what once were services now are luxuries

well...winter's here, and no mistake...it's been snowing here for the past twenty-four hours or better...nothing major like the plains blizzards i've been reading about....just a steady, light snowfall...a couple of inches so far...nothing new for these parts and nothing we can't handle...standard stuff...you just need to be a bit more cautious driving because of the few idiots out ther that snow seems to both embolden and stupify...but what i have noticed is that the roads seem to be in really poor shape in relation to the ammount of snow...the communities i've been in this morning ( lake station, portage, and hobart) all seem equallly bad...i don't ever expect my street will be anything but a skating rink in winter...fair enough...it's a residential street and people shouldn't go tearing through here anyway...but i was having some sliding difficulties on the main roads as well...snowy...icy..rutted...and not alot of plows to be seen...true it's still snowing, but cities usually make some sort of an effort to take care of intersections...then i saw something on my way home from my mom's that illuminated the issue to some extent...i saw a plow on old ridge road in hobart filled to the brim with sand instead of salt and the impact of an eroded tax base because of the jobless recovery recession that will end sometime in the middle of the next decade became obvious...i lived in hobart from 1959 to 1975 and again from 1980 to 1985...and all i ever saw on the streets in winter was salt...not this year apparently....when a city as arrogant and vain as hobart starts to sand the winter streets you know the shit has hit the fan economically...hobart may be a city of busybodies and crybabies, but they do like to feed their pretenses...and sand doesn't get it...doesn't do too much for the roads either really...just make the snow dingy earlier than normal...this is the first real municipal manifestation of the economic slump that's actually hit home to me...you have to wonder what services will become cut corners in the near future.

imagine their relief

"moreover, the crisis is deeply rooted in international and national policies, decided and inmplemented under the auspices of bretton woods institutions such as the international monetary fund (imf) and, more recently, the world trade organization(wto). these policies have undermined the spaces for states to respect, protect, and fulfill the human right to adequate food."

"since april 2008, the reaction of the international community to the food crisis has been coordinated by the high level task force on the global food crisis (hltf), which was instituted by the u n secratary-general ban ki-moon and is composed of all u n organizations dealing with food and agricultural issues, as well as the world bank, the imf, and the wto. in july 2008 the hltf released a comprehensive framework of action (caf), which is meant to set out the joint position of hltf members on proposed action to overcome the food crisis."
from the scope of the world food crisis by foodfirst information and action network.

only a bureaucrat could have thought this hopeless mismash up and ony a bureaucrat could love it..i don't know where to begin...in the three months that it took these people to draw up a response to a crisis what were people in places like ghana, haiti, and bangladesh doing? starving? most likely they were...who cares about joint positions, high level task forces, or frameworks of action in a crisis? bureaucrats and ngo's...which are basically holding pens for bureaucrats between official gigs and bureaucrat wannabes...that's who...certainly not anyone who's starving...and if the damned imf and wto are responsible for the trade liberalization policies that destroyed traditional agriculture in the unindustrialized parts of the world why the hell would you want them involved in any sort of relief effort? are they promoting a realistic plan for relief or just protecting their prerogatives? i never much liked ngo's...you have to pay attention to who's actually running them and whether what they say they're doing is what they're actually up to...somewhere along the line there has to be a way for people to help people directly without a lot of organizational nonsense getting in the way...simply reaching out to help out of a sense of common humanity rather than with an eye to a profit or some careerist plotting...what's the answer people?

reality declared null and void in copenhagen

in rock-solid post-modernist fashion the politicians, bureaucrats, and policy wonks at the climate change conference have slipped into denial and habitual cant as they "take note" of an agreement by the big five polluters that might set some sort of framework for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions sometime soon maybe if we all just get off their backs and let them figure out how to pass the costs on to the rest of us...the default setting is extiction and that is where the late empire nihilists seem to want to go...a stalinist response would be appropriate , if unethical, as patience with the greed heads wears thin....but who wants to sink to their level? we are obviously on our own as we try to figure this out...the system is so wrapped up in the need to generate wealth that it cannot escape the parameters of its thought long enough to see the danger or even recognize that the situation is beyond a mere problem with a soultuion waiting for ingenuity to find it....the choices will be hard and they will change the way we view things....elites will no longer be elites, and that is the problem....substantive action on the dilemmas facing us will alter societies structure fundamentally...the things that brought the elite wealth and power will be recognized as one of the major sources of our ills and they will lose ststus...expect them to stall, equivocate, lie, cheat, steal...whatever it takes to defend their prerogatives... i am disinclined to cut them any slack...meanwhile we will hear empty promises and bullshit plattitudes about the "next" conference....the time for talking is passed...if they're going to procrastinate rather than lead then it's time we led ourselves...politics and conferences will do nothing...it is time for us to act as individuals in our own best interests...go out and talk to your neighbors...it's time to save ourselves.

