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TechnoratiA Reality Check From the Brink of Extinction
We can join Bill McKibben on Oct. 24 in nationwide protests over rising carbon emissions. We can cut our consumption of fossil fuels. We can use less water. We can banish plastic bags. We can install compact fluorescent light bulbs. We can compost in our backyard. But unless we dismantle the corporate state, all those actions will be just as ineffective as the Ghost Dance shirts donned by native American warriors to protect themselves from the bullets of white soldiers at Wounded Knee.
“If we all wait for the great, glorious revolution there won’t be anything left,” author and environmental activist Derrick Jensen told me when I interviewed him in a phone call to his home in California. “If all we do is reform work, this culture will grind away. This work is necessary, but not sufficient. We need to use whatever means are necessary to stop this culture from killing the planet. We need to target and take down the industrial infrastructure that is systematically dismembering the planet. Industrial civilization is functionally incompatible with life on the planet, and is murdering the planet. We need to do whatever is necessary to stop this.”
The oil and natural gas industry, the coal industry, arms and weapons manufacturers, industrial farms, deforestation industries, the automotive industry and chemical plants will not willingly accept their own extinction. They are indifferent to the looming human catastrophe. We will not significantly reduce carbon emissions by drying our laundry in the backyard and naively trusting the power elite. The corporations will continue to cannibalize the planet for the sake of money. They must be halted by organized and militant forms of resistance. The crisis of global heating is a social problem. It requires a social response.
The United States, after rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, went on to increase its carbon emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels. The European Union countries during the same period reduced their emissions by 2 percent. But the recent climate negotiations in Bangkok, designed to lead to a deal in Copenhagen in December, have scuttled even the tepid response of Kyoto. Kyoto is dead. The EU, like the United States, will no longer abide by binding targets for emission reductions. Countries will unilaterally decide how much to cut. They will submit their plans to international monitoring. And while Kyoto put the burden of responsibility on the industrialized nations that created the climate crisis, the new plan treats all countries the same. It is a huge step backward.
“All of the so-called solutions to global warming take industrial capitalism as a given,” said Jensen, who wrote “Endgame: The Problem of Civilization” and “The Culture of Make Believe.” “The natural world is supposed to conform to industrial capitalism. This is insane. It is out of touch with physical reality. What’s real is real. Any social system—it does not matter if we are talking about industrial capitalism or an indigenous Tolowa people—their way of life, is dependent upon a real, physical world. Without a real, physical world you don’t have anything. When you separate yourself from the real world you start to hallucinate. You believe the machines are more real than real life. How many machines are within 10 feet of you and how many wild animals are within a hundred yards? How many machines do you have a daily relationship with? We have forgotten what is real.”
The latest studies show polar ice caps are melting at a record rate and that within a decade the Arctic will be an open sea during summers. This does not give us much time. White ice and snow reflect 80 percent of sunlight back to space, while dark water reflects only 20 percent, absorbing a much larger heat load. Scientists warn that the loss of the ice will dramatically change winds and sea currents around the world. And the rapidly melting permafrost is unleashing methane chimneys from the ocean floor along the Russian coastline. Methane is a greenhouse gas 25 times more toxic than carbon dioxide, and some scientists have speculated that the release of huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere could asphyxiate the human species. The rising sea levels, which will swallow countries such as Bangladesh and the Marshall Islands and turn cities like New Orleans into a new Atlantis, will combine with severe droughts, horrific storms and flooding to eventually dislocate over a billion people. The effects will be suffering, disease and death on a scale unseen in human history.
We can save groves of trees, protect endangered species and clean up rivers, all of which is good, but to leave the corporations unchallenged would mean our efforts would be wasted. These personal adjustments and environmental crusades can too easily become a badge of moral purity, an excuse for inaction. They can absolve us from the harder task of confronting the power of corporations.
The damage to the environment by human households is minuscule next to the damage done by corporations. Municipalities and individuals use 10 percent of the nation’s water while the other 90 percent is consumed by agriculture and industry. Individual consumption of energy accounts for about a quarter of all energy consumption; the other 75 percent is consumed by corporations. Municipal waste accounts for only 3 percent of total waste production in the United States. We can, and should, live more simply, but it will not be enough if we do not radically transform the economic structure of the industrial world.
“If your food comes from the grocery store and your water from a tap you will defend to the death the system that brings these to you because your life depends on it,” said Jensen, who is holding workshops around the country called Deep Green Resistance [click here and here] to build a militant resistance movement. “If your food comes from a land base and if your water comes from a river you will defend to the death these systems. In any abusive system, whether we are talking about an abusive man against his partner or the larger abusive system, you force your victims to become dependent upon you. We believe that industrial capitalism is more important than life.”
Those who run our corporate state have fought environmental regulation as tenaciously as they have fought financial regulation. They are responsible for our personal impoverishment as well as the impoverishment of our ecosystem. We remain addicted, courtesy of the oil, gas and automobile industries and a corporate-controlled government, to fossil fuels. Species are vanishing. Fish stocks are depleted. The great human migration from coastlines and deserts has begun. And as temperatures continue to rise, huge parts of the globe will become uninhabitable. NASA climate scientist James Hansen has demonstrated that any concentration of carbon dioxide greater than 350 parts per million in the atmosphere is not compatible with maintenance of the biosphere on the “planet on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.” He has determined that the world must stop burning coal by 2030—and the industrialized world well before that—if we are to have any hope of ever getting the planet back down below that 350 number. Coal supplies half of our electricity in the United States.
“We need to separate ourselves from the corporate government that is killing the planet,” Jensen said. “We need to get really serious. We are talking about life on the planet. We need to shut down the oil infrastructure. I don’t care, and the trees don’t care, if we do this through lawsuits, mass boycotts or sabotage. I asked Dahr Jamail how long a bridge would last in Iraq that was not defended. He said probably six to 12 hours. We need to make the economic system, which is the engine for so much destruction, unmanageable. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta has been able to reduce Nigerian oil output by 20 percent. We need to stop the oil economy.”
The reason the ecosystem is dying is not because we still have a dryer in our basement. It is because corporations look at everything, from human beings to the natural environment, as exploitable commodities. It is because consumption is the engine of corporate profits. We have allowed the corporate state to sell the environmental crisis as a matter of personal choice when actually there is a need for profound social and economic reform. We are left powerless.
Alexander Herzen, speaking a century ago to a group of Russian anarchists working to topple the czar, reminded his followers that they were not there to rescue the system.
“We think we are the doctors,” Herzen said. “We are the disease.”
315 Comments so far
Show AllAll right, to all you self-righteous trolls out there, please stop. Your directed personal attacks make the comments on this thread nauseating to read. I think a good number of us are so used to being marginalized that we get more jumpy than should when we do disagree amongst ourselves.
As for the issue at hand, I agree more Hedges and Jensen. To address your points, V.L Love, our modern standard of living has much more to do with the increased rate of resource extraction (and the subsequent human cost) than it has to do with any inherent efficiency of capitalism. In fact, regardless of ideology, any attempt to replicate our modern lifestyle would demand some form of centralized efficiency (whether in the private corporation or state) to ensure the flow of resources.
These "negative externalities" economists speak of include the entire life support of this planet. Destroying it makes any economic gains meaningless since humans would not exist. Of course, decades ago, when most of it remained intact, not calculating the damage did not skew the results, but today, as the destruction is near complete, not calculating costs is not only foolish, but also harmful to future generations. This is the greater reality that encompasses the reality of man and our currently urban world.
The corporations and governments hold the most power and thus, are the most ones most liable for environmental problems. Thus, Jensen's strategy of engagement is the most direct solution.
The individual solution, however, is easier (in terms of scale) to accomplish. However, without collective action, either with your neighbors to not buy corporate products, or by acting against further environmental degradation, one can't really lead by example. Furthermore, this method takes too long to systemically change society because it is dependent solely on consciousness raising (nor is it sufficiently uniform, raising the possibility for regression). Hence, such methods are necessary, but not sufficient.
Some detractors may argue some (less extreme) variant of the following: the "apocalyptic" future of global warming and resource depletion requires so much sacrifice in terms of reduced living standards (since that's implied with reduced resource consumption) that radical environmentalists are in league with tyrants in attempting mass starvation, sterilization, and murder in an attempt to reduce the population and better enslave/control/reduce the power of the masses. Indeed, man has exceeded his carrying capacity on this planet (mostly by his own actions in resource depletion) and global warming will reduce this further. Modern industrial civilization in the First World is living beyond its means; it survives only by exploiting the Third World and expropriating its resources. The future can only bring reductions to populations and consumption, likely by further conflicts and by famine. The real question is not how to stop this, but how to not destroy ourselves (by nuclear war) in the process, how to uncouple our norms of happiness and progress from consumerism, and how to ensure that at least some group of humans, somewhere, will continue a free existence in a relatively safe environment. All this requires the end or serious revision of the existing capitalist/fascist status quo.
Tailfeather, Mairead,
Your comments assume so much, that I am not sure where to start. Maybe it would help if I begin buy saying that for 30 years, I have done more than just talk about environmentalism. My wife and own a small business that produces furniture and furnishings out of waste materials, mostly deadfall. We began by using firewood permits and gathering only from the forest floor in the Tahoe Basin. As we got older it became too demanding to carry logs and limbs out of the woods on our shoulders so now we only make lampshades, a product which is made from handmade paper, that was originally made to suit a line of rustic lighting that we made back in early 1990s. Now, partly due to the housing slowdown, and partly due to the fact that we are burnt out on making things, we have downsized down to the bare minimum and my wife has taken a job as a park ranger. Put simply, we grew up in California at a time when parts of the country were having acid rain and burning river issues and we have been involved on the solution side ever since.
