Feeding the Bigger Brain

Fashion: Sartorial Opiate or Shamanistic Magic?

2010-08-06T06:23:00.001-07:00

New word: sartorial means pertaining to tailoring. The history of consumerism is embodied in the glamorous, eye candy history of fashion. These writers have more direct awareness of the relationship between fashion and imperialism than most economists. Where economists seem to accept industrial growth and expansion as a good that will raise all boats, these art historians and cultural observers touch on the darker underpinnings of an elitism that could not survive without cheap labor to shore up the expensive tastes of its wasteful leisure classes. Christopher Breward, author of "Fashion", from the Oxford History of Art series, is particularly insightful in this regard.

From his rather dry account, I learned that "dynamic obsolescence" was invented by fashion stylists beginning in the mid 19th century with the concept of the fall and winter collection which aggressively rendered last seasons fashion out of style. Obsolescence is of course the driving growth of virtually all industries today.

Fashion being the most portable and accessible of cultural markers was spread from the three key cities: London, Paris and New York via print media, the fashion show and later film and television to other cities aspiring to rank as global players. (The fashion show was big in Bangkok where it was usually associated with royalty. I was a runway model for two of these events at the home of local royalty when I was five and six years old.)

So I was intrigued to learn that it is mainly in the West that fashion was ever changing while elsewhere it was static due to local customs and social hierarchies. This does parallel the rise of the cult of the individual in the West, but I would go further and look at the religious beliefs that allowed this cult of the individual to arise. Buddhism, for instance, with its teachings of no self would not lend itself to the cultivation of individualism and still doesn't, not with the skill of personal power that Western psychology has elevated it to.

But I am not in a hurry to label fashion as a tool of imperialist Western selfishness. These accounts of fashion also point out the influence of street fashion from the 19th century dandy to the Punk styles of the '70s. Vivienne Westwood, whose fashion footsteps I seem to be following, is credited with firing up the whole phenomena of Punk. She then went on to fuse 16th century, ie Renaissance clothing cuts, with modern materials and gender bending presentation. Fashion was certainly a part of the emancipation of women, had a hand in popularizing cycling and has been the visual marker of all kinds of anti-establishment movements including queer culture. It has been as much a tool of the outsider in communicating resistance as it has been a tool of the elite to dictate the parameters of the in crowd.

But to go even deeper, I remembered from the novel "The Mists of Avalon" that glamour is a word borrowed from witchcraft. Thus glamour is a concept used by witches to enhance spells that require the viewer to be enchanted by the appearance of the witch herself. (Kind of a sleight of hand like the use of the Force in Star Wars when Obe One persuaded Stormtroopers to allow him entry through a security checkpoint.)

In this sense it could be said that fashion is akin to the use of hallucinogenic drugs. Where drugs were once an important part of shamanistic ritual, they are now taken without the ritual and have become portals to addiction. Thus fashion has become a portal for consumer addiction. But rather than take the puritanical route and declare a "fashion free" zone, I would prefer to reclaim fashion as an inspirational art force that requires a constant stream of creative manifestations to communicate ideas and ideals, but it would also have to be done without compromising values of sustainability. And I can do that as long as there is already manufactured materials out there to salvage. After that it will be back to the fig leaf.

Earth Democracy

2008-09-18T20:27:00.000-07:00

Justice, Sustainability, And Peace. Vandana Shiva believes that peasants should be able to make a living based on access to land, rivers, forests and oceans and that governments must protect the health of these commons for the good of all. This makes her a radical. She also makes complete sense and answers many of my questions about the inequity of the poor.

Much of this book is a discussion of the commons and the enclosure laws in England in the 16th century that allowed the commons to be privatized. Critics of Vandana Shiva claim that she is asking for a return to feudalism, but they are not hearing her out. (And besides feudalism guaranteed that the peasants would eat, while privatization guarantees that those without money will starve while taking away access to the land that originally provided them with a livelihood.) Much of the battle of the enclosure laws is waged with words. By claiming that an area of land is a wasteland and is not being used by anyone, this somehow gives private companies the right to buy the land or contract to use it for development purposes.

She ferrets out the flaws in the arguments of the opposition ie Richard Epstein in his book "Takings—Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain". Their position is that government cannot protect natural resources like beaches, streams and other property because it would be a "taking" and therefore the owners must be compensated. This argument, she says, ignores the original taking of these public lands during colonialism, but it also confuses public trust with eminent domain which is virtually the opposite. And finally the public is redefined as a collection of individuals thus the loss of property is calculated based on its higher value to one individual vs each member of the public. Here she has not only explained how things have changed, but what kinds of arguments have influenced far reaching policies and how we have been manipulated into buying into the ideology of privatization over public interests. This is an important concept because it is a cultural battle of words that over time has eliminated the very notion of a public trust. If it were not still going on, this book would just be a historical treatise, but with water rights and clean air and the earth's atmosphere at stake, her arguments serve as the ground floor of resistance.

She also debunks the argument that having a commons doesn't work because everyone will abuse it. Not so, she says, as long as everyone can subsist off the land and be self-reliant, the community will work together to insure that no one party takes advantage. Assumptions are being made by free market advocates that have messed with our minds, but her examples show a different picture.

She points out the correlation between economic livelihood and the attraction of fundamentalism both here and abroad. When people no longer have a livelihood to identify with and globalization forces upon them a cultural sameness, they are attracted to religion and will vote for issues relating to cultural identity rather than economic identity. This explains why Gay Marriage has the ridiculous political status as a hot button issue when there is so much else at stake.

She claims that when enclosure laws allow people a living only by selling their labor (and their bodies I would add) then that encourages a population increase as families feel they need to have more children to bring in more income or to insure that at least one survives to care for them in old age since more die.

Her discussion includes the enclosure of intellectual and biological property with Monsanto trying to patent seed species. While governments pass laws that forbid farmers from participating in trade as they have always done, ie: saving their own seeds to sell to other farmers. She explains how governments help out large companies by passing laws inappropriate to small producers, for whom complying to these laws, would put them out of business, ie food packaging laws under the guise of safety. Thus her alliance with Slow Food Nation (she is Vice President) to support local foods and small producers.

She talks about how the sustenance economy is not valued on the market because it does not involve paid labor ie;, women's work, home economics, child rearing. Yet such work is how the recognized market can exist. She warns that the market is bent on the exploitation of resources that support the sustenance economy such as clean water, air and land and comments that the only sustainable economy is the sustenance economy because of its built-in feed back loops and community. The market however tends to solve problems by providing solutions of increasing complexity involving more exploitation of resources and more privatization as seen with privatization of water.

Getting inside Vandana Shiva's worldview stretches my head, but I really think she gets to the root of global issues and successfully relates how economic justice is the road to democracy and in turn to peace. She is apparently a huge threat to advocates of individualistic wealth building systems, thus the caustic negative reviews of her work as extremely leftist. The rich don't like being told that their success comes at great cost to the poor rather than out of their own smarts. But If we could embrace what she is saying, solving our most destructive planetary problems may look a lot simpler.

The Unthinkable-Who Survivies...

2008-08-31T20:20:00.000-07:00

Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why. A riveting page turner for those of us curious about how people behave when the shit hits the fan. Lots of stories from survivors of the Twin Towers, hotel fires, stampedes in Jerusalem, school shootings and plane crashes. Interviews with brain specialists, professionals and heroes even those who could do nothing, but offer a human face of compassion.