better red than post-modern

"the presence of a boundary or measure implies the possibility of exceeding it. the consideration of this leads to a dialectical conception of the finite according to which it may be understood only as the unity of its own being and its own nonbeing, as the mutual transition of one into the other."
-entry on the finite in The Great Soviet Encyclopedia

so...that's why communism fell...it was a sort of proto-post-modernism that ignored objective fact...concetrating on defining things by what they aren't and allowing that negative to subsume the reality of what is...the death of the real...and so the death of itself....an object lesson and no mistake....post -modernism is mindless crap engendered by those who want to deny personal responsibillity in events in their own lives...it isn't real so it doesn't matter...people have been trying to dodge that bullet for a long time..."shit happens"..."god's will"...all a deferral of facing up to what they are...which isn't an easy thing to do...you always find some facet of yourself that you really don't like but don't know how to change...sometimes denial is the best defense, but it leaves us vulnerable to being blindsided by characteristics that we repress but other see all too clearly.."what happened?" crops up alot...so tell me the truth about me as you see it...i reserve the right to dispute your interpretation, but i'll take your thoughts into consideration ( just don't expect any fundamental changes) it is, after all, your world.

rio 2016

the ioc decides tomorrow whether to annoy me for the next five years of my life with an array of over exposed "celebrities" and washed up atheletes extolling the virtues of the olympics, or to overcome a bias against south america and send the 2016 summer games to brazil...i'm all for rio in this, if for no other reason than i loathe oprah and her unwarranted influence and absoultely do not want to ever see the strutting, pompous, terminally arrogant richie daley anywhere again...the olympics are a taxpayer's bane...only the elite make money on them...the public purse is left holding the bag...developers salivate over the possibillity of pulling down entire neighborhoods and destroying local urban cultures that have been resistant to their greed....the olympics is a magic talisman that will let them do things that would normally cause outrage, all in the name of prestige...an excuse to move the urban poor out to the perifery...at once taking them out of sight and immesurably complicating their lives by removing them from the immediate vicinity of their subsistence....making the cost of commuting to a minimum wage job prohibitive...all while some hokey olympic village and glittering new venues are constructed, only to be virtually abandoned after the games...the money is in the preperation, not the execution of the games and the loudest supporters are those with the most to gain...roughly half the poplation of chicago wants nothing to do with this...no-one is asking the sattelite communities here in northwest indiana what they think ( but i'm telling you anyway ) they usually don't...here's wishing all the luck in the world to rio.

dmitry orlov

dmitry orlov said in a blog on the 17th of this month that politics in the united states was a "mostly harmless game." i rebutted this in a comment which he posted, seemingly so he could tell me that even though i was at least partially correct there was no point in discussing it because there was nothing i could DO about the venality and brutality of american politics. instead i should "...drop the pretense and stand behind the government, which should maintain a monopoly on violence, to avoid a conflaguration." when i replied that this was a hobbesian response and that no government should have a monopoly on anything, much less violence because if it did then that violence would be used in the service of the elite's purposes whether or not it was beneficial or harmful to the interests of the citizenry would be irrelevant....this he decided not to publish...either because he had no answer or he resented being labeled hobbesian, or, as he says in his blog, he just didn't think it was "good"...so much for mr. orlov and free speech.

a clean city is a green city

it's been a remarkable week in a multitude of ways...the post-modern era is profoundly psychotic...reality evasion and magical thinking are emanating from the professioanl bureaucrats and pundits, and wall street is growing more disconnected from the real economy every day...the recession grinds on despite claims to the contrary...impacting everyone...(i saw an article in the n y times about the plight of the "mega rich" and how they might not ever get back to their former levels of income...imagine my distress).... i live in a mincipality that has seen better days...my water & sewage bill is laden with surcharges, and it goes up exponentially relative to the state of decay of the infrastructure...yet i got my new city garbage can and recycling bin ( ironically the garbage can is emblazoned with the seal of the city and the mayor's name...you just can't buy exposure and name recognition like that)along with detailed instructions for their use...the recycling bin is too much...i recycle privately anyway...i insist on keeping the cash for myself...but the main point of all this is that garbage pick-up will now be curbside, rendering the system of alleys obsolete...i'm thinking this is partly due to the scavengers who troll the alleys before collection day picking the recycling bins clean before the city gets to them...moving it out front will make an anti-pilfering ordinance more easily enforced...(how long, i wonder, before the city demands that i give them my valuable aluminum cans? revenue is revenue in a downturn...property rights be damned)but what about all those broken and discarded washer and driers and water heaters and vaccuums? what will the people at code enforcement say when people start dumping them in the street...or will the alleys become junkyards? i am curious to see, and will be monitoring the state of the alley...as well as thinking of the mayor whenever i chuck out the trash,

which came first, the oil or the dysfunction?

