Malicious Idiocy
Members of Orlando Food Not Bombs were arrested Wednesday when police said they violated a city ordinance by feeding the homeless in Lake Eola Park.
Jessica Cross, 24, Benjamin Markeson, 49, and Jonathan “Keith” McHenry, 54, were arrested at 6:10 p.m. on a charge of violating the ordinance restricting group feedings in public parks. McHenry is a co-founder of the international Food Not Bombs movement, which began in the early 1980s.
Michael Anderson:
Read this the other day. Another way to disenfranchise, control, and eventually eradicate the “useless eaters”, which, eventually, could be a lot of us. How perversely fitting that it should happen in “Mickey Mouse Town”, in the “Christian” South.
6 June 2011, 12:45 pmWinston Warfield:
Yes, Michael, it would seem compassion and decency have now become criminalized. I feel a social upheaval is growing; I feel it in my bones. It won’t be energized by rational political parsing, but through the replication of mass acts of kindness and love toward our fellow Americans, leavened by the loss of fear and the pull of necessity. The state’s cold-blooded enforcement of the Americorp’s agenda will completely strip its remaining shreds of legitimacy. If Medicare and Social Security are eviscerated, that will be the last straw; there will be nothing left but extirminism. Food Not Bombs has been around forever here, always seemed a little cookey to me, sort of neo-hippie and not serious. Am no longer of that opinion. It’s a powerful meme when you ponder its global implications, no? It, and like efforts across the spectrum of political and religious belief, are our salvation, IMO.
7 June 2011, 8:27 amMorocco Bama:
It reminds of that scene from Ben Hur when The Christ, early in his ministry, presumably, attempted to give Judah some water and the Centurion tried to smack it away whilst warning that Judah was to get no water.
Here in the West, such a big deal is made of that Tiananmen Square moment whilst ignoring our own 1,001 Tiananmen Square moments, marginalizing them to the periphery. What I mean by that is, China was held up as a trampler of Human Rights, which they are, of course, but then, so too is the U.S. This is one such moment, and yes, the U.S. has always been this cruel. Remember the Bonus Army….another Tiananmen Square moment? Those Noble U.S. Idols, Patton, Eisenhower and MacArthur mowed down their fellow comrades for their lack of manners with estreme prejudice, even going beyond their orders in meting out punishment.
It’s called Exceptionalism, and propaganda has a way of making the Peeps blind to it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiMuzkpT8Xs
7 June 2011, 1:10 pmMichael Anderson:
@ Winston: Seems compassion (towards have-nots) is illegal now, so WE are definitely all criminals. Let us not become hard-core when TPTB are in punishment mode….let us not become them. That is what they want. It ain’t easy…
7 June 2011, 11:12 pmBob:
“The violence is not in things. It is not something artificial. The violence is not in the guns or in the drugs. The violence is within us. The institutions, the government, the Army and the police are also citizens and are not things outside of humanity. Every one of us has our responsibility in this struggle. We created the violence, every day, or we make it stop existing. And only together can we end it.”
From Julian LeBaron, Carvan of Solace, June 6, 2011
http://www.narconews.com/Issue67/article4444.html
I’ve been following the story of Javier Sicilia and the journey to Ciudad Juárez. They are due to arrive on June 10. I’ve been looking inward for the source of discontent that prevades our society. Now, when I find myself thinking in negatives, I try to remember that I have other ways to view the sutuation. Empathy,it is making a difference for me.
8 June 2011, 6:45 amMorocco Bama:
Bob, that reminds me of an essay I read within the last several years by Andrew Kimbrell entitled Cold Evil: Technology and Modern Ethics. Here’s a link and a teaser passage:
http://www.schumachersociety.org/publications/kimbrell_00.html
8 June 2011, 7:29 amCurt:
Morroco,
8 June 2011, 10:42 amthat is an interesting teaser page. I think that it has one thing wrong with it though. I think that because it points out everything that needs to be changed (OK not really everything but lots of things) it gives the impression that all of these evils are equal.
For example, is someone who joyfully takes their children out to Mcdonalds as guilty of being a moral eunach as someone who kills people for the empire? A vegitarian would certianly say yes. Less than 10% of the people in the US are vegitarains though.
Then take SUV for example. I think that they suck. Yet someone who drives one becasue they live in a no heat home and take cold showers and do not drive much might be contributing to global warming less than some tree huggers. OK I still think that SUYs should be outlawed except for people who can demonstrate a specific need to have one, such as a Vetrinarian living in upstate New York. But we are talking about we all belong to a system that makes us cogs in the system.
Not all cogs are equally important. Not all bad consumre choices are equally bad. The reason I think that it is important is because it could give a reader who is not part of the choir the idea that it is impossible to become good. OK in a way it is impossible because there is always room for improvement. Perhaps we can say one does not become good one becomes better one step at a time. This teaser page might convince someone that the journey is to difficult to attempt.
The dilemmas never end. For example I am about to put my house on the market. I have spent several days clearing all the weeds off of the bricks with a high presure hose. When people come to see the house they are going to see the bricks being weed free. What they will not see is how much work it takes to keep them weed free. Now if they are like me and they like their weeds, grass and bricks to all merge together so that there is no distinct borderline it will not be an unbearable task. But if they are like some people, where the bricks and the grass need to be in their own clearly defined space and the weeds need to be eliminated it is going to be a nightmare. Am I going to point this out to potential buyers. NO way in hell. Should I point it out.
