rhinocrisy.org

What is effective?

saurabh — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 02:22:46 +0000

Some thoughts by my friend Jarl on the G20 protests in Toronto:

Some say that the the throwing of bricks through the windows of banks by the youthful “anarchists” allows the protest movement against the G20 to be divided. This is not true - there isn’t any such unified movement. At least not one that was apparent at the demonstration on Saturday. There was no single reason which could make sense of why all the different groups were at the demonstration. Tibetans for a Free Tibet, pro North-Korean Trotsky-ists, Labour Unionists, an Iranian communist group and its opposition in the form of the homegrown Bolshevik Tendencies communist group, some Vietnamese groups, Tamil support groups, an anti-seal hunting group, Indigenous rights groups, walked alongside many other groups that I didn’t register. And there were many people who came not as a part of any group but for any number of reasons. And we should not forget to include all the “crazies” that these demonstrations unleash. Why do they all come? We should not disavow any of them - yet. The most salient division which the demonstration manifested was, however, between the police and everyone else.

Did all the groups come to the demonstration because they wished to oppose the G20 summit? I doubt it. And all those who came because they opposed the summit - did they agree on what the summit was or why one should oppose it? Absolutely not. We should take the time to consider why all these different groups appear together in the space of a demonstration. The question of the “correctness” or “rightness” or “wrongness” of a particular group’s dogma is not apropos - in the context of this primary question. We should have a sort of speech or writing that accounts for this heterogeneous reality without criticizing it on the basis of the something which doesn’t exist - in this case the cohesion of a unified social movement. I have not yet produced such an account - here I simply want to pay attention to the heterogeneity of the experience and say “there was no unified social movement.” This should at least prevent a whole series of ill conceived criticisms. I am highly suspect of the desire to push away absurdity and strangeness in order to pursue an always already determined “correct” strategy. Especially since this pre-determined strategy has been a failure. We can learn something here of our present situation.

But it is, of course, not the youths who throw bricks who promote their own division into “violent anarchists” as against the rest of the “peaceful protesters”; it is the corporate media which separates out the “anarchists” and labels them “violent.” It doesn’t really matter what happens - the corporate mass media will always be on the look-out for any “anarchistic violence.” And if there is no “anarchistic violence” it will make it up. And if it can’t make it up it won’t report anything. It is not true that anarchists destroy the message of the so called peaceful protesters - without the anarchists there would not be any coverage at all. To think otherwise is to be grossly naive concerning the function of the corporate media.

These facts mean that it is hopeless to try to control the media. But it was a bad plan in the first place - always calculating how a message is to be received, etc… It is fundamentally hopeless because the plan to “control the message” agrees from the start that language is essentially an instrument to be manipulated for the sake of power. We lose the capacity to say and do what we mean - freely. Our speech loses its capacity to prophecy - to promise a better world. The prostrating of leftists to the structural demands of the media is a grotesque mistake. Besides, language exceeds our desire to control - and no matter what the corporate mass media attempts to do - there will always be an excess (in an image or a word) which doesn’t conform to their spin. The images of “anarchistic violence” trafficked by the corporate media contain within themselves the seeds of a radical criticism. (Obviously this would need to be demonstrated. It is true that whole university departments have been set up to articulate just this sort of criticism; but the excess of which I am speaking is available to anyone who has the desire.)

Acknowledging the hopelessness of the media situation should fill us with joy. We don’t have to speak or act in that ridiculous stupid way - we can say what we want with all the force of our desire. We want a better world; we want to destroy Capitalism. And acknowledging the limits of our power to control the media doesn’t stop us from attempting to fuck it up.

It has been said “the anarchists destroyed all our effective plans for change.” This is making the young demonstrators into scapegoats for our failures. We should acknowledge that we don’t have any good plans for change. The 20th century is a vast wreckage of our greatest hopes. Sartre supposedly said in the last century that Communism was the horizon of our times. This is absolutely not the case now. To pretend that we simply need more of the same after the fall of the USSR and the current Commu-Capitalism in China is patently absurd. And these last two examples are only emblems of a vaster disintegration - which is difficult to summarize here. The young people who smashed the windows of Starbucks live in this harsh world where very few, if any, organizations have anything vital to say regarding their present reality - or their desire to live better. And yet they still persist and resist - stupidly perhaps - but thank god for their stupidity. We need less of the hackneyed words of those who know exactly how to reproduce the situation of the last two hundred years and more youthful stupidity that puts bricks through the windows of banks. (By the way this is not to say that Marx or the revolutionary thought of the past is useless. I believe that we need our past more than ever - just that we need to be responsible for it. I think that there may be a revolutionary future for Marx - it may have much less to do with Marxism.)