i was listening to "world update" on the bbc this morning on the way to work, and as a sidebar to secretary clinton's visit they had a discussion about the "unchecked" corruption in the nigerian government, and how that seems to be an issue in resource rich "developing countries"...one of the participants was a professor from stanford university ( sorry...didn't catch her name...i know..sloppy reporting...sue me...it was dark and i was dodging semis on route 20) who has co-authored a book on ths subject...she said that a lack of a strong democratic government and lax social institutions holding miscreants accountable were the cause...she pointed out that when norway discovered oil there was no corruption issue because the norwegians had a well developed society that could control a sudden increase in wealth...all in all this seems to me to be saying that the nigerians are substandard because of weak institutions, but is that it? didn't traditional nigerian culture have mores that would deal with anti-social behavior? i'll bet it did...so is it a failure of nigerian culture, or was that culture exploded by a sudden influx of wealth and outside ideas? subverted by the developed worlds lust for oil...why else would people flock to miserable mega-slums other than a catastophic failure of their traditional way of life? what impelled that failure? don't know, but it's worth looking into.

the paper of record

the writers at the n y times are certainly fine stenographers...subtle ( mostly) reasonably accurate (when they're not making stuff up) and in line with the editorial boards directives...one of the headers for today's on line edition says "climate change seen as a threat to u.s. security"...well...policy wonks are notorious for rationalizing the elite's desires and needs, so they take an issue that faces all humans as a species everywhere on the planet and bring an "us or them" siege mentality to it...which is probably a pretty accurate reflection of the elite's viewpoint....but it precludes reaching out and evolving responses that would help everyone...that wouldn't be butressing the elite's favored position, would it? it would, in fact, be compromising that freedom of action they so cherish ( and promise, but do not deliver to,us...unless you count a choice of rotgut fast food or anti-persperants as freedom)...so they turn the political scientists losse on it, and it becomes a "security" issue that has to be taken into account in a overall "global strategy"...risk management in the 21st century is a complex business...it could be simplified if they would pay attention to what my old friend george orwell had to say...he remarked that if we wanted to enjoy our christmas dinner in peace we would do well to insure everyone else had one too...meanwhile barbra ehrnreich is bemoaning the "criminalization" of the poor...when was the last time she actually talked to a "poor" person ( "poor" because those who lack material wealth can be remarkably rich in things that matter) and listened? they know that being "poor" makes them the "other" in the consumerist utopia...always a target for law enforcement or whatever other government racketeers come along...nothing new in this...the poverty of immigrants, women, people of color, white trash, and the young has always made them pariahs..old babs is airing her liberal guilt a bit late in the game

gladhanding the hoosier state

the president came to indiana to tell us all that things will be okay if we only believe ...magical thinking and cash for clunkers will re-inflate the ruptured housing/credit bubble and things will be back to normal...the elite will stay the elite because the system that made them so will still be intact...more debt is what's needed...that's what makes the economy grow...the feds are leading the way on that...racking up impressive spending deficits., and encouraging new car sales to bring the private sector on board... as california gets set to furlough its prison population there may be new thinking among jurists about reaganite manditory sentencing and a push to decregulate some controlled substances to stimulate the economy, broaden the tax base, and purge the number of cases on court dockets...bankruptcy, both public and private ( both economic and ethical) aknowledged or unaknowledged are piling up...millitary planners want more money and troops for afghanistan...what's a few more billion in a sea of trillions? at what point do we begin to realize that these ruptures in the consumerist utopia will continue to mount? when will the fundamental unsoundness of having social parameters set by greed become obvious to even politicians? if the elite cannot begin to think outside the box of the profit imperative and the need for continued growth and come to terms with a smaller economy geared more toward need than the production of that wealth they won't be elite much longer...they will be sealed off in their walled compounds hiding from some of the more brutish realities the rest of us will be facing..if they're lucky...or at least for as long as they can afford to pay their mercinaries...the rust-belt went through a major economic contraction in the 1970s...there are still a few of us dinosaurs working in industrial manufacturing...but nothing like it was...what used to be the middle class here went through some painful adjustments (everyone's moms and wives went to work and daycare was born...among other things)and the smart ones stayed as far out of debt as they could...creditworthiness may have been a virtue in the bubble but its an albatross now...utterly useless...when economists and policy wonks try to convince themselves (and me) that slowed economic contraction equates to the onset of recovery the illusion becomes delusion...smoke and mirrors...wishful thinking.

oh, we thought about them.