So my problem with this article and much of what I read on these threads is that there is so much pretentuous nonsense. Claiming for instance that corporations use 90% of water with 10% applied to consumers is not just sophmoric but embarrassingly ignorant to those who know these arguments. Consumption has been assigned to the consumer since the time of Marx and Ricardo, but here, consumption (water and energy) is being applied to producers as opposed to the timeless standard of assigning consumption to the end user, or, the CONSUMER. This "reassignment" assumes that the needs of consumers could be met without water for producing alternative goods, that thereby leads to the conclusion, that consumers can exist without staple goods. It might seem to some that this is a dishonest ploy, although, it is not clever enough to fool anyone other than the uninformed. So I can only assume that this is simply the "blind leading the blind".
So, I am not advocating Corporatocracy, but instead trying to help expose fraudulent claims. ANY sophisticated reader would recognize that this article is almost nothing but generalizations, distortions, and unsupported claims, so it is not that I fear that the ideals represented here might gain traction, there is no chance of that. I read articles of this ilk for the entertainment, they are funny to me. But I also try to reply in a responsible way so as to offer a more learned view. And in this case, the absurdly broad contention that all corporations are counter-productive and should therefore be destroyed with "whatever means necessary", also with any and all alternative solutions left to presumption, also based on faulty economic premises, and with no recognition of the progress that has been made, wow.
Instead of assuming that wasteful production is a given, as if some irreversible trend has no other solution but to be destroyed, what about the fact that the combination of technology and mechinazation are on the virge of finally allowing the needs of humanity to be met. And it is not a given, that responsible and harmless ways to meet the needs of ALL people might not be forthcoming. The recent failure of the EMH, the Laffer Curve (supply-side economics), has made possible the closing of escape routes to capital flight funds and this is huge in regards to the potential for progress. This will affect everything via global and domestic wealth redistribution, world trade problems, the do-things-my-way or I'll take my money and leave influence on domestic politics (power), developement loan vanishing propensities, etc.. So progress is being made, it is just complicated, as is the world we live in. Which is all the more reason that those who are uninformed should dedicate their time to reading rather than writing.
So there are solutions being found on many fronts and I can only guess, but I suspect that corporations are doing more good than harm. But that says only a little about my views on the Corporatocracy issue.
Any conversion of resources into usable forms of material requires waste by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This is true for all life, not just humans. Of course, if the energy used to perform this waste is renewable and sustainable and the resulting product can be reabsorbed, such production, mimicking natural systems, would not pose any problems. Unfortunately, no modern global corporation does this.
Nor can they under our current system. They are highly "inefficient" because by virtue of size and hierarchy, they must spend large amounts of money on administration and overage. Of course, technology and good practices (though these tend to maximize one type of activity--the result usually leads to inflexibility) can reduce the costs between any two links of the transaction, but the largest corporations are under constant pressure to grow. The more links they acquire, the more costs in managing the links (which increase more than linearly). Since technology often doesn't develop faster than stockholder or public demand, corporations need to take other measures to curb the costs associated with growing larger. Usually, this means cuts to environmental, public, and worker health, wages, and managerial competence, while hours at work increase.
Of course, the above also drives the ethic for technical innovation and efficiency, but that too is constrained by marginal returns. It costs much more these days to perform innovative research because much of the basics, requiring much less technology, time, or cost, are already known. Even when developed, because society is so much larger, implementation takes longer. The result is that large corporations must resort to the above tactics.
(You might argue that Moore's "Law" is a counter-example. However, there are physical constraints on packing chip components; just like populations, after the exponential growth phase, the population must stabilize to some upper bound. Similarly, despite the hype about the biotech, nanotech, and quantum computing revolutions soon to pass, these technologies will be constrained by energy and materials requirements.)
The only way to halt the above is to change the cultural paradigm of constant growth as implicitly good. Hence, we favor local production (simply because there's fewer chains of waste and hoarding and more cycling), but unless the existing problems (large corporations and subservient governments) outside of this paradigm are reformed or removed by the force of numbers and actions, our attempts mean nothing because they hold most of the power right now.
tailfeather,
I agree with you more than I don't. I too believe that the math leads to localized commerce if negitive externalities are accounted for within the origins of where the most benefit is derived. I am something of a biochar fan and I am also well informed on matters of world trade. But you are getting into logistical and administrative considerations that are assumed to be solved through profit motives. That does not mean though that by including the costs of negitive externalities that the equation will not change, or that there is no room for improvment. But so far, your argument is just talk, it needs numbers. You must explain why productivity numbers and PE ratios keep rising as corporations grow. You must also explain why the percentage of average income applied to staple good costs keeps improving.
You are trying to win a battle with words in a war that is fought with numbers. The area you are pontificating about is where Dr. Krugman's work lead to a Noble Prize. So, essentially, you are trying to refute the mathmatical findings of Princeton's Economic Department while simutaneously contradicting Marx's theory of Monopolistic Concentration (I may not have name of theory correct?). Anyway, I do not disagree with your assesment of the problems but your propensity for unsupported claims will not fly in the realm which you seek to change. ( if I could remember the name of Krugman's book on this subject I would include it , but I don't?)
R.L. Love,
Could you explain why you concentrate on "Staple Products" having a favorable cost under big corporate production.
What about housing and healthcare and water? What about the cost of Debt of too big to fail Corps... how do these fit in your argument? cheap bread and milk is good but when the hyper-inflation hits and gas rises, even the staples will bust the unemployed that the rise in productivity from layoffs with the giant corps swallowing the little ones bring.
Your argument seems to be more valid the more narrowly you define it.
Jim,
In the interest of saving time, read this article, it is telling and then some: http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/09/why-are-we-spending-more-on-healthcare.html.
(I am so sorry. I left "care" off of "healthcare". I can only hope I did not waste any of your time.)
I am not advocating corportism so much as I am trying to explain why it is foolish to attack corportism on its stongest front, the effeciency front. Most readers here do not understand why negitive extertalities MUST be assigned to consumers and producers and alike. And why consumer consumption must be assigned to consumers. This is integral to understand because it explains the very economic essence of the modes of production in a democracy. It is not possible to understand much of anything economic without grasping where these responsibilities must fall in democratic society. If you have time and are interested, read all of what I said here to Mairead and Tailfeather. Their side, with all due respect, is not necessary to read. You will need to look at the times in some cases, the conversation is mixed up a bit. I think though I explained what are some complex but critical aspects pretty well.
"consumer consumption must be assigned to consumers"
You can't consume something that wasn't somehow procured or produced. Thus, you can't separate consumption from production.
Note, consumption has negative costs only because the production and transportation of consumed things involves the conversion of labor and resources in ways that produce harmful by-products such as pollution, exploitation, etc. The consumer can only be responsible for the harm caused by aiding this process with his dollars (and the blame is spread thin over the entire population), but the producers are responsible for planning, encouraging (via advertisements and propaganda), executing, and in many cases, actively preserving (lawsuits and lobbying against disliked legislation) their production and attendant destruction. Per capita, the producers have far more power in this whole process. Thus, the producers, especially those with the most power (the largest), bear the most responsibility.
"the very economic essence of the modes of production in a democracy"
Since when was democracy linked to one or a few modes of production? Of course, real democracy (defined as each person under a governed area having say over the affairs of governance) tends to prohibit modes of production (like slavery) in which some portion of the population has fewer rights than others, but I don't see much else.
Consider why the amount of time needed to produce your average commodity has shrunk. In that blog post, it was treated as a given, but the reasons lie in the improvements in technology and method (mechanization, monoculture, the assembly line, irrigation, pest control, railroads). These technologies function only with massive amounts of energy, in the form of electricity or heat, usually generated by abundant fuels (mostly fossil fuels) or in human coordination, usually by assigning mechanical jobs to human beings. This created such a massive surplus (at least when compared to the pre-industrial world) that bosses could afford to pay workers more than nobles would to a serf while still being richer than any noble. This creates the attendant rise in average wages. However, this can only last if the supply of energy keeps coming and the materials needed to procure them are infinite or recyclable, but the current energy regime isn't while the wastes produced only become greater than before. Thus, these technologies and methods only make production more efficient by extracting more energy (either in electricity and fuel or treating workers as disposable machines), so the net increase is negative.
tailfeather,
You are simply wrong about consumption assignments. You are also too stubborn and disrespectful to warrant anymore of my time. I will say one more thing though, if you think a Nobel Prize winning economist isn't aware of "improvements in technology", and if you are unable to understand that his point is served by your "given", you are really confused. Which sums up your entire comment.
I do have a semi-mathematical model. I'm not an economist, so I probably don't have the full numerical arguments to refute the counterpoints, but I haven't really thought much about this since I envisioned this several months ago.
Let each unit of a business (a store, mine, bank) that generates profit be represented by a point. For the business to function properly, each unit must have some degree of coordination both with the management (a central point) and with each other. These are administrative costs. For each additional point, the number of connections (or additional administrative costs) increases by the number of previous points while profit increases only by the value of one point. Thus, the increase of administrative and maintenance costs is linear (at the least) while the increase of profit is constant (at best) as a company grows, holding all else constant. Thus, if one takes the limit of company size to infinity, revenue becomes negative.
Someone may object and note that top-down management avoids this as each new point (or source of profit) would only link to a fixed number of the previous points (the managers and not fellow workers/divisions), but naturally, as size of a company grows, so must the manager class.
Others may object that technology and innovations can bring costs down, but all it really does is increase the value per each new unit of business and decrease the cost of connection between any two units of business; it allows businesses to grow larger, but doesn't remove the existence of a maximum upper size.
A third objection lies in the fact I'm giving a theoretical upper bound on size; existing corporations may be so much smaller than the predicted values that the generated limits are practically useless. (Again, I don't have the data to test this.)