By disavowing the youths who put bricks through bank windows we disavow something vital in ourselves. We destroy the possibility of a vital link between the past and present. And we abandon our youth. We should support the young people who want to destroy banks - we should explain to them how their desire relates to what people wanted in the past. We should show them how they are not alone. I imagine this is how they experience themselves - “we are alone” - there is no need to make this more real than it already is. Especially now when everyone wants put them in jail or just get rid of them. We need to interpret them in the best possible light. This could be our power - as adults who care. And in order to do so we need to recognize something in them in us. It is a grave error to abandon these young - to sacrifice them in order to prove the efficacy of our failures. At the very least we have a moral duty to support them.

Most of the criticism of these youthful “anarchists” confuses our past with the present - and condemns a vital revolutionary possibility. It imagines that the revolution is the purveyance of the adults who know. Has this every been the case? Now more than ever we should have some humility with respect to the power and the extent of our knowledge. For good and for ill. Because although it is true that the criticism of the youthful “anarchists” is often just an easy way to affirm what we always say and to blame them for our failures - it is also true that we fail to see the very real nascent possibilities for revolution that exist without our knowledge (maybe even against our knowledge.)

Hedge-hog wild

saurabh — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 07:39:28 +0000

Cue triumphant return music.

Back to blubber

saurabh — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 01:59:41 +0000

I haven’t talked about oil in a while, mostly because ever since the ol’ economy took a big shit and died it hasn’t been a big issue - oil consumption drops with other kinds of consumption (fewer trucks delivering goods, fewer people driving and flying around, fewer people heating their pools with a hundred curling irons, etc.), so things have been pretty slow for the past few years. Snazzy graph from EIA:

Nevertheless, though things have slowed, that doesn’t mean our wild-eyed blubberings about peak oil are now completely mitigated. Quite the contrary; the problem was quite real, and remains. I read the other day that when OPEC recently trimmed their output in order to encourage the oil price back up around $100/bbl after it collapsed down to the $40s, the level they ratcheted down to was still an incredible 97% of capacity, leaving a whopping 3% margin of spare capacity - at the low end of productivity.

So we should be expecting news like we got last week from the US military, which announced that it expects a major shortfall in oil production in the next two years, and a serious crisis by 2015. By then, they expect a shortfall of 10 million barrels a day - that is, something like 12% of global oil consumption. As an exercise, just try to imagine the effect this will have on the price of oil.^*

We’ll pause to note the irony in the US military - the largest single consumer of oil in the world, at about 400,000 bbl/day - making this announcement. They haven’t announced exactly what they’re going to do about it. Maybe if we fought a couple of more wars it would help. Fortunately, it seems like the economy is going to be lying in the shitter and weeping for a bit longer, which might buy us some time.

In the meanwhile, to make up the shortfall, I advocate going back to doing what we were doing before: sending teams of ferocious, hook-wielding men in boats to kill thousands of whales for their oil-rich blubber. I’ve already done my part by canceling my contributions to Greenpeace.

^* Put a few hill giants and evil wizards into your scenario for good measure, just to spice it up.

It’s time

saurabh — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:04:28 +0000

Yes, the world does hate you. Both the developing and developed world.

Your government won’t get you out of the hole you’re in. You need to do it yourselves. Take to the streets, damnit! Make it known, LOUDLY, that you disagree with past and current policy. Let the average Iraqi know that there are right-minded people in your country, people who do not condone such barbaric behaviour. Let them know you’re not a nation of airheads fed on a diet of inane TV and biased reporting, glorying in the destruction you wreak on weaker nations. Do it for children otherwise they’ll be the ones being shot at next.

Do something, for God’s sake!

– Angela, Athens, Greece April 6th, 2010

I agree. We need to stop this war.

Goldman Sachs are scum

saurabh — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 21:33:35 +0000

This is the video of the year. Spread it:

Via Matt Taibbi.

Hallelujah!

saurabh — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 00:23:07 +0000

This kid has just discovered a candy store, one I’ve been wishing for since I came to San Francisco: digital newspaper archives, going back to 1869, of the San Francisco Chronicle.^* Here’s a piece of flavor, a quote from William Coleman, head of the second Vigilance Committee. If you’re unfamiliar, the Vigilance committees were fascinating bits of early San Francisco history, spontaneous, but extremely well-organized and orderly, expressions of public wrath against corruption and criminality. In this case, the group that Coleman spoke for formed to deal with one James Casey, a felon and apparently low character elected to the position of district supervisor. Casey responded to allegations of ballot-stuffing (and other criminality) by newspaper editor James King by waiting for King and shooting him in the chest. He then surrendered himself, confident of the protection of the authorities. Unfortunately for him, the vigilance committee speedily formed (with two thousand men swearing the oath), and in a matter of days “encouraged” the sheriff to give up Casey, tried him, and hanged him. Quoting Coleman:

Who made the laws and set agents over them? The people.
Who saw those laws neglected, disregarded, abused, trampled on? The people.
Who had the right to protect those laws and administer where their servants had failed? The people.
The people are the power; it is theirs by birthright, and when they delegate it, it is expressed and implied that upon wrongdoing the servants shall be pushed aside, formally or informally, and their places promptly filled by other and better agencies.