"the masses instead make do with stamped out plastic or metal objects that evince no sign that any living, breathing human ever worked on them or thought much about them."
Peak Everything p.76 by richard heinberg

i've spent the last twenty-nine years working in industrial manufacturing and i'd like to assure mr. heinberg that as a group industrial workers think quite alot about what they make at their jobs....for all the high-tech wizzardry that industialists and their shill economists like to hype to the service and information sector a great deal of manufacturing is still done by hand, and if it is primarilly mechanized people are still needed to serve as adjuncts to machines to package and quality control product...most machines in the real world are not bright enough to know when they are malfunctioning...someone still has to keep an eye on them....so for eight or ten hours a day ( at least during the recent bubble...not these days) people become extentions of machines...performing mindlessly repetetive tasks in the service of capital...this leaves a good deal of time for reflection ( a facet of proletarians little understood by management...since we perform tasks like automatons they feel that's what we are...the imagiantion and ingenuity of the shop floor continually take them by suprise)..being that workers are treated as ciphers and maligned as lazy and inefficient caretakers, that reflection usually turns to resentment and an active contempt for capital...everyone on the floor is keenly alert to the fact that the more they do the more wealth they provide for someone else...this is an empirical understanding of marx's theory of alienated labor, both psychologically and economically...all the boys and girls are natural marxisits, although they're unaware of it....even the bulk of their wages are someone else's property due to obligations in the form of monthly bills...disposable income is a luxury that is not common...so as you look at your souless toaster or that godawful refrigerator or bar stool, remember that someone somewhere put a good deal of thought into what you're using...even if, in these lean time, they spent less time doing it.

overcoming dependency is not a communal undertaking

on page 135 of Peak Everything in the chapter titled The Psychology of Peak oil and Climate Change, richard heinberg says, "following bush's statement more than one commentator advocated the development of a twelve-step program to rid america of its addiction to petroleum. the original twelve-step program of alcoholics anonymous was religion based, so it might not be useful to an entire modern seni-secualr society. but two steps could well apply:
.admitting we have a problem, and
.making a searching and fearless inventory of our energy consumption."

my experiences with twelve step programs have been less than fulfuilling, mostly because the bulk of the twelve steps have nothing to do with transcending addiction...they are basically concerned with perpetuation the organization...what is striking is the heinberg has chosen the only two steps that actually do pertain to overcoming dependency...alas...in his introduction he says that the chapter "...offers some suggestions on what sorts of group therapy might help us to kick the habit."(p.26)...two decades of dealing with my own alcoholism raised some red flags...it's not that aa or group therapy don't serve a worthwhile purpose...they just don't resolve anything...what they do is show you that there are other people grappling with the same problems you are...you are not alone...always good to know...it will also show you that a lot of things are relative...some people seem to be having a much more difficult time than you are...some seem to be breezing through (it only seems that way)...someone who does not have your financial troubles may have much more serious health issues to face...or maybe your marriage has fared better, or your legal status...as bad as it is things could be worse...also good to know...the dependent are a nosey bunch...therapists make us tell our stories for their own reasons, but beyond their agenda, you can compare notes on what you're facing and how you're coping...come away with a few more tools for the meager tool-kit rehab provides...and we're drawing in on the salient point here...at some point you have to take what you've learned and apply it to yourself...you are the only one who can do this ...overcoming dependency is not a communal undertaking ...a group can butress your resolve, but at some time you have to decide what you're going to be, and then be that...this applies to any addiction...nicotine, crack, alcohol, or fossil fuels...the only way to turn aside from their use is for you to do it...and that will not be simple...propagands for the "business as usual" group is running strongly the wrong way..."ford's got you covered" and general motors is inviting us along for the ride on the "next one hundred years of innovative engineering" ...lots of pushers out there...group therapy can help set direction, but the work will have to be done one addict at a time.

about what i expected

"however, i opposed h.r. 2454 because i believe it could be improved in several specific areas that would prevent its provisions from causing a net loss of jobs, particularly in the vulnerable manufacturing sector. given the gravity of our environmental and economic circumstances, it is worth taking the time and effort to ensure that we get this legislation right the firsts time."


