiency. The raising-of-hands-to-be-called-upon conditioned one to respond with deference to authority. To give one’s self away to authority, chiseling away, piece by piece, at one’s sense of personal agency. Cheating on tests was frowned upon, when really it should have been encouraged as group problem solving. If one felt torn to cram frenetically for a test, one was submitting her/himself to authority. If one decided to settle for a C for credit, one was giving her/himself away to authority. All of these elements and their implications are extant today and, virtually unchanged from their original forms.

Howard Zinn wrote in The People’s History of the United States, “It was in the middle and late nineteenth century that high schools developed as aids to the industrial system, that history was widely required … to foster patriotism. Loyalty, oaths, teacher certification, and the requirement of citizenship were introduced to control both the educational and the political quality of teachers.”⁵

1. The historian Clive Ponting revealed that every civilization has undermined the health of its natural environment, see Ponting, Clive, A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations (New York: Penguin, 1991).
2. See: Remotely controlled armed robots deployed in Iraq or Special Military Robots Manufactured by WVHTC Foundation Shipped to Middle East to Combat IEDs or Robots replace trigger fingers in Iraq or First Armed Robots on Patrol in Iraq (Updated).

   DARPA has even invented a “corpse-eating” robot; viz. a robot that powers itself by ‘ingesting’ organic matter, see: Robots That Eat Bugs and Plants for Power or U.S. Military Working on Flesh Eating Robot or Military Researchers Develop Corpse-Eating Robots.

3. ‘Natural resources’ being nothing more than the reification and silencing of an animate and subjective world in order to exploit for the sake of cultural prosperity and aggrandizement.
4. I.e., those who finance war, those who profit from war, those who bang the drum for war and, those who design the blueprints for war, et al.
5. Zinn, Howard, A People’s History of the United States, 1492-Present, (New York: Perennial Classics, 2003), p.263.

Fifty percent of the nation’s electricity comes from coal. What that alludes to is the cold, hard fact that Americans, suborned by the coal industry and their lies (e.g., the oxymoron ‘clean coal’) are responsible for the burning of over a billion tons of coal per year, resulting in 2.3 billion tons – and climbing – of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere annually. Alongside greenhouse gas emissions, the burning of coal is the leading source of mercury and sulfur dioxide that is noxiously tainting the planet’s freshwaters.

Blowing the cover

Precipitated by the petroleum crises in the 70s, coal mining quickly became the solution to an impending energy calamity. In 1977, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act was enabled to ensure regulation over the environmental effects of coal mining. Section 515(c)(1) allowed for coal mining operations to practice mountaintop removal. It purported to show MTR as more efficient than other methods of removal due to coal’s horizontal position located within the lifted terrain.

This piece of legislature is shameful, just downright nauseating. MTR may be more efficient for the transformation of mountains into subsidized energy but it is also extraordinarily efficient at exacerbating drought conditions in a region that is already affected by the degrading desiccation of local watersheds. Not to mention MTR is invariably destructive toward the landbases that provide inhabitants of Appalachia their lives and requirements needed in order to live said lives, i.e., clean air to breathe, clean water to drink and intact landbases to provide food.

When former “President” George W. Bush and his administration proposed the lowering of emissions standards, they embraced the coal industry as the model, placing it at the forefront of the nation’s energy table. With central Appalachia being the top coal supplier in the country, next to Wyoming’s Powder Basin, the floodgates opened. Central Appalachia has been inundated with excavation expansion, and the domineering practice of strip mining (70 percent) is being replaced at an escalating rate by MTR. Arch Coal alone digs up 100 million tons of coal per year; approximately half of this number is obtained through MTR in the Appalachian region.

Despite the recent presidential transitioning from ‘bad cop’ to ‘good cop,’ nothing much has changed. While on the campaign trail, the Obama team received $240,000 from the “clean coal” lobby– chump change indeed, but dirty money is dirty money. Moreover, President Obama appears supportive of the industry, speaking to a rally in Virginia: “We figured out how to put a man on the moon in ten years; you can’t tell me we can’t figure out how to burn coal that we mine…in the United States of American and make it work.” In my opinion, some things are better left unexplored ‘O’. Clean coal, which is nothing short of circumlocution in the real world, requires extraction, and that is the crux. The caveat one should pay mind to in Obama’s promulgation is the word ‘mine;’ we can have as much “clean coal” as we want, but the stuff still has to be mined and there are grave costs – and that is the issue at hand.

Last May, following the election, the Obama administration quietly gave the thumbs up to two dozen more mountaintop removals. And permits are still being handed out left and right to ‘mountain-bombers’ (viz. King Coal associates). According to West Virginian coal activist and co-director of Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW), Judy Bonds, “As far as the President’s policies go, Obama is better than Bush, but that isn’t good enough. If Obama looks hard enough into his heart he’ll abolish mountaintop removal and strip mining. If he doesn’t, then he’s justifying and validating Bush’s previous policies, and that isn’t any better than the past eight years.”

An assault on life

Despite legislative rhetoric it is by no means quick and clean as MTR involves numerous measures. The first step in the procedure is to prime the land for excavation, denuding the land of what has been dubbed as ‘overburden.’ To do so, the allotted area is logged – clearcut (in most cases the lumber is sold to timber companies) and the topsoil is removed and set aside. For the many beings that abound on, around and in Appalachia’s mountains the leonine roar of dragline excavators is an ominous portent of the ensuing blasting and widespread loss of life. The next step entails the application of the ammonium nitrate mixture to blast away the subsoil, exposing the dormant seams of coal. Because coal is found in lateral layers of subsoil, the debris is then pushed aside and excavated.

After the coal is brought to the plant for processing the remaining toxic sludge, known as ‘coal slurry,’ is deposited into designated slurry pools and left to stagnate, creating infecund, fetid pools that pose serious health threats to the surrounding communities of people, trees, animals, and watersheds.

With all of the noxious substances tainting the region’s land, children are often victims of nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, and shortness of breath: symptoms that are pertinent to blue baby syndrome. The long-term effects can be terminal; some include cancers of the digestive tract, bone damage, and liver failure. To paraphrase author and professor at the University of Kentucky, Erik Reese, the above symptoms are common ailments attributed to the exposure of heavy metals found in leachate befouling the region. Or perhaps the symptoms are related to the event in which 300 million gallons of coal-slurry spilt when a holding pool collapsed in 2000 in Martin County, Kentucky.

There is a slurry pool containing billions of gallons of noxious sludge nestled less than a mile from the March Fork Elementary School – which is just utterly bankrupt of commonsense.

In a recent confab I had with Judy Bonds, she lamented to me that she watched with tear-glazed eyes her grandson attempt to play in a stream littered with the corpses of fish; that her grandson suffered from asthma from coal dust accumulating within their home. Ultimately, she involved herself in activism because she was sick and tired of witnessing the abuses the coal industry inflicts on children in the area; tired of watching the land beneath her feet become toxic with coal slurry.

Central Appalachia is home to North America’s most diverse landbases. The region exhibits an exuberant array of bird species, accounting for 250 varieties. The ecology of the area is bountiful with more than 70 varying tree genera and up to 30 different species within a single site – a field day for the tree-enthusiast, but more importantly, home to the magnificent birds of the area and their fledgling young. Many other flora and fauna, such as bear, various conifers, fish, and bobcats, to name a handful, call this palatial bastion of unique forestry home. The land is also a natural haven for miles upon miles of streams, head streams, and watersheds.

“This area boasts the world’s most diverse deciduous forests, only the Amazon has a larger variety of tree specimen. When you destroy mountains you destroy forests,” Bonds grieves. “These mountains are important to the northeast. We need to stop valuing our forests and mountains in terms of dollars. A standing tree is worth more than one that has been felled to the ground,” she supplicates.

Bonds explained that many of the nonhuman animals of the area are being threatened. Leaf shredders and mayflies, both vital in maintaining the health of the riparian ecology, are vanishing quickly. These forests contain more than fifty plant and animal species being driven to the point of extinction.

Currently, two-thirds of the songbirds endemic to Kentucky’s Cumberland Plateau are in decline– a direct result of big boys playing with big explosives. Is this really about energy, or the infatuation male testosterone has with things that go boom? Could this all be allusive to the sovereignty of capitalism and its subversive barbarity, perpetuated by an aggressive, despotic patriarchy? I don’t know for sure, but this I do know: the corporate elite of King Coal is snuffing out life in one of the most spectacular bioregions on this planet at an expeditious rate, destroying lives at an unprecedented level. It needs to stop. The EPA estimates that 7 percent (320,000 acres) of the prolific forests and watersheds have been lost so far, and if continued at its current rate 1.4 million acres – larger than the state of Delaware – will be vanquished within a couple years.

Since the onslaught of mining throughout the region by means of MTR, 750 miles of the aforementioned streams have been completely buried beneath debris, suffocating nearly all macroinvertebrates (insects, mollusks, snails, worms) in the headwater streams, deeply scarring the web of life.

When the top of a mountain is defoliated of its ‘cover’ and then blown into smithereens, most of the debris is scattered and/or appropriated into the valleys below and into headwaters and streams. Between 1985 and 2001, 6700 valley fills had been consummated. That equates to 84,000 acres of forest and watershed destroyed and/or defiled from the impetuous dumping of sedimentation. When valley-fills occur they create floodplains, leading to flooding in an area that wasn’t naturally subjected to flooding in the past. Combined with heavy-metal leachate from the mine sites, this all conduces to a dying ecology and a toxic landbase. Every time there is a spill or a flood cleanup comes out of the taxpayers’ pockets.

Recently, there was the Kingston spill that dumped 1.6 billion gallons of heavy-metal-laden coal ash over 400 acres, by far the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. There was also the intentional release of pernicious substances and heavy metals into the Ocoee River in Tennessee. Trying to wrap my head around this despairing situation, I asked Bonds for her perspective.

“We’re seeing the destruction of entire watersheds and it all runs down hill,” she says. “Close to where I lived, the Little March Fork was poisoned, and that flowed into the larger March Fork stream and then into the Coal River. The Coal River empties into the Kanawha River and into the Ohio River, then into the Mississippi River which empties into the ocean. The poisons that flow into the ocean get into the atmosphere and fall back on the region through rainfall. So far 1,200 miles of streams and headwaters have been destroyed. The watershed and stream systems are extremely sensitive, and last time I looked, humans needed water. If nothing is done to stop this, we’re looking at least double that damage in the near future.”

Society pays a price

The coal industry is not just culpable for poor environmental policy, but their reprehensible policies and exploits are wreaking havoc on the people of the region as well. Eighty percent of the harvested coal is shipped outside of the area, mainly to Texas – the largest coal-consuming state in the U.S. One’s supposition would be that the export would generate wealth for Appalachia. But it doesn’t. Big Coal collects all the remuneration; profits go into the shareholders’ pockets and poverty accounts for over 50 percent of the central Appalachian region. The fact that flooding in the region is not a rare occurrence only exacerbates the abject poverty of the area. According to the article “Moving Mountains” scribed by Erik Reese in the February, 2006 issue of the environmental magazine Orion, in the year 2000 seven floods affected the town of Bob White, West Virginia after mountain top removal began in the surrounding mountains of the Cherry Pond Range. The recurring floods have been antecedent to evacuations and displacement. It is like a warzone.

Production as annihilation

In order for one to set charges to millions of pounds of ammonium nitrate, blow entire tops of mountains off, remove only what is of perceivable utility (i.e., coal), and dump the remains of mountaintops over more than a thousand miles of headwater streams and river basins, one must first perceive a lifeless object to be exploited: a resource to be managed.

Throughout Appalachia, entire mountain communities proliferate with some of the world’s most diverse beings living together in dynamic equilibrium, each life integral to another, all arising from their own unique places. These communities are, and abut, the nascent waters borne from springs emerging with erumpent display. Soils, rocks, lichens and moss foster the novitiate streams along their maturity into specific waterways, ultimately into the great Atlantic and into the atmosphere to be precipitated down to recommence the latter cycle – providing life and sustenance to every living being along the way. All of this is silenced and dead psychically in the coal-mining culture before becoming dead physically in the natural world of Appalachia. To rephrase this in the form of a question: Would you gather a group of your friends, armed to the teeth with explosives, and consciously blow up an entire community of diverse life? (If you answer yes, seek help immediately). For most of us, the answer is no, hell fucking no. Unless of course, you and your pals don’t see the functioning communities alive with diversity. And that is the underlying problem at hand.