The message of the book is that people are cooperative and willing, they just need guidance and information. Authorities and professionals don't trust regular people with enough instruction or tools to help themselves. Author notes suggestion by British House of Commons that airports should allow people a chance to use emergency equipment in a mock-up cabin where people wait at the gate instead of just having them sit there watching CNN. Aviation people wouldn't even consider it.

Authorities fear that people will panic at the very idea of an emergency, not to mention how it would impact business. In Katrina the mayor held off on the announcement to evacuate because his lawyers feared lawsuits from businesses. By now they have figured out that government is immune to that kind of lawsuit. Thai officials had same fear of backlash before tsunami.

Humans are motivated by both human psychology and cultural memory. Thus training would go a long way to helping a culture get it. And it helps if people are told why they should do things, ie: we all know we should put on the oxygen mask on ourselves before assisting a child, but I never knew why. It's because you would black out in 5 to 10 seconds without oxygen and then where would your kid be?

A note to activists and apocalypse mongers. There is a fine line between getting people's attention about a possible emergency situation and loosing them to a sense of futility. Thus give a scenario that is manageable, but not overwhelming recommends one professional.

Author divides the book into the three phases of human psychological response to a crisis, denial, deliberation and action. In the denial phase people will carry on partying on a sinking ship without questioning why the boat is lurching so. Or they will mosey about gathering up stuff rather than evacuate immediately. (Carry-on luggage is a particular hazard in airline crashes.) Thus first responders in charge must shout their orders aggressively.

Once a denial is overcome fear kicks in, but in interesting ways. As the heart rate goes up the brain focuses better (which is probably why my ADD clients boast that they are really good in a crisis. All their distractiveness is overridden). People perform best when their heartbeat is between 115 and 145 beats per minute (resting heart rate is 75 beats per minute). Over 145 and their abilities deteriorate. Fear can bring extrasensory ability for survival, but takes away other normal skills. People might experience temporary blindness, for instance, or pee their pants.

People also stick to their normal relationships and assume the roles they play in everyday life, but they will cooperate and think as a group. Relationships with people and their status matter, but even strangers will form relationships with strangers because the crisis itself will bond them. This is the heartwarming part. She devotes an entire chapter to groupthink. Crisis creates people eager to follow. This cries out for trained leadership. Resiliance can become encultured in a group which is exactly what the peak oil localizaton movement is all about. The example given here is of a town with a culture of evacuation in the face of hurricanes.

Resiliance in individuals, the author notes has three components, the belief that one can influence life events, find meaningful purpose in the turmoil and can learn from both positive and negative experiences.

Interesting analysis of panic as in stampedes. It's mostly a matter of physics. People can't see and are moving according to pressure on their space. Panic is the psychological choice of feeling trapped, but not knowing for certain that you are trapped, plus a feeling of helplessness and when compounded by the same reaction in others this leads to a profound sense of isolation. Panic is not nearly as common a response as people think, she says.

The book ends with an affirming blow by blow account of the Morgan Stanley evacuation of the towers led by Rick Rescorla. A case study of a meaningful emergency plan and a well prepared hero.

The Long Descent by John Michael Greer

2008-08-08T20:19:00.000-07:00

Another present from the Energy Bulletin for pre-publication review. I've been reading John Michael Greer's Archdruid Report for a few months now and I thought his book would be pretty esoteric, but it's actually brilliant in its simplicity and a much-needed wise and reasonable voice for the peak oil community. He covers all the usual information about what peak oil is and how it will impact society and create a descent into a pre-industrial state of affairs, but here he departs from the brethren to discuss why the peak oil community is failing to lead society towards helpful approaches to dealing with this predicament (emphasis on predicament as opposed to problem to be solved implying with technology.)

This collective failure of the imagination he attributes to Western society having provided only two stories—The Myth of Progress and The Myth of the Apocalypse. And these stories run deep. The Myth of Progress came out of the Enlightenment and sold everyone on the idea that if we simply acted rationally in our own interest the world would progress linearly to a golden age of everything. The other is the Myth of the Apocalypse, which says that we did live a golden age of harmony with each other and the planet, but we took a wrong turn and it's been one blind alley of misguided depravity after another. Classic Greek tragedy vs. comedy looks like.

The brilliance of Greer is that he takes the trouble to explain these social mindsets from the beginning so by the end of it you are like "yeah how obvious". What actually made the myth of progress work was abundant cheap energy making possible all these fabulous visions of opulence for all and now that it's not going to continue we are all like doomsday is coming, we bad. This was popular thinking in the '70s too, but then we cut back on oil consumption by 15% and the world did not end giving us a new opportunity to continue our myth of progress. Here he explains how short term political policies of the Reagan years and the manipulation of oil prices brought us to where we are now, when we could have done something about it when Carter was telling us to cut back.

He describes various coping strategies these dual myths have prompted, in response to peak oil, including the lone cabin in the woods survival-ism to the creation of lifeboat communities or earnestly campaigning for a political leader who will install policies that will save us, (but no one in their right mind would vote for because it interferes with our myth of progress). He then proceeds to describe very basic skills that we would do well to cultivate having to do with growing food, making things for ourselves, low energy transportation and reviving community governance and self reliance. He points out that it doesn't have to be all back to pioneer living and using hand tools, we can use advanced technology too if we set it up beforehand to cover basic tasks and not attempt to float this bloated high energy lifestyle that we think of as normal, because we just aren't going to have time or enough fuel to do that. That normal was an aberration of having stumbled on the energy dense, dead dinosaur deposits of oil. We had that opportunity to transit more slowly, but just because we missed it doesn't mean instant catastrophe. Due to adjustment factors he describes as part of his catabolic collapse theory, this deindustrialization will take several generations. So don't sweat it just get your mind around it and proceed in an orderly fashion to the nearest practical skill building class. Quite affirming, I would say, for all us appropriate technology flickerati. I sure hope this book becomes the peak oil spiritual bible, because if Kunstler continues to hold sway it's just going to make it more difficult.

Stuffed & Starved

2008-07-16T20:16:00.000-07:00

Raj Patel is much sought after these days since the rise in the price of food worldwide. In his book he attempts to explain the world food system in the tradition of Frances Moore Lappe's Food First and Diet for a Small Planet. I already know quite a bit about the system so there wasn't too much that was new to me in his account. Some explanations stand out. The Hourglass Figure he describes, with accompanying charts, is a good visual image for how money is made in the food system at the point where it is processed by large scale mechanization owned by a few mega corporations like Nestles. These companies process flour for tortillas, beans for coffee, rice when its milled and soybean crushing, for example and cause bottlenecks that jack the price up because only a few players can process food on large scale to meet demand.

He also describes how, historically, the food system was developed to feed those working in the newly industrialized urban areas. The point was to keep this cheap labor from revolting by feeding them cheaply at the expense of the farmers. Our food system technologies came about because of the needs of war, he explains, in that food had to be preserved for transportation under adverse conditions, plus the surplus created by government subsidizing the war effort in food supplies was the beginning of surplus grain being used to manipulate world politics through AID. The whole sociopolitical impact of government policies, AID and trade all play a part in how destructive agribusiness is to life on earth basically. He shows to what lengths Monsanto and company are willing to go to get their way for GMO seeds.

On the other end of the spectrum he talks about how the supermarket was developed to exploit people's impulses to buy. And the inputs in our food that allow it to be transported without damage, but have a huge impact on how crops are used—lecithin for instance. In discussing the obesity epidemic he points out that this is rarely discussed as a symptom of the failures of our food system and poverty, but is blamed on the individual. Obesity patterns in US very similar that of South Africa.

He describes a couple of movements working to change the system including the Landless Rural Movement in Brazil which is a voluntary cooperative system that is democratically run and organized by the farmers trying to occupy land. The details he gives from having visited one of these settlements broadened my understanding of this movement which Noam Chomsky called the world's most important social movement.

