Repost - "Our Least Resilient Neighborhoods"

I've got another interview coming up this weekend, God willing. In preparation for that interview, I thought it would be good to mention “Our Least Resilient Neighborhoods”, a post I wrote several months ago. That post talks about the challenges facing neighborhoods in the United States in this time of economic collapse, challenges made worse in many cases by institutional policies of economic persecution directed against minority communities. It is a good preparation for this next interview which will explore of some of these policies further, as well as general financial issues confronting urban neighborhoods. It's a bit late in the day to be talking about some of these issues – I don't know how much can be done at this stage of the game. Nevertheless, it can't hurt to talk about these things.

Hallucinating Riots

On Ran Prieur's website, there is a link to an online article from the May 2010 issue of Reason Magazine, titled, “Disaster Utopianism.” It is, among other things, a critique of CNN's coverage of the aftermath of the January earthquake in Haiti, where “news” correspondents talked of “chaotic crowds,” “chaotic scrambles,” and the need for “crowd control of...thousands of desperate people.” But the images of calm, orderly people recorded by the CNN cameras contradicted the attempts by CNN correspondents to portray Haiti as out of control.

This contradiction was noticed by a number of people, and not just those employed by Reason Magazine. Sasha Kramer, director of the Haitian nonprofit SOIL, described the calm, orderly solidarity of ordinary black Haitians after the quake. And in her post titled, “"The Quake"– Haiti Through The Distorted Lenses of PBS' Frontline,” blogger Chantal Laurent also noted that there are many discrepancies between the official American version of the story of Haiti and the reality on the ground – discrepancies whose effect is to present a magnified portrait of the United States as some kind of savior to a poor, backward, unstable nation. The American mainstream media portrayal of Haiti can best be summed up in this sarcastic statement from Reason Magazine: “Send cops to contain this peaceful crowd!”

So far that portrayal has worked – not many people have questioned the reasons for sending over 10,000 armed U.S. troops to Haiti to “restore order.” This is unlike Iraq, which the U.S. invaded because the Iraqi government “had ties to Al-Qaeda,” and “was building weapons of mass destruction.” When those statements were proven false, there was a brief period of much “hand-wringing” on the part of everyone in power, both in the mainstream media (except for Rupert Murdoch and Fox “News”) and in the Federal Government as they “wondered” how they could have made such a huge “mistake.” In the case of Haiti, where a major magazine has questioned how coverage of the situation could have been so inaccurate, the reasons cited have been rather vague. Reason Magazine blames the error on “cultural truisms” and ingrained prejudices that prevent affluent Anglo news reporters from seeing the reality right in front of their eyes.

Those reasons are certainly valid and operative in mainstream American media, where blond, blue-eyed survivors of disasters are described as “foraging for supplies” and “digging out from under the rubble,” but dark-skinned survivors performing the same actions are described as “looting” and “breaking and entering.” But I want to suggest another reason for this breakdown in perception, a reason which has been explored only by a handful of analysts.

Upton Sinclair once said that “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” A corollary statement could go like this: “It is easy to get a man to see the world a certain way if his salary depends on it.” It is instructive to ask why the American mainstream media see Haiti the way they do, and why the American media are working to make the rest of us see Haiti the way they do. My short answer is this: “Follow the money.” To those who want a more accurate understanding of the world, I'd like to suggest that it is time for us to make a natural resource map of Haiti, along with a map or database of foreign companies operating there – especially companies involved in mining and other resource extraction, or in industrial factory farming for export. It is time for us to study the conditions under which these companies operate, as well as the flows of money and capital from company to company and between the companies and outside governments such as the United States and the other member nations of the U.N Security Council.

As we try to construct such a database, we notice certain companies right off the bat, companies such as Eurasian Minerals, which has had a strong interest in Haiti for over three years (and possibly much longer), as noted in an article originally published in the South China Morning Post and republished on the HaitiAnalysis.com and “Preval Haiti” websites. That article featured an interview with a Mr. Keith Laskowski, a geologist for Eurasian, who was beside himself with excitement at the possibilities of exploiting Haiti's potential for gold mining. Eurasian Minerals' interest in Haitian gold is also described in articles published in 2009, such as “Eurasian Minerals: The Early Bird Once Again Gets the Worm” and “Eurasian Minerals Discovers Two New High-Grade Copper-Silver-Gold Prospects at Treuil Property, Haiti.” Eurasian Minerals is by no means the only company interested in Haiti's mineral wealth; there are also several Canadian mining firms operating in that country.

Now that the earthquake has occurred, Eurasian Minerals and investors such as IFC and the World Bank have cast their gold-lust in a softer, more humanitarian light, as noted in articles like this: “IFC invests in Eurasian Minerals to support Haiti recovery.” This article states that “...this investment reaffirms IFC's commitment to social and economic growth in Haiti. It also comes at a critical time for supporting the country's recovery through private sector participation.”

The earthquake seems to have benefited others interested in extracting Haiti's natural resources, people such as oil prospectors, as revealed in these articles: “Haiti quake may have revealed oil reserves,” and “Haiti: Bonanza for Foreign Mining Companies.” Indeed, the earthquake and subsequent American occupation seem to have benefited everyone except the ordinary resident Haitians, and the promises of foreign companies and governments to use Haiti's resources to rebuild Haiti sound as hollow as American promises to use Iraqi oil to rebuild Iraq after the American invasion.

Eurasian Minerals, gold and oil are three dots that can be connected to form an accurate picture of the real reasons for American (and First World) interest and involvement in Haiti. There are other “dots” to connect, for those who have the time. Many of those “dots” can be found on the blog The Haitian Blogger, and in the Black Agenda Report. But even if you only do your own digging, I suspect that you'll find lots of verifiable, multiply-corroborated “dots” to connect, and that the resource “dots” can be connected with geopolitical and governmental “dots” to form some eye-catching combinations. How about it? Anyone over at Energy Bulletin or The Oil Drum interested in playing a game of connect-the-dots?

