But fun is more than just, well, fun and games. Fun is a deeply human experience. And the struggle for fun, for pleasure and for the “right to play,” to quote a certain humanitarian campaign banned by our one-time benevolent Olympic overlords, is a contested ideal. Indeed, many an authoritarian regime has correctly understood that the right to play, the right to freely enjoy oneself can be the basis of deeply subversive process of liberation.  It is the often the basis for communities to come together, and as we all know, the people united, will never be defeated.

Politics & Football: A Long History

The Beautiful Game

As I write this, the most watched sporting tournament in the world is drawing to a close: the FIFA World Cup. 32 teams, representing all the Earth’s continents, with at least one or two solid sides from each, have made the World Cup a far more representative and far more watched sporting event than the Olympics could ever hope to be. From Paraguay to Ghana, the United States to North Korea, the Netherlands to Australia—the World Cup melds together a diversity of cultures rarely meeting on as level a playing field, both literally and metaphorically. Eleven players a side, one ball, ninety minutes: poetry in motion.

It is known as “the beautiful game” as much for the finesse and agility demonstrated by its top talents as for the simplicity with which it is played. Consider that to play a game of football all that is required is a relatively even surface, makeshift goals that can be made out of anything from walls, curbs, fences, rocks and trash and a ball. And even the term “ball” is used loosely in most of the world. Rolled up clothes, fruits, even plastic bottles melted into shape can substitute for a “regulation” ball used in professional competition. Generations of children have perfected this simple craft.

It is for this reason that football is the world’s game; the vast majority of the Earth’s people are overwhelmingly afflicted with that lingering capitalist disease known as poverty. Living in squalor, bats, pads, basketball rims and hockey sticks are a luxury most people will never experience to say nothing of clean drinking water. Football, on the other hand, is a game literally anyone of any economic status can play. Thus, football is often times one of the few outlets, one of the few luxuries, one of the few instances of fun for the world’s desperate majority. It has inspired generations of children in particular, regardless of stature, that this one game can lift them to better things. It is to this end that football has given us events such as The Homeless World Cup and the increasing popularity of women’s football.

It also explains why, increasingly, the world’s best players are emerging from the once “dark” and forgotten corners of the Earth. While we will likely never want for Wayne Rooneys and Cristiano Ronaldos, more and more the likes of Essien, Drogba, Messi, Ji-Sung and Honda are becoming household names. What other sport or even institution can claim to have such a true diversity of representation? Even the celebrated United Nations is dominated by the Security Council which is in turn dominated by a handful of veto-holding states, most of them Western states. As the game has become increasingly international, beamed to the homes and plazas of billions, the level of competition has elevated a once almost exclusively European and South American sport into a global phenomenon.

Socializing Entertainment

While the World Cup occurs only once every four years, much as with the respective continental tournaments (Euro, Africa Cup, Asia Cup etc) the period in between major international gatherings is an almost uninterrupted series of club fixtures. So much so that it has become something of a joke.

Nonetheless, football fans (read as “hooligans” in the American press) have garnered something of a reputation for a crazed obsession with their respective clubs. While it is easy enough to dismiss this as the idle, hollow pursuits of the unwashed masses (bread and circuses, as they say) there is actually a pronounced political dimension to this.

In most of the world, sport is anything but apolitical. For instance, it makes a difference whether one cheers for Celtic or the Rangers. The former were the team of Irish Republicans while the latter those of Protestant Unionists.  Inter Milan, one of Italy’s best known clubs, has had a long history of working class, left-wing support. Hamburg’s FC St. Pauli is a club which has been embraced by the neighbourhood’s working class and counter-culture scene and embodies perhaps the best a “political club” has to offer; “[the] organisation has adopted an outspoken stance against racism, fascism, sexism, and homophobia and has embodied this position in its constitution. Team supporters traditionally participate in demonstrations in the Hamburg district of St. Pauli, including those over squatting or low-income housing, such as the Hafenstraße and Bambule.” Moreover, “the club prides itself on having the largest number of female fans in all of German football. In 2002, advertisements for the men’s magazine Maxim were removed from the team’s stadium, in response to fans’ protests over the adverts’ sexist depictions of women.”

The Politics of FC St. Pauli (Video)

Even major clubs FC Barcelona, for instance, have continued to foster their social roots. “Barca” has had a long-standing policy of not wearing any corporate advertising on their jerseys, having only ever accepted the “sponsorship” of UNICEF. The fact has its origins in the history of the club, which had been composed of supporters of the Second Spanish Republic during the 1930s. On a tour of the US and Mexico during the Civil War in Spain, the players were treated as official ambassadors of the Republican side. Later, during the Francoist regime, Barcelona’s players and supporters earned a often dangerous reputation for being an organization that was willing to speak out and stand up for civil liberties and freedoms in spite of repression on the part of the fascist regime. These were no mere millionaire playboys.

There is a further point worth making, however. Like its arch-rivals, Real Madrid, Barcelona is owned, in part, by its fans. They have representation on the board of the club and no major decision regarding the club’s future is made without their approval. In Germany, all clubs are at least 51% community owned, preventing corporate domination of the game. Similar arrangements are found all over the globe, with communities embracing and defending their treasured sports teams. F.C. United of Manchester, for instance, was founded in 2005 by former supporters of Manchester United in specific opposition to the gross commercialization and corporatization of their team, as well as an increasing sense of alienation from the operation of the club as a result of the new, American, ownership.

There is an implicit recognition in these communities that while football may “only” be a game, it is also an organic part of the greater, social whole. Entertainment is an integral part of the human experience. And in so much as all members of the community are understood to have a right to entertainment and fun, and fan support is viewed as being integral to a club’s overall success, these groups have rightly understood themselves being part of the club itself and the club as part of themselves. These are their teams, and keeping them theirs means ensuring that rich and poor alike have an opportunity catch a live game once in a while. And moreover, to ensure that the club will play a function in the community beyond merely the weekly matches; politics is wedded to sport, not segregated from it.

Reclaiming Fun

As of yesterday, the former “GM Place” is set to become the “Rogers Arena.” We have swapped one corporate slogan for another. The overall state of the Canucks and most every other major professional sports side and league in North America is dreary at best. An ordinary, working family simply cannot afford to attend even a single session of “Canada’s game” in this country. At least not of the professional sort, to which all Canadian youngsters are said to aspire anyway. “We are all Canucks”—bullshit.

The People's Game.

