leaves in the forest

best system for whom?

2012-01-30T23:34:00.001-08:00

So, the Atlantic published an article today by Marty Nemko, who suggests that simply dropping federal, state, and local income tax in favour of a national sales tax in conjunction with existing state and local sales taxes would not only generate enough revenue to fund the government, but "ensure the poor pay relatively little," as well.

In general, I think Nemko presents some OK arguments for having a national sales tax instead of an income tax. And while I like the idea that consumer spending could be shifted from taxable products to not-sales-taxed services such as new mom aide, homework helper, elder companion, etc. as a result, which would potentially help improve our national quality of life overall, I have my doubts as to his assurance the poor wouldn't be punished in the place of the so-called 'innovators and job creators' he seems to really be more concerned about. For example, according to a study done in 2009 by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, data suggests that sales taxes are ultimately regressive because "they fall more heavily on poor people, who typically spend nearly all their money on everyday necessities"—something even Thomas Paine understood back in 1791:

Men of small or moderate estates are more injured by the taxes being thrown on articles of consumption, than they are eased by warding it from landed property, for the following reasons: First, They consume more of the productive taxable articles, in proportion to their property, than those of large estates. Secondly, Their residence is chiefly in towns, and their property in houses; and the increase of the poor-rates, occasioned by taxes on consumption, is in much greater proportion than the land-tax has been favoured. (Rights of Man)

The study also suggests that exempting food and medicine doesn't eliminate the problem of sales taxes falling more heavily on poor people. So exempting 'basic items' like 'non-luxury' food, clothing, and cars (which is most likely doublespeak for cheap, shitty, and used consumable and durable goods, anyway) can ease the burden, but it certainly doesn't fix the inherent regressiveness of consumption-based taxation. Poorer people still tend to spend all of their income, living paycheck to paycheck, and are unable to save very much, if anything at all.

In fact, the study concluded that even though Washington, which lacks a personal income tax and relies highly on sales taxes for revenue, exempts things like food and medicine from sales taxes, it still has the most regressive tax system in the country, mainly because of its heavy reliance on sales taxes. Just to for comparison, the study found that people earning less than $20,000 a year In Washington paid 13.1% of their income toward sales and excise taxes, and 17.3% including property taxes. People making between $99,000 and $198,000, on the other hand, paid just 5.1% of their income toward sales and excise taxes, and only 7.6% including property taxes. And the top 1% (those making $537, 000 or more) paid an unbelievably low 1.8% in sales and excise taxes, and just 2.9% including property taxes.

Another issue that's not addressed in the article is other forms of consumption, particularly consumption on the part of the all-too-often idealized "innovators and job creators." For example, if you're going to tax consumption, what about employers who consume their workers' labor-power, which is a pretty unique and, in a capitalist economy, necessary commodity? While people rarely think about that aspect of production, it shouldn't be ignored, especially when doing so would essential exempt employers who consume the time, energy, and productivity of their fellow citizens.

Nemko concludes that replacing the income tax with sales tax would be the best fix for our tax system; but after reading the article, I find myself asking, Who'd truly benefit the most by such a 'fix'? Because it certainly wouldn't be average, working-class citizens, let alone the poor. If anything, it'd only succeed in shifting the burden more towards the people who can afford it the least.

random nonsense at 30,000ft

2012-01-22T08:27:00.000-08:00

Somewhere between Seattle and Detroit, after being slightly delayed due to some poorly distributed oysters in the lower-half of our plane that were destined for Boston, I finally finished Dostoyevsky's final novel, The Brothers Karamazov. As soon as I'd read the last words, I felt at once both joy and melancholy, something quite typical for me after reading any of his works—works that seem to touch the very core of my humanity, and unleash all the contradictory thoughts and feelings that lay buried within my soul. But this work, in particular, dug so deep as to make me want to sing a 'hymn' rivaling that of Mitya himself. And at Alyosha's touching and heartfelt words to Ilyusha's schoolmates, I wanted to, for at least a moment, hug someone, anyone, out of the insufferable miasma of joy and sorrow and camaraderie and emotions indescribable that I felt; just because I could, because they were simply there and a part of the same wonderful and terrible world as I. And this shouldn't be at all surprising, because even a wretch such as myself, who most of the time despises the world and the people in it for their inevitable faults and sins, or even for no reason at all, can feel the warmest and sincerest of feelings towards all of humanity, even if only for the blink of an eye. Especially when looking at humanity in the abstract, from an intimate distance (if that's possible); but particularly when their multitude of failings, their collective sufferings and torments, become my own, and I see these contemptible and pitiable creatures not as separate individuals, but as myself. And their joys and accomplishments, too, I see as my own, being swept away with delight and reveling in our collective happiness. If only for a moment, it's as if I can truly love, and am loved in return.

the 'prodigious coach' vs. 'the masses of humanity'

2012-01-18T08:03:00.000-08:00

Today, a friend of mine wrote on Facebook:

Romney estimates he paid 15% income tax. I paid 25% in 2011 to federal. I'm not a millionaire. He justifies it because it's mostly from investments... so if you make millions by sitting on your ass you should pay less than someone who works 6 days a week and barely gets by.

It got me thinking that, when people talk about class war or class struggle, this is partly what they're talking about. In this case, capital is treated differently than labour, which, due in large part to inherent contradictions fuelled by the 'coercive laws of competition,' creates an antagonistic social relationship between these two diametrically opposed classes.

For example, money made through the investment of money, regardless of how, is generally taxed at a lower rate than money earned through labour, even though human labour is arguably where most wealth actually comes from. But under the current system of production, capital, which also makes up the majority of the ruling class, occupies a deferential position in which it legally owns the labour it utilizes, as well as what's produced in terms of goods and services. So not only does it get taxed at a lower rate, but it receives the lion's share of the wealth created by labour in the form of surplus value (i.e., unpaid labour), which is the primary source of what we call profit in the capitalist mode of production.

Essentially, if you're part of the working class who's forced to sell your labour just to get by, spending your meager wages on the necessities of life such as food, clothing, shelter, etc., you're getting screwed at least twice; while capitalists, which have the ability to increase their profit exponentially by reinvesting the surplus value extracted from your labour, and hold almost all the political power in society (especially when money equals social power), always have the upper hand.

This relationship is vividly portrayed by Edward Bellamy in his 1888 utopian science fiction novel, Looking Backward, by the parable of the 'prodigious coach' and 'the masses of humanity' toiling to pull it, and I think it's still applicable today:

By way of attempting to give the reader some general impression of the way people lived together in those days, and especially of the relations of the rich and poor to one another, perhaps I cannot do better than to compare society as it then was to a prodigious coach which the masses of humanity were harnessed to and dragged toilsomely along a very hilly and sandy road. The driver was hunger, and permitted no lagging, though the pace was necessarily very slow. Despite the difficulty of drawing the coach at all along so hard a road, the top was covered with passengers who never got down, even at the steepest ascents. These seats on top were very breezy and comfortable. Well up out of the dust, their occupants could enjoy the scenery at their leisure, or critically discuss the merits of the straining team. Naturally such places were in great demand and the competition for them was keen, every one seeking as the first end in life to secure a seat on the coach for himself and to leave it to his child after him. By the rule of the coach a man could leave his seat to whom he wished, but on the other hand there were many accidents by which it might at any time be wholly lost. For all that they were so easy, the seats were very insecure, and at every sudden jolt of the coach persons were slipping out of them and falling to the ground, where they were instantly compelled to take hold of the rope and help to drag the coach on which they had before ridden so pleasantly. It was naturally regarded as a terrible misfortune to lose one's seat, and the apprehension that this might happen to them or their friends was a constant cloud upon the happiness of those who rode.

But did they think only of themselves? you ask. Was not their very luxury rendered intolerable to them by comparison with the lot of their brothers and sisters in the harness, and the knowledge that their own weight added to their toil? Had they no compassion for fellow beings from whom fortune only distinguished them? Oh, yes; commiseration was frequently expressed by those who rode for those who had to pull the coach, especially when the vehicle came to a bad place in the road, as it was constantly doing, or to a particularly steep hill. At such times, the desperate straining of the team, their agonized leaping and plunging under the pitiless lashing of hunger, the many who fainted at the rope and were trampled in the mire, made a very distressing spectacle, which often called forth highly creditable displays of feeling on the top of the coach. At such times the passengers would call down encouragingly to the toilers of the rope, exhorting them to patience, and holding out hopes of possible compensation in another world for the hardness of their lot, while others contributed to buy salves and liniments for the crippled and injured. It was agreed that it was a great pity that the coach should be so hard to pull, and there was a sense of general relief when the specially bad piece of road was gotten over. This relief was not, indeed, wholly on account of the team, for there was always some danger at these bad places of a general overturn in which all would lose their seats.

It must in truth be admitted that the main effect of the spectacle of the misery of the toilers at the rope was to enhance the passengers' sense of the value of their seats upon the coach, and to cause them to hold on to them more desperately than before. If the passengers could only have felt assured that neither they nor their friends would ever fall from the top, it is probable that, beyond contributing to the funds for liniments and bandages, they would have troubled themselves extremely little about those who dragged the coach.

I am well aware that this will appear to the men and women of the twentieth century an incredible inhumanity, but there are two facts, both very curious, which partly explain it. In the first place, it was firmly and sincerely believed that there was no other way in which Society could get along, except the many pulled at the rope and the few rode, and not only this, but that no very radical improvement even was possible, either in the harness, the coach, the roadway, or the distribution of the toil. It had always been as it was, and it always would be so. It was a pity, but it could not be helped, and philosophy forbade wasting compassion on what was beyond remedy.

The other fact is yet more curious, consisting in a singular hallucination which those on the top of the coach generally shared, that they were not exactly like their brothers and sisters who pulled at the rope, but of finer clay, in some way belonging to a higher order of beings who might justly expect to be drawn. This seems unaccountable, but, as I once rode on this very coach and shared that very hallucination, I ought to be believed. The strangest thing about the hallucination was that those who had but just climbed up from the ground, before they had outgrown the marks of the rope upon their hands, began to fall under its influence. As for those whose parents and grand-parents before them had been so fortunate as to keep their seats on the top, the conviction they cherished of the essential difference between their sort of humanity and the common article was absolute. The effect of such a delusion in moderating fellow feeling for the sufferings of the mass of men into a distant and philosophical compassion is obvious. To it I refer as the only extenuation I can offer for the indifference which, at the period I write of, marked my own attitude toward the misery of my brothers.

But what if another world is possible? What if we rethought our system of production altogether? What if we revolutionized methods of production, ownership, and distribution in order to alleviate or even eliminate some of these problems?

I believe that, just as feudalism, which was a step up from earlier, tribal modes of production, was transformed into capitalism, capitalism, too, can be transformed into yet another socio-economic system characterized by the de-privatization (i.e., socialization) of opportunity and the weakening of class antagonisms and hierarchies arising out of social relations unique to capitalism and other predominately exploitative systems where the producers/workers have no ownership and/or distributive control over the surplus created by their labour.

happy mlk, jr. day

2012-01-16T05:55:00.000-08:00

Today celebrates the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., one of American history's most influential figures. King is most known for his "I Have A Dream" speech, and for being a prominent civil rights leader, but he was much more than that. He was also a radical activist, pacifist, and revolutionary who became a tireless advocate for the most downtrodden, oppressed, and marginalized among us.

The day he was assassinated, King was in Memphis, Tennessee, supporting a strike of black sanitation workers who were fighting against unequal wages and poor working conditions, as well as for union recognition. King wasn't just a champion for civil rights, he was also a champion for economic justice, freedom, and peace, using his style of nonviolent direct action to fight against racism and the Vietnam War as much as for major economic reforms.

For me, King's revolutionary spirit is characterized by these words, which were given in a speech at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

I'd always known that King was a revolutionary figure in American history due to his well-publicized fight for civil rights, but it wasn't until I heard those words for the first time that I finally realize just how revolutionary he truly was. In a world where people often assume that violence is the only effective means of change, King showed us by example just how powerful nonviolence can be in combating everything from racial inequality to social injustice in all of its forms.

Before his untimely death, King, along with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was helping to organize the Poor People's Campaign, a national campaign designed to address the issues of economic justice and housing for the poor in the US. Months before the march, King told reporters, "I think that the time has come, if we can't get anything done otherwise, to camp right here in Washington just as they did with the Bonus March—just camp here and stay here by the thousands and thousands until the Congress of our nation and the federal government will do something to deal with the problem [of poverty]"—a tactic that was similarly adopted by a budding Occupy movement only four short months ago.

He was in the middle of crisscrossing the country, trying to mobilize what he called a "multiracial army of the poor" to march on Washington to demand an Economic Bill of Rights, when he took that fateful detour to help support the Memphis sanitation workers. In King's absence, the march on Washington was led by Ralph Abernathy, his wife, Coretta Scott King, and Jesse Jackson, and culminated in what became known as Resurrection City, an encampment on the National Mall housing somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 people.

King was undoubtedly a brave man. He received numerous death threats, but he was willing to give his life for what he believed in, never letting the hatred of others deter him from doing what he thought was just, right, and for the common good—perhaps in part because he knew that his death wouldn't be in vain. As King said in a speech he gave the night before he was assassinated:

And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Like most of the people we tend to commemorate, whether via national holidays or annual acknowledgments, King wasn't perfect. He had his flaws and vices, and he made mistakes just like everyone else. But unlike other giants of history who I personally don't think deserve our admiration and praise (e.g., Christopher Columbus), he does, if only because he did more than most to actively change the world for the better.

As we honour his legacy today, it's my hope that his example will inspire us to not be afraid to make a difference, to courageously dive in and get our hands dirty working alongside our brothers and sisters all over the world in trying to shape a better future. King saw with profound depth the mutually dependent relationships that underlie this fragile thing we call life, and encouraged us to see them as well—a realization he believed necessary for peace on Earth:

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality. Did you ever stop to think that you can't leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world? You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge, and that's handed to you by a Pacific islander. You reach for a bar of soap, and that's given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. And then you go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that's poured into your cup by a South American. And maybe you want tea: that's poured into your cup by a Chinese. Or maybe you're desirous of having cocoa for breakfast, and that's poured into your cup by a West African. And then you reach over for your toast, and that's given to you at the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker. And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half of the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren't going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.

golden rule

2012-01-13T09:32:00.000-08:00

"Golden Rule"

The Golden Rule,
so simple a thing:
to treat others as we wish to be treated.
Or as Jesus commanded,
'love your neighbor as yourself':
an injunction that
even a child can understand.
Yet one as difficult
in actual practice
as the most laborious of physical tasks.
Particularly when,
in our heart of hearts,
we don't even love
ourselves.
The bête noire we see
whenever we look into the mirror
gets reflected back
onto the unsuspecting world.
And the all the suffering
we secretly believe
our birthright to be,
we unleash upon our hapless neighbor
in a desperate cry
for help.

breakfast at beulahland

2012-01-07T10:47:00.000-08:00

"Breakfast at Beulahland"

Sipping on my third cup of coffee, now,
and feeling my guts begin to stir,
as a soccer game plays in the background of my favourite breakfast joint.
My thoughts
occasionally focus on the game
but are mainly directing towards proving people wrong on the internet,
a collection of mostly anonymous bastards and twats
including myself.
Never imagined that I'd be called
a 'far left extremist'
simply for arguing against the use of torture.
It's certainly a strange world, indeed,
where hawks swoop in and verbally disembowel
peaceful doves
in their insatiable lust for Thrasymachian justice,
and are applauded all the more as patriots for it.
Aston Villa scores again,
and my thoughts turn from patriots to arete,
the excellence of the individual in the face of all adversity
so well characterized
within the heart of American exceptionalism.
Ah, America,
that "shining city on a hill";
land of the free-range consumer,
home of the brave imperialist.
America!
Conquering the hearts and minds
of the world
with bombs made with loving-care and a tender-touch.
The nike of dike,
which is nothing but the "advantage of the stronger,"
as Thrasymachus eternally argues in Plato's Republic.
Another goal,
as if Aston Villa is punctuating the point,
driving it home
like a ball through the metaphorical net of neoliberal ideology.
And with enviable skillfulness,
the clever orators of our day,
turn freedom on its head
over and over again,
with sweet words that pay lip service to justice,
while secretly affirming,
in their heart of hearts,
that "unjust is what profits man's self and is for his advantage."
They beseech us to enthrone
our baser desires as kings,
triumphantly proclaiming, "We are all rational individuals now,"
or so they'd like us all to believe.

coffee at pig bones

2012-01-05T10:03:00.000-08:00

Watched Howl last night, which inspired me to write a poem this morning instead of the usual political rant. Thought I'd share it here for the hell of it.

"Coffee at Pig Bones"

Sitting at Pig Bones
alone, in the brisk, winter afternoon.
Coffee to my right,
Dostoyevsky lurking around somewhere in my bag
resting comfortably in the other chair.
Stabby makes an occasional appearance from the back,
chatting up the customers
and intimidating them
with her tattoos and handsome features.
Short, black hair
matching her black, button-up shirt.
Less goth and more post-punk culinary, if you can imagine that.
Thoughts turn to daggers
like the tattoos on her arm,
piercing through the melancholy of the moment
and into the unknown future.
Hope and fear, love and loss;
life is such a holy and tragic thing.
Souls forming and taking shape,
like Fiddler Crab larvae
carried upon the currents of choices,
mistakes,
and circumstances beyond their control.
Washed far out to sea
to sink or swim,
or be eaten;
the lucky ones being washed back into shore.
Sometimes I feel like a leaf
caught in the wake
of souls bigger and more important than I.
I rise and fall
and am pushed aside by their passing.
Always in a hurry
with no place to go.
But at least they'll get there on time.

the 'war on drugs' is bullshit

2012-01-03T08:36:00.000-08:00

The Utica Phoenix recently obtained a video allegedly showing two white police officers in Utica, NY, planting evidence in a black couple's SUV (you can see one of them pulling out a bag from his back pocket at 1:02):

While the video itself isn't 100% conclusive, I think it's safe to say that racism still exists in our society, with blacks being disproportionately discriminated against, especially within the criminal justice system (as Katheryn Russell-Brown persuasively documents in her book, The Color of Crime), and with studies suggesting that many Americans, particularly white males, still have unconscious biases against blacks and the poor (e.g., Discrimination Against Blacks Linked To Dehumanization, Unconscious Race and Social Bias Among Medical Students, etc.).

And surprise, surprise, the majority of people arrested and sent to prison for nonviolent drug offenses are disproportionately black and poor, who often have little-to-no access to treatment options or even a competent defense. Looking at the statistics, my immediate suspicion is that the 'war on drugs' is little more than a war on minorities and the poor used mainly to funnel massive amounts of people and money into an increasingly privatized, for-profit prison system, as well as into federal and state run institutions that siphon off taxpayer dollars. It's a big business, and many communities are actually building their economy around local prisons.

In my opinion, drug use should be treated as a health issue rather than a criminal one. For one, prohibition exacerbates the problem by creating a black market that generates obscene profits for those involved in the production, transportation, and sale of these 'illegal' substances. We've seen it with alcohol in the 1920s; and drugs are no different. In addition, decriminalization policies elsewhere have shown positive results. In Portugal, for example, their decriminalization policy has lead to a dramatic drop in street drug related deaths from overdoses, as well as in the rate of new HIV infections from sharing dirty needles. Instead of going to jail, these people "are going to treatment centers and they're learning how to control their drug usage or getting off drugs entirely."

The evidence is clear: the 'war on drugs' is bullshit. As a recent report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy concludes:

Political leaders and public figures should have the courage to articulate publicly what many of them acknowledge privately: that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem, and that the war on drugs has not, and cannot, be won. Governments do have the power to pursue a mix of policies that are appropriate to their own situation, and manage the problems caused by drug markets and drug use in a way that has a much more positive impact on the level of related crime, as well as social and health harms.

Update (5:20pm, 1/3/12): A local news report from WKTV in Utica has some additional footage showing an officer taking drugs out of one of the suspects' pockets just before the bit in the video above:

Video of Utica Police traffic stop goes viral alleging drug planting; UPD says 'watch the full video'

Seeing that extra bit does make me think the drugs we see him pulling out of his pocket when he goes into the car is possibly what he's already taken from one of the suspects, assuming it's the same officer. Still seems a little odd to me, but maybe he was simply combining the evidence instead of planting it. I may very well have it all wrong; and if that's the case, I sincerely apologize to the UPD and to the two officers involved.

my thoughts on a bunch of tech-industry drama i don't really know anything about, but feel like commenting on anyway

2011-12-29T12:24:00.000-08:00

Here's my take on this whole Penny Arcade vs. Ocean Marketing thing, as this op-ed is the first I've heard about any of it:

Some corporate bigwig (or at least someone who fancies himself one) named Paul sends a few condescending replies to a customer named Dave — who has a legitimate question/complaint regarding his order of 2 Avenger controllers — and when the customer gets frustrated, becomes even more unprofessional, verbally abusive/insulting, and threatening.

Mike (a.k.a, Gabe), an artist for Penny Arcade and co-founder of Child's Play, steps in after being Cc'd by Dave and tells him that this guy won't get a booth at the next Pax East because of his conduct (which I think understandable). The customer, on the other hand, feels bad that his 'pissing match' may ultimately prevent people who could really use this product from getting it, asking Mike to not cancel his booth (a very nice and mature thing to do, I might add).

Apparently, Mike has already done so, however, as Mr. Bigwig now starts to send Mike extremely condescending, abusive, and tasteless emails that increasingly become threatening as Mr. Bigwig begins to name drop and listing off his credentials, contacts, etc., telling Mike that he'd better side with the company rather than the customer "unless you're his boyfriend." (Classy.)

To his credit, once Mr. Bigwig figures out who Mike is, he tries to smooth things over, admitting that he fed "into [Dave's] emails a little bit too much," and stressing that it's only one person (as if that somehow makes the shit he said to him OK). But Mike obviously doesn't like this guy (who can blame him?), and asks to be removed from his mailing list despite the unapologetic apology.

And here's where Mr. Bigwig truly shines, shitting on Mike's website, and overtly threatening to put his 125 person marketing team "on a smear campaign of you and your site and your emails." (Shit just got real.)

All things considered, I think Mike's best option under the circumstance was to go public. For one, the legal authorities probably wouldn't do a damn thing about Mr. Bigwig's threats of launching an all-out smear campaigns, and I'm sure Mike was a little scared about it, as well as angry. I think preemptively going public with the emails was a smart defensive strategy on his part. He was simply utilizing a resource at his disposal.

From a purely strategic point of view, having the solidarity and support of his readers put him in a much stronger position, one where he felt safer. It's the exact same principle behind unions and other kinds of organizations, i.e., alone, you're at a disadvantage against your employer or whomever; but together, workers or whomever have the strength to address grievances, bargain, be protected from threats by someone more powerful, etc.

In this situation, I find nothing wrong or unethical about what Mike did — who was not only trying to stand up for the 'little guy,' but protect his own career and reputation — and I'd probably do the same thing if I were his position. That said, I do think that putting an end this would be the more skillful thing to do.

Mr. Bigwig has been publicly shamed and lost his position that got him into this mess; Dave, the archetypal 'lowly, individual consumer' has won a victory over the 'condescending corporate bigwig'; and Mike doesn't have to worry about being hit with a massive, corporate smear campaign—at least not by Mr. Bigwig, who's now just a humbled and humiliated Paul at this point.

To encourage any further actions against Paul at this point is, in my mind, excessive; and lowers the probability that Paul will take this whole experience as a 'lesson learned' and grow from it. Instead, he'll very likely continue to feel persecuted (because he is) and become even bitterer about the whole affair, which won't help Mike, Dave, or anyone else for that matter.

That's my unenlightened two cents, anyway.

salo

2011-12-26T04:35:00.000-08:00

I watched Pier Paolo Pasolini's last film, Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, tonight. The genius of Salo is also its downfall and why it was banned in several countries. It's one of those films that, if we let it, succeed in forcing us to confront what we fear the most—the evil that lurks in the depths of the human heart, a horror that's all the more terrifying because it's real.

It was tough to watch. But, after thinking about it and learning a little bit about the director and the book it was loosely based on when I got home, I quickly started to appreciate what it does and how it was made. Movies like this make me want to get more into film theory, which I generally scoff at. It's horrible, yet there are so many genius elements in it that I can't help but admire such a vile thing.

Much of Salo's intensity stems from the unflinching way it addresses the darker side of humanity, the side that enjoys and even revels in the vilest of human transgressions; the side that has the ability to derive pleasure from indulging in what Freud called the 'death drive,' with its psychological pressure towards self-destruction and death arising out of a seeming "urge inherent in organic life to restore an earlier [i.e., inorganic] state of things."

In this, Salo exceeds in showing us too much; it takes us over the edge with its stylistic parade of nihilistic sex, violence, and depravity; often all three at the same time. It shows us the kinds of dehumanizing monsters we can truly be, while the entire time wearing a human face. It shows us the extent with which we can desensitize ourselves to even the most extreme acts of violence and cruelty, particularly when continually escalated and viewed over time—one horror becoming so common that another, more extreme horror must take its place in order to produce the same levels of shock, revulsion, and excitement.

Worst of all, in the midst of the film's climax, where the crescendo of torture, rape, and murder become the focal point of overt voyeurism, we're forced to realize, if we can allow our shocked psyche to reflect upon the construction of the scene itself, that by the very act of watching this film, we've become voyeurs ourselves, and have unwittingly allowed ourselves to be entertained by the very same acts of violence — even if not in the exact same way — that we abhor.

It can be difficult, especially if you are extremely sensitive to scenes of graphic sexual violence and degradation like I am, to fully appreciate the masterful way in which this film explores its themes, from the psychology of fascism and the dangers of passivity to the growing ills of bourgeois society we'd rather ignore. But if you can see beyond its nonchalant brutality, you'll find something deeply disturbing yet brilliant, an existential social commentary that doesn't pull a single fucking punch.

merry christmas, comrades

2011-12-24T22:20:00.000-08:00

You know, if you think about, the modern-day version of Santa Claus is not unlike a Gilded Age industrialist, a philanthropic, fantasyland robber baron. He's essentially an imaginary, white, 'chubby and plump' old man who 'employs' an entire race of other imaginary beings in some frozen, unregulated tundra sweatshop to make the gifts he then gives and gets all the credit/cookies and milk for. Maybe some class-conscious kid should slip a copy of the Communist Manifesto in with their letter next year, because I bet Santa doesn't bother to read them all himself: "Let Santa Claus tremble at a Communistic revolution. Santa's helpers have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Elves of the world, unite!"

At least I think it's funny. Merry Christmas, comrades. :)

the complexity of freedom, part deux

2011-12-21T12:28:00.000-08:00

Average, working-class people are usually shocked and outraged by stories about sweatshops and child labour, like the recent allegations surrounding the Kardashian clothing lines, as I think they should be. But few realize that global capitalism thrives upon, and even logically defends, this kind of exploitation, generally utilizing the classic 'it's better than the alternative, like x' defense that's perfectly exemplified here by Prof. Ben Powell:

"Hey, eating this turd on a bun with mustard is WAY better than just eating a plain ol' turd; and since you're starving and have no other options but these two turds I'm offering you, I think the better choice is obvious."

Some, like Prof. Powell, at least have the balls to admit that they unambiguously support sweatshops and child labour. However, it often seems to be the case that, instead of being forced to confront and potentially question the logic of a system where the road to higher wages and better working conditions is paved with sweatshops and child labour, free-market advocates and capitalist apologists in general find it easier to simply gloss over the problem, or else blame it on specific offenders, like China, rather than the 'invisible hand' that guides production in global capitalism and directs "industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value."

And this is how 'freedom' (e.g., of the market) can actually be used to justify exploitation, which is precisely the argument George Monbiot makes in his recent article in the Guardian.

the complexity of freedom

2011-12-21T10:07:00.000-08:00

George Monbiot makes an interesting yet surprisingly little-made point about the one-sidedness of many of the pro-free market arguments about freedom, i.e., that the state isn't the only entity or social institution that intrudes on our liberties:

This bastardised libertarianism makes 'freedom' an instrument of oppression

As a result, it also begins to reveal some of the underlying contradictions that are rarely brought to the surface in these superficially seductive arguments about freedom and liberty, e.g., there's obvious tension between freedom and equality, where complete freedom doesn't necessarily lead to equality when some have the freedom to exploit, oppress, or otherwise take advantage of others because of their particular situation in life, and where full equality means potentially limiting or even denying some their freedom to do things that negatively impact others.

