Whatcha Reading?

[Mark]

Yesterday I noticed in one of his comments on COTO that Waldo is reading, Family of Secrets. I got that book from the library the other day and just started reading it myself.

Come across any good books lately?

I want to read Eva Golinger's recent book, The Empire's Web: Encyclopedia of Interventionism and Subversion, but it was published in Venezuela in Spanish and I don't know if it is out in English yet.

[Mark]

We are all mostly ones and twos, Pan. That's the problem. The workers can't unite and the masses can't rise up because we are fragmented and disconnected. When groups do form, they are invariably met with violence, COINTELPRO-style disruptions (infiltrators, saboteurs, provocateurs, manufactured internal divisions and distrust, etc.), or bribes, and it is rare for groups not to succumb or sell out. A single infiltrator can paralyze a group that works by censensus, by habitually blocking consensus.

Corporations are highly organized, highly capitalized, have military states as enforcement tools, control national, private, and internal intelligence agencies, own the media, and cannot be effectively opposed by alienated, disconnected fragments.

For a group to have autonomy, it has to be self-sufficient. It is extremely rare for ones or twos to be self-sufficient, although it does occur. But in such cases there is usually little or no connection and solidarity with other pods. The indigenous Zapatista villages in Chiapas were self-sufficient and their struggle is to remain that way and not be evicted from their lands and/or slaughtered by a government or paramilitaries acting on behalf of private corporations the way that Native Americans in the United States, other parts of Mexico, and in much of Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere were. The world didn't become a corporation by allowing individual or community autonomy.

[BO]

640 acres. About the minimal amount of land needed for a self-sufficient farm.

Not to mention a bunch of cows, chickens, pigs and stuff. And at least 5 good farm hands.

Don't ever remember any committee meetings taking place on my grandparents farm. They just knew what to do. Tis the beauty of raw survivalism--bureaucrats and administrative types need not apply. Self governance took place at church on Sunday.

[pan]

Depends on where the farm is and whether the intent is sustenance or profit. In Iowa the soil is rich and there is enough water that irrigation isn't required. The Central Valley of CA is little more than a giant hydroponic farm as the soil is completely leeched of any fecundity from the massive amounts of water that is drained from Mono Lake. So the soil is just a place for seeds to receive chemical fertilizers and piped in water.

There are no family farms anymore. They are monocultural agribusiness that are massive. During the Great Depression the farmers who didn't get kicked off their land ate and lived well even if they couldn't sell their produce because every family farm had chickens, cows, a garden for their own food, etc.

180 acres would work for sustenance.

[Mark]

That comes to approximately 100 acres of arable land per person, and I don't think we have that much. The use of biointensive farming methods (and a vegan diet--something I'm still trying to achieve with only partial success) can reportedly reduce that to 4,000 square feet per person, or a little less than a tenth of an acre.

But if we're going to get beyond global corporate rule, we need to have units that are more coherent than the traditional nuclear family. Extended families, tribes, clans, and nations have also been easily subjugated to corporate hegemony. So it isn't a matter of numbers, but of how we're connected. Not all affinity groups and collectives survive either.

Rushkoff advocates things like community supported agriculture (CSAs) and barter as great for reconnecting people to each other. But he also says:

"When we aren't coding websites in return for kale, we are cutting the Federal Reserve and its network of banks in on every transaction we make. This extractive force is a drag on the system, particularly at times when speculation or banking-industry incompetence has made money too expensive to get a hold of, or too unstable to use as a means of exhange."

So he also advocates local alternative currencies. These seem to be growing in popularity, but would exercise a self-limiting numerical factor depending on how widely they were accepted. But Rushkoff admits that:

"Townspeople with their own money systems still need conventional currency. The three automobile repair shops in Great Barrington that accept BerkShares must still buy auto parts from Mopar or BMW with U.S. dollars. But they are willing to break down their bills into two separate categories, selling parts at cost in U.S. dollars, and markups and labor in the local currency. The object is not to replace centralized currency altogether, but to break the monopoly of centralized currency and the corporations it supports over transactions that keep money circulating locally. This is why many advocates now call local currency 'complementary' currency--because it complements rather than replaces centralized money."