To the miners, but moreso, to the CEOs, all the way down the chain of command to the foremen and diffused throughout an entire culture, the inculcation of objectivity over subjectivity is first and primary for CEOs to value capital over life; for miners to set fuses that will end – scratch that, destroy life and, for those who direct the protocol. For an entire culture to become reliant upon and endorse this violence – to choose coal-fired power plants over life, to choose subsidized energy to power TVs, microwaves, and refrigerators for soda pop and cold-cuts over life – for all this to manifest, life outside the human sphere must not be seen in its entirety. To erase a mountain with explosives it mustn’t be perceived as a community of living beings in cooperation but rather viewed objectively as a retainer of resources to be extracted.

How could we tolerate the forever loss of mountains and their forest chains and watersheds if we truly experienced these landscapes convivially and reciprocally, as the communities they are, animated with diverse life? We couldn’t. But many have become blind, deaf and, virtually insensate to other life on this planet. They don’t see the inextricable relations weaving our world into being. They don’t perceive the beingness of nonhuman others. This is why many cherish large-scale production over life. If all life were cherished over large-scale production, communities would not be blasted apart to power a grid that powers TVs and incandescent light bulbs.

Wendel Berrry, a prolific writer and agrarian from Kentucky, wrote in September 2009’s issue of The Progressive:

For coal to feed the fires by which we live, whole landscapes are destroyed, forests and their soils and creatures are obliterated, streams are covered over, watersheds are degraded and polluted, poisonous residues are left behind, communities are degraded or flooded by toxic wastes or runoff from denuded watersheds, the people are exploited and endangered, their houses damaged, their drinking water poisoned, their complaints and needs ignored. When the fossil fuels, extracted at such a cost to people and nature, are burned, they pollute the atmosphere of all the world, with consequences that are fearful, infamous, and continuing.

Knowing the extent of the devastation and annihilation, the suffering and immiseration, the maiming and scarring attached to the coal industry, how can anyone tolerate this without an emotional response evinced from some place deep within our sacred, wild bodies? It’s time we recognize life again – for all its beauty and grandeur. Not for reified or aesthetic reasons, but for the sake of living beautiful, healthy lives in healthy communion with healthy natural landbases and their inhabitants.

It is more apparent now than ever before that coal mining, especially mountain top removal, is unethical and inhumane. It displays stark irresponsibility in land stewardship as well as depraved practices within a diverse region. It’s time to shake off the flawed belief that we are reliant upon coal and other fossil fuels. Renewable energy, in tandem with radical fundamental lifestyle changes, and communion with our natural environments, are the promising candidates to swap out archaic coal and its environmental-socioeconomic-laggard industry. Let’s put a stop to the systematic dismantling of Appalachia’s ecological infrastructure. And continue from there.

I know, I know, so this scenario is a bit kooky. Such a concept is a little too bonkers for the sociological imagination. Okay. Fine. Let’s try it another way.

Imagine if white settlers from a continent 3,325 miles from the eastern shorelines of an already inhabited continent, decided to seek out a New World putatively, circa 1620 AD. Imagine they discover “America,” it’s the New World, they assume. And they pursue a relentless campaign of occupation, colonizing the continent. One by one, these settlers systematically remove, with much violent force, the people of the North American continent, starting with the indigenous nations of the east, because, of course, they’ll want what those cultures have: access to the land and “resources” which those cultures inhabit and employ sustainably. Imagine these settlers succeeded with such a crusade, centuries later marking the genocide with an annual feast celebrating a deluded history that claims they were embraced with much alacrity and congeniality, that, while they were killing off the native indigenous to clear the way for their own culture, natives weren’t fighting back but teaching them how to make mashed potatoes and gravy and pies and roast turkey and things.

There. Not so crazy now, is it?

“About three-quarters of all adult Indians suffer alcoholism and/or other forms of substance abuse. This is not a ‘genetic condition.’ It is a desperate, collective attempt to escape our horrible reality since ‘America’s Triumph.’ It’s no mystery why Indians don’t observe Thanksgiving. The real question is why do you feast rather than fast on what should be a national day of mourning and atonement. Before digging into your turkey and dressing on Nov. 23, you might wish to glance in a mirror and see if you can come up with an answer.” — Ward Churchill

“One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting.” — Robert Jensen

“We suffer from a poverty level of 69 percent, which must be unimaginable to many people in this country, who would equate a situation such as this to one found only in Third World countries.” — Tribal Chairwoman Kathleen W. Kitcheya speaking about the San Carlos Apache Reservation.

“Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword, some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived that they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy.” — William Bradford, a settler, describing Captain John Mason’s attack on a Pequot village.

This Thanksgiving, rather than thoughtlessly stuffing yourself with food and then sauntering over to the couch for some postprandial football, think about how you can play your part in stopping the dominant culture from removing more indigenous cultures from their landbases to extract raw materials for industry that is destroying the planet’s ecological and climatic infrastructure.

Genocide is always and everywhere a political occurrence.

– Irving Louis Horowitz, Genocide

As you’re reading this I’m sure your eyes are beginning to roll, indicating how peeved you’re probably getting over yet another tirade on the subject of health-care-overhaul. Fear not. To prevent this article from joining the all-embracing tautology of other recent health care polemics, a juxtaposition of statistics will suffice: according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 20 percent of the general population under the age of sixty-five is without health care coverage; one out of three, if not more, American Indians and Alaskan Natives, under the age of sixty-five, is either uninsured or dependent on the deficient services provided through the IHS (Indian Health Service).

As claimed by the Office of Minority Health, an adjunct of the Department of Health and Human Services, as of 2008 there were an estimated 4.9 million people who classified as American Indian and Alaskan Native alone or American Indian and Alaskan Native integrated with one or more other races [sic]: comprising only 1.6 percent of the U.S. population. The IHS, according to the Office of Minority Health, provides services to only 39 percent of American Indians and Alaskan Natives — that is approximately 1.9 million individuals out of 4.9 million who qualify for IHS services. This laggard expanse of services comes at a time when American Indians and Alaskan Natives are plighted by appalling conditions and afflictions such as:

• infant death rates 40 percent higher than the rates that exist for whites;
• death rates from alcoholism and tuberculosis approximately 650 percent higher than overall U.S. rates;
• a male population twice as likely as white men to have liver and IBD cancers;
• a male population 1.8 times more likely as white men to contract stomach cancer and, twice as likely to die from stomach cancer;
• a female population 2.4 times more likely as white females to contract, and die from, liver and IBD cancers;
• a female population 40 percent more prone than white females to get kidney/renal/pelvis cancers;
• 31 percent of the population will die before the age of 45; “…the overall adjusted death rate for American Indians is 35 percent greater than the U.S. rate…” (The age-adjusted death rate for those living in the Aberdeen area — a region that harbors most of the Lakota-Sioux reservations in South Dakota, has risen beyond 1,000 percent);¹
• higher rates of diabetes and obesity than the general population;
• an unemployment rate of 49 percent — approximately five times the national rate.

What no one is talking about right now is how the most blighted class of people in this country, the most marginalized group of people in the history of the U.S., will be affected by the proposed health-care-reform-bill. But perhaps that is because this bill may not actually provide any measures to ameliorate these abysmal conditions at all. And that may be the case because no one has ever really talked about the historical and ongoing destruction of this country’s native population honestly and publicly enough.

There are many bones to pick with the judicatory infrastructure of the United States of America concerning the failed restitution of history’s most victimized and terrorized peoples. For now, let us focus on bringing an ailing population back to good health through a program hatched for the absolute benefit of a class it is designed to provide services for, alongside being unequivocally structured according to how the said class determines it to be.

What I am asking, and what we should all be asking is: Why is it so difficult to provide fair and equal health care to an entire group of people that comprise less than two percent of the general American population? And: Will the administration’s health-care-reform-bill ensure fair and equal care be provided for American Indians and Alaskan Natives? And more importantly: If so, will the provisions enumerated for American Indians and Alaskan Natives, included in the health care proposal, be drafted along the former and latter parties’ terms, unescorted by any equivocal provisos and/or tendentious legislative furnishings?

Health care as a euphemism for the euphemism that is assimilation

Health care for American Indians and Alaskan Natives is essentially the extenuation of assimilation programs, sanctioned and directed by the IHS under the auspices of the Department of Health and Humans Services (DHHS).

In 1921 a piece of legislation known as the Snyder Act warranted legislative authority for a federal health program designed to provide services to American Indians and Alaskan Natives. According to literature on the IHS website, the act authorized funds “for the relief of distress and conservation of health…[and]…for the employment of…physicians…for Indian Tribes throughout the United States.”

However, even prior to the ratification of the Snyder Act of 1921, the United States government was well involved with juridical “health care” measures (i.e. expedients) designated for the remaining native population. Holly T. Kuschell-Haworth wrote for DePaul Journal of Health Care Law in the summer of 1999:

The Origins of Federal Native American Health Care Attention to Native American health care began in the nineteenth century when contagious diseases, such as smallpox, threatened the once substantial populations of Native American people. The Federal government’s earliest goals were to prevent disease and to speed Native American assimilation into the general population by promoting Native American dependence on Western medicine and by decreasing the influence of traditional Indian healers. In 1849, responsibility for Native American health was transferred from the War Department to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The BIA oversaw the use of congressional appropriations for the establishment of health programs for Native Americans. Responsibility for Native American health has since endured many organizational transfers, and now resides with the Indian Health Service (IHS), an operating division of the Department of Health and Humans Services (DHHS).²

In 1976, the United States passed the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. This piece of legislation detailed the U.S.’ responsibilities, citing: “Congress hereby declares that it is the policy of this Nation, in fulfillment of its special responsibilities and legal obligations to the American Indian people, to meet the national goal of providing the highest possible health status to Indians and to provide existing Indian health services with all resources necessary to effect that policy.” (I’ve added the italics to emphasize the obscene irony of these words with respect to the real, physical effects of the referenced promulgation).

Aside from the year the Ramones released their first album, 1976 also happened to be the year the U.S. government admitted to running a covert program of involuntary sterilization, affecting about 40 percent of all American Indian women of childbearing age.³ Article II of the United Nations 1948 Convention on Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide explicitly proscribes involuntary sterilization as a means of “preventing births among” a targeted population. Nonetheless, the IHS — an adjunct of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) at the time, authorized and administered the illicit sterilizations. The putative termination of the program resulted in the transfer of the IHS to the Public Health Service. There were no indictments or punishments for those reprehensibly involved.

Furthermore, it was revealed in 1990 that the IHS was inoculating Alaska Inuit children with Hepatitis-B vaccine — after the WHO placed an interdiction on this particular vaccine for having a strong correlation with HIV-Syndrome, which is, in essence, directly linked with AIDS. In 1992, a “field test” of Hepatitis-A vaccine, also HIV-correlated, was controlled on reservations in the northern Plains region.⁴

The IHS fails as it continues to expand assimilationist health care

Founded in 1955, the IHS is a federally administered health care program, accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. It was designed to provide services for North America’s members of the 546 federally recognized indigenous tribes. Those who receive IHS services reside mainly on reservations and rural communities within thirty-six states, mostly contained in the Western U.S. and Alaska.

IHS dependents are not eligible for access to the bulk of hospitals and medical practitioners ubiquitous throughout the U.S. They are restricted to services provided by the clinics and hospitals that contract with the IHS only. Moreover, the majority of IHS facilities are located within “contract health service delivery areas” comprising reservations, the counties circumscribing the reservations, and the adjacent counties. The IHS itself approximates that 43 percent of American Indians and Alaskan Natives live outside the parameters of “contract health service delivery areas.” And according to Bonnie Duran, writing for the American Journal of Public Health in 2005: “…more than 60 percent of members of US tribes reside outside their home reservations at least part of the year, but only 1 percent of the IHS budget is earmarked for urban Indian health care [urban clinics service, in toto, nearly 600,000 individuals].”⁵

In the 1950s the U.S. passed a sequence of “termination” statutes by which, in the words of American Indian scholar, author and activist Ward Churchill, “the federal government unilaterally dissolved more than a hundred indigenous nations and their reservation areas.” Furthermore, concomitant ruling was enforced to “encourage” the relocation of sizable “numbers of Indians from the remaining reservations to selected urban centers;” a colonial tactic designed to obviate any recrudescence of social solidarity within native communities.⁶ These legislative instruments were prorogued (suspended but not dissolved) in the 70s, but by the 90s the federal relocation program had succeeded in pushing more than half of all U.S. indigenous peoples out of reservations and into city ghettos, under the ostensible objective of “assimilation.” Would you care to be prodded out of your home and marshaled into an economically depressed area of one of America’s major cities? I didn’t think so.