Worse still, these franchises have little actual integration in the communities which they nominally represent. They contribute little and stand for nothing. Which is precisely why North American teams, like the Jets and Grizzlies and Sonics, have no real issue with moving from city to city. The dollar determines whether it will be the Utah or the New Orleans Jazz, Mormon propensity for black music be damned. Nothing else matters: the fan support is cosmetic as the real power is private and corporatized. Communities are merely expected to build multi-million dollar arenas, preferably at the expense of social housing, and like it.

In the grander scheme of things, the fate of professional sports in the world is essentially irrelevant, many would aptly argue. No one is suggesting we shed any tears for those who make millions chasing rubber discs and the like. Yet the fate of our “fun” is a telling reflection of the fate of our overall well being in these societies. Is it any accident in the countries where sports teams are considered community institutions, publically owned and politically active, that their general social welfare situation is in much better shape? Is it not entirely fitting that in a country like Canada where even basic services like education and healthcare are increasingly becoming unaffordable and inaccessible to the majority of people, that things like pro sporting events have likewise become obscene luxuries? The connection seems clear.

I thank you for indulging me in this somewhat banal commentary but I repeat only that all of it has been to say simply that the struggle for a better world is not merely the about “the conquest of bread.” We are no mere machines, requiring only food and sleep to return simply to the daily grind of exploitation and wage slavery. We require beauty, art, song and dance. We require community and opportunities for common, collective, joyous experience. For much of the world, football provides just this and it is why they fight for it and defend it. Much as we ought to.

Related Links:

The Anarchist Soccer Federation

• No Related Posts

But today we’ve seen another fail in the possibility of quality community journalism in BC with the announcement of another shakeout in community papers in BC. Black Press just bought out Glacier Media’s 11 papers and they’ll close the 4 that happen to compete with Black papers in Nelson, PR, 100 Mile and Quesnel.

The performance of its remaining publications should get stronger as the economy improves.

via CBC News – Media – 4 B.C. newspapers shutting down.

I’d venture to say that the performance of Black’s 4 papers that suddenly lose competition will get stronger very soon!

So what’s the prognosis?

Ultimately, what I want is a vibrant free press. A group of media outlets that hold society and its leadership accountable.

Though I haven’t caught up yet to this episode of The Wire, I enjoy that this is flying around Twitter right now: “You know what a healthy newsroom is? It’s a magical place where people argue about everything all the time.”

Where there is a monopoly, like the CanWest stranglehold soon to be weakened in Vancouver, there is less chance of effective journalism. And while competition also leads to bad journalism sometimes as everyone tries to be the first, or nearly the first, to report the death of Gordon Lightfoot while he happened to be getting his teeth cleaned, I’d rather see some healthy competition as the good outweighs the bad, at least in my universe.

But I also read today that The Canadian Press is going to cease to be a non-profit cooperative purveyor of news as 3 media groups are going to now run it as a for-profit business.

And I’m left with some real sadness about the potential for community political dialogue. When community papers now weigh less than the fliers in the middle, it’s time to wonder if quality online outlets can go to press and put a paper in people’s hands. Certainly a place like San Francisco is a geographically tight and politically vibrant enough community for San Francisco Public Press to try creating a hardcopy edition.

In the end, I turn everyone once again to George Monbiot’s advice to aspiring writers: Choose Life! The 6 years of this site certainly wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for this fantastic perspective on writing, politics, integrity and improving society. I only hope we can live up to a solid ideal, an ideal that Monbiot wrote about even before the explosion of blog-platform journalism and editorialism.

Because I know it just got harder today in BC and Canada for all of us to enjoy the ideal of a quality press.

• No Related Posts

This year’s sea ice meltdown is well ahead of 2007 in loss of both area and thickness. The ice is failing at a record pace, in part, because it is at a record low thickness for the date. This ice is thinning at a record rate because of warm air temperatures above and because of melting from below.

via Daily Kos: Arctic Sea Ice Meltdown Accelerates: DK Greenroots.

See http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2010/060810.html

Here’s what I get from this graph:

• 30 years of general decline
• 2007 really sucked
• 2010 looks like it will be far worse than 2007 and it’s only early July
• Anomalous  years affect the line of best fit and normalize outlier behaviour

What does this mean? Climate change is not a straight line effect, but more logarithmic. Positive feedback loops accelerate the melt. And while everyone who thinks sea ice melting won’t rise ocean levels, that’s still correct. But what missing ocean ice will do is remove the plugs that keep the Antarctic and Greenland glaciers from tumbling into the sea.

When is the tipping point?

When do we realize something’s changed?

When do we think that we actually have to start really changing our lives in a myriad of ways, including cutting down on intercontinental trade that hurts economically vulnerable people, but also increases GHGs? The irony, of course, in international trade is if the northwest passage opens up due to Arctic ice melt, lots of innovators in intercontinental trade are going to want to exploit that new route, thereby exacerbating the problem. Suddenly, Churchill, Manitoba may become a shipping hub over the pole.

But in the end, I’m not really worried about climate breakdown and how it would affect me or my loved ones because so many techno-disciples believe humans are so innovative that someone will develop a superhero app that will save us all just before we cross the brink.

And if it weren’t for the SurvivaBall, I think we would have to get going on some plans here.

• No Related Posts

Sitting here in Burnaby, it’s interesting observing the protests in Toronto on television or through social media.  Were I in Toronto, I would have been on the streets.  It would have been terrifying.  But it would have been liberating.

Yes, the protests and actions smashed some windows and burned some police cars.  Yes, the black bloc tactic was employed.  Yes, there were thousands in the streets.  But there’s a reason for this.  The people who are meeting in the downtown core of Toronto as part of the G8 and G20 are our “leaders,” our “politicians,” and they are the people who, according to the popular mythology, we have elected to do the peoples’ work.

But they’re not doing that work.  And the people are rightfully unhappy.  And they want to protest this lack of work.  And they do. And the police put on their riot gear and pick up their batons and pepper spray and beat back the people in the streets.  Why? They’re “protecting” the people in the meeting from the people in the streets.

The protesters in the streets of Toronto, of Vancouver, of Genoa, of Buenos Aires, of Santiago, of Johannesburg, and of so many other cities and towns and places around the world are demanding a different world.  And they’re demanding a different world, a better world, in the only way that might be left.

Emma Goldman famously said, “if voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”  So many of the people in the streets of Toronto today were there because they voted for a difference.  And no matter who was in power, promising that difference, it has yet to come.

The media argue that the protesters in the streets have resorted to “violence.”  Smashing a window is not violence.  It is destruction of property, certainly, but not violence.  And the property being destroyed when someone smashes a window of a bank or a transnational corporation is but one manifestation of an inherently violent system, capitalism, which requires subjugation and exploited labour and alienation.  The window of a bank is one manifestation of a system with forcibly enclosed public spaces, which removed people from lands and removes the product of peoples’ work from their own control merely because they must work to survive.