So what does this have to do with American neighborhoods? Well, if you live in a poor or working-class or minority neighborhood, everything. Beware of the media. Especially in the aftermath of a disaster. Especially if you have things that rich outsiders might want.

Video Troubles and Citizen Journalists

This weekend I created another video for your enjoyment. Once again, however, the process of uploading that video is anything but enjoyable. Here's the deal:

I made the video from clips I shot three weeks ago. The problem is, I wanted to add a little music to my work. I knew that the only way I could add music without paying huge royalties was to use music that was published under some form of Creative Commons license. So I logged on to Magnatune, because I knew that all the music published through Magnatune is released under Creative Commons Non-Commercial licenses to people who want to use the music for non-commercial applications. (That certainly applies to me. I haven't made a dime from this blog. Then again, I haven't charged a dime either.)

I have a couple of CD's of a vocal group that I heard about via Magnatune. Two of their songs seemed to fit my video quite well, so I looked up Magnatune's policy on using their music in noncommercial videos posted online. I was surprised to learn that there are restrictions on the use of Magnatune music in videos hosted on commercial, for-profit sites like YouTube and Vimeo. I think this is because of the “rights” such sites assert and claim on material hosted by them. (I suppose I shouldn't have been so naïve, but then again in many things I'm still a newbie.)

As I read the Magnatune policy, it dawned on me that these restrictions don't apply to videos hosted on non-for-profit sites like the Internet Archive. (At least, I think they don't.) But one problem with the Internet Archive is that it doesn't seem to like Linux users. My computer runs on Linux most of the time. My machine is five years old, and although it came with Microsoft Windows XP when I bought it, I've been trying to move away from expensive dependency on Microsoft. Much of the trouble I've had with trying to upload video to the Internet Archive has had to do with the fact that their site is not friendly to computers that run on Linux or UNIX. They are not the only such site. My troubles uploading to Vimeo were for this very cause; the only reason I was able to upload my “Managing Trees, Stormwater and Hunger” video was that I finally gave up and ran my computer on Windows XP.

All of this had me thinking as I tore myself away from the computer screen and headed for my bedroom in the wee hours of this morning. First, about the Internet Archive itself. After all, the Archive is a product of the protest against the excesses of “digital rights management,” the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the attempt to destroy the public domain in order to create a culture in which everyone must pay rent in order to participate. The Internet Archive is a big promoter of open-source file formats and the Creative Commons licensing model. So why does their site require the use of proprietary software for optimum success in uploading video files? I mean, one can use a computer running Linux, but what happens if after waiting all night for your files to upload, you fail because you weren't using Windows? Believe me, I speak from experience!

But the Internet Archive is but a subset of a larger problem. Linux has proven itself as a stable, capable operating system for computers both large and small. Linux is even being offered pre-loaded on new laptops and notebooks sold in the U.S. nowadays. (By the way, a computer pre-loaded with Linux can be quite a bit cheaper than a computer pre-loaded with the latest version of Microsoft Windows.) And there are entire suites of free, open-source software (such as OpenOffice) available for users worldwide.

All of these things mean that access to computers and to the digital world is within the reach of an ever-larger population – including ever-more people of very limited means otherwise. This includes people in poor countries and poor communities in the U.S. who could become potential citizen journalists, telling their stories accurately and authentically, and making a valuable contribution in forming an accurate picture of our world.

But this access and the democratization of digital media is hindered even today by the existence of proprietary digital systems that restrict access so that their creators can collect rents. This is why you can't buy a DVD from a store in the U.S. and play it in the video player that comes standard with Ubuntu Linux. This is why you can't upload a video to Vimeo from a machine that has only Linux installed. This is why until recently you couldn't even view some sites from a computer that was running on Linux. It's not that Linux is bad. It's just that it's free – and allowing people to meet their needs via a thing that's free is bad for the profit margins of the rentier class. This is the reason for the existence of obstacles to the use of free things. So rising citizen journalists in poor communities and poor countries are nipped in the bud – because they can't afford to pay rent to Microsoft.

The rentier mentality pervades almost all other areas of life in America these days. Take driving, for instance. In most states, if you want to get around, you must buy a car. If you do buy a car, not only are you charged registration, but in some states you are also charged a vehicle excise tax on top of registration fees. The excise tax must be paid even if you never drive the car. If you actually drive anywhere, you must carry insurance. Cars nowadays depreciate in value fairly rapidly, so eventually you will wind up needing a new car. In other words, there are fairly substantial “rents” paid to various persons for the privilege of driving a car. Yet if you can't afford these rents, there are almost no other options than driving. Many places still aren't bike-friendly.

Or take health care. People in this country are dying from lack of affordable access to medical care. This is largely due to the rent-seeking of various bodies – the pharmaceutical companies who squeeze the last bit of profit from their patented medicines, the medical technology companies who push their latest and greatest machines, and the health insurance “industry” which does next to nothing, yet has now been gifted with a national law that requires most of us to buy health insurance. On a similar line, there are the efforts by industrial agribusiness to push everyone into reliance on GMO crops, in order to extract rent from us all for the “privilege” of eating the food made from these crops.

The rentier class is the ultimate example of a something-for-nothing way of life, in which people who do absolutely nothing useful are supported by the enforced contributions of millions of others who are under some sort of specious legal obligation to pay their livelihoods to the rentiers. As their appetite grows, so do the obligations they place on the rest of us. Are you in rags? Sleeping under a bridge? Do your children have skinny arms and distended bellies, like pictures of malnourished people in some Third World country? It matters not at all to the rentiers, as long as you keep paying up.

An Open Letter To The American Right and the Tea Party

I actually wanted to write a different post for this weekend. But that post involves uploading some video to the Internet, and every time I have tried it, the operation has been a bit like having one's teeth pulled without anesthesia. One of these days, I might just succeed... But in the meantime, I have some questions for the American right in general, and the Tea Party in particular. I am trying to understand you. If you read my blog, you'll doubtless pick up on my general views regarding you – but I'm willing to admit that maybe we don't understand each other, and that I've been unfair in my attitude toward you. So please help me out here, if you would.