I didn't link this idea in my last post to conditions, so I'll state it here:
When a company first starts out, the marginal revenue is positive. However, once it establishes a presence in an area (in this case, we assume the globe), the rate of gain in revenue slows due to market saturation and increased management and maintenance costs. Thus, to maintain the rate of growth, companies find ways to increase the average productivity per unit (mechanization, increased division of labor, worker education and benefits, low wages, cheaper materials, etc.) or by lowering maintenance and management costs (top-down management rather than workplace democracy, less oversight over sectors of the company). However, each one of these innovations requires increased costs, either on society (of educating the workers and providing benefits to them or on the costs of crime, environmental degradation, defective products, etc.) or on the business itself (in terms of the increasing need for managers, quality control, medical insurance, or other aspects).
As for your point about the rise of living standards as to the cost of food, most of the credit should go to the agricultural sector. No nation would exist without the production of food, and as populations exploded, food production increased at a faster rate, thanks to modern technologies and techniques of the Green Revolution that maximized production of grains (over the environment as a whole). This was true in all modern nations, not merely the capitalist ones. Now, however, the soil is incurring marginal returns, as is our chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
tailfeather,
Economics as a field of study is coming out of a confused period of about 30 years of duration. Now, a shift back toward less reliance on models and algebraic theory, is bringing some much needed reason back into the "dismal science". But whether numbers are used, (which in your argument numbers are surreptitiously absent), or whether reason is relied upon, to refute an argument (mine) which is presented with more than ample support, with abstract theory without support, as if you have it all figured out -- so we should just take your word for it, tiresome.
Some of the numbers I supplied to support the rise in "living standards" are based on a 100 year period. The "Green Revolution" only applies to the latter half of that period and even if the first half of that period is ignored, YOUR period includes extensivive subsidizing. So you start with a false premise, and then:
Your: "No nation would exist without food production", implies that all nations supply their own staple goods, as if exports and imports do not play a role. And then, Your: " This was true in all modern nations, not merely the capitalist ones. Now, however, the soil is incurring marginal returns, as is our chemical fertilizers and pesticides." This is just one unsupported claim after another, each a declaritive statement loaded with implications which are also unsupported. Your claiming that the false premise you started with "was" true in ALL nations. So, essentially, you are claiming that my defence of the modes of production are flawed because "you" think that your conclusions, which are based on distortions which are derived from false premises, premises which rely on exclusions and other unsupported contentions, all presented with complete generalizations, are to be taken seriously, tiresome. And I agree with most of your implications, but the lack of integrity in your arguments is allowing you to reach false conclusions.
Can you present to me your sources detailing the decrease in food costs?
Just looking at some Internet data today, food production in the US (just to use an example) grew by 0.4% annually from 1910-1939 and 2% since, but population growth in the US was around 1.5% per year from the period of 1900-1950 (and have declined since the 1960s). Then I looked at some statistics detailing the price of basic foodstuffs (eggs, I think) showing an overall decrease in real costs over the last 100 years; however, I will note that until 1920/25, the costs were fluctuating at around $6 a dozen. Only since then did the decrease truly begin.
Now, let's correlate these gains to history. Food prices decreased (especially considering the halving of real costs from the eve of the Depression to the end of WWII) from 1925-1950 even though population was growing faster than food production. It seems minimum wage policies and the jobs/wages generated by rearmament seem the likeliest culprits. These policies, regardless of what ideology uses them, would likely bring similar results (consider the Nazis or the Soviets, for example).
"'No nation would exist without food production' implies that all nations supply their own staple goods, as if exports and imports do not play a role".
Imports and exports do play a role, but no nation can survive in the long term unless they have the means to use their own land to feed themselves. If a nation has to repeatedly trade finite resources (like minerals) for food and water, such a nation will starve when they run out of things to trade, or if trade becomes prohibitive (which is very likely when oil peaks), because if managed properly, soil, and the food produced from it, is a renewable resource while oil, coal, gas, uranium, diamonds, copper, etc. are not.
As for the soil incurring marginal returns, most agricultural land around the world that's been under the cultivation style of the Green Revolution is no longer fertile. Increasingly more fertilizer must be applied to maintain and expand yields. Chemical usage has increased and has reverted to more toxic compounds as weeds and insects have adapted resistance while their natural enemies have died from our pesticides and herbicides. I don't exactly see why you find this "unsupported".
tailfeather,
Here is a great article on histoical economic trends, written by a Nobel Prize winner named Robert Fogel: http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/09/why-are-we-spending-more-on-healthcare.html.
I don't have much time. You need more facts and examples though, and you presume that just saying that, "is no longer fertile", for example, is a given, but it is not an accepted norm. Your next sentence needs to say something like, "Increasingly more fertilizer", up to x pounds per acre in some cases, the average increase in Kansas from 2003 --2008 was x pounds per acre "to maintain and expand yields". And once you had looked at the numbers, you would probably have realized that a more honest claim would be: "is no longer AS fertile". Because if the soil you refered to ("most", but only 3% of all land is classified as highly fertile) were "no longer fertile", then the stench of the dead would cover the planet, or there would be nothing but dust, or something along those lines.
(p.s. edit, 5 hours later)One reason you might think that what you claim is a given, but isn't, is because there is what the the scientific journal NATURE has named a "black revolution". This has to do with adding charred waste materials to soil, a process which expotentially increases microbial populations. At a depth of one meter, the carbon content in normal soils is 30 - 150 tons per hectare, with biochar the carbon content at one meter is 150 - 500 tons per hectare. So soil not only becomes more fertile due to the increase in microbes, but it also sequesters carbon at a depth that allows tilling without releasing the sequestered carbon. As with most everything, there is some controversy attached to boichar, although that is beside the point here, the problem here is that you assumed that soil degradation was a given. When that assumption is attached to your defence of an article that advocates that the circumststances are so desperate as to warrant destuctive measures to solve the world's problems, without considering potential progress that is clearly worthy of consideration, you are signalling presumptive ignorance. Not to say that we all do not do so from time to time, but instead to say that serious claims demand serious considerations.
( There is well researched article on soil issues in the Sept. 2008 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, "Where Food Begins" -- I don't have a web address although if you just put in BIOCHAR there are sites and a wealth of info on biochar. The NG article though is golden and it covers a broader range in regards to soil issues.)
And when you generalize, if you must, include exceptions, because there are nearly always exceptions, or say somethig like, "without exception". Generalizations are a signal to the informed reader that bs is headed his or her way. Most of us simply move on.
Your claim that systems other than capitalist systems also needs support, which systems? A claim that broad and controversial needs numbers.
This might seem unfair, but the more unaccepting you are of the status quo, the more explaining necessary. Conservatism has an accepted norm advantage due to the MSM bias and so on, victors writing history and all of that, but it is what it is. And for someone who does not understand why it is not only unfair but also inaccurate to assign consumption and negitive externalities to producers in a democracy, and to not consider what progress is underway, for that someone to advocate destuctive means to reach presumed ends, that is sophmoric at best, but it only need be a phase and the remedy is simple, be honest, especially with yourself.
( I explained why consumer consumption and negitive externalities are not assigned to producers in a reply I made to Mairead (Oct. 24, 11:28, p.- 1 ).
Do I understand you correctly? Your little innocuous two-person business was/is a corporation and that makes corporations okay in general? That's your argument?
Mairead,
It is odd to me how presumptuous you ARE when it suits your beliefs, even to the point of delusion, but when things do not suit your beliefs, things must be spelled out for you. Our business was larger than your assumption supposes, although I did not include what I consider to be -- beside the point. That point, which you have clearly chosen to ignore, is that my wife and I felt strongly enough about environmentalism so as to mold our lives accordingly. And if you understood my closing statement in regards to "Corporatocracy", and what that implies, you would then understand how misinformed a person must be to say: "that makes corporations okay in general". So, it must follow that a person with such narrow thinking might somehow then also miss the obvious fact, that my argument is almost entirely substantive. It explains quite clearly that informed people are taking the necessary steps to make progress, where progress can and should be made. That you do not understand how important it is to eliminate safe-haven banking is not my responsibility. In fact, somewhere on this thread, I wrote "that fringe thinking can not exist without fringe standards". So the essence of my contention is that your beliefs depend on your ignorance so as to protect those beliefs. A contention clearly supported by your snarky little reply.
What does big keybord mean?
The 'corporations in general are okay' summation comes from your statement that
-----------------------------------------
all lead to the indisputable conclusion that corporate capitalism is far more efficient than any system in human history. ... only the uninformed or delusional would contend that the corporate system is wasteful as a mode of production.
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Those sound like admiring assertions, to me. Corporations are efficient and non-wasteful. Uh-huh. The junkyards and landfills are figments of our imaginations, and products are carefully designed and produced to last many years without replacement or repair? Of course they're not. Corporations are *extremely* wasteful, waste is the only reason their owners are wealthy. Corporations waste everything, including human beings, non-humans, and Earth herself. Decapitated mountains, heaps of tailings, open-pit mines, befouled rivers, clearcut forests, acid rain, smog, dead zones in the sea, lung cancer, tens of thousands of on-the-job fatalities every year and Goddess knows how many injuries, sea bottoms stripped bare of life, coral reefs poisoned, Tokyo Bay so polluted that tuna haven't been anywhere near it in nearly a hundred years, whole species driven to extinction, the Cuyahoga so polluted it caught fire, the Love Canal scandal, the destruction of the Aral Sea, the creatures living in it, and the health of the humans living near it.... I could keep going.
But I'm going to stop here, because if you haven't already 'got' it, you're not interested in getting it.
Mairead,
Now you are taking something I posed in a context regarding the effeciency of the modes of production, and assigning negitive externalities to the producer. That is simular to the mistake made in the article although in your case a little more understandable because you are not presenting yourself as an authority on this subject. The flaw in your argument, other than the fact that you distorted the context of my argument, is that producers in a capitalist system are expected to meet the demands of the market. Your assertions blame the modes of production as if the consumers, and the regulatory agents (government), had no choice but to consume what was produced. But of course the producer must create supply to meet demand if that producer is to profit. And without profit things do not get produced in this system. So, all stakeholders must share in the blame and that is where this becomes a political issue. Because of course in a democracy the citizen has choices. So by Corporatocracy, I am suggesting that the problem is the combination of corportism and democracy. In other words, I see the much needed solutions to most of the world's problems as being multi-dimensional, which of course they are.