YES, if I were really a good human being. I am definately doing something bad. I want to sell my house though. I am in a very competitive situation. So, will I lose sleep over it?
Maybe a little.
Morocco Bama:
Curt, those are great points, and I’m not sure he addresses them, but I don’t think that’s his thesis. Please do read it in its entirety when you get the chance. It’s well worth it…or, at least, it was to me. His thesis is systemic “cold” evil versus personal “hot” evil, and the differences between the two. I suppose the questions you raise could be an addendum to his essay, but never letting go of the fact that we all live in this System and contribute to in some way…..but, as you note,in varying degrees. Maybe he’s preaching to the choir when he mentions all of this….I know when I read it, I was the choir, because I had long thought the same thing, and his essay just validated my own thoughts, but you must admit, most people don’t think this way, or won’t think this way, and that’s a large part of the problem, because until we all do, collectively, the problem will continue to persist, and most likely worsen.
8 June 2011, 11:19 amCurt:
Good. I thought that his description of the new trinity was a 3 run homer. I wish upon a star that every 17 year old could read your link.
8 June 2011, 2:09 pmDeAnander:
Wow, Morocco, thanks for Kimbrell article. I haven’t time to peruse in detail right now but a quick scan tells me it is a must-read, so onto the stack it goes
9 June 2011, 2:11 amMorocco Bama:
That’s exactly how I felt about it when I first stumbled upon it, De. When I read it, I literally kept saying “yes” repeatedly out loud during the entire read. It really resonated.
9 June 2011, 5:51 amStan:
Follow up in Orlando More arrests for giving people food.
And agreed, the Kimbrell piece is a good snag. Hat tip.
9 June 2011, 7:50 amDeAnander:
I see “the homeless” are now considered a nuisance population, like ducks and geese in city parks: Please Do Not Feed the Ducks.
The cruelty of our times is astonishingly banal (Arendt meets Kimbrell)…
9 June 2011, 10:01 amMichael Anderson:
Great article—going out to my list—even those who might (WILL) be offended…a “need to know”. We have to get this stuff exhumed. De, your comment about homeless people and ducks was prescient—was riding the River Bike Trail yesterday in Eugene, and at a public park, the city has given homeless people the OK to camp there in their cars or RV’s. There are a million ducks here, too (this IS the home of the Oregon Ducks, you know—lol). Everybody was co-existing just fine, and no cops in sight. I realize this is a microcosm, but it still made me smile.
9 June 2011, 11:19 amStan:
Just wait until the homeless people try to eat the ducks!
Do people feed the ducks there and not the people?
Thoughts.
9 June 2011, 1:20 pmStan:
Jacques Ellul, referenced in Kimbrell’s speech.
Part 1 of six, Ellul on Betrayal by Technology
Here is some of Ellul’s stuff (in the alphabetized author list) on his faith.
9 June 2011, 1:39 pmSusan/catlady:
Feeding ducks, feeding people…how about a rousing chorus of “on Ilkley Moor baht ‘at”?
One of my favorite “interdependent web of life” songs.
9 June 2011, 2:53 pmDeAnander:
Actually, Malicious Idiocy is a good alias for capitalism. It’s malicious because it’s focussed on making a *profit*, that is, getting the better of the other person, carving something extra out of the deal, keeping the change, hoarding. It’s idiotic (in the classic sense of the word) because it’s excessively self-focussed and oblivious to important information, narrowly oriented to a very restricted world of discourse, ignorant of everything that can’t be owned, bought, sold.
– Mark Morford (fulminating and — as he often does — expressing my own feelings). Remember DeAnander’s Law: it is always more profitable to do things wrong. Or even more concisely, it is always more profitable to do wrong.
To “do right” is by definition to restrain one’s own profit-seeking by not taking advantage of other people. Honesty means not withholding or falsifying information to one’s own benefit, probity means not stealing or cheating for personal profit, honour means keeping one’s word even when it would be easier or more convenient to renege, generosity means sharing one’s wealth instead of hoarding it all for private enjoyment/security and so on. Every one of the virtues means foregoing or restraining the impulse to “win” by profiting at another’s expense. Hence, truly maximising one’s profit means vicious conduct towards someone or something: liquidation, cheating, lying, stealing, usurping, robbery with violence.
The big lie of growth (industrial) capitalism is that profit happens at no one’s expense, that the rising tide of money lifts all boats (rather than, in practise, behaving more like a tsunami that washes away villages, topsoil, tribes, trees, livelihoods, species, cultures, ecologies, while a fortune few surf precariously on its leading edge). Confronted with the falsehood, the hypercapitalists then turn to an inverted morality in which vice (selfishness, greed, and callousness) becomes virtue. The global predicament we find ourselves in has no solution outside of virtuous conduct (with regard to each other and our commons): a culture built on the worship of vice is going to hit the brick wall harder, faster, and sooner…
What do I mean by vice? I mean “the barbaric heart,” the desire to dominate and “win” and control, the desire to have more than our share, the desire to have more than the other monkey, to take the other monkey’s fruit if we can get away with it, to hoard more than we need… anyway, keep coming to the conclusion that the way to build a better world is to have better people — chicken and egg problem …
9 June 2011, 3:05 pmRazerRay:
It’s not just malicious, but intentional as well. An intermediate result of the “Gentrification” process. Which I must note off the top is a misnomer. Gentrification IS Polarization (of the community).
