orange juice

Fruit on the Street

B02001 Wed, 1 Dec 2004 20:01:34 –0800

Is fascism coming to the States? Without getting into a debate over the semantics of the F-word, I’d say it doesn’t matter whether or not it seems likely that the U.S. government will push for an overtly fascist state anytime soon. What matters is that the infrastructure is in place, that the groundwork is laid. Follow the earlier links. The other day I saw my first movie in a Chinese cinema—I, Robot (the cinema costs 25 yuan (about 3 U.S. dollars); within my lifetime that price has risen from about 5 mao (5 U.S. cents), the high prices most tangibly felt with the release of Titanic). Without getting into any revolutionary implications within the film, reading the robots as workers, etc., I would like to discuss one scene where humans take to the street and face down the robots who have just instituted martial law (the robots no longer acting on their own, but controlled by the central computer, VIKI, who has decided to protect the childish humans from their own destructive ways), in a Braveheart/Gangs of New York type rumble. Obviously, here we had a situation where the groundwork for martial law was in place and all that was necessary for it to occur was the will to implement it. What I suggest, however, is that it is highly unlikely, HIGHLY unlikely, that the U.S. public would actually take to the streets in such a situation, directly confronting the people (or robots) responsible for taking away whatever civil liberties they still had, especially when these same people (robots) were almost absolutely trusted by this same U.S. public minutes earlier. What is my point? I don’t know. Maybe the fact that uprisings and riots, even the “spontaneous” ones, do not come out of nowhere. Organizing is hard goddamn work and any discussion of revolution or general strikes or what-have-you within the U.S. needs to take into account specific U.S. histories and realities. In my humble opinion, waiting for things to get so bad that people will spontaneously take to the streets just aint gonna cut it. A hard look at the realities of Nazi Germany cannot be overstressed, especially as it relates to the good citizens that made a functioning German state possible. So, um, start thinking realistically, in terms of, if I was going to go about doing this, how, in fact, would I do it? And then, give it a try. For we aren’t going to truly learn anything about possibilities if we just sit back and let all of them pass.

Rethinking Peak Oil

B01814 Thu, 25 Nov 2004 05:25:23 –0800

My opinion is that a great number of radical, revolutionary, and progressive people (especially those writers, intellectuals, and activists who hold the power to influence a mass audience), need to seriously rethink their approach to the concept of “peak oil”. First of all, I think it should be noted that “peak oil” is hardly an idea that the “powers that be” are attempting to bury or keep from public view. The concept can be found throughout the mainstream news media, without the massive attacks that radical or potentially damaging concepts and news have been subject to in the past. Surely, if the global elite wanted to hide the fact that the world was running out of oil, they’d be doing a much better job of it. And the Heritage Foundation probably wouldn’t be putting the videos of conferences like Global Energy Security in the Time of World Terror on their website. Then there is the method of debate generally employed by “peak oil” adherents, which, to me, seems to be quite disingenuous and serves to silence opposing viewpoints. One such example is the topic of abiotic oil. Comments such as, “If I may be so bold as to put forward a personal view, the Russians that invented this idea [abiotic origins of oil] have been at the Crackski Pipeovich a bit too often,” as put forth by Adam Porter in the GNN article Peak Oil: A Reality Check , do not serve to further serious discussion and thought, but work to silence alternative views through the use of ridicule. For people who are interested in actually looking at alternative views, here is a link to a paper published on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America website. I also highly recommend reading this Reply to certain biogenic/peak oil lobbyists. I have no desire to drag people into the conspiracy theory ghetto. In fact, I’d rather ghettos of all sorts did not exist. And while I do agree with the opinion that we should be focused more on our own actions than the actions of some global elite, I think it is foolish to say that the machinations of such an elite do not have an effect on local, national, or international struggles. And when it comes to the topic of “peak oil”, I think that its discussion (as it exists now) within radical/revolutionary/progressive circles does not serve to benefit ongoing and future struggles, but in fact does them harm. Here is an e-mail I wrote to Dave McGowan back in October.

hey dave. long time listener, first time caller. As my old friend Vincent J. Salandria once upon a time made clear, once you enter a situation where CIA infiltration becomes a real possibility (or in some cases a stark reality), everyone and anyone becomes ripe for the label of agent. Better to dismiss all talk of intentions and stick to the effects of actions and logical and likely consequences of thoughts and proposals, for even the best of them (intentions) end up as pavement on the road to hell. Follow me, please.

Oil comes from the Earth. We do not need it to live, but if we don’t have it, a lot of people will die. Oil is quite likely NOT a fossil fuel. It is very likely that oil companies and the U.S. government are colluding to keep oil production down. But, regardless of whether or not the Earth is running out of oil, our methods of extraction and use are NOT SUSTAINABLE. What the “Peak oil” movement serves to do is to put enormous pressure on our situation (though, I would say, our situation does require a certain sense of urgency).

“Peak oil” CANNOT be used as an effective consciousness raiser for the U.S. public. It in no way follows that once people realize that we are running out of oil, they will become consumed with desire to throw out their leaders and overturn the capitalist system. I’d say, as in most media-managed crises, as this would surely be, a fearful public, not knowing what to do, will relinquish all of their power to their leaders and the experts they keep in their pockets, as those experts pull out of their pockets their plans for social engineering, which they no doubt will readily have available. Getting “peak oil” on the agenda is absurd. “Peak oil” is not going to rattle the feathers of a group that flat out denies the existence of global warming. Also, for people who consider themselves radicals to push the “Peak oil” meme is, on its face, extremely puzzling. The idea that we are running out of oil is NOT a radical idea. Almost all of us were taught in school that oil is a non-renewable resource. It would therefor make sense for it to run out. And why would an American public that is perfectly content letting others make critical decisions that affect their lives react any different to this particular problem? Especially after being conditioned for years by things like the Patriot Act and the social experiments we call airports and major sporting events (where they won’t let you bring a plastic bottle cap into a Giants game). If anything, “peak oil”, assuming it’s true (or even possible) should be added to the litany of other ecological crises we face (global warming, the destruction of our forests, massive poverty, etc., etc.). As for the people it will expose to issues of sustainable development and possible methods of living outside the grip consumer culture, while some will indeed develop a radical consciousness, the vast majority will most likely support things like alternative forms of energy, and not things like the resistance to the complete fascist takeover of the state, which, if “peak oil” is true, will most assuredly be accelerated. Here’s where it get’s tempting to play “guess that agent.” The “Peak Oil” movement got its start from a branch on the “9-11 Truth Movement.” The basic idea is that the powers that be, knowing that the oil supply was on the wane, engineered 9-11 so that they could easily convince the public to support them in their wars of conquest of oil rich lands, so that they could control the oil they desperately need to feed the corporate-military-industrial complex that keeps them in power. As you have pointed out, “peak oil” rationalizes the Afghanistan and Iraq (and any future possible) wars and would make them digestable for a large number (I would say a vast majority; heck, half the country already SUPPORTS the Iraq war without any credible rationale) of U.S. citizens, especially once the debate was normalized by the mainstream media. Never mind the simplistic focus of the 9-11 happened for oil theory or that these wars make the oil fields extremely unstable as oil pipelines are now constant targets for attack. Saying 9-11 had to be engineered by the powers that be because of the imminent “peak oil” crisis takes the attacks and the subsequent wars completely out of the historical context of, not only capitalist wars of conquest, but this particular group of power’s long (and documented) sustained efforts (along with their ilk of eugenicists, fascists, and social engineers) to exert their control on the U.S. populace and humanity in general (not to mention the rest of the planet and universe). I suppose we could then discuss how this break in the historical narrative could serve as a limited hangout (some rogue agents (or Dick Cheney) went a bit too far after they (understandably) panicked when they found out about the imminent oil crisis and what it would mean for The American Way of Life; sure what they did was horrible, but they had America’s best interests at heart) and also make for easy plausible deniability. The system would continue functioning as normal, keeping in mind that this would all be occurring during an oil crisis, which would mean increasing state control over everything. But perhaps we’re getting ahead of ourselves (while on one level we are deconstructing a giant chess match, on another level we are trying to communicate with people who might not understand us). While “peak oil” is NOT a potential consciousness raiser, 9-11 most definitely IS. Just as its predecessor, the Kennedy assassination truth movement if you will, was. So much so that even in the ‘90s, after the release of Stone’s JFK, in order for the (let’s call it capitalist) capitalist system to continue to function, the film had to be ruthlessly attacked by such left lumanaries as Chomsky, Cockburn, Hitchens, and the editors at the Nation (not to mention the attacks from the establishment and mainstream press. As E. Martin Schotz has written, this shows us how establishment Chomsky and the like actually are).