And why I am taking the time to explain this to someone who is so rude, someone accussing me of being insensitive to environmental issues, after I explained that I molded my life around those concerns, which lead to the very knowledge that I have tried to share here, when I clearly have nothing to gain here, and a rudeness based on uninformed presumption, is a question I have no answer for.
Your interpretations are quite self-serving, including your imputation of 'rudeness' to my criticism of your pro-corporate political position. Few would agree with you that to criticise your politics is to criticise your person.
This is rather stunningly disingenuous, straight out of the canon of corporate apologetics:
----------------------------------
producers in a capitalist system are expected to meet the demands of the market. Your assertions blame the modes of production as if the consumers, and the regulatory agents (government), had no choice but to consume what was produced. But of course the producer must create supply to meet demand if that producer is to profit. And without profit things do not get produced in this system. So, all stakeholders must share in the blame and that is where this becomes a political issue. Because of course in a democracy the citizen has choices.
----------------------------------
There's quite a good study of FDR's New Deal and the difference between the hagiography that's presented to us as history and the actual changes for which FDR and his administration were responsible. "End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War", by Alan Brinkley. Brinkley is the Nevins Professor of Am. History at Columbia, highly respected and at least conventionally lib-left, so it's not a hatchet job by some rightwing nitwit.
FDR and his crew were committed to saving the US for the 'ordinary' oligarchs by preventing the Marxist revolution brewing among the alienated, dispossessed working class, and the fascist one by the top 0.1% of the ruling class (who might well have succeeded in installing fascism had they been smart enough to pick, say, MacArthur rather than Smedley Butler to do their dirty work).
To save the US for capitalism, they concluded that they had to distinguish 'the American Way' from the attractions of both Soviet Communism and the German and Italian Fascisms. They decided, quite cold-bloodedly, that we would have an economic system based on endless consumption. After the war, Europe and Asia would be all but ruined, and could be exploited to produce goods that the US corporations could cheaply import in endless quantities. To be sure that people would continue to buy them (thus keeping corporate profits high), the goods would be poorly made with 'planned obsolescence', and the power of the advertising industry would be used to make people continuously unsatisfied with 'only' having last year's car/dress/suit/fridge/furniture/house/whatever. (During that same period, he handed over the control of military procurement to his 'dollar a year men' who, of course, weren't subsisting on that dollar -they continued to draw their salaries and perqs from their corporate employers and naturally saw no reason why the military shouldn't be able to buy whatever it wanted from those same corporate employers. Whence the birth of the infamous 'military-industrial complex'.)
This consumption-economy scheme, they felt, would satisfy both the oligarchs and the working class, because the latter would be unwittingly enslaved to the former by the manufactured need to 'keep up with the Joneses'.
When GIs began bringing back Volkswagens, the more perceptive Americans realised the real purpose of 'planned obsolescence'. The Volkswagens were produced to a completely different ethic, with badges given out by the factory to cars with verifiable high mileage, and yearly changes subtle enough to make identifying the year of manufacture a matter of some expertise. Just as in Germany, perceptive US VW owners took pride not in having the 'latest and greatest' VW, but in having an old one with one or more high-mileage badges that still looked and ran like new. It was a real counter-culture, and bothersome to the corporatocracy until they managed, with tariffs and arm-twisting, to end the threat.
So your claim that corporations 'must create supply to meet demand' turns reality on its head. What they actually do, and have done since 1946, is create a demand for the crap they wastefully supply.
That famous photo of Black folk in the breadline under the poster of a White family in their car is priceless precisely because it exposes the fraudulent, destructive nature of the consumerist scheme imposed on us.
Mairead,
You are still assuming that wastefull production is a given. A problem which can only be solved by destroying the modes of production. Your premise suggests that we destroy the good along with the bad. All based on your unwillingness to admit that some progress has been made and that it would cause more harm than good if all production were sabotaged somehow. As if humanities needs might be met by some sort of miracle during the transition to your leisure based alternative.
Where your premise reaches a level contradiction beyond confusion and ignorance, is that the you would destroy the machines that will eventually allow the leisure of your desires, and without the exploitation that you so convenietly ignore in your nastalgia. You also ignore the fact that during the most prosperous decade of the first half of 20th century, during those wonderful times of leisure and plenty, the poverty rate in this country reached 71% (before the crash).
Your contention that "reality" has been turned on its "head" suggests that consumers are being forced to buy what they obviously choose to buy. If consumers choose not to buy a product it is no longer produced and to argue otherwise on a macro level is delusional.
What you call "stunningly disingenuous" is just a standard explanation of the basic capitalist system in a democratic society. That you would take an objective explanation as having an "apologetic" agenda behind it, that is disingenuous.
I'm going to stop here. You continue to 'respond' with nothing more than obfuscated assertions without so much as a shred of support. I don't know what you think you're doing, but I do know what I think you're doing and I'm not interested in helping you do it.
mairead,
Now you are ignoring the fact that it was you who criticized my criticism of the article. Notice though how you tried to defend the article without using a single reference from the article, and notice especially that I used the very references in my original critisism that could not have been any more applicable. Interesting that you would use the term "obfuscated".
As for what you claim I did not support, as I have exlained on this very thread, it not necessary to support the claim that "water is wet". I also wrote, somewhere on this thread what the burden of proof is in regards to accepted norms. You should up on THAT SUBJECT.
I am glad you are through supplying me with examples that serve my primary premise here: "fringe thinking can not exist without fringe standards". I have well more than enough examples. Thanks for the help, but I could do without your help, forever.
I have read hundreds, maybe even thousands of works on subjects related to the premise of this article, works including academic research, books by Nobel Prize winning economists, privately funded studies, and of course the daily contributions of magizine and newspaper articles. But Mr. Hedges is the first writer in my experience to contend that corporations (all) are wasteful in regards to inputs(costs related to production).
Over the past 50 years the percentage of average income spent on staple goods has fallen from about 75% to about 35% (U.S., [studies vary slightly]). And this trend, especially when combined with simular productivity trends, birth-rate trends etc., all lead to the indisputable conclusion that corporate capitalism is far more efficient than any system in human history. During these past 50 years the amount of disposable income per household has risen steadily, even though for the last 30 of these years wages have been stagnant. There is a perfectly valid argument here regarding wealth distribution, and/or an argument against materialism-consumerism etc.; but only the uninformed or delusional would contend that the corporate system is wasteful as a mode of production. Any such argument even refutes Marx's theory of monopolistic concentration, this of course being based on the unfair advantages inherent to LOWER input costs, not higher.
The premise of this article seems to be that, if those on the far-Left would stop drying their clothes in their backyards, and use that time more wisely, in an effort to destroy the modes of production, that the planet might be saved. This equates to a plan based on destroying the only good part of the Corporatocracy, while ignoring all that is bad. Evidently, because the author is not aware of what the essential argument is about. Which makes this the most delusional article I have ever read. I would provide more support for that claim here, although I have other comments on this thread that do just that. And a book's worth of examples might not be enough to explain all that's wrong, dishonest, and delusonal about this article.
Yeah. I rather agree. I have railed against the GW deniers for YEARS, and hold Exxon TREASONOUS for their funding the denier community, but TRASH CAPITALISM? I hate the amount of power modern corporations have been allowed to gather, but TRASH ALL CORPORATIONS? EVERYWHERE?
I like the CommonDreams.org website, with its refreshing liberalism. But if it plans to advocate, as lately many articles seem to, for the destruction of our economic system, for the upending of our means of production/allocation, for ACTUALLY forcing people onto farms to grow organic/vegetarian produce, then SCR*W THAT!!
Here's four ideas (admittedly 10-40 years too late):
1. Don't reduce the maximum marginal income tax bracket below 90%, OK? When someone makes over $3 million a year, just TAKE the amount over $3 million, and tax the rest at the lower rates. It worked fine for the 'Greatest Generation' (1930-1980), it can work fine for us. Sheesh.
2. Don't trash Glass-Steagal, or ANY of the FDR banking legislations from the Great Depression. Keep investment banks and commercial banks separate. Dump derivatives and other clever schemes for creating money where none exist. Eventually, such money turns out to be worthless, which it was all along. The game that is being played is to NOT BE THERE when this true value finally comes calling. This is not investment, its predation.
3. Do whatever Jimmy Carter tells you to do on alternative energy, including putting solar water heaters back on the White House Roof.
4. Incorporate agressive anti-trust legislation: once an American corporation grows to employ more than 2000 employees worldwide, break it into two companies. This keeps the labor/management ratio low enough for labor to have a fighting chance just on the threat of its number one asset: loss of its labor. Anti-trust against corporations, on behalf of labor, is much more effective than labor unions, at keeping labor valuable to the modern production process. (BTW: the investors don't care HOW many companies you break their ownership up into: they still own the same amount. What you're breaking up is MANAGEMENTS.)
Nowhere in this is a call to TRASH CAPITALISM! Its enough of that talk. What that talk does, is give Glenn Beck and the new McCarthyists ammunition to paint the 'climate change' crowd as a threat to capitalism, because, frankly, it IS THREATENING CAPITALISM. The theat of global warming is a human threat, exclusive of economics or politics. Get the luddite, 'back to nature', organic, vegetarian, anti-corporatism off this issue. It doesn't deserve it and is more likely to drown it than anything else. And, if it does, we may ALL drown... for real.
You shouldn't agree.