Let me just say that it's been quite an experience to watch the rise of the Tea Party and its promoters – groups like Fox News and talk radio hosts, and people like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, and rich sponsors like Dick Armey and Steve Forbes. And I see all the books written by your spokespeople and sold in places like the Fred Meyer store just a few blocks away from my house. Moreover, I have met many people who seem to sympathize with you, from some of the people I know at work to some of the people I see on the streets of Portland waving signs. (I am thinking particularly of the sign wavers who want to recall Mayor Sam Adams.) Certainly you all have a lot of energy and zeal.

I must also say that I am more than a little unnerved by what I see of you. I know that both the world in general and our nation in particular are facing tough, uncertain times. However, it seems to me that you are responding to these times in ways that may not be beneficial to all groups of people in the world – especially those who are poor or who come from an ethnic background that is different than yours. It seems to me that many of you would like to take this country (along with the larger world) back to a condition that existed maybe 50 years ago, and that had only slowly begun to change by the 1970's. That condition was very hard on my parents (who are black, as I am), and was rather hard on me as I was growing up. Now I am a Christian, but I must warn you that I refuse to go willingly back to those days without a fight. Also, I perceive larger systemic, environmental, ecological and economic threats for which a return to the thinking of the 1950's and 1960's is just not the answer.

Take the global warming controversy for instance. I really liked science as a kid, and I used to want to be an astronaut. So I read a lot of books on astronomy and particularly the planets of our solar system. One planet, Venus, has an atmosphere that contains a lot of carbon dioxide. Both the U.S. and Russia have sent space probes to Venus, and the Russian probes have actually taken pictures of the surface. Those pictures look like something out of Hell. The surface temperature of Venus is high enough to melt lead. And all those science books, written 40 years ago and more, all said that this was due to the huge amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Venus. These books also taught me that carbon dioxide is transparent to visible light and short wave infrared radiation, but that it is opaque to long wave infrared radiation. In short, these books explained the greenhouse effect in a way that a little kid could understand (and they were backed up by lots of research done by trustworthy grown-ups). So why is it, now that big money is involved, that we're suddenly not supposed to trust the science behind global warming and manmade climate change?

Or take the subprime crisis (and race relations along with it). I remember the discrimination against minorities that was practiced by banks and realtors during the civil rights struggle. I also remember what it was like for the few minority families that escaped red-lining and were able to move into suburban, traditionally white neighborhoods. I remember the fights I got into almost daily when my dad bought a house in a white neighborhood. And I remember how one of the gains of the Civil Rights Movement was the passage of laws that outlawed discrimination in housing and lending.

But I also remember doing research for this very blog, The Well Run Dry, and finding out how Ronald Reagan and every president after him weakened and gutted those anti-discrimination laws. And I know what the actual causes of the subprime crisis were, and how minorities were deliberately “steered” into subprime loans by banks – against the law – even though many of us could have qualified for conventional loans. And now Fox News is saying that our present financial crisis was caused by the Federal Government outlawing lending discrimination against minorities?! Speaking of race, why is it that whenever there are disasters and people suffering from slow and incompetent responses to those disasters on the part of their government, they are always treated by the media (particularly Fox) as unfortunate sufferers bravely trying to cope as long as they are white, and they are called “looters” if they're not white?

Let's take health care. To me, the present health care debate seems to be about bailing out the health insurance industry. I don't like the Democratic proposal any more than you do. But I would have preferred single-payer health care. Your answer to that is to shout “That's socialism!!! Socialism is evil!!!” I don't get your response. To be sure, single-payer health care would prevent the masters of certain American “industries” from getting any richer – namely, the health care “industry”, the drug “industry,” and particularly, the health insurance “industry.” But you seem to think that preventing these people from getting any richer is the same as preventing you from getting rich.

To me it seems that you think that any restrictions placed on the prerogatives and powers of the rich would hinder anyone else from getting rich. Don't you remember the history of the United States over the last 150 years? Don't you remember that during the 1920's, when there were almost no Government restrictions on businesses, the result was that a few large monopolies emerged which effectively destroyed anyone who tried to compete with them, and that the rich became a club whose members effectively prevented most other people from becoming rich? Oh, sure, there was the stock market, but the stock market was nothing more than a sucker's game to fool the average working-class guy (or gal) that they were playing a rich man's game by which they could also become rich. And then the stock market crashed. Kind of looks like today, doesn't it?

You now seem to think you can play the same game and get rich yourselves, and you don't realize that your chances of scoring it big are about the same as your chances of winning the Lottery (which is to say that you don't have much of a chance). So you scream that you don't want socialized medicine, yet if you break an arm or a leg or have appendicitis and have to visit an emergency room, the health “industry” will bleed you dry. Do you want to be on the hook for a $20,000 emergency room visit?

And that leads to the question of whether or not people should even want to be rich in the first place. Wanting to be rich is an American value – as American as apple pie, blond haired children, NASCAR and “Support Our Troops” bumper stickers. Yet many of you on the right claim to be Christians. Have you never read in the Good Book that “the love of money is the root of all evil”? (1 Timothy 6:10 in case you don't believe me.) Have you ever looked at the lives of the rich and considered the things they did to get rich? Especially the things they did to other people? Do you want to be the kind of people that like doing those sorts of things? You might have Hell to pay afterward.

Or take morality. I think particularly of the “Recall Sam Adams” campaign. I asked a sign-waver why he wanted to recall Adams, and he repeated the true story that Mayor Sam had sex with an 17-year old male and lied about it. Now I have to agree that that's pretty sleazy. Sam Adams is a gross, immoral character. But there are two things to consider. First, the Republicans and the Right also have their share of gross characters – including Larry Craig, Mark Sanford, and Ted Haggard. In fact, there are whole websites dedicated to listing and chronicling the sexual sins of figures on the American Right and its politicians. (The list of sinners on the Right is very long.)