The “9-11 truth movement” (certainly before it decided to give itself a name) is an extremely heterogeneous, grassroots phenomenon with no hierarchical structure. Most of the arguments are extremely easy to comprehend, even if many of the proofs do indeed require painstaking technical analysis (there are enough aspects of this case that are so mindboggingly clear and require no specialized knowledge that these technical aspects, while EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to have being analyzed in a coherent manner, need not turn into a potential straw man for a divide and conquer debate strategy). The “Peak oil” movement, on the other hand, is based primarily on a handful of websites (most prominently the From The Wilderness site) and relies heavily on experts and boring, confusing, difficult to read articles. In the case that the “9-11 Truth Movement” gains momentum and poses a growing danger to the powers that be, the idea of “peak oil” gives the (let’s call them fascists) fascists who engineered 9-11 maneuvering room by way of the points you have raised and the limited hangout discussed earlier, especially if 9-11 is strongly tied to the idea of “peak oil” in the minds of activists. And of course, framing the 9-11 movement around “peak oil” completely weakens any chance that the truly radical ideas contained in the 9-11 truth movement have for entering mainstream consciousness by taking the focus of researchers and activists away from discussing the facts of 9-11. It is more likely (as we have already seen) that “Peak oil” will reach the mainstream first, and as soon as it is, it will quickly be divorced by the corporate press from any connection it might have to the 9-11 Truth Movement. And no matter how many people are directed to the From The Wilderness website, no critical mass will be obtained. Ruppert and company, delusions of grandeur aside, cannot play hardball with a well-oiled (pardon the expression) high tech media machine for the hearts and minds of the people. The fascists have been in the game of public relations for too long, and according to the “Peak Oil” movement itself, have had a headstart in this particular match. It is foolish to believe that this group went through the trouble initiating 9-11 and its massive coverup, but had no strategy for controlling a “peak oil” meme that would eventually leak out. My old buddy Vincent Salandria likes to talk about the concept of “Transparent Conspiracy.” The goal of such a conspiracy, I’d say, is to neutralize public opinion (as well as intimidate those who would challenge you). The goal of people seeking to dismantle or radically change the system is to mobilize action. Over two thirds of the U.S. public believes the lone gunman theory is nonsense, but this idea has lost all of its previous radical possibilities in and of itself. Finding out about 9-11 via Peak oil might eventually make the majority of Americans BELIEVE that the U.S. government was responsible for 9-11, but it won’t prompt significant numbers to action. Some people (like Noam Chomsky) like to pretend that secret meetings to take over the world do not exist (hardly secret anymore now that these people have taken to openly publishing their plans) and that these conspirators don’t act consciously to try to implement their plans, or, if they do, it is irrelevant, because their actions have no real historical effect (I think it was Alistair Crowley who said something to the effect of Magic is walking across the room, turning the handle, and pulling (that’s how you magically open the door)). This Chomskian type of historical analysis is like saying that the positioning of the stars killed Kennedy or that the moon was responsible for the massacres in Guatemala (also Indonesia, Chile, and East Timor). Respectable theories, sure. However, the effect that these possible realities have is that of eliminating human praxis.

People continue to recreate the structures that broke up the University Students Against Sweatshops sit-in that was my entrance into the political world, that plague the union hierarchies, that infect our personal relationships to the bone. To condemn actions of the past, forged in the intense pressure of space and time, is ridiculous. But if we are going to pretend that we are actually able to decide our path, we have no need to recreate these actions. It’s a question, as some intellectual guy once said, of how to do something that’s impossible, yet indispensable, and in any case inevitable. We live in the now. We should all take a breath.

There are traps of power that we all can fall into. I’ve seen hardcore revolutionary communists (who I still consider my friends) turn into apologists for presidents in the midst of struggle. You do not need to be on the C.I.A. payroll for your actions to contribute to the maintenance of the fascist sytem in which we dwell. I am not interested in whether Michael Ruppert is working for the government or merely swallowed whole a juicy piece of disinformation. I am going to continue assuming that people like you and the editors at sites like www.altpr.org (which consistently posts “peak oil” material) and my old buddy Vincent Salandria are not paid disinformation agents of some nefarious group that works to implement total control, but human beings who are capable of changing their minds and choosing their direction. What I am interested in is how the “Peak Oil Movement” will function within this system in which we dwell. The fact that it exists as it is shows that it’s a prominent piece on the chessboard and is as much of a window to power as the events of 9-11 and subsequent coverup themselves. You might actually be having a meaningful effect on an ongoing critically relevant issue (not to mention working to undermine and overturn long held assumptions of institutional science).

These traps of the system (as I’m now calling them) help explain how people who otherwise provide coherent radical analysis take seriously a man who has the audacity to claim that a G7 which ignores millions and millions of protesters caved in to a single website, and continue to think that supporting this man could lead to any sort of radical change. As long as people continue to work from the premise that what the “American public” thinks is relevant and that they are still capable of playing any role other than that of consumer, they need to recognize the dense history of social engineering and social control and the ways in which they constantly interact with those of us who live inside of global capitalism. And they need to develop a world view that recognizes the political reality of conspiracies. Ah fuck, I could go on forever. For a number of reasons, possibly based on reality, I don’t think the struggle against global capital and the war machines it employs (or fascism if you like) is doomed to failure. I guess I’ll write someone an e-mail about that later. Anyway, keep up the good work. -Jake

I didn’t even discuss the fact that “peak oil” fuels the same fear-inspired consensus reality that we should be trying to break free from. For a nice take on “spiritual activism”, read the 2004-11-19 Spiritual Activism entry over at the Arthur Magazine website. Yep. I gotta pee.

The Future Will Take Care Of Itself

B01779 Tue, 23 Nov 2004 21:37:03 –0800

“As the activist Starhawk asks, “Can we think like no other social movement has ever thought?” Can we act as no other rebellion has ever acted? Can we create a politics that isn’t left up to specialists, a politics that is not just relevant to but part of everyday life, a politics that doesn’t look or feel like politics?”

“How can we discover the paths we should take? How will we know they are the right ones? For is there any revolution in history that has not taken a wrong turn eventually, ending in bloodshed and betrayal—ultimately, in failure?”

-Walking: We Ask Questions

I do not see the task of “alternative” media as being that of competing with the corporate mass media for the hearts and minds of the U.S. public. I feel we need to be engaging in the task of building the worlds and communities that we want to live in, not in perpetuating systems and structures that we would rather see destroyed or abandoned. And I do not think we have the luxury of waiting for some broad consensus to form within the U.S. in which it is agreed that radical change is needed. Once we come to the conclusion that the society in which we live is fundamentally based on injustice, how many of us take the next step, as taken by some of the characters in Ursula LeGuin’s The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, and walk away, refusing to contribute to the maintenance of such a society? Of course, the physical act of walking away from our corrupt society is not so much a real possibility. To quote the essay Clandestinity: Resisting State Repression , “There are no safe places in a world which grows critically warmer, a world in which safe drinking water is running out, a world undergoing the greatest mass species extinction since the disappearance of the dinosaurs. We can’t keep going back to the land, starting commun(e)ities off the grid, and insulating ourselves with the safety net of subculture.” So while I think it is necessary that we “walk away” from our identification with U.S. style capitalism, with consumer culture, from the Spectacle, it is also necessary that we engage with the communities in which we live. I see the role of an alternative media—of a revolutionary or radical news media especially—to be that of providing a support structure and resources for people engaged in various local struggles. As good as it feels to shoot the shit with like-minded folk, an on-line community cannot possibly serve as a substitute for the “real thing”. And in as much as it serves to alienate a person from her, let’s call it, land-based community, or occupy vast amounts of time without leading to direct actions, an on-line community is a roadblock on the way towards real change. Sites such as the guerrilla news network have an enormous potential, existing as the name itself suggests—as aggressive, radical, and unconventional networks of news. In such a network, it is up to the individual users to make the effort to provide news and information in as transparent and relevant and accurate a manner as possible. And while I generally despise things like effort, bullshit sayings such as “you don’t have a right to complain if you don’t vote,” and the idea that change has to begin with yourself (a statement that makes (mostly false) assumptions about the nature of individuals and boundaries and other things), the fact is, there ARE things that are within our power to change, and, if we actually want to work towards a world that we CHOOSE to live in, there is no good reason not to take these actions and make these changes. The future is going to come about, regardless of what we do. So I say we all stop, take a breath, look around us, get our bearings, and move in a direction that we want to go. Or some other metaphorical bullshit that you like. Be well.

Yes

B01381 Sat, 13 Nov 2004 00:54:49 –0800

I’ve had enough of this current darkness and want to help present some real truth, and real wisdom. I hope others will post more of this sort of info. We will need it to remain sane in the coming days –cortez

After reading these comments on the GNN forum, I decided to head over to the Yes! Magazine website, to see what these positive thinkers were talking about these days (“Can we live without oil?”), and happened to find an article on China, titled China Future, the World Future. How can I sum up the article? Well, to recycle some words I wrote to my old buddy Fred back in October, “still, i’m tempted to say, if there is hope in the world, a lot of it rests in China. there are enough kurt cobain, peace, and anarchy t-shirts to make you proud. and there are just so many fucking people that any progressive decision the country makes will effect the entire planet.” [editor’s note: the Yes article doesn’t mention various t-shirts worn by people in China] What was I talking about? Oh yeah. E-mails to Fred. Following the line about hope for the world, I wrote, “i¡¯m curious to see if the mcdonalds, nikes, and walmarts swallow china or if china will swallow them.” So yeah, as has been discussed elsewhere on the GNN site, the giant corporations are colonizing China on an increasing basis. You can hardly go anywhere in the big cities without your consciousness being assaulted by insidious corporate logos. I don’t know enough about the Chinese economy or culture to predict the direction any embrace of “corporate America” will go, but I will make the innocuous and perhaps obvious claim that my experience in China as someone raised in the U.S. is substantially different from people born and raised in China. As a foreigner living in a foreign land, I find that my eyes tend to focus on familiar images, regardless of whether I want them to or not. The everpresent nature of corporate logos in the U.S. (on billboards, on clothing, on the litter that coats the streets) would often make me feel confined, restricted, circumscribed. Their presence in China often amplifies this feeling (of course, for an “American” who is not quite as allergic to corporate logos as myself, the presence of these symbols in a foreign land might give one a sense of security, or even feelings of ownership and power, especially since in many cases these corporations are the only familiar symbols that a foreigner can lay claim to. So it would seem that the reach and grip of the corporations that lay claim to so much of the U.S. psyche strengthens as one travels abroad.) So what was my point? I don’t know. Something about how these logos probably don’t have nearly as tight a grip on the consciousness of the average Chinese person as they do on mine, and hence, their presence in China produces a much less insidious effect. So, as I said before, I’m curious as to whether the mcdonalds, nikes, and walmarts will swallow China, or if China will swallow them. “speaking of curious,” I then said to Fred, “you’re a civil engineer/architect type person, what’s your take on the implosion of the WTC towers way back on the eleventh of septiembre after the planes smacked into them?” Well, I didn’t hear back from Fred on this question, but apparently there is an engineer type person that recently sent a letter relevant to this question, which was then posted in the forum. In other GNN related news, I send my support and love to those people and trees who continue to resist against the deforestation of the planet. Be well.