that's a quote from a form letter my representative in the house sent me in response to my request that he vote in favor of the american clean energy and security act of 2009. obviously he did not, but, for reasons that are both artificial and manipulative, felt the need to explain. the first congressional district here in indiana is, if anything, something of a dinosaur in that manufactuing jobs still exisit here, albiet in much smaller number than in past years...this means that there is a significant union presence in the electorate so jobs are of particular sensitivity as a political issue...politicians of all sorts and philosphical bents are careful to show sympathy, if not solidarity, with the working class and its issues...hence my reps reference to job loss and "the vulnerable manufacturing sector." damn straight! is the desired response from me to this cheerleading and a glowing appreciation for pete's efforts on the part of us suffering mill rats. all fine and good until you come to the realization that a good number of those "vulnerable" jobs are at the big bp/ammoco refinery up in whiting and that the folks there might not be in favor of the "clean" part...pete expresses his environmental concerns while industry in his district continues to use lake michigan as a vast sump for industrial waste...part of why they built the steel mills here a hundred years ago was because the lake provided easy transport for iron ore from minnesota, and a place to dump all the toxic crap steelmaking produces...once you've got all that going into the lake what's a little benzine going to hurt? anyway politicians are adept at obfuscation and glib dissembling...it's part of the trade...don't let them confuse you.

fairness or control?

i just got home from the union hall where we voted on a contract proposal for the upcoming year...the company and the union held two days of negotiations earlier in the month ...not much to talk about really..we all know how the economy is doing...two days was doubtlessly enough time...the vote was scheduled for today..okay...things to print...stories to get straight...but what irritated the hell out of me was the secretiveness the union behaved toward the rank and file with...they told the negotiating committee to keep quiet, and they did...leaving everyone to speculate about what was in the proposal...so why do i pay these guys to represent me? so they can keep secrets about something that impacts my future? i asked one of the business agents why all the secrecy and he fed me a line of bullshit about how he thought that it was fair if everyone heard the proposal at the same time ( this in itself was bunk...not everyone in the bargaining unit came to the meeting, so everyone did not hear it at the same time...others will hear what went on filtered through the biases of the tellers...the acceptance was not unanimous...i suppose there was a quorum...but only just...another hole in his explaination) and he illustrated his point with a story about a contract they negotiated for installers ( we are an industrial production group) he said that people on that negotiating committee talked and all sorts of rumors started and he had a hundred people walking into the ratification vote saying thay were voting against it because that all had the wrong numbers...at which point i thought that if these bozos had been upfront with their installers from the beginning and had been a bit transparent instead of secretive the installers would have had the real numbers involved in the contract and there would have been no misconceptions...so is it about fairness or controlling events? if you walk into a meeting, discuss the terms for five minutes and call for a vote who has time to digest the implications and ponder possible outcomes? it's all about controlling the outcome and getting through the process while investing as little time in return for dues as possible...john r. commons business unionism...cost-effective representation as viewed from the supply side ...members=dues=assets...negotiations=debits=loss...they simply have more in common with management than with rank-and-file...craft union philosopphy is irrelevant to industrial workers

what did you expect?

okay...the good work in iraq is done....they have a new constitution and their security forces are capable enough that our troops have removed themselves from urban centers and their commanders are turning their thoughts to the afghan poppy fields...and yet the suicide bombings go on...the kurds in the north are working quietly on their own constitution and planning to take kirkuk to control the northern oil...the shiite millitias in the south are still armed and waiting..and politicians in baghdad and washington talk about a non-existant "unity"...iraq is an abstraction at best...created from the old ottoman provinces of baghdad and basra by the british in 1921 under the mandate they received from the leauge of nations...in 1926 they added the province of mosul and created a pseudo-nation of arabs, curds, shiites, sunnis, assyrians, armenians, and iraqi turkmen which has owed its "unity" mostly to a series of kings, millitary dictators, and foreign interventions...the last dictator is gone and the occupation is winding down...everyone who was ever gassed or shot at or forcibly relocated is going to have an axe to grind and when the lids off they will grind away...another failed attempt at imperial nation building? no doubt. that still leaves the nagging question of why we thought that a bit of outside interference was in order in the first place...after all saddam was a client of ours during the reagan years...fought a proxy war aginst the evil iranians for us...shook don ruimsfeld's hand at a photo op...he was on our side...at least until he started making noise like he was going to try to corner the kuwaiti oil market...the bushes are oilmen and that got their attention...somnething had to be done...the first bush sent sadam back inside his own borders and felt that that was enough...bad pr to go in for the kill on a former client with so many still on the rolls...the first bush was ex-cia and understood the value of intimidated assets...the second bush was just stupid, but his handlers saw an opportunity to create a subservient client in the wake of one gone rouge...a client that would represent imperial energy interest and povide a safe base of operations in the area, at least until the oil gave out...then it wouldn't matter...the empire is only as strong as its energy resources, and even if it didn't need to directly control the oil it did need a direct presence in the are so no-one would get the wrong idea about who was top dog in the energy market...unfortunately the cultures that make up iraq aren't co-operating...they don't seem to mix well, and they all seem to have agendas with the empires energy plans well down the list...our little adventure in nation building isn't going to work out any better than the one the british tried eighty-eight years ago...in the end, left to their own devices, the people who live there will decide if they're a nation or not...kurdistan in the north...a shiite state affilliated with iran in the south...and some sunni dominated hellhole of a rump iraqi state inbetween...welcome to the empire.

