Category Archives: Environment

A History of Decentralization 5

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Environment, Law/Justice, Left and Right, Men and Women, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy, Science and Technology, Secession, Strategy

aragon.black
Jun 11, 2019
14 minute read (full)

First let’s decentralize history…

This month’s thematic has been a real challenge for us and raised many questions in our minds. Why? The history of decentralization is complex and non-linear. But most of all, it is difficult to be considered from an objective point of view, stripped of the predominance of the state.

Talking about decentralization leads obviously to discuss about centralization; to find the ghosts of history, to cross-reference the victories and failures of social-political movements; to discover some contemporary alternatives to the generalized centralization of our lives. Unless we consider that a technology is neutral, in the end, we cannot talk about decentralization without talking about governance, suffrage, politics or apoliticism, autonomy, organization… and the dominant model of centralization: the nation-state. Still, if a very vast literature and documentation concerns rise of states, it must be stated that the one granted to the opposite, i. e. the absence of a state, is almost non-existent. More…

Oregon’s Tsunami Risk Reply

by • Environment

New article from the lady who wrote “The Really Big One,” that Pulitzer Prize winning article about the inevitable super earthquake that is supposedly going to destroy a nice chunk of the coastal Northwest. If this kind of stuff interests you I’d recommend reading this article before reading the newer one that I’ve posted below.

————————-

The New Yorker
by Kathryn Schulz

JULY 1, 2019

Houses in Cannon Beach, Oregon, sit just inside a tsunami-evacuation zone, an area that will be destroyed when a tsunami hits—even though it’s now legal for new public facilities to be built there.

Photograph by National Geographic / Getty

Other than asteroid strikes and atomic bombs, there is no more destructive force on this planet than water. Six inches of it, flowing at a mere seven miles per hour, will knock a grown man off his feet. Two feet of it will sweep away most cars. Two cubic yards of it weighs well over a ton; if that much of it hits you at, say, twenty miles per hour, it will do as much damage to your body as a Subaru. In rough seas, a regular ocean wave can break with a force of two thousand pounds per square foot, more than enough to snap a human neck. A rogue wave—one that is more than twice the height of those around it—can sink a nine-hundred-foot ship. More…

AnPrim On Fire: Human Supremacy Within Anarcho-Primitivist Narrative 4

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Environment

By Ria Montana, forest & wetland rewilder https://veganprimitivist.wordpress.com/ 

Within anarcho-primitivism plays an ongoing dialectic pinpointing origins of the problem of civilization. Impugning only capitalism or the industrial age is much too timid. From the left, radical environmental activist leader and author Derrick Jensen impugns the point people exceed their capacity for self-sufficiency, the dawn of cities. In the trilogy Ishmael, The Story of B and My Ishmael fiction writer and civilization critic Daniel Quinn renders agriculture as humans’ dichotomizing choice to be Givers or Takers. Couple city settling with plant cultivating & animal herding and you’ve hit the collective anprim sweet spot.

Looking farther back than agriculture as the start of humans’ split with nature slashes approval. Anarcho-primitivist author and Anarchy Radio host John Zerzan’s look back to origins of art and language has appealed to some but with less enthusiasm. In his 3/13/19 radio show Zerzan reals in analysis on the catalyst of controlled fire, instead positioning civilization’s birth at the point humans domesticated animals and plants. Some say focusing at this fixed ~10 millennia point paints too simple a picture, ignores all civilizations’ embers heating up, culminating to ignite the world ablaze.

Techno-Fire

The debate on civilization’s origins parallels the debate on what qualifies as a technology. Values connoted by technologies are biased to support the interpreter’s view on origins. For example, those who blame agriculture see the plow as an obvious tool of civilization. Those who include controlled fire in the blame see hearths uncovered in archeologic digs as technological shifts in humans’ relationship with living communities that set the stage for domestication of plants and animals. Agriculture-blaming purists deny that using fire is technology toward civilization, perhaps to justify keeping fire in their rewilding repertoire, or perhaps in an effort to ward off criticism of hunting and cooking animals. In the premise set forth here placing civilization’s origins with the beginnings of human primate’s colonizing lifeways, inventions such as mortar and pestle are not catalysts toward civilization if they are not used as colonizing instruments, but spears are catalysts toward civilization if they are used as colonizing instruments, no matter the complexity of design. (Yes other species use hunting implements, but not in a way that degrades and massacres large scale living communities in a mega-regional and eventually worldwide colonizing schema as humans have.)