The smashing of a window is an act of freedom, as it smashes the manifestation of the violent system and strikes at its heart.

And our “leaders,” the politicians, know the violence of the system and its inherent contradictions.  The capitalistic desire to profit more created the commercial ‘products’ and predatory lending and so forth that caused the economic crises that hurt so many.  The crises that the G8/G20 meetings are struggling to address, in order to restabilize capitalism.

And the people don’t want this.  They want their education system to be free and of high quality.  They want public health care. They want equality and freedom.  This is the peoples’ work, and it is what so many of us vote for, when we are permitted to vote.

But our “leaders” aren’t doing this work.  And so the people are in the streets, protesting.

And the fences go up, and the police march in, and the boots come down, to protect the people who have been elected to do the peoples’ work from the people who elected them.  Who want them to do their work.

Friends, we have a choice.  We can continue to hope that the people that we vote for will actually do the work that we want them to do.  Or we can do it ourselves.

I’ll see you in the streets.

• July 1, 2010 -- A Better World is Needed: The oh-so ‘Canadian’ style of dissent (8)
• June 30, 2010 -- Canadian Authoritarianism: Then and Now (10)

As Toronto prepares to host the G20 Summit in a few days time, the media has been abuzz once more with the salacious prospect of street clashes between black-clad anarchists and riot police. The notorious “Black Bloc” has been presented as some sort of international, traveling cabal of professional provocateurs who have migrated, en masse, from the streets of Athens to the streets of Vancouver and now Toronto. As the mainstream media cannot even present a semblance of balanced coverage of the ongoing apartheid regime in occupied Palestine, or the occupation of Afghanistan or Iraq, it seems pointless to hold our breath for anything akin to a rational analysis of the growing anarchist movement across the globe; what they stand for, what they want. As such, this task falls to one such as I.

To that end, some brief remarks:

On Understanding

A frequent refrain from the uninformed, upon hearing of an anarchist gathering or a rally is twofold: who are these lunatics who want to bring in a dog-eat-dog world of chaos and violence? And secondly, I thought anarchists were against organization? How could they possibly organize anything? These aren’t real anarchists; real anarchists are long bearded savages who speak in tongues. This statement is usually followed by a smug cacophony of bellicose laughter.

While these are all very much nuanced observations they all suffer from one, significant, collective flaw: they’re absolutely moronic. One can certainly forgive ignorance of a given political phenomenon, but to use one’s ignorance as a truncheon and to, in turn, assert this ignorance as fact (i.e. “real anarchists don’t organize anything, real anarchists eat children and raw chicken livers!”) is inexcusable. Then again, this is the general “style” of modern media culture as a whole so one need hardly be surprised. Nor is this the first time that anarchists have been the victims of drummed up media hysterias—the 1890s, 1920s and 1930s were noted for their “Red Scares” which included, of course, the spectre of the (usually European/foreign) anarchist in North America in particular.

Over a hundred years have passed since that original hysterical onslaught, and yet few in the media have sought fit to do much research beyond the crass stereotypes that were established during that Gilded Age. As anarchist ideas and ideals are finding an ever wider audience, these “analysts” and “reporters” continue to rely on hackneyed caricatures and straw-men arguments to buttress their various accounts. Lost in this repetitive drone, however, is the simple truth that one must understand before they can judge, one way or another.

Whether one agrees, for instance, with the policy of the current BC government on, say, public education or on the proposed Harmonized Sales Tax (HST), one must understand their arguments on their own terms. What do the Liberals think they are accomplishing? What do they view as their own objectives and their own principles? Only then can we begin to debate whether or not these are sound or unsound public policies. The same method, however, applies to any political phenomenon—from establishment political parties to Islamic fundamentalist militias to, yes, even the anarchist movement.

Understanding Anarchism

So, what do anarchists believe themselves?

At this juncture I could quote any number of rather eloquent anarchist theorists to explain the anarchist creed to the uninitiated but for the sake of brevity let me use merely the words of the anthropologist David Graeber, who describes the anarchist philosophy as being one which simply insists on “autonomy, voluntary association, self-organization, mutual aid, [and] direct democracy.” The term anarchism itself comes from the Greek anarchos, meaning “without rulers.” Thus, when anarchists speak of anarchy they do not speak of chaos or anomie as is popularly understood but rather of a social order based on true freedom and mutual respect, not authority and hierarchy. The famous circle-A symbol often associated with the movement signifies precisely this: “anarchy is order” as Proudhon put it.

In short, anarchists emphasize independent, voluntary decision making, organized directly by individuals and communities themselves for the common benefit of all therein, with power being devolved to the lowest possible atom of these societies so that each may have a say in directing their own life, and the direction of their broader community. In light of all this, anarchists are avowed anti-capitalists and anti-statists—viewing both systems as fundamentally authoritarian and exploitative.

As such, anarchists have historically been concerned far more with practice than they have been with any supposed ideological orthodoxy. Anarchist methods of organization can be seen in everything from the indigenous band council of the Americas to the reclaimed factories movement in Argentina. Most of the contemporary anti-globalization movement has been profoundly influenced by anarchist ideas and tactics even if only a fraction of the membership might overtly identify as “anarchist” as such. We’re not the jealous type: what we care about is results, not labels. Hence the motto: “anarchists make better lovers!”

Prominent historical and contemporary anarchists have included the likes of Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, Emiliano Zapata, Lucy Parsons, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, William Godwin, Oscar Wilde, George Woodcock and many others. Individuals such as Helen Keller and Mahatma Gandhi, amongst other notable figures, never expressed themselves as anarchists, per se, but their actions and own ideas closely followed the shape of the anarchist philosophical and practical framework, leading many anarchists to embrace them as their own. Aside from these figures, however, anarchists come from all walks of life and in every shape, size, colour and temperament: we are organizers and activists, workers and students, retired and unemployed, artists and academics, lovers and fighters.

Anarchist Terrorism?

It is usually at this point that someone will scoff and proceed to inform us all how, “no, no, what anarchism is really about is terrorism—blowing stuff up! Also possibly mohawks and listening to the Sex Pistols. But mostly terrorism!”

To begin with, there are many anarchists who are, in fact, pacifists and the current has a long-standing tradition within the movement: Leo Tolstoy comes to mind as a prominent example. Nonetheless, there have been many anarchists who have refused to disavow themselves from violence. So, a few points need to be made on this subject.