The FNB here is inactive due to it’s reliance on college students for volunteers and the changing social structure of the local UC campus which went from being a ‘hip’ Liberal Arts college to a ‘yet to be vital’ engineering school (UCSC) combined with the city’s fubar social engineering actions (intense police presence, selectively enforced nuisance laws on the non-affluent, incredible cost-of-housing, work availability mostly ‘facework’ so locked down for the benefit of UC student’s needs that the town’s business owners won’t hire local kids, just the college students for labor) which, intentionally or not, chased away all the more creative elements of the counterculture while leaving behind the socially conservative element… The junkies, winos, speedfreaks, and umn… ‘intellectually challenged’.
This is intermingled with a cohort of disenfranchised local kids with ‘no future’ for them in the town they were raised in. Methamphetamine, alcohol, and pill use is rampant among the ones who find themselves on the streets due to their home environments or other issues.
Meanwhile, the local churches and independent Christian lay preachers have stepped into the breech, and in some cases, have stepped into the political arena’s pile of dogshit because of it.
To wit. I spend my Monday afternoons preparing the coffee for about 100 people at a local Presbyterian church which compliments a once-a-week hot meal for local kids, travelers, and the aforementioned resident houseless/jobless.
A while back, a then sitting city council member whose daughter just happens to own a house across from the church, wrote a letter on official city stationery, and without the knowledge of the other city council members as far as anyone knows, to the regional Presbyterian archdiocese requesting their assistance in getting the church’s pastor to end the Monday meal.
But the city council member who wrote the letter didn’t word it like that. False accusations were made. The pastor was ‘called on the carpet’ in the Presbyterian church’s equivalent of a Grand Jury, and he was ‘indicted’.
He is currently appealing to the higher authorities in the church for relief (and relies on a still higher authority to assist him…). He HAS community support and the support of most church members… even the ones that opposed the meal as a church-related operation from the beginning, but it does ‘encumber’ him, to say the least.
I posted on it at the time and included a Scribd embedded copy of the letter, which a local activist managed to obtain through an emergency request under the FOIA.
The write up is HERE, with a link to a Round Table discussion by a number of the ‘players’ on Community TV about a month later.
Read it, and read the FOIA’d document if you want to see something truly corrupt.
It’s also noteworthy that the local Vets are STILL waiting for the county to relent and reopen the VFW hall (#1588 Bill Motto) after it was closed under the false premise of ‘structural damage’. That facility was, and will be again, the traditional venue for the annual Christmas and Thanksgiving community meal here, and guess what? The county and city conveniently forgot to make arrangements for another venue for last Thanksgiving’s meal, causing the volunteers and organizations that prepare the meal no end of grief, as by the time the community noticed it to be a problem, and their rage at the city council heard, there was only approximately 2 weeks to get the meal arranged to be held at the local Civic Hall.
They normally had been working on the event for at least 6 weeks in advance. Time to organize the volunteers and food supplies, gather some entertainers, and such.
The meal did come together… served in an environment that resembles a basketball court… IS a basketball court at times (and a Roller Derby venue too), and there was no entertainment of any organized sort.
Cold… Clinical… Like an urban homeless shelter might be on Thanksgiving day.
This in a town that arguably has one of the highest unemployment rates for residents (The transient office workers the city panders to are another story) in the nation while also being at the top of the list of most expensive places to live in the United States. Many of the Senior Citizens here depended on that holiday meal for their social event of the year.
Unconscionable.
They “Forgot”.
Right.
More information on the Veterans Hall situation is linked below the Scribd document at the link above.
Needless to say… As times get harder, our narcissistic society is tending towards scapegoating… Because “Social Responsibility” is only a drag on their wealth accumulation plans.
I’m way past expecting ‘change’ in that exceptional American trait.
9 June 2011, 3:13 pmMorocco Bama:
De, I said the same thing about geese just the other day on another forum. I was responding to a commentator about the employment of violent and non-violent forms of resistance. She was staunchly non-violent, but the blog author’s post was concerning the Maoist Insurrection in Kashmir and its use of violence as self-defense against the Indian Government, to literally survive. My question to the audience was is there a line in the U.S., or the West, in general, that if crossed will warrant the the use of violence in resisting. I’m neither advocating nor condemning its use as a tactic, but I found her comment provocative. She said:
To which I replied:
9 June 2011, 3:15 pmStan:
I’ll put in my two cents on violence. It’s the most effective thing there is in the short term. But violence, like machines, should not be treated like they don’t interact with people and change them. At what point do the people who resort to violence for self defense decide they can stop using it? Once people pick up guns, I can tell you, they find it very hard to put them down again, no matter how much the circumstances change.