It's contradictions like these, for example, that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution attempt to balance to varying degrees of success. Definitely broadens the argument, I think.

tax inequality

2011-12-20T11:14:00.000-08:00

Ian Ayres, a professor of law at Yale, and Aaron S. Edlin, a professor of law and economics at UC Berkeley have an interesting idea on how to "to end the continued erosion of economic equality in our nation" with a "tax that would limit the after-tax incomes of this club to 36 times the median household income":

Don’t Tax the Rich. Tax Inequality Itself.

I'd certainly support something like this — with the caveat that the revenue generated from this new tax be expressly allocated to social welfare programs like food stamps, low-income housing, Medicaid, Pell grants, and unemployment insurance — especially in combination with a modest 0.25% tax on stock trades and a 0.02% tax on the purchase of credit default swaps (raising an estimated $100-150 billion per year according to economists Dean Baker, Robert Pollin, and Marc Schaberg), and getting rid of the Bush tax cuts (netting an additional $72 billion per year according to Citizens for Tax Justice).

All these things together in conjunction with targeted spending cuts not only have the potential to help limit the rising rate of income inequality, but to help reduce the deficit that everyone's been squawking so much about recently, as well.

how the austerity class rules washington

2011-12-20T09:57:00.001-08:00

Just read an interesting article in the Nation about the rise of the 'austerity class,' and the growing popularity of deficit reduction measures in political discourse:

How the Austerity Class Rules Washington

The way I see it, the inherent contradictions within capitalism that give rise to crises always seem to put government into a tricky position. On the one hand, it makes sense, especially from the point of view of a household, to have a 'balanced budget,' i.e., to be 'austere' today and save any discretionary income for future hardships, invest it for future returns, or both. And, utilizing this rather 'common sense logic,' people want their government to be 'responsible' and have a balanced budget just like any household should.

The problem is that, if everyone is saving and investing on a national scale (i.e., not consuming), or if they have little in the way of discretionary income to begin with, especially in the midst of an economic downturn, higher unemployment will result due to lack of demand, and the value of any investments will be greatly reduced since no one's consuming the products being produced. When this inevitably happens, people begin to scream at the government to do something, which either means some kind of conservative austerity plan to reduce spending and increase investments, or some kind of liberal stimulus plan to promote aggregate demand and boost employment.

Unfortunately, neither solution can eliminate the contradictions within capitalism that naturally lead to boom and bust cycles and financial crises; but the latter makes far more sense to me in that it helps boost employment, which further stimulates demand and speeds recovery, and doesn't come at the expense of people who need help the most in the form of cuts to things like food stamps, low-income housing, Medicaid, Pell grants, and unemployment insurance, which is precisely the kind of spending conservative austerity plans tend to target.

the credit union myth

2011-12-20T07:55:00.000-08:00

Admittedly, I was one of those who thought that simply switching over to a local credit union, especially if it was done by a large number of people, would make a real statement and 'stick it' to the big banks, depriving them of the use of our money to finance their irresponsible lending practices, and disrupting the continued merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and by extension, weakening the stranglehold of the these financial monopolies. I got rid of my own Chase account two years ago, in fact.

But, according to an article by Doug Henwood, it turns out that it doesn't really make that much of a difference, that our money still greases the wheels of these financial juggernauts, especially considering how credit unions and small banks actually end up investing a lot of their money in things like Treasury bonds and federal agency securities (including things like mortgage-backed securities), which in turn get fed via the federal funds market to, wait for it, larger banks like Chase. As Henwood concludes at the end of his article, "Getting banks under control is a matter of politics, not individual portfolio allocation decisions," and I'm reluctantly inclined to agree.

Of course, there are still a lot of good reasons to bank locally, but 'sticking it' to big banks isn't one of them.

r.i.p., vaclav havel

2011-12-19T14:59:00.000-08:00

In honour of Vaclav Havel's passing this weekend, here's Slavoj Zizek's 1999 review of John Keane's book, Vaclav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts:

Attempts to Escape the Logic of Capitalism

In the spirit of full-disclosure, half-way through the review, I found myself thinking, "Wow, that's pretty genius," being impressed by the way Zizek's analysis (influenced by a combination of Hegel, Marx, and Lacan, among other things) actually helped broaden my admittedly poor understanding of how and why some of these events took place, while at the same time raising, and then connecting them to, questions I've been struggling with myself recently.

The conclusion reached by Zizek at the very end, however, doesn't satisfy me; and I wonder whether that's because I'm unconsciously worried that 'the direct ethical foundation' of my own politics (arising out of my Buddhist practice, and influenced by a mixture of radical liberalism, Marxism, and Plato) will 'sooner or later turn into its own comic caricature,' or whether there's something missing here, as if I intuit the bulk of his analysis pointing in a slightly different direction, but am unable to articulate precisely what that direction is (although, I suspect it's probably mainly the former).

the future direction of organized labour

2011-12-17T15:12:00.000-08:00

With organized labour once again on the ropes, it may time for labour to rethink modern-day contract unionism, which relies on bloated bureaucracies and effectively neuters unions with its no-strike clause, and go back to the more 'radical' roots of the American labour movement—a time when, in the words of Stanley Aronowitz, "Workers ... used to fight for their demands continuously and agree to return to work only when they were met."

One option could be, as some within the IWW have recently argued doing themselves, for unions to move in the direction of 'direct unionism', where the focus isn't on contracts, workplace elections, or legal procedures, but building "networks of militants in whatever industry they are employed" who'll then "agitate amongst their co-workers and lead direct actions over specific grievances in their own workplaces." The goal essentially being to start small and "build up leadership and consciousness amongst other workers" that'll eventually lead to "large scale industrial actions that address issues of wages and conditions across entire regions or even whole countries" rather than just "union recognition from a single boss" and the signing of contracts that ultimately seek to de-radicalize workers.

Whether or not it's a direction labour wants to take, I think it's definitely time to try something new. The current direction is going nowhere fast.

the making of the american 99%

2011-12-15T17:30:00.000-08:00

This article by Barbara Ehrenreich (author of Nickel and Dimed) and John Ehrenreich presents an interesting look at the coalescence of the 99%:

The Making of the American 99%

It suggests to me that, among other things, what we often call 'class' is ultimately a social relationship, which, in the words of Edward Thompson, "happens when some [people], as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other [people] whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs." The implication being that, for the Occupy movement to continue to grow and truly become "a force to change the world," divisions within the 99% need to be patiently confronted and resolved (or at least put aside), and common interests need to be identified and made into an increasingly more conscious, unifying force.

obama to sign indefinite detention bill into law

2011-12-15T15:17:00.000-08:00

When I've said in the past that there's not much difference between Republicans and Democrats in practice, it's things like this that I'm referring to, where the current Democratic president is continuing, and even expanding, the previous Republican president's policies, going so far as to enshrine indefinite detention without trial into US law:

Obama to sign indefinite detention bill into law

Ultimately, I don't think the problem lies within the two dominant political parties themselves so much as within the structure of the system itself, which actively promotes a two party duopoly, produces toxic accumulations of both wealth and power (which seem to go hand in hand in politics), and serves to protect the economic, legal, and political hegemony of the ruling class. That's why it seems to me that, even when people who have the best interests of the citizenry in mind get elected to office, the system often forces their hand and they end up being like every other politician, or else the system just runs them over (metaphorically speaking, of course).

Hence, the candidate in 2008 who, assuming he was genuine, strongly criticized what he called "the Bush Administration's attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo," now continues where his predecessor left off by being a proponent of, and codifying into law, what the Bush administration argued the original 2001 AUMF against terrorism already empowered them to do, i.e., to, in the words of Greenwald, "imprison people without charges, use force against even U.S. citizens without due process (Anwar Awlaki), and target not only members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban (as the law states) but also anyone who 'substantially supports' those groups and/or 'associated forces' (whatever those terms mean)."

In my opinion, once people start to realize that voting for one party or the other (an electoral version of the 'lesser of two evils' principle) doesn't really make that much of a difference, that there's something inherently wrong with the system itself, the better off we'll be.

if i were a poor black kid

2011-12-14T10:51:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine posted this Forbes article by Gene Marks on Facebook yesterday, and I couldn't help but read it:

If I Were A Poor Black Kid

What it sounds like he's trying to say is, "I know things are harder for poor, black youths in this country, but there are tools out there that can help you succeed. If I were in your place, knowing what I know, here's what I'd do." What I'm actually hearing, however, is, "If you're poor and black, you have to work a million times harder than any white kid from the suburbs, and that's just the way it is. Deal with it."

I think the sentiment is genuinely sympathetic; but the presentation is terribly condescending, and essentially glosses over the roles things like class and race play in keeping minorities from succeeding in our society, not to mention ultimately placing the blame on 'poor black kids' for not succeeding instead of questioning a system that makes it so disproportionality difficult in the first place.

In other words, I think we need to be challenging this historically classist, racist, and sexist socio-economic paradigm instead of simply accepting it as a fact of life—a sentiment that's seemingly echoed by, surprisingly enough, fellow Forbes contributor Charles Green:

You conclude by saying, “…the opportunity is still there in this country for those that are smart enough to go for it.”

So, if poor black kids seem to be disproportionately not going for it, your conclusion would be, what–they’re just dumb? Come on, spell out what you’re trying to suggest here!

Viktor Frankl emerged from Nazi death camps stronger for the experience. That doesn’t justify prison camps.

The fact that a few people can escape overwhelming social forces doesn’t prove much of anything. The much more important question is, if millions of people are doing worse than millions of others, what the heck is going on? And to suggest the answer lies in IQ is simply disgusting.

Social mobility is measurable, and is measured. And social mobility in this country is declining. We are less socially mobile than almost every country in Europe now except for Britain and Italy. The land of opportunity–defined as the chance to do better than your parents–is now demonstrably better in a lot of what Americans like to call “socialist” countries.

We need to stop listening to ignorance like this and get a grip.

led by the child who simply knew

2011-12-13T15:39:00.001-08:00

Just read this extremely touching article about Nicole, a transgender teen:

Led by the child who simply knew

I know this story may be difficult for some people to read, especially for many social and religious conservatives; but I think it's important to understand some of the struggles transgender individuals have to go through, and that they need our support rather than our scorn.

It's heartening to see such a relatively positive story; but many transgender children (as well as adults) aren't as lucky as Nicole, and many suffer lives of intense abuse, bullying, discrimination, and ostracization, often leading to suicide or ending in murder.

It makes me incredibly sad that we live in a world where intolerant and insecure people harass and hurt others simply because of their gender or sexuality or anything else for that matter. In my opinion, we'll never truly be a 'civilized society' until we stop hating and hurting others simply for being who they are.

support occupy the ports

2011-12-13T11:12:00.000-08:00

I understand why some people are critical of the port shutdowns. For one, it ends up financially hurting front-line workers like longshoremen and truck drivers. That said, the plight of the working class is generally ignored unless something big happens, and drastic actions such as port shutdowns and strikes seem to be the only way to get people's attention.

Nobody seems to take notice or care, especially the 1%, until the flow of commodities and capital stop, or at least is impeded. One of the few nonviolent tactics the working class has at its disposal is to withhold its labour and/or impede the flow of noncritical goods and services. Yes, it hurts the working class more in the short-term; but it also makes enough noise to really get people's attention and make them realize that the 99% is serious about addressing pressing socio-economic issues.

Furthermore, purely electoral solutions are limited. The logic of the present system itself seems to produce toxic accumulations of debt, wealth, and power (especially in the sense that money equals social power). That's why it seems to me that, even when people who profess to have the best interests of the 99% in mind gain political office, the system often forces their hand and they end up being like every other politician, catering to the needs of the 1%, or else the system just runs them over (metaphorically speaking, of course).

So, in the end, I support these kinds of tactics, and I hope to see them spread to more than just ports. The working class needs to unite in this fight. That way, maybe we'll actually see some real solutions to these problems instead of business as usual in Washington and Wall Street, which, for all intents and purposes, are practically one and the same.

my body, my rules: a case for rape and domestic violence survivors becoming workplace organizers

2011-12-09T07:48:00.000-08:00

This emotionally raw yet well-written article/essay has been making the rounds pretty quickly on the interwebs, and I can see why:

My body, my rules: a case for rape and domestic violence survivors becoming workplace organizers

It presents an interesting (and horrifying) perspective on the unequal social relations created by a system where one class of people is forced to sell their labour in order to survive while another thrives by exploiting that labour; as well as powerful a reminder that the right to organize is one of the few tools workers have to shift the (in my opinion, unfair) balance of power in their favour.

The main lesson I take from it, however, is that we shouldn't let the proverbial (or even literal) 'pizza party' make us forget where our strength lies, or pacify our struggle for workplace democracy.

rats free each other from traps, then share chocolate

2011-12-08T18:28:00.000-08:00

Just read this extremely interesting article from New Scientist:

Rats free each other from traps, then share chocolate

More evidence that rats (and potentially other animals, particularly mammals) exhibit levels of compassion, empathy, and generosity previously thought to be unique to primates; as well as further corroboration of Peter Kropotkin's theory that cooperation and mutual aid are factors of evolution at least as important as competition, if not more so.

the media's blackout of the national defense authorization act is shameful

2011-12-07T08:15:00.000-08:00

I couldn't agree more with this article that Section 1031 of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012 needs to be covered, and widely:

The Media's Blackout Of The National Defense Authorization Act Is Shameful

Unfortunately, most media outlets haven’t covered it (and probably won't), at least not in any great detail. Part of the problem, I suspect, is that the vast majority of what we call the 'mainstream media' is really a conglomeration of roughly six main corporations. What gets reported by these major multimedia outlets is arguably limited in many cases to what's in the interest of the owners, controllers, and shareholders of these companies, which themselves are part of the ruling class.

This Orwellian piece of legislation, on the other hand, with its ambiguous language about covered persons including "any person who has committed a belligerent act," would make it easier for the government to put down and indefinitely detain 'nuisances' like Occupy protesters who the state and others of the ruling class deem as 'terrorists'; and the state is already in the habit of labelling peaceful protesters as terrorists (e.g., Max Obuszewski).

I think this piece of legislation is both scary and troubling; but the lack of media coverage is scarier and more troubling because it puts us, the working class, even more in the dark as to what's really going on in this country. More importantly, it highlights the need for average, working-class individuals to continually educate themselves and turn towards alternative sources of media.

secret fed loans gave banks $13 billion undisclosed to congress

2011-12-01T00:08:00.000-08:00

According to a recent Bloomberg article, the Federal Reserve allegedly gave out approximately $7.77 trillion in secret loans and guarantees to banks throughout the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009.

What I found even more interesting, however, is the article also notes that, among other things, "Total assets held by the six biggest U.S. banks increased 39 percent to $9.5 trillion on Sept. 30, 2011, from $6.8 trillion on the same day in 2006, according to Fed data." Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown is quoting as saying: "When a few banks have advantages, the little guys get squeezed... That, to me, is not what capitalism should be." Except that's precisely how capitalism is, and always has been.

The capitalist mode of production, which forms the economic base of our society, is, in effect, the process of commodifying, privatizing, and monetizing goods, service, ideas, etc.; and which, by its very nature, promotes the concentration of wealth and power, primarily into the hands of the owners/controllers of capital. It's working exactly as it's supposed to work, and the Fed is merely one of the institutionalized tools capital uses to displace inherent contradictions within the system in an effort to limit and/or stave off crises.

If this article doesn't piss you off and start to make you question whether we can do better, it probably should.

occupy detroit: faith in the future

2011-11-27T15:22:00.000-08:00

I went down to St. Aloysius with my friend Dave today to meet with some of the members of the church who were interested in learning more about what the Occupy movement, and Occupy Detroit in particular, is all about; and it was a pretty enlightening experience. It's been a little over two months since the emergence of the Occupy movement in New York, and taking a broader look at the phenomenon itself, I can see a lot of similarities between it at the Catholic social justice movement, which itself has always focused on things like equality, fairness, and a strong sense of community.

Listening to some of the older parishioners and social activists who were present for this informal gathering, it struck me that today's younger generation may be subconsciously looking for a sense of community that has been lost over the past few decades, and a return to more community-based activism and creating more community-based (as opposed to purely political) organizations. The cultural trend over the past few decades has been towards extreme individualism and the fetishizing of privatization, as if 'private' somehow automatically equals 'better' or 'more efficient.' This has lead, in my opinion, to a culture of blaming the victim, when the victim (the economically declining 99%) is actually a symptom of a much larger systematic problem.

For example, if you're underwater on your mortgage or student loan debt, it's your fault and your problem (you shouldn't have taken out more than you could afford). If you and your family are getting evicted from your home, it's your fault and your problem (you should have kept up with the payments). If you're laid-off and unemployed, it's your fault and your problem (you should have found a new job already). If you don't make enough money to pay all your bills and you don't have any health insurance, it's your fault and your problem (you should have gone to college to get a better paying job). If you get sick and go bankrupt because of all the medical bills, it's your fault and your problem (you shouldn't have gotten sick in the first place, or had a job with a good insurance plan).

Instead of looking around and seeing these people as our neighbors and members of our community (or just fellow human beings) who might need our help, we have a tendency to see them as merely irresponsible and/or lazy strangers who need to 'man up' and take responsibility for everything that happens, regardless of whether there's 'extenuating circumstances' or bad luck involved. "It's your fault and your problem, not mine. Deal with it!" And, sadly, the number of victims has been growing at an increasingly alarming rate, in no small part due to the actions of arguably 'irresponsible' people and financial institutions on Wall Street.

Both the Occupy movement and religious-based social justice movements in general, on the other hand, are, at their core, about coming together as a community (which is really what organizing is all about) and trying to make things better for everyone, gathering whatever money, time, and experience we, as individuals, have to offer into a single entity that's dedicated to fighting things like economic inequality and poverty in our society. For some, like many involved in predominately religious-based social justice movements, this collective fight against inequality is something that's part of their spiritual calling in life; while for others, like myself, it's simply the most rational way to combat these social failings (neither of which are mutually exclusive). And regardless of where we each of us may stand on other issues, this is one battle we can all agree is worth fighting.

But exactly how to go about fighting this battle is something the fledgling Occupy movement is still trying to figure out for itself, especially here in Detroit, where a large portion of occupies are relatively young and inexperienced. And I think a lot of us newbie activists can potentially learn a lot from people like we met at St. Aloysius, many of whom spent their earlier years participating in the civil rights movement, and are still active in things like the anti-war movement, the economic justice movement, volunteering at soup kitchens and homeless shelters, etc. More importantly, many in the religious community already have access to resources and social networks in these areas, and linking them together with occupiers could go a long way in furthering the work we're trying to do to strengthen and rebuild our community.

happy wopila

2011-11-24T12:53:00.000-08:00

While I love to stuff my face full of delicious, home-cooked food and watch football as much as the next stereotypical American, I think it's worthwhile to reflect on the history of Thanksgiving — from the mythologized 1621 celebration at Plymouth to the 1863 proclamation celebrating the Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg — and what it means to each of us who celebrate it. For me, like many others, Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks and share a meal with those around me, friends, family, and strangers alike, in the spirit of generosity and kindness. But, given what I know, it's also a time to remember with somber clarity the bloody history this national holiday commemorates, and in doing so, strengthen my resolve to try and make this world a better place.

imperial overstretch: is a bloated defense budget weakening the u.s.?

2011-11-22T12:06:00.000-08:00

Interesting article suggesting that the US's economic decline, as well as its decline as a major power in the world, is directly tied to its bloated defense budget:

Imperial Overstretch: Is A Bloated Defense Budget Weakening the U.S.?

In The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Prof. Kennedy argues that empires can extend themselves beyond their ability to maintain or expand their military and economic commitments in what he calls 'imperial overreach' or 'imperial overstretch'; in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin argues that modern day imperialism is actually the highest form of capitalism, a distinct, developmental phase or stage of capitalist economy as opposed to merely a policy preferred by finance capital.

Incidentally, considering the recent report about record lobbying spending by banks and the massive consolidation of banks since the '90s, number two in his list of basic features of imperialism seems especially relevant today, i.e., "the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this 'finance capital', of a financial oligarchy." Looking at the present state of things, as well as the way they've been trending for at least the past few decades, and comparing that to what Lenin wrote about the evolution of capitalism, I think there's ample reason to take his analysis seriously.

The US's actions and polices, as well as its current economic structure in general, seem to indeed be more or less imperialistic in the sense that Lenin defined it, and follow much the same pattern as he laid out in his 1916 pamphlet. That doesn't mean, of course, that I believe Lenin's analysis to be 100% correct, but I do think both Prof. Kennedy's and Lenin's ideas have merit, and are worth considering in tandem. Not only to see where we're potentially headed, but to start a conversation about what, if anything, we can do about it.

ebenezer newt

2011-11-20T21:37:00.000-08:00

Apparently, Newt Gingrich (who, for some inexplicable reason, is still seeking the Republican presidential nomination) thinks that poor kids should be put to work as things like school janitors because, well, you know, they're poor and child labour laws are 'stupid' and stuff. Not to mention the fact that it'll help get rid of unionized janitors, which is always a bonus for conservatives. (Just don't let the kids unionize, because that'll make them into little socialists!):

Gingrich: Laws preventing child labor are 'truly stupid'

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with young adults trying to make some extra money by working part-time if that's what they really want to do, and I doubt that many people would. But saying that we should put poor kids 14 and under to work as school janitors simply because they're poor (and because it'll help boot unionized janitors out of a job in the process) is as fucking herpy derpy as it get, in my opinion.

For one thing, it's not as if all you have to do is just throw out a couple of garbage bags at the end of the day; it's pretty physically demanding work. Janitors (or custodians as they're often called) routinely work 8 hours a day. For example, one listing that came up on my job search back in May lists hours as 2-10pm for high school and 3-11pm for grade school. The job itself entails "moderate to extensive degree of physical stamina and frequent lifting up to 50 pounds" and "frequent and prolonged standing, walking and bending." Plus, the job also includes a great deal of repetitive motion and the use of some seriously heavy-duty cleaning products. I've been a janitor before, and it's not something I really think kids 14 and under should probably be doing.

It should also be pointed out that 14+ year olds are already allowed to work limited non-school hours if they want. Child labour laws are essentially there to prevent kids under 14 from being put into the workforce, and limit the amount of hours a minor can work (so they have time to learn and play and do all the things kids should be doing instead of being janitors). What Gingrich wants is for poor kids 14 and under (which in most areas are statistically minorities) to be allowed and encouraged to work a physically demanding and dirty job, while at the same time taking those jobs away from actual, adult janitors (and specifically unionized janitors).

Basically, what I hear Newt saying is: "Instead of actually fixing (or better yet, supplanting) a system where so many people are left in poverty, let's just go back to the early 1900s and get rid of child labour laws. Because poor people are just lazy; and if we get their kids working sooner, maybe they'll develop a better work ethic and not be poor like their parents. In the meantime, we'll let them take their parents' jobs because we can pay them less. It's a win-win!"

If the multiple reasons why this is a bad idea aren't readily apparent, I'm not sure what else there is to say. The whole thing brings to mind an exchange between Ebenezer Scrooge and two unnamed gentlemen from Charles Dickens' classic, A Christmas Carol:

"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not."
"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.
"Both very busy, sir."
"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge. "I'm very glad to hear it."
"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude," returned the gentleman, "a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?"
"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.
"You wish to be anonymous?"
"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned -- they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides -- excuse me -- I don't know that."
"But you might know it," observed the gentleman.
"It's not my business," Scrooge returned. "It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"

cairo or new york?

2011-11-20T12:18:00.001-08:00

For a second, I thought this story in my Yahoo! news feed was about New York's Liberty Square when reading, "An Associated Press reporter at the scene said police and troops chased the protesters out of most of the square, dismantling their tents and tearing their banners." But then I remembered that Mayor Bloomberg prevented local news helicopters from flying over the area, and barred reporters from covering the raid.

'to protect and serve' whom?

2011-11-19T16:57:00.000-08:00

Two videos. The first, an interview with an amazing 84 year old woman who was pepper-sprayed by police at Occupy Seattle; the second, a police officer pepper-spraying student protesters at UC Davis in the face at point blank range for apparently sitting quietly on the pavement—just two of many recent cases of police attacking peaceful, unarmed protesters across the country.

I hate to say it, but in these instances, the police are not our friends; they're not part of the 99%. It's not that cops are individually or inherently bad people (I know a couple, and they're great, hardworking men and women), or that they're not struggling to make ends meet like many of us are. The problem is that, as an institution, the police are designed to serve and protect the interests of the 1%, the owners and controllers of wealth, the ruling class.

Hopefully, occupiers can hold out and stay the course, maintaining "a rigid adherence to nonviolence" and "a refusal to respond to police provocation and a verbal respect for the blue-uniformed police," to quote Chris Hedges, until these generally decent men and women begin to no longer obey orders, defecting from the ruling class and their agencies of state repression, and start protecting the 99%. If not, the movement may be crushed, or even worse, turn violent.

why the first amendment won’t protect occupiers

2011-11-16T12:30:00.000-08:00

Great article pointing out the limitations of the Occupy movement relying solely on the First Amendment for judicial protection against state intimidation:

Why the First Amendment Won’t Protect Occupiers

In short, it ain't gonna happen, especially considering the conservative lean of SCOTUS (not to mention the inherent bias of the legal superstructure in favour of property and the ruling class).

occupy detroit: where do we go from here?

2011-11-06T20:43:00.001-08:00

I went down to Occupy Detroit Sunday for the 'Labor in Solidarity' rally and march, as well as to just check out how things are going; and to be honest, I'm feeling rather apprehensive about the whole experience.

When Dave and I first arrived at Grand Circus Park, I was initially optimistic. I was happy to see more tents than the last time I was there, and even happier to find Tony sleeping in one. He was just getting up as we strolled into the park, and Dave immediately set about adjusting some tarps under and over the tent to help keep out the water that Tony had mentioned was sneaking its way in. Right after that, Dave saw Anthony, one of Tony's friends, trying to do the same, and proceeded to help him too, going so far as to make his own stakes out of old pallet boards.

Overall, things seemed to be going well enough at first glance. Spirits still appeared to be high despite the increasingly cold weather and other challenges. I saw some familiar faces, as well as some new ones, and more were slowly wandering into the park for the upcoming rally. It felt good to be back down after so long. But soon, I started to notice small changes here and there. I was surprised, for example, when I heard that, for security reasons, they decided to fence off certain areas and give out colour-coded wristbands to help keep track of who's actually camping, as well as who should have access to where donated items are stored.

Trying to be more organized about that kind of thing makes sense. Unfortunately, there appeared to be little rhyme or reason to who they're given to. Dave had trouble getting one earlier in the week even though he's been a regular face at Occupy Detroit from the very beginning, and some of the people they were given to have been accused of harassing other occupiers. Tony pointed out one man working security for the day who he said harassed (and possibly sexually assaulted) a female occupier the week prior. And some of the 'security' team seemed to be taking their roles a bit too seriously, strutting around the park with other people's dogs acting like they were tough shit, talking down to anyone questioning their presence and making them feel uncomfortable, while turning a blind eye to the ones shooting dice and selling weed.

In addition, some of the homeless people who have been hanging out and sleeping in that park for years are starting to resent being what they perceive to be as segregated and restricted from the rest of the occupiers, while others are getting angry at being pushed out of the park. Certainly there are issues that need to be addressed here. Some of the homeless who have joined the occupation are just there to hustle occupiers, while others are stealing things out of tents and selling drugs. But at the same time, they're fucking homeless and we're essentially occupying their park; what'd we really expect to happen, an endless chorus of Kumbaya? They've been doing this to survive long before we showed up, and they're going to continue doing whatever it takes to survive long after we retreat to our regular lives.