First, the idea that anarchism is a violent ideology or the most violent ideology out there is a bare faced lie. If we were to take all the people who have ever been, even accidentally, killed by anarchists as compared to the number of people killed every year by nominally democratic states such Canada (to say nothing of the US or Israel!) there would be no comparison whatsoever. This is, furthermore, to say nothing of the violence committed every day by corporations and capitalists around the world. The BP disaster alone has done more damage to the Earth and all its inhabitants over the past month than any anarchist has, could ever have or have wanted to. In short, the capitalist and statist system that dominates our world currently is violent and coercive by its very nature. The same simply cannot be said of anarchism.

It is true that anarchists have, however, participated in violent revolutions and insurrections and it is further true that anarchists have also committed acts of terrorism (usually assassinations of monarchs, Presidents and the sort) in which, unfortunately, innocents have also been hurt and killed. The debate about the use of violence to attain ones ends has been a divisive issue within the movement (and outside of it!). Nonetheless, almost without exception, the major theorists and proponents of anarchism have agreed that individual acts of terrorism, the so called “propaganda of the deed,” accomplishes little. What is necessary is social revolution, mass movement mobilization—not vanguards of enlightened, sacrificial martyrs who will “inspire” the masses through bold acts of heroism and/or stupidity.

As many revolutionaries recognized even during the 19^th century, killing a single monarch or a single capitalist meant little when the issue was not the individuals but the system as a whole. It is why when one looks beyond the bold headlines of young Greeks smashing windows and battling police, we see a movement that has spent decades building an infrastructure of social change: social centers that teach people valuable life skills, including language classes for migrants, libraries, cafes, restaurants, free schools, free medical clinics and most every other resource a functioning community needs. These are the means by which we build “the new society within the shell of the old.”

It is not to say, as many tepid liberal commentators would have us believe, that violence is inherently evil. No, violence is a tool and the critical question is the manner in which it is marshalled. As a local Vancouver activist said during her speech in the post-Olympic “riot” navel gazing, how many of the people who cursed The Bay window smashers also spent their nights toasting and celebrating the Zapatistas? Why is a militant indigenous movement, famous for their identity-concealing masks, celebrated for their resistance to the Mexican state but Canadian or American or Greek anarchists, employing very similar tactics (in fact, far more “peaceful”), shunned? Why is Marcos a romantic icon, but the Black Bloc a spectre of evil? Like the Zapatista mask the Black Bloc is merely a tactic, above all, to protect fellow demonstrators and grows out of a legacy and history of police and state repression. Recent events have done little to dispel the idea that the state, even one as supposedly benevolent as the Canadian one, actively plots against its citizenry. The mask is as much a self-defense mechanism as it is, as with the Zapatistas, a sign of solidarity.

In any case, it is not to say that we cannot disagree on the need or efficacy of violence—quite the contrary, as my preceding comments on the history of this debate should have hopefully illustrated by now.  But let us be honest, as well. The great evils of the modern world (the state and capital) do not, have not and will not accept change. The necessary changes that are required, for instance, to resolve social inequality, to resolve global corporate exploitation, will not be acquiesced to by the ruling classes.

Ask the indigenous peoples of the Americans how their governments dealt with their calls for autonomy. Ask the Argentines or the Chileans how their military juntas dealt with attempts at peaceful change. Ask the Thais how their government dealt with calls for free and fair elections. Ask the Palestinians about Israel’s benevolence.  Ask the Nigerians how BP and Shell have dealt with their calls for a greater share of their country’s oil wealth. Ask the Bolivians how Bechtel dealt with their calls for a greater share of their country’s gas and mineral wealth. Ask any of the world’s peoples, really, how their “elected” state representatives, or unelected corporate and capitalist overlords have dealt with their calls for a better world.

None of this is to suggest that violence, itself, will usher in a better world. In fact, used improperly it will surely bring misery to all involved. What is needed is social mobilization, first and foremost. Only at the point at which such a movement exists (i.e. Bolivia, Thailand…Greece?) does the notion of violence become a legitimate means by which power can be transferred from the few to the many, and divided democratically and directly. Until then, it remains largely useless and dangerous. This conclusion has been one repeated through the ages by almost every serious anarchist theorist who has wrestled with the question of true, radical social change.

Few movements begin violently, and few grow by means of violence. In fact, violence at this juncture predictably stifles growth. But, inevitably, serious revolutionary movements must confront the reality that their opposition will not cede the reins of power quietly. As everyone from George Washington to Comandante Marcos has agreed it is just and reasonable, in the course of struggling for a more equitable order, wherein the “governors” have ceased to enjoyed the confidence and support of the “governed” for the latter to rebel against the former—by any means necessary.

Demanding the Impossible

There is one last objection generally raised against the social order which anarchists advocate. The refrain usually goes something like this: it’s a nice idea but it’ll never work. Human nature won’t allow it. It’s usually the sort of remark made by people who fancied themselves sometime “radicals” but are today little more than office pencil pushers. To justify the betrayal of their own ideals, they seek to implicate you in a broader culture of indifference and apathy.

Emma Goldman spoke to this sentiment in her famed essay What is Anarchy? when she remarked: “Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature.” I find no better or more apt words to counter this supposed objection.

We would do well to remember that women, for instance, were never meant to get the vote. Or that the American slaves were never meant to be freed. That apartheid in South Africa would never be abolished, or that the colonialism more broadly would never leave the continent. Education and healthcare were never meant to be free. And workers were never meant to have an eight hour day or the right organize unions. All this and much more were once said to be “impossible.” It was often times made seemingly impossible by the use of great violence on the part of Presidents, generals and tycoons alike. The list of excuses used to permit injustice to continue are long and varied. To paraphrase a famous dictum, however, we might well remark that history is the record of the impossible made real. So it is with us today, those still fighting, still resisting, still organizing.

Some might well argue that “autonomy, voluntary association, self-organization, mutual aid, [and] direct democracy” are an altogether bad idea and not worth pursuing in the first place. Those concerns, however, do not concern us. We no more acknowledge this as a valid argument than those who did and do suggest in many parts of the world today that some peoples are inherently inferior to others, or that some peoples should not be allowed the right to self-determination. These are the slavers and tin-pot dictators of the world and their perspectives are relevant only in so much as they need to be abolished from the face of the Earth and replaced with opportunity and ability for every woman, man and child to live according to their heart’s desires.

In short, we demand only the world.