R.Love is forgetting *how* capitalism produces those 'wonderful' effects: by forcing Earth and third-world peoples to pay the real costs. Paul Hawken has shown that the true cost of goods is *never* fully accounted-for. And that's why we're in so much trouble today.
If the real costs in terms of resource depletion, pollution, and misery were factored into the price of the crap we so carelessly buy, we wouldn't be able to afford it. The rare earths that go into cell phones? Paid for in human and non-human blood, pollution, and habitat destruction. Fruit from Israel, Mexico, or New Zealand? Paid for with fossil-fuel depletion and deadly climate change. The list is endless.
If we want to stay in business as a species, we have no other option than to change our way of life the world around, growing more of our own food, weaving more of our own clothing, sharing communally-owned goods, cooperating rather than competing. Earth can no longer afford to let us party-hearty at her expense.
We will *certainly* stop, the only question being whether we'll still be alive after.
Mairead,
That which you are claiming that I am "forgetting" are what economists call "negitive externalities". What you have said here is beside the point, and so I did not forget, I instead tried to explain that it is delusional to call for the destuction of the modes of production when these modes are not the problem. You, as is the author in question, are assuming that wasteful production is some sort of given. He then also advocates destuction of what produces more good and necessary products than harmfull products without offering an alternative.
I would imagine that Hedges didn't spell out the alternative for the same reason I didn't: it seems so obvious. The alternative is a world in which things are made only when needed, or as artistic craftwork, not with all the quality squeezed out of them to maximise the profits of the few.
This is in the literature, so you can check it if you doubt me: most people in most jobs do not put much of themselves into their work because their work has nothing to do with who they are. It's just how they earn the money to stay alive. Free them of the need to work for money and you see what truly engages them. It might be gardening, or teaching or needlework or cabinetmaking or playing the fiddle for dancing or working with kids or something else. In all cases, it's their 'calling', and they put everything they've got into it.
Read the early Foxfire books, especially the stories told by the older people, those born around 1900. They had had relatively little in material goods, but they had been rich in culture and leisure time. If something needed done, they did it, trading skill for skill. If nothing was needed, they didn't 'build up inventory' or 'get laid off', they simply relaxed, visited, played music, read, did craftwork, or found something else enjoyable. One of the Foxfire sources, a man born around 1905-1910 and highly artistic, commented about how impoverished modern life was because nobody had time to stop and enjoy themselves anymore. Time was, he said, that someone passing by in the road would be more than happy to stop and 'set a spell', spending half a day smoking, talking, playing music, drinking cider, eating, whatever seemed enjoyable in the moment. Now it was all changed, he said, and everyone had money in their pockets but were poorer in their hearts.
Mairead,
The next time I read an article which advocates the destruction of all corporations, because they are all of course evil, I will know to assume that things will just work themselves out in a leisurely way. To further improve my presumption skills, I will presume that the author of that article has better things to do than explain things. Or I will assume that he knows that the unexplainable is often best left to presumptuous readers. Thanks.
I'm at a loss to understand why you're being sarcastic.
Do you *really* believe that private-profit corporations --economic feudalism-- is the only way to produce things?
Do you *really* believe that working our arses off to enrich the few so that we can buy crap-quality 'stuff' made by near-slaves in maquiladora sweatshops or pollution-pits in Guangdong is the only way for us to live?
I find that all but impossible to accept, since I presume you're an adult and that the same information is available to you as to me in libraries and even the internet. How could you be so limited in your perceptions, unless by choice. And if by choice, *why*?
All,
I answered Mairead at this point by a reply addressed to Tailfeather and Mairead in tandom. This part of the thread got out of order also because Tailfeather's initial reply to my comment was put at the top as opposed to attached as a reply. So the only way to make sense of this conversation between the three of us is to look at the times. Sorry for any confusion that I caused.
My four perscrptions elevate government power over corporate power and, through wealth redistribution, help return our democracy to the people by slashing concentrations of wealth that currently corrupt the process. Elevating a government that has been returned to her people will do much to increase the proper evaluation of the true costs of economic activity. Breaking corporate managements up reduces the lobbying power of individual corporations and, as I mentioned, decreases the labor to management ratio so labor has the leverage needed to make an honest wage.
But the primary aspect of capitalism remains intact. All economies, centrally-planned or otherwise, take in high quality energy and excrete low quality energy. All organisms do the same. All chemical reactions do the same. Indeed, nothing MOVES without taking in high quality energy and excreting low quality energy. With better planning we can do a better job of evaluating the costs associated with economic activity. But we will never stop impacting our environment by taking some of its high quality energy and returning lower quality energy, not unless we stop existing. Fortunately, all high quality energy ultimately comes (in this neck of the woods) from the sun, and earth subtends only one-billionth of the suns total solar output, so there's room for growth...
It's not clear to me that centralised control is much better when carried out by 'elected' oligarchs than when carried out by un-elected ones. Both groups seem not to care a fig about us. Perhaps it would help to include the idea of devolved government?
Your point about being unable to escape entropy is of course unimpeachable. But as even Lincoln (smart man!) pointed out, any labor is unproductive and wasteful that goes into moving something that could just as well be produced at the destination. Jane Jacobs said much the same thing when talking about the economic health of cities and their catchment areas: the more local needs that are met by local production rather than imports, the healthier.
So I can't quite see how central 'command and control' by government is significantly better for us proles than the same thing by any other organism. In theory it's better, sure, because in theory we control government. But in practice?
If I'm misunderstanding you, I apologise and grovel.
The biggest stumbling block in the argument is equating corporations as corporations instead of groups of people. Doing this is less effective then the mentioned Ghost Dance dresses. Viewing corporations as groups of humans leaves the avenue for a human solution. The word "corporation" has become an idolatrous image linked to negative self-righteous vibrations that also limit if not block the best of human creativity. Be human, see human.
But corporations *aren't* 'groups of people'. Corporations are deathless, unpunishable legal fictions controlled completely by a few oligarchs who are themselves immune from being called to account for the destruction they indirectly cause.
The only 'groups of people' are the employees and possibly the owners, neither of which have any say at all in the running of the corporation unless they're able to completely band together, which in general they can't/don't (sound familiar? it should!)
The article states: "We can save groves of trees, protect endangered species and clean up rivers, all of which is good, but to leave the corporations unchallenged would mean our efforts would be wasted."
It is becoming clear that while individual examples of living sustainable are necessary, it won't be enough until we do it collectively.
And if we continue to vote for Obamas or Clintons who are more concerned with protecting the status quo and the power elite, we are not acting in a manner which will bring about the fundamental changes that are necessary for our survival.
It is time for a culture change, one where we ask before decisions are made, if our action negatively impacts basic humans rights or the requirements of a sustainable environment. Anything less is going to guarantee the downward path to the bottom of constant unnecessary suffering and misery.
To change the status quo will require participation by every single person out there. Unfortunately, if the current situation didn't get everyone off their ass and into action, there probably isn't anything that would do it until it is too late.
It may already be too late to make the change that is necessary for our survival.
so it goes
Great article Chris Hedges. It doesn't tell us how, but it tells us what needs to be done. We have to be clear about what has to be done before we can find the appropriate hows.
Joe
Corrections!
Ranjit Kumar posted at 10:44 a.m. today:
"Olemanriver didn't finish high school but he has been a gifted learner on this site."
While I thank you for the compliment, I got my diploma in 1961 and was a National Merit Finalist, was offered scholarships but they weren't enough because my parents had divorced and spent all their spare money fighting court battles over younger children's custody.
I was a college dropout, not a high school dropout. I attended five colleges and universities including Berkeley and CCNY. But IT WAS THE SIXTIES!!! I met Mario Savio during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and would later work with The Chicago Seven and was heavily into journalism. I knew I was witnessing a revolution in consciousness that transcended formal education, but that didn't mean I eschewed learning (unlike "Shawn Berry," who calls "himself" a "blue collar progressive" and then disparages a college education).
Not having a degree can be a serious impediment financially, and for most of my life it has been. I spent a year living in a storage space and surviving by dumpster diving (the Great Recession of 1982-83). Great books have been written about how fortune changes. I worked for several banks including the Federal Reserve and BofA as well as a couple of really great newspapers as an investigative reporter and for some college textbook publishing houses as a copy editor and proofist. I APPRENTICED into these jobs by reading and practicing and self-discipline, and, yes, desperation and sometimes just plain luck. I was also able to live coast to coast working as an offset printer, again, APPRENTICED.
***
As for "Shawn Berry," I have done something of a linguistic analysis of "his" semantics on this thread and others, and I think we have all been truly suckered. I doubt that "Shawn Berry" actually exists as an individual person. I think/suspect/believe that "Shawn Berry" is a COLLECTIVE Agent Provocateur.
"His" technique so far has been to make essentially ridiculous personal attacks that suck in our egos to compel us to defend ourselves against what we usually rightly regard as absurdities. "His" modus is to reduce as much as possible everything to personal attacks (Latin: ad hominum) for the purpose of diverting attention from the serious issues raised by the articles and threads on CD. If you spend some time studying "his" syntax in "his" attacks I believe that you will find as I do that no one person is writing this garbage. "Shawn Berry" is a Committee of Trolls trying to subvert Common Dreams, and I do agree with those who have posted that at least some trolls are PAID to do it. After all, CD consists of nearly 200,000 readers/participants interested in "progressive" causes. In this day and age that is nothing to sneeze at and can represent a threat to some very evil people. "Shawn Berry" is among them. "He" has used virtually every trick in the Book of Sophistry to misrepresent a host of threads by other people at CD, for the purpose of diversion from a study of what ails what passes for "civilization" today. That his primary target has been Sioux Rose should tell us a great deal.
"Blue collar progressive" my ass. "Shawn Berry" is the "personification" of Corporate Personhood. Fascism posing as a human being. Exercising "his" First Amendment "right" to Free Speech. This orchestration of a Corporate Collective even goes so far as to pretend that its human feelings are hurt by attacks like mine. As time goes on we're gonna see more of this crap on the Web.