I know all the arguments for self-defense and violence, because I’ve made them myself; and they are pretty good arguments. While I can make a pretty good counter-argument for non-violence on purely utilitarian terms – especially on behalf of the weak – I’ll freely admit that my faith in nonviolence is ultimately based on – well, faith. So is my optimism, which doesn’t disabuse me of my pessimism about the foreseeable future. I can’t possibly accept that it is ever too late. Too many children, too many grandchildren to ever ever accept that.
9 June 2011, 4:26 pmCurt:
I think that is the best arguement that you have ever made against the use of violence.
9 June 2011, 5:10 pmMorocco Bama:
I feel much the same way, Stan, but, of course, per the Kimbrell link, the cold violence, of which we all take part in day in and day out in respective varying degrees, also changes us. Will hot violence be necessary in bringing about an end to cold violence, or will cold violence wither away, on its sown, into the sunset? Perhaps cold violence will, by force of circumstances beyond human control, decline, but only to be replaced by senseless hot violence in the ensuing chaos of a world without the placation of every impulse. It’s hard to tell, but I have this nagging feeling it won’t be pretty, either way. There’s nothing Brave about this New World.
9 June 2011, 8:19 pmStan:
Quotable last sentence there.
There will be a great deal of violence of every temperature. We are inheritors of the 20th Century, the century of great slaughter and great vandalism.
One thing that Ellul stresses in his talk-video is that technology has structured things in such a way that no one is responsible… making it all the harder to figure out what to do. No one and everyone.
And as AM points out, without a narrative community, we can’t know what we OUGHT to do. He concludes rather vaguely (and in his own Catholic way) that we are waiting for new Benedicts… for new counter-cultural communities with new counter-cultural disciplines that can survive the long bleak winter ahead.
De and I have fantasized along those lines together more than once, perhaps not with such a monastic character to our imaginings, that this is the real value in efforts to relocalize… not merely survival through (name your crisis), but reconnection held together by a new ethos that brings us back into our living bodies as communities of care. That’s a pretty counter-cultural idea.
One thing I have observed in several nascent efforts along those lines is that many people still want to control the outcomes, and they engage in ideological selection (a powerful vestige of the culture we imagine countering). We still want to organize projects, when we probably ought to organize locally around simple need.
Paradoxically enough, it’s my training as a marxist that brought me to this emphasis on the practical and the day-to-day. For all their chatter about philosophical materialism, most leftists still behave as if material changes emerge from a foundation of ideas (over which they will spend all their time) – the exact opposite of what materialists claim to believe. Simple, practical cooperation at a very local level around shared needs will do more to overcome attitudes that embrace Hobbesian competition than all the treatises in the world, imo.
The macroverse of this exterminist epoch cannot last forever, but it can and will continue its mischief until it is gone. Moreover, it is unlikely to be changed at the macro-level because there really is no one in charge, and no one is accountable. Hope will grow in the cracks, and break out in the abandoned spaces. I hope.
Look for cracks, and put down roots.
9 June 2011, 10:01 pmDeAnander:
cracks make a space for roots.
roots by growing make more cracks.
ever seen asphalt buckle and split as equisedum pushes up from the dirt underneath?
inasmuch as I have hope, it is vested in people with practical skills choosing to be decent human beings… inasmuch as I have ambition, it’s to become one of those people…
9 June 2011, 10:37 pmCurt:
“insammuch as I have hope, it is vested in people with politcal skills choosing to be decent human beings…
insamuch as I have amibition, it is to become one of those people.”
Very Good DeAnander, I am going to have to have that one mounted on the wall. It is a trophy.
10 June 2011, 3:06 amMorocco Bama:
Curt, you replaced “practical” with “political.” That one word changes the entire meaning of De’s embellishment on Stan’s “Hope in Crack” theme. Who would have ever thought crack could be so useful…..besides the CIA…..sorry, just joking…..MB ducks and covers.