More…

One Cheer — More or Less — For the Green New Deal 3

by • Activism, Anarchism/Anti-State, Economics/Class Relations, Environment, Strategy • Tags: , , , ,

This seems to be a serious, thoughtful critique of the “Green New Deal” idea from a fairly conventional left-anarchist perspective (although Carson is an individualist/mutualist/AWA, not an an-com).

The ATS theoretical model and strategic paradigm is oriented toward global revolutionary struggle against the new Rome (i.e. the global capitalist empire), with an emphasis on indigenous people everywhere, and bottom-up anti-imperialist struggle. I’d say my own geopolitical outlook approximates that of the Shining Path (minus the Maoist fundamentalism).

What Carson describes here is more or less what I would envision the reformist wing of the left-wing of pan-anarchism in First World countries doing, but it’s only that. Notice that the examples Carson provides are all First World places (“the new municipalist movements in Barcelona, Madrid, Bologna, and Jackson”) I see the ATS vision of global revolutionary struggle as transcending the left/right reformist/radical First World/Third World (core/periphery) dichotomies. A similar analysis could be made of Carson’s ideas on “privilege theory,” which would likewise be appropriate for the social/cultural wing of the left-wing of pan-anarchism in First World countries (in a way that potentially networks with similar tendencies in the Third World).

By Kevin Carson

Center for a Stateless Society

In critiquing and analyzing a state policy proposal like the Green New Deal from an anarchist perspective, I should throw in the usual disclaimers about my working assumptions. I’m not an insurrectionist and I don’t believe the post-capitalist/post-state transition will be primarily what Erik Olin Wright called a “ruptural” process. Although the final transition may involve some ruptural events, it will mostly be the ratification after the fact of a cumulative transformation that’s taken place interstitially.

Most of that transformation will come from the efforts of ordinary people at creating the building blocks of the successor society on the ground, and from those building blocks replicating laterally and coalescing into an ecosystem of counter-institutions that expands until it supplants the previous order.

Some of it will come from political engagement to run interference for the new society developing within the shell of the old, and pressuring the state from outside to behave in more benign ways. Some of it will come from using some parts of the state against other parts, and using the state’s own internal procedural rules to sabotage it.

Some of it will come from attempts to engage friendly forces within the belly of the beast. Individuals here and there on the inside of corporate or state institutions who are friendly to our efforts and willing to engage informally with us can pass along information and take advantage of their inside positions to nudge things in a favorable direction. As was the case with the transition from feudalism and capitalism, some organizational entities — now nominally within state bodies or corporations — will persist in a post-state and post-capitalist society, but with their character fundamentally changed along with their relationship to the surrounding system.  If you want to see some interesting examples of attempts at “belly of the beast” grantsmanship and institutional politics, take a look at the appendices to some of Paul Goodman’s books.

A great deal, I predict, will come from efforts — particularly at the local level — to transform the state in a less statelike direction: a general principle first framed by Saint-Simon as “replacing legislation over people with the administration of things,” and since recycled under a long series of labels ranging from “dissolution of the state within the social body” to “the Wikified State” to “the Partner State.” The primary examples I have in mind today are the new municipalist movements in Barcelona, Madrid, Bologna, and Jackson and the dozens and hundreds of cities replicating that model around the world, as well as particular institutional forms like community land trusts and other commons-based local economic models.

READ MORE

Studying the demise of historic civilizations 1

by • American Decline, Economics/Class Relations, Environment, Uncategorized

Must read.

**

By Luke Kemp
19 February 2019

Studying the demise of historic civilisations can tell us how much risk we face today, says collapse expert Luke Kemp. Worryingly, the signs are worsening.

Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.

DEEP CIVILISATION

This article is part of a new BBC Future series about the long view of humanity, which aims to stand back from the daily news cycle and widen the lens of our current place in time. Modern society is suffering from “temporal exhaustion”, the sociologist Elise Boulding once said. “If one is mentally out of breath all the time from dealing with the present, there is no energy left for imagining the future,” she wrote.

That’s why the Deep Civilisation season will explore what really matters in the broader arc of human history and what it means for us and our descendants.