e-mail from oakland

B01338 Fri, 12 Nov 2004 01:33:57 –0800

Hello China, something bizarre about writing to the future. So I have been thinking this week, something I try not to do too often, but thinking none the less about what I should do with myself given the current state of the world and all the stuff you wrote last week. And here is where I am stuck. I realized that much of my resistance to joining socialist organizations or going out and becoming a berkeley radical stems from a fear of falling on the obsolete side of a dichotomy have always felt but have only recently begun to articulate. OK, I will get to the point. Here is the question, what is the difference between a movement and a counter culture. I grew up in a counter culture. My father looked around, thirty five years ago, in a busy news room of the Toronto Star, and saw all the makings of a mainstream suburban professional life, a wife, two kids a career track job. He decided he did not like the world he saw and moved to rural Vermont to be an organic carrot farmer! (luckily carrot thing wore off, but the move did not) A counter culture is a wonderful place to grow up. I am grateful for the values instilled in me, growing up inside a radical puppet theater and surrounded by peace loving hippies and hard working dairy farmers. But when I grew up and entered the world my father left it was unchanged. well it was changed, but not for the better. My parents generation decided they did not like the status quo so they left. But the status quo carried on quite happily without them. The establishment of a counter culture did not alter the course of the power structure they opposed. They did not resist, they had the means to carve out for themselves a life that did not require them to come face to face with the beast on a daily basis and they did. Not to discredit their decision or their lives, I am who I am because of those decisions. So I see the lefty organizations that have been raging on for decades and I see self inflicted impotence. They have removed themselves from society (for lack of a better word) and have therefore given the world permission not to take them seriously. This is the root of my obsession with organizing. Radical people put their ideology in their pockets and go out and engage with society, engage with the masses and make change. this is a sacrifice, it requires compromises, it is hard work and it is frustrating. Sometimes you do not have patience to explain to a middle aged housewife the meaning and power of collective action. Sometimes you don’t want to wear make up, shave your legs or wear a skirt. Sometimes it requires you to compromise the very values that push you to do it (that is usually when I quit). So here are my choices as I have seen them, embrace the counter culture, and the impotence that comes with it, or compromise my deeply held values and go out and engage with the institutions out there that push the world in the general direction of my vision (I have not yet done the I will exercise, I am waiting for inspiration, but it is not coming). I am not sure that I like either option and have waffled between the two fairly ineffectively for the past five years. OK, so the counter argument on counter culture, we cannot sustain a resistance movement without a vision, a common goal based on common values, by definition a counter culture. As you pointed out, life doesn’t stop during a revolution. People still sing songs, make art, make babies, etc and this is not just a side effect, it is a necessary ingredient of revolution. So what is my point? I guess every decision I make, what meetings do I attend, what rallies to I go to, what newspapers do I read, this calculation is made in the back of my head. Is this a step towards making the change I want to see in the world or is this a step toward indulging the flowerchild within and in so doing condemning myself to obscurity. Or third, is this a step towards attempting to be accepted by a powerstructure in the fallacious assumption that I will work from “with in the system” to change it. I guess I am not seeking to provide an answer but rather to raise the issue, do we want a resistance movement or a counter culture? How do we create a resistance movement that is effective in making change? One that is supported by a culture that brings to the fore values and priorities not reflected by the mainstream. How do we create this culture without putting the counter culture before the movement, and in so doing become marginalized and written off by those who would be our allies but are turned off by our rhetoric or our style of dress. That’s what I have been stewing about this week. yeah, not that it makes any sense when I write it down. I think the question of information, how we get it, how we communicate is a key piece of the foundation of a movement, media can cross social groups that otherwise might not communicate. OK bed time, love MAB

ps (can you do that in an email) the counter culture isnt a bad thing, it may be our best option at this point, but if that is what we are about we should be honest about it and do it right, not delude ourselves about full fledged revolution.

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orange juice

I Come From Outta Space, Baby

B01217 Tue, 9 Nov 2004 02:25:06 –0800

A message from Jason Louv concerning our ideal worlds and our ability to will them: Hello, The following is an exercise in art and the manifestation of dreams. It is not political in nature, although it does comprise in part a response to the events of November 3 (this email has also been sent to the US President, wouldn’t want to leave anybody out). Please take a moment, whether now or in the coming days, to participate in this global art project. The health of this project also depends on the number of people you forward it to and give a chance to participate (this is NOT a chain mail, however!)—it has already been sent to at least four continents and the more truly global it gets, the better. First, take a moment a write out YOUR perfect world. What YOU believe would be the perfect planet, not just for you but for the race as you see it. You are not constrained to entertain the idea of “REALITY” or “POSSIBILITY” at any point during this exercise. Nor does this have to bear any relationship to the world as it currently stands—the ONLY rules are that you may not use the words “I,” “me,” “my” or in any other way refer to your “SELF” in this section, EXCEPT that you must phrase each of your desired changes to this big blue orb with the prefix “I WILL.” This can be as complex as you want. For instance, your response could be as short as: “I WILL a perfect world in which everybody has access to food, water, shelter, medical care and education.” or as complex as: “I WILL a world in which each human being takes full responsibility for their own life, dreams, thoughts and happiness; one in which renewable energy is a reality; one in which non-militaristic and clean space travel are a reality; one in which mass population control through propaganda and media are no longer necessary; one in which the potential of the human organism is no longer crippled by external control systems but has been fully tapped and mediated by a new “shamanic” social class; one in which the irreality and impermanence of everything are taken for granted; one in which dogma no longer exists; one in which murder is no longer a routine occurrence of daily life; and one in which cars are no longer a mass mode of transportation.” Or even more so. The specifics, beyond the phrasing, are totally up to you. These, of course, are just my answers, which I use as an example, and I will immediately be apparent as the lefty pinko I am, but they have NO importance whatsoever to the experiment itself, which is to have YOU compose your own list. As you compose your list (and make sure that you only write what you know to be true solutions, at least from where you stand right here and right now), really take the time to WILL these things to happen, whatever that means to you. Will them without fear or desire, or worrying too much about whether they could ever be real, and then compose a second list. This is where REALITY as you currently perceive it with your five senses enters the picture—simply write a list of of how you, and you alone, can begin doing something, no matter how minor, to begin making each of your WILLED changes to your world (and be assured that they have already begun) into a reality. How you can begin enacting this better future in the PRESENT, in the theater of your own life. (You can, of course, say “I” now.) For instance, mine might read: “I WILL take responsibility for my own dreams, thoughts and happiness; publicize and discuss developments in renewable energy research and non-militaristic/clean space travel through the channels I have open to me; stop watching television; promote the truly “shamanic” people I know through the channels open to me; take the time from time to time to remind myself of irreality and impermanence; stop dogmatically just believing that “everybody has the power to change the world” (and instead try to test it out with this experiment); stop “fudging” on eating meat; and refuse to own a car.” Make sure that they are things that you can actually DO, and then over the next coming days, weeks, months and years, DO them. Well, you don’t have to, really, but I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to live in your perfect world—but hey, different strokes for different folks right? Many of you will have already asked and answered these questions for yourselves; we congratulate you and request that you share them with the world. For the rest, we envy you since the first crystallization of will tends to be the most fun! It is not enough to simply think about these things, you have to write them out and then commit to doing them. If you’ve got a list that’s too much to commit to, you can always just edit it down until it’s doable, even if you’ve only got one thing. After composing these two paragraphs, please send them to: generationhex@gmail.com Your email will not be compiled or shared with anybody for ANY purpose WHATSOEVER. Your response will then be included on a website which combines each and every response from all over the world into a single growing, living tapestry of slowly reifying dream—and what’s even better, we might even begin to see how all of our perfect worlds fit together. (I am also gratefully accepting alms from anybody who would be so kind as to donate the space and a domain name to host this on, though it will be done one way or the other.) If you do not wish for your name and/or email to be included along with your response, PLEASE SPECIFY this and I will kindly respect your wishes. (Anybody who wishes to embellish, artistically or otherwise, their entry, is certainly welcome to do so.) Please forward this message to everybody that you can, regardless of age, or political or personal opinion or orientation. The process becomes more democratic the bigger it gets. Yours, Jason Louv http://www.icomefromouttaspacebaby.com generationhex@gmail.com

This Is The Way The World Ends...

B01216 Tue, 9 Nov 2004 01:18:11 –0800

Here are some predictions from a Nancy Davies posting over on the narcosphere:

1. The US economy will collapse. The questions are how soon and how badly. Can we look for a “soft landing”? The debt that is now being perpetrated depends like all debt, on who will lend you the money and when they will ask for repayment. Third World and Latin American countries are very familiar with the cost of debt. Americans have not as a nation understood it, up until now. But who holds our debt? Individuals and nations who have bought US Treasury bonds; they are both domestic and foreign purchasers. The foreign purchasers now decline to buy more US debt. The second class of debt is trade balance of payments. Up until now, it has been in the interest of nations like China and Japan to permit the US to buy (import) more than it sells. Greedy greedy greedy. But that can not continue. China is the big factor. At the moment it is not in their interest to bring down the US but it may well be so soon, as the oil wars progress. Likewise Europe, who would benefit from oil-sales in euros.