Owing to the fact that the preponderance of IHS facilities are located not in city ghettos but on and around reservations, concurrent with the actuality that virtually half the native population resides nowhere near service areas on account of former federally mandated relocation programs, not only substantiates the concern that adequate health care is not being provided to America’s indigenous, but that these conditions are federally ignored, and met with silence and depraved indifference.

As regards financial deficiencies, IHS is bracketed for budgetary purposes as a discretionary program. In other words, there is no federal guarantee that there will ever be adequate pecuniary allocations (funding) for the IHS. On the other hand, for the general public, being predominantly Eurocentric, white-American, Medicare and Medicaid are federal prerogatives. And those who are eligible are guaranteed plenary (full) access to their programs. To adduce another excerpt from Bonnie Duran’s piece in the American Journal of Public Health in 2005: “For reservation-based populations, the level of per capita funding is less than half of what is provided to those on Medicaid and in prison.”⁷

In 2005 the General Accountability Office (GAO) controlled a study that revealed a number of IHS facilities with zero funding to contract for “non-urgent care.” The same GAO study discovered that eleven out of thirteen facilities surveyed had zero to limited ability to treat chronic pain. Seven out of thirteen facilities had zero to limited ability to perform cancer screenings.⁸ Let me remind the reader that these findings pertain to a specific group of people who are, at the very least, twice as likely as white folks to contract, and die from, preventable cancers.

As if that isn’t bad enough, despite the claim that Congress still allocates funds for the IHS (in lieu of the expiration of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act in 2000), the IHS only receives 50-75 percent of the requisite funding needed to operate.¹ Regardless of the increase of federal appropriations over the years, the amount of real money doled out has decreased. To put it another way, the IHS is virtually bankrupt. The amount of federal allocations may have increased, but the amount of actual capital put into the system has considerably decreased.

Meanwhile, the Pima of Arizona suffer the highest diabetes rates in the world. And in 2007 their tuberculosis rate was 5.9 compared to 1.1 for whites.⁹

The 1.8 million-acre San Carlos Apache Reservation, home to a community of 13,000, is one of the poorest reservations in the States. Writing for Congressional Quarterly, Peter Katel quotes Tribal Chairwoman, Kathleen W. Kitcheyan, lamenting: “We suffer from a poverty level of 69 percent, which must be unimaginable to many people in this country, who would equate a situation such as this to one found only in Third World countries.”⁹

Less than a tenth of the recent bonuses awarded to certain peoples by certain businesses, generated by the taxpayer bailout could have sufficiently extended IHS services and advanced aid to improve these inimical conditions greatly. It is the very least this country could have done on behalf of long overdue reparations.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter which end of the political spectrum one is ensconced in — negligent and damaging policy written by U.S. lawmakers is negligent and damaging policy. If one leans further to the right, obdurate ethnocentrism (the whole “…I’ve seen one Indian, I’ve seen ‘em all…” mentality) often accompanies those at the helm. If one leans further to the left, liberal and “humanitarian” agendas often obfuscate the implications attached to policy destined for nothing short of the same old hegemonic ends. In the words of Oscar Wilde, “Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.” It does not matter whether one is right, center, or left.

The syndicated creation of disease and destitution

Would it surprise you if I told you that most of these despairing conditions could have been prevented? Well, it’s true — they could have been prevented. More than one half of the nation’s uranium deposits, one-fourth of its low-sulfur bituminous coal reserves, one-fifth of its oil and natural gas, alongside substantial deposits of copper and other ores are confined within the margins of reservations.¹⁰ These resources are lucrative, to say the least. They are also lethal once taken from out of the ground and/or processed on site. Nonetheless, it is peculiar to find the most impoverished demographic in the U.S. residing directly above a copious amount of the world’s most profitable resources. As claimed by Ward Churchill, in his essay “The Political Economy of Radioactive Colonialism,| the natural resource base of the Navajo alone is far greater than that of Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, and Monaco, combined.¹¹

Through a series of ratified acts (e.g., Indian Reorganization Act, 1934), the U.S. defined itself as the primary governing body of Indian reservations, establishing a system of tribal council governments for each reservation, whose main responsibilities (under the rubric of “economic planning”) include: minerals-lease negotiations, contracting with external corporations, long-term agricultural leasing, water-rights negotiations, land transfers, and more. History has shown that such “economic planning” is nothing but a damaging strategy for an exploitative U.S. bylaw apparatus.

After decades of uranium mining on American Indian territory, many lives have been ruined. Uranium tailings, fifty to sixty feet high litter the defunct mining sites situated on reservation lands releasing radon, actinides (responsible for long-term radioactivity), and other debris into the topsoil and groundwater of the surrounding regions. There is no such thing as “safe doses” of radiation. The debris that sullies the climes of Indian country is replete with alpha-emitting substances often resulting in cancers and other degenerative diseases. Remember that most IHS facilities cannot afford to offer cancer screenings.

Dr. Gordon Edwards, writing for Perception magazine in 1992, explained that leftover uranium tailings contain about 85 percent of the original radioactivity found in the ore. They emit at least 10,000 times the amount of radon gas (able to travel a thousand miles in just a few days) as the undisturbed ore. In the Southwestern U.S., schools were once built using uranium tailings as construction material.¹²

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) estimates radon emissions from uranium tailings in the Southwestern U.S. will result in over 3,000 cancer deaths per century over the entire North American continent. Other researchers posit that this assertion is underestimated by at least a factor of ten.¹²

By the 1950s cases of lung cancer, pulmonary fibrosis, pneumoconiosis, silicosis, tuberculosis, birth defects, kidney damage, and more, began to show up in populations near uranium mining sites. By 1978, the GAO had recorded 140 million tons of “on site tailings piles at twenty-two abandoned and sixteen operational mills.” There are more than 1,100 abandoned uranium mines in the Navajo Nation alone. Continued production results in the creation of six to ten tons of tailings annually, alongside small cell carcinoma for the Navajo miners.¹³

Yucca Mountain, situated on Shoshone Nation land, is a proposed nuclear waste repository site. Left with thousands of tons of nuclear waste per annum, U.S. nuclear power facilities are desperately seeking a place to store their ever-increasing stockpiles of deadly wastes. America’s best idea thus far is to stuff it all inside a mountain, on land that does not belong to the U.S.

Backed by the Ruby Valley Treaty and the Nevada Enabling Act, Yucca Mountain and its surrounding region are not U.S. territory, therefore not for federal use. Not surprisingly, this injunction is flouted by military nuclear weapons testing on Shoshone land, during which 700-ton explosives are detonated. Moreover, nearly 70 percent of the nation’s gold mining occurs upon Shoshone Nation land, despite the fact that gold ore is commonly found throughout the U.S. What’s wrong with industrial gold mining, you may ask. Well, for one, it’s stupid.

Gold mining is a highly nocuous vocation. Not only does it threaten the health and livelihood of miners and occupants of the surrounding communities, but it is deleterious to its own and surrounding landbases, ultimately threatening the natural ecology of the region.

Tons of rock must be extracted from the earth to extricate an ounce of gold. The processing of the metal involves (depending on its metallurgical makeup) the application of a diluted cyanide solution (sodium cyanide), sulfuric acid, mercury, and other noxious and fatal substances, alongside being water intensive (drawing intensively from a diminished water-table).

There are literally thousands of other examples I could provide to illustrate how the U.S. and its corporate collaborators create poor health conditions and abject poverty among an already marginalized population for their own profitable gains and neocolonial, hegemonic aspirations. And matters are made desperately worse by the incompetence of the IHS.

Seeking solutions

Rectifying a longtime problem, one as grisly as the diminution of America’s indigenous, followed by destructive protocol delegated by U.S. decree, is indeed a difficult task at hand. As regards restoring a broken and virtually bankrupt IHS, some lawmakers are pushing for the reauthorization of the Indian Healthcare Improvement Act.

On October 14th, Rep. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller urging “the inclusion of reauthorization of the IHCI Act as part of comprehensive health insurance reform,” nmpolitics.net reports. In the words of Heinrich, “Our country desperately needs health insurance reform — but our pursuit of reform cannot leave Native Americans behind,” he said. “I represent tens of thousands of Native Americans in central New Mexico, and my constituents have made it clear that they cannot wait any longer for health care reform in Indian country.”

According to New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone: “Less is spent on providing health care to American Indians per capita than any other sub-population. In fact, we spend more to provide health care to federal inmates than we do for American Indians.” As reported at racewire.org, Pallone is appealing for an amendment to the current health care bill that would add changes to services for American Indians to “any health care reform that happens in Congress.”

Many wonder, though, would reauthorizing the Indian Healthcare Improvement Act, with a few additional furnishings, really ameliorate the problem at hand? Obviously, U.S. legislation has not worked thus far and, moreso, it has been the driving impetus behind the historical disintegration of this country’s indigenous.

If anything is to suffice, health care services for Native Americans must be developed in accord with Native Americans’ requirements and wishes. Services must incorporate the indigenous traditions and practices of each tribe, alongside the option to access conventional methods of treatment.

More capital should be injected into the system. There are absolutely no excuses to do otherwise. The money is there — it’s just being misspent, primarily on an already-bloated defense budget. Allocations for environmental clean-up costs must be put in place, too. And clean-up projects must be enforced with full speed ahead. This would — with the adequate sanitation gear — provide a massive amount of new employment as well.

A concerted effort, from all angles, on behalf of U.S. policy-makers, must culminate in an unprecedented level of reparations that not only rectify centuries of genocidal maltreatment, but also recognize, with respect, indigenous sovereignties. This includes the withdrawal of all unwanted military and corporate activity/occupation from Indian country. In the end, the health of one’s landbase is commensurate with the health of one’s community.

1. Goldsmith, M.F. (1996). First Americans face their latest challenge: Indian health care meets state Medicaid reform. JAMA, 275, 1786; also see Voss, Richard W., Victor Douville, Alex Little Soldier, and Gayla Twiss, Tribal and shamanic-based social work practice: a Lakota perspective, Social Work, Vol. 44, 1999.
2. Kuschell-Haworth, Holly T., “Jumping Through Hoops: Traditional Healers and the Indian Health Care Improvement Act,” DePaul Journal of Health Care Law, 1999.
3. Dillingham, Brint, “Indian Women and HIS Sterilization Practices,” American Indian Journal, vol. 3, no. 1 (1977), pp. 27-28. For more info on this, see Churchill, Ward, “In the Matter of Julius Streicher: Applying Nuremberg Precedents in the United States,” From A Native Son: Selected Essays on Indigenism, 1985-1995 (Boston: South End Press, 1996).
4. Andrea Smith, “The HIV-Correlation to Hepatitis-A and B Vaccines,” WARN Newsletter (Chicago: Women of All Red Nations, summer 1992).
5. Duran, Bonnie M., American Journal of Public Health, May2005, Vol. 95 Issue 5, pp. 758-758.
6. Churchill, Ward, “Since Predator Came: A Survey of Native North America Since 1492, From A Native Son: Selected Essays on Indigenism, 1985-1995 (Boston: South End Press, 1996), p. 26. Also, see House Concurrent Resolution 108 of August 1953, which promulgated a policy of “unilaterally dissolving specific native nations.” This resulted in the “suspension of federal services to and recognition of the existence of”: the Menominee on June 17, 1954 (ch. 303, 68 Stat. 250); the Klamath on Aug. 13, 1954 (ch. 732, 68 Stat. 718, codified at 25 U.S.C. § 564 et seq.); the “Tribes of Western Oregon” on Aug. 13, 1954 (ch. 733, 68 Stat. 724, codified at 25 U.S.C. § 691 et seq.); and more. In total, 109 nations were statutorily “terminated” in the 1950s. Some were restored and federally recognized in the 1970s. Also, see the Relocation Act (PL 959) of 1956; for more info on the latter “Act,” see Fixico, Donald L., Termination and Relocation: Federal Indian Policy, 1945-1960 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986).
7. Duran, Bonnie M., op. cit.
8. James, Cara, Karyn Schwartz, and Julia Berndt, “A Profile of American Indians and Alaska Natives and Their Health Coverage, Race, Ethnicity and Health Care,” Kaiser Family Foundation, September 2009, p. 6.
9. Katel, Peter, (2006, April 28), “American Indians,” CQ Researcher, 16, 361-384.
10. Churchill, Ward, “Native North America: The Political Economy of Radioactive Colonialism,” From A Native Son: Selected Essays on Indigenism, 1985-1995 (Boston: South End Press, 1996), p. 147; also see Garrity, Michael, “The U.S. Colonial Empireis as Close as the Nearest Reservation,” Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, ed. Holly Sklar (Boston: South End Press, 1980), pp. 238-68.
11. Churchill, Ward, “Native North America…,” From A Native Son…, p. 150; also see U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, The Navajo Nation: An American Colony (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976).
12. Edwards, Dr. Gordon, President of Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, “Uranium: The Deadliest Metal,” Perception Magazine, v. 10 n. 2, 1992.
13. Quartaroli, MaryLynn, “Leetso,” the Yellow Monster: Uranium Mining on the Colorado.