Secondly, for a long time I have believed that the calls on the Right to correct American morality were simply a ploy to rally people around a very different agenda. The candidates we were told to vote for all said that they were very concerned about American morality, yet when they got into office, their real agenda became evident – an agenda designed to promote American economic power at the expense of the rest of the world, and to promote the fortunes of wealthy American and European elites at the expense of ordinary working-class people in America and Europe. Think about it. If the American Religious Right, for instance, had really wanted to end abortion in this country through government action, they had a golden opportunity during the last two years of George W. Bush's presidency. Yet they didn't.

I have come to believe that the sexual morality of a nation can't be fixed by laws. (Anymore, when I vote at all, I vote for people whom I think are most willing to build social safety nets. That's my biggest value these days.) I have also come to believe that those of you on the Right who call yourselves Christians could do far more toward healing the morality of a nation by acting like Christ yourselves. One translation of 1 Peter 1:1 says, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who reside as aliens, scattered...” We're not called to be earthly patriots or materialists, but to live as resident aliens – in the world, but not of it. Yet what I see especially in the American Religious Right is a bunch of jingoistic flag-wavers who are rabidly willing to send in the troops to kill people in countries that possess things we Americans happen to want.

In short, I see the American Right, both religious and secular, as mere greedy materialists. As has been documented on this blog and on many others, the well of Western and First World prosperity is running dry, due to ecological and energy constraints. One wise response would be to learn to live within limits and to learn to share. Yet the response of American Right seems to be a temper tantrum. This is why you scare me.

As I said at the start, however, I may be wrong about you. If any of you reading this are on the Right or associated with the Tea Party and you have read this far, thank you very much for reading. This entire post arose out of a conversation I had with someone after church today. Now I am reaching out to you all and I would like to know what you think. Correct me if I'm mistaken – please. Please do it calmly and rationally, however; I don't respond well to MESSAGES IN ALL CAPS, FULL OF RANT WORDS AND EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!, if you get my drift.

The Day of the Autodidact

Oh what did you see, my blue-eyed son

and what did you see, my darling young one?

– A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, Bob Dylan

“Therefore watch carefully how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise; redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” – Ephesians 5:15

This post continues the theme I have been considering in my posts, The Liars' Channel, Hunting Fox (And Other Varmints), and to a lesser extent, in Crime, The Informal Economy, And Dark-Skinned People.

I still remember the day, over thirteen years ago, when I bought my first guitar. That decision was made under strange circumstances, as I was in a strange state of mind – you see, I was tired of the music I had listened to for years, I no longer believed that most bands and singers on the radio had anything new or insightful to say, I more than half didn't want to buy a guitar at all, and I thought I was making a dumb decision that I would soon abandon. Anyway, I bought the cheapest guitar I could find, an entry-level Samick, along with a Hal Leonard book of chord shapes and a copy of You Can Play Guitar by a guy named Peter Pickow.

The Samick mostly sat in my bedroom closet for a few weeks while I tried to figure out what an acoustic guitar was good for. At times I would pick it up and try to play some of the chords I saw in the chord book. I also listened to some pop songs on the radio and tried to copy them. However, listening to that sort of thing convinced me even more that my guitar was useless and that most musicians had run out of things to say.

Then an acquaintance of mine started loaning me CD's by bands labeled “acoustic alternative”. Intrigued, I started listening, and was turned on to some intricate, acoustic guitar-driven, complex music with complex lyrics. I was hooked.

Trying to play the stuff was a challenge, though. For one, I didn't know what I was doing. The Peter Pickow book wasn't much help either, as its primary goal seemed to be teaching people to play yesterday's pop hits. It wasn't a very useful guide to navigating the fretboard and the large world of music theory. The things I heard on CD's continued to be a mystery to me, a mystery I could not reproduce. Lastly, playing up the neck (especially barre chords) was very hard with the Samick.

One day I decided to replace the Samick, and bought a Mitchell guitar from Guitar Center (hey, I was still a cheapskate), along with an beginner's book on fingerstyle playing. The fingerstyle book was a good introduction to right-hand technique and altered tunings, but it wasn't the fretboard/music theory roadmap that I had hoped for. Also, the Mitchell was even harder to play up the neck than the Samick had been. I also started taking lessons from a teacher at a local music store. His form of “teaching” consisted of looking at the book I was trying to study, then telling me, “Yep. Go ahead, keep practicing that.” I stopped seeing him after only a few weeks.

I might have given up guitar altogether, except that someone loaned me a CD of a totally unplugged Dave Matthews concert. It was just him and another guitarist, and the things they did with their guitars were amazing. That, and someone suggested to me that if I really wanted to advance in my playing, I needed a better ax. Soon afterward, I picked up a Larrivee, and haven't looked back since.

Hearing Dave Matthews (and later, other players like Paul Simon (on an unplugged Simon and Garfunkel live album), John Renbourn, Bert Jansch, Pierre Bensusan, and others) inspired and pushed me to really learn my instrument. I soon found that the weakness of the Peter Pickow book was shared by many books targeted for people just starting to play: that their aim was simply to teach people whatever pop songs were popular at the time the book was written. I had to spend many hours in music stores to find books that promised something more.

In all that research, I began to put together a road map of what I wanted in learning the guitar: first, an understanding of music theory in general; second, a thorough knowledge of the fretboard; and third an application of theory to the fretboard, such that I could compose (on the fly, if necessary), while working within the unique strengths and limitations of the guitar. After the disappointing experience I had with my “teacher,” I decided I'd have to figure out all these things on my own. So I bought the books I believed to be helpful, and got to work. It's been a long journey thus far, and I still feel as if I'm just beginning (although I did teach myself to play John Renbourn's version of The English Dance).

In teaching myself the guitar, I was functioning as an autodidact. What I learned, I had to figure out for myself, due to the lack of an adequate teacher. I had to construct a knowledge system for myself, and I had to learn to find the missing pieces of that knowledge system for myself, by myself. That experience is something of a parable for the kind of thinking that's needed by those who would understand and navigate our present times.

The trouble with trying to understand and navigate these times is that there are rich and powerful men and women who don't want most of us to succeed in this task. They want to navigate us into enslavement to them, while we remain deluded about our present situation. Their ultimate goal is to consume us until there's nothing left of us. This is easier to do to willing, duped victims than it is with victims who understand their situation and who are trying to fight back.