Anyhow, I like the idea, and it’s where we (my wife, our children and I) are headed in our life, as well. I have never done well in large crowds and groups. I am a passionate person full of intensity, and I have a way of motivating and inspiring those around me. I refuse to hand that talent over to Corporatism, though, therefore I have continually eschewed material success in my life thus far, and I don’t think that will change. In a large crowd, that gets diffused and lost, I lose my bearings, I feel marginalized and dismissed, and I end up melting into the wallpaper…..the crowd takes on a life of its own, and as we all know, that energy is hardly ever positive……not that it couldn’t be positive, it could be, but it would have to be a conscious effort on the part of all those in the crowd. Speaking of crowds, here’s a poem by Charles Bukowski entitled The Genius of The Crowd. There’s Dunbar’s number popping its head again, and also it ties with what I posted awhile back about Egregores, and the willful conjuring of a “spirit.” When people gather in large numbers, unless they are conscious of the spirit they are creating, one will be provided for them, and it won’t necessarily be a pleasant one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gifEn61dZBc
10 June 2011, 6:54 amWinston Warfield:
@Michael Anderson: my phrase “I feel a social upheaval is growing;…” was understandably misunderstood. I tend to write from the gut, and sometimes have little time to go over material to make sure communication is clear. I didn’t mean by that some kind of violent paroxysm, because that would be a great tragedy. The kind of love and compassion behind projects like Food Not Bombs spreading, like kudzu, was what I had in mind. I was trained/self-trained in Marxist theory, and have moved beyond its theoretical limitations, partly through the intelligence and analytical depth of this blog, partly through deep reading of permaculture literature, and partly just plain common sense. The issue of violence is a very difficult one, both theoretically and practically. Growing up in a culture dominated by patriarchal ideology makes grappling with it more intractable, and as a man marinated in this culture I have not escaped. Further, it’s not simply a theoretical issue for me as a father raising two interracial teenage boys in da ghetto, where violence avoidance and macho pride sometimes clash. How you move in public space can be a matter of life or death, especially for young males. But back to the bigger picture of violence as a social transforming agent… I turned my back on that a long time ago after seeing how social injustice was pulling others to its embrace (at least theoretically). Having “done time” of a year on the ground in Vietnam, and carrying consequently with me a life’s worth of remembered observations, I knew how consumately ugly violence is, and especially the “organized industrial murder” variety practiced by modern militaries. Those who hadn’t, the “ultra-left” as it were, borne witness to this Dante’s inferno, I realized when they discussed “smashing the state”, etc., because that was all the rage in the 70′s, I realized they had no idea at all what that meant, or its implications. So it was adios to all that and trying to carve out answers to this insane world independently. This narrative community has been helpful in that it resonates with observed reality, puts the issue of systemic mindless cruelty and injustice front-and-center, and helps build an intellectual lattice around which to start building a different, non-violent, future for those of us who find this culture barely tolerable. Hope this clarifies a bit.
10 June 2011, 7:33 amMorocco Bama:
If you haven’t seen this movie, I highly recommend it. It’s pertinent to this thread of thought, and it would seem, every thread of thought discussed on this blog, and beyond.
http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=7554
10 June 2011, 10:13 amStan:
“…as a father raising two interracial teenage boys…”
BTDT.
This is where all the easy answers go out the door. All we can do sometimes is love them and hope we can love them more than the confusing hostility of the world and probative masculinity teaches them how not to love. Hope that they at least remember that love is real. Pray that someday when they need it most, love is what they’ll turn to.
10 June 2011, 1:02 pmJack Thompson:
One of the most important questions I’ve taken to asking myself lately, as often as I can remember to, is “Right now–am I acting out of fear? Or out of love?” Strangely enough, when I’m acting out of love, I don’t feel the impulse to ask myself that question.
10 June 2011, 2:40 pmRazerRay:
@Winston Warfield ““smashing the state”, etc., because that was all the rage in the 70?s, I realized they had no idea at all what that meant, or its implications.”
I still hold out the hope that ‘smashing the state’ leads to a better way but otoh, I’ve become aware of what makes Americans exceptional… When we break it… It stays broke.
10 June 2011, 5:15 pmEric:
Haven’t been here in almost five years-a long & uninteresting story but I’m glad you’re still at it…here’s a random question, and a bit off-topic: is there any truth to the chemtrails issue? unmarked aircraft spraying metals into the air, ruining the soil so firms like Monsanto can sell seeds that grow in said ruined soil?
10 June 2011, 10:53 pmStan:
I strongly doubt it. Even the government’s most secret units mark their aircraft. And the soil everywhere I’ve been responds exactly as it is supposed to when people treat it right. In less than five years, any piece of ground that is not toxic can be pretty much rehabilitated… a fact that gives me hope.
11 June 2011, 7:28 amMorocco Bama:
Not to mention, why bother to spray shit in the air, when industry and our lifestyle takes care of that pretty well already. Think about the impact of jet travel alone. Ozone is killing the trees, and no one seems to notice. This blogger has been vigilant in her research and documentation of the issue. I respect her work very much. It is alarming and enough to make you weep, if you’re not weeping already.
http://www.witsendnj.blogspot.com/
11 June 2011, 8:01 amEric:
Yeah, the chemtrails thing sits in the conspiracy theory realm, a dimension I choose not to venture into. Been reading Wendell Berry lately. You folks heard about the film Farmaggeddon? Fits right in with the Food Not Bombs crackdown insanity. I like WW’s idea of a social upheaval-food sovereignty.
11 June 2011, 9:01 amMorocco Bama:
I like that idea, as well, but there will be strong resistance to that by the Plutocracy and its minions. As resources continue to dwindle what’s remaining will be forcibly gobbled up by the Plutocracy, and people will be forced into over-crowded urban ghettos. It’s why I was interested in the violence versus non-violence direct action issue. When options and breathing space are increasingly removed, is there a line where you are backed into a corner, and there’s only one option left? I don’t know. But it appears to me that this is where it is headed. It’s been happening in third and second world countries, and considering Climate Change and overall environmental destruction, it’s going to happen in the West. I’m not sure if any of you have seen this, or not, but it’s not surprising, although it’s always disturbing.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/08/us-universities-africa-land-grab
11 June 2011, 9:17 amStan:
Not at all sure this is what will happen. I think we attribute too much power to those at the top of the structure – people who are in some ways more its captives than the rest of us. Most of the US will be stranded in suburbs, if trends hold, for example; and the ruling strata are not like a singular being with a single mind. They are a social dynamic themselves, one that is greater in its determinative power than any of its parts.