2. Government services to the population will decrease. Bush said so. Small government means fewer services, and with little money, he can just claim services can’t be afforded. That means no national health care, no national social security (privatize!), etc.

3. Fascism will be made manifest. That’s partly because a war mentality encourages authoritarian control, and partly because conservatives who want “values” upheld want only the values they themselves espouse, which are restrictive, based on a biblical interpretation, anti-female, sexist, blurring separation of church and state, etc. You know. Those who currently (post-election) call for the Dems to stand fast on the Left have my sympathy, while those who say “compromise even more” do not.

4. Jobs will continue to vanish. International capital does not care who buys its products, therefore, it’s no skin off their noses if the Indians and Filipinos get more cash to buy cars with, and the Americans workers get less, especially since the lower foreign salaries (for the next twenty years?) mean a bigger profit.

5. The intellectual cream of the country will emigrate. Why should scientists and inventors stay—the climate is not in their favor, and the medical and scientific research facilities can only go downhill when they ass-lick the big corporations and the government as they now do. Honest research will be conducted elsewhere (maybe Cuba?). It’s of course clear that those bright students who used to enter the USA for university or graduate studies no longer choose to—in fact, many are barred due to their national origin.

6. Militarism will increase. One reason—the scarcity of jobs means that youngsters join the military for pay, and that is true all over the world, and already so for us. Secondly, there’s a terrorist on every corner (as well there may be, after all our attacks on innocent people) so we must Defend Our Country from inside dissenters as well as foreigners.

7. Sooner or later (when?) the East and West coasts will begin to think about secession. They have nothing to gain by supporting the ruined heartland which produces neither useful products nor edible foods. A university education is more likely when it is in the interest of the national economy to promote and pay for it—where will that take place? So the two coasts will do their own thing.

8. Sooner or later (when?) repression, poverty and/or despair gives rise to rebellion. That’s how it goes. People calling for the Dems to promote a winning strategy—whatever that is—do not reckon with the severe voter fraud and intimidation we already see, nor with the viciousness of the Republicans.

9. Global climate change will lead to some big migrations or at least severe readjustments. Maybe the north will be emptied—or maybe the south! Who knows. But something’s gotta give, and at the moment it looks like the tundra.

10. The evil empire, like all empires, will collapse of its own hubris and over-reach. The rest of the world may simply go its own way while ignoring the US’s needs and desires—this will happen when the petrodollar gives way to the euro, when other blocks of nations decline to trade with the US, when energy sources cannot be maintained, when potable water and food sources cannot be maintained. The USA, if very lucky, will fall to the position the UK is in now, and the UK, if very lucky, will get itself more firmly involved with the EU, in effect turning its back on the USA. Many empires don’t die, they just fade away. Let’s hope for that, as the best outcome possible: not with a bang but a whimper.

Some essays from Nancy Davies can apparently be found at George Salzman’s website. Today’s movie recommendation is anything by Polish director Andrzej Wajda. I recently viewed Landscape After Battle and The Promised Land.

Game Time

B01142 Sun, 7 Nov 2004 22:18:03 –0800

So let’s say you’re in the midst of a revolution. What I mean is, let’s say that you live in a place that is undergoing change. Conscious change. And you are one of the change makers. What do you do about those who do not speak the language used by you and the other change makers? So anyway, as I walked out of my complex this afternoon and entered Xi Yuan Alley, it crossed my mind that if the community where I lived was attempting to make any changes in the way it functioned (let alone radically change their social organization), I would quite likely have no idea what was going on, and would have an extremely difficult time adapting (or, for that matter, contributing to said changes in a conscious manner). I watched another Abbas Kiarostami movie today—“The Wind Will Carry Us”. Really fucking good. I recommend everyone in the States watching and spreading around as many Iranian films as you can get your hands on. Not only for the purpose of humanizing the people that live within the “axis of evil”, but because so many of these films are really fucking good. Speaking of Iran, it seems that China has declared its support for the Persian nation in regards to its nuclear situation. Speaking of China, I have received unsolicited confirmation of the fact (discussed elsewhere on this blog) that there are lots of people going to university and comparatively very few good jobs for graduates to go into. Getting a decent job is still a matter of who you know (the Chinese term is Guanxi). I’ve reached the beginning of the conclusion of “Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” (by Fredric Jameson). I’ll do some analysis at a future time. I’m hungry. I think I’m gonna go eat something.

Revolution Redux

B01032 Sat, 6 Nov 2004 04:33:36 –0800

Back when I was editor in chief of the Redskin, this fact (that I worked to produce a book called the Redskin) did not cross my mind in any substantial manner, even when I sat in on a little talk with a political cartoonist who spoke of a cartoon he published with football helmets depicting the (I forget the corresponding cities) Niggers, the Kikes, the Spics (I also forget the exact team nicknames), and so on, social commentary on the existence of the football team, the Washington Redskins. What can I say? They were two different classes. One was Comparative Government and the other was Yearbook. My mind didn’t establish any connection. Anyway, I’ve been spending the plurality of my time these past few days in an e-mail correspondence with a friend of mine (who lives in Oakland, maybe?), discussing recent and past and future world events, amongst other things I’m sure. Presently, I’m listening to a Ruben Gonzalez CD that my Oregonian friend burned for me last night. Though it is not the CD that says Cuban Traditional Revolutionary Songs on the cover, I consider it Cuban Revolutionary Music nonetheless. Back to the discussion with my friend. I brought up the idea that it is time we “Americans” put our resistance at the core of our reality. To finally take up the identity of revolutionary or radical, with all of its life and death implications. To come face to face with the realities that peoples in the Third World have been facing for decades. To no longer imagine ourselves to be privileged in any way. I even plugged the GNN site. As she replied, in order to realize the revolution we must reconceptualize the revolutionary (OK, her reply contained a bit more than that, but that can perhaps be dealt with later). I’m in the process of now writing these words—So it appears, we “Americans” are given the choice of having just enough so that we don’t need to identify with resistance and revolution. But this is a false problem, a red herring, as I like to say. What’s the purpose of our “revolution”? I often ask myself. Isn’t it so that NO ONE has to face the problems we tend to associate (falsely when we do it exclusively) with the Third World, the poor, the destitute. So yeah, my first reactions to 9-11 were “no justice, no peace”, and “welcome to the third world”. And I can’t recommend enough the identification with the Eugene Debs quote, “While there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” An alternative spin, perhaps, on Martin’s “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” But it is not a question of either working for justice or living your life. It is all your life, whatever roadblocks you encounter on the way. As I learned from watching Abbas Kiarostami’s 10 (a director I first came across in my Third World Cinema class, whose name I might have misspelled), sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. I’m personally able to take the risk of running up a credit card to its limit and not paying the giant criminal bank conglomerates a dime, thus ruining my credit rating, banking on the fact that there are so many people in personal debt that, in the future world that I imagine living in, there is going to have to be some sort of personal debt amnesty. And until we get there, why should I be better off than the thousands of other people who are in debt up to their necks? I can make that gamble, but some cannot. Some people have children to feed. So we do what we can. And we relate to each other’s personal situations, realities, struggles. This is a global conversation, a local conversation, a universal conversation. And blah blah blah. I guess that’s enough for one blog entry. Be well.

Time destroys all things.

B00868 Thu, 4 Nov 2004 04:48:42 –0800

Beautiful day today. Enabled me to take a hot shower (solar powered water heater, quite common in the parts of China I’ve frequented). I took a nice walk around the city. Smoked a cigarette with a random guy on the street. Conversation points included birds, girls on bicycles, and boxing, amongst other things I’m sure. The other day I was ambushed by a couple of girls who live in my building complex as I was walking back from breakfast. They are taking an oral English exam soon, going to school at night, they are, hoping to become tour guides. We are going to do a language exchange, me and my new friends, as I can surely use the help in speaking Chinese, and they the practice in English. It turns out there’s a cafeteria in my complex where a good deal of the residents eat their lunch and dinner. Cheap, tasty, and plentiful food, with a nice community atmosphere. Last night I had a loud political discussion over dinner with an Oregonian friend of mine. We had green vegetable tofu soup, some sort of bean and tomato concoction, some really tasty spring rolls, rice, and beer and talked about freedom, violence, and the differences between the U.S. and China, amongst other things I’m sure. Later that night we mapped out some lectures for her upcoming job in a city in another province where she’ll have the honor of being the first ever foreign teacher. It’s all about communication. Speaking of which, it seems the “U.S. public” has spoken. As Justin Poder asks (in an article that can be found at the G7 Welcoming Committee Records website), “Can it really be that Americans have decided that this is the world they want?” I think that what we have here is a failure to communicate. Good luck to those of you inside the confines of the U.S. trying to get out a message other than “gay people are the root of all evil”. Viva la revolution.

“How many peoples in the worlds that make up the world can say as we do, that they are doing what they want to? We think there are many, that the worlds of the world are filled with crazy and foolish people each planting their trees for each of their tomorrows, and that the day will come when this mountainside of the universe that some people call Planet Earth will be filled with trees of all colors, and there will be so many birds and comforts. Yes, it is likely no one will remember the first ones, because all the yesterdays which vex us today will be no more than an old page in the old book of the old history.”

-Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, Our Word is Our Weapon, Seven Stories Press, 2000

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orange juice

Witches and Pirates and Clowns

B00673 Sun, 31 Oct 2004 22:55:54 –0800

So, in case you’re interested, I visited the newly renovated Speakeasy Bar on Dong Feng Dong Lu last night. I enjoyed the new layout. One patron described it thusly: “Oh yeah. It’s circular. It’s, of course, designed to be circular in resemblance to…other such circular things…as buttons…and lifesavers.” [probably not a direct quote] Speaking of new layouts, gnn user insrekshnaraoke’s comments in the blog entry “rockin’ the redundancy” sum up most of the thoughts I’ve been having on the new GNN layout. Stuff about comments sections, facilitating user discussion, feedback. Yeah. In other news, the weather today in Kunming was a bit chilly with grey skies and scattered rain.

cheap DVDs

B00603 Sat, 30 Oct 2004 00:29:41 –0700

This new binladen video sure doesn’t seem to help bush. that is, assuming he isn’t captured before the election. nor does the story about the missing munitions. that is, assuming there is not a terrorist attack using these munitions before the election. I’d say that this means that there are significant sources of power within the elite that would prefer a kerry victory. in fact, this has been reported in articles such as Mark Engler’s “Are the War and Globalization Really Connected?: Have the liberals got it all wrong?” and Wayne Madsen’s “A Bush pre-election strike on Iran “imminent”: White House insider report “October Surprise” imminent”, where he writes: “Intelligence circles report that both intelligence agencies [CIA and DIA] are in open revolt against the Bush White House. White House sources also claimed they are “terrified” that Bush wants to start a dangerous war with Iran prior to the election and fear that such a move will trigger dire consequences for the entire world.” Of course, what with the “peak oil” meme running around and the recent stories about the decline of the U.S. dollar and oncoming economic collapse, a kerry presidency certainly is not going to slow down the war machine and the expansion of global capital in any significant manner. Even if he attempted to, a cabal as dangerous and crazy as the one that blatantly stole the 2000 elections, engineered 9-11 and its coverup, and systematically dismantled whatever institutionalized civil liberties it could, will surely have no compunction in assassinating a president with the initials JFK. Of course, his kennedy identifications aside, I do not think it realistic that kerry will in any way significantly challenge the global elite.

Back to the binladen video. The part I found most interesting (other than the fact that he apparently took credit for 9-11 for the first time) is this little quote: “It appeared to him (Bush) that a little girl’s talk about her goat and its butting was more important than the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers. That gave us three times the required time to carry out the operations, thank God,” he said. Apparently, I’d say, Osama got his hands on a copy of “Fahrenheit 911”, which, if the recent report by Gordon Thomas that bin Laden is hiding out in China is true, is not all that unlikely. DVDs here in China will run you about 6 yuan (75 cents) and I’ve seen quite a few copies of F 911. But maybe I’ve underestimated Osama and his Islamists’ brilliant long term plan. Use CIA and U.S. government support to gain power in places like Bosnia and Chechnya, and, other than one gigantic spectacular attack on the WTC towers and the Pentagon (followed by practically zero attacks on Americans the next three years), stick to fighting local battles throughout the Muslim world, aided by their growing support coming from (foreseeable) U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. And then, days before the U.S. presidential election, finally take credit for the 911 attacks in a speech that really doesn’t have a clear effect on said election. Whoah. That’s a lot to think about. Global chessmatches sure are interesting. Regardless, as osama suggested, and as richard oxman reiterated, it is time we take matters into our own hands.

I need a cigarette.

B00557 Fri, 29 Oct 2004 02:32:43 –0700

“Is China able to feed its people,” I asked my friend who recently returned from a trip to the countryside with her Chinese environmental NGO whose name I don’t remember. I don’t remember exactly what she said. Something about how farmers aren’t growing as much rice (a staple of the Chinese diet), because they are using their fields to plant cash crops such as tobacco. Rice isn’t bringing in the dough, you know. Especially as long as China can import cheap grain from the U.S. Why doesn’t China subsidize its farmers to grow food to feed its humans? The WTO agreement, says my friend. Which is odd, since the reason that the U.S. grain is so cheap is because the U.S. does subsidize its farmers. Deep insights, I know.

from kunming to carolina: a letter to ms. johnson (sent on oct. 25, 2004)

B00399 Tue, 26 Oct 2004 02:41:24 –0700

So anyway, I don’t know where you are in life or whether or not you’ll be receptive to this letter, but when it gets down to it, it’s like you once said, there’s nothing like writing for a genuine audience.

So where was I? Somewhere in China, no doubt. I’m in the process of reading a book titled Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (I finished the little intro to thermodynamics book earlier today). I forget now why that’s relevant. Something about altering consciousness. It just started to rain. Earlier today I had a Howlin’ Wolf tune running through my head as I was walking down the street. Maybe it was when I was walking in back of the kids and the shirt with the anarchy symbol. Maybe it was yesterday. It’s still raining. Here I was going to say something about writing in the medium of e-mail and maybe do a comparative analysis along with other mediums, but now I’m going to tell you about the screaming human located somewhere outside my window. It seems the last three nights I have heard sustained intermittent screaming coming from somewhere inside my complex. As I have yet to see the source, I am forced to ponder what these horrific noises might actually be. I’m starting again to see the genius of such writers as Edgar Alan Poe, Franz Kafka, and Fyodor Dosteovsky. The screaming has stopped. The rain has picked up. I’m in the process of “working” on at least three different “books”. The one I’m writing in now I think might be part of chapter 2 in the book I already published. I was planning on calling this entire section “Kunming”. So I was thinking about writing a letter to the editor to some of my favorite news organizers was the most recent sentence I had written (in Kunming).

My tree died last week. Her name was Aradia. She was felled by Pacific Lumber and what I am tempted to call their evil henchmen. She was an old-growth redwood in Northern California and home to (amongst other things) a tree-sit that dated back six years, which I came across a few years ago in my travels out west. I cried on my way up the tree because it was SO FUCKING BEAUTIFUL. When I got to the top of the sit I was greeted by a fellow that had recently lived in a kibbutz about five minutes drive from the kibbutz I had recently lived in and who had gone to elementary school with some good old friends of mine. During my stay I saw my first real true rainbow and had the somewhat unique experience of weathering a hard rainstorm while living about 90 feet up in a tree. All in all it was an intense trip. You can read about the tree on the web.

My roommate cooked dinner tonight. She’s from the north. Kidney beans, chicken, green beans, tofu, fried potatoes, and lots of garlic. And, of course, rice. I’m listening to my new Spacemonkeyz versus Gorillaz CD and smoking Baisha cigarettes, the same brand, so I’m told, that Deng Xiaoping used to smoke. We ate apples after dinner. Apparently its easy for non-native speakers to confuse the word for apple with the word for butt. My tree died last week was going to be the basic gist of various e-mails I was planning on writing to various news-related websites. The only other time I had felt that compelled to impact the on-line community (not including the time I sent mass e-mails to the philosophy and communication departments during the sit-it), and been serious about doing so, was when I was all set to e-mail what I saw as an influential website regarding their treatment of alternative theories (theories not accepting the U.S. government line as unquestionable fact) on the recent attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. It was shortly thereafter that I wrote you a long and excellent letter, satisfying my perhaps need to express my mind and managing to use the word Manichean in a written exchange of ideas. I’m not sure what the money word will be in this letter. Maybe something like reification or simulacrum. I mean, sure, we could tell the story of the Manichean battle between the Sons of Light (personified by the forest defenders) and the Sons of Darkness (lumber companies and various government officials) until the cows come home. But hell if I’m not reading a book who’s very title is Postmodernism and never tires of affirming that we are in fact living in a postmodern world (if not a post-postmodern world). The only ignoramuses still playing that good vs. evil meme in a serious manner are those cartoon characters that run the planet.

Purveyor of antiliberalism and works of American criticism displaying rare interpretive brilliance and intellectual energy Walter Benn Michaels (as described by Fredric Jameson, author of Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism) writes about how “Progressive” writers and theorists make the mistake of attempting to transcend their origins, placing themselves and others outside the system of consumer culture, of the “market”. (I should note here that while I was writing this, I was approached and surrounded by the seemingly omnipresent DVD salesmen who inhabit Yuan Tong Dong Lu.
“DVD? Yao bu yao? (DVD? Want/don’t want)” We had a pleasant conversation, despite the language barrier. I was sitting on the steps by the street, waiting to meet the head of the english school I’ll be teaching at, an engagement I pursued with the idea of making money so that I can continue to consume. Sidenote within a sidenote: After we ate lunch (I ate, she watched) we compared laptops in various computer stores (I live off of what I shall now dub, unoriginally, Computer Alley) and had a uniquely postmodern experience as we looked at some laptops that captured and displayed our moving images back to us, one computer, in midst of a screen saver, artistically moving and juxtaposing “real-time” frames and time-delayed frames together in a truly grandiose performance.) And Jameson insists, in his chapter on theory written circa 1991, that we leftist thinkers persuade ourselves that we are inside the culture of the market and that the dynamic of the culture of consumption is an infernal machine from which one does not escape by the taking of thought (or moralizing positions)...” Ah yes, the dilemma of getting out of the totalizing system (capitalism, American culture, etc.) where “the power with which the system is theorized outsmarts the local act of judging it or resisting it from within, revealing that to have been yet another feature of the system itself—programmed into it in advance” or, as Baudrillard apparently demonstrated in dramatic and “paranoiacritical” (?) fashion, “the ways in which conscious ideologies of revolt, revolution, and even negative critique are—far from merely being “co-opted” by the system—an integral and functional part of the system’s own internal strategies.” (Perhaps all of this can be related to your excellent recent metaphor of trying on too many clothes and being restricted by the very clothes you wanted to wear) So we are enmeshed in the culture. We too are capitalists, grounded in the market—it is the air we breathe, so to speak. But does not this perspective miss (or mistake) the more encompassing total system of the universe we live in—the planets and stars and moons, our constant rotation, the air we breathe (so to speak)? Granted, both Michaels and Jameson work to materialize theory, writing, cultural artifacts—representation—as I feel they should. And keep in mind, I have yet to finish reading the second section of Jameson’s chapter on theory, which starts out with a discussion of a discussion of Rousseau and deals with things like Nature and Reason, and quite possibly deals explicitly with this question. Anyway, the intro to thermodynamics book (Understanding Thermodynamics) got me thinking about the psychology of physics—the effects of gravity (the rotation of the planet, the orbit around the sun, an internal system of energy constantly tending toward equilibrium) on the mind; and the (I say) false belief of some that consciousness is an emergent property, somehow separate from the material world. How do all of these forces in the world, acting simultaneously, affect consciousness—or, better yet, constitute it? Which brings us back to Aradia, and the tree-sitters’ belief that the Earth is alive, that trees are living beings, that consciousness resides in everything. And the idea that just maybe, the total system that envelops even the “market” is a whole world, waiting for us, ready to welcome us home. (as Derrick Jensen so eloquently states in a quote at the top of his website, which I came to via a link from www.altpr.org (alternative press review), which had posted an excerpt from his new book, Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control [highly recommended!]. Jensen is so relevant (as is altpr.org) that he even mentions the good vs. evil opposition, in obvious anticipation of this very letter (altpr.org’s posting of the excerpt is an obvious reaction).) So where amongst all these systems amongst systems amongst systems (the universe a postmodern text if ever there was one, constantly shifting context, priority, and meaning with each and every reading), does that leave the question of human praxis that seems to consistently occupy both our minds? A restaurant in China, no doubt, right next door to the house of Heavenly manna, smoking cigarettes and eating rice-vegetable-soup concoctions randomly ordered off the illegible menu, writing in the most comfortable notebook you have ever run into. Walking down the street with a Modest Mouse song in our head. Which reminds me of a story. Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