With regard to a contemporary program, for instance (neo)-Malthusian measures, to solve the “population problem,” such propositional theory put into wholesale praxis would essentially expand and accelerate the genocidal effects of the civilizing process. Sure that sounds like a loaded allegation and indictment upon an archaic Western archetype and his immoral conjectures, but it is true. Not only did Malthus believe that inequality was natural and good, or “at least necessary for avoiding the problem of massive overpopulation and hence starvation;” he also “denounced soup kitchens and early marriages while defending smallpox, slavery, and child murder [sic].”¹

Malthus believed that social inequality and poverty was natural, expunging from the historical record centuries, if not millennia, of social engineering, construction and stratification of a system that manifests inequality and penury by virtue of its own design. In other words, abject poverty, famine and, social stratification that unjustly engenders inequality, are tangents of social arrangements configured by sovereign powers themselves.

These same sovereign powers set up and normalized the city-state lifestyle/culture (i.e., civilization) as a way to enhance and, make more efficient, production at the expense of human and nonhuman resources in order to enhance the luxuries of those positioned at the top of the hierarchy. Surfeit resources, profits and assets, enjoyed by few, are commensurate with expanded efficiency in production and, in turn, so will a population that is organized around growing and perpetuating said social arrangements grow geometrically. In other words, “population growth correlates with economic prosperity.”² Therefore, overpopulation of humans on this planet is not necessarily a natural phenomenon as much as it is a direct result of the dominant social construct, i.e., overpopulation is moreso anthropogenic than it is organic. So, for starters, Malthus had conveniently designed the theoretical framework for the dominant culture so to fix a problem induced by the dominant culture.

Second on the list of excoriations directed toward Thomas Malthus and his legacy of villainous schemes and those who propound and argue in defense of such machinations, is the hunger fallacy. Despite the fact that the world population is, at the very least, six fold from what it was in 1800, there is still more than enough food produced the world over to support the population.³ Africa alone produces 25 percent of the world’s cereals, but yet it is the most immiserated continent on the planet. This is a direct result of global trade, orchestrated by the world’s richest coterie of individuals (i.e., the WTO, World Bank and IMF, et al.). Africa grows enough food to feed itself, but because its countries have been co-opted, if not coerced at the barrel of a gun by Western trade agents over the centuries, it has to export its very own solution to famine. Those countries who spurn compliance with Western trade agreements are subject to reprehensible sanctions that Arundhati Roy refers to as “New Genocide,” meaning the creation of “conditions [through economic sanctions] that lead to mass death without actually going out and killing people.”⁴ Digression aside, what is transpiring in Africa is not an isolated occurrence. In India, where millions are the victims of starvation and malnutrition, there have been incidences, time and again, in which the government allows immorally imbalanced disbursement of food. One example that Arundhati Roy presents in her book, An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire, reports the Indian government allowing 63 million tons of grain to rot in its granaries.⁵ Meanwhile, twelve million tons were exported and put on sale at a subsidized price the Indian government refused to offer its country’s impoverished peoples.⁶ There is more than enough food to feed people – bottom line.

When exploring the implications of a (neo)-Malthusian program, one must ask, as Richard Robbins advises, “what social interests or purposes might be advanced by their acceptances?” Clearly, Malthus envisioned a world where the elite and upper class decide and act upon population control by advancing measures that materialized from within the very former and latter statuses. It should also be noted that Malthus was not concerned with population growth, he was concerned with the rising number of poor in England at the time and, why they should or should not exist and, “what should be done about them.”⁷ Malthus erroneously, and egregiously – might I add, saw poverty not as a consequence of “expanding industrialism, enclosure laws… or the need of manufacturers for a source of inexpensive labor…” but rather as a phenomenon that emerged from “the laws of nature…”⁷

The Malthusian premise is one that presumes poverty exists by virtue of overpopulation, which is often postulated as the fault of fundamentally flawed human beings – which is dehumanizing to say the least. And, his theory (and any other theoretical fledglings of similarity) exempts the privileged elite from any accountability for fomenting and perpetuating the framing conditions and social arrangements that engender overpopulation and poverty in the first place.

If there really were something inherently poor and laggard in large populations, then affluent places like London or Manhattan would elicit fear of overpopulation. But the truth is, such sentiment is not directed internally toward ‘civilized’ regions of high densities of people, but rather it is directed externally toward areas and regions that are sought after for resources – areas that need to be ‘managed’ and ‘civilized.’ These are areas that, unlike densely populated areas of developed countries, are impoverished and immiserated on account of sanctions, development projects, foreign debt, illicit purloining of resources, and more, perpetrated and/or effected by foreign institutions – the very institutions that not only wreak tremendous social and ecological havoc, but also castigate such ‘victim’ countries as being ‘poor’ and ‘problematic’ and as ‘jeopardizing’ the globe with overpopulation. This is pathologically depraved behavior.

Furthermore, in today’s economic climate, one who recognizes the limits of economics within an ecological context of invariable finite materials is often referred to as a ‘neo–Malthusian.’ But because one recognizes the intrinsic limits to growth does not also mean that such a realization is concomitant with Malthusian theory, or rather: Just because one recognizes the limits to growth does not mean they are a neo-Malthusian.

The crux is, there are limits to growth. The planet is comprised of finite resources. Any intelligent creature is aware of this unalterable truth. However, these facts do not warrant one group of people to assume a higher positioning over another as a means to decide who lives, who is ‘useful,’ who gets what and when and where. The truth is, as many maintain, the whole carrying capacity discussion is either a.) not discussed honestly, or at all, or b.) it is approached with a narrow set of ‘solutions,’ all of which intend to perpetuate the status quo – which translates into either not solving shit or, solving the problem in a way that keeps those in power in power to enjoy their luxuries and privileges.

More importantly, owing to the fact that overpopulation is commensurate with economic growth (which confers tremendous power and wealth upon economic architects and directors i.e., the state and financial and corporate institutions) – we should, as Derrick Jensen suggests, honestly acknowledge how different our discourse and theoretical solutions would be if we changed the language from ‘overpopulation’ problems to ‘overconsumption’ problems? Here is where we find the fundamental flaws inhered within the ‘panaceas’ that are prescribed to fix this entire conundrum. We can’t address this issue as an ‘overconsumption’ problem because mitigating consumption growth would destroy the capitalist economy. So, unforgivably, we go with ‘overpopulation.’ Does anyone see the fundamental flaw yet? Does anyone else see what’s wrong here?

According to Jensen, “The United States constitutes less than 5 percent of the world’s population yet uses more than one-fourth of the world’s resources and produces one-fourth of the world’s pollution and waste.” And, if you “compare the average U.S. citizen to the average citizen of India, you find that the American uses fifty times more steel, fifty-six times more energy, one hundred and seventy times more synthetic rubber, two hundred and fifty times more motor fuel, and three hundred times more plastic.” Nonetheless, our concepts of overpopulation are usually not comprised of “those who do the most damage, the primary perpetrators (there can’t be too many [middle-class] Americans, can there?), but instead their primary (human) victims.”⁸

There is much absurdity and arrogance, as Jensen asserts, in the call for the poor to stop having children but not minding the rich driving around in SUVs, watching plasma-screen TVs while living sedentary lives in 3500 square foot homes, etc. ad nauseam. Also, to quote Jensen in depth:

…there are those who claim—equally absurdly, and equally arrogantly—that all talk of carrying capacity is racist and classist. To even use the phrase carrying capacity in this crowd is to invite hisses and catcalls, as well as spat epithets of Neo-Malthusian. I suppose the argument is that because some of those who want to protect this exploitative way of living use carrying capacity as a means of social control against the poor—as an American Indian activist friend said to me, “The only problem I have with population control is that you and I both know who is going to do the controlling”—then the notion of carrying capacity itself must be racist and classist. This seems similar to me to suggesting that because Hitler claimed (falsely) that Germany was being attacked by Poland, and that therefore the Germans needed to attack, and that because this same argument has routinely been used (just as falsely) by the United States as well as other imperial powers, that anyone who claims self-defense is lying. These people seem to forget that the misuse of an argument does not invalidate the argument itself. Worse, this argument, that the very concept of carrying capacity is a fabrication designed for social control, as opposed to a simple statement of limits, serves those in power as effectively as does ignoring or de-emphasizing resource consumption when speaking of overshooting carrying capacity, because it goes along with the refusal to acknowledge physical limits (and limits to exploitation) that characterize this culture. What would it take, I’ve heard peace and social justice activists ask, to bring the poor of the world to the fiscal standard of living of the rich? Well, another thirty planets, for one thing. It’s a dangerous—and stupid— question. Within this culture wealth is measured by one’s ability to consume and destroy. This means that attempts to industrialize the poor will further harm the planet. Because industrial production requires the exploitation of resources, the wealth of one group is always based on the impoverishment of another’s landbase, meaning that on a finite planet, the creation of one person’s (fiscal) wealth always comes at the cost of many others’ poverty. Those reasons are why the question is stupid. It’s dangerous because it serves as propaganda to keep both activists and the poor playing a game that doesn’t serve them well, and which they can never win, instead of quitting this game and working to take down the system.”⁹

There is a term called lactational amenorrhea, which is the absence of menstruation due to lactation. As long as a mother is nursing her neonate (i.e., infant) each and every time the child wants to feed, fertility is postponed. Basically, the female body temporarily shuts off its procreational facilities because the body is taxed to its limits regarding nutrient allocation for not only the infant but the mother as well. In other words, “If you continue with exclusive breast feeding for your baby’s first six months, your risk of becoming pregnant is less then 2 percent.”¹⁰

Many indigenous mothers would sleep with their infants through the night so that their child would be able to nurse even during sleep. This beautiful communion between mother and child was practiced nightly for upwards of six months, if not more.¹¹ This practice, which is being forever lost in the dominant culture, in tandem with sustainable living practices, conduced to a natural, safe, sane and non-exploitative program of population control.

One must ask, what sort of culture would replace such population control measures with something like the Malthusian model. The answers tell us that only an exploitative culture, hell-bent on production by means of degradation of another’s landbase, thence elevating one’s luxuries on account of another’s impoverishment, would discard sane and sustainable ways of living to achieve prosperous ends.

1. R.L. Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999).
2. Richard H. Robbins, Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism (4th Ed.), (Boston: Pearson, 2008), p. 153
3. Robbins, p. 150.
4. Arundhati Roy, An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire, (Cambridge: South End Press, 2004), p. 88.
5. N.A. Mujumdar, “Eliminate hunger now, poverty later,” Business Line, 8 January 2003.
6. “Foodgrain exports may slow down this fiscal [year],” India Business Insight, 2 June 2003; “India: Agriculture sector: Paradox of plenty,” Business Line, 26 June 2001; Ranjit Devraj, “Farmers protest against globalization,” Inter Press Service, 25 January 2001.
7. R.H. Robbins, p. 156.
8. Derrick Jensen, Endgame Volume I: The Problem of Civilization, (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006), p. 115.
9. D. Jensen, p. 115-116.
10. Katie Singer, The Garden of Fertility: A Guide to Charting Your Fertility Signals to Prevent or Achieve Pregnancy – Naturally – and to Gauge Your Reproductive Health, (New York: Avery, 2004), p.68.
11. K. Singer, p. 67-70.