He is a fan of the Slow Food movement and farmer's markets, but not organic food in that organic food production as applied to agribusiness is not much different from chemical agribusiness.

In his conclusion he lists 10 ways to change the system

1. Transform our tastes and get away from what commercial food production has taught us to want.
2. Eat locally and seasonally
3. Eat agroecologically meaning eat food produced in harmony with the local environment as developed in Cuba and embraced by Masanobu Fukuoka's One Straw Revolution in Japan as well as the UN developed sustainable agriculture network.
4. Support locally owned business not supermarkets or big box stores. He points out the flaw in corporate responsibility because it hinges on profit being made.
5. All workers have the right to dignity through unions that are allowed to organize without persecution.
6. Profound and comprehensive rural change such as equitable land distribution, but also including education, healthcare and infrastructure.
7. Living wages for all so poor can access food.
8. Support for sustainable architecture of food. Local markets and CSAs.
9. Snapping the food system's bottleneck. Curb power of monopoles through anti-trust laws.
10. Owning and providing restitution for the injustices of the past and present. Forgive debt owed by the Global South to the Global North and start paying back for damage we have done.

Superpower Syndrome

2008-06-08T20:31:00.000-07:00

A psychiatrist sheds light on the thinking behind the need for absolute power. It is the same psychology embodied by Darth Vadar and handily explained, in the final episode of the Star Wars epic, as his fear of the death of his beloved which spurs him to control everything rather than allow uncertainty into his life or let the force take care of things.

This author confirms that fear of death is the underlying psychology of superpower syndrome, but he also offers quite a bit more on the subject that I found helpful. And that was chiefly in his analysis of apocalyptic thinking and how it ties into the tendency, especially in western mythology, to think in terms of good and evil and eradicating the latter. His inclusion of Japanese apocalyptic thinking post-Hiroshima allows him to extend this dualistic story to the East, but he is chiefly focusing on how this plays out in Christian and Islamic mythology. It is a story of purification through destruction especially by fire, but also includes the purification of the race as with the Nazi agenda and other forms of purification either/or thinking. He claims that all religions have this story, but he does not address the religions that embody the yin and yang mix, and the teachings on how to live with ambiguity. (It may be that Western psychology itself is a need to alleviate ambiguity.)

He addresses how apocalyptic technology—giving humans the ability to annihilate the planet—has brought this internal story to planet threatening levels particularly the way the Bush administration has played it out by embracing preemptive war. This change is what makes superpower syndrome so dangerous and has alarmed enough writers to take it on in various books. Yes! magazine did a recent cover story on how to step down from the superpower agenda and join the community of nations through diplomacy. These discussions all mention how the desire to control in the name of absolute security will ultimately lead to the collapse of said superpower, mainly because you can never control it all and the effort to do so will bankrupt us and rob us of domestic infrastructure maintenance.

He gives a blow-by-blow account of what happened on a psychological level to Americans in light of the apocalyptic imagery provided by the 9/11 events. This was helpful as I did not live any of the stages of response he describes as part of being a survivor of a traumatic event. This includes death anxiety, survivor guilt, psychic numbing, suspiciousness, and the resulting search for meaning in this ordeal. (In the Tsunami, it was the Westerners who were focused on "why me, why us, why now" while the Thais were like "shit happens" and how do we make sure the dead don't come back to haunt us. Note: there were absolutely no ghost stories to contend with post 9/11; Karen Kingston, fung shui guru from England, says that those who died in the towers died very clean deaths so maybe that's why. And maybe fire is purifying after all.)

As is the tendency of psychiatrists, this author has taken the patients story at face value and analyses it accordingly without questioning that perhaps the patient's story is in itself pathological. He does not consider that Osama bin Laden may have had nothing to do with 9/11 per the analysis of the Osama video claiming the 9/11 deed, having now been shown to be a fake. What then would be the psychological underpinnings of that fabrication? This would have been a much more interesting story if he had brought in the need for American apocalyptic storytelling to invent al Qaeda as the enemy as reported by the BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares. More interesting still, if he had analyzed the Bush administration in light of MIHOP or LIHOP theories (Made It Happen On Purpose or Let It Happen On Purpose). I would have been interested in what goes on in the minds of leaders who kill their own people to create false flag events. He did not even analyse the psychological need for survivors to invent conspiracy theories. I had to refer to Wickipedia re: 9/11 to assure myself that all facets of reality were still being addressed by the democracy of content providers. It is possible that the inability of psychiatrists to consider more than one story is part of the dualistic, black and white apocalyptic think mode that he is warning us against.

Though the book annoyed me on these many levels, I found it helpful in showing me how my own recent thoughts of economic collapse in the US was a version of apocalyptic thinking. And having recently learned that it took Rome 300 years to fall and the Mayans who did it quick, a 100 years, I feel much more relaxed about it now. Even though we are headed for deep economic doo doo with oil prices spiked again, it will still take a while for societal collapse. And with nothing to do people will have more time to think about things.

Nemesis—The Last Days of the American Republic

2008-05-18T20:15:00.000-07:00

The best summation I've read on the political underpinnings of the fall of Rome, the first republic to suffer collapse due to overstretch. I understood the overstretch part, but I did not understand the role that Cesar played in overextending the empire and the role his nephew Cesar Augustus played in transforming the republic, with its checks and balances that insured democracy, to one of a military dictatorship and to the creation of himself as emperor much as George W. is doing today in the ongoing transformation of our democracy into a military dictatorship and perpetual war-making machine.

He fears that this warmongering will eventually bankrupt us and lead to economic collapse, a very real fear especially since no one has any idea how much money the pentagon is actually sucking up, not to mention the CIA, the president's private army. Our defense industry is shoring up the economy as it is. And with China and Japan lending us money we're relying on the kindness of strangers. The Blanche Dubois economy as one wit put it. Chalmers does not mention that the dollar is used to buy oil, said to be another reason countries honor our worthless dollar.

I was amused to learn in his chapter on space weapons that garbage in space is our chief worry because a piece of junk could knock out all sorts of communications satellites causing misunderstandings about who might have been attacking who by blowing up said satelite. Lot of satellite politics I didn't know about that demonstrate that we really should be devoting ourselves to world cooperation via treaties, as others are doing, rather than world domination with more high tech toys.

Explains how our nefarious activities regarding outsourcing of torture and CIA activity is watched by amateur plane spotters and witnesses in international airports pooling information. This does not endear us to international community.

All this detail did not, however, allow Chalmers to veer from his pet theory that 9/11 was the result of "blowback" from our controlling foreign policies and military colonialism. Despite his bucket-loads of facts, he can give no evidence that Osama Bin Laden did any of the things he is accused of. He simply leaps to conclusions without even bothering to state that he is speculating. He does give ofher evidence of "false flag" operations for the purpose of increasing the military budget.

(Using his facts I was able to feed my own pet theories of the impact of American presence in Thailand. For instance American anti-communist sentiment, he confirms, was expressed in the form of cash gifts (foreign aid) to any country willing to declare that they were carrying out anti-communist projects. Thus I can conclude that the Thai military government received money as a result of establishing policies to encourage the cutting down of the teak forest to "deter" communist insurgents hiding in the jungle. The resulting subsistence farming led to the exodus of farmer's sons to Bangkok to work in construction and their daughters to work in the sex trade (and sometimes visa versa). American service men in Thailand, during the Vietnam War, the existing sex trade grew by four times. (Said sex trade was originally created by the Japanese occupation during WWII.) Since foreign aid from the US is one of the most powerful tools used to manipulate the activities of developing countries, it wouldn't be difficult for the US to put a stop to the sex trade, drug trade, illegal logging, harsh prison conditions for American citizens overseas or any other activity US citizens might wish to put a stop to, but no, we are policing the world for non-humanitarian reasons.)