So concluded the historian Arnold Toynbee in his 12-volume magnum opus A Study of History. It was an exploration of the rise and fall of 28 different civilisations. More…

The End of Our World Order Is Imminent Reply

by • American Decline, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Economics/Class Relations, Environment, Military


A writer at The Nation points out how more than 200 empires have risen and fallen in world history, and the US empire will eventually fall as well. I think this author likely overstates the prospects for future Chinese dominance, and his environmental alarmism may be overstated as well. Most likely what will replace US hegemony is the system that the author describes the US as having a pivotal role in creating, i.e. the system of global capitalism. As the US recedes, international organizations will increasingly come to dominate, e.g. the UN, World Bank, IMF, WTO, G20, transnational corporations, NGOs, foundations, international media conglomerates, etc. US military power will likely retreat as various European and Asia powers come to dominate their particular regions, but within the wide framework of global capitalism.

By Alfred McCoy

The Nation

Once upon a time in America, we could all argue about whether or not US global power was declining. Now, most observers have little doubt that the end is just a matter of timing and circumstance. Ten years ago, I predicted that, by 2025, it would be all over for American power, a then-controversial comment that’s commonplace today. Under President Donald Trump, the once “indispensable nation” that won World War II and built a new world order has become dispensable indeed.

The decline and fall of American global power is, of course, nothing special in the great sweep of history. After all, in the 4,000 years since humanity’s first empire formed in the Fertile Crescent, at least 200 empires have risen, collided with other imperial powers, and in time collapsed. In the past century alone, two dozen modern imperial states have fallen and the world has managed just fine in the wake of their demise.

READ MORE


Robert Stark talks about The YIMBY Movement & The Alt-Center 1

by • Economics/Class Relations, Environment, Left and Right, Race and Ethnicity, Science and Technology • Tags: ,

The Stark Truth. Listen here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Stark joined with Cartrell Payne(aka The Adventure Kid) to discuss the YIMBY movement, the Alt-Center, and how those issues relate.

Topics:

California Senator Scott Wiener’s housing-transit measure Derailed
Factions of the YIMBY movement including left leaning housing advocates, real estate developers, and the Market Urbanist
Left Wing anti-gentrification activists and their alliance with NIMBY’s
Cartrell’s observations on gentrification in Memphis, Tennessee
The hypocrisy of pro-immigration Limousine Liberal NIMBY’s, and how that combination exacerbates the housing crisis
How the YIMBY movement is also very pro immigration
Income Inequality in California and the mass exodus of the middle class
The film Falling Down which is set in LA in the early 90’s and a warning of a dystopian future
What makes California great and can it be saved?
The New Great Migration of Black Americans back to The South
White Middle Class Conservative NIMBY’s, their motivations, and how they are sabotaging their own self interest
Why YIMBYism and immigration restriction are compatible, and why the Alt-Center should take up those causes
Why YIMBYs need to address aesthetic concerns
Why YIMBYism is compatible with environmental and historic preservation
Citylab and City Journal; their writings on urbanism and political agendas
Why mass transit is inefficient in LA and other Sun Belt cities
The political and cultural flaws of both Blue and Red States
A vision of an Alt Center which include alternative economics, pro middle class policies, New Urbanism, environmentalism, SWPL culture, and socially centrist
Cartrell’s political orientation as an Old School Southern Democrat minus the racism
Cartrell’s critique of both the Black Liberal Establishment and Black Conservatives
Conservative views on the poor and police issues and Conservative Class Cucks
The early 20th Century Populist movement
Norman Mailer’s plan for breaking up New York City which addressed both the concerns of the Left and the Right

Cliches of Statism, and How to Answer Them 5

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Economics/Class Relations, Environment, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

Tom Woods and Stefan Molyneux discuss many of the cliches libertarians find themselves having to answer, involving child labor, labor unions, monopolies, the environment, and more. Listen here.

I generally agree with the content of this discussion, except, like most mainstream libertarians, they’re going far too easy on historic capitalism in terms of the role of the state in fostering it, and the degree to which corporatism and statism continue to be interconnected.

More…

Where Technophobia Meets Lenin 2

by • Activism, Environment, Strategy • Tags:

A review of Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How, by Theodore John Kaczynski. Fitch and Madison Publishers, 2016.

Image result for anti-tech revolution why and how

By Keith Preston

Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How is a work by Theodore John”Ted” Kaczynski, otherwise known as the “Unabomber” terrorist, a former mathematics professor who sought to fight what he regarded as the excessive encroachment of technology by blowing up those who invent and market it. Kaczynski has been imprisoned since his 1996 arrest, and this book was completed during the course of his incarceration while serving multiple life sentences.