One final note to the editors of CD. I think you have been judicious in not censoring. Trolling is an evolving issue. At least half the comments on this thread were internecine rivalries thrust upon us by diversionary tactics. Keep publishing Chris Hedges. His is among the few voices of sanity left, and his life-experience credentials are impeccable. I'm a fellow war correspondent. Mine was The War At Home (some may recall the film by that name). There were many times when I lived daily expecting a bullet through the head for what I was writing when I was inhaling police tear gas because there wasn't any air, back when I had a by-line. And backing from courageous Publishers. Keep up the good work.
-30-
Sioux Rose
OLE MAN RIVER: Thank you for taking the time to share your insights and observations in this post. (And by the way I DID answer you on the Naomi Klein thread and was MOST appreciative of your kind words.) I am fortunate that when I go bike riding (it's about THAT time now), whatever spirits live in the forest send insights my way. I clear my thought process and reflect on many things, like the antipathy created in this forum by a few interlopers. Due to the use of anonymous names as identifiers, the same handful can seem like a much larger group. I find that troubling. Since I am a professional writer who uses her name in this forum, I am less invisible, and perhaps an easier target.
In any case, so long as there are still wise souls, well-informed thinkers who generously give of their time, knowledge, and caring in this forum, I will be compelled to return. I would prefer that Craig Brown find a way to put some kind of control on the board so that a dominant poster cannot repeat himself (or herself) over and over again. Twelve is a nice metaphysical number. I vote for max 12 posts per thread from any single source. In any case, thank you again for being "the lady's champion" and pointing out the imposter.
I certainly do NOT agree with all opinions posted here, but in 95% of the cases, I appreciate reading them, potentially learning from another viewpoint, and certainly honoring the other individual's point of view. Redundant stupidity, opinion without substantiation, and character assassination are quite to the contrary. These items reduce the level of discourse and have probably scared some worthy persons away. Thank you again.
More lies and bs. Craig Brown knows better than to do what you would ask him to do. Be careful what you wish for.
YOU GOT IT ABOUT SHAWN BERRY! I THINK MOST OF US HAVE FIGURED OUT HE'S A PLANT
Stop shouting. You're the one acting like a plant. You just appreciate thinking differently, do you?
Nicely stated. I respect and admire your integrity. As a Viet Vet, dumpster diving is also a part of my experience following the Viet War. The collective mask you refer of one moron, along with the Obama bot resurgence on CD is because the Obama Administration is in campaign mode again. One only needs to note the resurrection of people who were only participating circa the last election to know Obama is in trouble on the left and now scrambling to undermine us by taking on progressives like Hedges. Keep the fires burning – my metaphor for staying true to one’s inner compass.
Unproven lies and conspiracy theories. I'm no paid Obamabot. Stop lying.
Excellent analysis OleManRiver,
That is my assessment as well. The sock-puppet in question is always aggressive, however the rant ranges from illiterate "Professional Wrestling" stammer to coherent vocabulary within a few posts. The shear volume of postings assures us that it's not one person. The fact that it often contains pro-war undercurrents leads me to suspect DOD.
What a fascinating life you've lead.
Thanks for standing up for Democracy all these years.
TJ
"To criticize those in power, is the highest form of patriotism" - Thomas Jefferson
Another pack of lies. You and your associates aren't standing up for Democracy. You're standing up for fascism of your own. You don't know me.
I apologize for my mistake. It was a long day at work. You might be interested in knowing that in my Indian culture, getting an undergraduate degree is not considered getting a degree figuratively speaking. Getting a master's degree is what it takes to be culturally considered educated. I haven't been to India in 15 years but Sioux Rose would know the latest in education expectations in Indian society.
AAAHAHAHAHAHA ! Glad I wasn't an Indian in this life time. I didn't need a useless money wasting college degree to be a smartass ! AAAHAHAHAHAHA !
You can't stop lying about me can you? If the CD editors wanted to censor, they would not censor my posts because they would have found out that I wasn't the mean one. I was just another progressive defending myself against lies and bs. You have nothing to back up your claim that I am a paid troll other than heresy but that is not proof or evidence whatsoever.
The only way to dismantle the corporate state is to stop giving them our money. Stop buying anything but essentials, and get those from a local supplier. Ditch the car- stop donating to the oil companies every week. Turn your heat down, heat only the rooms you are in. Throw the cell phone out the window. Stop borrowing and paying interest to banks. Buy only used clothes and wear yours until they wear out. Power down in a big way. Don't buy cleaning chemicals- anything from the big corporations. Quit buying processed foods. Don't fly anywhere- all your spending is propping up the corporate state. Of course its not just you and me, but if enough of us cut off the money, we could bring them down.
You speak of reality. The reality is that we don't live in a pre-industrial world. We live in a world of billions of people, most of whom live in extremely complex and very technology-dependent urban and semi-urban conditions--far from nature, far from being able to earn a living or even subsist in an agricultural world, still less a nomadic or forager's world. Corporations are a serious problem, but they are a branch, not the root. Communist countries polluted as well as any other country.
There is no viable alternative to oil. Not unless you want to kill off half of humanity. It is pure fantasy to think so--and biofuels are scarcely the answer, neither is nuclear power.
It's simple. It's called fatality. Read some Greek plays. Play chess. Make the wrong moves and you reduce your possibilities of action. You run out of space and time. The root is industrialism, and the planet has become fatally dependent on it. And industrialism depends on a mental formation that began already at the time of the Renaissance. It is a desacralized view of the cosmos--a fatal view, because--and this is Reality:
"in Him we live, and we move, and we have our being."
Of course, it goes without saying that modern man on the whole doesn't want to hear this. That too is fatality.
Your Christian zealotry may represent your reality and world view, it does not represent mine.
The Greeks also offered incredible insight on the psychological dysfunctions guiding the values of conspicuous consumption tied to the industrial world view of Eurocentric peoples, even though they wrote long before that period. The myth of Sisyphus comes to mind to describe a psychological mind-set in need of fulfilling all its addictive tendencies driven by greed; an insatiable appetite filling an empty hole inside that can never be satisfied. My people called these types “hungry ghosts.”
jwgn,
Well said and wise.
the right to 'own' property, which funds the monied world, must go...
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...the world's citizens unanimously withdrawing from the current system...acoustic, agrarian, sustainable life...local governance...local necessities, local defense...
Great comments from most everyone. There is a lot of debating I see on where to fix the system. Some choose to fix from the inside while others choose to fix from the outside. I generally choose the latter option but am willing to try from the inside until I know that at some point enough is enough. Changing a system from the inside still keeps it intact and prone to reverting back to its bad status. It is like trying to change the Democrat Party and move it to the left only to watch it fail again and move further to the right. I for one though would like to see a European model, a mixture of socialism and regulated capitalism. We could rein in corporate power that way.
MichaelGoodhart, welcome to Common Dreams. As Cee Miracles pointed out, there is a long road ahead for you to follow and I wish you lots of luck recovering out there. There is a lot to learn here. I hope this site helps speed up you recovery. Again, welcome aboard.
Hey you remind me of my Uncle Stan, who was also new to this site a couple months ago and he was also shy like you and he didn't want to post comments til he had read for a while, but even though you are shy, you stepped right up and wrote about 89% of the comments in this thread today. You also sort of remind me of my new roommate who used to be a republican but now is probably progressive but might vote third party. I wonder what ever happened to Uncle Stan.
Leave her alone, troll. Go back to your Obama cave and repair Obama.
Thank you Ranjit. NoMoreForCorps is just an Obamabot troll.
Thanks Jennifer for the welcome as well. I look forward to learning and reforming. I'm slow to learn but I'll give it my best.
I still think change from within can't hurt. I think we need to fix the system from both the inside and outside 50/50.
This is Chris Hedges' best article yet.
"The corporations will continue to cannibalize the planet for the sake of money."
Here is what I take away from the article:
1. Sacrifices of a small minority alone will not stop the global devastation and suffering caused by unregulated corporations and aided and abetted by our government, ever.
2. Although we do have power in our choices, the real power is held by our government and we can change that by voting out those who aid and abett and vote in those who will reform and transform.
3. Unregulated corporations are a threat to our existence, our health. If someone or some entity threatens your life and that of your family's, do you take action to protect yourself and your family?
From my perspective, our family includes the earth, animals, all people.
The actions we take to protect ourselves can be inclusive and results are not necessarily based on a single solution.
For me, socialism is not a dirty word, yet neither is capitalism. In fact, I believe that it would be the answer to a lot of issues for we need innovation now as never before.
However, in order for that to happen, the sine qua non, corporations should be declared as illegal entities.
There are two different ways to view the issue: (1) we ARE the system, so in order to solve our problems we will have to change ourselves, and (2) the capitalist system exists outside of ourselves, and in order to solve our problems we must bring it down. When I think about these issues, these two different views flip back and forth in my mind like one of those optical illusions. Which suggests to me that they are but two aspects of a single reality; which further suggests that either approach might work.
CH seems to be calling for a revolution--and while some revolutions may work out well, most seem to end in disaster, generally because they're led by the same creeps who caused the problems in the first place.
Personally, I think we'd be better off if we seriously work on changing ourselves and those in our immediate vicinity.
Amen nick. We are the government we choose to keep just like we are the companies we choose to keep. Anyone who thinks otherwise is in total denial and delusion. There's no point in trying to change forces outside of one's own control. Fix from within and make oneself tougher to defeat and then confront those external bad boys if you have to.