As Chalmers tells it, the US is interested mostly in establishing US military bases all over the planet in order to control the emergence of any potential super power as has been the agenda of the neo-cons since Reagan. The entire book was very illuminating on this need for relentless control. It is so infuriating to be part of this Darth Vader psychology, much of which has been manifested in policies implemented by the Bush Administration. We are indeed a changed country.

He notes that the number of large and medium size bases (38 in 2005) is just about the number of colonies the British had during the height of the British Empire and is close to the number of bases the Roman Empire had at its height. The US negotiates with the host country to make sure it is not held accountable for anything it or its servicemen do there to local citizens or the environment. This is the source of much contention in the example he gives of Japan, now a crucial base from which to control China. He recommends that the US dismantle the empire as the British did.

Exposed, The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products...

2008-02-08T08:47:00.000-08:00

The main treatise of this book is not so much about what's poisoning us in our everyday lives, although that is mentioned, it is that the US no longer controls industry standards because the EU has taken the lead in banishing toxins from multiple industries including electronics, cosmetics, and children's toys as well as banning genetically engineered foods. It has also led the way in demanding that manufacturers take back products at the end of its lifecycle. All this is significant because the EU is also influencing China and India and other emerging economies. This sidestepping of the Bush administration's resistance to change has caused us to remain the guinea pigs for not only our own industry, but also serving as a dumping ground for products that cannot be sold in the EU and other regulated countries.

The book describes the historical precedence that has laid the way for this parting of the ways with the EU. The US chose to monitor dangerous products by allowing citizens to sue for damages when they are hurt by products. This litigious climate of consumer protection is a process that industry has, of course, worked to erode. Meanwhile in Europe, lawsuits were not much tolerated and settlements were small, but citizens had a political climate that demanded that the government protect them from dangerous products in the first place, thus was born the precautionary principle. The difference between the two is that, with the cautionary principle, the burden of proof is on the manufacturer to prove that their product is safe while our approach puts the burden of proof on the consumer to prove that a product is unsafe. In other words our brand of capitalism allowed business to flourish at the risk of consumers while their democracy put citizen safety first and let industry operate within those parameters. (In reality they fight over this just as much as we do, but the base from which they begin is different.)

I also took note that the generic brands are the most likely to fall to the bottom of the regulations heirarchy since the "white box" stores that sell these products always seek the path of least resistance, ie cheapest, easiest to make and least likely to object customer. This is politically interesting because activists are always going after the name brands, but nothing is ever done about the off off off Broadway brands.

The most interesting implication of this shift in power towards the EU is that it has reversed the "race to the bottom" that globalization forced upon us and has used it to leverage up the lax standards of US industry. If this writer had used more inflammatory language such as "race to the bottom" this book would have been much more exciting to read instead of the dry as dust slog it was. I might also add that the implications of this shift points to how free market capitalism is trumped by heavily regulated capitalism (formally socialized democracy). So there.

No Logo

2007-11-15T09:05:00.000-08:00

I didn't read No Logo when it first came out because I was already a no logo kind of girl. It was worth reading though because she fleshed out the whole sweatshop situation for me. After spending the first few chapters describing how companies have gone from making products to advertising them to branding and now focus only on creating an image, she describes how the whole sweatshop issue is a result of companies getting rid of their own factories and searching for the cheapest labor to assemble their products.

Contractors compete with each other to get those everyday low prices for them. This created what were basically indoor work camps, all over Asia, enclosed in walled compounds that were protected from local taxes in an effort to lure the big name "investors". These "export processing zones" or "free trade zones" are impenetrable to outsiders and short on inspectors. The labor, usually teenage girls and young women, are kept intimidated to discourage labor unions from forming. So what we're talking about here is a structural component of globalization. Countries compete with each other for the big brand name investors so they grant the foreign investor immunity from their own laws regarding minimum wage and conditions, while inspectors turned a blind eye to violations of safety and overtime claiming those to be a management problem. Brand name companies don't have to face the conditions they have created until activists force them to.

Klein asked the same question posed by Travels Of A T-shirt in which the author claims that such factory work is preferable to working on the farm. This was also a statement made by one of the factory owners. The girls are outraged by this assumption and point out that it is just a justification given by those who employ them. One said she missed her family and wished she was at home with them because at least when she was sick there would be someone to take care of her. And they only make enough money to cover expenses so they have little opportunity to either help their family or improve their own lives. Klein gained access to the factories by sneaking into one of the compounds. The author of the t-shirt book was invited into a factory by the owner, so there are factories and there are factories. As I learned from the Green Festival, activists have now established fair trade guidelines and factories that comply to their guidelines can register as a fair trade factory.

Klein also gave me insight into what happened to activism when it got mired in identity politics. She herself was in college fighting for women's rights, gay rights, minority rights, etc. as was I. The problem was that the politics became all about equal representation in the media and equal opportunity for jobs. The equal representation part was co-opted by advertisers looking for niche markets while the equal opportunity for jobs became all about access for middle class women and minorities. Everyone forgot all about the poor and the class system that made sure the poor would remain poor. My complaint was that gay rights had become all about rights for gay people who could present as nearly identical to straight white married upper middle-class people. And women's rights had become all about getting women into the CEO's office while neglecting them at the welfare mom level.

She points out how activists narrowed down their focus, but that there's been a come back as students came to understand that the shirt on their backs was made by their peers in sweatshop conditions and began to protest globalization. Her book predates the WTO protest in Seattle, so she was on the pulse. In the end she acknowledges that there is a limit to activism focused on brand names, while the bigger damage is being done by companies that extract resources and aren't household names.

The Secret History of the American Empire

2007-11-07T09:03:00.000-08:00

The fun of reading John Perkins is that his books are more like spy novels than heavy reading about globalization and empire building. So interspersed between exotic descriptions of Asian hotties entertaining corporate hit men, are nice summations of how the IMF, World Bank and economic hit men collude to bring countries into the corporate empire. Basically the same ground as covered in Shock Doctrine, but with more stories of illicit CIA activity.

Often his sources are cloak and dagger in their anonymity. This seems to render him suspect in the eyes of many skeptical readers, but the stories are still compelling and likely true. I mean why wouldn't they be? We now know from recently declassified reports that there was indeed a CIA backed coup to overthrow Allende and then he was assassinated. He describes how a democratically elected leader might be elected based on his promises to help the poor, distribute land and otherwise take resources away from corporations by nationalizing mines, oil reserves, etc,. This is when corporate economic hit men first try to bring around the elected leader with bribes, then when that doesn't work, the CIA jackals threaten him and if that doesn't take, the CIA stage a coup and finally an assassination if he can't be budged.

He also tells the story of a young couple who wanted to find out what life was really like as a sweatshop worker living on $2.41 a day in Indonesia. Conditions described were bordering on destitute so now I'm really mad at the economics professor who wrote Travels of a T-shirt and concluded that these jobs were giving women economic freedom. Besides with the Gap being exposed as an employer of child slave labour, I'm even more inclined to assume that bad conditions and human rights violations are more the rule than the scandalous exception.