As the title suggests, this work seeks to provide an answer to two primary questions. Why must the “technological system,” as Kaczynski refers to it, be abolished? And how might such abolition be achieved? Kaczynski devotes a considerable portion of the book to revolutionary strategy. I found this to be the most compelling part of the book, as I am likewise interested in revolutionary theory, even if I cannot abide Kaczynski’s ideological framework. More…

National-Anarchist Movement Conference 2017: A Summary Reply

by • Activism, Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Electoralism/Democratism, Environment, Fourth Generation Warfare, Health and Medicine, Immigration, Left and Right, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy, Science and Technology, Secession, Strategy, Uncategorized • Tags:

Image result for national anarchist movement

By Keith Preston

Special thanks to Peter Topfer, Adam Ormes, Thom Forester, and Sean Jobst for their assistance in the writing of this summary.

On June 17 and 18, the first ever conference of the National-Anarchist Movement (N-AM) took place in Madrid. The process of arranging this conference was certainly not without its difficulties, and the organizers deserve much praise for their diligence in this regard. Originally, the conference was supposed to be hosted by the Madrid section of N-AM, who dropped out of the project shortly (and out of N-AM altogether) before the conference took place. This led to the irony of a conference being held in Spain where no actual Spanish people were among the attendees. Because National-Anarchists are widely despised by leftists who mistakenly regard N-A as a “fascist” tendency, security was a paramount concern.

More…

“The Great Global Warming Swindle” is itself a Fraud and a Swindle Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Environment, Uncategorized

I’m actually agnostic on the question of climate change/global warming. However, I generally favor the use of sources of energy other than fossil fuels, natural gas, and nuclear power to the greatest degree possible (with “possible” being the operative word) on the grounds of health and environmental aesthetics.

By Bill Butler

“The Great Global Warming Swindle” (DVD/video/movie) is a pseudo-documentary in which British television producer Martin Durkin has fraudulently misrepresented both the data involved and scientists who have researched global climate. Movie director Durkin has willfully misrepresented the facts about global warming just to advocate his own agenda. The program was originally aired on England’s “Channel 4” (The “Supermarket Tabloid” of the airwaves). In the past, “Channel 4” has had to broadcast a prime-time apology for broadcasting another of Martin Durkin’s “sleazebag” pseudo-documentaries.

“The Great Global Warming Swindle” is aimed at and appeals to the “Don’t bother me with the facts – I’ve already made up my mind” audience. There may be future media presentations by those who wish to promote ignorant political viewpoints instead of presenting factual knowledge. (Or possibly, the individuals involved have never passed a high school science course and don’t understand that there is a difference.

READ MORE

Global Warming Swindle Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Environment, Uncategorized

By Thomas Sowell

Townhall.Com

Britain’s Channel 4 has produced a devastating documentary titled “The Great Global Warming Swindle.” It has apparently not been broadcast by any of the networks in the United States. But, fortunately, it is available on the Internet.

Distinguished scientists specializing in climate and climate-related fields talk in plain English and present readily understood graphs showing what a crock the current global warming hysteria is.

These include scientists from MIT and top-tier universities in a number of countries. Some of these are scientists whose names were paraded on some of the global warming publications that are being promoted in the media — but who state plainly that they neither wrote those publications nor approved them.

One scientist threatened to sue unless his name was removed.

While the public has been led to believe that “all” the leading scientists buy the global warming hysteria and the political agenda that goes with it, in fact the official reports from the United Nations or the National Academy of Sciences are written by bureaucrats — and then garnished with the names of leading scientists who were “consulted,” but whose contrary conclusions have been ignored.

READ MORE

Climate change: Fact or fiction? 1

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Environment, Science and Technology • Tags:

Some scientists say the earth’s climate changes constantly and naturally, but the vast majority of them believe the current rise in global temperature is man-made, and could be catastrophic for the planet. But is all this but a case of extreme ‘climate alarmism’? Climate change sceptic Richard Lindzen is challenged on his view that concern about global warming is alarmist nonsense.