The task of these rich people is aided by the fact that they own most of the media in Western (European and American) society, and that most of us eat up their stories like cereal. We've been trained to do so by memories of our parents who sat at the breakfast table and read their newspapers and watched TV news at night and believed every word. And who knows, maybe many of those writers and talking heads weren't lying then, but many of them are now. How can a person find out the truth for themselves?

Well, let's take the climate change controversy for starters. Many conservative commentators, along with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp are foaming at the mouth with allegations that scientific warnings about global warming are simply part of some liberal conspiracy to keep Americans from getting rich. They point to hacked e-mails and they scream “Climategate!” and allege that climate change scientists have made such serious mistakes that their case holds no water.

These climate change deniers have their disciples and true believers, including one gentleman I know, an engineer with over thirty years experience and some post-graduate coursework, yet who reads Fox News at lunch and believes every word. How he can live with such a cognitive disconnect I have no idea, as he took chemistry and physics just like I did, and he ought to know how carbon dioxide absorbs longwave infrared radiation. If I were in his shoes, I'd at least want to hear both sides of the story. So, having heard the Fox News side of the story, where would I look to hear the other side?

I might start by looking on the website of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and downloading some of their publications, like their “Fourth Assessment Report,” as well as some of their supporting material. If I really wanted to be intellectually honest, I'd read such publications completely. If there was something I didn't understand (like some of the math or statistical analysis, for instance), I'd figure out what knowledge I needed to gain in order to understand. In short, I'd become literate enough regarding the science to make a judgment for myself – and I'd do it by going directly to the source. And if I wasn't satisfied with the IPCC alone, I'd consult other climate change scientists such as NASA's climatologist Dr. James Hansen. I might also check old newspaper records of average annual temperatures in various locales over the last fifty years. I might even visit some towns on the Oregon and California coasts and talk to residents who have seen the sea bury their properties in recent years. Then I'd make my judgment. At least that's how I'd do things if I wanted to be intellectually honest.

How many people know how to sort fact from fiction regarding Iran? Or health care reform? Or our economy and the causes of its present weakness? Or environmental damage? How many Americans are content merely to say, “Well, I heard on the news...” Are there any Americans are willing to do the hard work of furnishing themselves with an accurate picture of the world? How many are willing to consult multiple sources, to do the work of verifying the accuracy of sources, to do research, to do the math? “It's hard!” some will say, but then again, so is learning to play the guitar.

The Dark Persons of America

Dark matter: that matter in the universe that is not directly observable. Dark internet: that portion of the Internet that can no longer be accessed through conventional means. Dark people: those individuals who have fallen out of society’s view, who have disappeared from society’s radar. (Most of them are poor.)

My follow-up post containing the rest of the brownfields interview will be posted this weekend. But for this present post, I want to discuss something different.

Bernard Hill is a name that is probably familiar to most people who remember the Lord of the Rings movies. He played Theoden, the King of Rohan. That role was the first role I saw him play, because I don’t go to movies much and I don’t have a TV. But because I was intrigued by the Lord of the Rings movies, I did a bit of research on the principal characters, and discovered a surprising amount of information on their previous acting roles. It turns out that an early breakout role for Bernard Hill was in a British TV miniseries titled, The Boys From The Blackstuff.

Hill played the character of Yosser Hughes, one of five unemployed asphalt (tarmac for you British) layers in the 1980’s. The series chronicled the lives of this loose gang of five men as they struggled to maintain their dignity and provide for themselves and their families amidst mounting national unemployment and the indignities of being “on the dole.” It was a struggle that each man eventually lost. The most harrowing portrayal of that loss was shown in Yosser Hughes, who lost his wife, his children, his home, and lastly, his sanity, while constantly asking – sometimes demanding, sometimes pleading – “Gizza job!”

The Boys From The Blackstuff was an eye-opener for many of the British, who had previously been trained by their culture and their own mass media to think of the poor and unemployed as mere scroungers. In fact, the series was widely seen as a dramatic denunciation of capitalist, free-market Thatcherism. Most of all, the series put a human face on the poor.

Such a series would probably not have been made or broadcast in the United States at any time during the Television age. (It is doubtful that such a series could be made anymore in Britain.)

Our nation has been trained to ignore the poor. This training has been accomplished through a steady diet of distraction and aspirational propaganda that claims that “anyone can be rich, and by Gum, everyone should want to be!” So we allow ourselves to be hypnotized by game shows, upscale living and “home improvement” shows, sports, the promise of the Lottery, and the advertising that goes with it all. When we go to the store, the magazines next to the checkout counter are full of flashy covers full of beefcakes and vixens and stories about the lives of these “stars.”

When events force the poor onto the American national consciousness, the response frequently consists of anger and hatred on the part of the rich and the “aspirational.” The poor are blamed for being poor. This, of course, gets the rich off the hook for any sort of duty or obligation of charity toward the poor. Thus the mainstream media (which is owned by the rich) denounces any suggestion that government social spending should be increased (though they are curiously silent when the Government bails out the institutions of the rich). They denounce any suggestion that the rich should be taxed more heavily than they are (and they are not taxed heavily right now). This is why the mainstream media in Oregon (such as that “progressive” newspaper, the Oregonian) have come out so vehemently against Measures 66 and 67. Measure 66 would add an increase of a (very) few percentage points to the tax rate of singles making over $125,000 a year or couples filing jointly making over $250,000 a year. How many people do you know that make over $125,000 a year?

Sometimes that anger and hatred takes even more grotesque forms. Pat Robertson, the outspoken founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, recently denounced the country of Haiti, saying that the earthquake that struck that country several days ago is God’s judgment on its people for “making a deal with the devil” two centuries ago in order to get free from their French (white) colonial masters. If the earthquake is “God’s judgment,” that excuses rich Americans from having to help Haiti, doesn’t it? By the way, Mr. Robertson has a net worth of between $200 million and $1 billion, according to Wikipedia.