There was also another interesting tidbit about OPEC and the gas shortage of the '70s. According to his sources, Nixon was playing a brilliant game of chess by backing Israel in the Six day war which he knew would piss off the Arabs who then raised oil prices. This is interesting in that I've not read anywhere else that pissing off the Arabs was intentional. It was after that that economic hitmen were sent into Saudi Arabia to make a deal for corporations to handle all their infrastructure. US also persuaded them to invest their oil money in American treasury bonds and agree to only sell oil for dollars. Since Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard this gave the dollar an "oil" standard which we are busy trying to protect by going to war in any oil producing country that makes deals to sell oil in Euros. Speculators seem to betting that the Euro will win, given the 40% devaluation of the dollar in recent years.

His stories about Africa tell how NGOs and the Peace Corp are inadvertantly helping corporate takeover, by instilling first world living standards. For the amount of money spent to send over Western "teachers", they could be developing teachers who are already there who know the land already and how to farm it. Instead the Peace Corps teachers are bringing in GMO seeds and pesticides and fertilizers to "help" farmers get into debt and kill off their land.

And finally he talks about how to make change, telling stories of how Rainforest Action Network got their point across through public humiliation of corporations like Home Depot. He emphasizes that even though companies seem so big, so was the English crown to the colonialists. Though it's not my preferred metaphor, he does persuade me to believe that ordinary people can put pressure on corporations.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

2007-10-22T08:13:00.000-07:00

Naomi Klein brings us up to speed on how the economic agenda of the neo-cons came to be the mantra of American foreign policy and is now coming home to roost. I wanted to pour myself a stiff drink from the opening chapter where she describes what was really happening in New Orleans post Katrina. Her account of how the ideas of one man—Milton Friedman— in what was known as the Chicago School of economics (from the University of Chicago) was exported to South America, then Africa, then the Eastern block and Russia, South East Asia and finally to Iraq, is enraging, heart breaking and illuminating. She answered so many of my questions that she has forever galvanized my understanding of the last 35 years, just as Howard Zinn opened my eyes to the 200 years prior to that.

Much of what I knew already about the policies of the World Bank and the structural adjustment programs of the IMF was just the beginning of her tale. So much more was going on from the Ford Foundation sponsoring students from South America to study with Milton Friedman to the banks freezing all loans in order to force Allende's government to buckle to corporate takeovers of state factories to the support of strongman dictatorships by the US to Amnesty International erasing all mention of why people were being disappeared and tortured (so as not to offend corporate donors). Yes, why indeed? Why did we simply accept that South American dictators enjoyed such activities just for kicks? Turns out that all those tortured and disappeared were leaders in the socialist party. Capitalism is not the preferred economic system of a democratic people. All over the world the neo-cons were having to fight democratically elected socialist governments and the tactics they used resemble war and now is war in Iraq.

The underlying thesis of Ms. Klein's book is that the preferred strategy for forcing a country to embrace capitalism is to shock them with such severe economic hardships that the populace is too stunned to realize what is going on and when they do come too, they find out that their infrastructure has been sold dirt cheap to mult-national companies and that contracts have been made for so far into the future that the new governments are unable to stop the resulting rise in unemployment, 25% say, or the putting out of business of local businesses. Wal-Mart anyone?

I have long been looking for a way to explain the flawed thinking of free market ideology and now that I know it was just an extremist economic theory involving the desire for an unobtainable pure system, I can compare it to another extremist ideology. That of breeding the perfect race. It just isn't possible and to do so would be to hack off all the parts that offend the ideal. We know where that got us in the racial cleansing department. It is my sincere hope that one day the phrase "free market" will be as abhorrent as the word eugenics.

Meanwhile, having been mauled by such free market extremism, the victim's best bet is to play dead until the Grizzly bear moves on. In South America where the victim was left for dead, a new socialism is being born as countries are now banding together to make their own trade agreements and to keep prices stable. (Fluctating prices is how money is made on the free market by speculators/investors). And as long as profits are to be more easily made elsewhere, the beast will move on. That's how South East Asia was tripped up. The Asian Tiger countries took the advice of free market advocates to allow capital to move freely and, on rumor alone, it did move, leaving these countries with no money in the till. Then when they said well that didn't work let's restrict capital again, the IMF swooped in and said oh no, no, no you can't do that if you want to be part of free trade, you'll scare off investors, you must take money out of public services. Ms. Klein makes a correlation between the 20% rise in girls sold into the sex trade in Thailand and the implementation of IMF structural adjustments.

Meanwhile with all this destruction going on, in the new world of post 9/11 war, terrorism and global warming, a whole new market has evolved in security and reconstruction. And we thought the defense industry was bad. Now the stock market can cheer on death and destruction because its good for more than half of all businesses.

The world was caught by surprise by such unfettered greed because, before we always had the example of the Soviet Union and communism to tame the beast. With the fall of Russia, capitalism could roar on. This could have been a very depressing story, but Ms. Klein ends her tale by describing how people learned from this experience and are fighting back by decentralizing power, localizing it in essence, and making laws that their people will now know to make stick. May it be so.

A Game As Old As Empire

2007-10-12T08:12:00.000-07:00

Following on the success of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, this anthology brings to the public eye even more crimes with more concrete details than John Perkins was able to impart. The whole shady loans to developing countries is explained plus a chapter just on the Phillipines to demonstrate what happens. And if the World Bank thinks a project is too much of a credit risk or is environmentally unsound even for their standards, there's the export credit agencies for the odd nuclear power plants and massive arms sales to areas of conflict.

Then there's the whole nefarious world of offshore banking which is reported here to be a substantial part of the global financial traffic thus allowing all the crooks of the world to channel profits out of their home countries, launder money, evade taxes and take kickbacks without anybody being the wiser. That's also how the arms trade and drug trafficking can carry on.

Repressive regimes in Africa mine resources from the land with what amounts to slave labor created from local wars. Coltan for instance is an ingredient of the Sony playstation 2. Here also, how oil production sharing agreements will rob the Iraqis of most of their revenue stream.

Debt relief just creates more burden for the same country, but here is offered some suggestions which would require the redistribution of social assets like land, education, technology and political power. Also resurrecting basic legal principles which would deem certain dubious debt contracted by dishonest governments to be non-enforceable. And addressing the offshore banking problem of capital flight.

Talking Hands

2007-10-10T08:11:00.000-07:00

A journalist brings her linguistic background to this travel research story of a group of language scientists setting out to capture an emerging sign language. The story is sandwiched between chapters that recap the history of sign language, in particular American Sign Language.

Until the '70s, sign language in America was considered to be more pantomime and gesture than actual language and thus inferior because how then would the deaf come to know such concepts as God. This distinction was what fueled the cause of the oralist who insisted that the deaf be taught to speak and that sign language be suppressed. Then a hearing professor who had come to teach Chaucer at the Gallaudet University became interested in the sign language in use outside of the classroom and determined that it had the linguistic components of a language. This is determined by a series of criteria including word order, the use of classifiers and other features that make it a symbolic code rather than representational pantomime. He reminds me of Dr. Evelyn Hooker, the psychiatrist who convinced the world that homosexuality was not a pathology and should be stricken from the list of mental illnesses. That was in the '70s too.

And when instruments came along that could show what part of the brain was firing when what activity was happening, it showed that the language centers were being activated when sign language was used as opposed to pantomime. Studies of stroke victims clinched it.

The book also includes background on linguistics and how language evolves with the help of children who have the capacity to easily create language. This is quite fascinating because it shows how innate language is in humans and how the need to communicate concepts is so ingrained in us. More powerful, one might surmise than the urge to hit each other and steal stuff. And as powerful as the urge to mate say.