I said once that Barack Obama is the least free man in the world. I believe that.
Ruling power, as the structures that underwrite it begin to shift and destabilize, tends to spend more and more of its time and energy in mystification and self-delusion; and they will abandon anything that doesn’t afford them what the require – return on investment.
This is an even more chaotic process (as Marx noted) given the ever more bureaucratic organization of power, ie, accountability is hard to locate even among themselves.
I think we see our epoch too much as war, and not enough as evolution.
11 June 2011, 10:23 amEric:
here’s the movie website link:
11 June 2011, 11:34 amhttp://farmageddonmovie.com/
I saw a flyer the other day about a town in Maine that had achieved food sovereignty rights for it’s inhabitants; perhaps that will be the way of the future-small communities focused on their own (food) rights.
RazerRay:
I’ve seen activists get sidetracked in pursuit of Chemtrails and become totally ineffectual and non-responsive to actual ‘social issues on the ground’. I’ve also seen A LOT of that in the 9/11 truthers. They end up getting intimately, inexorably, involved in the details of who, what, and how, but never, at least that I’ve ever heard, speak to “why”.
I DO have a hypothesis about that but this most likely is not the most appropriate forum.
FWIW, I try to sidetrack chemtrail discussions first with a discussion of how long cloud seeding has been known about (and why the sudden “conspiratorial interest” interest by that person). If that fails to dissuade the person I try to discuss HAARP, which IS researchable. You’d be surprised how many chemtrail chasers know about the program… Think ionizing the upper atmosphere is in the category of chemtrails, but are not the least bit interested in following up.
Methinks some people like “Snipe Hunts”.
11 June 2011, 1:38 pmpetra gallert:
Was going to humbly add a reference to Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem” connecting to your musings on “cracks” as quiet, small signs, not so much of hope but of determination.
The refrain goes:
There’s a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
Several YouTube files are out there of LC performing this quietly subversive song.
For the thoughtful fathers–a line in that song suggests some deep understanding of how the example of the sum of your respect, care, and generosity of your everyday lives work:
Every heart to love will come /but like a refuge…
The more recent comments had me scrambling to WikiP to understand “chemtrails.”
12 June 2011, 1:09 pmBeyond the water vapor explanation I can add this tiny bit of info:
I spent twenty yrs in what some called the Error Force, first four yrs in F16 squadrons. We got flown into the sand box. For weeks, even months, we were bored out of our gourds so when I got the chance to go along on a KC-135 refuelling trip–I jumped at it. Long trip, mostly on autopilot in refuelling pattern. Only two “takers.” Consequence, and this is my point: almost all of the JP4 onboard that KC135 (a specially configured Boing 707) was released into the air before landing. Why? because the 707 can’t land safely with that much fuel weight abord. Incidentally, the KC-135s didn’t carry parchutes: because they’d be useless: by the time you got to bailout altitudes the whole thing would’ve been a barbeque anyway.
So, I don’t understand well the “chemtrail” approach, but I do know stuff gets dumped into the air, our atmosphere, with nobody looking.
DeAnander:
Malicious idiocy has history…
Turns out the Don of the Koch clan, old Fred Koch, was “pivotal” in the founding of the infamous John Birch Society.
Nothing new under the sun. Like Daddy, like sons.
13 June 2011, 1:32 amDeAnander:
Seems like we don’t have to go searching for Area 51 and secret chemtrail projects… for the most part, what the badguys are doing is not secret at all; it’s right in our faces. They’re so unsubtle and inyoface about it, in fact, it’s kind of insulting really.
It’s like they’re *daring* us to revolt…
13 June 2011, 1:47 amDeAnander:
I am thinking that these long-haul land grab deals have an uncertain future. Growing commodity crops halfway around the world presupposes the fossil fuel to transport them back to the “homeland,” no? As the cost of transport rises, doesn’t it make more sense to grow food closer to home? I think that a lot of the present generation of Richy Riches are incapable of thinking outside the fossil fuel box, and their moves as they prepare for peak oil tend to be, ironically, completely dependent on continuing supplies of cheap oil.
We do know that Rome, that powerhouse of accumulation and consumption, grew grain remotely (and not very remotely, right across the Med in N Africa)… and failed to keep that system going due to soil exhaustion and transport costs… England used Ireland for grain production, starving as many Irish peasants as necessary in the process; that’s about as far from home as I think the staple-grain trade can operate without cheap fossil fuelled transport.
Regardless of practical considerations, Emergent should be prosecuted under RICO.
13 June 2011, 2:00 amCurt:
Petra, I find your short story one of the most important that I have ever read on Feral Scholar.
It reveals so much about about about well about who exactly? Does it reveal so much about human nature?
Does it reveal so much about the hear no evil, see no evil nature of Americans?
Does it reveal so much about the nature of of Americans who join the military or about anyone from anywhere that would join the military?
To think that this practice has been going on for probably 50 years. How many gallons of JP4 have been released in to the atmosphere during this time? How much damage would one release cause and for how long?
