marjaerwin

The Occupy movement does not need to run candidates for office to gain legitimacy. Although I have nothing against those who wish to try to change things from within, I distrust any effort to take power over others.

The movement's legitimacy comes from the needs of the whole world, and it cannot give that legitimacy to the state, or to any other violent/hierarchical institution. And the defenders of the kleptocratic status quo would love for the movement to get into electoral politics. If the movement did so, it would direct organizing effort away from useful projects into electoral dead-ends, and it would undermine occupiers' critiques of the electoral system.

If you vote, people tell you that your vote meant agreeing to abide by the results. If you refuse to vote, people tell you that your refusal makes your opinions worthless. But with this kind of double bind, neither bind can hold truth.

I admit I haven't been able to do much to support the Occupy movement. I went down to Occupy DC some weeks back, but couldn't stay long, because of my smoke allergy. I haven't returned because of that and other health issues.

We need to point out the injustices of capitalism - and the structural problems in capitalism - and start creating something better than capitalism. We need this because capitalism demands constant growth, while survival demands sustainability. We need alternatives which meet people's needs instead of paying profiteers' demands. I think these alternatives need to be less centralized and more voluntary than the present order. In this sense, even if people choose communism over, say, mutualism, it would be more free [market] than capitalism ever was.

But right now there are people trying to destroy the Occupy movement, and it's depressing to face all the disinformation. and see the violence against the movement, and see the victim-blaming. So when the police attack protests, the beaten-up protesters get defamed as "violent" "mobs."

And there are people trying to co-opt the Occupy movement, to marginalize anarchist and other radical contributions, to support kleptocracy/capitalism, to propose specific reforms that will ameliorate the symptoms without treating their causes, to turn the Occupy movement into an arm of the Democratic Party, and so on.

Those who wish to preserve their power need to destroy other's knowledge, and communities, and values. Because equality and justice and freedom are values, and better values than heteropatriarchal values, which call themselves family values although they break up extended families and friendships and families of choice in favor of one model of male-dominated nuclear family.

http://endablog.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/how-to-destroy-the-legitimate-productive-majority-of-society-make-sure-that-none-of-them-ever-get-trained-to-analyze-the-bullshit-that-the-idle-rich-use-to-stay-in-power/

A bit angry right now. The courts sent out jury questionnaires, partially filled out, and in my case partially filled out with incorrect information. I was not quite sure what to do: I am vulnerable to punishment for not filling out the questionnaire, for filling it out since the pre-printed parts were wrong, and for believing that the courts and the government are systems of injustice in any case.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13796479

Carbon dioxide levels are now so high, it says, that ways of pulling the gas out of the atmosphere need to be researched urgently - but not using techniques, such as iron fertilisation, that lead to more CO2 entering the oceans.

"We have to bring down CO2 emissions to zero within about 20 years," Professor Hoegh-Guldberg told BBC News.

"If we don't do that, we're going to see steady acidification of the seas, heat events that are wiping out things like kelp forests and coral reefs, and we'll see a very different ocean."

And as this civilization destroys the oceans, it destroys itself, and our futures.

I see no way to stop this madness. Our society counsels us not to worry about what we can change, and not to worry about what we can't, but we damn well need to worry about what - given proper cooperation - we can and must change.

Hat tip to Suzan: http://womenborntranssexual.com/2011/06/20/worlds-oceans-in-shocking-decline/

I only see the BoingBoing summary and the video link, so I'm not sure whether there is a readable version of the original.

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/05/02/school-principal-ban.html

When I was just starting school I had allergies to wheat, dairy, eggs, and red meat, among other things. I was never able to eat one of the cafeteria lunches without throwing up. It was quite a mess to clean up.

From what I've read about the story, I think this policy is dangerous, and I suspect it violates the Some Americans With Disabilities Act too.

Human civilization is running out of the oil it currently depends on. It is destroying the forests and depleting the fisheries. It is changing the climate with still-increasing CO2 emissions. And it is growing. It is getting harder and harder to extract resources for this civilization, and it is leading to techniques, such as oil-sands extraction and deepwater drilling, with worse and worse effects.

One way or another we are in for hard times ahead.

In the best-case scenario, human civilization devotes the needed resources to switch over to sustainable energy sources and sustainable food production. An economic revolution, including the collapse of capitalism and the state, keeps the plutocracy and the military-torture-prison-industrial complex from drawing off more wealth. A demographic revolution allows the birth rate to fall. A technological revolution allows civilization to adapt to new energy sources. People still face hard times, but civilization survives.

A major revolution will be required. It might look like the Egyptian revolution, but in China, India, America and/or Europe. I think Europe is most likely to accomplish the switchover.