So we've got a schism between those who would, if it were possible, willingly forfeit technology for autonomy, and those who would not. A bias towards technology is also a bias towards corporate rule, because you can't produce cars, computers, and cell phones on a tenth of an acre. In order to enjoy the benefits of technology as we do, corporations have to use militaries or paramilitaries to exterminate indigenous people and extract the resources from their land, and rely on favorable government legislation to allow the exploitation of labor and the pollution involved in the production of such "goods,"

So what constitutes a "pod," and does it have lower and upper numerical limits?

[Mark]

Just found this in my email. Whaddya think the chances are of this book finding a publisher? And how the heck did Barry ever get a Ph.D. without taking a class on "Publishable Prose in a Market Economy?" ROFL

EARTH MEANDERS
Ecological Overshoot: Climate, Inequity and Corruption

A call for reluctant Earth revolutionaries to unite and slay the economic growth machine consuming ecological being.

September 20, 2009
By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk, http://www.ecoearth.info/newsdesk/
http://www.ecoearth.info/earthmeanders/

A disease is ravaging Earth as ever more people, consume ever more, destroying natural ecosystems that are our shared habitat. In a few short centuries the violent, expansionist and deeply ecologically unsustainable Western mindset has become virtually universally accepted. The meaning of life is more, ever more of everything, at the expense of a finite biosphere. The emptiness of such a vacuous worldview is revealed through changing climate, devastating human inequities and an irredeemably corrupt economic system.

More than just a climate crisis, humanity is facing profound over-population and injustice that are spurring dozens of inter-related ecological and social crises. Billions suffer as their basic human needs go unmet, while billions more gorge themselves. Forests, prairies, streams, rivers, estuaries, wetlands, lakes, soil, oceans, air and all the rest are all life's flesh and blood. Humanity, Earth and kindred species have entered the late stage condition of ecological overshoot -- whereby our cumulative demands upon ecosystems exceeds their life-giving capacity and causes them to collapse.

We are eating creation. Hardly anyone is thinking or acting at the necessary scale to avert global ecological Armageddon. Market based solutions are pervasive with corruption and inequity. Nothing we do is going to maintain an affluent life, as it is now for some. Widespread economic decline will certainly accompany abrupt climate change and global ecosystem collapse; indeed, it has begun. If existing political systems are unable to deal with the inevitable collapse of the growth machine, at the same time as pursuing rigorous environmental policy-making, then new political structures will be necessary.

A stewardship revolution that maintains life of some worthy, habitable sort is possible. Surely in a free country whose liberty came from such means, we can talk about revolutionary violence, as Thomas Jefferson said would continue to be necessary. "The blood of tyrants and patriots must flow to renew the soil." What could be more glorious than fighting, and perhaps dying, for the Earth, and maybe even succeeding in saving her (and us)?

It is time for a credible revolutionary threat to protect the biosphere. What is needed is a steady ratcheting up of pressure – protests, sit-ins, sabotage, assassinations -- giving opponents every opportunity to respond to reasoned arguments – and culminating in guerrilla warfare and whatever else is necessary to save the Earth. If a few thousand insurrectionists can tie up the American military in Iraq, think what dedicated, highly decentralized and autonomous groups of tens of thousands of Earth insurgents could do to bring down industrial capitalism and the Earth eating growth machine.

People power protest culminating in an Earth Revolution needs to be done urgently yet thoughtfully. Not speaking of mob rule or rioting -- that is what is coming from the status quo. We are speaking of highly disciplined, targeted protests including the possible use of violence to bring down the equipment and individuals responsible for destroying global ecosystems, and herald in a new ecologically sustainable, just and equitable way of living with the land, water and sky. Living must become a matter of what you can give to ecosystems, and others with whom you share being, rather than only being concerned with what you can take.

