Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Monday, November 27, 2006
Global warming: Fasten your seat belts
Good morning after the Michele Birthday day to everyone.
Your article points out the truth. OJ is more important than global warming in the minds of most people. OJ’s story has sex and violence. Global warning just has the death of the planet as we know it. Someone, maybe Neil Postman, wrote about entertaining ourselves to death. I admire all of you who are still struggling for change. I am with you even though I think that the game ended a long time ago. The usa has 10,000 nukes and is planning for more. The impact on the environment from nuclear waste has never been successfully addressed. No one can find a safe place for the radioactive waste because there is no safe place. The rule is, “You can never throw anything away because there is no ‘away’ place”. Sorry for the rant. You got me going again, Mickey.Did everyone hear the latest news. NBC announced this morning that it will now, after very careful consideration, start to call the war in Iraq a Civil War. The usa government objects to the new terminology. Maybe if we wait long enough NBC will even refer to what is happening there as a “resistance” movement, but I am not holding my breath. The way that the Press accepted the Pentagon term of “collateral damage” is an example of the worse journalism in all of history.
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 11/27 at 09:27 AMfor some reason the endgame film fest link is not working for me...probably a busy server. very cool that they used your quote for the endgame ad, Mick.
Good morning, RMJ and all.
I would take it one step further and say that Paris Hilton’s sex life is more important to most people than anything happening to this planet’s life systems.
Posted by JOS on from Chicago 11/27 at 11:10 AMHowdy, Expendables. It’s a fine day in MA, seasonally appropriate for the most part. The change of seasons is one of the great parts of living in the Northeast.
Aye, the link for the Endgame Film Festival isn’t working. It’s an event that I will not miss - assuming it goes on tour. I don’t have the equipment to make a film, but a photo essay is within reach and there’s no shortage of material.
Gotta get busy.
Posted by Zenprole on from Urth 11/27 at 12:23 PMHi people.
Rosemarie, yes it was Neil Postman and the book is called Amusing Ourselves to Death. I cannot recommend this book highly enough to others. A relevant passage:
“Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture’s being drained by laughter?”
Posted by Keir on from The Gray Hague 11/27 at 12:29 PMMickey, I can’t help but point out that the logic of the Bruce Lee film, is the same that the administration uses over and over again. That we have to use violence or else we face nonexistence. It is an immature concept and not self-arguing. Besides, as a film music professional, that such a bunch of cheesy mythological-heroic music is effective in making people believe the rightousness of the montaged fantasy, makes me right larf!
Violence, real or pretend, unleashes a hormone cocktail that is addictive. I WILL beat my sword into a plowshare, I WILL study war no more.
captcha="deep"
Posted by Peter (the other) on from California 11/27 at 01:26 PMI disagree, Peter. The violence of war, the violence against our environment, the violence against the poor can not be stopped without taking violent action ourselves...we must be willing to break the rules that they have put on us, but do not follow themselves.
Posted by JOS on from Chicago 11/27 at 02:05 PMAnd yet, at googlefight global warming beats O J Simpson hands down
Posted by Kim Ayres on from Scotland 11/27 at 02:27 PMHello fellow Expendables. I’m enjoying another downright balmy NYC day.
Lots to chew on here, but let me make two quick replies.
Kim: I did a Google News search to find recent stories...and that’s where O.J. came out way ahead.
Peter: The Bruce thing was somewhat tongue in cheek. I realized it was a hokey video. But to weigh in on the violence debate, sometimes our existence does depend on a violent response. A woman being attacked in an alley is not going to prevent being raped and/or murdered by meditating.
More soon…
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 11/27 at 02:42 PMI agree JOS. As Derrick Jensen says, ask a mother grizzly bear her views on nonviolence. I am finishing his book “Endgame” and have just read “Pacifism as Pathology” by Ward Churchill. Great stuff. I should also say that I am a Buddhist, but unlike most American Buddhists, I do not subscribe to universal pacifism.
Posted by Brian on from Belly of the Beast 11/27 at 02:44 PMP.S. The Endgame film festival link works for me. I guess those who can’t access it might wanna try a search engine.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 11/27 at 02:46 PMI agree with Peter that the message is the same: non-violence = non-existance. That doesn’t mean I think people should act like grizzly bears. I won’t (I don’t eat fish, for example, so there). But that doesn’t necessarily mean there is never any call to violence . . .