“You’re not in such a bad place, are you?” by Jacob Rosen

Earlier that day, the very same day I would eventually make first contact with what turned out to be the tree-sit community, before the bus ride from Ashland to Arcata, before I met my fellow passengers, one of whom was coming from Montana where she was working with the buffalo [editor’s note: cattle ranchers were accusing buffalo of infecting their herds with brucellosis and using this accusation for an excuse to murder the buffalo. Soon after I recalled this story, I read an article, a mainstream internet headline article no less, informing me that some commission in Montana just voted to re-“legalize” the hunting of buffalo, throwing this issue back in the spotlight], before we got high at one of the stops (the bus driver believed in the hereafter: if you don’t get back on the bus by the time we leave, you’re gonna be stuck here, after [editor’s note: we’d meet again later on my way out of town, when he gave me a free ride from Arcata to Eureka]), before I had a sausage for lunch at a yellow picnic table, I woke up to a window full of horses. OK. Back in time one revolution, I’m walking along Main Street, or whatever it is they called the main road in that town, and I’m thinking, “Sure my trip so far has been amazing, awesome, things falling into place like never before, but how come I’m not having any of those Alice in Wonderland curiouser and curiouser experiences?” I kept on walking and stumbled upon a sign, which read, “The Bizarre Bazaar.” [update: the Derrick Jensen excerpt is multiplying throughout the web, and now also an interview with him from Green Anarchy. Recommended articles of the day: We Are the People Who Fear Nothing by Kirsten Anderberg (or anything by her), Of Pynchon, Thanatos, and Depleted Uranium—Weapons of Mass Destruction Found in Iraq by Walter A. Davis] I went inside and found the Bazaar to be closed. Also, a sandwich board, on it posted is an article from a local paper. What words does the article use in its write-up of the Bizarre Bazaar?—“curiouser and curiouser”. I resumed my walk. Perhaps this is when I entered the alchemist’s shop and picked up the Thayer’s Cherry Cough Drops, the same cough drops, I would later learn, that were featured in the Thomas Pynchon classic Gravity’s Rainbow [editor’s note: I would later leave the cherry drops with Aradia, along with a mechanical pencil, some rolling papers, some mini-carabiners, and some American Spirit cigarettes]. Eventually I made my way back to an open Bazaar. The shop that caught my interest a music store (CD’s records, etc.). While looking for a CD to jump out at me, the stereo played a version, by a female band, of the Led Zepplin song, “You’re Time is Gonna Come”, which song, while listened to on at least one occasion in the caravans in the desert in Samar, time became completely unraveled (this even prompted me to write Your time will come on a box of matches, matches I had then been using in my travels out west). I purchased a Modest Mouse record. [editor’s note: I first encountered Modest Mouse during a Mardi Gras concert at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans. Two years earlier, I stood outside this very same venue—this same place—as music from the Funky Meters/G. Love & Special Sauce concert drifted through from the inside. This night has since been referred to (by me) as “The Great Mardi Gras Mushroom Trip”, “The Great Mardi Gras Streetcar Ride”, “The Great Face-Licking Incident”, and “The Time I Became Completely Displaced From Time”] After a chat back at the youth hostel with some highschool students (and teacher) on a class trip visiting Ashland for the Shakespeare Festival and after I ate some of their Chinese food (the students, from northern California, were enamored with the freshness of the Oregon air; they practically forced the Chinese food on me), I headed back into town for the night. I decided to take in a movie at the local theater. What to see? Hard Luck or Monsoon Wedding. I chose Hard Luck. Set on the Oregon coast, about an escaped mental patient named “Lucky” who reunites with a couple of childhood friends, this movie spoke to me, like a movie you might see on a mushroom trip or inside a Philip K. Dick novel, one of those movies where it seems like you have seen it all before. Somewhat unreal (but it was real, I still have the ticket stub). [interesting fact: That night I made a long-distance phone call to Scranton, Pa. (from a pay phone) to one of my own childhood friends and confirmed lodging in his soon to be new home in Northeast Philadelphia, where I would later live for about a year.] Late night Ashland, not much going on, I entered a pub called The Black Sheep. I sat at the bar, drinking bourbon. Time goes by, one of the regulars to my left, who had given me a cigarette, asks the bartender for a piece of paper, starts writing poetry. We engage in conversation. “Oh, you write poetry,” I says. “Only when I’m drunk,” says he. As the night goes on, out of the blue (or perhaps in reference to what he was writing), he mentions those Alice in Wonderland “curiouser and curiouser” experiences. “Funny,” I says, “I had one of those “curiouser and curiouser” experiences today actually,” and proceeded to tell my story of the Bizarre Bazaar. At one point in the night, a song played that had a somewhat familiar sound to it. I asked one of the regulars to my right if he knew who sang the last song. “Uh, Modest Mouse, I think,” says he. I ask the bartender, “Who picks out the music?” “I do,” she says. “Funny,” I says, “I just bought a Modest Mouse record earlier today.” I would wind up paying my bar tab with poetry (if you can call my generally incoherent ramblings written in her notebook with colored pencils poetry). The bartender gave me an almost full pack of American Spirit cigarettes that someone had left behind, and a ride home. I ended up back at her place, where she pulled out an enormous bag of bud. The next morning, I woke up to a window full of horses. “So,” says she, “you’re not in such a bad place, are you.” That night, I slept on the beach, around a campfire made from driftwood. True story.

If you stare long enough into the abyss, the abyss will stare back. Or, as I like to say, aint nothing here but your empty head; good thing nature abhors a vacuum. Maybe we’re nothing but brute force [editor’s note: apparently Hakim Bey tells us that “the idea of “force” belongs to classical physics and has little role to play in chaos theory.” A better term perhaps, rather than some sort of causative force, would be “strange attractor”] floating through a sea of possibility. Maybe our identity is nothing more than our occupation of the words. Maybe it’s time to let the words go free. Ah, but what then? Game over? Manifested how? A cosmic awakening? Schizophrenia? Nirvana? A remembering of what we once were? An eternity in Hell? The ability to shapeshift? to travel to the moon and stars? Death? If our collective history can be seen as a progression of anything, it is of more and more separation and control. The fact is, the way we are playing, this is not a game we can keep up, and it is just a matter of time until our addictions to our identities destroy us. Are you ready for another quote from the book on postmodernism? This one from Niklas Luhmann: “We can conceive of system differentation as a replication, within a system, of the difference between a system and its environment. In differentiated systems, as a result, we find two kinds of environment: the external environment common to all subsystems and a separate internal environment for each subsystem. This conception implies that each subsystem reconstructs and, in a sense, is the whole system in the special form of a difference between the subsystem and its environment. Differentiation thus reproduces the system in itself, multiplying specialized versions of the original system’s identity by splitting it into a number of internal systems and affiliated environments. This is not simply a decomposition into smaller chunks but rather a process of growth by internal disjunction.” This, of course, reminds me of a fable I just made up. There once was a differentiated system of Being and an external environment of Nothing. Being feared Nothing, and thereby wanted to control Nothing, and so judged Nothing less than Being, as being nothing. This, of course, was reflected in Being’s process of growth by internal disjunction. The Luhmann quote also reminds me of another quote, this one from me, you know, that I can’t quite remember. There was also something about how actions are not reducible to a single teleological or ideological spout, and about peeling off all the layers and finding the onion has no core. “I mean, look at the Japanese economy. It’s going to fucking pieces. A system of human relations based on boundaries and competition is a powderkeg of a system--.(period) What makes our society unique is that those who hold an inordinate mass of power to affect our system of relations—to affect our language—make a conscious choice—to hurt. Fact is, gangsta rap is not the only seemingly subversive culture to find it has too much in common with the mainstream culture of values to ever truly be considered separate or sub. We learned it from watching you, Dad, we learned it from watching you.” I think that those fear-inspired power-hungry power-holders know full well what they are doing when they clearcut old-growth forests, drop massive amounts of depleted uranium bombs on civilian populations, pave over open fields with concrete, or stick incredible amounts of people in giant prisons. They have declared war on the world and are taking us along for the destructive ride. And as Richard Oxman makes clear in an article at pressaction.com, our methods of resistance are woefully ineffective (he uses an excellent baseball metaphor). When the Earth, not to mention the rest of our galaxy (go to the Centre for Research on Globalization for information about U.S. government plans for the militarization of Space, as well as articles about weather manipulation and weaponization), becomes fed up with us humans, where will we find allies? In the dogs we leash? the fish we stick in glass bowls? the parrots we lock in cages? the rivers we dam? the wind we block with huge skyscrapers? the ground we chain up with electrical wires and cables? Take the phenomenon of liberal guilt. I see it as a result of perceiving horrors committed in the name of your identity (White, American, wealthy, etc.) against a group of people defined (or previously defined) by your identity as less than human, or, I should say, of less worth than those included in your own identity. The “guilt” comes when this group of people, all of a sudden, is included in your identity, and now must be dealt with face to face, as an equal. Take then the feeling you get when you realize that the world around you is conscious, and at the same time you realize all of the atrocities committed in the name of the human race. The feeling is overwhelming and near impossible to face. Much easier to go on believing as before and ignore the voices that surround you, claiming them as your own. It is no wonder then that people are so supportive of war. It is much too scary to grant consciousness (or worth or rights) to those who, by all rights, should hate you for what you’ve done. And, it seems, we are all complicit in some sense. So we rationalize this and that and sit by—even do our part—as our leaders continue to convert “the living into the dead, because only the dead can be controlled (Derrick Jensen).” I like playing with words (also dogs, trees, cats, flies, birds, and sometimes humans). But I’m done making an effort to produce for civilization. I’m done rooting for the home team at the expense of all others. Like it’s written on one of my t-shirts, I aint no goddamn patriot.