Economic growth cannot continue forever if greenhouse gases are to be curbed, and the myriad of other eco-crises solved. Efforts to cap and trade, certify, sustainably manage and otherwise reform our way out of the situation are orders of magnitude inadequate and failing. Free markets appear to inherently be unable to price carbon and other externalities. It is becoming increasingly unlikely (if not impossible) that current political and business growth systems can reform in time to maintain the ecosystems necessary for life.

The looming death of Gaia and most or all being is no one's fault, or rather, it is all our faults. As many species have done previously, we have collectively overgrazed our habitat. We simply must immediately allow traditional ecological disturbance, regeneration and succession patterns to again operate. The industrial growth machine must be powered off and we must herald in an era of ecological stewardship and restoration. Even while we organize and pursue revolutionary action; each of us must plant, tend and restore our Earth's natural ecosystems and permaculture gardens, and help others to do so.

Only dramatic and immediate revolutionary action to destroy the growth machine offers any hope of maintaining a livable Earth. We must commit to stopping burning and cutting -- antiquated means to make a living -- indeed killing those that refuse to stop. Rich people are setting themselves up to be fine in geo-engineered comfort while sacrificing the poor who no longer have free ecosystem services to sustain them. There can be no engineering of a biosphere; indeed, thinking we can has brought us to this moment. We must return to nature.

We must hold onto our humanity as we collapse and renew ourselves. Earth Revolution is as much about helping those that want to reconnect to Earth as it is sabotaging equipment and killing people directly responsible for ecocide. This means sharing food and water, shelter and clothing. But bring those responsible for ecocide to justice, utterly destroying them, their institutions and their equipment. The must be no indiscriminate terror, but if our warnings go unheeded, targeted violence against known ecological criminals is justified and warranted.

Given the momentum of nearly seven billion seeking to be super-consumers , do not see any other way to stop the forces of destruction other than a revolution. There is absolutely no way current energy and other resource use-- much less expected growth in population and per capital consumption -- can be produced either from agrofuels or more drilling. Humans have hit the biogeochemical limits of a finite planet, and each of us must seek what is enough, rather than always more.

It is well past time to be men and women of fortitude, set aside our computers and amusements, and commit our minds and bodies to stopping the destruction of being. We must demand more courage and less corruption from ourselves and our leaders. The Arctic has already been changed forever. Soon your neighborhood, ecosystem and bioregion will be too (if you really look, almost certainly it is already). Please, as I do, take the end of human being through needless habitat destruction personally.

Part of the solution is allowing people to get back to Earth on their own plot of land. How we live in the future will be by necessity less urban. We will be called upon to make do with what is in our bioregion.
Let me make some further suggestions to you. Acquire land and seeds. Make or restore an Earth friendly shelter and plant trees and permaculture forest gardens. Prepare to live in your changing bioregion. Go back to the land. Ecologically farm and restore as you connect with like minded Earth revolutionaries to clandestinely carry out escalating protest, sabotage and guerrilla war.

I urge you to really think about what is necessary -- both personally and in terms of social change -- to sustain being, and committing to it. Token managerial reforms of the antiquated ecologically damaging activities of burning and cutting are not enough. Technology is not going to save us. Market campaigns using glamorous celebrities are not enough. Petitioning our leaders is not going to save us. Personal efforts will only get you and Gaia so far. Only escalating protest action targeting the destroyers, their equipment and their Earth eating worldview can still avert biosphere disintegration.

Set aside your best efforts at ecological denial, acknowledge the task before us, and join with others in becoming a reluctant revolutionary. An Earth insurgency could topple the growth machine in a day, though it may take years. The sooner the better, as more ecological remnants will exist to serve as the basis of ecological restoration. Even as we pursue revolutionary strategies and tactics to maintain a habitable Earth, commit to remaining free and humane. The answer is neither tyranny of the left nor right. Above all else we must achieve global ecological sustainability through just and equitable means.