don't let them confuse you

i was driving into work this morning ( how much longer, i wonder, will we be doing that? a bankrupt system in a bankrupt country...hopelessly delusional) and listening to "world update" on the bbc...they were "taking the pulse" of the world's economy...today's topic:unemployment...they interviewed a jordanian who had been working in a management position in the united arab emerates and was downsized back to unemployment in jordan with "no compensation"...bearing the costs of his forced relocation himself ( they even fired him with a document in english...a language he clearly does not understand)...a chinese truckdriver who had been working for a state run wire company was next...he was ordered home ( there was a migrant sub-text to all this) on "unpaid leave" and told to find what work he could...he has no idea when or if he will resume his "guaranteed employment"...to analize this disturbing trend they had some capitalist apologist from the business school of cardiff university explaing that unemployment was a "natural condition" in capitalism..."frictional unemployment of four to five percent is natural in a dynamic system of expansion and contraction"..."anyone who wants a job can find one even though it might mean a downward adjustment in wages."...sounds like some protestant work ethic/ social darwinist bullshit to me...don't let them fool you...capitalists LOVE unemployment...it gives them a desperate pool of job seekers they can use to leverage down wages and benefits...uppity workers? can the bastards and hire off the street...a system that works entirely to the elite's advantage...less money for the lumpenprolatariat means more for them...the less money out there the less inflationary pressure...and the elite hates inflation almost as much as it hate a living wage.

the morning after the night before

...and it would seem that the local abc and cbs affiliates have disappeared from the airwaves...even with a new digital antenna they are nowhere to be found...i will miss them and have sent them emails telling them so...all the other stations are there...some in more than one incarnation...a banaza of pbs choices and enough local independent stations to make me unplug the set and turn it to the wall...so where, exactly has this redistribution of wealth gotten us? certainly not to better, informative, unbiased viewing...and even with the new antenna the picture at times looks like a battered dvd in an outdated player..i am excited and amazed at the scope of the scam...you have to admire the fed's moxie.

statist television

it's analog tv year zero today as a centrally planned redistribution of wealth to cable companies, electronics manufacturers, and retailers becomes manditory for those who want to remain plugged into the master manipulator...i have plunked down abouy $250 to keep my household ( there is significant pressure from others to keep it so) and my mother's connected to engineered desires...i have vented my frustrations on the fcc and in various blogs...but somehow this is not enough...there are allegedly millions of households unprepared for today who would want what i have but do not want...odd how life can work that way...desire it and it proves elusive...or, after a protracted pusuit of your desire it turns out to be unexpectedly unfulfilling....something wrong with desire? or just what we desire? i'm not sure, but i think the fact that this economy functions by creating desires that might not be there otherwise plays a part...people allow themselve to be convinced that so many superfluous material things are necessities when they are just so much junk designed to agrandize someone else by padding their profit margin...sixteen months of economic contraction have been an education in that respect... i think the old economy based on growth fueled by cheap energy is broke beyond repair ( even though the powers that be insist on trying to fix it...that's because it's what defines them as an elite and if it cannot be fixed they may be left behind) but even if it is recovered i won't look at it the same way... i was questioning what i did and why i did it before this all started, and i am doing more of it now...examining your motivations probably won't make you happy...but it will make you change.