What do you all think of the term “militancy” as opposed to violence? Michael Albert uses it often. I guess a lot of people are turned off by the connotations (myself included sometimes), but I can imagine an anti-establishment movement that is effective without being inherently violent. “Buy Nothing Day” is cute. Buy Nothing Month would positively freak them out. And I suppose halfway through the first week we’d all start making alliances with our neighbors, sharing and trading and dealing with each other as people rather than competitors. It would give the establishment the creeps!
Posted by Keir on from The Gray Hague 11/27 at 05:29 PMI’m afraid that O J Simpson looms larger in the minds of lots of people than global warming, Mickey! And thanks for the rest of this post as well - always enlightening and my first stop on my Internet ‘surfing tour’.
Hi, Rosemarie, JOS, Zenprole, Keir, Peter (the other), Kim Ayres from Scotland and Brian, from a hot Daylesford - we expect 90F today, no less! Best to keep out of the sun.
Posted by Helga Fremlin on from Daylesford, Australia 11/27 at 05:30 PM‘The impact on the environment from nuclear waste has never been successfully addressed. No one can find a safe place for the radioactive waste because there is no safe place.’
Too true, Rosemarie! And in spite of all that, our present federal government in Australia is considering ‘going nuclear’ - that’s their solution to the problem of emissions.Posted by Helga Fremlin on from Daylesford, Australia 11/27 at 05:35 PMRe: means of resistance: I must recommend the same books: “Pacifism as Pathology” and “Endgame,” in that order. The point isn’t violence as a first or only option, but one of many kinds of responses that rational people bear in mind as they grapple with problems large and small.
Nothing more or less than this modest notion scares the fertilizer out of the Comfortable Left (tm) ‘cause they can’t make a career, hierarchies, have infighting, print useless columns, or fundraise with it. My mathematical proof for this: Lewis Lapham.
Keir’s on target: effective resistance doesn’t have to be violent. In fact, the Dutch Resistance Museum in Amsterdam documents the Milk Strike, a brief event in which Dutch farmers completely shut off the spigot. However, as a Central American woman once commented, “Don’t tell me about Ghandi. He wouldn’t have lasted here a week.” (a quote from the Jensen book).
Which brings to mind: Keir, when did Michael Albert started talking about ‘militancy’? I’m having trouble fitting the two things in my mind at once. At any rate, I prefer confrontation, which is the active form of militancy.
JOS also hits the nail on the head: let’s get rid of double standards. We can gauge the success of various American movements for change by how effectively they applied this concept. It drives the power-mad back to reality, which is a very distasteful experience. The Wobs, Black Panthers, and the AIM come to mind.
Captcha sez “effort,” which is a means to some dinner.
Posted by Zenprole on from Urth 11/27 at 06:49 PMWhile I’m not a “seasoned” activist I 100% agree with your blurb Mickey.
I think the important issue here is that morality is defined by those in power. Fighting them exclusively by non-violent means illustrates a complete lack of understanding of what power is and how it works. Our values will never be the same as their values. When the issue is such that it pertains to life and death the morality of any action must be measured by the fact that by failing to effectively act is perhaps the most immoral act.
Posted by Fiona on from san diego 11/27 at 07:17 PMHello again, my friends.
It’s not as if those who reject pacifism are declaring that every problem or even many problems require confrontational or militant solutions. That’s a straw man created by some pacifists to paint non-pacifists as violent and thus counterproductive to some mythical movement.
This is how I see it: We each have many tools at our disposal. Depending on the situation, some work better than others.
Since a Bruce Lee video got this started, here’s something I can’t believe hasn’t happened sooner:
http://tinyurl.com/ydfh9hPosted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 11/27 at 07:30 PMSorry to get back so late. Zenprole, this Micahel Albert’s latest (but not only) that references “militancy” . . .
“I don’t know anything much about the Grameen Bank. My guess is that it probably does have some very good effects for some people, but at the cost of to a degree further validating as inevitable certain kinds of social relations, market exchange, profit seeking, and so on. So I think it is probably - and again, I admit my knowledge of this bank is slim to none - very helpful in part, to some people, but that it could be more valuable and positive if its actions were undertaken in ways directly challenging existing relations, posing positive alternatives for the whole economy and society, and thus trying to develop militant consciousness against capitalism and especially for a new system in its place. This would be a good kind of militancy.”
Posted by Keir on from The Gray Hague 11/28 at 03:31 AM
Next entry: More trigger-happy New York City cops
Previous entry: Caption This
Copyright © 2005-2007 Mickey Z.