Also learned what it was that Noam Chomsky contributed to the study of linguistics. He basically turned it upside down by kicking out the behaviorists who insisted that language had to be taught word by word, when it was clear that children had the ability to conceptualize and invent language, given some basic exposure. And deaf children did the same with sign, or they would invent it which brings the story back to the Bedouin village in the middle of the dessert with a population of deaf people that invented their own sign language.

Made Love, Got War

2007-09-26T08:10:00.000-07:00

Norman Solomon divides the post atom bomb generation from the previous one by raising the question of the psychological impact of living in a world with no future because we are now capable of blowing up the planet. The rest of his peace activist memoir is dotted with thought provoking nuggets and anecdotes, but no overall thesis. For this journalist, it is a sort of you win some you loose some battle with the media, while his personal revelations are rather minimal.

He did introduce me to the idea of faith in arms when he relays his conversation with a company publicist on his tour of Los Alamos National Laboratory (where the A bomb was designed). This is the concept that we must have the bomb in order to deter others from attacking us. This theory leads to the arms race, because you're always going to have to top the other guy in firepower, but it mostly gave me insight into how the nuclear bomb club thinks—that certain civilized nations are allowed the bomb because they would never use it, but they need to have it in case other less civilized nations decide to use it. In that case how come Japan has remained unattacked despite having no military? Or is it that Japan has friends in the bomb club? Not to mention that Bush wans to make pre-emptive war so that kind of throws the civilized part out, not to mention that the bomb has been used to back up virtually every foreign policy put into place by the club. Wasn't the war against communism basically a battle of economic policy differences? This faith in arms concept has nevertheless made me wonder since I do believe in self defense, just not in weapons of mass destruction. So does that mean I automatically surrender to those who have them?

At his talk Normon Solomon implied that the peace movement was suffering from a lack of commitment from a populace more motivated to buy lottery tickets than to call their representatives. While reading his memoir I was struck by how uninspiring the story of the peace movement is compared to the civil rights movements or any other movement involving raising awareness and taking action. He makes fun of the make love not war strategies of the '60s, but I was left with the thought that, fundamentally, by the time a peace movement is required it is already too late. If a leader has the power to activate military forces then there's little to stop him using it. He only needs to persuade the public of imminent threat to the nation—false flag events being the most effective. And if stopping the war is the job of the peace movement then why do we have to wait until the profiteers get their piece of the action? Polls are always showing that people want peace, so why do we have to remind our representatives to represent these sentiments? Do we have to threaten their lives to compete with the corporate interests?

I think the most effective tactic of the peace movement is to uncover and spread the truth once war is upon us. It is a battle of who gets to tell the nations story. Which comes down to maintaining access to broadcasting and media and a cadre of responsible journalists willing to educate the public in a way that can compete with the info-glut which means that educated comedians and cartoonists may be the frontline of peace activists. And bloggers. And holding up the rear must come responsible historians. Thus this book could be more effective if it were told as a "and then we uncovered the lies and we told the people". It would be the story of a nations evolving consciousness.

Fashion: Sartorial Opiate or Shamanistic Magic?

2007-08-30T09:02:00.000-07:00

New word: sartorial means pertaining to tailoring. The history of consumerism is embodied in the glamorous, eye candy history of fashion. These writers have more direct awareness of the relationship between fashion and imperialism than most economists. Where economists seem to accept industrial growth and expansion as a good that will raise all boats, these art historians and cultural observers touch on the darker underpinnings of an elitism that could not survive without cheap labor to shore up the expensive tastes of its wasteful leisure classes. Christopher Breward, author of "Fashion", from the Oxford History of Art series, is particularly insightful in this regard.

From his rather dry account, I learned that "dynamic obsolescence" was invented by fashion stylists beginning in the mid 19th century with the concept of the fall and winter collection which aggressively rendered last seasons fashion out of style. Obsolescence is of course the driving growth of virtually all industries today.

Fashion being the most portable and accessible of cultural markers was spread from the three key cities: London, Paris and New York via print media, the fashion show and later film and television to other cities aspiring to rank as global players. (The fashion show was big in Bangkok where it was usually associated with royalty. I was a runway model for two of these events at the home of local royalty when I was five and six years old.)

So I was intrigued to learn that it is mainly in the West that fashion was ever changing while elsewhere it was static due to local customs and social hierarchies. This does parallel the rise of the cult of the individual in the West, but I would go further and look at the religious beliefs that allowed this cult of the individual to arise. Buddhism, for instance, with its teachings of no self would not lend itself to the cultivation of individualism and still doesn't, not with the skill of personal power that Western psychology has elevated it to.

But I am not in a hurry to label fashion as a tool of imperialist Western selfishness. These accounts of fashion also point out the influence of street fashion from the 19th century dandy to the Punk styles of the '70s. Vivienne Westwood, whose fashion footsteps I seem to be following, is credited with firing up the whole phenomena of Punk. She then went on to fuse 16th century, ie Renaissance clothing cuts, with modern materials and gender bending presentation. Fashion was certainly a part of the emancipation of women, had a hand in popularizing cycling and has been the visual marker of all kinds of anti-establishment movements including queer culture. It has been as much a tool of the outsider in communicating resistance as it has been a tool of the elite to dictate the parameters of the in crowd.

But to go even deeper, I remembered from the novel "The Mists of Avalon" that glamour is a word borrowed from witchcraft. Thus glamour is a concept used by witches to enhance spells that require the viewer to be enchanted by the appearance of the witch herself. (Kind of a sleight of hand like the use of the Force in Starwars when Obe One persuaded Stormtroopers to allow him entry through a security checkpoint.)

In this sense it could be said that fashion is akin to the use of hallucinogenic drugs. Where drugs were once an important part of shamanistic ritual, they are now taken without the ritual and have become portals to addiction. Thus fashion has become a portal for consumer addiction. But rather than take the puritanical route and declare a "fashion free" zone, I would prefer to reclaim fashion as an inspirational art force that requires a constant stream of creative manifestations to communicate ideas and ideals, but it would also have to be done without compromising values of sustainability. And I can do that as long as there is already manufactured materials out there to salvage. After that it will be back to the fig leaf.

The Travels of a T-Shirt In the Global Economy

2007-08-22T08:58:00.000-07:00

This is just the kind of non-fiction I like–a journey in search of the truth filled with anecdotes about real people. The author, however, is an economist professor and one who upholds the ideals of the "free market" while acknowledging that one doesn't exist. Her quest is to find out whether the claims of recent student activists about the horrors of sweatshops are really justified.

The long view she offers through history taught me a lot about the influence of the textile industry as the primary driver of the industrial revolution—satanic mills and all that, not to mention driving the slave trade to work the cotton farms to supply those mills in England. Is this not an early example of globalization?

Then there's the history of protectionism which gave me a working knowledge of how politics work in the American congress and the role of the textile industry in the South re: trade and foreign policy. And the role these protectionist policies played in helping industrialize all the little players in all those third world countries that wouldn't have been able to compete with Japan or China, but were given their moment in the market because of US quota systems.

As a good economist would, the author sees this industrialization of all the corners of the world as a leg up out of poverty. She did give me pause in her claim that jobs for women in sweatshops working long hours for little money were an improvement over jobs at home on the farm working even longer hours for no pay under the authority of the family patriarch. We all know about the oppression of women in China, after all, so we'll go along with that.

The history of China's early textile manufacturing serves as an example of sustainable production. The farmers themselves, the entire family, carded the cotton, spun it into yarn and wove it into cloth on their home loom. They made their own clothes from it, then took the rest to market to sell. Her point is that this system created no bottlenecks so no Eli Whitney to invent the cotton gin or whatever was needed to ease those bottle necks, the solving of which would increase production (which would result in increased demand, but she doesn't mention that).