Of all our natural resources water has become the most precious. By far the greater part of the earth’s surface is covered by its enveloping seas, yet in the midst of this plenty we are in want. By a strange paradox, most of the earth’s abundant water is not usable for agriculture, industry, or human consumption because of its heavy load of sea salts, and so most of the world’s population is either experiencing or is threatened with critical shortages.

– Rachel Carson

Around the world, scarcity of potable water is becoming a portentous matter. Admonishing phrases like “water is the next oil,” and “wells are running dry” have percolated their way into the collective lexicon of global issues. Rivers and streams are vanishing, and the desiccation and depletion of entire watersheds and aquifers is increasing the world over. Desperately seeking a reason for the withering away of drinkable water and the silencing of gushing streams, it becomes obvious that there is not one sole factor contributing to this dire situation, but many. Global warming and climate change, industrial modes of production, dam construction, and water privatization all conduce to the problem of water scarcity.

The supply of freshwater on this planet is only 2.5 percent of the world’s total water. Considering the amount that is frozen up in ice and snow, roughly one percent is left for human use. Water consumption has grown twice as fast as the world’s population.

We are often told that we’ve exceeded our carrying capacity here on Earth (or are arriving at that calamitous denouement of the story of civilization in no time soon), and water – a finite resource – is being exacerbated at an alarming rate in tandem to population growth. It is very true that we’ve reached our carrying capacity, this planet cannot healthily sustain so many people living in current arrangements; it cannot support our lifestyle. But anyone who has closely studied the conflation of civilization, agriculture, and Capitalism understand well that human population booms are endemic to the aforementioned social formula. And in all honesty, to blame the problem of water scarcity upon an increasing global population is sneaky as hell. Ninety percent of human water use is for industrial purposes – 70 percent being used exclusively for large-scale agriculture and factory farming. If the dominant economic mode were to shift gears, to one that wasn’t defined globally, and predicated upon the funneling of resources to the producer rather than the community, the availability of water would be much different. If community-scale projects and strict environmental protection policies were implemented to define our economic behavior, then I’m pretty sure billions of people would not be facing such dire water related plights. However, in a world where market theory has greatly influenced the dominant praxis of economic intercourse, the privatization of the planet’s water has been pitched as the panacea that will solve our troubles.

Such pernicious tropes like “blue gold” used to describe water have motivated many corporations to privatize water with much alacrity. Here in Vermont I quickly got wind of the contentions surrounding the privatization and commercialization of water. Like sprouting cowslips that push their way through marshy soils in the springtime, private water-bottling operations were popping up left and right along Vermont’s pristine springs. These enterprises have set up shop with the intent to siphon the state’s fresh water from age-old springs and commercialize it.

There was the New Jersey resident, East Montpelier landowner, and chief executive officer of Montpelier Spring Water Company, Daniel Antonovich, who initially pitched forward the Montpelier Spring Water Company in May of 2007 to the East Montpelier Selectboard.

Antonovich envisions constructing a subterranean pipeline that will transport the water over several miles from the East Montpelier site to a bottling factory (yet to be erected) alongside U.S. Highway 2 in Montpelier, where the water will then be bottled, capped – ready for shipment, and consigned to its mercantile fate.

Following the proposal, many citizens became skeptical and concerned that the Montpelier Spring Water Co. could follow suit of other companies and someday sell out to a larger corporation that would aggrandize the water-bottling operation. This had already occurred in Randolph, Vermont with Vermont Pure; ClearSource, being a leviathan in the commercial bottled-water industry, bought them out.

ClearSource has a history of violating their traffic violations, as well as transgressing their sewage discharge limits. According to its permit, ClearSource’s sewage discharge is restricted to 2,960 gallons of sewage on a daily basis. Currently, ClearSource pumps out 8,000 gallons a day – a considerable decrease from 23,000 gallons only a few years ago – but still, ClearSource is over its limit, and well – rightly so, any company that can’t tolerate administrative precepts implemented to carefully manage human ordure scores a big fat zero with concerned citizens.

In accordance with their permit, ClearSource must maintain no more than 120 roundtrips per day for all vehicles into the bottling plant. As a response to the guidelines, ClearSource’s CEO Jay Land stated that if the company were to suddenly follow this requirement “the result would be a mass layoff this morning in the plant,” and that, “I’d have to tell [employees] that if you go home for lunch you have to stay home…But I will not do that to the people in the plant.” Geez Land, ever think about offering incentives for carpooling, or having your employees pack a lunch? Fortunately, ClearSource “has fallen upon difficult economic times” and had to shut down their bottling plant in Randolph, VT in early May ‘09. Good riddance.

In October of 2007, Ice River Springs (aka Aquafarms and Aquafarms 93) one of Canada’s paramount “private label bottled-water companies” announced that it would be opening two new bottling plants in the U.S., one of those plants being constructed on the New Hampshire/Vermont border in Claremont, New Hampshire. The company further announced that 75 percent of its water would be extracted from a Vermont source in Stockbridge, Vermont, while the remainder would be retrieved from Claremont’s municipal water supply, alongside manufacturing the plastic bottles at the plant.

According to an article titled “Ice River Springs/Aquafarms 93 Exposed” at polarisinstitute.org “…the company locates plants in small rural communities that are desperate for economic development and jobs…” and that “…Ice River Springs uses paid lobbyists to put pressure on politicians to push for or against policies that effect [sic] the company’s profit.” I thought of all the other water privatization injustices, sanctioned in tandem by the IMF, World Bank, and transnational corporations like Nestle™, Bechtel™, Suez™ and Coca-Cola™, ad nauseam, that have occurred throughout the world in places such as Belize, Buenos Aires, Atlanta, Georgia, Manila in the Philippines, Cochabamba, Bolivia, Jakarta, Indonesia, Nelspruit, South Africa, and The United Kingdom. The article goes on to expose that Ice River maintains a plant located in Morganton, North Carolina, an area of the state suffering from one of the worst drought conditions ever recorded, and that it hasn’t curtailed its production and has made no indications that it will be doing so.

The precipitating trend of privatizing and commercializing Vermont’s freshwater is a microcosm of a larger corporate zeitgeist to seize control of much of the world’s fresh water.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 1.2 billion people worldwide go without access to clean drinking water, and approximately 2.5 billion people don’t have access to “adequate sanitation services.” Over five million – mostly children in Africa and Asia – die annually from preventable, water-related diseases. The following countries (population provided) consume only contaminated water: Sudan (12.3 million); Venezuela (5 million); Zimbabwe (2.7 million); Tunisia (2.1 million), and Cuba (1.2. million).

Proponents of water privatization argue that privatization of water in developing nations, where millions are subjected to abject poverty, would be a boon, delivering clean water for drinking and sanitation to many who go without. Conversely, many posit that these nations are not equipped to negotiate contracts and the poor bear the brunt of fee increases. The ensuing information will corroborate the latter allegations.

In 1997, the people of Bolivia did not choose to privatize their water – it was forced upon them. Bechtel’s subsidiary, Aguas del Tunari, along with the Abengoa Corporation of Spain, went into Bolivia, enforced a forty-year contract that privatized much of their fresh water, and not soon after, rate increases quickly doubled and tripled for most of the poor water users. The private investment relied stringently on market-rate pricing. According to Jim Shultz, in an article for The Nation on January 28, 2005 titled “The Politics of Water in Brazil,” the cost of water and sewage hookup, in El Alto, was more than half a year’s income for those making minimum wage.

The contract was so draconian that protest broke out in the streets of Cochabamba, the people demanding an immediate rescinding of the water contract. The protest led to martial law to save the companies’ contract, which led to the death of a teenage boy, and the wounding of more than a hundred people. Over the course of five years in Bolivia, there have been two citizen revolts decrying the privatization of their water. Bechtel’s contract was indeed cancelled, but in 2001 Bechtel filed suit against the Bolivian government, claiming they were entitled to $25 million in compensation for the loss of future profits.

By the end of 2000, more than 93 countries worldwide had partially privatized water or wastewater services. The larger the company, the more control. According to research done by Elizabeth Brubaker at the Energy Probe Research Foundation, at the largest scale, private water companies construct, own, and run water systems around the globe, raking in revenues of more than $30 billion – excluding revenue from the sales of bottled water. Most of this money does not make it back into the communities, but is rather transferred to the transnationals.

The largest players in water privatization are two French transnationals: Veolia Environment (owned by media conglomerate Vivendi) and Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux whose water and wastewater businesses are run by its subsidiary Ondeo (I’m sure you can find the CEOs’ names and home addresses if you reconnoiter hard enough on the Internet …to send them letters, silly). These two companies have interests in water projects in over 120 countries and provide to roughly 100 million people. Suez alone is active in more than 100 countries, and has become the second largest overseer of municipal systems in the U.S. – right behind American Water Works.

In 1993, Suez and Buenos Aires consummated a privatization deal (lauded by the World Bank); over the years the results were: drastic increases in consumer water prices; more than 95 percent of the city’s sewage dumped into the Rio del Plata river, to name but a couple. In 1998, Atlanta, Georgia signed a 20-year, $428 million contract with United Water, a Suez subsidiary. The results? Rate increases of sewer bills – 12 percent annually. According to a report procured by Public Citizen, the company also charged “an extra $37.6 million for additional service authorizations, capital repair, and maintenance costs.” The denizens of Atlanta paid about $16 million of these costs, and then an additional $1 million to hire investigators to verify United Water’s reports. Which turned out to be fishy. How’s that for venality – as if selling people water isn’t enough of a depraved iniquity.

As for abroad, the U.K. has used a large private system since the late 80s. A 1994 study purported to show rates of dysentery ascending in a majority of the urban areas. And according to the Public Citizen report, in 1998, “the major water companies in the U.K. were ranked as the second, third, and fourth-worst polluters.” And, “…ten water companies were prosecuted a total of 260 times between 1989 and 1997.”

Other noted effects of water privatization include: Improper protection of water quality; ecological destruction of downstream habitat; failure to protect public ownership of water and water rights; wasted water and neglect of conservation; and the transfer of assets of local communities to transnationals.

Despite corporate claims (which are fallacious beyond a doubt), the privatizing of water heavily increases the price of water. According to foodandwaterwatch.org, “International corporations can easily expect to make a 20 percent to 30 percent margin of profit from investment in water service… In 2006, Veolia made a consolidated net income of €759 million (nearly $1.12 billion), according to its 2006 annual report. In addition, 35 percent of Veolia’s total revenue came from water, with 10 percent from North America,” and “In the same year Suez earned a gross operating income of €7,083 million (nearly $10.38 billion), and RWE had a net income of €3,847 million (almost $5.66 billion). Some €689 million ($1.02 billion) of RWE’s EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) came from its water division, known as U.S. water provider American Water.” All of this money is funneled out of the community and into the pockets of the shareholders. There is virtually no case in which the privatizing of water has benefited everyone in a specific community. Kendra Okonski, editor of The Water Revolution, observed, “In most poor countries today, governments perpetuate water scarcity – which harms both people and the environment. They fail to provide water to the poor, but provide massive subsidies for water use by vested interests, such as big landowners.”

Conflicts over water issues arise as well. Along the Tigris and Euphrates River System, the countries of Iran, Iraq, and Syria face problems. As early as 1974 Iraq mobilized troops along the Syrian border, threatening to destroy Syria’s al Thawra dam along the Euphrates. In India, Arundhati Roy claims, “…over the last fifty years in India alone big dams have displaced more than thirty-three million people.” And according to the World Bank’s “Water Resources Strategy,” the World Bank will continue its policy of funding big dams.

In 1992, Hungary and Czechoslovakia took a dispute over Danube River water divisions and dam construction to the International Court of Justice. Other conflicts include disputes between: North and South Korea, Israel and Palestine, and Egypt and Ethiopia, to name a handful.
Dams, big or small, are deleterious to entire riparian ecosystems, disrupting sediment flow and fish populations, alongside uprooting people from their communities. They must go. There are over 75,000 dams, most inoperable, within the continental U.S. alone. If we were to take down a dam-a-day, it would take over 215 years. Meanwhile, salmon, steelhead, and trout are disappearing at an inexorable rate. For the Coho salmon, the apocalypse has already begun.

As for climate change and the latter’s effect on the world’s water systems, warmer climates will conduce to the desiccation of Himalayan glaciers as soon as 2035, as claimed by many reports. These glaciers are the sources of Asia’s largest river systems, i.e. Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, and the Yellow. Roughly 2.4 billion people live in the drainage basin of the Himalayan Rivers. Much trepidation presides over these folks with the morbid knowledge of likely being inundated by glacial melt, and the subsequent disappearance of their sacred, nascent glaciers.