(Pat Robertson claims to be a Christian and a minister of the Gospel. But I am a Christian, and I’ve read the Bible, and I think Mr. Robertson might have to prepare for an unpleasant surprise on the Day of Judgment – see Matthew 6:24; Matthew 25:31-46; Luke 16:19-31; 1 Timothy 6:9-10 and James 5:1-6. I shall have more to say about him on my other blog. Has he ever heard of a place called Gehenna?)

Usually, though, the eyes of American society are directed away from the poor. There’s a store I regularly visit that carries Newsweek Magazine next to its checkout counter. Last week, Newsweek’s front cover was dedicated to picturing the “new face of Al-Qaeda” – the supposed black Nigerian threat. This week’s cover featured the growing American conservative acceptance of gay marriage. To the best of my knowledge, Haiti did not even make the front cover of Newsweek. (In fact, I’ll bet that in two weeks, Haiti will be forgotten – just like New Orleans was after Katrina.)

But we don’t have to go as far as Haiti to see how hard our leaders are working to keep our eyes off the poor. There are the “official” Government unemployment figures that are regularly cooked to a reality-obscuring flavor. I am truly thankful for those analysts who are able to sniff out the truth, people who publish websites like Shadowstats and The Automatic Earth. Basically, what they reveal is that in order to keep the “official” unemployment rate from going much above ten percent, the Government is ignoring huge and growing sectors of the unemployed population. Would you like to meet a “dark person”? You may not have far to look.

Meanwhile, if you want a peek at the lives of these dark people, feel free to rent or buy The Boys From The Blackstuff. You won't find another such portrayal in our mainstream media. It’s a good preparation for the time when you yourself will have to shout out the American version of the plea, “Gizza job!”

Iraq: A Good Heist?

A couple of weeks ago I read a bit of the December edition of the Oilwatch Monthly, an oil production newsletter published by Rembrandt Koppelaar, President of ASPO Netherlands. (You can get a PDF download here: “Oilwatch Monthly December 2009”; click on the link I have provided, then click on the link that says, “November 2009 – 1.24 MB – 33 pagina's” in the target page.) I came across a very curious statement under the discussion titled, “The Importance of Iraqi Oil Production,” which I quote as follows:

“European, Russian and Chinese oil companies including Shell, Lukoil, CNPC and BP are having a field day winning auctions to develop big Iraqi oil fields. Shell and Petronas have obtained the right to develop Majnoon with 7 billion barrels of reserves, Lukoil and Statoil the West Qurna 2 field which in total holds 9.75 billion barrels, and Total and Petronas the Halfaya field with 0.5 billion barrels. The only US company that secured a deal is ExxonMobil over the development of West Qurna 1, quite a disappointment given the amount of money the US has invested in Iraq through the Iraqi war...

“As demand is the driver of oil markets, and a continued shrinkage of the economy under a W or L shaped recession is more likely, the development of Iraqi oil is even more important due to its low cost structure. The costs to develop these fields are in the order of 10 to 20 dollars per barrel excluding war subsidies already incurred. Low cost Iraqi oil that ‘floods’ the market bringing oil prices down as supply vastly outmatches demand can give a huge boom to the economy. Albeit temporarily for only about five year as continued declines will eventually outweigh increases, it can create the breathing space to make some swift decisions to add resilience to national economies. In that sense the Iraqi war may not have been fruitless but create a boon for the global economy...”

Note the last sentence: “...the Iraqi war may not have been fruitless but create a boon for the global economy...” Frankly, I choked on this statement. I'd like to present a rather different view of things in today's post.

First, a minor unrelated criticism. For over a year I have been less enthusiastic about accepting the production figures in the Oilwatch Monthly, not because I think Mr. Koppelaar is not competent, but because those figures are based on figures published by the International Energy Agency. Since the middle of 2008, I have suspected the IEA of cooking the books a little to hide the reality of global oil production declines. I still think that 2005 was the year of maximum global oil production.

Secondly, a technical criticism of stated Iraqi reserves. It is common knowledge that many OPEC nations grossly inflated their proven and probable reserve numbers in the 1980's in order to boost their production quotas. Thus Iraq went from declared reserves of 30 billion barrels in 1980 to 100 billion barrels in 1987. (Source: “Oil reserves,” Wikipedia). Lately a figure of 115 billion barrels has been tossed around. It is very possible that such high numbers are a mere fiction.

In making these minor criticisms, I freely admit that I'm not a petroleum geologist or oil industry expert, but an average ordinary guy trying to make sense of things. I'm sure the experts know much more that I do. But on to my third criticism, which has to do with morality. Here I think I can speak with more confidence. The Iraq invasion was not “worth it” from a moral standpoint. Here are my reasons for saying so.

1. All of the “terrorism” and “weapons of mass destruction” excuses for the war have turned out to be false. It has been conclusively proven again and again that both the American and British governments fabricated evidence of Iraqi involvement in terrorism and continued Iraqi attempts to build WMD's, in order to build a case for invading Iraq. (Anyone want a little “yellowcake” to go with your coffee while you're reading this?) Further, no weapons of mass destruction were found after the invasion. None.

2. There are no moral justifications for attacking a country that was not planning or preparing to attack us. Some have attempted to justify the invasion on grounds other than American access to Mideast oil, but these justifications hold no water and are often mere attempts to deflect attention from the real reason for the invasion. I think in particular of how one prominent writer has stated that America invaded Iraq in order to “modify and influence the behavior” of other Arab powers in the region, in addition to sending a message to the Arab world in response to 9/11.

To me, this justification is unrighteous. So, Iraq and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with terrorism, Al-Qaida or the events of September 11^th, yet we destroyed that country in order to send a message to the rest of the Arab world? How would you like to be punished for a crime committed by someone else? Does that seem fair? Two wrongs do not make a right.