It's almost comical in that the occupiers are setting up a mini version of the system they're protesting; and there seems to be a big disconnect between occupiers and the homeless, which should be natural allies in this fight. It's kind of sad, really; because as my friend, Francesca, so succinctly put it, "If even the people with the best of intentions lose sight of the greater purpose, what chance does anyone else have?"

But despite these growing challenges, there are a lot of people down there with good hearts who are working extremely hard to make this movement successful; and the majority of the homeless people I've met and hung out with have been a never-ending source of knowledge and inspiration for me. They're giving me a perspective on the world I thought I had, but really didn't. The trick is getting the two groups to see the other's point of view, and to get occupiers and homeless alike to take more of an active role in the committees. From what I've heard, many of the decisions are being made by a minority of occupiers who are actually participating in the various committees, and many of the committee members themselves change regularly, leaving greenhorns unfamiliar with certain issues and people to introduce/block proposals and make relatively uninformed decisions (although some of this is due to the inherent limitations of consensus decision making).

That said, the majority of my views and opinions about what I've seen have been influenced more by the homeless participates like Tony and his friends than the occupiers, as I've spent far more time with them and listening to what they have to say than anyone else, so I'm sure there's 'more to the story' as they say. Nevertheless, I think their ideas and concerns should be taken just as seriously. Tony, for example, questions why they're occupying the park in the first place.

"Who are you fightin'? Ain't nobody in this park but a bunch of homeless motherfuckers." He's been saying from the very beginning that protesters should be occupying the governor's backyard. And I think he has a point. Some have suggested moving the Detroit occupation to Lansing, the political center of Michigan, where they've got the support of the mayor and an indefinite permit. Word also has it that legislators routinely walk by the dozen or so occupiers in Lansing and talk with them about why they're there. The idea has merit and makes tactical sense; although strategically, it'd be difficult to get everyone up there, not to mention organizing a reliable supply chain. Donations are hard enough to come by, let alone trying to figure out how to get them consistently to Lansing. And many simply don't want to 'abandon' Detroit. But that's something for the occupiers themselves to collectively decide.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and things could always be better; but it's not like they're not having similar problems in other cities. Moreover, this is the first time a lot of these people have participated in any kind of political activism, and even though I'm critical of certain aspects of the Detroit occupation, its very existence makes it a relative success. I just hope that we can keep up the momentum and learn from our mistakes; because what concerns me the most is the fundamental stability and longevity of the movement itself. If the Occupy Detroit movement implodes, whether due to our relative inexperience, infighting, political apathy, or whatever, it'll be our failure—one not so easily blamed on the 1%.

happy birthday, eugene

2011-11-05T23:30:00.000-07:00

Most people think of Guy Fawkes on November 5th, a member of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 who was arrested while guarding explosives placed beneath the House of Lords; but today is also the birthday of Eugene V. Debs, one of the greatest Americans to ever have lived, in my opinion. He was a champion of the working class if there ever was one. Happy Birthday, comrade.

"Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free" (Eugene V. Debs, upon being convicted of violating the Sedition Act for giving the speech read above by actor Mark Ruffalo).

blah

2011-11-04T18:45:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine just got laid off yesterday. After moving cross-country, their employment, due to no fault of their own, was terminated. Same thing happened to me last year. Sucks to know that no matter how good you are at what you do, you're ultimately expendable; that to capital, you're labour power is little more than a commodity to be bought, sold, and sometimes discarded on the marketplace. Is it any wonder that some people want to see a radical economic transformation in which the exploitation, alienation, and commodity fetishism of the present system are gradually eliminated via a more socialized mode of production?

zizek on al jazeera

2011-11-01T14:38:00.000-07:00

Just watched an interesting discussion with Slavoj Zizek about "the momentous changes taking place in the global financial and political system." The genius of Zizek, in my opinion, isn't so much his critical analysis of capitalism as it is his skill at trolling people (esp. liberals) in order to get them to think outside the box. He often seems to say intentionally provocative and contradictory things in order to provoke a violent intellectual response within the mind of his real and theoretical interlocutors alike, acting as a kind of dialectical koan subverting their ingrained, bourgeois assumptions about political, social, and economic realities/potentialities, effectively saying, "A new paradigm is possible." Either that, or I'm just a gullible asshole who easily falls for chubby, Slovenian philosophers/critical theorists with thick accents and ceaseless nervous tics. :\

the onshoring manufacturing glass: half empty or half full?

2011-10-22T18:16:00.001-07:00

A recent article in Forbes speculates that manufacturing jobs will start coming back to the US soon, partly based on one manufacturer's plans to flee "the high costs of Chinese manufacturing for the relatively lower costs of the U.S." And while people are celebrating this potential shift, it's a bit of a mixed blessing.

From the average worker's perspective, it's definitely good if some of these manufacturing jobs actually come back to the US. Unfortunately, one of the reasons they'll be returning is that wages in the US are currently so low, and falling even lower.

For example, one article, referencing data recently released by the Social Security Administration, notes that, "The median wage for the 150 million workers surveyed in 2010 was just $26,363.55 per person. For comparison, the poverty line for an average 4-person household is set at $22,350, while the line for a single person living alone comes in at $10,890." Which means that, by definition, "50 percent of wage earners had net compensation less than or equal to the median wage."

Another recent article points out that, "Over the past two decades -- and especially since about 2000 -- the share of national income that flows into wages and other kinds of worker compensation has been plummeting in various countries [here it's dropped approximately 5% or about $500 billion a year since 1990]."

Furthermore, according to a report by the Nation Employment Law Project, close to 75% of the new jobs added in the last two years are below $14 an hour, while, as Alternet's Sarah Jaffe notes, "60% of the layoffs from the Great Recession were in what the report calls midwage occupations, those that make between $28,142 and $42,973 per year."

In essence, the addition of these new jobs, if they do come, will certainly help, especially when it comes to lowering the persistently high unemployment rate we've been experiencing since the 2008 economic collapse. But they're most likely not going to be very high paying jobs, which is definitely good for capital, but not necessarily so good for labour.

And, of course, nobody talking about this seems to care that for every job we gain, a worker overseas may very well lose theirs. So, for me, the potential onshoring of manufacturing trend back to the US is a bit of a mixed blessing when looking at the big picture.

occupy detroit: getting schooled

2011-10-15T12:32:00.000-07:00

Homeless Tony just dropped some serious knowledge on my ass. Some serious fucking knowledge.

When I started out on a 'field study' to Occupy Detroit with my friend, Dave, who also happens to be a teacher, I had no idea I was going to get schooled, literally. We met Tony, a homeless man about fifty years old, who's been on the streets at least a year, sometime after midnight, long after most of the protesters had left and it was starting to get cold. His words, gruff and oftentimes filled with profanity, hit us both harder than the rally or anything the speakers themselves had to say. They were sad yet powerful, angry yet caring. More importantly, they came from experience.

There was something about what he said during our first meeting and the way he said it, as well as the fullness of his humanity in the face of complete privation, that made me feel almost as if I was in the presence of holiness. But Tony's not a saint, at least not the kind most people would recognize. Most people call him a bum and tell him to get lost; most simply see him as just another homeless, unemployed black man endlessly roaming the streets of Detroit—not the contemporary Francis of Assisi with the attitude of Diogenes that my friend and I saw that night.

Tony looked around at what remained of the group, the people who were willing to risk the cold and possible arrest to camp out in Grand Circus Park, and shook his head. "I like what you're doing. What you're doing is right. But the way you're doing it is wrong. Fuck Wall Street. I'll show you what people need to be protesting, what the people should be taking pictures of and writing about. Be here at 7am and I'll show you some real shit." And good to his word, Tony was standing right outside the orange Coleman tent someone was nice enough to have set up and left for unprepared idiots like us, waiting, despite the cold, wind, and pouring rain. "See. I told you I'd be here."

I'll admit it, I was tired, cold, and hungry when I finally crawled out of the tent. Even with all the layers I had on and the protection of the tent, it was too cold for me to sleep more than a couple of hours. Then I immediately thought about Tony and the other people who didn't even have a tent to protect themselves from the bitter cold and rain, and wondered how in the world they managed to survive this night after night.

We started walking south down Woodward, and Tony pointed out building after empty building. "What's that? An empty fucking building. It's been sittin' there three years. Why don't they let us sleep in there? They're not using it." This went on for a couple of blocks, with Tony pointing out property after property, storefront after apartment building, empty, waiting. Many of the buildings had signs saying things like: "For Lease. Wanted: Bar/Restaurant. Liquor License Available."

It's funny. People generally assume that help for the homeless has to come from the state, which means 'bigger government' and 'higher taxes'—buzzwords that have never been very popular. But as Tony took us by Comerica Park, Ford Field, and the Greektown Casino, he asked why is it that wealthy individuals and corporations can seem to afford to build huge, multi-million dollar stadiums and casinos downtown, but can't seem to find a fraction of that to build a simple shelter where people with nowhere else to go can sleep, eat, keep warm, etc. Ironically, what happens instead is that businesses push the publicly-funded police to enforce local loitering laws and essentially harass the homeless community, making them endlessly wander around downtown, looking for a quiet place to hide and rest.

As we continued our impromptu tour of his world, he'd often stop and tell us something about his life or about some of the people we ran into. He seemed to know everyone, and everyone seemed to know him. Whatever he had at the time — whether it was some spare change, a cigarette, or a swig of cheap vodka — he shared with whoever we ran into. At first I wasn't sure if this was just a show; but the way the others responded to him made me think otherwise. They seemed to love and respect him.

Many of the people we met on the way had some obvious signs of mental illness or disability, a fact which Tony pointed by saying that half of them were probably thrown out of mental health facilities. Pointing behind me, he said, "Look at him. He don't even know where he's at." It was a young man, in his twenties or thirties I'd guess, walking out of an alley with a smile and a blank stare. Tony asked the man if he'd eaten yet. The man said no and continued to smile and talk to himself. "I try to make sure he gets something to eat. You know anybody who's talkin' to himself and answers back is crazy. Shit. He might kill somebody or rape a kid one day and not even know what he did."

Just before that, he'd shown us where he 'sleeps'; although he said he hadn't actually slept in days. It turns out it was right across the street from where we parked, in a windowsill of the Old Wayne County Building. His 'bed' consisted of a hard concrete recess that offered minimal protection from the wind, rain, and cold. He kept what few things he had stashed in a small play area, including a small grill, and someone had already ransacked through his stuff. His blanket, which was still there, was pulled out of a plastic bag and was soaked. I didn't even know what to say. All I could do was look at him with all the sympathy I could muster, which I knew wasn't nearly enough. And yet he rarely stopped smiling. "I'm the happiest homeless man out here. You gotta laugh to keep from crying."

He showed us where he regularly asks for food, which is right out in front of the Sweet Water Tavern. He pointed out the places on the sidewalk, in between manhole covers issuing steam, where a lot of them try to sleep due to the warmth. He took us by streets he said he didn't go down because he'd either be arrested or shipped off in the 'party van.' According to Tony, the police routinely throw homeless people who wander around Greektown too much into the back of a police van and drop them off in the worst possible neighborhoods. When that happens, he says, he immediately files a complaint, for whatever good that does.

Later that night, when we ran into him showing some other people from Occupy Detroit what life on the streets was like, he took us behind the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law on St. Antoine, where we found a group of people sleeping. One of them was a lady who was over sixty. Tony talked to them for a minute, and then gave the lady the extra sleeping bag my friend had given to him earlier. After we walked a block or two away, he sat down at a bench to finish his vodka and broke into tears over the fact an elderly woman has to hide like some kind of vermin just to try and get some sleep.

The toll this kind of life takes must be staggering, mentally as well as physically; so it didn't come as much of shock when he told us that he was on a suicide mission—that he wasn't scared to die, he was scared to live; that he was tired, tired of looking after the others, like Chuck and Red—one, almost seventy, the other not all quite there. We ran into them earlier in the day. Tony said they get beat up a lot, that other guys routinely steal what little money they get. He said he's had to step in on more than one occasion. "I got two or three more good years in me," he said with a laugh as he threw a punch into the air.

More than once, Tony mentioned that he felt like he was being tested, that he was on a mission to help others, often accompanied his constant mantra, "I'm tired. I'm tired." It was impossible for me not to notice the similarities between him and the biblical Job, both men struggling to remain righteous in the face of excruciating circumstances and trials. It reminded me of something his friend, a man by the name of Kevin Johnson, said the night before: "You have to love others more than yourself." Something he said he learned only after losing all of his family while in prison and found himself on the streets when he was finally released.

"Why do I do it? People say I'm stupid. 'Why you lookin' after them? They're not related to you.' That's just me," Tony said with a shrug. "Out here, we're all we got." He illustrated this by asking random passers-by for change or their leftovers, and noting in his own unique way how many of them simply ignored him. "See? And they say I'm blind. Fuck you! I'm your real daddy!" He also liked to use the word 'dyke' a lot. Definitely not saintly language; but he had a point. Very few of the people coming out of the numerous bars, clubs, and restaurants acknowledged him, let alone stopped to offer anything, or to even just say that they didn't have anything to give at the moment.

"They can spend $500 partying, but they can't spend $2 to give a man a damn sandwich?" As one person walked by, completely ignoring Tony, he said with watery eyes, "You don't think that hurts me?" It reminded me of all the times I did the same thing. I felt ashamed. And when one man actually did stop to offer Tony some change, Tony said, "I don't want your money. But what you just did right there, man, I love you for that."

And that, for me, perfectly illustrates the essence of this movement. No matter what others may say Occupy Detroit is about, or how the media tries to frame it, for me it's all about treating people like people. And that's exactly what the occupiers of Grand Circus Park are doing. They're not just 'a bunch of hippies' camping in protest of the growing economic inequality; they're setting up a comfort station, where occupiers and the homeless can get things like gloves, coats, and blankets; a food station, where anyone can get a bite to eat and cup of coffee; a medical station, where basic first aid can be given (I saw Red there last night). In essence, they're protesting by taking care of the community. As Dave would say, it's a movement by humanity, for humanity.

occupy detroit: yosh!

2011-10-12T21:12:00.000-07:00

Occupy Detroit is scheduled to begin this Friday. We're meeting at the iconic Spirit of Detroit at 4pm, and marching to Grand Circus Park at 6pm, where the occupation is planned to take place. A friend and I are planning on at least spending Friday night there. Like other protesters, we want to help add our voice to movement and inspire others to do the same.

Of course, some people don't think that organizing and protesting can change anything, that it's simply a waste of time; but history shows otherwise. During the Great Depression, for example, similar protests and civil unrest motivated Roosevelt to institute major reforms such as the enactment of Social Security, unemployment insurance, minimum wage, the right of workers to organize unions, etc. And more recently, protests and occupations led to the resignation of Tunisia's longtime president and toppled Egypt's de facto dictatorship.

As for my own reasons for supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement, I can think of four right off the top of my head. I'm protesting: (1) rising wealth inequality and lower economic mobility; (2) the increased influence of money in politics since Citizens United v FEC; (3) grievous conflicts of interest in the 16 trillion Federal Reserve Bailout, which went to large financial institutions while average, working-class Americans got next to nothing; and (4) restrictions on the use of public space. Beyond that, I'm just trying to help create a better world—one where 1% of the population doesn't essentially rule over the other 99%.

To be honest, I don't know if this movement will be successful in the long run; but as I said before, I'm truly heartening to see so many people passionate about something greater than themselves rallying around a common cause, particularly in my home town of Detroit, and I'm happy that I can be a part of it. Even if we fail to change the world, at least we can say we tried.

google hands wikileaks volunteer's gmail data to u.s. government

2011-10-11T11:44:00.000-07:00

This story reminds me of something I wrote last month: "[The use of digital/social media by activists] brings up issues from censorship to the security of the people who are trying to organize (e.g., the ability of corporate interests to reveal names, locations and correspondences of activists to governments) to whether the internet and certain online services should be regarded as part of the commons since they're fast becoming an integral part of how we communicate and function as a society. And that's just the tip of the iceberg." 'Don't be evil' my ass.

To be fair to Google, however, they were merely complying with a 1986 law enacted by Congress; and they're one of the companies actively trying to get Congress to revise the law in order to require more search warrants. Nevertheless, that doesn't mean I think it's kosher for Google to do whatever the government asks it to. Not only do I feel that the law itself is unjust as it stands, but I think that Google has a moral responsibility (because corporations are people, right?) to not comply if they're against the law ethically, morally, etc. There's nothing preventing Google from participating in an act of civil disobedience by simply not turning over private information to the government. By their own admission, they've complied with 94% of the 4,601 requests they've received, which makes me wonder how they got out of the other 6%.

Furthermore, according to another article by the Wall Street Journal, Google says that they "pressed for the right inform Mr. Appelbaum," but it isn't clear exactly what that means. How hard did they 'press,' for example? It seems that Twitter managed to successfully challenge a similar order and at least won the right to notify the people whose information was being sought, including Appelbaum. Moreover, Twitter hasn't turned over information from the Appelbaum's account yet, which is the same type of information Google was asked to turn over. Seems to me that Google isn't quite as powerless here as they might initially appear, which is why I'm so critical of their compliance.

And thinking about it some more, I've realized that I've completely written off Congress at this point. I have absolutely no faith whatsoever that they'll do anything useful, let alone anything that's in the best interest of average citizens. I have more faith in Google, a for-profit company, and their ability to say 'no' than I do of the potential for Congress, our 'elected representatives,' to respect our rights and privacy, especially if the initial enactment and subsequent extension of the Patriot Act is any kind of indication. In essence, my complaint is primarily with Google because I think they can, and actually will, do something positive given enough pressure.

public space for public use

2011-10-11T07:39:00.000-07:00

Last night, Boston's mayor made it explicitly clear that, "Civil disobedience will not be tolerated." About a hundred people were arrested, including members of Veterans for Peace, for the awful crime of occupying a public space in order to exercise their constitutionally protected right to peaceably assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

We're being intimidated, and our voices are being suppressed by the very people we employ to protect and serve us. This is why we, the people, need to work even harder to reclaim our public spaces for public use and protect our rights. As one Occupy Wall Street protester in New York so succinctly put it in early October, "This group is reasserting the power to use public space in a democratic manner. That's democratic with a small d. Occupying public space is a metaphor for occupying political space." In my opinion, no one should be harassed and/or arrested by the police simply for peaceably occupying public space like parks, greenways, etc., especially when in the process of exercising their First Amendment right to free speech. And that goes doubly for veterans.

occupy detroit: a hopeful start

2011-10-10T23:12:00.000-07:00

Today I attended the first General Assembly meeting for Occupy Detroit. It was an incredible experience. Not only was the turnout great, but the energy was, too. It was truly heartening to see so many people passionate about something greater than themselves rallying around a common cause, particularly in my home town of Detroit, which has a reputation of being cynical to the point of apathy when it comes to things like political activism. One lady even brought her young son to the event, and later tweeted, "Thanks for tonight. I brought my 4 yr old. We're both excited. He says he wants to make the world better."

Of course, not everything at the meeting went smoothly, but that's to be expected at the beginning of any spontaneous, grassroots movement; and I'm hopeful that the next meeting/march/occupation that's planned for this Friday will be even bigger and better if what I saw tonight is any indication of its potential. And that's saying something considering that many people, including myself, doubted that Detroit would actually manage to organize any sort of concerted response to, and in solidarity with, the Occupy Wall Street movement at all. But it is, and I'm damn proud of Detroit for it. As the handout I picked up says, "Detroit is a city of voices that deserve to be heard."

the homeless are people too

2011-10-10T15:03:00.000-07:00

A fairly disheartening story I read in today's Macomb Daily:

Mount Clemens business owners concerned about vagrants, teens, bar crowd

What I mainly gather from this story is that the Mount Clemens Downtown Development Authority (DDA) cares more about harassing the homeless than it does welcoming alternative energy into the city, which is obvious from the things business owners are saying about the homeless themselves. (Of course, the article also mentions teenagers and rowdy bar goers, but the focus is predominately on the homeless.)

Instead of talking about these people as fellow human beings, they're talking about them as if they're some kind of pests, e.g., "We can't just tell them to get out, but we can enforce our loitering ordinances. We're doing what we can." They're idea of 'doing what we can' reminds me a lot of the Portland Business Alliance (PBA) and their repeated attempts to help pass the various sit-lie ordinances over the last 8-9 years.

The money — which could be used to help install electric charging stations, or even go towards some kind of program to help the homeless get off the streets so they don't have to sleep "in the crevices of City Hall" — is most likely going towards more foot patrols downtown in order to "make the public feel more secure." And, apparently, 'the public' doesn't include the homeless, which is one of the business community's primary targets.

(Incidentally, one of the issues I have with the institution of private property in relation to our current political-economic setup is that it essentially links private property to liberty, and through private property rights, secures the liberty of the propertied. Consequently, the greater one's property, the greater one's means of self-determination; while no access to property means a complete lack of self-determination whatsoever.)

It's not surprising to me that businesses value short-term profit over long-term sustainability or the welfare of the less fortunate; but it surprises me that we're not more critical of this kind of attitude as a community. I really hope that the budding Occupy Detroit movement will be able to help reverse this trend in some by giving the homeless and other marginalized segments of the community a voice they so desperately need, and in my opinion, deserve.

happy indigenous peoples' day (my yearly columbus day rant)

2011-10-09T22:02:00.000-07:00

(Since I'm feeling lazy, here's something I wrote about Columbus Day last year.)

Screw all this Columbus Day bullshit, I prefer to call today Indigenous Peoples' Day. Why? Because Columbus doesn't deserve a national fucking holiday, that's why.

I don't dislike Columbus Day simply because he 'discovered' land that was already inhabited (Hispaniola), I dislike it for the fact that he helped to literally wipe that land of its original inhabitants, the peaceful Arawaks, through his unbelievable cruelty and that of those who followed him to the New World.

What happened to these poor people was nothing short of genocide, and there's simply no justification for it. Stealing land and killing and/or enslaving its native inhabitants isn't OK, and it's certainly not something to celebrate with a national holiday.

And for all those who are unfamiliar with the real history behind Columbus Day, I suggest checking out this excerpt from Howard Zinn's Columbus and Western Civilization, as well as this clip from The Canary Effect.

anime 101: equivalent exchange

2011-10-09T21:41:00.000-07:00

According to Wikipedia, the general principle of equivalent exchange in Fullmetal Alchemist ("To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's first law of equivalent exchange") was initially inspired by the author's parents, who had to give all their effort working on their farm in order to earn the money to eat.

But the idea of equivalent exchange itself has been around for ages; and not just in relation to alchemy, either. For example, the concept can be found (perhaps most famously) in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, where, in the midst of discussing the role of money in the exchange of commodities, he writes, "If there were no exchange there would be no association, and there can be no exchange without equality, and no equality without commensurability" (1133b.1).

The more you know.

obligatory 'steve jobs is dead' post

2011-10-06T16:21:00.000-07:00

So, Steve Jobs is dead. To be honest, I'm ambivalent about Steve Jobs' passing as I didn't know him personally; but I find the polarizing effect his death has had interesting. I see people fawning over him as if he single-handedly cured cancer and "invented the future," while others decry him as a capitalist monster who outsourced production to hellish Chinese factories and bashed teachers unions as "off-the-charts crazy."

For my own part, I don't think he was a saint or a monster, just an exceptionally intelligent, ambitious and lucky man (sans the whole pancreatic cancer thing) who was good at what he did, which wasn't necessarily good for all those inevitably involved. I will say, however that these opposing reactions bring to mind the Great Man Theory debate, which I think is perfectly illustrated by these two different perspectives on Steve Jobs' accomplishments: "Here's to the crazy ones: a farewell to Steve Jobs" and "The Social Genius Behind Steve Jobs."

In the end, my opinion of Jobs and his accomplishments falls more on the cynical side (as I'm generally critical of what Arthur Goldhammer calls "the hagiographic depiction of Steve Jobs as the heroic entrepreneur," which often ignore his penchant for authoritarianism and other faults); and as amazing and intelligent as he may have been (which I don't doubt is also true), I can't help but be reminded of Bertolt Brecht's poem, "Questions From a Worker Who Reads":

Who built Thebes of the 7 gates ?
In the books you will read the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock ?

And Babylon, many times demolished,
Who raised it up so many times ?

In what houses of gold glittering Lima did its builders live ?
Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished, did the masons go?

Great Rome is full of triumphal arches.
Who erected them ?

Over whom did the Caesars triumph ?
Had Byzantium, much praised in song, only palaces for its inhabitants ?

Even in fabled Atlantis, the night that the ocean engulfed it,
The drowning still cried out for their slaves.

The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone ?

Caesar defeated the Gauls.
Did he not even have a cook with him ?

Philip of Spain wept when his armada went down.
Was he the only one to weep ?

Frederick the 2nd won the 7 Years War.
Who else won it ?

Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors ?

Every 10 years a great man.
Who paid the bill ?

So many reports.

So many questions.

how unequal we are

2011-10-05T09:43:00.000-07:00

One of my friends posted this article on Facebook yesterday:

How Unequal We Are: The Top 5 Facts You Should Know About The Wealthiest One Percent Of Americans

While I think it's interesting in that it points out certain statistics which highlight the underlying symptoms, the real problem is that the capitalist system won't fix itself no matter how much we try to regulate it or leave it alone. It also needs to be pointed out that, as another friend of mine put it, "It's the nature of this system to produce this toxic accumulation of debt AND wealth."

If we want a real solution — one that does more than simply mitigates the symptoms — we need to start rethinking the capitalist system itself; and in my opinion, start working towards creating a new economic paradigm that's characterized by collectively owned and democratically controlled production based on need rather than profit.

But for me, particularly, economic democracy (i.e., socialism) isn't so much about the equality of wealth or outcomes as it is the de-privatization (i.e., socialization) of opportunity and the weakening of class antagonisms and hierarchies arising out of social relations unique to capitalism and other predominately exploitative systems. As Karl Marx wrote in The Poverty of Philosophy:

Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.

And if the growing popularity of the Occupy Wall Street movement is any indication, it seems like people are finally figuring out how badly they're getting fucked by the owners and controllers of all this wealth:

double standards of the nypd

2011-10-02T08:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, hundreds of Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested for blocking the roadway when a bottleneck formed on the walkway and a large group of protesters took to the roadway instead, obstructing traffic in one lane for several hours. Yet when a 1992 protest consisting of thousands of off-duty police officers degenerated into what one New York Times article characterized as "a beer-swilling, traffic-snarling, epithet-hurling melee that stretched from the Brooklyn Bridge to Murray Street," blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge in both directions for hours, no one was arrested. Double standards much?

some thoughts on occupy wall street

2011-09-29T18:26:00.000-07:00

On the one hand, I'm sympathetic to the idea of Occupy Wall Street and what people are trying to do. I see it as a grassroots push back against the people and institutions that not only helped cause the latest economic collapse, but collectively represents the very embodiment of the expropriator class that expropriates massive amounts of wealth from working-class people in the form of uncompensated labour.

Basically, the money that Wall Street is playing around with is all the money expropriated by capital from the working class in the form of surplus value (i.e., unpaid labour), which is the primary source of what we call profit in the capitalist system of production. The stock market essentially takes all this wealth and tries to increase it for its holders via gambling, investing and shuffling it around, while at the same time acting as a freeway for the distribution of capital between other capitalists throughout the system.

Many people seem to think that 'markets,' including the stock market, can do no wrong, even when the markets themselves are full of people and large financial institutions moving things around in an effort to profit off of the ups and downs, which, in turn, creates even more ups and downs. Unfortunately, when markets crash, as they inevitably do, it's ultimately the working class who suffers the most — enduring everything from extended periods of high-unemployment to higher costs of living to depleted 401Ks and IRAs, etc. — while for Wall Street, it's business as usual.

One of the lessons I've taken away from Occupy Wall Street, however, (and perfectly illustrated by this article) is that the left seriously needs to relearn how to organize, as well as how to get its message out more effectively since the media often seems to downplay (read, 'completely ignore') these kinds of events (which, consequently, brings up the question of the place and use of digital/social media by activists and some of the problems they're facing).