Australia, too, faces desperate conditions in the near future. As a result of an epic drought, there is severe ecological damage done to the Murray-Darling basin, which provides for 40 percent of the country’s agricultural produce. In the opinion of environmentalist Tim Flannery, unless there are drastic changes, Perth (home of my former bands’ record label – I should give Cam, the owner of Hidden Shoal Records, a call and see how everything is going for him, water-wise) could become the world’s first “ghost metropolis” – virtually no water to support its population.

I recently had a chat with local environmentalist, Annette Smith from Vermonter’s for a Clean Environment (VCE), over the issues of water privatization, and the reprehensible bottled-water industry. She explained to me that “large extractions of water, the size at which commercial bottled-water companies operate, can taper stream channels, alter temperatures fish rely upon for their life cycles, and can expend aquifers and other nearby water sources.

“Furthermore, the impact goes far beyond the actual water extraction.” Smith explained that, “the plastic bottles have their environmental impacts as well. For one, the plastic bottles contain phthalates, which are chemical compounds that are added to plastics to increase their flexibility. Phthalates have been known to be culpable for organ damage, adverse hormonal activity, and birth defects.”

Plastic is a polymer, which is a very complex molecule. When plastic is disposed of in a landfill, it takes thousands upon thousands of years for that polymer to break down. In the U.S. approximately 60-70 million plastic water bottles are discarded every day.

The industrial process of manufacturing plastic bottles is very intensive as well. It uses the equivalent of four pints of water to manufacture one plastic bottle. A quote taken from the Chicago Tribune pretty much sums up a brief but comprehensive analysis of the water-bottle industry’s uses: “The 1.5 million barrels of crude oil used each year to manufacture plastic water bottles in the U.S. could fuel 100,000 cars for a year [or just stay in the ground and mitigate our military involvement in the Middle East]. Thousands of tons of greenhouse gases are emitted transporting bottled water around the world. Just 23 percent of all plastic bottles are recycled, meaning 52 billion end up in landfills or littered.”

Did you know that there is a trash vortex in the Pacific Ocean larger than the continental United States, and that there is now more plastic by weight than plankton?

Phytoplankton populations are in inexorable decline.

Whale populations are in inexorable decline.

This is what I do know: People manufacture plastic while sea otters choke to death on polyethylene rings from beer six-packs. People buy plastic while nylon nets strangle the lives out of great gulls. People discard plastic into the landbases and oceans while plastics get lodged in sea turtles – killing them. Fulmars wash ashore, lifeless, their stomachs distended with plastic. Whales, too, have been found dead along shorelines, autopsies revealing stomachs bloated with plastics.

As we’re all aware global warming is a consequence of green house gas emissions, especially CO2 emissions, and the water-bottling industry clearly isn’t helping the situation. I was curious to hear what Smith had to say about the impact global warming will have on watersheds. Her response was sharp: “Drought is the equalizer, because you can have water extractions that do not seem to be having an impact, but in drought the impacts can turn a neighborhood from barely having enough water to having no water at all.” I was beginning to see some irony here, as the song goes: “You don’t miss your water ‘til your well runs dry.”

Annette was also kind enough to forward me information she had retrieved herself when she attended a symposium at the Omega Institute in upstate New York in 2003, addressing the condition of the planet’s fresh water resources. The conference included some venerable and sagacious thinkers such as John Todd, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ralph Nader, Winona Hauter, Maude Barlow, and the prolific, left of center author, Kirkpatrick Sale. Annette was so impressed by Sale, that she attached a piece he had written following the conference. I have to concur with Annette, it is quite poignant and so I’d like to adduce an excerpt:

Of all the social and natural crises we humans [and nonhumans] face, the water crisis is the one that lies at the heart of our survival and that of our [sic] planet Earth. No region will be spared from the impact of this crisis which touches every facet of life, from the health of children to the ability of nations to secure food for citizens. Water supplies are falling while the demand is dramatically growing at an unsustainable rate.

In an article written last year by John Walters, in Montpelier’s The Bridge, as a response to Montpelier Spring Water Co.’s proposal “…skeptics circulated a petition calling for a three-year moratorium on any large-scale withdrawal of East Montpelier – anything over 10,000 gallons a day.”
The idea of the petition began with the lone voice of East Montpelier resident, Carolyn Shapiro. She became outraged two years back after getting wind of the Montpelier Spring Water Co.’s proposal in a local paper that “covered a request from the fledgling water company for Montpelier City Council’s approval work in the city’s right-of-way.” She had harangued the selectboard for “not informing the public of the company’s application to the town and for not granting an information meeting after she presented the board with a petition signed by 60 East Montpelier residents.”

Eventually, after much public concern, the petition came under Article 15 at East Montpelier’s town meeting on March 4, 2008. Dean Hedges, the town water manager, opposed the moratorium, stating: “permitting by the State Agency of Natural Resources, Act 250 and oversight by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would suffice enough to protect the town’s water.” The idea of leaving this issue exclusively in the hands of the state to be dealt with legally did not seem like the best of ideas, considering how much influence corporate lobbyists have over politicians. Moreso, I recalled Annette stating: “The Clean Water Act required Zero Discharge and we [the state] are not doing that at all. In Vermont, an attorney at ANR told me the other day that in his position it is legal to contaminate the groundwater under your site. I asked another attorney in private practice and he said no it isn’t.”

At the town meeting, Paul Earlbaum proposed an amendment to the moratorium, stating the selectboard and planning commission should “take all steps necessary to realize the intent of…a three-year and three-week prohibition on withdrawing water…for the purpose of allowing citizens adequate time to gather information.” The meeting adjourned and the amendment was passed. The citizens’ voices proved not only to be loud, but effective, and there seemed to be a realization that this was more than just a fight against private industry – it was about preserving Vermont’s pristine watershed.

As a result of East Montpelier’s victory, Vermont Natural Resources Council was inspired to push for legislation that would enact law making it so Vermont’s groundwater be mapped and accounted for; to much success, the initiative received a great response and a write-up in the New York Times.

However, the issues surrounding water access around the world still remains dire and demanding. Mexico City has sunk more than thirty feet into the ground due to their extracting from the underlying aquifer. Routine shutting off of taps has become compulsory as they are over 50 percent below their water table. The same conditions exist in Beijing and Shanghai, China, as well as in many regions of India, Africa and the Global South.

Between 1970 and 2000, virtually all vegetation of Madagascar’s highland plateau had been lost to deforestation for irrigation and agriculture. The endeavor transformed the country’s biomass into a wasteland. The detrimental effects are widespread erosion that produce heavily silted rivers that “run red;” the loss of ecosystems, and species driven to the brink of extinction; as well as the loss of fresh water, and coral reef reformations.

In California farmers are on strike because of drought conditions and lack of adequate water supply for agricultural purposes.

We’re told this is an issue that is commensurate with a growing global population. But the truth is, it is the result of social arrangements. Ninety percent of the use of water is for industrial agriculture and the commodification of nature, viz. for the industrial production of consumables and energies. Population growth is not responsible for the desiccation of fresh water as much as capitalism is, as much as industrial civilization is (it is self-evident that cities do not have a clean source of fresh water – fluoridation does not count, to find out why, go buy some rat poison at your local grocer and read the ingredient – there’s only one: sodium fluoride. Or better yet, see how long it takes for one of your friends to take a swim in the Hudson in the NY Bay area; I’ll give you a hint at how long it’ll take – unless s/he’s fucking bonkers, you’ll get well beyond quadruple-dog-dare).

If we want to preserve our freshwaters, it is imperative that our modes of production change radically, that the dams the world over come down – immediately, and by any means necessary; and that water is not viewed objectively as a catalyst for generating financial wealth, meaning no more commercial bottled water.

Every river, stream, and brook in the continental U.S. is tainted with carcinogenic material. There are approximately 41 million Americans drinking water that has traces of pharmaceuticals in it – in India the waters contain 150 times the highest levels of pharmaceutical contamination than in the U.S. The reasons for this abuse to our watersheds and freshwaters runs deep folks, but if we want to preclude further devastation we must act now, we must engender what the residents in East Montpelier had last year, this time on a global scale.

In April 2000, after weeks of civil disobedience and vehement protest in the streets, the president of Bolivia was forced by the popular upheaval to terminate the 40-year water privatization contract granted to Aguas del Tunari. This victory shows that if we align voices with actions, then community agency can direct what’s in our best interest, and that is to preserve the natural world – especially its freshwaters.

China’s Entry into the World Trade Organization (W.T.O.)

In 2001 China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO). Their enrollment into the WTO has allowed a multitude of transnational corporations to set up shop within the provincial cities of China, moving 300 million people out of poverty, a substantial number indeed; but China’s total population is approximately 1,321,851,888 as of July 2007 – that is 1/5 of the world’s total population. In fact, an equal proportion of 300 million Chinese denizens are subjected to abject poverty while a little over 700 million more endure abysmal working conditions and subdued living conditions.

China’s augmented trade relations have only strengthened the proliferation of transnational corporations (TNCs), rather than advancing the quality of life for its citizens. Wal-Mart (the world’s largest retailer) has fifty percent of its suppliers located in China, purchasing $18 billion worth of Chinese products annually, and by 2006 there were already fifty Wal-Marts within the country.¹ Additionally, Wal-Mart is far from the paragon of social and environmental responsibility. Wal-Mart is culpable for worker exploitation through unfair working conditions and improper salaries and pay (Chinese garment workers make less than twenty cents per day), as well as expunging natural resources for their low-cost products, all in the name of expedience and efficiency.

China’s economy has been able to skyrocket on account of bulldozing transnationals looking to expand and sprawl forth, and they have finally been granted such privileges under the aegis of the World Trade Organization. China has granted U.S. investments significant tax breaks and markdowns on land prices in return for a plethora of private enterprises with the hope to continue to boost China’s economy upwards. It’s a clever cycle of supply and demand: TNCs need cheaper production costs and more land for development; China demands more private business for its growth; and the Western consumer demands the products (the U.S. is the primary market for China’s exports and China is the 4th largest market for U.S. exports).

As it stood in ‘07, China’s trade with Japan had eclipsed U.S. trade with Japan, and in 2004 China had supplanted the U.S. as South Korea’s largest trading partner. China’s gross domestic product (GDP) had sprouted from less than five percent in 1980 to nearly 16 percent in 2007, landing one slot away from attaining global economic supremacy, the U.S. still being number one. Also, China’s exports have jumped from $150 billion in 1996 to approximately $1 trillion in 2006.² The final outcome? China is side by side with Japan as the world’s largest foreign retainers of U.S. debt, and combined the two accounts for 47 percent of more than $2 trillion total.

Ostensibly, it would appear that the U.S. is the global economic supremacist; but in all honesty, China has quite the stranglehold on the U.S. with its holdings of over $1 trillion of U.S. debt. And how does Japan’s economy really hold up? According to economist at the Economics and Management School, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Han Deqiang, “Japan’s debt in proportion to GDP is the highest in the world, roughly 130 percent, and its rate of growth has been somewhere near zero.”³ No wonder Japan’s economy is foundering so hard right now. China’s stature may be grander than once thought, but without a doubt, China’s economic growth is contingent upon foreign trade. However, it is clear none of this is sustainable.

As China’s economy grows, the nation is demanding the use of more fossil fuels to power its infrastructure as well as an increase in privately owned vehicles. More land is needed to make room for supporting industry and business, and according to Han Deqiang “When Wal-Mart goes to Gweiyang or Beijing, say, they knock out, in an instant, four or five department stores,”³ directly conducing to job loss.

Although China manufactures more than half of the world’s electronics and low-cost products, at what expense does the natural environment we live in have to pay? And in the name of expedience and modernity, how far will China continue to foment negligent economic growth? Despite ostensible reports of progress, China is projected to follow a path that will make them the world’s leading greenhouse-gas emitter by 2020– this is just one of the myriad environmental repercussions due to China’s economic expansion that will undoubtedly fare ill for the entire global population if continued.