Conclusion

When the billion dollar circus comes through Toronto, much as it came through Vancouver, there is going to be opposition to it. Had Francis Fukuyama been right, the events we have seen transpire in Athens, Geneva, Seattle, Quebec City, and to a far lesser extent Vancouver and soon Toronto would never have occurred. As he had promised us, the end of history had arrived. Capitalism and the liberal democratic state had triumphed and would shortly homogenize the entirety of the globe. Since then, the global capitalist economy has continued to fail the vast majority of the world’s population, beyond even just this most recent of crises, and yet has continued to be propped up by the coercive arm of the state.

Those black-clad folks in the streets, “kids” as some like to call them though their ages run the line from young to old, are our better selves reflected and resisting. They are what we ought to be. They are what we can be. They are a spectre of a much broader movement, a movement not afraid to defend itself, but above all committed to a better world and actively involved in creating as we speak. They do not make apologies for feeding the hungry any more than they do for confronting those who ensure that these same conditions of hunger, starvation and poverty continue unabated.

Anarchism is sometimes referred to as the “the beautiful idea.” I am of like mind. There is an unbridling beauty in the passion of those who have for hundreds of years continued a struggle against some of the most totalizing forces in history. Those willing can easily discover this beauty but doing so requires an open mind and an open heart—a dangerous proposition for those merchants of closed minds and numbed hearts. Hence the misinformation, hence the caricatures, hence the deception.

I invite you, however, to try to understand us on our own terms and ask yourself then we’re quite the terror we are made out to be. Ask yourself from whom you have more to fear: those inviting you to participate in creation of a world in which we abolish fear, hunger and inequality? Or those who in the name of “protecting” you turn your cities and homes into open-air prisons, who wine and dine while billions live in abject poverty because of their decisions, who murder innocents in the name of democracy but move at every turn to stifle and silence dissent?

See you in the streets, friends.       

• No Related Posts

Three Mohawks from Quebec travelled to Cochabamba for April’s climate summit. They left on the Haudenosaunee Passport since they accept neither Canadian nor American citizenship. They were easily allowed out of Canada with those credentials.

But then Canada wouldn’t let them in unless they signed a Canadian document. Their story is moving and inspiring. There are allies and enemies to their desire to travel internationally under their own flag. And it shames me to say that most of the enemies were Canadian officials and our policies.

“The Haudenosaunee Passport is a non-violent expression of our distinct identity as a sovereign people,” Deer concluded. “While both Canada and the United States claim us as their citizens, the Haudenosaunee Passport is a constant reminder that our people have never acquiesced our citizenship as Haudenosaunee people. It also provides our people an alternative to acquiring Canadian or U.S. documentation.”

via Prevents Mohawks from Returning from Bolivia with Haudenosaunee Passports

• No Related Posts

So should I be seeing if anyone wants to contribute here beyond me?

The first question is whether it’s worth seeing if anyone has pieces to contribute to this site. It’s not like anyone can’t already set up a blog at WordPress in less than 2 minutes. So people would have to see value in contributing “here”. And there’s nothing to preclude someone from contributing here AND wherever else they live online and off the interwebs.

Then the question is who should be contributing?

6 years ago when I started this site, I asked friends who lived on various spots on the political spectrum to contribute ideas with the idea of creating some comment dialogue among contributors, like a virtual salon. It never took off. Maybe because it was 6 years ago and not now. Or maybe it was because I don’t believe in the effectiveness of a left-right political spectrum and instead prefer a 2D or 3D spectrum like at PoliticalCompass.org so a left-right paradigm may have been doomed to fail.

I don’t have a richly developed sense of what “kind” of people ought to contribute to this site beyond a few things: not crazy people, not racists or bigots, not folks who would get the RCMP visiting me in my home to discuss what contributions I approve. I certainly don’t think that only people I agree with should be contributors. That’s just not worth anyone’s time.

I put it out to the community of you folks.

So if you are inclined to contribute more than just comments to this site, think about it. Toss your ideas into a comment in this post about creating a contributor community here. Send me emails. Tweet me. Figure it out to whatever extent you wish. I don’t have all the answers, or any answers necessarily, though I do have inclinations.

Let’s see what the crucible burns for us!

• June 29, 2010 -- Campaign Stops Corporate Voting in BC Municipalities, Probably (0)
• May 18, 2010 -- Pettiness: the Defining Quality of Politicians? (3)
• June 21, 2009 -- Ignore My Copyrights (0)
• April 27, 2009 -- No More Strategic Voting: Thanks STV! (0)

Those of us whose passionate engagement helped elect Obama haven’t stepped up to help define our national debates.

via The Tyee – What Cynicism Costs Us.

It’s easy to be disappointed in people in whom you inject high expectations. But democracy is a muscle. It must be exercised widely or it atrophies. I’ve complained about people subcontracting their democracy to “professionals” and while “the people” helped elect this Obama construct, going back to passive business as usual is the fertilizer for cynicism.

Too many Americans, convinced that the greediest must always run our country, have responded by retreating into private life, whether the admittedly difficult challenges of economical survival, or the distractions and comforts we embrace as modest respite and recompense. Meanwhile, we bury whatever qualms they may have about our national direction, hoping against hope that someone will take care of things.

The lure of private life is strong. It is compelling because it is rich with no shortage of sound arguments. Looking for “someone” to fix things, however, is no tonic.

Yet, I expected more after Obama got elected. He had an email list of 3 million, or 1% of Americans who actively helped him win the White House. I fully expected a machinery to mobilize those people to compel Congress to step up and lead and not weasel healthcare into corporate welfare. That mobilization which was effective during the election didn’t materialize in the last year or so.

And while I didn’t expect the grassroots fire of Bolivarian Circles a decade ago to erupt in the rust belt of the USA, I did expect something more than a thank you for the electoral win, now come back at mid-terms to help hold Congress.

When we look at the larger issues, like global climate change, why so many people in America are hungry, or how to fix a greed-driven health care system or America’s strip-mined economy, we throw up our hands in frustration. Taking them on just seems too daunting, and our chances of success too elusive. It seems wiser and more practical to narrow our horizons.

I think about monarch butterflies, ants, bees and those awesome birds who fly inches from each other in tight formations that alter, twist and turn every second. They all work with hive minds and can accomplish great feats and beauties.

Human beings? If we had the potential to cooperate to even a fraction of the hive species, what could we accomplish?

But notice my assumption here, that we don’t have that potential. I/we can’t accept that assumption.

I’d like to propose a clear-eyed idealism, which recognizes that these are bad times but refuses to accept that the bad times are inevitable.

I welcome this. But it takes strength to grab hold of this. When the cynicism beats us down, we need to gather our people together, enrich our communities and our souls, go dancing and build each other up.

Sliding into private life closes our living rooms off from the salons that they ought to be.