The author is right. Those corporations won't go down without a fight and they already have allies, us. It's easy to be dishonest and say that you don't work for those corporations or are affiliated with them in any way but it's obviously hard to be honest about it without getting flamed. A few months ago, some user admitted to working for the DoD and got flamed but he did strike back and expose the attackers' dishonest and hypocritical modes of denial. I know I am on a lot of people's hate lists on this site for honestly admitting that I own an SUV for business purposes and that hybrid equivalents are not cheaper. No problem, that's why the corporations win. Would these same people join me in asking those dealers to lower those steep prices on those hybrids so that more people can afford them and help save the planet instead of pointing fingers? I would be shocked if any of them said yes. That aside, let's face it. As long as all of us post on this site, we will rely on coal, gas, and oil to keep those machines and servers powered. As long as we drive, we rely on oil. We would have to be complete luddites to defeat those corporate interests 100% but where would we or CD be? None of us would be here typing on this site. Leea, MichaelGoodhart, and Cee Miracles raise excellent points about the need to reform from within. If we look to our inner selves for our inner strengths and make the best of it, the corporations will be controlled differently by different people and just maybe corporate power could be put to good use just like political power used to be before it fell into the wrong hands.
I love Hedges, and Jensen. USA Truth tellers par excellence. I have 3 questions however to throw into the discussion.
1. Dismantle the system by ANY means (because it in fact is destroying life on the Planet, incl ours) nonetheless creates a violent reaction w/o the necessary consciousness shift that can make healthy changes permanent;
2. We the people in fact legitimize & cooperate with the system w/our lifestyles, taxes, voting for twiddle dee or twiddle dumb,burning fossil fuels, buying their crappy consumer items, passivity VS lifestyles of resistance/noncooperation. Thus, radical changes in our individual & collective lives removes the engine engine from capitalism and needs to be an intrinsic part of the resistance strategy. In fact our individual & local actions of simple living and radically reduced consumptive/carbon lifestyles do count because we do not understand the transcendence effect on others. That our individual actions in local communities by themselves will not save ourselves from catastrophe is not a reason not to do them. If the structural/systemic changes do not happen no matter our political organizing and resistance actions, no matter how massive, so be it.
3. It is a leap in human consciousness that is sought w/o which nothing really new is able to emerge. If this shift does not happen, then our demise, even extinction, is a warranted eco-system corrective mechanism that will not be averted by desperate actions;
Tearing down the infrastructure to save lives is like blowing up the foundation to save the building. See how many lives are lost when people can't access food or clean water (both provided by the system, thank you), when telecommunication bites it, and so on and on and on.
If you want change, you must target the decision-makers: The CEOs and executive committees. Make THEIR lives miserable NOW if you want change. When THEIR lives and their children's lives are on the line, you'll be surprised how quickly a big corporation can become a force for positive change. Like they say, the best way to get cheap organic tomatoes and fair farm-worker treatment is to make MacDonald's demand such from their suppliers. It's merely shifting corporate power toward constructive change and away from the race to the bottom. They won't do it without a good reason, like saving their own skins. Not CORPORATE skins but flesh and blood skins.
Second, a little rhetorical shift here please. Our effect on the planet doesn't even amount to a hot flash. So enough of this talk about "killing the planet." Mother Earth has seen far worse than us; just ask the dinosaurs.
Well said. Individuals, and only individuals, participate on all levels. We are all tied into the same system and consciously or unconsciously participate, whether we like it or not. To suggest that all our individual efforts are meaningless is nonsense. All we have are individual efforts.
Suggesting we "dismantle the corporate state" and "target and take down the industrial infrastructure" sounds great. Where do we start? Should I throw out this corporately produced computer, end my internet subscription with AT@T, junk my Toyota pickup, throw out my DeWalt tools? Walk to work and start chiseling away at some stone tools so I can finish the renovation job I'm working on? Oh wait I'll have to scrap the Pacific Lumber and drywall I just bought and throw out the Georgia-Pacific mud (I think I saw some reeds in a swamp near the house, maybe I can look up how to build a thatched roof, but I can't do that because I threw out all the books that were printed on the subject being that they were printed in China by MaGraw_Hill).
Corporate states are abstractions that exist because with give them the power to exist. Creating an alternative world only happens by individual means. Suggesting that it's a big bad abstraction that is destroying the planet is dis-empowering.
Corporate capitalism demands chewing up more of the planet each year than it did the year before. I mean this is built into the system- growth forever. bigger gdp. well all this cannot happen without killing the planet. because the planet is finite, it cannot sustain infinite growth. and since this is what capital demands, it's gotta be stopped.
This is like real simple arithmetic. The reason so many people, including right here, can't see it is cause they don't want to. and who can blame them? we are all so deeply enmeshed in this system we can't imagine any other way. but still we must. Because we can't let our planet be murdered to satisfy corporate greed.
it's capital against the planet, and we gotta choose. which side are you on?
"The oil and natural gas industry, the coal industry, arms and weapons manufacturers, industrial farms, deforestation industries, the automotive industry and chemical plants will not willingly accept their own extinction."
No kidding. They will slander, bankrupt, fight and, if need be, kill anyone who tries to stop them.
They are afraid of us but they will prevail because we are even more afraid of them. The change must come from within the power structure by the family members of the elite. I wish it weren't so. The physical problems of this planet are nothing compared with the spiritual depravity of the elite of humanity.
I personally do not want this civilization to go to the stars and apply their exploitaion to some other hapless planetary life forms.
Better that corporations destroy this planet and us than for this monster amoeba corporatism that rules humanity grow strong enough to leave this planet. As a former pilot and air traffic controller, I apologize for having loved technology so much and try every day to live as frugal and earth friendly a life as I can. It's all I can do. I will not fight physically. Condemn me as a coward if you wish. I respect that. You are probably right.
AGG:
Especially, they will slander.
I will not fight, too.
Non-cooperation! Resist!
Dear Leaders of countries possessing a few primitive nuclear weapons:
If any of you would like to be remembered for eternity as the savior of the planet, act now. With your few SCUD class missiles and primitive fission bombs you have the capability of creating a world wide Electromagnetic Pulse that will stop industrial pollution in its tracks and position your people, adapted as they are to subsistence, with the best possibility of long term survival. Only the criminally insane have no interest in the survival of future generations. What I am asking you to do is to stop the criminally insane from destroying us all, including all future generations. Never has so much been asked of so few. Please, only you can pull the plug on this madness before the industrial machine kills us all. Please act now.
Herb Ruhs, MD
Note: Homeland Security, the above is meant as a satire and not to encourage or facilitate any hostile or terrorist intent.
Normally I am very impressed with Chris Hedges's articles, but I really think he misses the boat on this one.
His characterization of evil giant corporations chewing away at the earth like big destructive caterpillars is a joke.
The problem is not corporations. The problem is the consumers which enable these giant corporations to profit from environmental destruction. As the collective conscience of consumers improves, we have seen small niche markets go mainstream. Think of how widely available organic food and free range meat is now vs. 20 years ago. It was not a bunch of misguided ELF fanatics blowing up factory farms that made this change possible. It was an due to an increased consciousness about the food we eat. This is how to change things in a positive way. Violence and militancy are never the solution. Corporations which are successful due to consumer demand cannot be changed through force, and any aggressors will undermine their cause through violence. Trying to destroy a corporation driven by consumer demand is the same as trying to destroy grass by mowing it. If you want to change something, you need to look to the source. That source is the consumers.
The problem of corporate abuse, however, lies exclusively with the government. It wasn't corporations that filled the US Treasury with ex-Goldman Sachs employees, it was the federal government. It isn't corporations that provide huge corporations and industries with undeserved capital and entitlements, it's the federal government. It isn't corporations that expand the money supply making money available to corporations who would never receive it in a true free market. It's the federal government. It isn't corporations that permit corporate lobbyists to write legislation, it's members of Congress.
Rather than focusing on corporate power, the main focus of all Americans in initiating change needs to be to sever the federal government as an enabler of abusive corporate power. If you want to stop a war, you don't attack the soldiers, you find and take out their ammunition supply.
Right now, that supply is the Federal Reserve. The expansion of money allows the federal government to pour billions of dollars into every corrupt industry that exists without affecting the public in an immediate and drastic way. If their ability to expand the money supply stopped today, you would see immediate change. Faced with a finite money supply, Congress would have to visibly cut into services provided to the general public in order to enrich the wealthy elite. This, in turn would result in public outrage, and a balance would be found between corporate and public interests. Right now, the alarming increase in corporate power we are seeing is a direct result of huge infusions of newly fabricated government money into their coffers. This, above all, needs to stop.
I feel like many people here at CD, though progressive, are missing the boat to how central this is to fighting corporate abuse, stopping the wars, and preventing the environmental destruction subsidized by the federal government.
In 2008, Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, Ron Paul, Bob Barr, and Chuck Baldwin all got together and agreed on four uniting principles. This is what they came up with on the Federal Reserve.
http://www.votenorth.org/node/75
The Federal Reserve: We seek a thorough investigation, evaluation and audit of the Federal Reserve System and its cozy relationships with the banking, corporate, and other financial institutions. The arbitrary power to create money and credit out of thin air behind closed doors for the benefit of commercial interests must be ended. There should be no taxpayer bailouts of corporations and no corporate subsidies. Corporations should be aggressively prosecuted for their crimes and frauds.
Right now, there are 303 cosponsors in the House and 30 in the Senate for an Audit the Fed bill. More than calls for tea parties or heaven forbid, taking up arms against corporations, Americans need to unite against the Fed and pressure Congress to put this to a vote.
Once the Federal Reserve is forced to expose itself, the American people will be outraged and real change will come. This is the first step that NEEDS to happen to start cleaning house in Washington.
Go here to sign the petition.
http://www.auditthefed.com/
Great post Euato! Unfortunately most of the American people are either fooled or indifferent or have been successfully brain washed into believing in the American way of entitlement.In denial about the struggling majority of our fellow human beings.
How can a nation or a modern world for that matter,that for the most part consumes,relatively the biggest share of the planets's resources without conscience,while at the same time,several billion other human beings live in atrocious misery.