Did noones conscience bother them during this time? I imagine that they were told, “IT IS SAFE.” Does that really sound like a plausible proposition though? Just who do the tanker pilots think that they are working for?
Who is the ultimate customer? Is it thier chain of command or is it the American people?
(If the American people should say in unison, we are fully aware of the costs of empire and we deamand that the military implement the policies of of empire is it the job of the military to give them what they want?)
13 June 2011, 5:09 amMorocco Bama:
Petra’s post brings up an essential point. The U.S. military is one of the largest polluting industries on earth, especially if you include all the 1st, 2nd and 3rd tier industry supporting it. Also, obviously, it’s highly reliant on fossil fuel to keep it running. So, it’s not only used to secure and control the distribution of fossil fuels, but it’s also one of the largest consumers of fossil fuels. When you have a significant military that can no longer be deployed to all four corners of the earth because of fossil fuel constraints, what do you do to maintain a semblance of your former self? Create a domestic justification in order to perpetuate a significant footprint.
De, I don’t think the Elite are ignoring the issue. They have to know, when you consider all the experts they’ve employed to research and analyze the issue. I have to imagine that, even though their affiliation with one another is a loose one made up of various sub-groups and factions, they have some plans floating about, most likely drawn up by the Pentagon, on various possible scenarios, and how they will play out. One of those scenarios, you can bet, is depopulation. If we’re talking about it, you know they have considered it and analyzed it to death. It’s what these strategists do day in and day out.
Take the recent actions in Libya, for example, and North Africa, in general. Why is North Africa of sudden interest? Let’s face it, the media is corporate controlled, so what gets covered is what the Elites want covered, and North Africa is being presented for a reason. They have labeled it the Arab Spring, but I believe that is cover for the bold moves they are making. The Elites are interested in North Africa for the Fossil Water beneath its sands and for its prodigious Sunlight. It’s not enough to provide for Europe’s current population, but when you consider a depopulation event, and you are left with only 10% of your population, it now becomes plenty. Here’s a link that establishes the fact that they want to turn the North African desert into one giant solar panel. This was 2010, and now its 2011 and lookey here, we’re going to establish a significant military presence in North Africa….to secure what?
http://allafrica.com/stories/201003200004.html
13 June 2011, 8:48 amCurt:
Petra,
13 June 2011, 3:29 pmi was in the town of Limbourg in eastern Belgium today. I parked in the square in the center of town. As I walked out of the parking area I took a right and walked down the street and over a bridge which went over a wide but shallow river filled with rocks. The town had a charming but neglected apppearance that I have seen on my trips to eastern Germany and the Czech Republic. Several hundred meters after crossing the bridge there was a set of steps that went up the hill to the left. I took the stairs and came to another city street at the top of the stairs. It was hard to decide which way to go next. I decided to make my way uphill to what looked like a very nice large church on top of one of the hills overlooking the town. As I walked up the hill I passed a large crusifix on my right which had a fresh rose placed on it. I thought to meyself I would really be nice if one could would not know what kind of shine to expect when walking through the Ardennes Forest because one could expect to see a Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, or Marxist shrine when surveying the nooks and cranies of the hillsides and valleys of the region. Well as I neared the church I found that the church was surrounded by a very pictuese little village. I walked through the narrow streets of the village and made a stop at a art exhibition that was being held in a building located on the main square. As I left the square and was walking back down the hill I noticed a set of teps leading in to a cellar. The cellar was blocked by an iron bar gate.
Dirt had accumulated behind the gate making it impossible to open.
I peered more closely in to the cellar and to my surprise I found nine invory colored Buddhas sitting in meditation. What happened next was even more surprising. One of the Buddhas rose as said something in what I think was Chinese. I of course did not understand a word. He then sat down and another Buddha stood up and said, He was only asking, if an airplane can take off with 20,000 gallons of extra fuel why can’t it land with 20,000 gallons of extra fuel? He is only asking.
Well I couldd not answer him so I started to scurry down the hill. Why didn’t I think of that? Would I have ever asked that question myself? Petrra, I certianly believe you have repeated what you were told. Did you actually see the fuel be dumped though? I can not see any reason for the crew to try to pull the wool over your eyes. Yet I am now finding the story hard to believe not becasue of the potenial damgage to the environment that it costs but becasue it seems really really ineffecient to waste so much fuel when I does not get transfered during inflight refeulling.
So I wonder diid they dump only a portion of the load? How often does this arial spraying of JP$ actually happen? Are these incidents classified as confindential, secret, of unclassified?
petra gallert:
Meneer Curt, hoe maakt U het? And you drove in Belgium? Last time I did that a Belgian driver’s license was essentially a hunting license. Lots of cemetaries, for sure. Flanders Fields…. My parents are buried a bit west, close to the Rhine, between Bonn and Koeln. Yes, I know this isn’t Belgium, but my dad was big on education and languages; I’m a kid of a German foreign service officer, who was a gentle, funny soul, heavily marked, as have generations of humans, by war. And for purposes of conversation, I do lump various European entities
together. For you, not for me. Mi corazon sigue siendo en Espana, mas bien Catalunya, which would’ve adopted Seve, en su manera, and, como no, it did.