The most fun chapter is about the used clothing market. Unlike e-waste, dumping our used clothing on poor countries around the world isn't toxic. Though the documentary T-shirt Travels claims that such dumping destroys the local clothing industry, she makes the observation that it was already destroyed through mismanagement of the local governments and because socialism didn't work because factories didn't seem to produce and things just didn't get done.

Whenever pro free market writers talk about mismanagement by local governments, I've learned to read that as a sign of lazy thinking. Local governments may be mismanaged and corrupt, but they do not have nearly the power of destruction that large scale economic policies enacted by the World Bank and IMF do. Her anecdotes of the entrepreneurs she meets does convince me that socialism is miserable at providing incentives for workers to produce and innovate, but then she didn't see The Take about the power of democratically run cooperatives to produce for whatever markets they can find usually local.

It's too bad the student activist that inspired her didn't also shout something out about the deterioration of the planet because not once does she mention how industry impacts the earth, polluting it and using up natural resources and she was writing this in 2004, so no excuse.

The Bush Agenda

2007-08-15T15:37:00.000-07:00

Covers much more than just the Bush agenda, going back to the first influence of the Neo-cons with the Carter doctrine drawn up by Paul Wolfowitz. Covers all the usual territory about PNAC (Plan for a New American Century) and how that group first expressed themselves by asking Clinton to go to war with Iraq. Much of this story I already knew; what was illuminating were the details and background on the four companies that are major war profiteers and supporters of Bush's global agenda, namely Halliburton, Chevron, Bechtel and Lockheed Martin. Except for Haliburton, the other three are based in Northern California making it a local story for me. I was particularly illuminated by the history of Bechtel and how George Schultz angled to overthrow US policies that would help his company gain business access to the whole world to build nuclear power plants, thus kicking off the global proliferation of nuclear arms.

My father worked for the defense industry (as an engineer) so reading about Lockheed Martin recalled the work he did and the eagerness with which he wanted us to go to the Persian Gulf war so he could field test the heads-up pilot's helmet for which he was able to patent some solution of his that was crucial to making it work. That I was a peace activist did amuse him so especially because he was so confident that war was inevitable.

The author lays out the history of the oil industry both in Northern California and Iraq. Know the history of oil and everything falls into place including who has power in American politics and why we support repressive regimes in the Middle East. She also gives a nice run down of the destructive policies of the World Bank and the "structural adjustment policies" of the IMF that have been the undoing of national economies world wide.

Most fascinating was the story of how the Bush agenda proceeded to erase all of Iraq's existing laws that they didn't like in order to dismantle the socialist infrastructure and force the country to favor the services of multi-national corporations. Changing a countries laws is illegal per the Geneva convention and why everything is such a mess, but no pundit is really going to discuss it in a big picture way because it means discussing how the socialistic government ran things much better for the populace while capitalism is all about looting multi-nationals. We do know bits and pieces like how the Bush agenda fired key workers who were running the country, but I don't remember anyone saying they were replaced with Haliburton and Bechtel scabs from Pakistan. They also fired the Iraqi soldiers and apparently let them go home fully armed. So here we have key people out of work supported by an armed contingent while their foreign replacements are making an expensive mess of the reconstruction, doing things the American way when all the existing fittings and hardware were from France or the Soviet Union. Who would support this nightmare?

I heard a speaker on Iraq talk about how the Iraqis have a saying about the American reconstruction. "To heal the wound you must first pull out the knife."

And despite this story being called the Bush Agenda, it is not a new one. Under Clinton, the economy of Yugoslavia was similarly invaded for the purpose of replacing nationally controlled infrastructure with private enterprise. But she doesn't mention that. I read it in To Kill A Nation. What is new is the extent to which the Bush administration has taken this strategy especially by forcing the signing of "free trade" policies that would make the WTO cream its pants, not only with Iraq but with other middle eastern countries thus forming MEFTA.

It becomes clear through the details, Antonia Juhasz gives, that this is not a war, but a military takeover by American corporations. Particularly telling were the provisions put into place to rewrite Iraqi textbooks. Gives new meaning to the phrase "history is written by the victors". Reading this book convinced me that we should not even say the words "war in Iraq" because that is essentially a euphemism implying that we are defending ourselves from aggressive violent outsiders while protecting innocents. From now on I'm going to call it the American occupation of Iraq, make that the illegal American occupation of Iraq.

This is one of the few non-fiction books I've read whose author is a woman. I'm glad to see that a woman will tackle economics as a world organizing principle. I was beginning to fear that, while women excelled in discussing psychology and social justice, they were resistant when it comes to the importance of economic health. The last woman I read who tackled this territory was Frances Moore Lappe of "Food For A Small Planet" fame. Her book Food First was my first glimpse into the continuation of colonialism through corporate globalizatio

The Middle Mind

2007-07-18T09:01:00.000-07:00

So much of what Curtis White says in the final third of this book is brilliant and had me furiously taking notes. He also infuriated me and tried my patience with the first two thirds of his book while he complains about what I have long abandoned as hopeless mediocrity. In his characteristically cranky white boy way (by which I mean he references mostly works by white guys and gives grudging lip service to feminism, queer theory and minorities), he gives the impression that he is struggling in quicksand to free himself from the very culture he is complaining about.

The Middle Mind is what ails us says Curtis White, who characterizes this condition as a lack of imagination and therefore an inability to think and as a result make change happen. He lays out his thesis in a systematic and somewhat exhaustive way to show how the imagination has been co-opted by various sectors of society including the entertainment industry, the academic institutions, the military industrial complex, technological innovation, capitalism, the New Age spiritual movement and the art world. Ultimately he identifies that it is art (both high and low) and philosophy, that will best serve us as the vehicle for cultivating imagination in our culture.

He chooses art for the job by which I gather he means art that has been imbued with meaning and context, but not so controlled that the sublime and unexpected cannot slip in. I was illuminated by his description of how consumerism has robbed us of historical perspective and context. This is why we can't seem to think things through to their logical conclusion. We are made to be satisfied with a surface level of critieria and ethics. We are encouraged to be "stupid/smart" so that we contribute to the market (ie capitalism) through innovation, but don't question the status quo.

He tells us that "art reminds us that change is real and the possible is possible". He specifies that it is the job of art to remind us of justice, freedom and creativity—the promises of the Enlightenment. Art should "critique and imagine alternatives to the social status quo. Art is at work only when it is biting the hand that feeds it."

This last concept was particularly empowering for me because I've always felt that way about art and the market for art. The book was most useful in how it got me thinking about "being the change I want to see" but not that rah rah solution oriented, techno-wonderful, change, more subversive, gritty, badly behaved, unpredictable and revolutionary in meaning. Fodder for my next essay.

Tales of the Lavender Menace

2007-05-14T07:25:00.000-07:00

Karla Jay, who edited one of the anthologies in which my work is published, wrote this memoir of her radical lesbian activism in New York in the '70s. It was published in 1999, but I just got around to reading it because of my renewed interest in the lesbian community through the L Word and because I made connections with young queer bloggers who made me aware that there was still a queer consciousness worth paying attention to.

Karla's book gave me new respect for my predecessors in her very readable and deftly analyzed account of what is now classic queer history, from the Stonewall rebellion to the consciousness raising groups in the feminist movement. Karla herself introduced consciousness raising to groups in Los Angeles and played a key role in getting lesbians recognized in the male dominated gay liberation movement. She was one of the founders of The Lavender Menace, a group that was responding to the attempt to suppress the presence of lesbians in the women's movement. There are some famous characters like Rita Mae Brown, portrayed from her early appearance demanding that lesbians be recognized in the women's movement.