The Americans truly seem to believe that they are owed three car garages,more than one home,several bathrooms,the updates (stainless steel ,granite, hardwood floors),the excesses ,well everyone gets the picture.They worked for it,right.
The corporations are corrupt and money driven but if we all cut back to common sense living, wouldn't it make a difference.Corporations of the planned obsolescence and indulgence era are going to have to disect their philosophy and change. Just helping or sharing with one one family somewhere,just one cause for each one of us,who are priveleged,would have to impact the planet's mire and influence positively the marathon towards the cliff. Maybe we won't be the lemings that we seem hell bent to imitate.
Good post Euarto Gullible,
But, why do you keep talking about violence? Chris doesn't say anything in his article about violence. You can't commit "violence" against an inanimate object can you? Every since the Pengram trolls showed up here screaming "Violence, Vilolence" now they've got everybody doing it.
I know the corporate empire would like to frame everything as "domestic terrorism" or "violence" against corporate property, but it's an absurd lie. Taxpayers and Voters have the right to boycott and stay home if they get the "blue flu". They have the right to peacefully assemble as the British recently did on the rooftops of parliament in London. Did the Brit protestors break a few light posts and roof shingles in the process? No doubt. But property cannot be injured. Breaking things in public is not "domestic terrorism" no matter what the mindless turds in at Homeland Stupidity tell you. Corporations are not people and never were until last century.
What a ridiculous suggestion, that a corporation is a person. Rather than pick the bank or the corp as the villain in this story, let's play it safe and pick both. They are partners in crime. You cannot have one without the other.
But the huge Federal Government that acts as body guard to all these injustices is a bigger villain. Join the Libertarian Party. Push for a weak central government today.
Good Article Chris. Great comments everybody.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Phrases like "use whatever means are necessary" and "sabotage" mean violence.
The definition of 'violence' is the massive, sudden, destructive use of energy ("the storm's violence"). So sabotage is not necessarily violent. Someone who quietly shoves a spanner into the gears and wrecks the machine has not committed violence by the definition most people would understand. A fall of rain isn't seen as violent; a thunderstorm probably is. Picking someone's pocket isn't violent; coshing them first, is. The difference is in how sudden and dangerous the release of energy is.
Similarly with 'whatever means are necessary'. It might come down to violence, but the few who would make violence their first choice are psychopaths or loonies. Violence usually occurs only when there's no other avenue left open to change an unfair situation. Nobody can justify unfairness on any ground but pure, unmitigated selfishness. Nobody is ethically obliged to suffer the selfishness of others.
I am continually getting English lessons on this site from people who don't seem to understand the language.
The term "use whatever means necessary" is a well-known euphemism meaning readiness to perpetrate extreme violence. "Sabotage" is something typically carried out in wartime. And if you have any doubt about its intended meaning in the article, just notice the reference a few lines later to the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, a violent organization which includes "guerilla warfare and kidnapping" in its repertoire (just click on the link provided by CH and see for yourself).
If you're going to comment on an article, try to understand it first.
Nick, you've just illustrated the concept of meta-ignorance.
Coming from you, I will take that as a compliment.
Twice.
Euarto,
This comment shows much intelligence but it is not consumers, but instead stockholders. It is a Corporatocracy as opposed to a "tiny oligarchy". You are on the right track though.
Sioux Rose
Interesting thread. We are so conditioned to look at life through the team we belong to, or otherwise through an external category noting a specified reference. Our conditioning results in a tendency for our minds to divide into oppopsing perspectives. Is Chris Hedges right, that "I of mine own self can do nothing," it is ALL about the corporations? The truth is that the best answers are found on "both sides of the net."
OBVIOUSLY corporate footprints are DEVASTATING the planet; and while our small personal efforts--even when they act as magnets and draw others into similar practices--are important, ultimately they are insubstantial given the magnitude of the tide that needs to change course. Still, there is merit in BOTH aspects, and then some.
My personal kudos to the following:
--Benningwentworth (8:35 AM), interesting beat prose
--Elohim 7:54 PM (good use of metaphor, and it is NOT your imagination. Today's pretender logged 19 posts by the time I logged on.)
--Toquevile (4:25 PM) great quotes and analysis of Fromm's material.
--Rtdrury (4:51 pm) excellent on the path to sustainability
And : Gene Therapy (4:22), Lefty (1:42 PM), and Cygnus (11:30 AM & 9:59 AM). You are so right about the power of media and what the absence of access to genuine understanding is costing America's collective psyche.
"--Elohim 7:54 PM (good use of metaphor, and it is NOT your imagination. Today's pretender logged 19 posts by the time I logged on.)"
Again, baseless lies and bs. You don't know who is pretender and who isn't unless you actually own the site and I doubt that you do. If you in fact did own the site, you would have seen your own accusations being proven wrong. The only bad posts here are paranoid freako posts making baseless accusations with no evidence or proof to back it up. Nobody could possibly be paid to troll. This is a public site and everyone is free to express their views related to the given article, not off-topic bs. Everyone else is getting along fine here. You and elohim are acting totally immature. Grow up.
Prove it.
Sioux Rose
Opinions are like a--holes and yours IS in full view. 56 posts on the Naomi Klein thread most tossing calumny and accusation, but when YOU are called to task on doing this, you project the blame onto others, as if YOU have not done the very thing you accuse others of having done. I come from a place of integrity, whereas you have not convinced me you are not a paid shill. And lately, you seem to have a lot of time on your hands, posting on this site from dawn till past midnight.
Just ignore her Sioux, she is most likely off her meds. I think BH said it best, "the oars on her little boat are ready to snap."
Lies, lies, and more lies with nothing to prove it.
Lies, lies, and more lies from the queen of black magic. Sioux Rose invents false accusations to bully others the way she desires. 56 posts means nothing to some, discussion to others, trolls to the haters. Sioux Rose turns to hypcrisy, lying, and name calling when she cannot debate or make an argument. Like George W Bush and most Repugs, she refuses to debate. She has no proof or evidence to back up her lies on my being a paid shill. The burden of proof rests on Sioux Rose and her associates. 56 posts and when I post is no proof that I am a paid troll. Notice how Sioux Rose spends all day posting but falls apart like a house of cards and tries to blame people who disagree with her as all day trolls. Sioux Rose could learn a lot from Gandhi rather than act like a corporate neocon repug in progressive drag.
I don't understand what you and Ms. Rose have to fight each other about. Both of you have a lot in common than either of you realize. Ms. Rose has a right to give her enlightening views on this site and I love her points of view. Sometimes, we have to look outside the box to understand our problems. Put it this way. When I moved from India to America, I was better able to see what was wrong with India. When my cousin moved to Europe and Ms. Rose lived in and visited other nations, she was better able to pinpoint what was wrong with America. My parents moved from India to America for one big reason. Inside, they felt that they were missing something and that something is called self esteem. My father was the worst. He would believe in self-defeatism and suggesting that we stay backwards. The more my parents grew up here, the more assertive my mother became and finally brought some sense to my father. Likewise, we can keep lying to ourselves that we're not improving but it is not until we put our foot down and face the fact that we did our best but something outside of us is blocking our progress and we must stop that. When you work from the outside, you will have a better shot at defeating the outside forces.
I have had a wonderful conversation with her when she told me about her trip to my parents' home country of India some months ago. She has been through plenty of suffering and I don't think she needs any more of it. I am sure that even you suffered a lot when you lost your father to divorce after what he did to your mother as you wrote in another thread. You may disagree with her view that today's newcomer is a pretender and I agree that there is no way to prove that claim but that does not make her immature. I don't think you are MG either. Based on your posts, both of you think somewhat differently and have different writing styles but let's not get into unnecessary fighting. If someone writes an accusation that they personally believe, it is usually obvious and best ignored. Why don't you and Ms. Rose discuss the issues where you agree with her? If there is something you do not understand, please do not hesitate to ask. Either she will answer it or those of us who know her posts very well will. Calling her posts "black magic" is just as sophomoric as are people accusing others of being that person.
I read your posts on your lack of education and even though I don't take kindly to uneducated people at times, I still think you have another chance. Olemanriver didn't finish high school but he has been a gifted learner on this site. I suggest you go to Ms. Rose's site, www.siouxrose.com, and read her articles. Her site has been mentioned here before if you had actually read the archives. I also suggest that you take the time to read the archives and compose yourself. Even a blue collared hick can be compassionate.
Sioux Rose
RANJIT: Thank you for taking the time to play diplomat. SHAWN has conflated my serious studies of astrology with the accusation that my EDUCATED opinions on this marginalized (by authoritarians like himself) subject constitutes "black" magic. This is an ancient form of calumny that is intended to demonize me and diminish the value of what I have to say. The FACT that such assertions were used to MURDER many women like me centuries ago is still a justifiable "sore" spot with me.
I would not strike up ANY conversation with someone of his narrow mindset had he not repeatedly attacked me first. He is here to use the premise of diplomacy or polite unity to forge a consensus with the status quo that is killing people abroad, ruining lives at home, and decimating nature. He does not appear to wish to learn a thing. On the Naomi Klein thread from Friday of the 230 posts, over 50 were his. That is obsessive by ANY count. Either he's a self-centered narcissist or a paid interloper, and either way, I would prefer to have NO virtual contact... however, if he sees fit to try to darken my reputation, I will respond in like measure.
Ms. Rose, I just read more replies and I'm starting to find Shawn getting more obnoxious. He replied accusing me of being your associate which I am not. I think that it is best to ignore him. He should be out soon. He's a typical blue collared hick who cannot be reasoned with. He might just be another paid Obama spokesman trying to get some money to pay his back taxes or late monthly payments for all we know.
Have you all lost your independence? You can't debate so you cluster?
You're another one lying and bs-ing. I'm not a paid troll. I'm just another regular American. Who are you?