It is obvious that China has adopted similar methods the U.S. has implemented to further private enterprise, industry development, and economic growth. But as we have learned time and again here in the states, the GDP may go up while the quality of life goes down, e.g. private investors have cashed in on insurance claims immediately after hurricane Katrina; meanwhile, the nation’s GDP can go up while thousands of families are left homeless and a city remains in shambles. Another example is urban sprawl – a condition in which the nation’s GDP swells upward at the expense of environmental degradation and community disengagement: for every dollar spent at a corporate retailer 15 cents is automatically reinvested back into the community, whereas every dollar spent at an independent local retailer 45 cents is automatically reinvested back into the community.⁴ Another stifling fact: in 2000, lucrative sales for the top 200 corporations were eighteen times the combined income of the more than 1.2 billion people living in abject poverty.⁵ So much for “democratic” Free trade.

China’s Current Environmental Dilemma

To raise consumption of energy and materials throughout the world to Western levels, given current population projections, would require the resources of four planet Earths by the year 2100. To do so with the one world we have would so severely compromise the biosphere that the Earth would be unrecognizable.
– Wade Davis

Although China does not constitute the entire world’s population, China does harbor one fifth. At the current rate of energy consumption and product manufacturing, developing China has already made its countryside unrecognizable. The country is home to sixteen of the world’s twenty greatest polluted cities, and approximately 14,000 new cars emerge on China’s roads every day resulting in more than 52,700 miles of developing highways throughout the country.⁶ The rate that China is moving toward fostering a private-car based economy is alarmingly high, contributing to global carbon emissions and global warming. Without mutability in China’s current stride of development, China is expected to emit more CO2 than North America and Japan combined by 2025, a frightening fact that attenuates the efforts to curb CO2 emissions dramatically within the next couple of years. Moreover, according to GeoHive (an online data base), China claims chief rank in the world arena for coal production (38.37 percent), providing roughly 70 percent of China’s energy – a climb from 309.9 million tons of coal burned annually in 1981 to 1,107.7 million tons by the year 2005; 2006 saw a total of 2.4 billion tons – more than the U.S., Japan, and the U.K. combined.

Furthermore, four of the most polluted cities reside in the coal-rich province of Shanxi. Ninety percent of China’s sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions and fifty percent of its particulate emissions are a consequence of coal consumption. The U.S. only reaches half of China’s numbers pertaining to coal production and consumption, and already faces dire consequences e.g. significant loss of watershed alongside loss of plant and animal species, flood, drought, abysmal health conditions, and poverty to name but a handful. So how bad does China have it? According to China’s State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), air pollution is culpable for 400,000 premature deaths annually alongside extinctive damage to myriad ecosystems harboring unique forms of life,⁷ e.g. the endangered panda.

Since the 1950s, China has lost 36,000 square miles (the size of Indiana) to desertification, and the Gobi Desert maintains an annual growth rate of 1,900 square miles. Although China retains the 4th largest freshwater resources in the world, they are quickly drying up and/or are rapidly being tainted by the agricultural sector, urban development and growth, as well as mismanaged irrigation and more. It is estimated from one report procured by the government-run Xinhua News Agency that “aquifers in ninety percent of Chinese cities are polluted” and that “more than 75 percent of the river water flowing through China’s urban areas is considered unsuitable for drinking or fishing” and as a result “nearly 700 million people drink water contaminated with animal and human waste.”⁶

Due to China’s despoiling of its watershed, many of China’s cities are sinking; Shanghai and Tianjin have already sunk more than six feet over the past fifteen years. The Yangtze River, which begins in Tibet and flows into Shanghai, receives 40 percent of China’s sewage, of which 80 percent is untreated. The Yellow River, which affords water to more than 150 million people (15 percent of China’s agricultural land), is regarded as “unsafe to drink” and ten percent is considered sewage.⁶

The World Wildlife Fund reports that China “is now the largest polluter of the Pacific Ocean” and that “more than 80 percent of the Eastern China Sea (one of the world’s largest fisheries) is now rated unsuitable for fishing.” There is almost no river from China that flows into the seas clean.

In 2006, the provincial industry of Guangdong and Fujian dumped nearly 8.3 billion tons of sewage into the ocean without treatment. The Bohai Sea, which is expected to be barren and infecund within 12 years, receives approximately 2.8 billion tons of “contaminated” water each year.⁷ As industry grows along the coastline, tons of pollutants taint the waters; SEPA estimates that half of China’s offshore seawater has been “poisoned.” A report from Chinadaily.com states that “last year [2006] there were over 80 incidents of algae blooms in the shallow waters off China’s coast, leading to direct economic losses of nearly 8.6 million U.S. dollars.” Algae blooms, also known as “red tides”, are massive blooms of algae teeming with hazardous levels of toxins and have been on the rise throughout China’s ocean shoals.⁷ Not only are red tides perhaps an augury of economic loss on the horizon, but are also harbingers of death and toxicity for the myriad plant and animal species that are indigenous to the coastal waters and vital to sea-life.

As production increases in China so does the economy, but it is explicitly realizable that the current growth rate does not sustain a natural environment that offers such imperative resources for an industrial nation’s economy – talk about irony. It’s apparent that industrial civilization is just not sustainable.

It has been estimated that for every pound of electronics, 8,000 pounds of resources are used along the way for the manufacturing processes and assembly. According to the latter statement, China’s colorable achievement of being one of the world’s largest producers of energy efficient lights and windows, as well as solar cells, really translates as acute resource extraction and land/air/water pollution. Somewhere along the line, someone has to blow the whistle. Somewhere along the line, China must adopt a less formidable economic model to espouse to, one that is much more sustainable with respect to the natural environment. Please China – stop following in the West’s footsteps.

How will the world’s environment stand against China’s economy?

One should be aware at this point that China, influenced heavily by western capitalism, champions unprecedented industrial growth. With an increasing push for more privately owned vehicles, a larger infrastructure, and heightened product manufacturing, China will sit comfortably as the world principle emitter of green-house gases, carbon, particulate emissions and then some. In 2004, “China installed as much new electricity generating capacity, mostly fossil fueled, as the entire electricity output of the U.K.”⁸ Such prodigious development has been a hallmark of China’s growth as well as an environmental hazard elsewhere.

A consequence of China’s booming coal industry, acid rain precipitates on at least 14 percent of its own country as well as on Japan and South Korea – damaging crops, woodland, and water ecosystems.⁹ To make matters worse, as a result of China’s gorging coal industry, 25-40 percent of all mercury emissions in the world come from China – a statistic that will steadily climb if China’s economic gait is not tapered. As for the U.S., the EPA cited a model showing that China contributes close to 30 percent of background sulfate particulate matter in the Western U.S. and is responsible for one percent of all particulate matter in L.A.¹⁰

There is no red light in sight for China’s transnational-fueled economy. It is near impossible to expect growth to slow down enough before China reaches emissions levels that are predicted to throw the planet’s biosphere into an unrecognizable state. Meanwhile, a 2007 report issued from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency stated that China has already outdistanced the U.S. as the world’s largest contributor of CO2 emissions. Gerhard Berz, chief of Munich Re’s geoscience research group also stated, “The effects of China’s decisions will be felt worldwide. Within the foreseeable future, the global trend may well lead to extreme climate conditions the likes of which have not yet been experienced by man.”⁹

Without curtailing emissions drastically within the next couple of years, global warming won’t only be irreversible but amplified, and the melting of the planet’s ice will continue to increase at faster rates. Rapidity in glacial meltdown will result in higher sea levels and stronger hurricanes, undulating coastal cities globally. Currently, the Association of British Insurers claims that up to 1.2 million properties are in harm’s way within Britain’s inland floodplain, and that insurance claims stemming from weather damage has exceeded $3 billion some years and may emerge as the leading agent of property damage in the country.⁹ Nevertheless, that money must benefit someone (i.e. insurance companies), giving a boost to GDP somewhere, but knockin’ a blow to the quality of life for the inhabitants of the affected areas.

Desertification is also on the rise. Although China is losing much of its countryside to the Gobi Desert each year, Africa is getting hit hard and will fare worse if the global economy picks back up. Projections show that by 2025, two thirds of arable land in Africa will be swallowed up by desertification resulting in population displacement, not due to Africa’s own emissions, but directly on account of the industrialized/developing countries.

Chinese multinational corporations have spread their wings as well, maximizing their occupation in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, in search of resources to further fuel China’s economy, and are ravishing their regions in the process. China’s timber imports have more than tripled over the last ten years, and China’s demand for lumber will most likely increase by 33 percent in the following five years – China is the largest importer in the world of illegally logged timber, 50 percent of its lumber imports stem from illegal operations.⁶

At what costs will China, as an emerging economy, continue its rapacious extraction of resources before they decide enough is enough? Clearly, exhausting its own resources didn’t give any forethought to slow down. And with the precipitous rise of myriad private enterprises stockpiling remunerative gains as the result of climate-change induced disasters, who will have a voice loud enough for the world to hear and acknowledge: slow down!

Alongside desert sprawl and watershed depletion there will be a decline in food and crop yields. So far, record world prices for almost all staple foods have led to an 18 percent food cost inflation in China; and according to the U.N. Environmental Program, the planet’s water, land, air, plants, animals and fish stocks are in “inexorable decline.”¹¹

Constant perturbations to ecosystems will eventually trigger a response on a scale unimaginable, considering the tightly woven interrelations life’s complex natural communities have with each other. To approach species endangerment, land degradation, water/air pollution, as well as industrial growth at the expense of the surrounding environments without dire and heartfelt concern to halt economic exigency, is suicide.

(Un)Fixing the mistakes

Over the last 25 years, the World Bank has lent more than $34 billion dollars to China, a quarter of it allocated for transport infrastructure and fighting pollution. In 2001, the World Bank invested millions of dollars in a project to remove dangerous shoals along the Xiangjiang River in Hunan Province, creating a deeper 157 km channel to improve vessel efficiency and “significantly increase environment-friendly energy generation in the region” that will be “saving environmental pollution and cutting the incidence of energy outages.”⁹ Despite financial efforts to fix the environmental damage done by China’s economy, rearranging nature in the name of economic efficiency is disastrous as well as crazed and doltish – the efforts will only further exhaust a quagmire into bedlam. One might as well advocate MTR (mountain top removal) as “environmentally-friendly” based on a criterion of its efficiency. At last, China has culminated over 4,000 km of inland waterways as navigable – hooray! Right? The results are: desiccated and poisoned watersheds, and cities sinking inch by inch, as if the earth that grounds them was imbibing them.

Perhaps the benefit of free trade (that sounds evil) can be found with Europe’s Registration, Evaluation & Authorization of Chemicals (REACH), a set of chemical regulation standards that has set a new benchmark in the product-manufacturing arena, one that purports to show how chemicals are controlled and how “production decisions around the world will be made from now on.” In an article written in October of 2007 for Harper’s Magazine, Mark Schapiro writes:

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce had REACH translated into Mandarin within days of its passage. European consultants also traveled to China to show industry and government officials there what exporters will have to do to abide by the chemical regulations. The Europeans were willing to aid their competitors in China, with whom they have a significant trade deficit, because just about anything made in Chinese factories can end up in the hands of Europeans.¹²

Still, REACH has only aspired to some, despite its advancement. The U.S. is nefarious for its history of antagonism toward environmental and human-rights programs, in fear of new standards encumbering U.S GDP. The U.S. also waged campaigns under the Bush administration to subvert REACH’s influence in the many regions of Eastern Europe.¹² And if it weren’t for China’s acquiescence to cheap-cost production, pragmatism in efficiency, and western influence in the first place, perhaps there wouldn’t be such a loud cry of concern over the product safety of imported goods from China.

REACH does not address the concerns of crop depletion, or widespread desertification; nor does it lower emissions or troubleshoot and prepare for a rampant exodus that may potentially follow coastal city flooding or the breaking up of villages and communities. Cramming billions of dollars into China’s infrastructure through modernization programs will not ameliorate conditions either, but will only further shock the country’s morale with confusion. Alongside a diminishing countryside deprived of potable water, ushering China into modernity hastily, while simultaneously condemning them for their dereliction, is a paradoxical investment that will further cultivate and foment social unrest.

As for current climate-change policy, even if China was never exempt from the Kyoto Protocol there is question as to whether it would have made a speck of a difference. Japan, the purveyor of the treaty meant to unite the world through addressing climate change, has done only that: addressed the world of climate change, nothing more. In fact, Japan’s emissions have increased since the onset of the protocol. The protocol, which was enacted in 1997 and had called for a 6 percent decrease from 1990 emissions levels, has not achieved any progress. Japan’s emissions have risen 13 percent, and the U.S. (the largest contributor of greenhouse gases) has remained exempt (along with India and China). Any emission cuts that have been achieved have been cancelled out by China’s emissions alone.¹³

Listening to Reason

World renown scientist and father of the Gaia hypothesis, James Lovelock disclosed to Rolling Stone online that “Our future is like that of the passengers on a small pleasure boat sailing quietly above the Niagara Falls, not knowing that the engines are about to fail.”