So in dealing with my cynicism, a core pledge can be to embrace my people and find ways to encourage each other. We’re all in this together…unless we embrace some kind of despaired free agent status.

And when that happens, we have really lost.

• No Related Posts

I know the stakes are high as at least one group [or agent provocateur] has asserted its tone with the RBC firebombing.

I’m reading of rebel clowns, watching a video on the G8 and the Group of Seven, and remembering the teddy bear catapult in Quebec City’s FTAA protest in 2001. And I’ve reviewed Judy Rebick’s commentary on the context of the catapult as well as and example of how to effectively extend the media life of creative resistance!

Then I recalled protesters throwing teddy bears onto the floor of the House of Commons, and found the connections here: New Form of Protest in Canada: Teddy Bears – ABC News.

Two anti-free trade protesters were arrested Wednesday at Ottawa’s House of Commons after they unfurled a banner reading “Decriminalize Democracy” in the public gallery. The pair began throwing teddy bears onto government benches occupied by parliamentarians.

Security guards quickly subdued and charged them with causing a disturbance.

…

Government House leader Don Boudria refused to see the humor in the situation. “This is Parliament, not a recreation center, not a demonstration hall, or not a barricade, and any use of the building for anything other than parliamentary purposes is wrong,” he said.

I’m finished with this perspective. The House is the people’s House. I find it galling when MPs behave like petulant children because of some absurd notion that the theatre of parliament is entertaining or valuable to society somehow, yet enforce strict silence for citizens in the galleries.

When they have lost a sense of public servanthood, they are asking to be mocked. Teddy bear protests seem to fit. Creative resistance is a valid tactic.

Regarding the teddy bear catapult at the FTAA from the ABC article:

The group also issued a statement saying: “The catapult was a prop which was used in an absolutely non-violent manner to mock the absurdity of holding the secretive and undemocratic summit within a walled fortress.”

I also remember a photo in a paper of a protester with a hockey stick shooting either a tear gas canister or teddy bear back toward the police line. That was my inspiration for taping my protest signs for rallies to a hockey stick.

But McTeague warned the protesters about Wednesday’s teddy bear attack, saying, “All kidding aside … this kind of tactic should never be used in the House of Commons. If you have a statement to make, make it by the ballot or make it verbally, write us a letter or do what you have to do, but throwing stuff at us doesn’t accomplish anything,” he said.

Like Boudria above, McTeague has no standing to demand public decorum when MPs refuse to abide by the same or even a higher standard: after all, they run our country!

The electoral system is not a level playing field. Letters are hardly compelling when corporate interests control both parties that have ever run our country. Throwing stuff at them does, I think, accomplish a great deal.

With action heating up already with arrests in Vancouver on Friday, I hope to see more creative resistance next month in Ontario.

• No Related Posts

The entire editorial is below, but here are ten comments about how deluded the editorial department at the Globe and Mail is.

1. We live in a post-modern world, if not a post-post-modern world. Corporate media is modernist by design; its paradigm is authoritatively objective, one-way, profit-driven, broadcast and top-down. That sounds pretty jaded to me. The Yes Men can only be seen as jaded because they no longer recognize the primacy of modernist corporate media as being much of a useful force in society unless it is subverted and manipulated.
2. Since the medium is the message, increasing proportions of the population are rejecting the message of corporate media’s medium.
3. The Daily Show and Colbert Report are not anomalies today, but they do threaten corporate media’s monopoly over news/truth/opinion. In fact, just today someone’s again writing about how newspapers could even have a future!
4. The Globe and Mail got quite badly punked by the Yes Men in Copenhagen in December, as did all other corporate media. In fact, much corporate media in Canada showed themselves with their pants down when they recently reported the death of Gordon Lightfoot while he listened to it all on the radio while in his dentist’s chair. Fact-check much?
5. Suggesting the Yes Men are the actual threat to the believability of all forms of communication is laughable since corporate mainstream media are constantly guilty of suppressing critically important news while promoting their neoliberal politics and politicians while marketing sensationalism for maximizing their corporate profit.
6. Suggesting that all forms of communication are threatened by the Yes Men is itself sensationalist, reactionary and further proof that the editorial staff doesn’t really get post-modernism in media…but then how could they, they are the established paradigm.
7. The first half of the editorial describes the Yes Men antics, thereby demonstrating the potency of their brand of satire with free publicity.
8. While the Globe editors are correct in describing satire as a “legitimate form of comment,” their demand that there be “sufficient warning for the public” indicates a few things. The Globe editors didn’t get the joke in Copenhagen and feel embarrassed. They think the public is too stupid to get ironic messages. Again, see The Daily Show and Colbert Report. Those in the public who are duped need to learn the lesson that we should question information authorities and verify sources, then compare stated messages with confirmed messages. Then we need to evaluate in our own minds what policies ought to be. This is the point of satire, which the Globe editors are clearly missing.
9. Their example about no one ever showing up for real free concerts in Missoula is a small risk to society as a whole that is being constantly misinformed by corporate media neglecting its investigatory role.
10. I refuse to allow the Globe editorial staff to be the ones to inspire me to ask the question of whether anyone believes a message. Corporate media is so compromised when it comes to truth, they have very little standing to even pose that question. That they end their editorial with it, with presumably a straight face, is laughable.
11. A bonus comment: ultimately, I hope I am being duped by an editorial that is actually ironic in itself. That perhaps the Globe actually welcomes the antics of the Yes Men and their disciples and have written this editorial in an attempt to mock their own paradigm. If so, I will gladly tip my hat to them. But I’m not holding my breath.

Say no to the jaded world view of the Yes Men

Their ilk threatens the believability of all forms of communications.

Gresham’s Law holds that devalued money eventually drives out good money. The more inferior currency floating around, the harder it is for people to believe in the real thing. The same goes for the news.

Last week, a widely circulated news release claimed, “Shell halts Nigerian offshore drilling in visionary new remediation plan.” The document carried a Shell logo at the top and was distributed via a legitimate-looking website. At the bottom was a media-relations contact number (answered by a real person) and all the standard legal boilerplate. The message: After the Gulf of Mexico oil leak, Shell was halting all its drilling operations in the Niger River delta and embarking on an $8-billion environmental rehabilitation program.

It was, of course, entirely bogus.

A group calling itself the Nigerian Justice League later claimed credit for the ruse, saying they drew their inspiration from the Yes Men, a group of anti-corporate pranksters familiar to Canadians. In December, before the Copenhagen climate change summit, the Yes Men produced a realistic-looking press release purportedly from federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice, claiming Canada was adopting strict carbon-emissions targets and donating $13-billion to Africa. It was accompanied by a fake Wall Street Journal article, a fake endorsement from a Ugandan politician and, later, a fake retraction by Mr. Prentice. All this to draw attention to what the Yes Men considered Canada’s lack of commitment on climate change.