Enough to make any anarchist teary-eyed.

^* Unlinkable without an SF Library card, unfortunately.

Followup

saurabh — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 21:20:21 +0000

This New York Times article on the subject of the mash-up culture, and its origin in deconstruction’s implied nihilism, is a pretty close parallel to my previous post on the subject. Although the author it quotes, Jaron Lanier, seems to favor a technological rather than philosophical culprit as the main antagonist: “[S]ince the Web is killing the old media, we face a situation in which culture is effectively eating its own seed stock.”

Song for the jilted

saurabh — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:44:53 +0000

I am starting to have the sneaking suspicion that we have been sold a lemon.

Here are the current most popular videos on YouTube:

CRASH LUGE ACCIDENT KILLS OLYMPIC STAR
COX BLOCKED
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - Episode 62 [1/2]
The Haul of Plenty
LUGE ACCIDENT KILLS OLYMPIC STAR
How-To: Kim K Double-Winged Liner
Spy & Pyro
Woman’s Last Stand: Dodge Charger Commercial Spoof
Women have their say about that Superbowl Dodge Charger ad.
139,820 views
Most Exciting Job EVER!
Pee-wee Gets An iPad!
Valentine - Kina Grannis (Official Music Video)
Morning Joe Interview on Courting Disaster 2/12/10 Part 2
SHOUT OUT SUNDAY #10
OUR LOVE STORY!
Demi Lovato and Joe Jonas sing “Make a Wave” live in Epcot at Walt Disney World
ESPN Boston: Rondo on HORSE competition
Modern Warfare 2: The Ken Burton Show Part 43 - Dodge Ball (MW2 Gameplay/Commentary) [HD]
2010 NBA Sprite Slam Dunk Contest (Part 1 Round 1)
CRAZY CHIC FIGHT!!! (Vlog #72)

Better step it up, Internet. Your vaunted utility is on shaky foundations with only Wikipedia to buttress it.

Alternatives

saurabh — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 04:57:48 +0000

Obama, this morning:

And so the question then is, are we going to be able to put together a package that includes safe, secure nuclear power; that includes new technologies so that we can use coal — which we have in abundance and is very cheap, but often is adding to our greenhouse gases — can we find sequestration technologies that clean that up; can we identify opportunities to increase our oil and natural gas production in a way that is environmentally sustainable? And that should be part of a package with our development of clean energy.

Answer: no. We’ve talked about clean coal here before, and how it’s at best on a twenty-year time horizon before it becomes viable technology. “Twenty years” basically means “never going to happen”, or “this is science fiction”, so whenever you hear someone talking about “clean coal”, understand that they’re talking through their hat. Oil and gas are tapped out domestically; that is simple geological fact against which there is no argument. The only sources left are offshore, which are expensive and environmentally problematic.

Nuclear power has been a mess for many years; some people are now discussing thorium as a safer, cleaner, cheaper, and all-around better alternative to uranium. India is really into it. Maybe that’s a reasonable plan; I don’t know enough to comment.

But I’d like to take issue with Obama saying this:

I am very firm in my conviction that the country that leads the way in clean energy — solar, wind, biodiesel, geothermal — that country is going to win the race in the 21st century global economy. … [W]e can’t overnight convert to an all-solar or an all-wind economy. That just can’t happen.

Here’s an idea: stop funding that unwinnable war in Iraq. Just end it. Then, use that money to spark research on clean energy. If you’re really very firm in your convictions, put some money where your mouth is.

Fucking retarded

saurabh — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 06:27:10 +0000

Rahm Emanuel is being forced to apologize for saying something was “fucking retarded” because the use of the word “retarded” is unconscionable in modern America. Savvy commentators are pointing out that the lede is being viciously dumped here; what Emanuel thought was “retarded” was that some liberal advocacy groups are considering running ads against conservative Democrats whose stance on health care they disagree with.

Fair enough; let’s use this incident to exemplify a key principle of American politics: holding office is paramount, and representation of the public interest is only important insofar as it aids that end.

Utopianists might wish for something close to the inverse: where the office and the office-holder mean almost nothing, but public participation is 100%. A ‘representative’ should be little more than a delegate, a mouthpiece, a channel. The wonderful news is that nowadays it’s actually feasible to involve large numbers of people in the political process through “technology”. Unfortunately, we’re still saddled with a political edifice as recalcitrant as bone. This arrangement, where lordly Senators cling desperately to their thrones and curry favor with whatever seedy pimp will allow them to stay there, seems ready to topple. Time for something else.