06.03.2014

Links March 2014


Imperial news:
http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2014/01/02/wounded-knee-1890-1973-photos/6496/
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/02/businesses-going-surveillance-time-mode-pursuit-productivity.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-secret-playbook-of-social-media-censors-the-counter-reset/5370943
http://rt.com/news/five-eyes-online-manipulation-deception-564/
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/02/wolf-richter-young-subprime-debt-slave-generation.html
http://www.workers.org/articles/2014/02/20/volkswagen-workers-lost/
http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/OI_Report_Down_on_the_Farm.pdf
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-powers-and-abuses-of-americas-mega-corporations/5371901
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/db_article.php?article_id=566
http://disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com/2014/02/19/you-can-jail-the-resisters-but-not-the-resistance/




1.) The blog, that you are visiting just now, regularly violates basic rules and convention of blogging, namely:

a. Avoid controversial topics which could upset the blogs constituency.

b. Avoid complicated, lengthy, and technical texts, which could distress the readers and exceed their attention span.

c. Name the person or the group as scapegoat who presumably evokes the least sympathies in the readers. 

d. Blame the system and not the people who constitute the system, avoid any suggestions that the readers themselves are responsible for a calamitous situation or an undesirable outcome.

e. Always offer solutions for a problem which don’t explicitly call for the active participation and for financial sacrifices or lifestyle changes of the readers.

f. Present current popular apocalyptic views (zeitgeist apocalypse) in a dramatic yet nonchalant and detached manner which projects, that this is just to give the readers a thrill and that it is more or less entertainment and show.
Rosy bookshelf DSCN2939
Considering the mentioned violation of basic unwritten but understood rules and considering the uncompromising, uncommon, and controversial views presented here it is astonishing that still 61 people have subscribed and that there are between 60 and 80 views a day. The mirror site on blogger has even more views (probably because Google ranks its own blogger service higher).

Is this a blog for mental masochists? Is this blog just an intellectual playground completely detached from real life? Is the blog itself real?

Lets cool it and put things in a proper perspective.

2.) The in various blog posts continuously repeated assumptions are:

a. Modern communication technologies (TV, internet, cell phones) break traditional social bonds and are used for indoctrination, misinformation, propaganda. The steady stream of contradictory and distorted information makes us numb, confused, dull.

b. Modern technologies allow the creation of global networks (international finance) and distribution systems (trade of commodities and consumer goods). The networks are controlled by criminal gangs (banks, hedge funds) to extort money.

c. Vital resources (water, minerals, soil) are unsustainably exploited or made unusable by chemical and radioactive contamination.

d. Steadily increasing levels of artificial substances (ubiquitous plastics, agricultural and industrial chemicals) in the environment endanger our health. 

e. Natural habitats (forests, corals) are destroyed and many fellow species go extinct.

f. Weapons are produced in huge quantities and used by psychopathic criminals to slaughter or enslave their fellow humans.

3.) The in various blog posts continuously repeated conclusions are:

a. To use modern communication tools cautiously and in moderation.

b. To create and support local networks (barter, time banks, counter currencies, credit unions, local co-ops) and acquire self-sufficiency (DIY, gardening, subsistence farming).

c. To use less of everything, to revive traditional ways of food production and manufacturing, to prevent new roads, factories, plants.

d. To avoid plastics, industrial food, unnecessary technical gadgets.

e. To restore habitats or leave nature alone. To adopt measures against human overpopulation.

f. To hinder, subvert, sabotage weapons production, to destroy or convert existing weapons, to install mechanisms of peaceful conflict resolution.