Anyway, here’s the letter I was originally writing to you from China:

Aren’t you a lucky dog. You get a letter from me by default, as I can think of no other person to write to. I mean, it’s not like I’d even be thinking about you if my current roommate was not named Johnson. It’s not as if you enter my mind every time I’m walking down the streets of Hong Kong and a Johnson & Johnson truck happens to pass me by. It’s 12:30 in the morning and I’m sitting outside my dormroom scribbling words I can barely read due to minimal lighting. There’s a nice cool breeze, but I’m told this will be fleeting and the weather will only increase in heat and humidity. I teach my first class in the morning and nerves and two cups of coffee are keeping me awake. I am in China.

I just experienced my first class as a teacher. It feels like someone took a giant shit in my head. And though it’s a feeling I’ve experienced many times during these past few years, it is not a feeling I have come to enjoy. So be it. The yearnings for stability and submission will last only so long. And I will hold onto my worldview, too lazy and proud to change, still clinging to that fading hope that I am right.

I love the colors in China.

Treatment of the foreigner is a funny thing. The sense of entitlement we “Americans” feel is not quite as shallow as it first appears. The fact is, we ARE entitled to certain things, or at least, I should say, I am willing to take a stand and claim certain things as our rights. But as good as it feels to have your needs catered to and at the same time feel that you deserve it, I still seem to find myself being tempted/compelled/obligated to delve in deeper and see what it is that is outside the picture frame, or perhaps, I should say, what it is that is out of focus. So how have you been? You were in one of my dreams last night. It was a bit surprising as we were both genuinely, purely, and simply happy to see each other. I didn’t start dreaming until the fifth night of my trip. I think I’m going to start gathering some ideas for this morning’s class. Is three days too much for introductions? Hello. How’s it going? Fine, thanks. And you? Pretty good. What is your name? Today I taught my morning class the word conversation. We were going to practice having conversations, but they did not know the word practice. Neither did they comprehend prepare or get ready. It’s possible that this is a cultural ignorance—and I use that term in a non-pejorative manner. It’s possible they don’t separate life into sections—the meaningless and the meaningful. As in, this here is practice, it doesn’t count, it doesn’t matter. But regardless of whether it was a foreign concept or only a foreign word, I decided that rather than practicing our conversations, we would instead simply HAVE conversations. I find this to be a better description of reality anyhow and, as I feel it is largely through language that we continuously create and recreate society and reality, I feel this word choice is much more conducive towards creating a world I want to live in. I just took my first walk around the city. Dongguan City , I think it’s called. It brought back memories of mushroom trips and Mardi Gras. I really like China. Tomorrow I give my first ever student evaluation. I hope it doesn’t make me sick. Next week I think we’ll begin a unit on transportation. We’ll start with walking. At lunch today I learned that Johnson & Johnson is a despicable corporation that has raped and pillaged China. It seems they have a deal with the hospitals whereby they force all new mothers to buy their products and take their drugs. Here’s a surprising fact. “Capitalist” Hong Kong has socialized medicine. In “Communist” China you only get what you pay for in cash. My near complete ignorance of China is making it difficult for me to assimilate new facts. I am still nowhere near being able to paint the big picture. [end of original letter[editor’s note: I danced tonight. It was fun. Don’t forget(t-shirt I saw on my way back), impossible is nothing (billboard).]] I met my teaching partner/assistant/translator today. We took the bus out to the “school” where we’ll be teaching. It seems I’ll be commuting. I like her a lot. Her English is good and she likes to talk. So, what can I say? I still like China—a lot. Here in Kunming City, the people smile a lot and the trees are friendly. And the weather, though at times moody, is generally pleasant enough to earn the city its nickname—the city of eternal springtime. Are there homeless people? Yes. Prostitutes? Yes. Seemingly large amounts of amputees and elderly begging on the streets? Yes. A seeming lack of any financial support system? Yes. I don’t know what salaries people make or what stores pay for the goods they sell. I don’t know how the economy functions. I know I could live an entire year in my current apartment off of what I was paying for one month in Philadelphia (and that was, so I thought, rather cheap). I know I can eat three meals a day for less than two dollars. The police presence seems high, but for some reason it doesn’t bother me (still I’d rather not see them than see them). I’ve definitely on a few occasions seen first hand the reluctance to talk politics outside a few safe zones. However, this is not a populace, especially the younger generation, that lives in fear. And I have yet to even come close to feeling like I have encountered a broken people. I’ve thought about your question of why someone would move overseas to the States. One of my first answers was Hollywood. But then again, 12-hour work days might not be too uncommon here. And, I’ve heard from one source, that on the one hand, you have lots of people graduating from universities, and on the other, you have no paying jobs for them to go into. And I have no idea what the conditions are like in rural China (a friend of mine is about to embark[update: has embarked] on a whirlwind bus tour of the Yunnan province farmlands with the environmental group she works with, so perhaps I can give you a more informed perspective later; she’ll have the pleasure of working alongside members from the (in my eyes) suspect Greenpeace organization, who co-sponsored the tour). What does motivate someone to leave their home and move halfway around the world? All the negatives in China have their counterparts in the States. I’ve heard a few outsiders complain about the constant construction and, of course, the stench. But let’s face it, cities, as they are, stink. Maybe it’s because I lived at Tulane and New Orleans, but these things don’t particularly bother me. And I think it’s a better alternative than the false cleanliness that you see in some major city centers where they have the sweep-it-under-the-carpet attitude that keeps the tourist spots and wealthy sections pretty and dumps the filth on the poor. I’d rather people deal with the filth we make or at least have a transparent process (oh yeah, kids can be seen pissing and shitting on the street on a consistent basis). Anyway, if I was to do a spontaneous comparative analysis, I’d say I feel a helluva lot more free and comfortable in Kunming, China than I did the last two years I spent in Philadelphia, USA. But the freedom of the foreigner is a funny thing. I think that a lot of what folks who move abroad call freedom is actually ignorance. As someone who doesn’t speak the language and hasn’t shared the common history, I’m free (or required) to do a lot of projecting. And is it easy to enjoy the narrowed range of responsibility that comes with the title of foreigner/visitor/recent immigrant? You bet. For the most part, you know what’s expected of you (granted this can change in a heartbeat). All you’re really required to worry about is your own wellbeing. You’re not responsible for the nation’s history or whatever national problems exist. Besides, you don’t really know enough to be able to make any informed decisions. There is a great comfort in this. (This is actually a key aspect of U.S. politics, as shown by E. Martin Schotz in his illuminating book, History Will Not Absolve Us , as he highlights the difference between belief and knowledge. This is why the system continues to function fine, even when the vast majority of people believe that politicians and corporations and the like are completely corrupt. For it is only with knowledge that comes the responsibility of acting.) So, bottom line, I like China. I like the colors. I like the scenery. I like the language that I don’t understand. I like the cheap fast food you get off the street that actually tastes good and doesn’t try to colonize your mind with its symbols and jingles. I like the abundance of youth with their unique fashion sense and the equally large number with their fashionable haircuts. I like the fact that I don’t live in a town where, in order to use the internet, I’d have to go with my passport and register with the police station (internet cafes in Kunming are surprisingly abundant and easily accessible. And compared to the American counterparts that I’ve seen, extremely cheap. The one I frequent is sufficiently fast and one U.S. dollar would net me about 5 1/2 hours. This seems especially inexpensive when I consider that many U.S. pay phones are charging 50 cents for a local call. The computers I use even have headphones and a mini video camera, which could also be put to use were I able to read Chinese characters). OK, we haven’t spoke about the alarming embrace and escalation of the car culture, which, as you know, is extremely addictive, for individuals as well as societies. Still, the presence of bicycles and bicycle lanes is, well, abundant. And the public transportation is generally a helluva lot better than what I’ve seen in the States. Public garbage receptacles are almost always split into unrecoverable and recoverable sections, though it seems as though people don’t distinguish between the two. The economy uses too many plastic bags! But it might be true that people actually pick through and separate the garbage after it’s been collected. Certainly some people make a living off of plastic bottles and the like. So there is still a lot we could discuss. But there is something about China (well, at least Kunming) that you see in the way people interact, which I am tempted to attribute to its self-perception as a communist country. I don’t see or feel the separation and constant competition that marks so much of life within American capitalism. There appears to be a sense of respect for one another, regardless of occupation. There seems to be more transparency towards work, even a more relaxed attitude towards work (as opposed to the constant service to the magic show—towards keeping up the spectacle so as to make for happy consumers). But then again, what do I know? I don’t even speak the language. OK. This letter seems to be winding down. And I haven’t even talked about the great oil debates. As usual, I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Be well. Love, Jacob