Ay, jolines. Pues, It’s Physics. An aircraft, any aircraft, goes through two critical phases of flight: takeoff and landing. Those two maneuvres put the greatest strain on physical structures. When you want to land a behemoth like a Boeing or Airbus X ( meaning pretty much anything, small little things like wind (including windshear), altitude (and its effects on air pressure, lift) combined with the geography and limitations of a given airfield–well, if the risks of going up in flames (remember, that’s what JP4 and its successors like JP8, do best: i.e., ignite) Why would you fault the Air Force for wanting to protect its pilots, the most highly invested in, the most “expensive” in Manpower terms (ask me about that one) when there are at least three (two pilots, one nav) on an a/c that might not make it back. You dump the fuel because not doing so endangers the lives of your highly trained pilots and navigators.
My educational training was of course shaped by what my parents had experienced.! No, they were not Nazis, btw. They lost everything, including what would’ve been my aunt, to
starvation. I never knew any grandparents. C’est la guerre.
Bueno. Of the Buddhas in your dream, was Avalokiteshwara among them?
14 June 2011, 1:17 ampetra gallert:
PS–sorry, this is complex. If you’re a Wing King (wing commander) you don’t want to lose aircraft (a/c) or pilots. Loss of one (set) was, well, forgivable. If you, as Wing Comm are stupid enough to lose two, well, better sign up for a retirement community in sunny Florida.
Nobody wants to risk losing multi-million aircraft. Jetissoning hundreds of pounds of aviation fuel is, well sure inefficient from fuel usage POV. But that’s not the basic calculus.
Am just telling you what I saw. My ten-yr old Snubaru still gets 30 mpg; it’s the dog car. My superannuated labs (diabetic, blind, badly arthritic despite surgery) can’t walk three plus miles to the nearest vet.
14 June 2011, 1:49 amCurt:
Petra,
14 June 2011, 4:38 amIt is very interesting how something probably destructive that is done in an emergency situation can become an apparently common practice because those harmed by the practice are not looking.
I wonder when the tankers go up, do they always go up fully loaded? Or, is some estimate made as to how much business they can expect. Considering that a gallon of water weighs 8 pounds not very much fuel would have to be dumped to be dumping thousands of pounds. Considering how large a tanker is I would suspect that a reduction of thousands of pounds would be needed needed to noticably reduce the risks when landing.
It must seem to those working on tankers that we live on a big planet. The people on Easter Island thought that they lived on a big island.
Thank you for the explination.
petra gallert:
Curt,
Am deeply uneasy generalizing about human nature, military, civilians, etc. Some pilots were very thoughful; some seemed seduced by the adrenaline rush of flying & expensive technology. _Full Spectrum Disorder_ was in the Cadet library in 2004; I wasn’t the only one to read it. Yes, the Stan Goffs and Andrew Baceviches seem rare. I see this in the context of an American culture of short attention spans & an unwillingness to confront “bad news.”
Am drawn to H. Ahrend’s “banality of evil” concept as a way to describe the ethical stance
where bad consequences are accepted as “the cost of doing business” and the stunning roar of a lit afterburner is “the sound of freedom.”
Re: fixing problems, any airman could point out problems (& fixes) & be rewarded for his/her contribution. In fact, contributions “to the mission” become material for yearly performance reports as well as promotion recommendations.
Another path is to have the Inspector General formally investigate.
If I had to name anything close to a conspiracy it’d be the simultaneity with which the shift to military contractors coincided with a huge rewrite of the regulations governing awarding and managing those contracts.
14 June 2011, 2:17 pmEric:
check this out: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/opinion/20mcardle.html
“the wreck is goin down, get out before you drown” – Soundgarden
20 June 2011, 10:06 amStan:
This one is going on facebook. nice
20 June 2011, 1:16 pmUncensoredangels:
Hannah Arendtstated,”The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” Members of Orlando Food Not Bombs made up their minds to do a good act to serve the homeless and instead got punished for it. The scales of justice have become relativistic as Nietzsche states, “What you call evil, I call good”.
27 July 2011, 6:58 pmKim Sky:
Re: wait until the homeless people try to eat the ducks!
Have not seen an article with so many ways of referring to the homeless before: bizarre poackers, oddball poachers, band of vagrants, Beverly Hillbillies”-like, dodgy group, threatening…
Cops nab bizarre Prospect Park poachers
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/34/31/dtg_poachersbusted_2011_08_06_bk.html
Cops have busted a group of oddball poachers in Prospect Park — a band of vagrants that was trapping and eating ducks, squirrels and pigeons. Parks officers wrote four tickets — two for killing wildlife and two for illegal fishing — totaling $2,100 in fines during a two-day period last week.
The city would not immediately release details of the incidents, which occurred on July 17 and 18 — just days after park-goers told rangers about a “Beverly Hillbillies”-like scene on the southeast side of the lake, near the ice skating rink. This is a dodgy group,” said park-goer Peter Colon, who spotted one of the men catching a pigeon while his friend started a fire. “They are the most threatening people in the park.”
The disheveled — and possibly homeless — tribe in question uses “makeshift” fishing poles and traps to catch the critters, then grills them over the fire, according to park watchdogs.
31 July 2011, 10:58 am