4.) The recommendations are clear enough and nobody until now has disputed their logic. Lets repeat the recommendations in a different formulation:

a. If everyone would use her/his limited time in this life for retrospection, meditation, and human contact instead of virtual communication via screen, keyboard, mouse, it would make a difference.

b. If everyone who knows better paved the way for fundamental change by grabbing and spending less money, it would make a difference.

c. If all people who believe that climate change and global warming is real would quit the rat race it would make a difference.

d. If all people who are aware that industrial production of any kind without exception is poisoning the ecosphere would stop buying stuff it would make a difference.

e. If everybody who dislikes weapons production, wars, and the various regime change projects around the globe would stop paying the taxes which fund such activities (like Cindy Sheehan for example does), it would make a difference.

f. If everyones guiding principles would be kindness, tolerance, and empathy it would make a difference.

5.) Is this undisputed, undefined, accepted as conclusive, and beyond question? Or are the assumptions and the derived conclusions wrong?

Until now only a few people raised their voice and nobody challenged the basic assumptions and conclusions. They only said: “Well, its maybe not that bad, don’t be that negative.” To agonize in the next sentence about Fukushima, destroyed coral reefs, disappearing wildlife, increasing cancer rates, poverty, inequality, disastrous wars, and failed states. 

“Well, its maybe not that bad.” So why are they complaining? I had contacts saying, that they hate what the US has become, and I am still pondering this remark.

Many people feel that there is something wrong, many people feel disillusioned, unhappy, restless, distressed, empty, alone. People who are able to depart from their TV/computer/smartphone screens to go out into nature see the changes, the decline, and are scared.

So why aren’t we following the recommendations, why aren’t we reorganizing our lives, why aren’t we rising up and change things in a collective effort? Are we all in denial? Is this “cognitive dissonance”? Is it carelessness, fatalism, chuzpe?
Rosy bookshelf DSCN2932
Again, lets cool it and put things in a proper perspective.

Some of us are ready for change, others are not because of perceived uncertainty and danger. There are also the unrepentant idiots, the lackeys and minions, the unscrupulous whores of power who make things complicated.

Every one of us is a tiny wheel in a big machine, and if enough tiny wheels break, the machine will stop. Yet some of us are in a more precarious situation and could be seriously hurt if they try to break out.

Who casts the first stone?

6.) The same once more from a slightly different angle:

The movers and shakers, the mighty caste of the Forbes list, also called plutocrats, oligarchs, or simply billionaires, together with big corporations and banks (which are according to the US Supreme Court also individuals) use their power to exploit the rest of humanity and everything else on this planet.

They resist change and they don’t mind to destroy nature, because profits are all what counts for them.

Are we at their mercy? (We are clearly not, because they are merciless.)

Are we powerless, defenseless, helpless?

We are not, because power isn’t simply top-down, as thinkers such as Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault remind us. Power is also something that exists in and through the opinions and actions of the collective.

Nobody is forced to stare at screens of various sizes all day long, nobody is forced to watch or listen to advertising, nobody is forced to waste her/his time with pointless internet chatter, nobody is forced to believe the propaganda lies.

Nobody is forced to follow trends and fashions, nobody is forced to comply, conform, accommodate, while climbing the career ladder. Nobody is forced to have a career.

A lot of elections are still free and fairly fair, though the presented choices may often be not that great.

Back to point 3.)

Or forward to the question: Have we brought it upon ourselves? Or do we at least share responsibility for the pillaging of earth resources, the destruction of nature, the looming catastrophes?

Mute questions. In the end, we will do what we can, we will change as far and as fast as we can, and we collectively will bear the consequences if we fail.

Life will go on or will end.
Min Ki bookshelf DSCN0844
There was no winter to speak of this year and no snow to melt. Garden work has started already and I’m busy weeding and fighting slugs and snails. The slugs and snails are tiny and nearly undetectable but they are hungry. I have already caught a lot in the traps filled with beer. Pests and fungal infections will be an increased problem this year.

Blackbirds have ruined quite a lot of the onions that I planted in fall. I hate them.

Blog posts will be issued more infrequent in spring and summer.

The cats are fine. 
Gandhi Mia couch DSCN3005
Wendy window sill DSCN0469
Sumo couch DSCN0480
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