Both pranks got enough press coverage to be considered successes by the perpetrators. With the Yes Men now drawing eager imitators, we’ll likely be seeing much more of this sort of thing. And that’s bad news for everyone.

Satire is a legitimate form of comment. But it requires a deft hand; and sufficient warning for the public to get the joke. A recent prank in Missoula, Montana, falsely promoted a free thank-you concert being staged by Smurfit-Stone, a container company, and Macy’s department store, two firms that recently shut operations in the city. But to what greater purpose? It had no discernible impact on the corporations in question. And if Missoula ever hosts a free concert in the future, no one will show up.

The jaded world view of the Yes Men and copycat pranksters threatens the believability of all forms of communications. It could eventually undermine the very kinds of positive achievements the activists claim to demand.

Consider the historic truce last week between environmental groups and the Canadian forestry industry on logging practices. It seems such a surprising and radical departure from both sides’ normal behaviour, after years of animosity, that it might easily be considered a prank. In fact it is very good news. But will anyone believe it?

• No Related Posts

via xkcd: Infrastructures.

• No Related Posts

CNN showed Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech from August 1963 on the day that the United States inaugurated a black man to be president.

I remember a chat they had with King’s son and a question along the lines of whether it would have taken until 2008 to elect a black man to be president if his father weren’t assassinated so long ago. The answer was something like, yes a black man probably would have been elected president sooner, in fact his father could have been president.

I remember my life at 34, King’s age at the March on Washington. I also remember 39, the age King was killed. I think about all that progressive forces accomplished in the United States and elsewhere during his life and after it. I often wonder how much more could have been accomplished if he lived, even until today.

I think about the “fierce urgency of now” and how many nows we have passed up on, we as a society.

Who is to define the nows? Who is to determine when it’s time to act on climate change, or reform of global capitalism, or free public clean water for all, a global basic annual income, a Tobin Tax, leaving tar sands oil in the ground, you name it. Who is around to stand up and say they have a dream, that it’s not alright to wait any more and that we need to start walking down a new road?

King did and they killed him. Bobby Kennedy never made it out of the 60s either. Decades of Jane Elliott exercises demonstrate the necessary controversy and resistance to complacency, but also our culture’s inability to embrace a sea change. She “even” came to Saskatchewan to demonstrate the extent of prejudice, so there are no moral high grounds in some kind of enlightened Canada to perch on.

In the end, it comes down to change. The status quo is poisonous. It favours the anointed and abuses the weak. We are either fine with that, or someone steps up.

Tommy Douglas. Terry Fox. Crystal Lee Sutton, whose insurance company had the last laugh on her last September.

And while Barack Obama has proven to have had more profound rhetoric than policy in his first 1.5 years, we have to look past all the things he got us to say “Yes, We Can” to and think about all the things that still need doing that he, and others, are simply or profoundly not doing.

And I have to say, I’m looking around…constantly…looking for people to step up and show they can do more than be petty. I can tell you what I see, but really, the question is what do you see, and are you asking the question?

• No Related Posts

This blog is a fine companion to the official Diaspora development team blog. There are grounds to be optimistic about an alternative to the Facebook privacy ghouls.

Below is just a first point of principles of Diaspora. They get better as you read on!

Don’t just destroy your Facebook account… get rid of Flickr and Yahoo, too! Nobody needs someone else to “own” their data. Your information should stay yours, and if you can get your friends to agree to switch to an open network like Diaspora, you won’t need to use those services for anything.

via Avery’s Diaspora News » The latest updates about the emerging Facebook alternative.

• No Related Posts

Below is the liveblog underneath the description of the event here:

We increasingly hear that more private for-profit health care is needed to ensure that our public health care system remains “sustainable”. Is this really true?

The BCHC is excited to host a free public forum that will explore the motivation behind, and implications of, expanded for-profit health care in BC and Canada. Guest speakers include:

• Iglika Ivanova, Economist and Public Interest Researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives on supporting innovation in the public health care system.
• Legal expert Steven Shrybman on the aggressive constitutional challenge being waged by private health care investors to open up public health care to American-style insurance companies.
• U.S. physician Dr. Paul Hochfeld on working within the costliest and most inequitable health care system in the world and the need for meaningful health care reform.
• Glyn Townson from BC Persons with Aids Society

• No Related Posts

Her talk starts at 1pm today when the liveblogging will begin.

I’ll also be liveblogging the public forum tonight.

• No Related Posts

Now give them money to fund their junk food summer. It’ll be the best investment you’ll ever make in a liberating social media interweb.

Thanks, Matt, for the evangelism!

What is the project about?

We believe that privacy and connectedness do not have to be mutually exclusive. With Diaspora, we are reclaiming our data, securing our social connections, and making it easy to share on your own terms. We think we can replace today’s centralized social web with a more secure and convenient decentralized network. Diaspora will be easy to use, and it will be centered on you instead of a faceless hub.

via Decentralize the web with Diaspora — Kickstarter.

• No Related Posts

Let’s start by talking about BuddyPress. It started as a WordPress plugin designed to add social media elements [like Facebook features and Twitter] to people’s WordPress sites. Then BuddyPress grew into its own WordPress paradigm.

If I were Nokia or Boston University running a WordPress platform, I could install BuddyPress to manage social media elements for my thousands of “members” just like Facebook.

When I knew almost nothing about BuddyPress, I had high hopes for what it could be. But now that I get it more [assuming I actually do], BuddyPress seems to still be a ghettoized environment. I could create a social media installation on my site, but people would have to login and use it just like Facebook. That means way too many logins for people on too many different sites.

UnionBook is a great social media website for trade unionists, but with less than 4,000 users right now, it’s hasn’t hit its hundredth monkey yet.

So here’s what I wished BuddyPress were…and it [or something similar] still can be that.

1. It should have all the social media elements it currently has plus the new cool ones when they are invented.
2. It should be open source.
3. It should be non-proprietary, just like the culture of the internet in the early days, or even the 1980s, despite DARPA’s involvement, which was hands-off by then anyway.
4. It should be non-profit [notice 2, 3, and 4 in here are already the opposite of Facebook].
5. It should be non-corporate.
6. It should be decentralized, like the paradigm of the internet itself, so it can promote democracy, transparency and commitment.
7. Most importantly, it should be distributed. This means, for me right now anyway, that if BuddyPress were what I think of now as a solid alternative to the corporate Facebook, every site on the net running either the BuddyPress suite of WordPress plugins or the BuddyPress paradigm would be integrated, interactive and networked…like a web. People could flit among them almost as if Facebook were a jigsaw puzzle or an iceflow that is broken up and we just float around on pieces carrying our social media with us. Sickeningly, that’s what Facebook is doing now. We just take our Facebook with us around the web and share things with others through Facebook, thereby spreading the Facebook corporate cancer to everything we touch.