3. I agree with Rembrandt that it is obvious that the Iraq war was all about oil – specifically American access to Iraqi oil (and anything else of value that belonged to the Iraqis). Abundant proof of that is seen in the actions of Lewis Paul Bremer, the governor of Iraq appointed by President Bush in the aftermath of the American invasion. We went to Iraq in order to jack that country – all so that well-fed Americans could continue to drive outlandish, super-sized vehicles wherever they want, as fast as they want.

4. In the process of jacking Iraqi oil, we killed a lot of people. In considering this, some will think only of the American soldiers who died. That's typical of American self-centeredness. But how about all the Iraqis who died? (By some counts, this figure is over one million.) It just hit the news that a Federal judge recently dismissed all charges against five Blackwater operatives who massacred seventeen unarmed Iraqi civilians in 2007.

5. Having stolen our way to Iraqi oil, we have not used our access to that resource in order to buy time for an orderly transition to more sustainable societal arrangements. Instead, we have done our best to keep industrial expansion and the concentration of wealth in rich hands going as smoothly as possible. We are indeed like a heroin junkie who, having just murdered and robbed a victim, is using the money not for rehab, nor even for methadone, but for another fix.

These are difficult times, and we will have to work together to insure that resources are allocated fairly to all the world's people. In times like these, it is dangerous to lose one's moral compass, and even more dangerous to decide that one does not need a moral compass.

The Power Of Aspirational Propaganda

Every child had a pretty good shot

to get at least as far as their old man got;

Something happened on the way to that place;

They threw an American flag in our face

– Billy Joel, Allentown

I picked up a copy of the Portland Tribune today on the way home from work, as I walked to one of the MAX stations. It had a number of articles that interested me, but it also had a few letters that frankly brought me up short. Most of the writers were complaining against the city government's plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Some of their sharpest criticisms were leveled at proposals that seemed to be actually quite innocuous at worst, and frankly beneficial at best. Take things like adding sidewalks to streets that lack them, or making routes to schools safer (as in freer from motor vehicle hazards) for children who walk or ride their bikes to school, or making bicycle commuting safer for everyone. These didn't seem to be particularly evil proposals to me; yet some who wrote letters seemed to view these as part of a radical leftist plot to push government control onto every aspect of our lives.

The letter that really made my jaw drop was not about the proposed climate action plan. It was instead a letter asserting that the hardships endured by the early Pilgrim settlers in North America were due to socialism, because the pilgrims shared their resources. The writer states, “Lesson: Capitalism works, Socialism doesn't.” I had no idea that the early Pilgrims were so leftist. The writer's real aim, of course, was to justify selfishness. (The truth, at least as far as the pilgrims' first winter in North America, is that their hardship was due to cold weather, scurvy, lack of provisions caused by arrival late in the year, and the sickness that resulted from all of these. Later, they did in fact switch from collective farming to individual farms, and their harvests increased as a result. But that in itself is a commentary on fallen human nature.)

The justification of selfishness is not entirely surprising, yet there are aspects of it that mystify me to this day – even after all the “teaching moments” which have hit our country upside the head over the last two years. For the thing that puzzles me is the fact that so many Americans still embrace this justification, this ideology of selfishness, even though they are being burned by it.

I want to make it clear that I don't see anything wrong with private property (within limits!) or a person working to support himself and provide for his own needs. The Good Book commands honest labor so that we may meet our own needs and have something left over for charity. It also says, “If a man will not work, neither let him eat.” But the idea that all sharing of resources is a bad thing is unbalanced, as is the idea that the only way to build a prosperous society is by appealing to the selfishness of its members. Societies that live by such a philosophy are ruthless and have no safety nets; thus when any of their members fall honestly and unavoidably into trouble, their fellows tend to brush their hands, shrug their shoulders and say, “Oh, well!”

Our problem in the USA is that we don't share well. Many of us tend to look with suspicion even on voluntary sharing arrangements practiced by others, even when no one is forcing outsiders into these arrangements. One example: several months ago, a community group was trying to install a community garden in East Portland, on land that was vacant. This would have been a valuable asset for working-class people near the garden plot, who could have cut down on their food expenses and gained experience in growing healthy food for themselves. But the proposed garden aroused opposition from a group of neighbors who feared that the users of the garden plot would be dope-smoking hoodlums. The neighbors even said things like, “These people shouldn't be growing vegetables during the daytime. They should quit being lazy and get a job so they can buy their vegetables at the store!”

Why do we not share well? Why do we look with suspicion on those who do? And why are so many of us trying to take apart what safety nets we do have, especially those safety nets provided by the government? I think it has to do with the myth of the American dream – namely, that anyone can get rich if he just works hard enough or gets lucky – and the reinforcement of that myth by American mass culture. For instance, there's a billboard in downtown Portland – I don't remember exactly where just now – with an ad from a cell phone company containing the caption, “Teach Your Children Not To Share.”

But it goes deeper than that. Yesterday, we had a surprise snowstorm that kept most of us from getting home from work until quite late. I was on a bus next to a grocery store. We were waiting for TriMet to come out and put chains on the bus. While we waited, a young woman dashed in to the store (twice!) to buy some sort of scratcher Bingo lottery game. It cost her three dollars each time, and she won only three dollars each time, so I guess it was a wash. But who knows, she might have struck it rich if only she had bought the right tickets. Then there's the lottery pool in my office, and the people who each hope that the day the tickets are bought will turn out to be the last day they have to show up for work. And there are the TV game shows like “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”, which reinforce the idea that with the right luck, some of us might have a shot at getting rich overnight (without having to work for it).

Of course, since any of us might potentially become a millionaire overnight through a stroke of luck, we must jealously guard the prerogatives of the rich, lest our own enjoyment of wealth be spoiled by the limiting of those prerogatives. At least, that's the propaganda pushed on us by the rich, who use all the media tools at their disposal to tell us how evil corporate taxes are (witness the large, expensive signs saying “Vote NO on Job-Killing Taxes!” in Oregon), how any government programs to help the poor are nothing more than “socialism!!!”, and how any restrictions on the use or means of amassing private property are totalitarianism.