2,500 Native Americans Successfully Block Oil Pipeline Construction — State of Emergency Declared 1

by • Activism, Environment, Race and Ethnicity

The Free Thought Project

Last week, a few dozen Native Americans showed up to protest the $3.8 billion, 1,172-mile-long pipeline that would cross right through their sacred land. As word spread, however, the few dozen turned into more than 2,500 native Americans. Because of the large turnout, a brief victory ensued for the people after the developers of the four-state oil pipeline agreed to halt construction until after a federal hearing in the coming week.

In spite of both the company building the pipeline, Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, and the federal government applying pressure, the Native Americans from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe have remained resilient.
More…

CrossTalk Debate on Climate Change Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Environment, Science and Technology, Uncategorized

The media coverage of Superstorm Sandy was 24/7. However, there was little mention of climate change. Why is this? And why didn’t Obama or Romney mention climate change at all in the three TV debates despite a summer of record temperatures, historic drought and wildfires in the US? Why are so many people in the US in denial of this dire situation? And is the thermometer going up or down? CrossTalking with Patrick Michaels, Denis Rancourt and Richard Milne.

Climate Change: What Do Scientists Say? Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Environment, Science and Technology, Uncategorized

Climate change is an urgent topic of discussion among politicians, journalists and celebrities…but what do scientists say about climate change? Does the data validate those who say humans are causing the earth to catastrophically warm? Richard Lindzen, an MIT atmospheric physicist and one of the world’s leading climatologists, summarizes the science behind climate change.

Climate Change: What Does Science Really Say? Reply

by • Environment, Science and Technology, Uncategorized • Tags:

Tom Woods interviews a climate change dissident. Listen here.

To call any aspect of the climate change orthodoxy into question is to risk being condemned as “anti-science.” But are the arguments and computer models of the so-called mainstream really so rock solid?

About the Guest

Chip Knappenberger is assistant director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute. He has over 20 years of experience in climate research and public outreach, and has published numerous papers in the major atmospheric science journals on global warming, hurricanes, precipitation changes, weather and mortality, and Greenland ice melt, among many other areas.

Anarchist Shawn Wilbur on the Malheur refuge occupation Reply

by • Environment, Left and Right, Uncategorized

I don’t personally have a dog in this fight. I sympathize with anyone who is in revolt against the U.S. federal system, left, right, or center. Other than that, it’s none of my business how Oregonians organize their own economy or approach to ecological issues.

Here’s another piece on this topic by “anti-fascist” Alexander Reid Ross.

Like I said, I don’t begrudge anyone their perspective on this topic, though I do wish these circles would show as much interest in overthrowing the U.S. empire as they do in opposing “the fascists” (whoever they are).

By Shawn Wilbur

Libertarian Labyrinth

I don’t do a lot of current events commentary here, but there are occasions where it seems both useful and necessary. What follows is notes drawn from my responses to the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, outside Burns, OR. They range from quips to more extended analysis and draw on my family connections to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, including a stint living on refuges much like Malheur in my extreme youth. I have tried not to rely on information that is not available elsewhere online.

I’m posting the material because it has garnered interest on social media, but also because I think that the question of anarchist alternatives to the federal lands is one worth taking up. An extension of my C4SS comments on “mutual extrication” and the “gift economy of property” is already in the works.

The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and all the problems of Harney County, are fifty miles from the middle of nowhere, but the issues that are really driving the conflict are the sort of things that we can examine much closer to home. Nearly all of us have experienced uncertain climate conditions and many of us have had very recent occasions to think about floodwater management. Given the very slow acceptance of decentralized methods of flood and storm-water management, I expect most of us think of these things as a responsibility of the government, when we think of the responsibility at all. Most of us don’t have to go too far to find clear evidence of the massive public works projects that have made agriculture and grazing possible in its present forms, but we also don’t have to go far to see clear evidence of the failures and limitations of our resource-management efforts to date. Agencies like BLM and USFWS have seldom sacrificed commercial interests to environmental ones, and when they have opposed immediate commercial interests, it has almost always been in the interest of preserving them in the long term.

READ MORE

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Abby Martin 2

by • Activism, American Decline, Anarchism/Anti-State, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Electoralism/Democratism, Environment, Left and Right

In this episode of teleSUR’s The Empire Files, Abby Martin interviews world-renowned philosopher and linguist Professor Noam Chomsky. Prof. Chomsky comments on the presidential primary “extravaganza,” the movement for Bernie Sanders, the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal, the bombing of the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, modern-day libertarianism and the reality of “democracy” under capitalism.