OpenID is a model I had in mind. I like that I could login to various sites with an ID that travels with me, not like logging into Facebook and doing my community there, in its corporate ghetto/prison. But now that I see who is part of the OpenID foundation, I don’t want to have anything to do with that. But the model is still good.

So maybe some day BuddyPress will evolve into the kind of distributed structure I’m looking for. Maybe it won’t and something else will. Or maybe nothing will, but I doubt that. It’s too good an idea not to happen, and not because I thought of it, but because the internet was built on that model and it works well. It worked really well until the corporations took over. But we can get that sense of distributed community back.

Open source, distributed social media can be a catalyst for that. And if you doubt that, check out Firefox’s market share. :)

OK, now onto removing my self from Facebook!

• No Related Posts

So I’ll be extracting myself from Facebook over the next few days. Community and social media are supposed to contribute to humanity with new means of connecting, but when the price of that contact is sacrificing my privacy and autonomy as a citizen, we get a paradox.

Facebook has us hooked like the crack dealer who gets new clients by giving away product to create an addiction. 400 million have now become dependent to various degrees on Facebook as a core means of social communication. Getting off the drug is hard. Our community interactions are now being held hostage. We must pay with compromises to our privacy.

The increasing restrictions on my ability to determine what I share with others, combined with expanding defaults of openness that subject the millions of Facebook users to abuse. Certainly the majority of users, I believe, are not being as vigilant as they should be at protecting their identities from unobserved, and not so secret data mining.

Try this game.

Click on one of your Facebook friends. Then click on one of their friends who you don’t know. Click on their profile picture. Does it open into their whole folder of profile pictures? If so, they probably haven’t navigated the ever changing maze of Facebook privacy settings, or they don’t care who sees what, which is their prerogative. Then repeat this game 10 times going from profile to profile, seeing how many people likely neglect vigilance.

What are the threats? Two high profile ones are the Facebook data mining corporation itself and the app designers who get monstrously wide access to your identity data and activities in social media.

Years ago, people flocked out of AOL onto the internet in part because they didn’t want one corporation being aware of all their online activities.

It’s like Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, in which he argued that it is not Orwell’s 1984 that we should fear but Huxley’s Brave New World because its model is totalitarianism by friendly hugs and not Orwellian jackboots.

Facebook is a system of subservience that we actually embrace. It has time-wasting games, ways of keeping up with friends’ Friday nights out, but within the context of disturbing increasingly anti-autonomy privacy policies. Explore these critiques of the latest imposition of Facebook into my autonomy, like this one. And despite some wonky logic in parts of this one, there are many thoughtful ideas that challenge the Kool-Aid we’ve been drinking.

At least in Twitter what we say we say, what we don’t say we don’t say. That’s it. Spammers are entering, but the anarchic community blocks them out quickly.

That’s also why the prominence of open source communication models like WordPress is growing because we don’t want “The Man” to be tracking our data/identity/existence.

So what am I going to do?

I’m going to stop compromising my autonomy and privacy for the sake of a communication/community platform.

There are new open source social media sites going live sporadically. We should be exploring these, supporting them and promoting them. In time we can get an open source, anarchic social media platform that functions better than the buggy Facebook and doesn’t compromise our freedom as a rule, something of that the freedom/anarchy of the original internet culture.

In the end, I just can’t handle the paradox that in order to partake of the access to connections in Facebook we have to give up core values of community: independence, equality, citizenship, interdependent responsibility. Developing community in the Facebook model is more than slightly like The Truman Show, where there is no benign master providing us the platform.

So my plan is to eradicate my personal profile from Facebook over the next few days. Politics, Re-Spun will still have a presence on Facebook, but primarily to drive human interaction to my website where what I post is not entirely owned by Facebook by virtue of it merely being there.

In the end, there is no real community in Facebook if the price of admission is accepting their claim of ownership over all community activities and where they set the rules for how we interact.

• No Related Posts

Yes?

No.

Maybe?

I’m honestly afraid to say yes, but I fear it is so. Below are some sobering conclusions from the Gaian theorist, 90-year-old James Lovelock, on our species’ prognosis. I agree with him profoundly. And if you want to be inspired about the road through this swamp, read a bit about political psychology at the end here.

Let’s begin.

“I don’t think we’re yet evolved to the point where we’re clever enough to handle a[s] complex a situation as climate change.”

“The inertia of humans is so huge that you can’t really do anything meaningful.”

He thinks only a catastrophic event would now persuade humanity to take the threat of climate change seriously enough, such as the collapse of a giant glacier in Antarctica, such as the Pine Island glacier, which would immediately push up sea level.

via James Lovelock: Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change | Environment | The Guardian.

Here, Lovelock is talking about our collective ignorance of systems theory. We don’t understand that we belong to something large and complicated and interconnected. We are deluded, thinking we’re individuals who can separate ourselves from our environment, particularly when it turns sour.

Freakish bubble bee population declines concern some people because the price of honey may go up. In reality, they are somewhat critical in all of us…eating food. Even community newspapers are recognizing the fact of the hive crisis, but they can’t go more than one level of analysis to the point of exploring the implications of the immediate consequences.

If you don’t get it, or somewhat get it and want to spend 45 seconds reflecting more on systems theory as a systemic approach to re-visioning your life and interrelationships, read about it here.

Now do something about it with some understanding of political psychology, but first read about pianos falling upon your head. My favourite comment about the Lovelock article:

• No Related Posts

I’m having trouble getting this song out of my life.

Vancouver is a fine town, but aside from a nice mention in Tom Cochrane’s “Life is a Highway” there’s not much we could do to make a civic anthem like this song.

It feels like lots of things:

• Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York”
• Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World”
• Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane”
• and even George Gershwin’s “American in Paris”

There’s a grand story. There’s power. There are epic themes. There is a soul in the song. There is a sense of pilgrimage. And there’s a solid story behind the song.

I’m still in that foggy place of mild speechlessness. My conclusions haven’t formed yet. It’s a place of mild anxiety, waiting for me to figure out the point. But really, it’s about enjoying not having to “know” yet the grand conclusions!!! :)

So for now, I won’t fight getting it out of my mind.

And it’s nice.

• No Related Posts