mail call

another long holiday weekend that has been routinely dull and uneventfull (all the cool people seem to be out of town...which is to be expected, but i don't have to like it)...dull at least until i ambled out to the mailbox to peruse what the post washed in....in what i can only hope is high, swiftian satire my union local has sent me a 2009 "pocket planner" on the twenty-third of may along with a letter bemoaning these "tremulous times" and aprising us of the cost-cutting measures they have undertaken ( the local's journal will be bi-annual instead of quarterly and they will only be sending out targeted mailings dealing with referendums on school bond issues because that may be the only work left) and soliciting our "...patience and steadfast support of our union and our elected leaders ( i cannot begin to tell you how wrong i feel that is...see my myspace blog) during this time."...along with a pencil, some bumper stickers, and a lapel pin, this may be the sole return on my membership in this organization this year...but the irony and pathos doesn't stop there...old ed peper, the north american vicce-presidient of chevrolet motors has written to me to reassure me that in these "turbulent times" ( a lot of alliteration in these letters, no?) he and the folks at chevy want me to be sure that they are "...committed to fulfilling your transportation needs." ed, it seems, has been with chevy for four of its ninety-eight years and is in a position to know my needs, and he seems to think i need to know about chevy's new "awesome" compact the cruze (sp?) and the "..chevy volt, the world's first extended-range electric vehicle." a panacea for a "energy challenged world." so the new doomed continue to cling to old forms with new facades rather than re-orienting themselves to a smaller, more local world with some scaled down expectations...denial runs deep, but with any luck enough people will realize that the old economy died last fall and that things will never be the same...less poor is the new rich...we all have adjustments to make...let's not let them confuse us about the realities of the situation and the necessity of the choices

language, architecture, and you

so much of culture is designed to reinforce the elite that sometimes it's hard to see..it's just second nature..so mundane you hardly notice...unless you're not part of the hegemony...then it's plain as could be. nativists everywhere insist on the use of the "national" language as a symbol of belonging. this may be co-opted by elites as a rationalization, but the destruction of language is an honored tactic in an elite's colonialization of a people. language can provide shelter for cultural resistance to an elite's purpose, and their attcks on it don't have so much to do with belonging as eliminating the establishment (or perpetuation) of an alternative to the elite's influence and control. at some point most peripheral european languages have been repressed and subgbornly maintained at the same time. the irish kept gaelic alive when the british banned its teaching through the use of "hedge schools". my carpatho-rusyn grandmother was a subject of the austro-hungarian empire and bitterly resented the use of the hungarian language at school. the language of a stateless people is always at risk. how many languages have been destroyed under the guise of "assimilation"? and isn't acceptance of an elite's authority a central issue in their concept of assimilation? an offensive against a language is an offensive against a culture...shouldn't acceptance cut both ways? it would if it were voluntary...there's nothing voluntary about being subjugated...elites may not be nationalistic...indeed elites are trans-national, but adopting nationalist forms can provide them with additional weapons in their war against the "other".
the use of space is another facet of elite control. why are "official" buildings so massive? the scale is meant to intimidate and engender the feeling of what geert mak calls ant-ness...the smallness of the individual in the face of the collective power of the elite..like a massive military or an efficient secret police its aim is to project authority and absoluteness...even in its ruins...state buildings can be rendolent of a past greatness (look at rome) that can be utilized by elites that claim direct descent from that past culture (look at mussolini...and why are so many building from britan's imperial era and those things along the mall in washington dc neo-classical?) hitler and speer evolved a concept of "ruins architecture", and their plans for germania ( to be built after the clearing of the rubble from bombed out berlin) were based, in part, on the size and qualituy of ruins those buildings would leave as a testament to future germans about the power of the third reich. urban centers here are full of architecture that speaks of corporate power...they are not accomodating to human existance...stand at the bottom of what was the sears tower ( i don't give a rat's ass what they've renamed it or their
ballparks either) and look up...what's human about that? "it's a struggle to see what's at the end of your nose." (that may not be exact, but it's at least close to what orwell said...same spirit anyway) reinforcing of the hegemonistic culture goes on every day...stop and give it a thought now and then...you may not be happier, but you'll have a more realistic picture of how you live.
happy mother's day to all you moms out there!

change

change is an anathema to elites because what is defines them as an elite and must be preserved...they may be fluid in adopting some new strategies to maintain what is , but like capital's ( and so the elite's) addiction to profit, that need to be defined as an elite frames their percertions and limits their actions. everything relates back to how it impacts their status. a box they cannot escape from. so elites will not sanction collective behavior thay cannot control...uncontrolled behavior can lead to uncontrolled change. banks that have shown a profit in the first quarter of 2009 ( the recesstion/depression may be easing for wall street, but not for those of us who work for a living) are declaring their intention to pay back bail-out funds and so avoid new regulations....that could lead to a change on how things are done, and protocols, mechanisms, and methodologies could change. they may not be set in stone but they are embedded in highly vicous mud so they're hard to move around.