This propaganda is so effective that many ordinary Americans are willing to vote against their own interests and to believe things that are against their own interests in order to preserve a supposed “right” to have no limitation or obligation imposed on their wealth should they ever strike it rich. So we have a society in which 20 percent of the American population controls 85 percent of America's wealth, and 80 percent of the population controls only 15 percent of the wealth – yet many of those in the 80 percent listen to Rush Limbaugh, and watch Glenn Beck, and voted for McCain and Palin, and oppose "socialized" medicine, and disbelieve in anthropogenic climate change because protecting the environment is “socialist.” Many of these people are sure that they or one of their relatives will be the next “American Idol,” or that if they invest just right, they will strike it rich, or that the next Lotto ticket will be the winning one, and that once that happens, it will be a sweet ride. We wouldn't want any moral obligation to our fellow man to spoil the ride, would we?

Most of us have no more chance of becoming rich than gasoline has of surviving the Last Judgment unburnt. Yet by wanting to be rich, and by indulging our fantasies of being rich, we continue to enable the selfishness of the rich. That selfishness is killing the rest of us.

Note: the figure on 80 percent of the population owning only 15 percent of the wealth comes from The New Elite: Inside The Minds Of The Truly Wealthy, by Jim Taylor, Doug Harrison, Stephen Kraus, copyright 2009, Harrison Group.

When Decency Confronts Predation

Fellow blogger Stormchild recently wrote a thought-provoking post on her blog, Gale Warnings. The title of the post is “The Underground Railroad, 2010.” Her post makes a point about the role of decent people in protecting their fellow humans from the predations of the powerful. In making this point, she uses the historical events of the Underground Railroad in pre-Civil War America, the hiding of Jews from their Nazi persecutors in occupied France during World War II, and her own experience of being rescued from an abusive work environment by the intervention of kind and perceptive senior managers.

Speaking of workplaces, she writes, “A band of uninformed 'nice guys' does not a decent workplace make; it takes an understanding of the psychodynamics of abuse, sufficient perception to know that manipulative and abusive individuals are plentiful in organizations, and sufficient moral courage to resist manipulations and see through efforts to 'set up' non-abusive individuals to be exploited. This is a tall order, and when it happens, it usually happens because one or two people, placed where they can have an impact, are willing to see, understand, and refuse to play.” She closes with a prayer that this nation (yes, our own U.S.A.) might begin to experience an outbreak of decency, that people might rise up who are willing to “...recognize abuse, call it what it is, and do what they can to oppose it and to support those targeted by it...”

I say “Amen” to that prayer. My focus is the larger society at this time of economic contraction, resource constraints and widespread man-made environmental damage. We are facing an historic transition, and there are preparations that should be made by as many of us as possible, to insure the survival and well-being of as many of us as possible. Yet the making of those preparations is being thwarted for most of us by a rich, powerful minority whose members seek to continue fattening themselves by making a prey of as many of the rest of us as possible. Whereas the abuse that occurs in smaller group settings is often due to complex psychological factors, the abuse that is being perpetrated on a large scale in our society is due mainly to the sociopathic greed of the rich. “Resilience” is hard to achieve when you're constantly having to defend yourself from people who want to turn you into lamb chops.

A typical and repugnant example of large-scale abuse and predation was recently posted on another blog, Shalom Bayit. The author, Ahavah Gayle, wrote a piece titled, “Class Wars, followed by Return of the Robber Barons. Will the Serfs Strike Back? ,” in which she cited a news article about two towns in Kentucky whose water utility was bought by bailed-out insurance giant AIG in 2005. From 2008 onward, the utility began a program of raising water service fees to a level so high that at present, many residents are threatened with choosing between continuing to receive water versus being able to buy food. In November 2008, the utility announced that it was raising water rates by 51 percent, in an attempt to collect an additional $750,000 from a customer base of 8000 persons. By the way, Kentucky is not a rich state, and the residents of these towns are poor in comparison to the rest of Kentucky.

Such predations as these are taking place with ever-increasing frequency all across America. Yet there is very little visible outrage, as most people still seem to be hypnotized by television and deluded by the “American Dream” that promises that just about anyone can get rich – and by Gum, everyone should want to! If there was a genuine outbreak of decency in this country, what would it look like?

For one, it might look like people suddenly becoming willing to inconvenience themselves and link arms with each other in order to stop supporting predatory systems run by predatory masters. If I lived in one of those Kentucky towns whose water service decided to raise its rates to crushing levels, I'd be motivated to get together with my neighbors to create a safe, workable alternative to the water and sewer service. I'd save what cash I could, and use it to buy things like multiple copies of the Humanure Handbook. I'd invite people over to my house and we'd form study groups to learn how to compost our own waste and re-use graywater. I'd form a “rain barrel club,” and we'd be buying, refurbishing, scrounging or making rain barrels like nobody's business. I'd do my best to create an activist community of decent people whose “refusal to play” was able to bring down the strategies of those wanting to make a prey out of them. And it would be work, and it would be inconvenient, but in the end it would be worth it.

There are many systems, many providers of consumer “stuff,” many wealthy captains of commerce who by their sociopathic predation show that they deserve to be boycotted. But righteous boycotts almost always involve some inconvenience, because the targets of these boycotts have done so much to make themselves all-pervasive and seemingly indispensable to modern life. The more you turn your back on these providers and the goods they provide, the harder you will have to work to create alternatives for yourself. A point comes when you can't do it all alone; you need to rely on neighbors and friends, and they need to be able to rely on you, in order to create sustaining alternatives to the things that must be boycotted. I think of the black boycott of the bus service in Montgomery, Alabama, one of the hottest conflicts of the American Civil Rights movement. There is also the boycott of British goods instituted by Gandhi during India's struggle for independence from Britain.

May there be indeed such an outbreak of decency in this country that huge numbers of us turn our back on the predators who now dictate our course, and that we learn to oppose their predations. Let us not be lulled by false promises of ease or convenience into a continued silent support of these predators, a refusal to rock the boat, a default into just “going with the flow.” And may there be many who rise up to defend poor, abused people from their abusers – whether that abuse is relational, societal, political or economic.