It should be taken with much consideration when those who have studied the planet’s ecosystems and environments for the past thirty years with diligence and ardor; and those who have examined the biosphere and atmosphere closely, postulating over the negative effects of industry and capitalism with earnest concern for the planet, have been saying all these years to slow down. It shouldn’t be taken lightly when projections point toward a steep decline of the current global economy and life, as we know it. For decades, many intellectuals specific to their fields of study in the natural sciences have cautioned the industrial world to be wary of material consumption; that there are limits to resources, as well as a holding capacity to the planet; and that unlimited economic and industrial growth is not sustainable for the future generations of people. According to statistics, data, and reports, not enough people have taken heed to this advice over the years and consumption has continued to mount.

America and other Western countries set a precedent at the dawn of industry, that with the sleight of rhetoric and cunning depraved indifference toward nature, an economy can grow large and fast; that GDP can climb parallel to poverty coupled with a decline in the quality of life (as shown with an increasing lower class that is engulfing the middle class, disproportioned by an exclusive upper class, predominant in modern society); and that somehow, someway, the voices of intelligent concern are quieted as to not interfere with the agendas of the developing nations.

China, a sovereign power perhaps as formidable as the sovereign entity of capitalism itself, is on the rise. Like any other country, China has the inherent right to strive for excellence, but if it is in the name of modern civilization, perhaps a path less traveled should have been taken, one that did not follow in the footsteps of the West, one that could have led by example.

1. Jiang Jingjing, “Wal-Mart’s China Inventory to Hit US$18b This Year.” China Business Weekly, 29 Nov. 2004.
2. Jason T. Shaplen and James Laney. “Washington’s Eastern Sunset: The Decline of U.S. Power in Northeast Asia.” Foreign Affairs, Nov./Dec. 2007. pp. 82-97.
3. Stephen Philion. “The Social Costs of Neoliberalism in China, Interview with Economist Han Deqiang.” Dollars and Cents. Jul./Aug. 2007. pp. 22-35.
4. Paul Demko. “Mass Consumption.” City Pages, Vol. 27. Issue 1353. 8 Nov. 2006
5. David C. Korten. “Better Than Money.” Yes! Magazine, Fall 2007. pp. 37-41.
6. Elizabeth C. Economy. “The Great Leap Backward? The Costs of China’s Environmental Crisis.” Foreign Affairs, Sep./Oct. 2007. pp. 38-59.
7. Clifford Coonan. “China’s Boom is Killing Sea That Gives It Life, Warn Scientists.” Independent News and Media Limited. 10 Mar. 2006
8. Hamish McRae. “The Kyoto Protocol Can Help Address Global Warming.” Global Warming. Ed. Cynthia A. Bailey. Opposing Viewpoints. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2006. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Thomson Gale. Hartness Library System.
9. Thomas Land. “Helping China’s Pollution With Waterways.” Contemporary Review. 279. 1630 Nov 2001: 291.4. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Thomson Gale. Hartness Library System.
10. James F. Hoge Jr. ‘Editor’s Notes.’ Foreign Affairs. Nov./Dec. 2007. p. 214.
11. John Vidal. “Global Food Crisis Looms As Climate Change and Fuel Shortages Bite.” The Guardian. 3 Nov. 2007.
12. Mark Schapiro. “Toxic Inaction; Why Poisonous, Unregulated Chemicals End Up In Our Blood.” Harper’s Magazine. Oct. 2007. pp.78-83.
13. Alan Zarembo. “Kyoto’s Failure Haunts New U.N. Talks.” Los Angeles Times; Science and Medicine. 3 Dec. 2007.

The crux is, in 2009 we are going to witness mass foreclosure in commercial real estate, consumer credit defaults, more residential foreclosures, and rising unemployment. These will all converge, militating any amelioration of the current crises, and rather exacerbate the crisis as a whole – this is a fact. For the U.S. to even come clean in ’09 it needs to generate at least $2 trillion – not gonna happen via tax revenues my friends; and if you look across the way to our debt-retaining pals in the East – they’re not doing so swell either; besides, they’ve had enough of our devalued dollar (a currency that has depreciated 96% since 1913), so we won’t be getting the $ there. The entire global market has turned on U.S. Treasury Debt – there is a Bond-Market collapse on the near horizon too. The Managing Director of the IMF has officially stated that the world’s advanced economies are already in a depression; the entire world, minus the U.S., is in virtual revolution right now. It’s myopic to believe that we’ll fare well through this. It’s only a matter of time (no earlier than 2010) that the U.S. undergoes total collapse.

As for the recent election, it is fascinating to read the purple content generated by folks who can’t separate the great achievement – the act of electing a black man into the white house, from the role of the actor. Hope has got many in a stranglehold but, as Derrick Jensen asseverates, hope is investing your existence into a future in which you have no agency over.

Now, aside from this entire economic debacle, Obama has already wavered with his foretokens regarding change and progressive policy. Troops were supposed to be taken out of Iraq, now he’s keeping 80,000 troops in Iraq and will be deploying 17,000 more into Afghanistan; so much for moving away from military industrialism. Let’s also not forget Obama’s pledge to AIPAC to invest $30 billion more into Israel. The litany of questions I ask all of the Obama zealots is what change is he really going to usher in? An end to the military industrial complex? An end to the Zion alliance? An end to financial conglomerates and syndicates? An end to industrial energy endeavors that are rapaciously tearing apart the ecology of this planet? An end to bailing out banksters with our hard-earned wages? Or does Obama stand for other changes? And if so, what the fuck are they?! Just some simple questions regarding his hopeful platitudes for change.

Currently, there is much prattle regarding conspiracy, NWO, et al. Whether or not one dons the tin-foil hat and alleges a grand conspiracy for world domination and senseless population control (which I believe propinquity shows we’re very close to this being a truth – viz. power and wealth is concentrated in a small few, and people en masse are constrained by the market and consumerism) – anyway, whether one professes conspiracy or not, the results are still the same, view it through whichever lens you choose. Personally, I believe this is all a result of a simple power-equation rather than a finely tuned and calculated conspiracy machinated over millennia by a bunch of Rosicrucians. The financial crisis, well, yeah this could be intentional, it appears to be moreso than accidental when you accrue the facts, but it’ s only about funneling money to the top, it was a heist not a doomspiracy.

The truth is, centralized power can never engender equality –that’s what this is showing – that is what is and has been happening. Furthermore, every single society, shit – every single civilization and empire throughout time has collapsed. Why would anyone think we are exempt from that inevitable pattern? The U.S. (as well as any other ‘civilized’ country) maintains itself, let alone grows, by the importation of resources from elsewhere. The U.S. no longer produces enough domestic resources to maintain a healthy economy. After a while of plundering peripheral communities and landbases for resources, conflict emerges, you scar the ecology of the planet, spin the earth’s climate out of control, and eventually run out of resources– simple math. My advice to hopeful optimists and marketeers– don’t omit the idea of total collapse of civilization from the scope of real possibilities. And besides, considering the current state of the planet on account of the behavior of the dominant culture, perhaps total collapse should be the optimistic outlook. But of course it all depends on what you make of things. If you think it’s not all too bad, and it’ll soon be a market world for a market man, go invest in vice funds in the interim. If you’re starting to believe that things are rapidly descending then do what’s wise: invest in a garden and transcend the indoctrinated hyperindividualism – practice neighborliness.

Moving along now. As for the folks who think the ‘military industrial complex’ is an anachronism, it has hardly been imbibed by obsolescence, but has only grown to virtually integrate the entire market. And now we have the keystone elements, security and surveillance, driving what’s left of the market as well. A precipitous recrudescence of security and surveillance also attests that things…well… are just going down the tubes… gotta protect and maintain the empire, so hire more goons.

I’d like to talk about the economic crisis for a moment again and touch upon the lefty-Dem argument that a Keynesian stimulus is the only thing that has worked throughout history, and will work just fine now. First off, when has your history begun? Last I checked capitalism has been around for more than a century…and let’s not forget that Keynes was Treasurer for the Cambridge University Eugenics Society…not that that has anything to do with his ideas, just with his personhood. Anyhow, the Keynesian model is a bubble-machine, the only reason these doctrines have ‘worked’ is because they were able to inflate a bubble that could drift us up and over and into the next set of dominoes to knock over. But about bubbles – hasn’t capitalism itself been just a perennial bubble that has conveyed the facilitation of the transformation of life into death the world over for the past 600 years or so? I believe it’s time for that bubble to pop once and for all. Perhaps this is what Marvin Harris meant when he admonished in his writings the impending burst of the industrial bubble.

The recent years of the new millennium (the Aughts) have seen the merging of ultra privatization and a corporate stalwart, that whether anyone wants to deny it or not, has bought our world governments off, which in my opinion echoes a caveat of semblance to Mussolini’s promulgation of how to successfully fructify total fascism. Now, I’m not one to sound the tin-foil trumpet of esoteric agendas waving the ‘Sword of Damocles’ over our heads (not that there couldn’t be one) but again, the more you centralize wealth i.e. $$, you centralize power and the default of the latter is total control (and then of course paranoia, abuse, corruption, etc.)– a more natural way of explicating the phenomena we are witnessing but keep sealed behind our lips lest an NSL finds its way through the mail slot.

As for Obama – again, let us recognize the people’s overdue exudation of indoctrinated racism and rejoice in that, but as far as the role of empire, just look at the policies and the cabinet members; we all know Rahm Emanuel’s sentiment regarding Middle East policy and we know about his dual citizenship and time spent in the IDF; where is his allegiance, really? And Gates and Billary… harrumph…

Anyhow, let’s get back to resolving this pecuniary mess. How exactly will the U.S. be able to generate the needed revenue? China’s government is definitely learning their lesson about their abuse of their role in the global market with their currency suppression and civil repression and all– which, ultimately, was a choice of their own – now severely repercussive with millions of angry jobless Sinos. However, is not the U.S.’ exploitation of putative Communist China’s propensity to funnel wealth to the center oligarchy rather than to the community a flaw that has its own repercussions back here? Those dowdy doodads come with a cost, other than the price paid at WalMart. I don’t think China will be buying any of our debt any time soon.

Boy, the U.S. seems to be stuck between a rock and hard place, huh? And what about all that rancor and bellicose language directed toward the U.S. from Russia lately? Well America, geopolitics is a fluid and dynamic wave that cannot be controlled, only slightly directed; foreign policy has some wacky protracting corollaries … but of course 9/11 had nothing to do with this latter allusion.

Now, the kicker is the eco-bill. Humans have been walking along for the past 10,000 years or so with it ingrained that we exist outside of an ecological context, completely submerged in the abstraction of ‘social-construct.’ The fact is we are circumscribed to the ecology of this planet. Derrick Jensen states (and, really, any remotely intelligible person can arrive at this conclusion), ignorance or denial of ecological law does not exempt anyone from the consequences of their actions. I believe we are witnessing the incipience of a convergence of economic and ecological repercussions of actions that have been steered by power desideratum for way too long. We will undoubtedly witness mass exoduses – in fact, we already are, just look down to the global South. And Africa is on deck. And aren’t we already emerged in resource wars that are slowly aggrandizing into a global phenomenon?

What I want to know, as crises seem to be picking up velocity, is how will we handle these issues? Why, at the most critical time in human history is Big Pharma in collusion with the FAO and WHO?

Why have they applied ‘risk assessment’ to nutrients when a billion people are starving for christ’s sake? Why are advanced economies still pumping $ into the weaponizing of nanotechnology? Why does U.S. military strategy now have a domestic focus? Why do we have InfraGuard? What is the purpose of all the fully guarded yet empty prison camps within the U.S.? What will happen to radical scholars, activists, and unionists in the ensuing years in the wake of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007? Why am I nervous? There are soooooo many questions I’ve got shootin’ around in my head. Anyhoo, the future appears bleak if you want to look at things through this sort of lens.

Tin-foil hat or not, facts are facts…and so we turn to rhetoric to help us decide what the facts do indeed allude to.