you me and the elite

Our society is a complex maze of interaction and insular activity in front of the television or the computer screen that is engineered to maintain the status quo and butress the elite's hold on power. Social institutuions and the media play pivotal roles in this daily manipulation in which our thinking is channeled in specific directions by the blatant and subtle suggestions of advertizers, politicians, journalists, educators,and clerics. They all have behavioral agendas they want us to adopt, and their work is litterd with visiual, verbal, and written clues about where our behavior should lead us.. From the images they show to the vocabulary they choose, they are reinforcing social structures and framing debate in way that will allow us to reach only conclusions that leave us subject to their authority. This directional control is obscured by by an apparent wealth of social and consumerist choices. You can be a Democrat or a Republican, a conservative or a liberal, a Catholic or a Baptist, a worker or a manager, a student or a teacher. You can drive a Honda or a a Ford, eat at home or at Olive Garden, listen to rap or country, watch the News Hour or TMZ. In the end all those choices lead to the same place...safely within the boundaries of extant social constructions. Limited disorder can be tolerate or even encouraged to vent growing frustration or resentment, but all the behaviors society positively sanctions serve to enhance the control exercised by the elite.
Social manipulation that directs us to insular activites such as consumerism or the pursuit of economic statis serve to short-circuit collective thinking that could endanger the status-quo. A veneer of "rugged individualism" and "enlightened self-interset" serves as a mechanism that divides collective thinking by focusing thouight on personal agendas. The aquisiton of material status serves the dual purpose of enriching the elite who profit from consumerism and curtailing the recognition of shared needs and desires. Moving forward as a group towards a collective goal usually means giving up some individual desires and initiatives in order to support a broader agenda. Engineered self-interest and desire are an effective damper on the necessary compromise inherent in group actions.
For the elites of society then, "character" is subservience to the social institutions, and belief in the overall wisdom and good intentions, if not ethical goodness, of the system. Genuine criticism that coulf lead to real change must be co-opted and marginalized or repressed as alien and dangerous. Substantive change is not possible friom within the system. Any attempt to do so will inevitably run into the legal and philosophicalconstraints promulgated by the system for its own survival. Real change must start with a change of viewpoint and an effort to think outside of institutional limits.
Like Roosevelt a generation ago (for me anyway) Obama and congress seem bent on rescuing what was. I have little interest in that. We need a social system that considers the needs of all its members on an equal basis and acts on them before even considering rewards for innovation or excellence ( those do need to recognized, but there must be limits). A sustainable and innovative economy doesn't need to be one that generates increasing wealth for an elite. A stationary economy can sustain a burgeoning poulation...it simply needs to grow at a pace that can absorb the new levels of need...a balance of need and resources is going to have to come...the sooner the better...the alternative is misery and death for billions...and that may happen anyway if the climate ceases to be supportive...but it shouldn't happen because we can't...or won't... discard unsupportable patterns of thought about what is important.

hope?

i'm hearing this word alot recently, and there's nothing wrong with hope...as long as it's tempered by a good deal of realism...barak's a step in the right direction as far as changing perceptions of ourselves as a nation and other's perceptions of us...better (less unilateral and exceptionalist) relations with the rest of the world will be something of a relief...but as far as substantive change goes...good luck...cosmetic changes, sure..the tone of voice will change, but the system will not...career bureaucrats will change style to suit the new boss, but the rules won't change much...barak's a lawyer and a politician...a smooth talker who has peopled his adminstration with cronies and washington insiders...moving towards the center since his election...he is part of the system, and will stay within its constraints...it is not neutral...it favors wealth, and they will have their way or there will be a new president in 2012...old bill clinton was supposed to be good for working people and all we got was nafta and bad judgement about office etiquette...in the end barak will not change the system, it will change him...i hear a lot of parallels drawn between obama and roosevelt...both inherited economic messes and fdr had a co-operative congress to a point, but there was always resistance to the new deal and as time went on it stiffened...that resistance was premepted by ww2, but as soon as it was over and roosevelt was dead the foes of the new deal began to dismantle it until virtually all that's left is social secutiry...ask a consevative how they feel about that...the system can't be fixed because it isn't broke..it's functioning as its designers intended...to protect wealth from the mob...read the federalist papers sometime...barak won't win if he tries to undo it...his time in office is limited ( another reaction to roosevelt) the system's is not.