In the most likely scenario, the state remains in power and devotes all its resources to staying in power. All of the current trends continue. By the time it loses power, its environmental destruction and resource depletion has caused mass starvation and reversed the industrial revolution. If human civilization is to recover, it must find new energy sources with fewer resources than before; however, it can still turn to old knowledge and salvaged goods.

A group which prepares for the collapse will be better-able to influence the ideas of post-collapse society. An activist approach which creates working alternatives would save a lot here, and could encourage groups to defect from the ruling institutions and switch tracks from this to a partial approximation of the better case.

In the worst-case scenario, they hit the button. The cities, mines, oilfields, and whatever else they target is destroyed. In this case, there is no salvage. There may be human survivors. There is little prospect of recovery.

There is nothing we can do to prepare for the worst-case scenario. But it is the least likely, if only because it is so terrible.

For our first entry, I'll take all statements of the form:

"If you [act in some harmless but insufficiently subordinate manner], then don't complain when faced with the consequences [up to and including beatings, arrest, torture, and rape]."

Look, do we even have to explain why kapoism and other evils are bad? *sigh*

Conventional femininity injures, mutilates, and sometimes kills.

Jill, at I Blame the Patriarchy ( http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2011/01/26/death-by-femininity-again/ ) considers who is to blame for the death of Carolin Berger, a German porn actress.

It is only too easy for defenders of the status quo to blame those who die of plastic surgery. All too many people believe the world is just. Devout believers in the American Dream believe that work will make them rich and free; that the rich have earned their wealth and the poor have squandered their opportunities. Drawing from the same world-view, they tend to believe whoever has been tortured must be guilty, whoever has been raped must have led their attackers on, and whoever has fallen ill must have neglected their health. Of course they will also believe that whoever has been injured or killed in surgery must have neglected the risks.

It is only too easy for cultural critics to blame the plastic surgery and porn industries. There is plenty of guilt among them. Surgery has its dangers. When some surgeons push extra procedures, or dismiss the risks, they betray their patients. When some practitioners use silicone injections, they mutilate, and often murder their patients. Rape culture depends on certain myths. When some porn producers imply that love doesn't matter, when they imply that consent doesn't matter, they encourage rape. When they normativize one body type and exoticize another, they encourage body-image problems, and racist and transphobic stereotypes. And the critics can do as much harm as good. When cultural critics turn aside, to mock trans people as Germaine Greer or Suzanne Moore have done, they create scapegoats while invisibilizing deeper problems.

I blame the plutocracy.

The ruling class has taken more and more wealth for itself. The other classes are faced with increasing precarity, the destruction of unions and communities, the growth of the prison-industrial complex, and the criminalization of poverty. The ruling class has taken more and more spending-power for itself, while destroying more and more of the bargaining power of the other classes. The ruling class is creating a harem economy. It is creating an economy where the best option for many lower-class individuals is to become concubines for higher-class ones. It is one of the few forms of class mobility left.

Individual tastes will vary, but the institution reinforces certain styles: ones which imply that the concubine is high-status, and still lower-status than their partner. Conspicuous consumption, expensive, and time-consuming styles can express high status; the combination of submissive-signifiers and dominant-signifiers can express unequal status between the concubine and their partner.

Foot-binding was an extreme example of both tendencies. It crippled its victims. It made it far harder for Chinese womyn to work, and the lost labor-power was conspicuously consumed. It made it far harder for Chinese womyn to assert independence, and enforced submission. Expensive surgeries, crippling footwear, fragile clothing and time-consuming cosmetics are not as extreme as foot binding, but they are status-signifiers and often submission-signifiers.

Under these circumstances, the status-signifiers, if not the submission-signifiers, of concubinage set beauty standards in other aspects of society. The plastic surgery industry cannot introduce new beauty standards. The porn industry can introduce its own beauty standards, but it will most often adopt the wider culture's beauty standards, and enforce them on its actresses and actors.

Yes.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/01/24-1

Driving Straight Into Catastrophe

by Julio Godoy

PARIS - Despite repeated warnings by environmental and climate experts that reduction of fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions is fundamental to forestalling global warming, disaster appears imminent. According to the latest statistics, unprecedented climate change has Earth hurtling down a path of catastrophic proportions.

Why. The. Fuck. do people keep letting this get worse?

Why. The. Fuck. does the state persecute environmentalists while subsidizing environmental destruction - where the profits go to the few and the costs go to all?

It's mind-blowingly stupid. An effective parasite has the sense to preserve its host. But the ruling class does not show any interest in preserving the people or the earth we all live on.

The state will not take one step to preserve the environment, humanity, and itself, but it will devote resources to make sure no one else acts. The state, as an institution, appears capable of paranoia, but not of forethought.

What. The. Fuck. is to be done?