Protest and restore natural ecosystems including old forests right now. Work with others to destroy coal, tar sands, fishing trawlers, oil palm, industrial agriculture, pipelines and ancient forest loggers. Start today. Now continued human existence depends upon your courage, ecological wisdom and taking direct lethal action in defense of our shared ecological heritage. Each of us and together will transition to a state of ecological grace, quickly, and through action against the Earth destroyers, or we will all die a horrific and barbaric death together as being ends.

If we choose to fight for Earth there is hope, otherwise there is none. Share the anguish of not knowing if revolutionary violence is the answer or not. But it has to be considered comprehensively, thoroughly and quickly. Prove me wrong and demonstrate how to ecologically sufficiently address converging eco-crises in a couple years time within current economic and political systems. Yet revolution is almost certainly the only possible way to sustain and restore healthy ecosystems as the basis of human civilization and all life. Be strong, slay the growth machine, for Gaia.

###

Discuss essay:
http://www.ecoearth.info/blog/2009/09/earth_meanders_ecological_ove...

This is an excerpt from Dr. Glen Barry's forthcoming new book entitled "New Earth Rising". Sadly, this will not be finished by Copenhagen, though we intend to publish the introduction soon as we begin serializing it at http://www.newearthrising.org/. We eagerly seek a publisher and financial backers to finish the book which is nearing completion.

[BO]

Musta received his PHD from Fraudtown U. The dude is whacked.

Besides it's overpopulation that's the problem. According to James Lovelock (Mr. Gaia), we'd need to reduce the global population by 5 billion to reach a level of sustainability again. Who chooses who lives or dies? Lovelock thinks the die-off is going to happen relatively soon anyway, so we may as well let nature run its coarse.

[Mark]

He's just frustrated, BO. First he authorizes other people to make his decisions, and then he gets upset when they make bad decisions. I just left a blog there entitled "Self-Defeating Strategies" to explain how he can withdraw his consent:

http://my.ecoearth.info/blogs.aspx

Maybe he'll see it and maybe he won't. Maybe he'll get it and maybe he won't. Rushkoff did. Some people do. Not many, not often, but I keep trying.

Overpopulation isn't the problem, BO, it is a symptom. For example, if you have a gastrointestinal obstruction, the symptom is that you can't piss or shit, but the problem isn't that you can't piss or shit, that's just the symptom. If you have gastroenteritis, the symptom is diarrhea, but the problem might be an infection or parasites. Diarrhea isn't the problem, it is just the symptom.

Our problem as a species is patriarchy. By cutting people off from our food supply, patriarchy was able to domesticate us, and then we could be bred like any other kind of cattle. Patriarchal gender roles force us to act in ways that are not in the best interests of our selves, our species, or our habitat, and prevent us from controlling our reproductive rate in accordance with available resources the way that an ecologically viable species does. The symptom of that problem is overpopulation. If you don't cure the problem, you can keep killing off people, but we'll always overpopulate again and the cycle will be repeated.

If overpopulation was natural, all species would do it. Many do not. We are not inherently incapable of assessing what resources are available to us, or of controlling our reproductive rate. Our ancestors had to have lived sustainably, or we would have been extinct long ago. Our overpopulation/die-off cycles only began about 6,000 years ago when we were cut off from our food supply so that we could no longer assess how many people our area could comfortably sustain, and encouraged to breed so that our owners would have plenty of cannon fodder for more conquests.