P.S. In regards to “what things will be like in the future”, I give you: “The great Oil Debates: Synopsis and Commentary” by Jacob Rosen

As my old friend Vincent J. Salandria once upon a time made clear, once you enter a situation where CIA infiltration becomes a real possibility (in some cases, a stark reality), everyone and anyone becomes ripe for the label of agent. Better to dismiss all talk of intentions and stick to the effects of actions and logical and likely consequences of thoughts and proposals, for even the best of them (intentions) end up as pavement on the road to hell. By now I’m sure you’ve heard of the phrase “Peak oil”. If not, do a search, I’m sure you’ll find plenty of information. The world’s a running out of-­Ah hell, let’s end up on sixteen.

[addendum to the letter] What is the world running out of? Is that the question? I think that last bit where we left off was a vague allusion to gambling. It’s all meant as intense social commentary. It’s all still a pile of bullshit—stacked on a pile of bullshit. Fucking metabullshit. Last night someone broke out the American Spirit rolling tobacco as we rocked over The Hump. It brought back memories of, I don’t know, the Taste of Portugal and Oak Street, amongst other things I’m sure. Perhaps our next topic of study will be sustainable Mardi Gras. Speaking of which, I just read the copy of the national english language newspaper that I picked up earlier today. Not only is there a front page article on how the massive drive of returning reclaimed farmland to forest will proceed with caution to ensure sustainable development and a better life for farmers, but there is an entire inside page dealing with subjects like eco-protection, eco-construction, green Gross Domestic Product accounting systems, and circulatory economies. If all goes well in pilot municipalities and provinces, a “green” accounting system could be spread across the country by 2010. And the first group of ecological provinces, in embryonic form perhaps, should come forth by about 2020. It feels nice to live in a country where sustainable development is even on the agenda, let alone one of the supposedly top priorities. But is it too little too late? Are we running out of the oil that fuels our economy? For if we have reached the “peak” in our planet’s oil production, surely the consequences will be most dire. Even Derrick Jensen thinks the shit’s gonna hit the fan within ten years. Even the only writer I’ve seen with a coherent analysis that DISAGREES with “Peak oil” thinks that things in the world’s ‘bout to change, though for different, albeit related reasons. His name is Dave McGowan, and I’m gonna give him credit for the first instance I’ve personally witnessed of a lone person writing on his website changing the frame of a critically relevant ongoing national debate AND possibly overturning long accepted notions of institutionalized science (no disrespect to Al Giordano). Oh yeah, recommended reading of the day: Cultural Politics, U.S. Imperialist War of Terror, and Socialist Revolution in the Philippines by E. San Juan, Jr. (found at axisoflogic.com )[editor’s note: while we’re at it, go to narconews.com and read the Notes from Nowhere related articles]. The oil debates, or I should say, what I have termed The Great Oil Debates, began with a random hypothesis born of that gut instinct spawned from an experience honed world view posted on the Dave McGowan website The Center For An Informed America. The theory was that “peak oil” was going to hit the mainstream and this would be used as a mechanism to keep the public docile while the war machine blatantly exerted more control on its already tight grip on the world. Any serious analysis of world politics will tell you that the recent “American” wars were largely about military and economic dominance. The planners of U.S. strategy don’t share the short attention span, historical shallowness, and narrow focus of its populace—at least not while they’re planning. It’s hardly debatable that small groups of people meet secretly and discuss their plans to change the world; and then go about attempting to implement these plans. I think it was Alistair Crowley (amongst others) who said something to the effect of Magic is walking across the room, turning the handle, and pulling (that’s how you magically open the door). Some people (like Noam Chomsky ) like to pretend that secret meetings to take over the world don’t exist (hardly secret anymore now that some of these people have taken to openly publishing their plans—see the Project for a New American Century) and that these conspirators don’t act consciously to try to implement their plans, OR, if they do, it is irrelevant, because their actions have no real historical effect. This type of historical analysis is like saying that the positions of the stars killed Kennedy or that the moon was responsible for the massacres in Guatemala (also Indonesia, Chile, and East Timor). Respectable theories, sure. However, the effect that these possible realities have is that of elimination human praxis. And what of this? Is this just a continuation of the fundamental battle that rages through time? I’ve been told that the trick to acting is getting inside your role, yet all the time being aware that you are indeed acting. How to do something that is impossible, yet indispensable, and in any case inevitable (Jameson on Adorno)?

“Do you meditate?” asked Wren.

“I’m gonna name you Happy,” said Lisa.

People continue to use the structures that broke up the sit-in, that plague the union hierarchy, that infect our personal relationships to the bone. To condemn actions of the past, forged in the intense pressure of space and time, is ridiculous; but, if we are going to pretend that we are able to decide our path, we have no need to recreate these actions. We live in the now. Let’s take a breath.

Oil comes from the Earth. We do not need it to live, but if we do not have it, a lot of people will die. Oil is quite likely NOT a fossil fuel (look up abiotic oil). It is very likely that oil companies and the U.S. government are colluding to keep oil production down. But, regardless of whether or not the Earth is running out of oil, our methods of extraction and use are NOT SUSTAINABLE. What the “Peak oil” movement serves to do is to put enormous pressure on our situation (though, I would say, our situation does require a certain sense of urgency). “Peak oil” CANNOT be used as an effective consciousness raiser for the U.S. public. It in no way follows that once people realize that we are running out of oil, they will become consumed with desire to throw out their leaders and overturn the capitalist system. I’d say, as in most media-managed crises, as this would surely be, a fearful public, not knowing what to think or do, will relinquish all of their power to their leaders and the experts they keep in their pockets, as those experts pull out of their pockets their plans for social engineering, which they no doubt will readily have available (yes, even if their leader is someone they only recently knew for a fact was a bumbling fool who didn’t give a shit about anyone besides his rich friends and making them richer—see 9-11). Getting “peak oil” on the agenda is absurd. “Peak oil” is not going to rattle the feathers of a group that flat out denies the existence of global warming. And for radicals to push the “peak oil” meme is, on its face, extremely puzzling. The idea that we are running out of oil is NOT a radical idea. Almost all of us were taught in school that oil is a non-renewable resource. It would therefor make sense for it to run out. And why would a U.S. public that is perfectly content letting others make critical decisions that directly affect their lives react any differently to this particular problem? Especially after being conditioned for years by the Patriot Act and the social experiments we call airports and major sporting events (where they won’t let you bring a plastic bottle cap into a Giants game). If anything, assuming it’s true (or even just possible), it should be added to the litany of other ecological crises we face (global warming, the destruction of our forests, massive poverty, etc., etc.). And as for the people “peak oil” will expose to issues of sustainable development, while some will develop radical consciousness, most will likely support forms of alternative energy, not the resistance to the complete fascist takeover of the state, which, if “peak oil” is true, will most assuredly be accelerated. [full disclosure: at this point, being as though these words were substantially written for you, I should note that I have taken a large portion of this addendum and placed it into an e-mail to The Center For An Informed America, where, I’m told, it might be posted, who knows, perhaps in full and original form.] OK, here I was going to include more reasons as to why the “Peak oil” meme is, not only not radical, but how it actually works to serve the interests of conservative and fascist powers, but I can send you a copy of the e-mail I sent if you are interested. [I just received your latest message. I believe it was: send it on] Once again, the question on my mind is: how can we go about existing in a world where we want to live? I still’ve got an itch to scratch. Perhaps my sister’s recent product design classes are rubbing off on me. Well, here goes. Activists, organizers, and those around the world who are fed up with U.S. hegemony and its horrors have been asking for years what it will take for a critical mass of people to rise up and take to the streets, or, if not, support those who do, regardless of what the corporate press tells them to think. And I’ve been saying/thinking/writing lately, as long as people continue to work from the premise that what the “American public” thinks is relevant and that they are still capable of playing any role other than that of consumer, they need to recognize the dense history of social engineering and social control and the ways in which they constantly interact with those of us who live inside of global capitalism. And they need to develop a worldview that recognizes the political realities of conspiracies. And, while the “Peak oil” movement is not a mass consciousness raiser, the movement it branched off from, the 9-11 Truth Movement, most assuredly, potentially IS.

Fuck if it aint baseball season and fuck if the baseball metaphors haven’t been proving fruitful (in a Botox, Bosox, and Indegenous Blocks in the Bush Leagues: Predictions article , Richard Oxman predicted a red world series). The powers that be have served up a big juicy hanging curve right over the heart of the plate and it’s time for us to knock it straight out of the park. Or, as the Roots have recently said, the tipping point has arrived, it’s time to shine. So anyway, let me know the story of South Carolina (if that’s alright with South Carolina, of course). Be well.