This isn't a criticism of Occupy Wall Street as much as leftist activism in general, which, on the whole, seems to have become increasingly less focused and militant over the years. While left-wing social and political movements tend to have no problems springing up over various issues and events, they seem to dissipate almost as fast, particularly more radical movements, once initial momentum is lost. Movements can't sustain themselves without long-term commitments on the part of activists; and the left needs to find more creative ways to spread its message, as well as to keep people actively engaged in struggles. Occupy Wall Street seems to be off to a good start, though.

And while I think that the recent influx of union support for Occupy Wall Street is definitely a good thing, what we really need are more radical unions (like the IWW, for example) that are willing to be instruments of revolutionary change rather than just mediators between capital and labour. Historically speaking, unions have tended to deradicalize working-class movements they're a part of due to their dependence on, and basic deference towards, the employing-class and capital.

Moreover, as heartened as I am by this upsurge in left-wing/working-class activism, I'm still afraid that it's a case of too little, too late. The right has been far more organized in recent decades; and the rise of right-wing lead, middle-class populism has little in the way of organized opposition besides a few scattered groups and a shrinking number of severely weakened unions. And if history is any indication, middle-class populism left unchecked can eventually morph into fascism.

Of course, I could be wrong about the potential direction that all of this populist anger might take in the future (assuming it doesn't just fizzle out into political apathy); but I still feel strongly about the need for the left to get better organized, and that depends on working people getting more active whenever and wherever they can. In end, I completely agree with the article, "A spotlight on Wall Street greed," that:

While Occupy Wall Street has shined a spotlight on the inequality in U.S. society and the power held by financial elites, a single action like this won't be enough to win the reforms desired by participants if it fails to link up with other movements. Doing so will require struggles rooted in workplaces, communities and schools--which highlights the need for activists to begin organizing around issues that impact people's daily lives in ways that involve people with families and jobs, who may not be able to participate in an action like Occupy Wall Street.

Update, October 2, 2011: I read two excellent analyses today addressing some of the predominately leftist criticisms of Occupy Wall Street (including my own), particularly the charge that the movement itself is unfocused and lacks any real direction: "The Nuts and Bolts of #OccupyWallStreet" and "First we take Manhattan."

the question of unions

2011-09-28T12:06:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine today wrote, "Unions are great until they show their dependence on and basic deference toward the employing-class & capital, their bargain partners." I think it's an excellent point that's often neglected by the left, particularly socialists (including myself), in their tendency to promote anything slightly favouring the working class.

As just one of many historical examples, I think the close connection between the Social Democratic Party of Germany and trade unions in the late 1800s/early 1900s is one of the things that eventually helped deradicalize the SPD for this very reason, i.e., instead of being instruments of revolution, the unions increasingly played the role of mediator between the classes; and the SPD had to become less and less radical to maintain the support of the growing unions and their membership.

Union complacency as mediator between capital and labour is an issue I think the radical left has yet to solve in any practical sense, especially now that unions are about all that remains of the organized left in this country. It's almost a stimulus-response to defend them at this point.

Even if unions manage to survive this latest economic downturn and onslaught of populism from the right, the question still remains of how to radicalize them and then, if possible, keep them from becoming complacent as mediators in a system where one class expropriates the wealth produced by another when what we really want is a different system altogether.

the straight dope

2011-09-27T09:22:00.000-07:00

The amoral (if not immoral) truth of the stock market straight from the horse's mouth*: many traders don't care about the overall health of the stock market or the broader economy; all they care about is making money from its up and downs (and especially its downs if you "know what to do" and have the means to do it). And Goldman Sachs [along with other large financial institutions] rules the world:

Of course, not all traders are so ambivalent about the overall health of the economy. But many people seem to think that the 'markets' can do no wrong, even when the markets themselves are full of people moving things around in an effort to profit off of the ups and downs, which, in turn, creates even more ups and downs. And its not just traders who do this, but large financial institutions, as well.

The way I see it, if their intent is to profit from the stock market (or any other for that matter) regardless of its health or the effects their decisions might have on it (which I imagine is fairly common), we have a problem because it's ultimately the working class who suffers the most when shit inevitably hits the fan, enduring everything fron extended periods of high-unemployment to higher costs of living to depleted 401Ks and IRAs and more.

*Word has been going around that Alessio Rastani may be part of the Yes Men, a group that impersonates corporate entities and "big-time criminals" in order to publicly humiliate them. While it could be possible that Rastani is an independent trader and a member of the Yes Men, both the BBC and the Yes Men are currently denying this.

deep recession sharply altered u.s. jobless map: why the rich love high unemployment, part deux

2011-09-27T06:39:00.000-07:00

Saw this article from yesterday's New York Times:

Deep Recession Sharply Altered U.S. Jobless Map

The last line of the article reads: "'I would look at it as our dreams are delayed,' he said, "rather than our dreams being denied.'" Maybe I'm just being cynical, but the 'American Dream' is all smoke and mirrors, if you ask me. As if there's a big difference between being denied and being delayed indefinitely.

Whatever the case, the article does shine a light on how bad this economic downturn has really been; so much so that it's altered the nation's economic landscape, with states in the Rust Belt now faring better than many of the 'boom states' in the Sun Belt.

Even more depressing, however, is that "only 16 of the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas have regained more than half of the jobs they lost during the recession," and the fact that we had more people living in poverty last year than in any year since the Census Bureau began keeping records half a century ago. It reminds me of this article from Truthout, which reads like Marxism 101, albeit through a liberal/social democratic lens.

As I ranted once before, capitalism, by its very nature, requires what Marx termed the "reserve army of labour" (i.e., the unemployed), which is one of the tools it uses to create and increase the profit it extracts from the labourer and the commodities their labour produces.

What the second article calls "labor-market flexibility" is the capitalists wet dream, i.e., an insecure labour pool that can be hired and fired at will, at whatever wage and however many hours the employer deigns to give (further supported by articles like this). And as the Truthout article points out, the mechanisms that the ruling class use to help 'fix' the economy ultimately end up benefiting big capital and the wealthy, not the workers (who make up the majority of the population).

Which is completely counterproductive, of course, when you have a consumer-based economy and very few of the consumers can afford much beyond their basic means of subsistence. In the context of a global, capitalist economy, however, capital can invest elsewhere (whether abroad in foreign markets or in stocks and bonds) and still increase its profits and those of its shareholders, while the average worker is left struggling.

The whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. How anyone can find such a system moral, or simply preferable to something which is less exploitative, is beyond me. /rant

the future of organizing in the digital age

2011-09-26T15:54:00.000-07:00

First, Yahoo! was caught blocking Occupy Wall Street-related emails (they later claimed it was an unintentional error); and now word on the interwebs is that Twitter has been blocking #occupywallstreet from trending. (You can check out the trend map for #occupywallstreet here.)

It's hard to say whether this is true because of the way trending topics are identified and circulated; but if it is, it makes one wonder where the interests of digital/social media companies like Twitter and Yahoo! really lie: with their users or with Wall Street. (And with stories like this, I'm leaning more towards Wall Street.)

So what are the implications assuming both stories are true, or at least have the potential to be true at some point in the future? I suppose the answer to that will depend on the type of analysis you give it. From a more theoretical/critical standpoint, for example, it evidences that private companies have a tendency to favour the interests of capital over the interests of users/consumers/etc., which isn't all that surprising.

From a more practical standpoint, however, I think it raises some serious questions about the place and use of digital/social media in regard to organizing, specifically how it can help or hinder those utilizing this growing medium based mainly upon the whims of those in control of these services and methods of communication.

Only a few months ago, for example, people were touting the use of social media when it was being used by activists to organize in places like Iran, Egypt, etc., where things like the right to free speech and the right to peaceably organize don't really exist in any meaningful way, if at all. But here in the US, where we do have these protections, our use of them is potentially being limited/censored by the private interests that own and control them because they're coming into conflict with the interests of the ruling class, especially those of wealth/capital.

It brings up issues from censorship to the security of the people who are trying to organize (e.g., the ability of corporate interests to reveal names, locations and correspondences of activists to governments) to whether the internet and certain online services should be regarded as part of the commons since they're fast becoming an integral part of how we communicate and function as a society. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Because digital/social media is such a relatively new phenomenon, it'll be interesting to see how we, as general users and activists alike, approach these issues as they develop, particularly when many of our ideas about them may well be influenced by the very medium and corporate interests in question.

re: the truth about "class war" in america

2011-09-22T22:02:00.000-07:00

Saw this article by economist Richard Wolff today:

The Truth About "Class War" in America

Republicans describing Obama's deficit reduction plan as 'class warfare'? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

While I think that Wolff's critique could have been more radical (especially for a quasi-Marxist economist), and could have gone deeper than just the issue of taxation, it's still good for what it is. At the very least, it's a point that should be made in order to ridicule the idea that businesses and the wealthy are the ones under attack. (I think Dan Graeber's recent appearance on Democracy Now! complements this from the standpoint of debt.)

In local news, the poverty rate in Michigan is on the rise while assistance to the poor is planning to be cut, so we better make sure to protect businesses and the wealthy from any kind of working-class attack/tax increase. /sarcasm

no bridge for you! (unless it's my bridge)

2011-09-21T18:29:00.000-07:00

Only in an economic/political system where money equals speech, and where private over public ownership is idealized (particularly by conservatives), can one man essentially prevent a bridge from being built:

The Bridge: Beyond Any Doubt

Report exposes bridge owner's lies

The Supreme Court of the United States has not only decided that money equals speech (Buckley v. Valeo), but has essentially neutered campaign finance reform as well (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission); and campaign contributions by Ambassador Bridge owner Manuel Moroun appear to be one of the reasons (besides ideology, of course) why the Republican-led legislature hasn't approved this project yet—proving once again that us 'little guys' (i.e., average working-class citizens) are effectively screwed and politically powerless unless we start getting our shit together and become better organized.

bobby

2011-09-12T20:23:00.000-07:00

I didn't plan on it, but I ended up getting a 40 of Mickey's from the party store and reminiscing about all the crazy shit Bobby and I used to do together. In the last eight years or so, we kind of lost touch and weren't nearly as close as we used to be; but we were pretty tight back in the day. When I first met Bobby, I was a geeky little kid who just moved to Warren from Detroit that was into things like Nintendo and comic books. Next thing you know, Bobby and I are cruising around in his Camaro with a case full of 40s in the backseat, the radio so loud the subwoofers in the trunk made my heart skip.

I remember countless nights across the street, watching crazy-ass movies and drinking the night away. I remember wandering around the neighborhood one Halloween, trick-or-treating with pillow cases full of beer, and then going behind the school to eat all our candy and get thoroughly shitfaced. I remember him getting me drunk and sneaking me into an 18+ screening of Faces of Death when I was probably only fifteen or sixteen, feeling sick because of all the fried mushrooms I'd eaten from Chicken Shack right before we left. I remember the store in the D where we used to be able to buy liquor when he was barely eighteen, and then heading back to his house to get completely trashed, or just sitting in his car watching the snowflakes build up on his windshield. I remember doing things so illegal I can't even mention them.

I remember that, even despite our different lifestyles and personalities, we were still friends, and he never did me wrong. At least, nothing that I'm aware of. And even if he did, he was one of my first friends in Warren; and for a long time, one of the best. We caused a lot of trouble together, and I'm sad that we eventually lost touch. He was such a big part of my life, and I hardly realized it until he was gone. Funny how that kind of shit happens.

I remember the scorpion he used to have and how he loved showing that fucking thing off. I remember sneaking over late at night to drink and hiding our 40s behind the couch while we drank them so Ressie couldn't see them, thinking we were so slick even though she probably knew exactly what the hell we were doing. I remember going to his wedding. I sort of remember the reception. I remember how often my brother, Gary, and I went over to hang out with Bobby and Tonya. I remember how pissed Tonya would get when he drank too much. I remember when he got that tattoo on his leg from the Necronomicon. I remember how jealous I was. I remember incredible Fourth of Julys.

I remember all these things and more because Bobby was such a big part of my life, even if I never noticed just how much at the time. Sure, Bobby wasn't perfect, and he could be a real asshole at times; but who isn't? And despite all the things about him that I didn't like, I wouldn't be the person I am now if it wasn't for him. I never would have had all those crazy experiences that helped make me into 'a man,' or at least a properly maladjusted teenager. For all of his flaws, Bobby was my friend, and his family was like my family: his younger brother, Anthony, and I once managed to convince a lady truck driver to meet us when we were barely passed puberty; while his older brother, John, constantly fucked with me about my long hair, telling me to "get a fucking haircut" every time he saw me.

More than anything, though, I remember the fact that Bobby didn't really fuck with me as much as he did everyone else. He could be a real shithead sometimes. I never knew him to hesitate when he saw an opening to rip on someone, and he was always playing mean-ass pranks. But he always seemed to go easy on me. I could never figure out why. Maybe it's just because he felt sorry for me, but I like to think there was more to it than that, that we were truly friends or something. Fuck. I can hardly wrap my head around the fact that his mother, Sandy, is gone, let alone the fact that he's gone too—and within just two days of each other. It just doesn't seem real. I feel like I owe him a debt that I can never repay now; but at least through his family and people like me, his memory will live on.

how can socialism be morally justified? or drowning my sorrows in socialist politics so I don't drink myself stupid

2011-09-12T17:15:00.000-07:00

On the Socialist Party USA's Facebook page, someone asked, How can socialism be morally justified? It's an interesting question. I think the potential exploitation inherent in the capitalist system is one place to start.

In the Marxist sense, at least, exploitation refers to the worker's lack of ownership and/or distributive control over the surplus created by their labour. (That's why Marx defined slavery, feudalism and capitalism as exploitative systems of production, i.e., in each, the producers/workers have no ownership and/or distributive control over the surplus created by their labour).

From this perspective, exploitation is an inherent part of the capitalist mode of production, which in turn, ties into Marx's theory of alienation. It's rather complicated, and I don't fully understand everything Marx wrote on the subject as much of it is very abstract, but in short, exploitation is the idea that the capitalist profits far more from a worker's labour than the worker does, and it doesn't really matter whether it's voluntary or not.

Adam Smith et al. assumed that labour creates wealth (surplus value). But according to Marx, in a capitalist system, labour itself becomes a commodity, an object that's bought and sold on the market. Moreover, due to private ownership of the means of production, the product of the worker's labour doesn’t legally belong to them (alienation), nor does the surplus value their labour creates (unpaid labour), which is kept by the capitalist.

Consequently, the product of the worker's labour becomes a commodity that's divorced from the labour expended on its production, thereby obscuring the social relationship between producer and consumer (commodity fetishism). Furthermore, the employer has the ability to increase their profit exponentially by reinvesting the surplus value extracted from the worker's labour into their company while the labourer is forced to spend their (more often than not) meager wages on the necessities of life such as food, clothing, shelter, etc.

If one assumes that giving workers more control over the product of their labour is more 'moral' than, say, giving that control to a capitalist who treats their labour as a commodity and gives them a smaller wage than their labour is truly worth in exchange, that may be one argument.

Another argument may be how the present system actually creates structural unemployment, which hardly existed on a mass scale before it became the dominant mode of production, leaving many working-class people unable to support themselves or their families. This can be seen to be 'immoral' from a certain point of view.

And then there's the argument that under the present system, opportunity is essentially privatized along with everything else the capitalists and free-market advocates can get their hands on, making it just as concentrated as wealth (and, if you've noticed, income inequality is rising while median family income is lower now that it was 30 years ago). Sure, things have improved since the 1900s, when workers (which included large numbers of children) essentially had no rights whatsoever, and were forced to work over 12 hour days in absolutely appalling conditions, but that's been due to the struggle of workers themselves, not due to the benevolence of capitalism.

Capitalism isn't an immoral system as much as an amoral one, in my opinion, but I think we've definitely outgrown it, just like we did feudalism. And while socialism isn't going to be a perfect replacement if it ever takes its place, I think it has the potential to revolutionize society much the same way feudalism and capitalism have.

For me, socialism isn't so much about the equality of wealth or outcomes as it is the de-privatization (i.e., socialization) of opportunity and the weakening of class antagonisms and hierarchies arising out of social relations unique to capitalism and other predominately exploitative systems. As Marx wrote in The Poverty of Philosophy, "Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist."

Marx's focus, the bodhisattva that he was, is essentially the same as socialism's, which is primarily the question of how to liberate society from its suffering and alienation by changing the material conditions that support it. In the words of Erich Fromm, "[Marx's] concept of socialism is the emancipation from alienation, the return of man to himself, his self-realization."

The present system, however, due to the way its structured, tends to idealize and promote greed (self-interest) over altruism (common good), competition over cooperation, privatization over public ownership, etc. This, I suppose, can be argued to be less moral if we place a higher/greater value on things like altruism, cooperation, etc. Those are some of the arguments I can think of off the top of my head, anyway.

rip, bobby and sandy

2011-09-12T01:48:00.000-07:00

I've lost two friends in two days, both in the same family. It doesn't even seem real. I can't imagine how their family is dealing with it all, because I sure as hell know I'm having trouble with it. Sandy, our neighbor and my mom's best friend, died from cancer on Friday; and now her second oldest son, Bobby, who also lived across the street, is dead. Possibly from an accidental overdose. Or maybe an intentional one. Maybe even from a heart attack or choking... nobody really knows yet. Sandy's viewing is scheduled for today, and her funeral for tomorrow; but the saddest part is that most of the family probably doesn't know about Bobby yet. Everyone who doesn't will find out tomorrow at the viewing. What a fucking nightmare that has to be for everyone, especially his younger brother, Anthony. He's the one who'll probably have to tell everyone who doesn't already know on top of taking care of his mother's wake. I feel a little guilty because I didn't go over to see Bobby right away after his mom died, and I didn't visit her more than once since being back in Michigan, either. I was always waiting for 'the right time.' I was always 'too busy' doing other things. But I could have made time; I just didn't. I know that none of this is 'my fault,' but that knowledge doesn't really make me feel any better. It's just a shitty situation all around, and I feel bad for the people who are affected the most, including my mom and dad. I wish there was something I could do to make things suck less, to take away some of their pain. Unfortunately, there's not really much I can do besides write about it and hope for the best.

happy capital d... err, labour day

2011-09-05T22:31:00.000-07:00

Listening to NPR this faux-Labour Day, I heard this story, and I completely agree with E.J. Dionne Jr. that "it should shame us about our cool indifference to the heroism of those who go to work every day."

The term 'shame' is dead-on. The way we've been systematically lead into essentially ignoring the contributions of labour as we laud the simple existence of capital is shameful. The way we've allowed ourselves to be swayed into idealizing investors as benevolent creators while looking down at workers as lazy, ignorant leeches is even more shameful.

I say this because I'm familiar with the history of the American labour movement, especially the things average workers have fought and sometimes died for that we now take for granted. People think nothing of celebrating soldiers who fought and died in foreign wars; but many of those same people turn their noses up at workers who fought and died right here for union recognition, 8 hour work days, a fair wage, etc., and I simply can't understand it.

Today isn't just about having a day off; it's about celebrating the labour movement and commemorating the struggles workers, including you and me, have faced and overcome throughout the years since the Industrial Revolution.

I highly recommend checking out books like Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States or Sharon Smith's Subterranean Fire for anyone who's interested in learning more about the history of the American working class and the origins of Labour Day (which should really be on May 1st like the rest of the world).

so long, and thanks for all the ipods

2011-08-24T17:01:00.000-07:00

Can't wait to see how much Apple's stock will plummet tomorrow when the market opens. It'll be good for a few lulz to watch all the amateur day traders panic YET AGAIN that Steve Jobs is stepping down, possibly for good this time. The market isn't so much rational as it is reactionary. I'm sure it'll eventually recover, though.

rethinking what 'productive' means

2011-08-20T10:50:00.001-07:00

I've seen a lot of talk about 'the productive class' lately (which is right out of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged), usually in reference to the mythical 'job creators.' But this attitude often neglects the importance of what they in turn consider 'unproductive' activities. As C. A. L'Hirondelle puts it in "The Stupidity of Economic Growth," "many 'non-jobs' such as being an unpaid carer, or doing volunteer work---activities that are often essential to human health and happiness---are considered 'unproductive' according to conventional economic measures such as the GDP."

Personally, I believe that we need to start looking at what is and isn't 'productive' in an entire different and more sustainable way. For example, as the same article notes: "E.F. Schumacher, Marilyn Waring and others have pointed out that harmful activities such as oil spills, clear cuts, ill health, and car accidents count on the 'plus' side of the GDP ledger because they generate economic activity while beneficial activities like unpaid family caregiving or growing your own vegetable garden are not counted as they are considered 'unproductive.'" That's why I completely agree with biologist and Nobel laureate John Sulston that it's time to look for more holistic alternatives to GDP as measures of well-being, as well as who and what kinds of activities are considered 'productive.'

a bad idea to get our economy moving a head quickly

2011-08-19T15:01:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine sent me a link to a blog post by Dan Gilbert, founder of Quicken and owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, and asking for my thoughts on it. The post itself is titled "An Idea to Get Our Economy Moving Ahead Quickly." Basically, Gilbert thinks that a great way to jump start the economy and create jobs is to reduce capital gains tax to 0% on "any new capital investment beginning immediately and made through the end of 2012, with certain important stipulations (which I will explain in a moment), if the investment is held for two years or longer." The types of investments include:

1. All NEW capital investment made by corporations, partnerships and individuals for newly issued shares of stock in both private and public companies (including start-up businesses) after the enactment of the capital gains legislation.
2. All NEW investments made by corporations, partnerships and individuals purchased after the enactment of the new capital gains legislation for all new capital assets.
3. All NEW construction real estate, both commercial and residential by corporations, partnerships and individuals developed after the enactment of the new capital gains legislation.
4. All NEW capital improvements made by corporations, partnerships and individuals to existing real estate, both commercial and residential, made after the enactment of the new capital gains legislation.

While interesting, my first reaction was more or less, Sounds great if you're rich and have money to invest into your own company or some other eligible area of investment, but I sincerely doubt that it'll translate into much for the working class in the way of higher employment and wages—except, of course, for a select few industries like construction, and that only temporarily.

The key buzzword here is 'job-producing investments.' However, many investments don't necessarily translate into new jobs, and according to a report by the Nation Employment Law Project, close to 75% of the new jobs added in the last two years are below $14 an hour, which isn't as helpful in terms of economic growth as you might think. Most people at that pay rate have little in the way of discretionary income. Moreover, I don't think that growth for the sake of growth is sustainable. In my opinion, we need to be focusing on high quality full employment, not just 'job creation,' since many jobs are wasteful, unnecessary or even harmful.

In addition, when people 'reinvest' into their own companies, it's often just another way for them to avoid certain taxes or higher tax rates and hoard money/capital in the form of assets. For example, according to an article in Bloomberg, tax cuts for people making considerably more (including capital gains) don't really do much to help to stimulate the economy because, much like Plato's oligarch in the Republic, they tend to save (read 'hoard') it.

The main problem I basically have with this idea is that it's the same 'trickle-down economics' that have failed time and again (e.g., in the 1890s, when they called it 'the horse and sparrow theory'; 'Reaganomics' in the 1980s, which Ross Perot called 'political voodoo'; etc.). In a predominately consumerist economy, what you need more than anything are consumers who have money to spend to keep the money moving and the economy growing (or at least relatively stable), not easier-to-produce goods and services when there's little in the way of real demand or a financially stable consumer base.

Giving tax breaks and such to the wealthy, however, actually allows very little to 'trickle down' to the average worker/consumer. The enormous amount of capital currently available isn't 'dead' so much as it's being hoarded or transformed into even higher record profits for the top 10%. They could use it if they really wanted to. Banks, for example, have plenty of money to lend; they're simply sitting on it. Same for large multi-national corporations. Whether it's out of fear of economic instability or whatever, lowering tax rates even more is like begging them to start doing something with their hoards of cash. We shouldn't be begging; we should be demanding.

Last but not least, even if this idea does spur 'new job-producing investments,' which is certainly possible, I think it's an extremely bad idea to encourage investment in, and construction of, even more commercial and residential real estate when we've just experienced a housing bust, record high foreclosure rates and currently have a large numbers of commercial properties already sitting empty all over the country. These kinds of measures to stimulate job growth and consumer spending simply by increasing supply, when they actually work, tend to create artificial bubbles, which is half the reason we're in this mess in the first place.

Those are my thoughts, anyway.

more fukushima bs

2011-08-18T15:14:00.000-07:00

From the Independent:

The explosive truth behind Fukushima's meltdown

Yet another story about the growing mountain of lies and misinformation surrounding the Fukushima disaster; and in my opinion, yet another example of what happens when you have a culture where profit is the bottom line and the state is dominated more by lobbyists and large corporations than average citizens: it's the citizens, and particularly the working class citizens, who ultimately suffer.

children starve while the sec covers up white-collar crimes

2011-08-17T19:16:00.000-07:00

Right now, millions of poverty-stricken children are slowly starving in the US while the rich are getting richer and the SEC is potentially covering up white-collar crimes. Can anyone tell me what's wrong with this picture?

And people say there's no such thing as class warfare. Pfft.

re: "stop coddling the super-rich"

2011-08-16T00:09:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure what his agenda is (I guess you don't actually have to like the system just because you're good at gaming it), but I pretty much agree with everything Warren Buffet said in his recent New York Times Op-Ed.

Reminds me of something I wrote back in December when they were arguing about whether to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire. Also, this.

london riots

2011-08-11T15:55:00.001-07:00

If you're interested in what's going on in London right now, I suggest reading this. I think Laurie Penny has an insightful take on why this is happening. As for myself, the whole thing reminds me of something MLK Jr. said (especially considering the unemployment statistics and poverty index of the affected areas/population):

[A] riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear 3 of 8 that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

into detroit

2011-08-04T12:52:00.000-07:00

Some good friends of mine have decided to start looking at houses in Detroit. Their current mortgage is a mess and they're seriously thinking about moving to the Woodbridge/Midtown area. They've also launched a new site for those who want to be a part of Detroit's 'renaissance.'

Personally, I'm a bit skeptical that Detroit will ever be the city it once was; but Detroit will never recover if people don't start taking a chance and moving back. That way, the city can start to regain some of its tax revenue and begin trying to improve its failing schools and infrastructure. Then maybe the job market will improve as companies start to see that it's worth investing in the city again.

So, as much as I have reservations about people idealizing Detroit's so-called renaissance, I don't think such a rebirth will be possible without people moving back and becoming passionate about making Detroit their home.

I just hope this potential renaissance doesn't become a negative example of gentrification, where an influx of wealthier, predominately white families start to flood the nicer areas, driving up property values, rent, taxes, etc., pushing out the poor and predominately African-American families who can no longer afford to live in the 'up and coming' areas. That would almost certainly inflame the racial tension that's existed since at least the 60s, and create the political conditions for a return to the reactionary policies of Coleman Young.

At the very least, I think the city needs a combination of things like strong rent-control laws, a strong push to develop frequent and reliable public transit and people who are willing to reach out to their community to really make this thing work. And if you happen to be one of those people, then I say more power to you.

trip blog: an exercise in banality

2011-08-01T11:35:00.000-07:00

Thursday July 28, 2011 (8:30-9pm): Sitting on the ‘empire builder,’ travelling much the same path as Lewis and Clark did on their journey towards the Pacific, I have nothing but time—time to think, to listen to old Megadeth albums and to enjoy the beauty of the Columbia Gorge in the light of the setting sun. Sitting here alone, Cryptic Writings blasting through my headphones and one of the most majestic rivers I’ve ever seen outside my window, I can’t help feeling a little badass, as if I there’s nothing I couldn’t do or be.

I’m glad I decided to take the train, even if I do end up getting stranded in Chicago. I don’t mind. This unadulterated time is more precious to me than getting somewhere ‘on time.’ In our fast-paced, 21st century world, it often seems to me like we never have enough ‘time’—like we’re always moving, from one task to the next, like a shark that’ll die if it stops swimming or something. But at least for tonight, I feel like I have all the time in the world. I don’t really have anywhere I have to be, or any time that I have to be there (although there’s a time I’d definitely like to be somewhere).

P.S. Happy Birthday, Mom. See you soon.