I live in a city that doesn't have any water. All our water is piped in. Yet we have families living here and having kids. No primitive person would have settled in an area without water. Cities cannot supply their own food and need to have food brought in from elsewhere. No primitive person would have settled in an area that didn't have food. People in San Diego have kids because they believe that the food will always be trucked in and the water will always be piped in. Any disruption in the supply of either, and we're as dead as chickens, cattle, or sheep that a farmer of rancher stops feeding. Domesticated animals can't feed themselves. People here overpopulate in an area that cannot possibly sustain this many people because they believe that food comes from stores and water comes from faucets, and there doesn't appear to be any serious shortage of either.....yet. When our owners want to harvest their cannon fodder, they just move the jobs that enable people to buy food and water elsewhere, and our kids enlist. Breeders and sheeple are both apt descriptors.

This isn't nature running its course, it is patriarchy intent on conquering the world. And the only way you can really conquer something is to domesticate it or kill it,. Otherwise it will keep struggling to be free. Free people in nature don't overpopulate because they know how many people their area can sustain and they want their kids to have the same kind of life that they have. When there are too many people, they stop having kids until some old ones have died off, the same way that any other ecologically viable species in nature does. If brainless amoebae can do it, it really ain't rocket science. The only way you can force people or viable species of animals to overpopulate is to use violence to capture them, tame them, domesticate them, and then breed them. Yes, there are some ecologically nonviable species that do overpopulate in nature, but they usually don't last very long as their behavior always leads to their own extinction. I'm pretty sure that we once were and still have the ability to be a viable species, but I have no way to prove it.

[BO]

Disagree with you, Mark. Overpopulation is the disease.

Here's an article by Chris Hedges to get you started...

We Are Breeding Ourselves to Extinction

Problem with trying to discuss overpopulation with most USAn's, is christian values always seem to come into play. The go forth and breed crowd--about 90% of Americans--will never admit that there is a problem. And the media won't touch it with a ten foot pole. As always, it's our collective willful ignorance that guarantees our future extinction.

[Mark]

Who the fuck is Hedges calling "we"? "We" aren't breeding ourselves to extinction. "We" don't even reproduce. You ever seen a person split into two people the way that an amoeba does?

Not only does it take two of us to reproduce, but in order to overpopulate, those two have to be captured and domesticated so that they can be bred by their owners. They have to relate to each other as commodities rather than as people. Otherwise, they'd place the welfare of their children and grandchildren and of their habitat first, and not tolerate overpopulation.

We are not "breeding ourselves to extinction," we are being bred to extinction. Every male who feels a closer bond and more respect for his male owner than for his female neighbor, has been brainwashed by patriarchy. If we were free, males would kill anyone who urged them to treat females with disrespect. If males wanted to display power and aggression under the influence of testosterone, they'd rape their male bosses, not their female coworkers.

Every time we have an overpopulation peak and then a big die-off, the cycle repeats. It isn't that we're not capable of learning, it is that we are not in control of our lives. We're taught from birth that we are two teams in competition, males and female, when the real competition is between the enslaved and our captors.

Unless we abolish patriarchy, if anyone is left alive after the next big die-off, the cycle will repeat again. The disease is patriarchy which prevents us from relating to each other as equals with equal dignity and respect. Instead, we're taught to disrespect each other and to respect our owners, the ones breeding us to extinction just as they are exploiting all the world's resources to extinction. They think only in terms of ownership and short-term profits. They don't care if there is enough arable land, clean water, and unpolluted air for our granchildren, they just want to make a profit today by depleting the soil and polluting the air and water. They don't care if we can feed our children, they just want us to have them so that they can profit from wars and use our kids as cannon fodder.

Christian values are not different from Islamic values, Judaic values, or the values of any other patriarchal religion. They all teach that males are superior to females and that we're supposed to go forth and breed without regard to the consequences, just have faith and if God doesn't provide for your children in this life, the Holy He will do so in the next life.

If you have the runs, you're told that you have a disease called diarrhea. But if you only treat the symptoms and not the cause of that disease, it will only go away for a while and then it will return again. Overpopulation is the name of a disease, but it is not the cause of that disease. Patriarchy, the idea that land, animals, and other people were given to us by the Creator as property and that we, not God, have the power of life and death over them, is the cause. An omnipotent God could do His own killing, He wouldn't need us to do it for Him.