Friday July 29, 2011 (7am): Woke up to the sunrise over some anonymous mountain range, then had breakfast with some random family before retiring to the lounge car. Although slightly overpriced, the breakfast wasn’t half bad. They even had grits. (A seriously underrated breakfast item, if you ask me.) There’s nothing better than enjoying some eggs, grits and a hot cup of coffee while whizzing through mountainous farmland. Now I’m just sipping on my third cup of coffee and taking in the sights from the lounge. I have no idea where we are (somewhere between Idaho and Montana I’m guessing), but we’re travelling through a valley alongside a beautiful green river surrounded by even greener forested hills. Pretty awesome.

(8am): Coming up to Libby, MT. Not sure if we’ve made up any of the time we lost leaving so late last night, but I find myself hoping so. I retract what I said yesterday when I said that I feel as if I there’s nothing I couldn’t do or be and that I don’t mind if I get stranded in Chicago. A combination of hunger, weariness from lack of sleep and a vague feeling of anxiety were sufficient enough to remind me of my fragile humanity. I don’t feel bad per se; but I certainly don’t feel invincible, either. A few daytime cocktails might take care of that, however. I’m still glad I took the train, but I can’t wait to get where I’m going. Then again, I wonder if I’ll feel the same once I get there. Heh.

I’m listening to Sunnypsyop by ohGr as I write this. I really love this album. I’m glad Zach reintroduced me to ohGr/Skinny Puppy. I’d moved away from industrial over the years, listening more to black metal and electronic dance music than anything else; but recently (especially after seeing that industrial show at the Fez), ohGr, Dead When I Found Her and Zeromancer have been my constant companions (although Lady Gaga still makes an appearance every now and then, as well). Reminds me of the mid-to-late 90s, when I was really into bands like KMFDM, Ministry and shit like that. God, I suddenly feel so old. Where did the past decade+ go? Time is like a thief in the night—robbing you blind while you sleep through it all. Sneaky bastard.

Apparently, the elk population outnumbers the human population of Montana. That’s how it should be.

(Noon): Finally got around to reading some more of Dostoyevsky’s final novel, The Brothers Karamazov. What a great book. Hell, what a great writer. My words could never do either of them justice.

(1pm): A lot more people boarded the train earlier today at Whitefish, MT. Met one of them in the dining car during lunch from Rochester, NY. Can’t remember his name (if he even told me), but he’s an architect who has his own firm, employing approximately 16 people, and has spent the past few weeks (months?) camping and riding his bike from Washington (Seattle?) to Whitefish, MT, covering about 800 miles in all. It sounds absolutely brutal, but it’s easy to see why the crazy bastard would do it; we’re passing through Glacier Park and the scenery is incredible. I also just realized that I need to listen better and stop being so self-absorbed.

For lunch, I ended up going for the salad (lettuce with orange slices, sugar beets and feta cheese), followed by bread pudding and a cup of coffee.

(1:30pm): Looks like we might be passing through the Rockies. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look as if we’ve made up any of the time we lost due our late start yet, but the view alone almost makes up for it. A little Cut Copy seems like an appropriate choice here for some reason.

(2pm): And back to ohGr (undeveloped). Just can’t get enough. We’re in Blackfeet territory now.

(2:30pm): Arriving at East Glacier. The park is said to be a “hiker’s paradise” with over 700 miles of trails. Picking up another large group of travelers, it seems.

(3pm): I feel happy. I guess that seems noteworthy to me since I have nothing but time to explore what happiness itself actually feels like.

Listening to Gary Numan and eating beef jerky as we pass fields of grazing cattle. Is that a twinge of guilt I feel? Whatever the case, it goes really well with the dried mangoes.

(3:30pm): Passing through Cut Bank, an area noted for “the coldest midwinter temperatures in the country.” It seems pretty desolate. I feel sorry for the people who live out here.

(4pm): Windmills and cows as far as the eye can see. Sigh. If only life could always be this carefree.

(5:30pm): Dozed off for a bit after Shelby, another dull looking town that was (a) the host of the 1923 championship fight between Jack Dempsey and Tom Gibbons and (b) 1 of only 3 locations in the US that has an antipode (which happens to be the Kerguelen Islands). Not even windmills or cows to look at now; mostly just parched-looking farm and grassland, although an occasional mountain or two can be seen in the distance. I’m kind of pissed that I may get screwed out of dinner, though. Apparently, unlike breakfast and lunch, which is first come first serve, they go by taking reservations for dinner, and they totally skipped me. I heard one lady behind me say that dinner is fully booked up and they’re on a waiting list. They probably took one look at me and thought, “Fuck that guy. He ain’t eatin’ shit for dinner.” And I was really looking forward to the pasta, too. I guess I’ll settle for a microwaved vegan burger from the lounge, which my stomach will then hate me for. Fuckers.

Listening to Bizaar by ICP. Haven’t heard this album in forever. Shit still cracks me up.

(6pm): Stopped at a place with rolling hills called Havre. I’m official tired of sitting.

(6:30pm): All the attendants seem to be pretty worn out at this point. Questions especially get on their nerves, and they seemed skeptical about not getting asked about dinner reservations. The good news is, I asked about dinner and got myself put on the waiting list. I’ll be eating around 9pm if I’m lucky. (I may have eaten that vegan burger in vain.) The bad news is that we’re being held back again, this time due to having to “water the train.” It seems the station in North Dakota they usually do this at is closed due to all the flooding, and a westbound train just beat us to the filling area. I’m all but guaranteed to miss my second train now. Options include spending the night in Chicago and waiting for the next train to Michigan or getting bused there if there are enough people who are stranded with me to warrant chartering one. Nobody I’ve talked to yet is going that way, however, so I doubt the latter will happen. I thought trains were supposed to be all efficient and shit. Fuck. Hopefully this Corona will help subdue the enormous amount of irritation that’s building up inside of me.

(7pm): For some reason, the Border Patrol is making rounds on the train. Our tax dollars at worker, right? Pfft. I mean, seriously. What in the hell could they possibly be looking for? It’s not like we’re coming from Ciudad Juarez or anything.

On a lighter note, I saw an Amish lady sporting a fresh-ass pair of Filas. You know it’s sad when the Amish have better kicks than you.

(10pm): Made it to dinner. They ran out of the pasta, though. I ended up going with the children’s mac & cheese and tiramisu for dessert. Ate with a really nice older couple and a young girl who was studying to be an entrepreneur (and who I just discovered is sitting right behind me when she told me the ETA to Chicago is now at least 3 hours past schedule with floss hanging out of my mouth) even though her family just gave her their old business in Washington while they pursued some other opportunity back in North Dakota. Must be nice. I feel like the only unemployed asshole on this train. Sigh. I guess I’ll try to sleep since there’s not much else to do. Good night, cruel, beautiful world.

Saturday July 30, 2011 (4:45am): Managed to sleep a little. Finally ran into some bad weather. The sky is filled with heat lightning. The girl sitting behind me got off in Rugby, ND, the geographical centre of North America. I felt a little sad. Funny how things like that happen. Just because she showed me an ounce of kindness by looking up the ETA in Chicago on her smart phone for me, I was emotionally invested enough in her as a person to almost give a shit that she was gone, while I could seemingly care less about the hundreds of other passengers who are probably equally worth a moment of my fleeting attention.

(7am): Passed through Devils Lake, the site of a “mammoth struggle between thunderbirds and water monsters.” Had eggs and grits again for breakfast. Less enjoyable this time, though. Everyone’s tired and pissed off, especially because were so behind schedule. I don’t know what I’m going to do in Chicago. I hope the station is still open when we arrive; otherwise I’m sleeping on the streets of the Windy City with damn near half of everything I own. It doesn’t help that I've already spent what little money I had on food, either. Damn my insatiable gluttony.

(8am): Listening to Portrait of an American Family and wishing I was 18 again. Almost to Grand Forks, ND—yet another prime piece of real estate important to Native Americans ‘settled’ by the White Man. They don’t call it the ‘empire builder route’ for nothing.

(11am): Just left Fargo, ND, 9 hours behind schedule. Not sure how I’m going to get from Chicago to Detroit now, let alone what time or even day. I probably won’t know anything until I get to Union Station in Chicago. Starting to wish I’d flown.

Passed a couple of hours after breakfast talking to a scruffy looking nerf herder who sounds like he’s got tuberculosis that got on the train at Rugby, ND. I think his name is Tim. I think he might be a vet, too. The train was 5 hours late getting to Rugby, so the poor guy had to sleep outside in the rain. He seems used to it, though. He showed me some pictures he took on his cell phone of all the flood damage near the place he was staying in ND. I offered to buy him a coffee, but he said no and later ate some instant coffee straight out of the jar. Pretty hardcore.

(1pm): We stopped at Detroit Lake, MN, right around noon. What a tease. They must have named it that just to taunt me.

Had lunch with a nice bloke from Chicago and a gentleman from North Carolina. The former was a history major while the latter was in the restaurant business (and who mentioned that he lives in the same home his family has lived in since before the Revolutionary War). I’m starting to get the feeling that most of the people on this train have the time and money to just travel. As for myself, out of the $140 I brought with me, I have $35 left. I’m trying to take the attitude of ‘Whatever happens, happens,’ but I’m such a control freak that the not-knowing is threatening to cause me a fair amount of anxiety. My sanity hinges entirely on what happens after I get to Chicago, so I guess I can relax until then.

(4:15pm): Arrived at St. Paul-Minneapolis’ Midway Station, which is not only midway between the two cities, but the Equator and North Pole as well. Still 9-10 hours behind schedule. An announcement made a little before we arrived said that we wouldn’t have to spend the night at Chicago’s Union Station unless we wanted to, but didn’t provide any more information than that. I assume it means putting us up in a cheap room for the night or throwing us on a bus depending on where we’re going. Connection information may or may not be provided by the time we reach Milwaukie. Sooo informative. Tim got off here. He came up with a good idea for a Twilight Zone episode where a guy is on a train and each stop is the same town no matter how long or how far they travel. That’s kind of how it feels to me right now, like I’m never going to reach my destination. He was good company. I just hope I don’t end up getting TB.

(5:30pm): They announced that since we’re so behind schedule, they’re offering a complimentary dinner to all the passengers, starting with the sleeping cars first and then working their way through coach. I’m not sure what I’ll end up getting, though, since I’m in the last car and they tend to run out of things fairly quickly. But I should look at the bright side; at least I’ll be full while I’m stranded in Chicago.

Speaking of dinner, since I’ve been eating breakfast, lunch and dinner in the dining car, I’ve gotten fairly acquainted with the dining room staff. One lady, Joyce, is really nice. I like it when I’m put at one of her tables. Rudy, on the other, is a complete dick that’s apparently hard of hearing and acts like it’s your fault he can’t hear what you’re saying. It doesn’t help that he stands as far away as possible when taking your order, either. The main host, Magan, is relatively nice, as well; although she’s running on empty at this point and chugging Red Bull just to keep going. I feel bad for them since it’s the same four people working each food service, which usually starts at 6am for breakfast and ends about 10ish for dinner, and with only a couple of hours rest in between.

One interesting aspect of this trip has been observing the conflicting range of emotions and thoughts that have continually arisen, as well as the interplay between external circumstances outside my control and my reactions to them. I began this trip full of high hopes and feeling invincible; now I’m just hoping for a shower and a change of clothes. It’s been a good test of character in a way, seeing how I really act when push comes to shove and I’m confronted with less than ideal circumstances. (I’ve failed some, and passed others.) It’s also been a good opportunity to practice patience. (I just hope I don’t use all my patience up surviving this train ride and then act like a total prick once I finally make it to Michigan.) It’s funny how a simple train ride has become an exploration of what it means to be human, from my social interactions with other people on an emotional level to seeing just how much care this physical body of mine needs.

(6:30pm): I’m starting to get hungry. Yeah, I’d totally resort to cannibalism if I ever had too. Just saying.

(8:30pm): Got lucky. They decided to start with our car, the last, and work their way towards the dining car. Dinner consisted of mashed potatoes covered in some kind of stew (beef?) and a roll. Not bad considered it was free. Ate with a lady from Chicago and a couple from Florida heading to Virginia. They all seemed pleasant enough. On my way out, I said hi to Joyce, who told me to come back in about an hour and she’d hook me up with a free coffee since she knows that I like it. Going back to what I was thinking about earlier, particularly my social interactions with other people, this just goes to show that even small acts of kindness – a ‘Hello’ here and ‘How are you holding up’ there — can and does make a difference (and, for people who need some kind of incentive to be nice, they can pay off too).

Relaxing with some Varttina.

(9:40pm): Just as I was on my way to get my coffee, they announced that everyone with a connection in Chicago will be put up for the night since we’re 10 hours late and everyone will have missed their trains. Not sure where, yet, but I could really use a shower. Finally got some cell phone reception, and according to Annie, it looks like there are 3 trains that run from Chicago to Detroit/Royal Oak tomorrow: one at 7:30am, one at 12:16pm and one at 6pm.

On a completely unrelated note, I like how they point out in the “Empire Builder Route Guide” that, “Milwaukee is the only major city in the U.S. to have elected three socialist mayors.” Hellz Yeah.

Sunday July 31, 2011 (10am): Thankfully, I ended up being one of the first off the train and to customer service at Union Station last night. There was huge line of stranded passengers behind me. Ran into one of them I ate with on the train, a civil engineer on vacation. Amtrak gave us all a room at the Hyatt Regency and $36 for food and cab fare. I went straight the hotel, watched a bit of TV and then went to sleep. I woke up at 9:15am, took a shower and am currently drinking coffee and watching RT News. I plan on heading back to the station in a few minutes to catch my lunch-time train to Royal Oak. If all goes well, I’ll be arriving at my intended destination a little past 7pm (although I wouldn’t be surprised if we got in a lot later than that).

(6:36pm): Sitting in Jackson, MI, getting an additional 30mins behind schedule waiting for a freight train to pass that has ‘priority’ (commodities over people), and that’s on top of leaving Chicago late and at least an additional hour delay due to speed restrictions placed on Amtrak by Norfolk Southern, which owns the tracks between Kalamazoo and Ypsilanti. After everything that happened on the Empire Builder, I’m no longer surprised or pissed off, but resigned to the fact that travelling by train is my punishment for whatever I did to offend the universe. Bumping some Twiztid on my way to the D.

(10:30pm): Destination reached. It was definitely an interesting trip – 2 trains, 10 states and 65hrs of actual travel time – but I’m glad it’s over. I was starting to think I wouldn’t make it.

see you on the other side

2011-07-28T12:27:00.000-07:00

Getting everything packed and ready for my trip to Michigan in a few hours. I'm taking a 51hr train ride from Portland, OR, to Royal Oak, MI, along Amtrak's Empire Builder route. The ride itself, while insanely long, promises to be quite scenic, and I'm looking forward to it. The closer it gets to departure time, however, the more anxious I'm starting to feel. I think part of it is the fact that I'm going to be away longer than usual this time. Instead of the normal 2 week visit, I may be there for a month or more depending on how things go. It'll be nice having more time to spend with my friends and family; but at the same time, I've never been away from Annie for more than a couple of weeks since we set out West almost 8 years ago, and I'm definitely not looking forward to that part. I haven't even left yet and I miss her already. It should be an interesting adventure, though. I can't wait to see where the road will take me. See you on the other side.

a recent conversation i had with a friend about my political views

2011-07-22T15:00:00.000-07:00

I don't know who in the hell would ever be interested in this, but here's a recent conversation I had with a friend of mine over Facebook about my political views. I began the conversation by writing:

Annie told me you think my political views are essentially anarchistic. To clarify, I identify as a democratic socialist, which essentially means that my politically and economic views are more or less democratic in nature. In essence, I'm not completely against government, nor am I a statist in the sense of advocating for a strong central government; I advocate for a more decentralized form of government, as well as a more decentralized and democratic economic system. My philosophy of government is fairly positive, actually. The way I see it, civil society is the establishment of a cohesive social structure in which the interests of the community as a whole are weighed against that of the individual in an effort to maintain social stability. Government, then, is the physical manifestation of community interests. It creates stability through the establishment and enforcement of laws, and acts as a mediator in disputes between groups and individuals within the community. Of course, like most people, I think it's preferable if a balance can be struck where individual freedoms aren't too restricted and the continued survival of the community is reasonably assured, and how far the government should go in meeting the needs of the community is an open question.

The problem is that, for the most part, our government is a manifestation of ruling class interests, that is to say, those who own and control the means of production, finance, natural resources, etc., and not that of the entire community. In fact, the interests of the ruling class, the interests of capital, are often in conflict with those of average citizens. And one of the main issues I have with the current economic system is that its entire legal and political edifice is built upon private property rights. While this may not seem like a bad thing at first glance, it's has the tendency to lead to an extremely top-down structure, with often overpaid owners and CEOs and underpaid workers (the average CEO now makes roughly 275x that of the average worker); and, philosophically, it links private property to liberty, and through private property rights, secures the liberty of the propertied. Consequently, the greater one's property, the greater one's means of self-determination. It should be made here that by 'property,' we're not talking about personal property such as cars or homes, but private property, i.e., means of production, finance, natural resources, etc. Moreover, it tends to idealize and promote greed (self-interest) over altruism (common good), competition over cooperation, privatization over public ownership, etc.

While 'liberals' try to reform the system, they generally don't see anything inherently wrong with system itself. They fail to see that Keynes and Hayek are two sides of the same coin, and that the system has contradictions which naturally lead to boom and bust cycles and financial crises, especially what Marx calls the 'crisis of overproduction,' i.e. the tendency to produce too much of a commodity or too efficient a service for it to be profitable. For example, industrial farmers can produce too much wheat for them to sell at a profit, even though there's no shortage of demand for food (and some people are actually going hungry or starving). According to Hayek, boom and bust cycles are natural and must be endured, and interfering will generally just prolong them or make them worse, unemployment being an unfortunate yet contemporary consequence that'll eventually take care of itself when things recover naturally. Keynes, on the other hand, thought that by pumping money into the system, the government could stimulate aggregate demand and help put people back to work, and their subsequent spending would further help recovery. Both ideas have pros and cons, but they're based on the assumption that capitalism is the the best possible system and should be preserved at all cost. The difference is that Hayek basically believed it'd be fine if left alone, whereas Keynes believed that government could (and should) help it in times of need. They disagree about other things as well, but the real problem is people and their unpredictability.

If people are unemployed, having their homes foreclosed on, unhappy and generally disillusioned with the present system, there could be instability and eventually some kind of revolution. If trying to help by pumping money into the economy and creating work projects makes things worse, not doing anything could lead to lots of really pissed off and unhappy people. This has happened time and again, from France and Britain, to the Colonies, Russia and India just to name a few. I don't think that socialism can be forced onto people through a violent revolution by a small band of professional revolutionaries and their followers, however. Like democracy, for socialism to have any chance of being successful anywhere, it must be an experiment conducted with the consent of the majority of the people. Positive change rarely comes from the barrel of a gun, and not all revolutions are violent, e.g., think of Gandhi's nonviolent challenge of British rule, for example. Hence, my position is to advocate for a move towards socialism via democratic means, meaning that I think it can only be a successful experiment if it's done with the consent of the majority of people (unless, of course, shit hits the fan and things collapsed on their own).

I also tend to border on being a social democrat (or a reformist) in that sense; but I think pure reformism has its own limitations in that the we can do our best to enact reforms and try to limit their power and the damage done by the 'enlightened self-interest' of capital and powerful corporations, but it's essentially a lost cause seeing as how corporations themselves are now considered 'natural persons' and have managed to acquire certain constitutionally protected rights. A company and a CEO can get away with things no average working class citizen could, and that's because the legal superstructure is built decidedly in their favour—always has been considering that the Founding Fathers themselves were mainly wealthy, ruling class elites, and the 'aristocracy of the moneyed corporations' that Thomas Jefferson was so worried about was simply the next evolutionary step in a long line of wealthy, ruling class elites. Basically, all this is really saying is that the game is rigged. To fix these problems, we need to change the rules; and to change the rules, we need to change the system.

And while I'm not entirely sure how such a system could be successfully implemented, I like David Schweickart's ideas on what he calls 'Economic Democracy' (e.g., see "Economic Democracy: A Worthy Socialism That Would Really Work"). I also think Peter Kropotkin and Edward Bellamy had some good (albeit slightly outdated) ideas in works like Conquest of Bread and Looking Backward. I've also seen some promising examples of successful worker-owned companies whose dynamics are a lot different than the typical top-down structure, e.g., Alvarado Street Bakery, Big Carrot, Brainpark, Cooperative Home Care Associates, MONDRAGON and, to some extent, Weirton Steel, even though it eventually went out of business.

Another issue I have is the potential exploitation inherent in the system itself. In the Marxist sense, at least, exploitation refers to the worker's lack of ownership and/or distributive control over the surplus created by their labour. (That's why Marx defined slavery, feudalism and capitalism as exploitative systems of production, i.e., in each, the producers/workers have no ownership and/or distributive control over the surplus created by their labour). In this sense, exploitation is an inherent part of the capitalist mode of production, which in turn, ties into Marx's theory of alienation. It's rather complicated, and I don't fully understand everything Marx wrote on the subject as much of it is very abstract, but in short, exploitation is the idea that the capitalist profits far more from a worker's labour than the worker does, and it doesn't really matter whether it's voluntary or not.

Adam Smith et al. assumed that labour creates wealth (surplus value). But according to Marx, in a capitalist system, labour itself becomes a commodity, an object that's bought and sold on the market. Moreover, due to private ownership of the means of production, the product of the worker's labour doesn’t legally belong to them (alienation), nor does the surplus value their labour creates (unpaid labour), which is kept by the capitalist. Consequently, the product of the worker's labour becomes a commodity that's divorced from the labour expended on its production, thereby obscuring the social relationship between producer and consumer (commodity fetishism). Furthermore, the employer has the ability to increase their profit exponentially by reinvesting the surplus value extracted from the worker's labour into their company while the labourer is forced to spend their (more often than not) meager wages on the necessities of life such as food, clothing, shelter, etc.

I should stop here, however, and note that proving this kind of exploitation is rather difficult, especially when it comes to the various labour theories of value (the idea that commodities have a value that's relative to the amount of socially necessary labour-time involved in their production, as well as to their use value and exchange value) vs. the marginal utility theory (the idea that the value of commodities are determined by their marginal utility). Marx's theory of exploitation is derived from his labour theory of value, which is itself a critique of both Smith's and Ricardo's labour theories of value; but the labour theory of value itself has since been challenged by the marginal utility theory. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about either yet to declare a winner in this particular debate; although I will say that I think even if Marx's theory proves to be incorrect, his dialectic method of analysis still has a great deal to offer our modern understanding of economics. Critiques, by their very nature, reveal weaknesses, and can help open up discussions on subjects that otherwise would go undiscussed.

As for anarchism itself, it's true that I'm sympathetic to certain aspects of it as a political philosophy. For example, I agree with its anti-authoritarianism and the idea that citizens shouldn't be coerced into any kind of 'social contract.' This type of free association is in direct contrast to the Hobbesian idea of the social contract, in which, by way of your birth into that particular state, it's assumed that you've entered into said social contract. (Hobbes thought that people are naturally aggressive and violent and that they should give their obedience to an unaccountable sovereign in exchange for relative security.) It's little more than an abstract ideal, however, and not an actual contract since it's assumed that one's morally obligated to obey the state without any actually agreement on the part of the citizen. Anarchists, on the other hand, believe strongly in the right of free association and self-determination, and strongly distrust an armed state that's ready to take away their freedom whenever it likes (e.g., imposing 'laws' that restrict their movement, associations, certain behaviours, etc.). There are many different kinds of anarchists, however, and some, such as certain 'philosophical anarchists,' aren't so much against the existence of a state as they are an expansive, authoritarian state, i.e., they'd be content with a more decentralized and minimalist state that was more directly democratic and recognized that it could be eliminated via revolution if it became too oppressive and over-stepped its bounds; while others see the state as a necessary evil that they're not morally obligated to obey when its laws conflict with their individual autonomy, etc.

Whatever the case, I wouldn't classify myself as an anarchist simply for the fact that I'm not inherently against a state per se; although I'd definitely like to radically change the organizational structure of the present one, and I hope that one day we can eliminate the need for such a social structure in the future. In that, I suppose I'm closer to the philosophical anarchist or the anarcho-syndicalist than I am the purely anti-state anarchist. Like most philosophical sophisticated anarchists, I'm not against organizational structures as much as I am inherently authoritarian and repressive ones that are designed more to protect property from people than people in general.

My friend, James, who's fairly well-educated, relatively successful and leans more towards libertarianism, replied with:

I must say, this was quite the insight. I don't agree with all points but I have a firmer understanding of where you stand with regard to government and economics. [...] I think the capitalist and worker dynamic you allude to is alive and well but I don't really see any problem with it. Without the capitalist, in general, I don't think that most workers would have a way for their labor to be utilized. The capitalist sets up the system/factory/whatever and people have the option to work for the capitalist (or not).

Pure capitalism puts far too much power in the hands of the capitalist. We've come up with a controlled and regulated form of capitalism that puts rights back in the worker's hands (minimum wage, standards of treatment, etc). Workers offer their services to capitalists and capitalists can choose to accept or not (and vice versa).

It's not a bad system (not perfect either) but socialism itself I don't know is the answer. Eurosocialism isn't the answer either. I don't know that there is a perfect system out there, to be honest, that could work on a massive scale. But capitalism so far seems to work the best. We'll see if that's true in the long run.

To clarify my position a bit further, as well as address some of the counterpoints that were raised, I responded:

I figured you wouldn't agree with much of it, but I'm glad that it's given you a better understanding of where I stand. I should also mention that I don't hate capitalism; I appreciate the level of economic and technological advancements it's fostered, and it's only through these advances in equipment, methods and overall efficiency of production that socialism is possible. Marx was the first to admit that.

I also don't believe there's a 'perfect system'; all economic and political ideologies are going to be flawed in some way, and even socialism would have its own contradictions (dialectic relationships are inherent in any kind of system characterized by change, nothing is ever truly static). The issues I have with the present system are what I've mentioned above, along with other things I didn't have time to touch upon, such as capitalism's need for constant growth (which is inherently unsustainable) and how it actually creates structural unemployment, which hardly existed on a mass scale before it became the dominant mode of production.

So while I think they you make some valid points in regard to how the system current operates, I'd say that it's not working as well as you might suppose. For example, you say that most workers wouldn't have a way for their labour to be utilized without capital, but one could just as easily argue that their labour isn't able to be full realized precisely because of capital since (1) capital dictates most of the terms and (2) capital benefits from high-unemployment (i.e., it creates an insecure labour pool that can be hired and fired at will, at whatever wage the employer deigns to give). Moreover, if capital wasn't so concentrated into such few hands, it's possible that more workers would not only be able to utilize their labour, but would have more of a chance to profit from it.

To put it another way, under the present system, opportunity is essentially privatized along with everything else the capitalists and free-market advocates can get their hands on, making it just as concentrated as wealth (and, if you've noticed, income inequality is rising while median family income is lower now that it was 30 years ago). Sure, things have improved since the 1900s, when workers (which included large numbers of children) essentially had no rights whatsoever, and were forced to work over 12 hour days in absolutely appalling conditions, but that's been due to the struggle of workers themselves, not due to the benevolence of capitalism. Moreover, there's been an on-going and relatively successful push by the agents of capital to strip labour of their hard-won gains, most visibly (and successfully) against unions.

Capitalism isn't a 'bad' system, but I think we've definitely outgrown it, just like we did feudalism. And while socialism isn't going to be a perfect replacement if it ever takes its place, I think it has the potential to revolutionize society much the same way feudalism and capitalism have. For me, socialism isn't so much about the equality of wealth or outcomes as it is the de-privatization (i.e., socialization) of opportunity and the weakening of class antagonisms and hierarchies arising out of social relations unique to capitalism and other predominately exploitative systems. As Marx wrote in The Poverty of Philosophy, "Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist."

In this, you may think I'm some naive and uneducated idealist who blames 'society' for my misfortunes and lack of opportunity, but I can assure you that my views are as educated and rational as they are conditioned by personal experiences living and working in four states across the US; and it's out of an optimistic hope that humanity will eventually get its collective head out of its ass before its current infatuation with greed and competition destroys itself that I take such a position. But as you say, we'll see if that's true in the long run.

a crazy letter i wrote to a friend of mine over three years that i found while going through some old things. (i can't believe i actually sent it.)

2011-07-13T16:27:00.000-07:00

May 1, 2008

Dear E___,

I have found, to both my happiness and dismay, that there are a great deal of similarities between the man in the mousehole and I. (I must confess that I have recently been reading Dostoyevsky's Notes From Underground, and I find it to be the most beautiful and terrifying thing I have ever read... and I am not saying this out of any kind of pseudo-pretentiousness; it speaks to me in a way that no other piece of literature has ever spoken to me before). Not unlike him, I had always thought that knowledge and intelligence were the keys to happiness and victory—the more intelligent we were, the more answers we would have; the more answers we had, the happier and more victorious we would be. And much to my dismay, I have found that this assumption has not proven to be true. I have since found that my intelligence, if you wish to even call it that, makes me content and miserable all at the same time; I am content, for example, in my knowledge, my self-awareness if you will, that sets me apart from the fool who acts without thinking, and yet that thinking more often than not prevents me from acting at all! This honest self-analysis that the person I envision I could be, the person that I desire to be, is little more than a mirage eats away at my sanity; I can see it so clearly, my imagination runs wild and the experience of my triumphs are so real and seemingly within my grasp that I almost leap into the world and give myself to this delicious dream completely, and yet it is a goal that I know I can never reach because it is simply a trick of my mind—the ghost of a long departed idealism that once captured my heart. I am as cowardly as I am courageous.

In reality, this thing that I loathe to call my intelligence simply alienates me even further from the rest of society; and even though I am quite an unsociable person by nature, I still get lonely and crave the kind of companionship that the Buddha called 'admirable friendship.' When we first met, I saw a lot of similarities between you and I (not that I thought you were a miserable person who failed to act out of a perplexing array of philosophical conundrums such as myself, only that you did not seem to truly be happy but in search of happiness). I might not have been at your intellectual level (I am certainly not an 'educated' man nor do I have the benefit of attending an institution of higher learning), but I felt that I was sufficiently intelligent enough to spark your interest and your friendship. (In fact, embarrassingly enough, I even entertained the idea that perhaps one day, we would become the best of friends.) Yet, after a short time, I realized that it was merely wishful thinking on my part. My realization was confirmed (painfully I might add) time and time again, like, for example, the last two times that I attempted to gather the courage to engage you in conversation. On each occasion, you gave me what perhaps you thought to be a clever excuse to prematurely end our (admittedly awkward) interaction in the form of an overwhelming urge to go to the book store, remember? (Perhaps you really did just want to go to the book store and it had nothing to do with me, but then I wonder why you did not invite me along if that were indeed the case. I like books too. Either way, I found it terribly insulting—especially on the day of my birthday when not only did I go to a job interview and the owner not show up, but then on the way home, I was greeted with a double-dose of rejection when you excused yourself to go to the book store.) The worst part is that I realize it was most likely my fault, that it is my personality that puts you off, and that it was my personality that drove you to make such excuses out of concern for my fragile intellect as much as your own boredom.

As I think about what I am writing, I can imagine you thinking while reading this, "What drivel; what absolute nonsense!" I can even imagine you showing this to some of you other friends while sharing a bottle of wine and having a good laugh at my expense, but to be honest, I do not care (OK, that is not entirely true; I do care, but there is nothing I can do about it so I have to tell myself that I do not care while secretly hoping that you will find my words amazingly refreshing and insightful, so much so that you will at once desire to invite me over for a cup of coffee and a long chat about our innermost thoughts. But I am not so deluded as to think this will actually happen, and in all probability you will have a good laugh at my expense. So be it!). I confess that if I were to receive a letter of this sort, I would probably do the same myself. I cannot begrudge you too much then, can I? Ha! Of course I can, and I probably will; nevertheless, I hope that you will at least see, behind all of my existential gibberish and this admittedly poor attempt at writing in a cliché Dostoyevsky-esque style, what it is that I am so desperately trying to say. In other words, I am sorry that we could not have been better friends, and as I try to understand why the majority of my friendships turn out the way that they do, I realize that I am doing so through the eyes of a man in a mousehole. In fact, that is how I see the whole world. For good or for ill, it is the only perspective that I have ever known without ever knowing it until know. Perhaps now you are wondering why I have written this, and all I can offer is that sometimes being truthful can be therapeutic; but more than that, I hope that you will at least understand me from an intellectual standpoint. Being a man that is familiar with the dialectic method, I know that if anyone can make sense of this gibberish and glimpse the confusion and clarity that is within my heart, you can. I am not sure that you want to, but I am willing to overlook that fact for the sake of the 'sublime and beautiful.' No, that is poor joke that I have borrowed from our dear friend Dostoyevsky; the truth is, it is my hope that this confession will finally rid me of the humility of rejection that I feel, imaginary or not, which rises like bile in my throat every time I am reminded of you.

Perhaps this 'man in a mousehole' phase will pass in time and I will see things from a different perspective, but for now this is something that I must accept. I must also accept that as pretentious as I sometimes find you to be, I admire and respect you all the same. And, since I am being completely honest, what pains me the most in this world is to be spurned by those that I look up to and admire. While I am no stranger to having others reject me or write me off, to having others not understand me, to being seen by others as nothing more than an eccentric anomaly that is tragically out of place, I am not used to having this be done by someone who I think is actually worth getting to know. It is painful and humiliating and absolutely maddening to a person such as myself—a person with intelligence, self-respect, and worst of all, stubborn pride. What is even harder to bear is admitting it, whether to myself or to my perceived transgressor. In fact, this is turning out to be one of the hardest things I have ever done (OK, that is bit of an exaggeration, but it certainly not an easy task for me in the least), and we shall see if I manage to gather the courage to send this to you at all. (And, if you are reading this, then it is safe to say that I did and my judgment did not get the better of me before I managed to send it.) But regardless of what you think or feel after reading this and reflecting upon it, for me it has been cathartic in the true sense of the word, and for that I truly thank you.

Sincerely,

Jason Merritt

so i had fun at church today....

2011-07-10T20:42:00.000-07:00

I was sitting at home this morning, drinking a cup of coffee and rather bored, when I decided to attend Mass at the Greek Orthodox church near my house. I'm not exactly sure why, but I think part of it may have been the fact that I've been reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov lately, in which the Russian Orthodox Church plays a prominent role.

Apparently, I picked a good day to go as the bishop of Atlanta, Metropolitan Alexios, was visiting and gave a surprisingly good sermon based on Mt 8:5-13 despite it being rather 'faith' heavy (I'm generally what you'd call a rationalist). I also got anointed with some myrrh from the Myrrh-streaming "Hawaiian" Iveron Icon of the Theotokos, which I guess just happened to be making the rounds of Orthodox churches in the Pacific Northwest. It was definitely a surreal experience for me.

Only one person there happened to know that I wasn't Orthodox (or even Christian for that matter) as we'd met before at the annual Greek festival, but he didn't seem to care. In fact, he invited me out to lunch after the service and we had a nice discussion (well, he did most of the talking) about everything from The Matrix to his trip to Japan to what the 'icon' of the communion ritual truly represents. The last was especially enlightening.

I half expect to burst into flames whenever I walk into a church considering the kind of person I used to be, or at least the kind of person I imagined myself to be (think Damien from The Omen), but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed myself and how welcomed I felt. I suppose much of that was due to the company; but whatever the case, I'm glad I went.

google+: possible 'facebook killer'?

2011-07-09T06:55:00.000-07:00

Almost everyone I know talking about Google+ seems pretty psyched about it and its potential to revolutionize social media. For example, check out this discussion between Trademark CEO Dwight Zahringer and my friend, Brian, about Google+ being a possible "Facebook killer."

Personally, I'm a bit skeptical as to whether it'll be as revolution social media-wise as they're predicting. That said, I agree with Brian that Google+ has a much cleaner look and simpler interface than Facebook, especially when it comes to privacy controls. Combined that with Facebook's comparatively complicated interface and increasingly more intrusive ads (not to mention their ever-changing privacy policy, etc.), plus Twitter's problems with spam, I think it has a good chance of replacing both as the default social media network for most people at some point.

The fact that you can actually edit your comments is another bonus. That's enough to sell me.

In the end, I think it'll all depend on how Google plays it, especially how well they integrate new features and services (it's pretty bare bones at the moment) and how quickly they open Google+ to the public. I think there's enough buzz out there right now to get people to join, and pretty much everyone I know uses Google and has a Gmail account already, so I don't think it'll be that hard to get people to eventually switch. The only question is whether they'll stay.

I think that predominately tech savvy people will find it more appealing at the beginning. But as Brian points out, the Circle feature definitely has a lot of promise; and if Google plays their cards right, I think it'll be extremely popular with a variety of people since it allows you to have a lot of sub-networks (e.g., family, friends, co-workers, etc.) within your larger network with little-to-no crossover. Even the beta version makes sharing things will certain people, and them alone, much easier than on Facebook or Twitter.

The obvious advantage to this is that it'll help people consolidate their social networks into one, eliminating the need to have a network dedicated just for work (e.g., LinkedIn), another one just for friends (e.g., Facebook), etc. Google+ puts you more in control of your content by giving you the choice of which Circles you share each post, picture, video, etc. with as you post them, which is something Facebook should have done a long time ago (along with the ability to edit comments). You can limit which groups see certain content on Facebook as well, but it's nowhere near as intuitive.

At least for moment, it looks as if Facebook is going to have to play catch-up with the beta version of Google+. And I'm guessing that if they don't come up with something to rival the convenience of Circles before Google+ is open to the public, they may have a serious challenger on their hands.

growth for the sake of growth isn't a sustainable model

2011-07-06T11:02:00.000-07:00

Personally, I don't think that growth simply for the sake of growth is a sustainable model. While economic growth isn't necessarily a bad thing (as it tends to promote higher quality education and standards of living), it's not without its dangers, especially when it forms the very basis of our economic system.

Generally speaking, for national economies to continually experience growth, they need access to natural resources, a supply of relatively cheap labour and, more importantly, to eventually expand their markets. For many countries, especially those with limited space and natural resources of their own, this has been done through imperialist policies. The most blatant example being fascist Italy, where Benito Mussolini, with the help of Giovanni Gentile, wrote that:

For Fascism, the growth of empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite a sign of decadence. Peoples which are rising, or rising again after a period of decadence, are always imperialist; and renunciation is a sign of decay and of death.

Of course, this doesn't mean that imperialism is the only effective means of acquiring natural resources and cheap labour, or expanding markets; but historically speaking, it's been one of the most popular, as well as one of the most effective (which is probably why it's so popular).

The focus on continual economic growth also requires a continual increase in consumption, and in turn, continually expanding markets and/or an increase in population to create and sustain such growth. This, naturally, tends to lead to consumerism, which has its own downsides, such as environmental degradation, the depletion of natural resources and the promotion of unnecessary and even harmful jobs as long as they contribute to growth.

In addition, things like sharing and reusing are actively discouraged by capital and the methodological individualism that underlies consumerism (and capitalism in general), which slows growth even though things like Portland's 'tool libraries' would arguably help people and the environment more than coercing them to purchase their own equipment or whatever simply to stimulate production.

In essence, I completely agree with C. A. L'Hirondelle that:

Blanket-over-head advocacy of jobs, jobs, jobs, ignores that

A) many jobs are wasteful, unnecessary or outright harmful (e.g. workin' hard at snaring new generations of smokers);

B) many 'non-jobs' such as being an unpaid carer, or doing volunteer work ---activities that are often essential to human health and happiness---are considered 'unproductive' according to conventional economic measures such as the GDP.

C) the idea of green jobs and green growth is just greenwashing the ugly roots, facts and outcomes of the economic growth imperative.

(I think B is an especially important point.)

I also get the feeling that things like 'green economy,' 'job growth' and 'sustainability' are little more than buzzwords being used by the current administration, as well as others, to promote the continuation of an inherently unsustainable system at a time when many are unemployed, disillusioned and beginning to question the status quo.

Sure, historically speaking, capitalism and the technological advancements it's fostered have arguably provided a greater standard of living for a large portion of the population in what amounts to the blink of an eye. But the system is designed to give people what they want, regardless of the consequences, and places profit in their production and distribution above everything else. Why? Well, for one thing, I'm inclined to agree with Martin Luther King Jr. when, on April 4, 1967, he said:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

The way I see it, we really need to start looking at capitalism and what we're being told by businesses, politicians and the mainstream media more critically before we do even more irreparable harm to the planet, not to mention our future on it. Unfortunately, I think my friend, Joe, was right when he wrote:

Yeah, and a lot of sustainability issues are dealt with strictly in terms of material causes (in the Aristotelian sense). The teleological, efficient and formal causes for capitalist bullshit go unchecked. You can't base your economy on monetary profit without it leading to cancerous growth of the economy or without completely crashing it and starving people with austerity measures.

I'm sure there are a lot of people who'd probably disagree with me and my predominately critical/pessimistic point of view, but that's the way I currently see things. I'm fairly certain that things need to change, and I mean seriously change, for us to survive another millennium, let alone to truly flourish as a society. I'm talking about the need for a radical shift in human consciousness and/or a socio-political revolution on an epic scale here, people.

sam harris: a neo-buddhist after my own heart

2011-07-01T17:18:00.001-07:00

Sam Harris is by far my favourite of the so-called 'New Atheists.' I especially like his approach to trying to bring things like science, spirituality and reason together, and I think he's more or less on the right track when it comes to these kinds of things, i.e., having no problem being a vocal atheist and critic of religion while at the same time being open to the fact that people have 'spiritual' experiences. As he wrote in "10 Myths - And 10 Truths - About Atheism":

There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly. What atheists don’t tend to do is make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about the nature of reality on the basis of such experiences. There is no question that some Christians have transformed their lives for the better by reading the Bible and praying to Jesus. What does this prove? It proves that certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct can have a profound effect upon the human mind. Do the positive experiences of Christians suggest that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity? Not even remotely — because Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists regularly have similar experiences.

Being a 'Buddhist' myself, I also like the fact that he's actually practiced meditation, and comes at things like vipasana meditation from the standpoint of neuroscience, de-emphasising their strictly religious roots in an attempt to move more towards developing "a scientific account of the contemplative path" (A Contemplative Science).

I think that if there were more people like Sam Harris who were interested in what Buddhism and other contemplative paths have to offer from a scientific standpoint, we could easily create a contemplative science of our own utilizing the latest in modern technology and knowledge of how the brain functions. For example, I think his latest blog post does a great job of pointing out the importance and usefulness of meditation and transcendent experiences:

My friend Jerry Coyne has posted a response to my recent video Q&A where he raises a few points in need of clarification about meditation, transcendence, spiritual experience, etc.:

This discussion continues at 21:25, when Sam criticizes atheists, scientists and secularists for failing to “connect to the character of those experiences” and for failing to “give some alternate explanation for them that is not entirely deflationary and demeaning and gives some warrant to the legitimacy of those experiences.” He implies that these experiences are somehow beyond the purview of science. I find that strange given Sam’s repeated emphasis on the value of science in studying mental states.

I’m not quite sure what he’s getting at here, and he doesn’t elaborate, but I don’t see why giving credence to these über-transcendent experiences as experiences says anything about a reality behind them. Yes, they might indeed change one’s personality and view of the world, but do any of us deny that?

I had similar experiences on various psychoactive substances when I was in college, and some of them were even transformative. The problem is not with us realizing that people can feel at one with the universe or, especially, at one with God; the problem comes with us taking this as evidence for some supernatural reality. What does it mean to say that an experience is legitimate? If someone thinks that he saw Jesus, I am prepared to believe that he thought that he saw Jesus, but I am not prepared to say that he really did see Jesus, nor that that constitutes any evidence for the existence of Jesus.

So my question for Sam would be this: “So if we accept that people do have these seriously transcendent experiences, what follows from that—beyond our simple desire to study the neurobiology behind them?”

These are all good points. I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that transcendent experiences are “beyond the purview of science.” On the contrary, I think they should be studied scientifically. And I don’t believe that these experiences tell us anything about the cosmos (I called Deepak Chopra a “charlatan” for making unfounded claims of this sort). Nor do they tell us anything about history, or about the veracity of scripture. However, these experiences do have a lot to say about the nature of the human mind—not about its neurobiology, per se, but about its qualitative character (both actual and potential).

So, to answer Jerry’s question: yes, many things follow from these transcendent experiences. Here’s a short list:

1. It is possible to feel much better (in every sense of “better”) than one tends to feel. It is, in fact, possible to be utterly at ease in the world—and such ease is synonymous with relaxing, or fully transcending, the apparent boundaries of the “self.” Those who have never experienced such peace of mind will view the preceding sentences as yet another eruption of “mumbo jumbo” on my part. And yet it is phenomenologically true to say that such states of well-being are there to be discovered. I am not claiming to have experienced all relevant states of this kind. But there are people who appear to have experienced none of them—and many of these people are atheists.

This is not surprising. After all, experiences of self-transcendence are generally only sought and interpreted in a religious or “spiritual” context—and these are precisely the phenomena that tend to increase a person’s faith. How many Christians who have felt self-transcending love for their neighbors in church, or body-dissolving bliss in prayer, decide to ditch Christianity? Not many, I would guess. How many people who never have experiences of this kind (no matter how hard they try) become atheists? I don’t know, but there is no question that these states of mind act as a kind of filter: they get counted in support of ancient dogma by the faithful; and their absence seems to give my fellow atheists yet another reason to doubt religion.

Reading the comments on Jerry’s blog exposes the problem in full. There are several people there who have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about—and they take this to mean that I am not making sense. Of course, religious people often present the opposite problem: they tend to think they know exactly what I’m talking about, in so far as it can seem to support one religious doctrine or another. Both these orientations present impressive obstacles to understanding.

2. There is a connection between feeling transcendently good and being good. Not all good feelings have an ethical valence, of course. And there are surely pathological forms of ecstasy. I have no doubt, for instance, that many suicide bombers feel extraordinarily good just before detonating themselves in a crowd. But there are forms of mental pleasure that seem intrinsically ethical. In fact, there are states of mind for which phrases like “boundless love and compassion” do not seem overblown. Of course, it is possible for a person not to know that this is a potential of the human mind, or to imagine that such experiences must be signs of psychopathology. Again, people who think this way seem to gravitate toward atheism. And it is decidedly inconvenient for the forces of Reason that if a person wakes up tomorrow feeling “boundless love and compassion” the only people likely to acknowledge the legitimacy of his experience will be representatives of one or another religion (or New Age cult).

3. Certain patterns of thought and attention prevent us from accessing deeper (and wiser) states of well-being. Transcendent experiences, in so far as they are usually temporary, are often surrounded by a penumbra of other states and insights. Just as one can glimpse deeper strata of well-being, and briefly see the world by their logic, one can notice the impediments to feeling this way in each subsequent moment. There is no question that all of these mental states have neurophysiological correlates—but the neurophysiology often has subjective correlates. Understanding the first-person side of the equation is essential for understanding the phenomenon. Everything worth knowing about the human mind, good and bad, is taking place inside the brain. But that doesn’t mean that there is nothing to know about the qualitative character of these events. Yes, qualitative character can be misleading, and certain ways of talking about it can manufacture fresh misunderstandings about the mind. But this doesn’t mean that we can stop talking about the nature of conscious experience. At one level, there is nothing else to talk about.

4. Certain “spiritual” experiences can help us understand science. There are insights that one can have through meditation (that is, very close observation of first-person data) that line up rather well with what we know must be true at the level of the brain. I’ll mention just two, which I have written about before and will return to in subsequent posts: (1) the ego/self is a construct and a cognitive illusion; (2) there is no such thing as free will. There is simply no question that these statements are well grounded scientifically (in fact, it is very difficult to even imagine a physical account of the human mind that would suggest their falsity at this point). So, here are two facts which science gives us good reason to believe, and which I believe we can know through introspection, but which seem quite paradoxical and troubling to most people.

As for the “various psychoactive substances” Jerry mentions, I’ll address the risks and rewards of these in my next post.

At this point, I should probably make it explicitly clear that my admiration for Sam Harris isn't due to his vocal support of atheism nor to his vocal criticism of religion; but because of his scientific approach to contemplative issues. I think he finds a good balance between his atheistic/materialistic worldview and the fact that people have and can benefit from these kinds of spiritual experiences, something that's definitely missing from other 'New Atheist' writers such as Richard Dawkins.

philosophizing at 6am

2011-06-27T09:12:00.000-07:00

Walking home this morning, I found myself reluctantly agreeing with Ivan Karamazov (from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel, The Brothers Karamazov) that it's more difficult to love another human being face-to-face than in the abstract: that our immediate perceptions and prejudices make any kind of truly 'Christlike' love difficult, if not impossible; whereas it's easier to idealize humanity and love them from a distance, in the abstract, because people can be so annoying, brutish, cruel, stupid, ugly, etc. And any expression of this so-called Christlike love is more likely just a type of 'self-laceration' we inflict upon ourselves as a form of charity imposed by duty as penance. (If so, penance for what?) This then reminded me of something I recently read about the dilemma faced by the Freudian socialists who wondered (and perhaps still do) whether the aggressive instinct, which Freud thought rooted in/part of the death drive or Thanatos, was part of our nature. Eros, love, libido, or whatever you want to call it, was seen by Freud as a constructive and binding force (an idealized form being Ivan's conception of Christlike love); and building on this innate drive, a socialist society (or, in an idealized form, the kingdom of God on earth) can, at least theoretically, arise. But throw the death drive into the mix, with its aggressive and self-destructive tendencies, and now you have a contradictory force that opposes and even undermines this constructive and binding force (which is like the torturous cruelty that Ivan uses to question the reality of truly Christlike love). A Hegelian or Marxist might see these two conflicting forces in the context of a dialectical relationship, which can be seen as a mechanism for change and progression in both the individual as well as society (and even a socialist society would have contradictions that'd be resolved), neither giving either force an absolute existence nor denying them completely; but Ivan seems to take the existence of the latter to refute the possibility of the former. Of course, since he's dealing with Christlike love and not Freud's libido, it's easily to see why he'd do this since it's the love of an immortal God, which is something that lies far beyond the range of his Euclidean (i.e., earthly) mind, he's juxtaposing to the material reality (and suffering) he's experiencing. From one point of view, this isn't unlike a literary/psychoanalytic version of the theoretical conflict between utopian and scientific socialism being played out in the form of an abstract, internal dialogue. Then again, I'm not sure any of this makes any sense since I've been awake for 24 hrs and I don't know a damn thing about Freudian psychoanalysis.

yeah, we're probably fucked...

2011-06-21T17:44:00.000-07:00

Sigh, yet another doom-and-gloom scenario linked to climate change and our collective impact on the environment, this time courtesy of the BBC in the form of an article, "World's oceans in 'shocking' decline." The gist of it is, a 'panel of expert scientists' have concluded that if we don't change our behaviour right now, our oceans are basically fucked.

Personally, I agree that we need to change our behaviour, particularly the ways we produce our means of subsistence, but I doubt that we're going to in time to prevent our actions from doing even more irreparable harm to the planet. Capitalism has become the dominate economic system worldwide, and with it, rampant consumerism, depletion of natural resources and industrial pollution on a global scale. The market itself is designed to give people what they want, regardless of the consequences, and it's unsustainable.

Sure, historically speaking, capitalism and the technological advancements it's fostered have arguably provided a greater standard of living for a large portion of the population in what amounts to the blink of an eye; but the system is amoral (if not immoral), and it's basically turned us into a bunch of greedy parasites intent on killing our host. Barring a radical shift in human consciousness and/or a socio-political revolution on an epic scale, I'm pretty sure we are fucked.

give evolution a chance

2011-06-06T08:50:00.000-07:00

To be honest, I'm a bit surprised by the number of people who still deny the validity of evolution. At this point, Darwin's theory of evolution is fairly well-proven; it's basically a fact. And despite what critics may say, all the evidence thus far (e.g., DNA, fossil, observations of evolution, etc.) supports it 100%. It'd only take one 'Precambrian rabbit' to turn the theory of evolution on its head; but so far, not a single piece of evidence has been found to contradict and/or disprove it.

Moreover, most of the arguments I've seen against evolution are based on completely specious grounds, such as Chuck Missler's argument (which conflates evolution with abiogenesis, by the way) that, apart from God's direct intervention, life from non-life is impossible. However, there are other logical, and more importantly, demonstrable, explanations for the beginning of life on Earth than God, and there are numerous models of abiogenesis currently being explored by scientists.

Don't get me wrong, if someone wants to believe that life on this planet began as an act of God, that's fine with me; but it certainly hasn't been proven that (1) organic molecules can't form via natural chemical reactions (which the Miller–Urey experiment has done), or that (2) those molecules can't form a protocell. It's true that a protocell has yet to be synthesized, but it's still a relatively new field and scientists all over the world are currently working on it, so I think it's a bit early to count them out just yet.

I know that this is a touchy subject in that it starts to encroach upon people's religious beliefs, and I'm not trying to convince anyone that God doesn't exist via evolution (and, by extension, trying to use evolution as a unified theory against theistic or creationist accounts); but at the same time, I don't want people's belief in God to blind them to the very real evidence of how life evolved, and possibly even began.

Science isn't perfect, and it certainly doesn't have all the answers, but that shouldn't stop us from considering the enormous amount of knowledge that science has already given us, even if it happens to challenge our deepest-held beliefs.

I'm not trying to promote scientism here, but saying things like the Earth is 6,000-10,000 years old when geological and radiometric evidence strongly suggests otherwise, that evolution doesn't take place when DNA evidence, fossil records and direct observations strongly suggest otherwise, or that organic molecules can't possibly form via natural chemical reactions when experiments strongly suggests otherwise, simply because that's what a certain set of religious beliefs with absolutely no supporting evidence say is hard for me to understand, let alone defend.

Now, it can certainly be argued that there's some kind of divine intelligence at work here, a type of cosmic architect that we call God determining the laws of nature so that we were destined to be here from the very beginning of the Big Bang; but at the same time, these things can also have purely natural causes and don't necessarily need a creator or architect. More importantly, regardless of whether or not an all-powerful being is behind these natural processes, we can, and should, observe these processes at work in the universe and learn what we can about them.

lost cause

2011-05-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

Today, someone posted this popular quote from Thomas Jefferson as their Facebook status: "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of the moneyed corporations, which dare already challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

I can't say I disagree with the sentiment. Unfortunately, any attempt to do so within the context of the capitalist system itself is almost assuredly doomed to failure, as history has shown. Even the likes of Thomas Jefferson couldn't stop the ascendancy of the 'aristocracy of the moneyed corporations' and their takeover of the American political system, especially those of private financial institutions.

As for the 'laws of our country,' the legal superstructure is built decidedly in their favour—always has been considering that the Founding Fathers themselves were mainly wealthy, ruling class elites, and the 'aristocracy of the moneyed corporations' was simply the next evolutionary step in a long line of wealthy, ruling class elites.

Like most forms of government centred around private property rights, the basic principle behind the establishment of our form of representative democracy had more to do with the ruling elites wanting to protect the small minority of property owners (including themselves) from the majority of the propertyless than anything else. As James Madison put it in Federalist No. 10, "… the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society."

The only real distinction is that the Founders were holders of landed property while corporations are holders of capital, which for all intents and purposes are the same thing (i.e., both are property). What people like Jefferson seem to fail to realize is that having a political-economic system centred on private property rights, which are considered sacrosanct, actually protects and even promotes the rise of this new kind of aristocracy.

Liberalism links private property to liberty, and through private property rights, secures the liberty of the propertied. Consequently, the greater one's property, the greater one's means of self-determination. We can do our best to enact reforms and try to limit their power and the damage done by their 'enlightened self-interest,' but it's essentially a lost cause seeing as how corporations themselves are now considered 'natural persons' and have managed to acquire certain constitutionally protected rights.