I saw an article somewhere that said that only 39% of Americans believe in evolution. The rest believe that females were created for and given to males, instead of males having been born from females.

There's a protest here today against the Governor's budget cuts. I just watched the documentary No Volveran, and I think maybe the budget cuts aren't big enough. It took much bigger cuts, the almost total destruction of their social programs, before the Venezuelan people woke up. There's a brief cameo in there of a guy who in all likelihood would have been a macho type ten years ago, praising Chavez for bringing more equality to females. The more dignity, equality, respect, and power females have, the less they can be forced to bear children they cannot feed. The more we see ourselves as a single species, one among many species living in a habitat that is limited in its ability to sustain us, rather than as two enemies competing to have power over each other to win respect from our breeder/owners, the better chance we have of surviving.

Looking at the factories in the film, it is obvious that the workforce is mostly male because that's the way that the capitalist bosses wanted it. Males worked so that they could own females. As socialism grows, the workplaces will be integrated and workers will think of themselves as working to make a better world cooperatively, rather than as competing with each other.

Cyclical overpopulation/die-off patterns are not natural to any but ecologically nonviable species and those don't usually last very long because they do breed themselves to extinction. We are not such a species. If we had not been captured and domesticated for breeding purposes, we would not overpopulate. Show me the starving person in a refugee camp who says, "I want to have children because I'll enjoy watching my child die of starvation as I am dying of starvation myself." But there are plenty of males in refugee camps who say, "I don't have a job, I don't have money, I don't have food, but I can still comfort myself and demonstrate my superiority to somebody else by raping a female." Without patriarchy, males and females in dire circumstances would comfort each other without producing children they can't possibly nourish or support.

We are perfectly capable of controlling our reproductive rates. Many countries have seen their birth rates decline. The more freedom and equality, the fewer unwanted and unplanned pregnancies. What's so hard about that?

[curt]

"We" is as much an insult as any other xxxx word. Hedges is currently popular in many nisches. That's supposed to be a foreign word that means "corner" but where there are more than four. Overpop is a hard one. In the USA, you have X amount of free space and X amount of bodies (living & breathing (through their noses, feh)) while in India you have .....

get the picture?

Gaia will survive it all or be blast to pieces by a huge assed astroid. Mankind? Sech a feh. Like a really good fireworks display. Zissssssssssssssssssssssssssch......................................


Booooooooooooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmm...............................

perplak. Blop. Gone.

[Mark]

Went to the protest. They'd made up some of the signs I'd suggested and I got to carry the one that said, "Arnie = Budget cuts on steroids!" Fun. Saw some folks I know and met some I didn't. But very few people turned out.

Then I went to see a free film about Fidel Castro at the library. Cool dude.

And tomorrow night I'm going to the movies! A real cinema movie, not a free library film. I usually go to the movies about once a year, usually for a Michael Moore film and I'm looking forward to his new film about capitalism. But when I got back from the library, this was in my email, I checked the listings and it will be at a theater just a few blocks from me, so I bought a ticket:

...please join us in one of over 700 cinemas worldwide for the grand premiere of climate change blockbuster The Age of Stupid (buy tickets at http://www.ageofstupid.net/). The live satellite show will not only feature the movie, but also a panel with Kofi Anan and other bigwigs, as well as a live performance by Radiohead's Thom Yorke. And it'll feature us Yes Men stealthily crashing the Green Carpet with one of our favorite climate-change-beating technologies. Shhh... the host doesn't know!

See you soon!
The Yes Men
http://theyesmen.org/

LOVE the Yes Men! Wheeee! I'm going to the movies!

[BO]

Good for you. Mark. Sounds like a hoot.

You keep projecting all them good vibes, you might even get laid. ;-)