Basically, all this is really saying is that the game is rigged. To fix these problems, we need to change the rules; and to change the rules, we need to change the system.

born this way

2011-05-25T18:06:00.000-07:00

I'll admit it, I'm a Lady Gaga fan. I mean, what's not to like? I like her style, her outspokenness and the fact that she uses her fame to promote things like gay rights and support working-class issues. (And I really love the fact that Slavoj Zizek analyzes her theoretical contributions to cultural theory, as well as her "actual theoretical project.") I'm not quite 'monster' status or anything, but I definitely like to dance around the house to "Bad Romance" once in a while. Her music is one of my guilty pleasures.

So it was lucky for me that my girlfriend decided to sign up for Amazon's Cloud Drive the day Lady Gaga's new album, Born This Way, was released, meaning that I got the entire album for only $0.99 via Amazon's Gold Box Deal of the Day. Quite possibly the best dollar she's ever spent. I love it. And I think it's funny that the main thing people seem to be criticizing about it — i.e., its late '80s/early '90s sound, replete with a generous helping of pulsating dance beats throughout — is precisely what I love about it. There's no accounting for taste, I suppose.

Overall, I think it's a great album, and you can really hear the wide range of influences in her music, from disco and glam, to ’80s synth-pop and techno. And of course there's Madonna. For example, I noticed (and I'm sure I'm not the only one) that the title track, "Born This Way," sounds an awful lot like Madonna's "Express Yourself." I know that Lady Gaga often downplays Madonna's influence on her music for the simple fact that everyone inevitably makes that comparison, but it's pretty obvious here. Compare:

vs.

It could be a tribute to Madonna, since they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I half wonder if Lady Gaga is trolling critics who accuse her of being completely unoriginal and simply ripping off Madonna by making "Born This Way" sound just like "Express Yourself." Personally, I don't really care if it's simply a coincidence or intentional that they sound alike because I like the song regardless; but I think it'd be cool if she made them sound similar intentionally, whether as a tribute or a troll, but especially the latter, mainly because I like to think of it as a musical middle finger to her critics. If so, it's a pretty awesome troll; but even if it's not, I'll still give Lady Gaga props for putting out a damn good album.

'secret' patriot act?

2011-05-25T17:31:00.000-07:00

Just read this article from Wired:

"There's a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says"

You know, the Patriot Act should be renamed the We Can Legally Abuse Our Powers and There's Not a Damn Thing You Can Do About It, Especially Because You Don't Know We're Doing It Act. But the, I guess WCLAOPTNDTYCDAI doesn't make for a very good acronym.

And we should all thank the Tea Party for replacing Russ Feingold, the ONLY Senator who actually voted against this piece of legislation, with Ron Johnson, who, as an opponent of 'big government' supports the Patriot Act.

why the rich love high unemployment

2011-05-25T17:27:00.000-07:00

This article reads like Marxism 101, albeit through a liberal/social democratic lens. Capitalism, by its very nature, requires what Marx termed the "reserve army of labour" (i.e., the unemployed), which is one of the tools it uses to create and increase the profit it extracts from the labourer and the commodities their labour produces. What the article calls "labor-market flexibility" is the capitalists wet dream, i.e., an insecure labour pool that can be hired and fired at will, at whatever wage the employer deigns to give. And as the article points out, the mechanisms that the ruling class use to help 'fix' the economy ultimately end up benefiting big capital and the wealthy, not the workers (who make up the majority of the population). Which is, of course, counterproductive when you have a consumer-based economy and very few of the consumers can afford much beyond their basic means of subsistence. However, in the context of a global, capitalist economy, capital can invest elsewhere (whether abroad in foreign markets or in stocks and bonds) and still increase their profits and those of their shareholders, while the average worker is left struggling. The whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. How anyone can find such a system moral, or simply preferable to something which is less exploitative, is beyond me. /rant

re: frosty woodbridge's "detroit"

2011-05-24T10:48:00.000-07:00

Someone sent this article to my girlfriend, who then forwarded it to me to get my thoughts on it/rebut it:

Detroit

By Frosty Wooldridge

For 15 years, from the mid 1970's to 1990, I worked in Detroit, Michigan. I watched it descend into the abyss of crime, debauchery, gun play, drugs, school truancy, car-jacking, gangs and human depravity. I watched entire city blocks burned out. I watched graffiti explode on buildings, cars, trucks, buses and school yards. Trash everywhere!

Detroiters walked through it, tossed more into it, and ignored it. Tens of thousands, and then hundreds of thousands today exist on federal welfare, free housing, and food stamps!

With Aid to Dependent Children, minority women birthed eight to 10, and in one case, one woman birthed 24 children as reported by the Detroit Free Press, all on American taxpayer dollars.

A new child meant a new car payment, new TV, and whatever mom wanted. I saw Lyndon Baines Johnson's 'Great Society' flourish in Detroit. If you give money for doing nothing, you will get more hands out taking money for doing nothing

Mayor Coleman Young, perhaps the most corrupt mayor in America, outside of Richard Daley in Chicago, rode Detroit down to its knees... He set the benchmark for cronyism, incompetence, and arrogance. As a black man, he said, "I am the MFIC." The IC meant "in charge".

You can figure out the rest Detroit became a majority black city with 67 percent African-Americans.

As a United Van Lines truck driver for my summer job from teaching math and science, I loaded hundreds of American families into my van for a new life in another city or state.

Detroit plummeted from 1.8 million citizens to 912,000 today. At the same time, legal and illegal immigrants converged on the city, so much so, that Muslims number over 300,000. Mexicans number 400,000 throughout Michigan, but most work in Detroit. As the whites moved out, the Muslims moved in.

As the crimes became more violent, the whites fled. Finally, unlawful Mexicans moved in at a torrid pace. Detroit suffers so much shoplifting that grocery stores no longer operate in many inner city locations. You could cut the racial tension in the air with a knife! Detroit may be one of our best examples of multiculturalism: pure dislike, and total separation from America.

Today, you hear Muslim calls to worship over the city like a new American Baghdad with hundreds of Islamic mosques in Michigan, paid for by Saudi Arabia oil money. High school flunk out rates reached 76 percent last June, according to NBC's Brian Williams. Classrooms resemble more foreign countries than America. English? Few speak it! The city features a 50 percent illiteracy rate and growing.

Unemployment hit 28.9 percent in 2009 as the auto industry vacated the city. In Time Magazine's October 4, 2009, "The Tragedy of Detroit: How a great city fell, and how it can rise again," I choked on the writer's description of what happened. "If Detroit had been ravaged by a hurricane, and submerged by a ravenous flood, we'd know a lot more about it," said Daniel Okrent. "If drought and carelessness had spread brush fires across the city, we'd see it on the evening news every night." Earthquake, tornadoes, you name it, if natural disaster had devastated the city that was once the living proof of American prosperity, the rest of the country might take notice.

But Detroit, once our fourth largest city, now 11th and slipping rapidly, has had no such luck. Its disaster has long been a slow unwinding that seemed to remove it from the rest of the country.

Even the death rattle that in the past year emanated from its signature industry brought more attention to the auto executives than to the people of the city, who had for so long been victimized by their dreadful decision making."

As Coleman Young's corruption brought the city to its knees, no amount of federal dollars could save the incredible payoffs, kickbacks and illegality permeating his administration. I witnessed the city's death from the seat of my 18-wheeler tractor trailer because I moved people out of every sector of decaying Detroit.

"By any quantifiable standard, the city is on life support. Detroit's treasury is $300 million short of the funds needed to provide the barest municipal services," Okrent said. "The school system, which six years ago was compelled by the teachers' union to reject a philanthropist's offer of $200 million to build 15 small, independent charter high schools, is in receivership. The murder rate is soaring, and 7 out of 10 remain unsolved. Three years after Katrina devastated New Orleans, unemployment in that city hit a peak of 11%. In Detroit today, the unemployment rate is 28.9%. That's worth spelling out: twenty-eight point nine percent.

At the end of Okrent's report, and he will write a dozen more about Detroit, he said, "That's because the story of Detroit is not simply one of a great city's collapse, it's also about the erosion of the industries that helped build the country we know today. The ultimate fate of Detroit will reveal much about the character of America in the 21st century.

If what was once the most prosperous manufacturing city in the nation has been brought to its knees, what does that say about our recent past? And if it can't find a way to get up, what does that say about America’s future?"

As you read in my book review of Chris Steiner's book,"$20 Per Gallon", the auto industry won't come back. Immigration will keep pouring more and more uneducated third world immigrants from the Middle East into Detroit, thus creating a beachhead for Islamic hegemony in America. If 50 percent illiteracy continues, we will see more homegrown terrorists spawned out of the Muslim ghettos of Detroit. Illiteracy plus Islam equals walking human bombs.

You have already seen it in Madrid, Spain, London, England and Paris, France with train bombings, subway bombings and riots. As their numbers grow, so will their power to enact their barbaric Sharia Law that negates republican forms of government, first amendment rights, and subjugates women to the lowest rungs on the human ladder. We will see more honor killings by upset husbands, fathers and brothers that demand subjugation by their daughters, sisters and wives. Muslims prefer beheadings of women to scare the hell out of any other members of their sect from straying. Multiculturalism: what a perfect method to kill our language, culture, country and way of life.

I PRAY EVERYONE THAT READS THIS REALIZES THAT IF WE DON'T STAND UP, AND SCREAM AT WASHINGTON, AND OUR STATE, CITY AND LOCAL LEADERS THIS IS WHAT AWAITS THE REST OF AMERICA. IF YOU THINK MEXICANS AND MUSLIMS AND OTHER FORIEGNERS WILL EVENTUALLY FIT RIGHT IN THEN YOU ARE AS BIG A PART OF THE PROBLEM AS THEY ARE.

IF YOU THINK THIS IS JUST A BUNCH OF HOOEY AND YOU FEEL NO DUTY TO FIGHT FOR THIS COUNTRY, THEN I'M SORRY, I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT WILL TAKE FOR YOU TO STAND AND FIGHT.

My initial responses was, "Sorry, but this is the most blatantly racist and xenophobic piece of trash I've ever read, and I'm not sure if I can even bring myself to write a rebuttal."

Being from Detroit, I can sympathize with the lamentations of whomever wrote this (if they're indeed sincere, since many of these types of emails are often written or rewritten by someone and attributed to another) over its continual decline; but these conclusions ignore a lot of other relevant data. For example, the '67 riots and subsequent 'white flight' from Detroit that followed was due to years of racism and police brutality inflicted upon the Afro-American population, not to mention a host of other factors such as economic inequality, lack of affordable housing, etc. Detroit was, and to some extent still is, a very racist place.

It also seems to gloss over the fact that Detroit's decline wasn't just due to decades of mismanagement and corruption (although that was certainly a large part of it), but also things like urban sprawl (e.g., sprawling infrastructure wastes resources, and with no real public transportation system to speak of, just trying to find a decent job can be a struggle in and of itself) and building its economic base on a single industry, motor vehicle and parts manufacturing. It's not the fault of Detroit's large Muslim and African-America populations that, through trade deals like NAFTA and our involvement with the WTO, things like auto manufacturing and assembly have become cheaper to outsource, thereby giving the auto industry an incentive to ship these jobs elsewhere (e.g., China, India, Mexico and places in the south where wages are lower and there's a strong anti-union sentiment).

I think it's also unfair (not to mention dishonest) to blame the illiteracy rate solely on immigrants when the public schools have no money, meaning no supplies, extremely large class sizes and underpaid teachers, and are unable to effectively teach anyone, which is due to the fact that there's no income via taxes because they're no jobs; and they're no jobs because they're being outsourced, plus they're hiring in more qualified people for the jobs there are from outside of the Metro Detroit area because the public school system is in such bad shape.

And the whole thing about the growing Muslim population "enacting their barbaric Sharia Law" in Detroit is little more than alarmist nonsense, in my opinion. Detroit (well, Dearborn, MI, actually) has the largest proportion of Arab Americans in the country, and I've never seen or even heard about anything remotely like this going on there, and I sincerely doubt that I ever will besides a few potentially isolated incidents. Furthermore, plenty of white, predominately Christian men kill their wives all the time, yet these same alarmists don't have much to say about that; but as soon as a man who happens to be Muslim does it, it's the end of the world as we know it: Sharia Law is being enacted! And it's all because he's Muslim, of course; as if all the white Christian guys who murder their wives or beat them and treat them like property somehow don't count, which to me is basically laying all the blame on their different religious and/or immigrant status (read, 'skin colour') and ignoring the general patriarchy and misogyny that still pervades much of society.

In addition, the author(s) insinuates that the growing illiterate Muslim population will become a hotbed of terrorism, but statistics show that many terrorists are often highly educated and come from what we'd call a 'middle class' background. Just because someone happens to be poor and Muslim doesn't necessarily mean they're going to automatically turn into a terrorist. Moreover, the author conveniently neglects to mention all the white, Christian terrorists that have arisen in the past few decades, some of the most notable coming from Michigan (e.g., Terry Nichols, who helped Timothy McVeigh bomb the Oklahoma City federal building; Hutaree, who was apparently plotting to kill a police officer and then bomb his funeral; not to mention the plethora of other militia groups that make their home in the woods of northern Michigan).

All this article really does is take a few facts and statistics and makes them into a simplistic narrative that essential blames stupid, violent Muslims and African-Americans for Detroit's decline — ignoring everything else that disagrees with, or contradicts, its overtly racist ad hominem against Afro-Americans, Muslims and immigrants — and implies that this is what's going to happen to the "rest of America" unless we we fight back (against non-whites and Muslims, I guess). All in all, a disgusting piece of right-wing propaganda if you ask me.

the futility of violence

2011-05-02T13:18:00.000-07:00

My first response to the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed by the US was: "Ten years, thousands of lives and billions of dollars later, and the US has finally succeeded in making Osama bin Laden a martyr. Good job?"

All sarcasm aside, I realize that many see bin Laden's death as a cause for celebration, but I think it's worth reflecting on Lao-Tzu's words on war, especially the part about treating victory in war as a funeral:

Where the princely man abides, the weak left hand is in honour. But he who uses weapons honours the stronger right. Weapons are instruments of ill omen; they are not the instruments of the princely man, who uses them only when he needs must. Peace and tranquillity are what he prizes. When he conquers, he is not elate. To be elate were to rejoice in the slaughter of human beings. And he who rejoices in the slaughter of human beings is not fit to work his will in the Empire.

On happy occasions, the left is favoured; on sad occasions, the right. The second in command has his place on the left, the general in chief on the right. That is to say, they are placed in the order observed at funeral rites. And, indeed, he who has exterminated a great multitude of men should bewail them with tears and lamentation. It is well that those who are victorious in battle should be placed in the order of funeral rites.

A similar sentiment can even be found in the Old Testament of the Bible:

Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice, or the LORD will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from them. (Pro 24:17-18)

Personally, it saddens me to see so many people celebrating the death of another human being, even a not-so-nice one like bin Laden. It reminds me of Gandhi's saying: "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." In fact, one of the main things that originally attracted me to Buddhism was its attitude towards violence, e.g.:

"He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me." Those who harbor such thoughts do not still their hatred.

"He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me." Those who do not harbor such thoughts still their hatred.

Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is a law eternal.

There are those who do not realize that one day we all must die. But those who do realize this settle their quarrels. (Dhp 1.3-6).

And:

Killing, you gain
your killer.
Conquering, you gain one
who will conquer you;
insulting, insult;
harassing, harassment.

And so, through the cycle of action,
he who has plundered
gets plundered in turn. (SN 3.15)

I think Howard Zinn, a WWII vet and political activist, came to a similar understanding — that war can't end war, that violence can't end violence — from his experiences in WWII; an idea which he expressed in part of a speech he gave in 2006:

I was talking to my barber the other day, because we always discuss world politics. And he's totally politically unpredictable, as most barbers are, you see. He said, "Howard," he said, "you know, you and I disagree on many things, but on one thing we agree: war solves nothing." And I thought, "Yeah." It's not hard for people to grasp that.

And there again, history is useful. We've had a history of war after war after war after war. What have they solved? What have they done? Even World War II, the "good war," the war in which I volunteered, the war in which I dropped bombs, the war after which, you know, I received a letter from General Marshall, general of generals, a letter addressed personally to me, and to 16 million others, in which he said, "We've won the war. It will be a new world." Well, of course, it wasn't a new world. It hasn't been a new world. War after war after war.

There are certain -- I came out of that war, the war in which I had volunteered, the war in which I was an enthusiastic bombardier, I came out of that war with certain ideas, which just developed gradually at the end of the war, ideas about war. One, that war corrupts everybody who engages in it. War poisons everybody who engages in it. You start off as the good guys, as we did in World War II. They're the bad guys. They're the fascists. What could be worse? So, they're the bad guys, we're the good guys. And as the war goes on, the good guys begin behaving like the bad guys. You can trace this back to the Peloponnesian War. You can trace it back to the good guy, the Athenians, and the bad guys, the Spartans. And after a while, the Athenians become ruthless and cruel, like the Spartans.

And we did that in World War II. We, after Hitler committed his atrocities, we committed our atrocities. You know, our killing of 600,000 civilians in Japan, our killing of probably an equal number of civilians in Germany. These, they weren't Hitler, they weren't Tojo. They weren't -- no, they were just ordinary people, like we are ordinary people living in a country that is a marauding country, and they were living in countries that were marauding countries, and they were caught up in whatever it was and afraid to speak up. And I don't know, I came to the conclusion, yes, war poisons everybody.

I know that we're not a nonviolent species by nature; but as naive as it might sound, it's my hope that we'll eventually see the futility of violence in the long run.

taxes are stealing, but...

2011-04-29T13:43:00.000-07:00

I was listening to some music today, and it got me thinking about taxes. There's a song by Corporate Avenger called "Taxes Are Stealing," which opens with the lines, "Taxes are strong-armed robbery. The collectors of taxes funnel the majority of funds to police [policies?] and intuitions counterproductive to spiritual advancement." While I can certainly sympathize with the sentiment, I think it's a little bit more complicated than that. Maybe it's some kind of fiscal Stockholm syndrome, but the older I get, the more I see taxes as a necessary, temporary evil. Nobody likes paying taxes, but can we really afford to live without them just yet?

To begin with, I should point out that my philosophy of government in and of itself is fairly positive. The way I see it, civil society is the establishment of a cohesive social structure in which the interests of the community as a whole are weighed against that of the individual in an effort to maintain social stability. Government, then, is the physical manifestation of community interests. It creates stability through the establishment and enforcement of laws, and acts as a mediator in disputes between groups and individuals within the community.

Of course, I think it's preferable if a balance can be struck where individual freedoms aren't too restricted and the continued survival of the community is reasonably assured, but allowing unlimited freedom amounts to anarchy and lawlessness, which often leads to increased social conflict and instability (as I believe the history of Western civilization shows). How far the government should go in meeting the needs of the community, however, is an open question.

The main problem I see with the current structure is that, for the most part, our government is a manifestation of ruling-class interests — i.e., those who own and control the means of production, finance, natural resources, etc. — and not that of the entire community. In fact, the interests of the ruling class, the interests of capital, are often in conflict with those of average citizens. Although this isn't anything new, I think it's something that needs to be changed for us to truly flourish as a society.

(I should stop here to note that I'm simply using the common definition of anarchy given in Merriam-Webster as the (a) absence of government or (b) a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority. If a community as a whole is organized in such a way where the community is self-governing, as envisioned by many anarcho-syndicalists and socialists, with links to adjoining communities across the country (and the world), then that wouldn't necessarily qualify as anarchy as defined above due to the community's organizational structure.

My personal feeling on the matter, however, is that a great modern state or community, especially one the size of the US (and more so with ones as populated as, say, India), can't function in such a way as to promote the flourishing of the community as a whole without some kind of organizational structure, which fits the definition of government as "the organization, machinery, or agency through which a political unit exercises authority and performs functions and which is usually classified according to the distribution of power within it."

Here, a community as a whole could technically be the 'political unit' — ideally being more 'directly democratic,' and possessing an organizational structure based more on free association than institutions of coercion (e.g., bodies of armed men, prisons, etc.) — but with very large communities (like very large metropolises or heavily populated states, for example), it'd be difficult if not impossible to have each and every person proposing legislation and directly voting on everything themselves, making some sort of delegation highly desirable, if not necessary.)

That said, I can understand people who are critical of the current government's management of the system, including tax revenue, since I believe this is something that definitely needs to be monitored and can always be improved. I can also understand people who take the position that taxes are stealing, because, for those who don't wish to pay them, it's not done voluntarily. (It may seem voluntary to those who pay willingly, but all one has to do is think about the 'consequences' of not paying them to see there really isn't much of a 'choice.') Nevertheless, I don't see how a complex, modern civil society can function without taxes, especially considering how interconnected everything is. And therein lies the rub.

From one perspective, our income (those of us lucky enough to have one, at least) is made within the context of a complex and highly-organized society, and we use and rely on a common infrastructure that has to be supported and maintained via revenue, everything from the roads we use and our water/sanitation systems, to our local law-enforcement and judicial system. And even if one were critical of some of these institutions and services (e.g., viewing police as a repressive apparatus of the state used to protect property from people), some of them are quite vital.

We often take most of these services and vital pieces of infrastructure for granted, but we've become so dependent upon many of them that society as we know it would collapse if they weren't consistently maintained, and the real question becomes, Who's responsible for a society's infrastructure? From this point of view, one could just as easily argue that by not paying taxes, one is stealing whenever they utilize said infrastructure without contributing to its maintenance in some way, and the easiest (and arguably fairest) way is via taxes.

(Also, it can be argued that whenever we do something like start a job or purchase property, we're essentially agreeing to pay taxes since that's an upfront part of agreeing to work for a particular employer or the acquisition of property; although, conversely, the way the system is set up, we don't really have much choice in the matter, so they're still ultimately 'coercive' no matter how much of a positive spin we give them.)

Of course, there are certainly valid counterarguments to this, but I think we have to start from where we're at; and within the context of the present political economic system, the responsibility falls upon us, the citizens—very few of which, I imagine, would like to see our roads crumble, schools closed or water/sanitation systems shut down. But how can we pay for the labour and materials needed to keep these things in operation in the present system without taxes? Where will the resources come from? By what means will they be distributed?

One alternative I've seen discussed recently (and the only really viable one, in my opinion) is a fee-based system, which would theoretically make collecting revenue less coercive, and make how the money's spent more transparent. The basic idea is that we'd pay for the services we want, and opt out of those we don't. Sure, it's one alternative, but I can also see how this could create its own difficulties, not to mention slippery slopes. For examples, taxes are used to help maintain roads and sidewalks. In a fee-based system, we could make every road more or less a toll road in order to pay for repairs, but what about sidewalks? Drivers aren't using them, so using their fees to fix them would be unpopular. So then we'd have to institute a fee for using sidewalks too, and now we can't even move about freely without having to cough up some cash every time we do. Talk about inconvenient.

Taken to the extreme, such a system would essentially privatize everything. If services are fee-based, one could just as easily give their money to a corporation who'll perform a particular service more cheaply (which isn't necessarily better if they cut corners). And after time, we could end up with private, Walmart-esque corporations in charge of municipal services instead of an elected government. And corporations, by their very structure, are far less accountable to the people than elected officials.

Moreover, a fee-based system that increasingly privatizes services could have other dangers, such as making it more difficult for people with lower incomes to get all the services they need because they're unable to afford all the fees, things like a proper education, road construction and maintenance, sanitation, etc. This could conceivably create huge slums (areas even more poor and neglected than they already are), further segregate society, and seriously lower the standard of living for lower income families. The redistribution of wealth via taxes helps prevent something like this from happening.

As naive and utopian as it may sound, I believe that a different world is possible—that we can revolutionize the system in such a way as to make taxation unnecessary. But this would take a socio-political revolution on an epic scale, involving a radical economic transformation in which the exploitation, alienation and commodity fetishism of the present system are gradually eliminated via a more socialized mode of production. And for that to have any chance of success, I think it must be an experiment conducted with the consent of the majority of the people, which I doubt will happen overnight, if ever. So until then, taxes may be stealing, but I'm willing to look the other way. At least for now.

16volt record release party = awesome night

2011-04-21T14:09:00.000-07:00

I had a blast last night. My friend, Zach, invited me to the 16Volt record release party at the Fez, a small, local venue in downtown Portland. I was a bit skeptical since most of the acts consisted of local industrial artists that I'd never heard of before; but for $10, I figured it couldn't hurt to check them out, and I have to say that I wasn't disappointed.

The opening act, Dead Animal Assembly Plant, kicked off the night with a decent set. The members looked like a bunch of demented butchers in their blood-spattered aprons, which complimented their raw, meaty sound. The singer even told a pretty good serial killer joke, which went something like: "A serial killer kidnaps a little girl and brings her into some deep, dark woods. The little girl says, 'Gee, it's dark and creepy here, I'm scared.' The killer replies 'You're scared? Imagine how I feel, I have to walk back to the car alone.'" I thought it was funny, at least.

After their set, Zach offered to buy the singer a drink, who came by later to give us some free DAAP buttons, which I thought was pretty cool.

After DAAP came Dead When I Found Her, which was the main reason why we were there, Zach having heard a couple of their songs before. I really enjoyed their old school, industrial sound, which is reminiscent of early Skinny Puppy. I was especially surprised by their cover of Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight," which is probably the only time I've ever enjoyed listening to a Phil Collins song.

Afterwards, I ran into Mike, the singer/guitar player of DWIFH, near the bar and offered to buy him a drink. We ended up talking for quite a while, mostly about music and the direction he was trying to go with his. Zach was also lucky enough to run into on him the stairs, and got to talk to him until 16Volt started playing.

16Volt came out and played one hell of a set. Out of the three, they were the heaviest, leaning more towards the metal-end of the industrial spectrum. By this time, I was fairly inebriated, and I couldn't help but start jumping up and down and banging my head like a fucking idiot. Zach and I tried to get the rest of the crowd going, jumping and pushing each other around, but the only one who joined in was some guy who we later found out may have been Erica Dunham's (i.e., Unter Null) fiancé. (Meaning that the girl I was bumping into the whole time could have been Erica Dunham herself!)

For some reason, we didn't stick around to see if anyone from 16Volt came out, but we ran into Mike from DWIFH again outside and talked to him some more. All in all, I'm pretty impressed with the local industrial scene so far, and the show was more than worth the $10.

After the show, we were both hungry, so we ended up walking to the Original Hotcake House on Powell, where I tore up a huge plate of eggs and pancakes at 3 o'clock in the morning. (There may or may not have been some public urination along the way; all I'm saying is that it wouldn't hurt to have more public restrooms available for Christ's sake.) I can't remember the last time I saw a kick-ass show and had a crazy, all-night adventure, but it was definitely long over due.

soccer: the greatest thing since oatmeal stout

2011-04-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

Somehow I've found myself obsessed with association football, a.k.a., soccer. I can't seem to get enough of the English Premiere League, for example, and I'm more than happy to wake up at 6:00am in order to make it to my favourite restaurant/soccer bars in time to catch all the 7 o'clock games. That's quite a turnaround for someone who was raised on Budweiser and the NFL, and used to think that soccer was the lamest sport ever invented (next to cricket, that is).

I partially blame last year's World Cup for this new obsession, which gave me my first real taste of soccer. My girlfriend (who used to play soccer in school and is a fan in general) and I made it a point to catch as many games as we could. I also blame it on the fact that Portland just got a Major League expansion team, the Portland Timbers (our only other professional sports team being the Portland Trail Blazers).

One of the things I like about soccer is that it's fast-paced. There's no commercials or breaks in the action before halftime unless someone gets hurt or fouls another player, and the action usually picks right back up. I'm also impressed by the level of athleticism displayed by soccer players in general, who basically run back and forth nonstop for two 45 minute halves, and make wicked-ass bicycle kick goals. Low scoring games can be a bit boring, but even those I find a lot more exciting than baseball.

It can also get quite physical, despite what many people think. There's a lot of pushing, shoving, sliding tackles and collisions. (Just last month, I saw Samir Nasri, a player from Arsenal, take an awfully nasty elbow to the head early on, giving him the biggest knot I've ever seen, and he still played the entire game.) It's got all the things I like about basketball and hockey (sans the ice) rolled into one sport.

Another thing I like about soccer is that it's international. It seems like everyone has a national team, and most of those players also play for teams in the various domestic leagues, which always give me somebody to root for. Clint Dempsey, one of the guys on the US national team (who resembles a young House), also plays for Fulham in the Premiere League. Mesut Özil, one of my favourite players from Germany's national team, also plays for Real Madrid in the Spanish Primera División. At the very least, it helps you brush up on your geography.

I also like that each team has it's own style. Some, like England's national team, are more physically aggressive, doing their best to outmuscle their opponents. Wayne Rooney can be a right hooligan. Others, such as Spain's national team, have a more technical and pass-intensive style, focusing on monopolising possession. Few are as graceful on the pitch (that's what they call the field in soccer, by the way) as Andres Iniesta.

What's really surprised me, however, is how fast I've become a hardcore soccer fan. I'm not really a big sports guy, and I've never been that into other televised sports, but now you're more than likely to find me at Beulahand or 442 (two local hangouts) with a pint of beer and my Timber's scarf on shouting at the TV. (The soccer scarf, which originated in Britain in the early 1900s, is usually made in a team's colours, and often contains the team's motto and/or crest.)

Sports-wise, discovering soccer has been like discovering Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout after drinking Budweiser for most of my life, an experience characterized by the feeling of 'What the hell have I been missing?!' Who knows, maybe it's just because I'm a bit of an Anglophile and have a thing for most things English (e.g., notice my liberal use of British spelling), but I really think soccer is a great game. I've gone from the stereotypical 'uncultured' American to an enthusiastic footie fan practically overnight.

some rambling thoughts on consciouness

2011-04-06T09:44:00.000-07:00

Truth be told, I've always found the subject of consciousness an interesting one, from a scientific, as well as a philosophic point of view. Lately (and I'm blaming this on all the philosophy I've been reading in the past few months or so), I've been questioning the sharp distinction that's often made between consciousness and matter.

For example, I find myself agreeing with Bertrand Russell that, the more we understand about matter (i.e., energy), the more it seems the word itself becomes "no more than a conventional shorthand for stating causal laws concerning events" (An Outline of Philosophy). This, of course, raises a number of possibilities, one of them being that what we call 'mind' and 'matter' is ultimately groups or structures of events arising from a substance that's neither mental nor material, but in between the two a la neutral monism.

But even that explanation doesn't fully satisfy me, and I find myself going back to the Buddha and Hume, both of which rejected the idea of mental substance in favour of what Hume called association of ideas and bundle of perceptions, and what the Buddha called heaps (khandha).

As Bertrand Russell summarizes Hume's empiricism, "Ideas of unperceived things or occurrences can always be defined in terms of perceived things or occurrences, and therefore, by substituting the definition for the term defined, we can always state that we know empirically without introducing any unperceived things or occurrences." Thus, "all psychological knowledge can be stated without introducing the 'Self'. Further, the 'Self', as defined can be nothing but a bundle of perceptions, not a new simple 'thing'" (A History of Western Philosophy, 603).

Moreover, I don't reject that specific mental events appear to be contingent upon corresponding physical events in the brain. I think it's been conclusively shown that there's a link between consciousness and the body via the brain, and that when the brain's damaged, the link between consciousness and the body is damaged. However, I'm not convinced that this in and of itself proves that consciousness is merely an emergent property of the brain, or that it ceases to exist when the brain itself no longer functions. Correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation.

I'll admit that it's looking more and more like that's the most likely scenario, but when I read things like The Holographic Universe, Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer, or even some of Rupert Sheldrake's crazy ideas regarding morphogeneic fields, I can't help but think that maybe it's not the whole picture. I suppose it could just be wishful thinking on my part, but I'm not ready to jump on the materialist bandwagon just yet.

Perhaps consciousness is simply a by-product of electrochemical processes in the brain, but perhaps there's another dimension to consciousness that science has yet to discover. I'm not saying that there is, mind you, but it's certainly a possibility. As B. Alan Wallace points out in an interview with Steve Paulson in the Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in Science & Religion:

This very notion that the mind must simply be an emergent property of the brain — consisting only of physical phenomena and nothing more — is not a testable hypothesis... Can you test the statement that there is nothing else going on apart from physical phenomena and their emergent properties? The answer is no... If your sole access to the mind is by way of physical phenomena, then you have no way of testing whether all dimensions of the mind are necessarily contingent upon the brain.

Unfortunately, I doubt that I'll ever fully understand what consciousness is, or what its relationship to the body (and the material world) is. I'm just not that clever. So, in the end, this is one of those areas where I'll probably always remain somewhat skeptical; although, from a purely empirical point of view, I do find myself leaning more towards the idea that consciousness is simply a by-product of electrochemical processes in the brain based on the evidence we do have. Science can be very convincing in that respect.

Of course, that doesn't mean there isn't more to consciousness than what's been discovered thus far, or that I've completely discounted other possibilities, especially considering the fact that, in the spirit of full disclosure, my ethical-spiritual practice assumes the possibility of a type of continuity involving consciousness that transcends a single birth and death—a belief built on premises that a strict materialist would reject, and with little from an empirical, scientific standpoint to back them up.

I'm comfortable with that, however, because my ethical-spiritual beliefs and practice are ultimately pragmatic, serving a practical purpose that's subjectively beneficial regardless of their objective validity. Incidentally, this is why I tend to have sympathy for theists, even though I don't have any theistic beliefs myself. While I find too many logical inconsistencies in the Bible to view it as the infallible word of God, there are some interesting philosophical arguments for the existence of God (although, not necessarily a personal God); and I understand that a belief in God can provide comfort in difficult times, as well as serve as the basis for a beneficial ethical-spiritual practice, just as my Buddhist beliefs can. I also accept that certain people may have had some kind of profound spiritual experience that has led them to such a belief.

What I generally don't accept, however, are dogmatic statements about absolute truth and/or reality, especially when they stem from an 'appeal to authority' or personal experience. In the former, the validity of a statement rests not on its own logical coherence or truth, but on the supposed status of the source as an 'authority.' In the latter's case, there's generally no way to confirm or deny them, so they're not very useful in proving something to someone who hasn't had them.

rants of a boy socialist: don't hate the player, hate the game

2011-03-24T10:22:00.000-07:00

Reading the article "Rants of a Gamer Girl: Duke Nukem – Smack My Chick Up," my first thought was that this may also be an example of how capitalism, in its ability to profit off things like sexism and the objectification of women, actually helps to further perpetuate these things, especially when presenting them in such a way as to make them more 'socially acceptable' (e.g., by things like separating sexual violence into two categories: 'it's OK when it's simulated/presented as entertainment' and 'it's not OK when it's done for real').

From a capitalist point of view, Gearbox Software and CEO Randy Pitchford are doing things just right. They're successfully engaging their target audience (which for this particular genre of game happens to be young-to-middle-aged men) with cheeky portrayals of sexual violence, getting a lot of publicity (read 'free advertising') and selling enough games and merchandise to make a profit. Capitalism doesn't ask for much more than that, and arguably encourages it unless restricted in some way (e.g., outside by government regulations, inside by consumer spending, etc). If it's profitable, how can it be wrong?

And I think that's unfortunate since I agree that marketing these things does serve to "further promote and perpetuate a culture of violence against women." Of course, that's not to suggest that Duke Nukem or Gearbox Software are directly responsible for sexism or any sexual assaults in the US (correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation), only that I think there's a plausible link between an economic system in which sexism and sexual violence are often promoted together in general, and the prevalence of sexism and sexual violence in that society, illustrated here by the statistic in the article that "there's a woman sexually assaulted every two minutes in the U.S." This is what, in economic terms, could be called a social externality, the cost of which isn't borne by abstract market forces or private companies, but society.

That said, it's entirely possible that the prevalence of these things in various media are simply a reflection of society and societal attitudes as a whole — neither promoting nor condemning them, just acknowledging their existence — but I think enough psychological studies have shown that our attitudes about these things are often heavily influenced by our surroundings, our family structure, the social conditions and norms we're exposed to growing up, etc. In other words, it's as much a symptom of the problem as it is a link in the complex causal chain causing it.

The way I see it, it's just one big, social feed-back loop, and I think people need to consciously start looking at these things and asking themselves if there really are connections here, and if so, figuring out what to do about it. But even that's difficult to do when genders are objectified and gender stereotypes commodified. This, of course, raises the issue of censorship, which is another tricky subject.

Even Plato realized the influence certain things can have on individuals in society, but his solution — the censorship and/or banishment of poets and the like who didn't say what was for the good of his 'ideal city' — seems just as unacceptable to me as the seeming use of things like sexism and sexual violence against women (cheeky or otherwise) as marketing tools. At the same time, I'm not sure what to do about it without resorting to such drastic measures, especially when its use is often so successful. How do we change how women are viewed and portrayed in media without censoring or banishing the proverbial poets from our 'ideal city'?

an open letter to nero bellum

2011-03-20T12:59:00.000-07:00

Dear Marshall or Nero (whichever you prefer),

I just wanted to write you a quick letter after reading your post, "Cleanliness [a message to my world]."

The first thing I want to say is that you're not the only one who's descended into the dark abyss of depression, drug addiction and self-loathing. I'm sure many of your fans have already shared their own feelings and personal experiences with you, so I won't go into detail about mine, just add my voice in saying that I've been trapped in a similar place, too. At the beginning, it seduces you — the darkness, the drugs, the creativity trying to tear itself out of you — but more importantly, it helps you survive, acting as a security blanket for your fears and anxieties. But, as you know, all of that comes at a price.

But reading your letter, I'm heartened by the fact that, with the support of your fans, close friends and family, it seems like you're climbing your way back out. It's not an easy path to take, and you may slip and fall into old habits (and vices) along the way, but I've found from personal experience that it's a journey worth making and I wish you luck.

The second thing I want to mention is that I've been a big fan of yours (and Psyclon Nine's) for years. Your music is absolutely fucking amazing, and if you ever find yourself in a pit of despair, feeling like a failure because you're unable to recapture everything you had in the past, I hope reflecting on the fact that you've already created musical masterpieces for thousands of people to enjoy will help bring you out of the darkness and give you some peace.

Truth be told, I envy you, even with all of your flaws and painful experiences. I'd never wish to go through what you have, but at the same time, you've done what relatively few people have: you've created something unique and extraordinary, something that's appreciated by people all over the world. That in and of itself is an amazing accomplishment, and you should be proud of yourself for that alone, regardless of anything you might've done to disappoint yourself or your fans.

I honestly have no idea why I'm even bothering to write all of this garbage, but I think part of it is that I see a lot of myself in you. I fell into my own downward spiral, and I know from experience that it's a "long, hard road out of hell," so I guess I just want to give you a little encouragement or something.

Another reason is that your letter touched me, not so much as fan, but as a fellow human being. It's honest. It's real. And it's good to know that even one of my idols isn't really all that different from me (besides the whole 'making awesome fucking music' thing). We're all flawed and imperfect creatures, but the music you've created transcends those imperfections, and nothing, not even your mistakes, can take that away from you.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I really hope that you come through this experience a better (and happier) person, but even if you don't, I'll still respect you because at least you tried.

Best wishes,

Jason

re: efm really is "unbelievable"

2011-03-14T22:08:00.000-07:00

So doing a bit more research about HB-4214, I discovered that it's only the House version that states the EFM can be "an individual of firm," whereas the more recent Senate version states that it has to be an individual. The Senate bill does not preclude said individual for being associated with, or influenced by, a private corporation, however.

In addition, the EFM must have "a minimum of 5 years' experience and demonstrable expertise in business, financial or local or state budgetary matters" to be qualified for the position," not just two days of training and to pay a fee. (It seems the report I read stating that "a candidate needs to undergo only two days of training and pay a fee" must have either excluded, or was simply unaware, of this additional requirement.)

The EFM would still have control over a municipality's elected officials, which have no power "except as may be specifically authorized in writing by the emergency manager and are subject to any conditions required by the emergency manager." However, an EFM would need the approval of a majority of the electors in the municipality under their control to sell a public utility.

The EFM can also "reject, modify, or terminate 1 or more terms and conditions of an existing contract [including collective bargaining agreements]" if the EFM and state treasurer decide that it's "reasonable and necessary."

Finally, the EFM, which is granted immunity of liability, has the ability to suspend elected officials' "access to the local government's office facilities, electronic mail, and internal information systems" if they fail to carry out the EFM's orders. The bill also says, "Immediately upon the local government being placed in receivership under section 15 and during the pendency of the receivership, the salary, wages, or other compensation, including the accrual of postemployment benefits, and other benefits of the chief administrative officer and members of the governing body of the local government shall be eliminated."

While some of the things aren't as bad as previously reported (or have been since amended), I still think it's an egregious piece of legislation giving the governor and his appointed EFM far too much authority.

buddhism and politics

2011-03-12T10:51:00.000-08:00

As a Buddhist, I do my best to apply Buddhist teachings and practices to all aspects of my life, including my political activism. This, of course, raises some questions, such as, What sort of political philosophy is most compatible with Buddhism? and Does Buddhism support socialism? As a democratic socialist, I'd like to say yes, but the teachings of the Buddha that are recorded in the Pali Canon are more or less apolitical, so applying them to my political philosophy requires a bit more investigation and thought.

The Buddha doesn't explicitly promote a particular political philosophy, being more concerned with problems of ethics and phenomenology. But he does give some pragmatic advice to lay-followers within the existing political economic system of the time, mainly dealing with generosity, honesty and fulfilling one's duties in society (e.g., DN 31). So in answer to the first, I'd say that Buddhism itself is compatible with pretty much any political-economic system as it predominately deals with developing virtue, concentration and discernment within whatever worldly circumstances we’re confronted with, not the circumstances themselves.

Moreover, I agree with Richard Gombrich that, "The Buddha's Dhamma represents a strong form of what has been called 'religious individualism'" (Theravada Buddhism, 72). I say this because the teachings on kamma (literally 'action') focus on individual actions and their consequences, and not so much collective or societal actions. So Buddhist virtue ethics are generally seen as a personal matter that each individual is encouraged to explore and develop on their own.

As for the second question, there's nothing in the Suttas to suggest that the Buddha was either for or against private ownership of the means of production, especially in the modern industrial sense. That's not a question anybody could have foreseen 2,600 years ago.

Furthermore, while it's true the Buddha encouraged generosity among his lay-followers, and that his monastic community has a relatively egalitarian communal structure, his teachings were also quite popular with the rising mercantile class in India at that time, and many of his wealthier lay-followers were merchants. In fact, I think the Buddha's advice to the lay-community regarding livelihood sounds more like some kind of enlightened entrepreneurialism than socialism.

In DN 31, for example, the Buddha advises lay-followers to use a portion of their income for personal use, including charitable donations, but he also advises that some of it should be used for business investments and saved for hard times, as well. This shows that the Buddha wasn't necessarily against consumption, private property rights and/or the accumulation of wealth, but there are suttas which seem to suggest that he was at least in favour of some type of welfare-state.

There's the case of DN 5, for example, where the brahmin Kutadanta asks the Buddha for advice on how to best conduct a great sacrifice. Kutadanta, who was evidently wealthy, had been given a village and some land by King Bimbisara, which he ruled as a king himself. On being asked by Kutadanta — who had a legion of animals waiting to be slaughtered — how to perform a great sacrifice, the Buddha answered with a fable about a great king who asks his chaplain a similar question.

Long story short, the king (i.e., the state), who'd amassed great personal wealth but whose kingdom was "beset by thieves" and "infested with brigands," is told by his chaplain that taxing the people, executing and imprisoning them, or simply banishing them from the land won't solve his kingdom's problems, and is given this advice:

To those in the kingdom who are engaged in cultivating crops and raising cattle, let Your Majesty distribute grain and fodder; to those in trade, give capital; to those in government service assign proper living wages. Then those people, being intent on their occupations, will not harm the kingdom. Your Majesty's revenues will be great, the land will be tranquil and not beset by thieves, and the people, with joy in their hearts, will play with their children, and will dwell in open houses.

Nevertheless, I don't think that the Buddha would object to a more egalitarian, socialist society that tries to limit the economic and societal conditions which foster things like greed and violence, and the way Buddhism has affected me personally has lead me to adopt more socialist-leaning views. As Albert Einstein put it, "the real purpose of socialism is... to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development," and I have a hard time not getting involved when I see what I perceive to be people being preyed upon by greed, hatred and delusion.

Before I became interested in Buddhism, I didn't really have any political-economic views to speak of. In fact, I was completely uninterested in political economy whatsoever. After years of studying and practicing Buddhism, however, I began to take more of an interest. This was partially due to cultivating compassion and being more sensitive the suffering of others.

Of course, it became clear to me early on that the world was imperfect, and that there is, and always been, suffering in the world. I also realized that it can't be 'fixed,' that there are no perfect solutions. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try our best to do what we can to make things better, and that's certainly compatible with Buddhism and Buddhist ethics in general. But more specifically, I think that the seemingly unrelated aims of communism/socialism and Buddhism are actually quite compatible, even in the sense that Karl Marx uses it, i.e. the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the working class. For example, in The German Ideology, Marx writes:

Further, the division of labour implies the contradiction between the interest of the separate individual or the individual family and the communal interest of all individuals who have intercourse with one another. And indeed, this communal interest does not exist merely in the imagination, as the “general interest,” but first of all in reality, as the mutual interdependence of the individuals among whom the labour is divided. And finally, the division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now.

One of the things that I really find interesting in Marx's writings is his materialist conception of history and the idea that "the nature of individuals depends on the material conditions determining their production." While Marx's theory was set within a specific context — that of the complex relationship between the production and reproduction of material requirements of life and the historical development of human society — I think it has much wider implications.

For example, I'm of the opinion that things such as identity are conditioned, at least in part, by the historical and material conditions that we find ourselves in, and that changes in those conditions can fundamentally alter our identity and the ways in which we express ourselves, and vice versa. Not in a rigidly deterministic way, however, but in a complex and symbiotic way.

This idea isn't necessarily new, of course. The Buddha, for example, developed similar ideas about identity in his teachings on kamma and dependent co-arising. In short, he viewed our sense of self as a continuous process—something which is always in flux, ever-changing from moment to moment in response to various internal and external stimuli. Furthermore, he observed that there are times when our sense of self causes us a great deal of suffering, times when we cling very strongly to those momentary and fleeting identities and the objects of our sensory experience on which they're based in ways that cause a great deal of mental stress.

But whereas the Buddha's focus was primarily on how to liberate the individual from their suffering by mastering this process of 'I-making' and 'my-making,' Marx's focus, the bodhisattva that he was, was primarily on how to liberate society from their suffering and alienation by changing the material conditions that support it. Of course, I disagree with some of Marx's ideas and methods, but I still find a lot of his writings worth reading. Hell, even the Dalai Lama once said:

Of all the modern economic theories, the economic system of Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability. Marxism is concerned with the distribution of wealth on an equal basis and the equitable utilization of the means of production. It is also concerned with the fate of the working classes--that is, the majority--as well as with the fate of those who are underprivileged and in need, and Marxism cares about the victims of minority-imposed exploitation. For those reasons the system appeals to me, and it seems fair. I just recently read an article in a paper where His Holiness the Pope also pointed out some positive aspects of Marxism.

As for the failure of the Marxist regimes, first of all I do not consider the former USSR, or China, or even Vietnam, to have been true Marxist regimes, for they were far more concerned with their narrow national interests than with the Workers' International; this is why there were conflicts, for example, between China and the USSR, or between China and Vietnam. If those three regimes had truly been based upon Marxist principles, those conflicts would never have occurred.

I think the major flaw of the Marxist regimes is that they have placed too much emphasis on the need to destroy the ruling class, on class struggle, and this causes them to encourage hatred and to neglect compassion. Although their initial aim might have been to serve the cause of the majority, when they try to implement it all their energy is deflected into destructive activities. Once the revolution is over and the ruling class is destroyed, there is [not] much left to offer the people; at this point the entire country is impoverished and unfortunately it is almost as if the initial aim were to become poor. I think that this is due to the lack of human solidarity and compassion. The principal disadvantage of such a regime is the insistence placed on hatred to the detriment of compassion.

The failure of the regime in the former Soviet Union was, for me, not the failure of Marxism but the failure of totalitarianism. For this reason I still think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist.

stand up, fight back!

2011-03-11T08:26:00.000-08:00

I'm not blind. I understand that we have more political freedom here in the US than they do in places like China, Iran or North Korea. I also understand how fortunate I am to enjoy that freedom. But that doesn't mean that that freedom, which we've struggled for over two hundred years to expand and protect, isn't quietly being eroded away by modern-day Federalists and corporatists in collusion with big-monied interests and large, multinational corporations.

My philosophy of government is fairly positive. The way I see it, civil society is the establishment of a cohesive social structure in which the interests of the community as a whole are weighed against that of the individual in an effort to maintain social stability. Government, then, is the physical manifestation of community interests. It creates stability through the establishment and enforcement of laws, and acts as a mediator in disputes between groups and individuals within the community.

Of course, I think it's preferable if a balance can be struck where individual freedoms aren't too restricted and the continued survival of the community is reasonably assured, but allowing unlimited freedom amounts to anarchy and lawlessness, which often leads to increased social conflict and instability. How far the government should go in meeting the needs of the community, however, is an open question.

The problem is that, for the most part, our government is a manifestation of ruling class interests, that is to say, those who own and control the means of production, finance, natural resources, etc., and not that of the entire community. In fact, the interests of the ruling class, the interests of capital, are often in conflict with those of average citizens. But this isn't anything new.

The state has been skewed in favour of the ruling class from the very beginning. Although some of the Founders, namely Thomas Paine, did advocate for things like the abolition of slavery, free public education, progressive taxation, social safety nets (e.g., old-age pensions), etc., the Founding Fathers, while arguably great men, weren't fighting for universal freedom and suffrage, they were fighting for the freedom of white, male property owners from the tyranny of the British monarchy.

Like most forms of government centered around private property rights, the basic principle behind the establishment of our form of representative democracy had more to do with the ruling elites wanting to protect the small minority of property owners (including themselves) from the majority of the propertyless than anything else. As James Madison put it in Federalist No. 10, "… the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society."

The Federalist Papers were a series of essays arguing for the ratification of our Constitution. Federalist No. 10, written by Madison, addresses the question of factions, which he defines as "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."

Believing that an individual's interest "would certainly bias his judgement, and not improbably, corrupt his integrity," he saw groups of individuals, or factions, as an even greater threat to individual liberty, even though paradoxically, he saw liberty as the cause by which factions arise. His solution, then, was to try to control the effects of factions within American society. This could be accomplished, he argued, by the establishment of a republic in favour of a direct democracy. And the representatives in this new republic were initially elected by a select few, namely white, male property owners.

While I agree with Madison, albeit somewhat reluctantly, about the dangers of having a majority of citizens who are united and motivated by a common interest who can take away the rights of the minority of other citizens, this can just as easily lead to the reverse, e.g., a minority of wealthy/propertied interests excluding the majority of poor/propertyless from voting, or in the case of Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, from effectively influencing the political process.

One of the few things I think Andrew Jackson got right (as opposed to his support of slavery and the Indian Removal Act) was his support for expanded suffrage, which at that time meant extending the right to vote to include all white males instead of just white, male property owners. Without removing this form of class antagonism, civil unrest on the part of the poor and disenfranchised could have gotten to the point where revolt was a serious possibility. Removing this restriction, however, allowed more people to become directly involved in the political process, giving them (at least in theory) a more constructive way to address their grievances than violence. It was the first step in the ongoing fight for equality and universal suffrage.

But as a general principle, the ruling class seeks to do as little for the average citizen as it can. It wasn't until 1870, for example, that African American males were allowed to vote. And women weren't allowed to vote until 1920. 1920! So what changed? Was it the interests of the ruling class? Perhaps in some cases, but the vast majority of changes came after long, hard struggles by average men and women seeking life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. From the abolition of slavery to the right of women to vote to the 40 hour work day, it was due to the bravery of ordinary, everyday men and women who were willing to stand up and fight for what they believed in that we have these things today.

Regardless of where one stands on the left-right political spectrum, I think it can be agreed by the majority who seriously think about it that, part of the reason we're losing the battle for political democracy in the US is the lack of civic participation on the part of its citizens. People can't just vote once a year and think that's the end of their civic obligation. Hell, most of the time they don't even do that much. Here in Oregon, for example, we can vote by mail. We don't even have to leave our house to vote and we still can't reach 100% turnout! Voter turnout for the entire US during the 2008 presidential election — the highest since 1964 — was only 63%. And many statewide elections are decided by even less.

But we need to do even more than that to win and secure our political freedom. We need to call and write our representatives. We need to go to their offices and talk to them face to face. We need to run for office ourselves. We need to organize with other like-minded individuals and push for the policies we want. We need to take to the streets in rallies and protests if need be. I vote, but I'm not under the illusion that my one vote can have as much of an impact as my political activism can. That's why today, I'm planning on walking 2.3 miles to Pioneer Square in downtown Portland, hopefully arriving by 2:30pm along with everyone else who's planning to march and gather in support of the students and workers of Wisconsin.

It's not just about Wisconsin, though. It's much bigger than that. It's about Ohio and Michigan. It's about every city and state whose unions are under attack. It's about the poor and the elderly who are being targeted to shoulder the burden of tax cuts for businesses. It's about attacks on everything from public education and PBS, to reproductive healthcare and even democracy itself. I really wish people would start paying more attention to what's happening in places like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and start fighting back.

We're spending over $663.8 billion on weapons, overseas military bases and the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, but we can't even manage to fund public schools and care for the elderly here at home. That's $663, 800, 000, 000! That's more than Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan and Russia combined, and accounts for 40% of total global arms spending.

I don't know how many other people out there feel the way I do and are willing to try and do something about it, but I'm tired of reading the news and seeing this insanity become the status quo. If we don't start taking notice and getting more politically active, we're going to find ourselves in an Orwellian/Atwood-esque dystopia. Apathy and complacency are the real enemies of freedom in the US, and I hope that at least some of you will join me in trying to put power back into the hands of the people. We need to understand that we're all in this together; and as the old IWW motto goes, "An injury to one is an injury to all."

an injury to one is an injury to all

2011-03-10T23:18:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow I'm planning on walking 2.3 miles to Pioneer Square in downtown Portland, hopefully arriving by 2:30pm along with everyone else who's planning to march and gather in support of the students and workers of Wisconsin.

But it's not just about Wisconsin. It's about Ohio and Michigan. It's about every city and state whose unions are under attack. It's about the poor and the elderly who are being targeted to shoulder the burden of tax cuts for businesses. It's about attacks on everything from public education and PBS, to reproductive healthcare and even democracy itself. I really wish people would start paying more attention to what's happening in places like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and start fighting back.

We're spending over $663.8 billion on weapons, overseas military bases and the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, but we can't even manage to fund public schools and care for the elderly here at home. That's $663, 800, 000, 000! That's more than Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan and Russia combined, and accounts for 40% of total global arms spending.

I don't know how many other people out there feel the way I do and are willing to try and do something about it, but I'm tired of reading the news and seeing this insanity become the status quo. If we don't start taking notice and getting more active, we're going to find ourselves in an Orwellian/Atwood-esque dystopia.

Apathy and complacency are the real enemies of freedom in the US, and I hope that at least some of you will join me in trying to put power back into the hands of the people. We need to understand that we're all in this together; and as the old IWW motto goes, "An injury to one is an injury to all."

efm really is "unbelievable"

2011-03-09T09:10:00.000-08:00

If you think what Governor Walker is doing in Wisconsin is bad, check out the shit Governor Snyder is trying to pull in Michigan with his backing of emergency financial manager legislation.

If passed, the governor would have the ability to declare a financial emergency in any town, village, city or township, and put that municipality under the authority of an emergency financial manager. This appointed EFM would not only have the power to unilaterally modify or even cancel existing union contracts and collective bargaining agreements, stripping away public sector union rights, but the ability to dismiss elected officials and even disincorporate or dissolve municipal governments.

As if that wasn't enough, the EFM would also be able to privatize all public services, merge school districts together and increase existing class sizes, and shift a community's debt burden onto local taxpayers seemingly at will. And the best part is, to qualify as an EFM, all you apparently need is to undergo two days of training and pay a fee.

That's right, an unelected official with as little as two days of training could have the ability to "overrule elected officials and dissolve units of government and school districts" (The Detroit News).