Karla integrates her own coming out/coming of age story, beginning within the context of her dysfunctional family in New York City. Her nutcase of a mother spices up the narrative as does her anecdotes of her sexual adventures, her student lifestyle, oddball roommates, beloved cats, and the occasional live-in lover. But what she gave to me was confirmation that there was once a radical sensibility in the movement, one that asked for much more than assimilation into mainstream institutions like marriage and the army. One that envisioned a radical restructuring of family and relationships and community.

I resonated with how she used her sexuality to connect with women before really knowing them. I admired the ballsiness of the political actions they carried out and realized the significance of what they were doing. This was the history that had preceded my coming out. One that I was already poised to rebel against because it didn't fit my idea of lesbians as mysterious femme fatales informed more by Marlene Dietrich and the movie Cabaret than the women's movement, plus the influence of my matriarchal family with its own brand of feminism. It wasn't until the emergence of lipstick lesbians that I felt I could return to the lesbian community.

The World Is Flat

2007-05-07T15:37:00.000-07:00

Reads like an Evangelical preacher explaining, to the already converted, how we will have heaven on Earth if everyone on the planet would just embrace Capitalism and repent from the evil ways of Communism, Marxism and terrorism.

NY Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner, Freidman, is well known, which is why so many people were reading this pap and mentioning it to me until I felt I had to suffer through it in order to respond intelligently. The first third of the book is about how the internet brought us globalized trade, thus "flattening" the world. All old news if you've kept up with technology or lost money in the dot.com debacle. Some interesting anecdotes of how India ramped up their call centers in Bangalore, that explains a lot about India's current stake in the world's economy, as well as China's, but it's really about Dell Computer's stake in the world and McDonalds.

All his details are a good example of how invested we are in increased complexity, vastly long supply lines, and an exponentially expanding power grid. He does not mention anything about how vulnerable these features make the whole world (except in the event of terrorism).

In the second third of the book he gives his readers a stern talking to about how Americans have to get back to discipline and hard work and figure this whole flat world thing out, in order to keep up with the much cheaper and better educated worker in India who so happily man (and woman) those call centers. At which point I suspect most will put the book down.

Near the end, he becomes so stunningly ill conceived, as to be rendered dangerous, if anyone bothers to read to the end of this tome. He has the audacity to suggest that Capitalism is the ultimate tool of peace because every country that has a McDonald's in it is far less likely to make war on its neighbors (because supply lines have become so important). He does not mention that every country that has a McDonald's in it is far less likely to be bombed by the US, back into the Stone Age, because it has not yet been colonized by corporate interests and needs to be humbled so it can be.

He explains the events of 9/11 as a cautionary tale about how the flattening of the world makes us vulnerable to the suicide bombers of the world (all 200 of them since 9/11) while making no mention of the impact of our sanctified, military terrorism, apart from some references to Bush and Co having behaved badly.

He does attempt to fend off critics of capitalism by offering to tweak the system with his suggestions for a more "compassionate" capitalism. His appeal to industry to take the compassionate route is about as effective a call to arms as a preacher's plea to his flock to abstain from sex (and for himself to abstain from buggering the choir).

His understanding of the world is so simplistic, he reminds me of our Teflon president, Reagan. I can just see him browsing a bookstore and saying to himself, "I don't need to read that, it's written by a Blah, Blah", whenever he comes upon anything that might challenge his viewpoint. I gather that most of the nation sees the world the way he presents it and conduct themselves in a similar fashion.

The Collapse of Complex Societies

2007-04-09T15:30:00.000-07:00

Published in 1988, this is the grandaddy of collapse literature. A short, but pithy academic treatment of the subject. Tainter starts by analysing all the past attempts at explaining why societies collapse including: resource depletion, new resources overwhelming old systems, catastrophes, insufficient response to circumstances, other complex societies taking over, intruders, conflict contradictions and mismanagement, social dysfunction, mystical explanations, chance concatenation of events and finally the only one he feels is viable—economics.

Because complex societies excel at handling adversity, he accounts for collapse as the logical fallout from diminishing returns on investment of labor and resources, particularly in agriculture, information processing and education, sociopolitical control and specialization and overall economic productivity.

He examines in detail the collapse of Ancient Rome due to over expansion leading to high operational costs. Leaders tried to compensate by debasing the currency, thus shifting the burden to future taxpayers, but the future also faced equivalent crisis. Eventually overly high taxes drained the agriculture sector and the peasantry upon which Rome relied.

He also details the Mayan collapse. The societies herewith were competing in an art race (to intimidate their enemies). He doesn't mention Easter Island, but sounds similar to those big heads. The Mayan elites further imposed an expanded building program on a weakened and undernourished population that could not support the demands and presumably fled or died.

The third society he examines is the Chacoan of the American southwest. This network of communities was challenged by arid land that eventually was not diverse enough to meet the unpredictable production of the land. Communities left the network, preferring to migrate rather than deal with drought. Major construction of food storage facilities drained resources.

Tainter claims that collapse is not likely today because of 1) absorption by larger state or neighbor, 2) economic support by a dominant power or by an international financing agency, 3) payment by the support population of overhead costs to keep the society going. The situation today is unique because all societies are complex; there needs to be a power vacuum to bring on collapse. What we have today are competitive peer polities. It is an arms race situation. Tainter points out that unilateral economic downsizing is as foolhardy as unilateral disarmament, but doesn't say why.

He feels that we will finance diminishing returns well into the future and that collapse will be global. He points out that reliance on stored energy reserves (oil?) demands that we find a new energy subsidy. Lack of a power vacuum and competitive spiral have given the world a reprieve from collapse. Failure to take advantage of the current reprieve will lead to collapse. Competition may also lead to collapse. The appearance of a disastrous situation that all decry may force us to tolerate a situation of declining marginal returns long enough to achieve a temporary solution to it. He urges that we must proceed rationally and make it our highest priority to find new energy source.

Tainter actually comes across as fairly optimistic especially now that global warming is being seriously discussed since complex societies are supposed to be good at solving complex problems like this. His description of complex societies and how they work projects a solution that is based in technological innovation and bureaucratic management. If a society fails to solve problems of insufficient resources or environmental degradation, then he feels that it is not a dysfunction of the complex society, but of the psychological underpinnings of said society.

His thesis gives the impression of inevitability. We will collapse because increasing complexity will overwhelm the resources needed to manage such complexity. He doesn't really leave room for rethinking how we live or creating a new myth to live by. We are trapped in a prison of our own making. Is this merely a patriarchal way of thinking given all the research on matriarchal societies that lived in harmony with the land?

Collapse

2007-01-15T08:19:00.000-08:00

Because his previous book "Guns, Germs and Steel" was so long winded, I wasn't going to read "Collapse", but it's the topic of a discussion group next week, with local environmental leaders, so slog through it I did. His message is that since we have the advantage, that no primitive society did, of knowing how societies have collapsed in the past, this means that we have the power to yank ourselves from the vortex of collapse, if we just choose to do so.

What was illuminating were his chapters on societies that did avert eco-disaster like the Tokugawa shoguns of Japan who reversed deforestation and this dictator chap in the Dominican Republic who enforced environmental regulations that saved the forest from further logging. These examples do rather contradict his premise that we have an advantage over early societies because we know so much about how they collapsed. What we do need to know is how close we are to using up our resources. The Japanese had every tree catalogued and a schedule drawn up for when each could be logged and for what purpose. We could barcode every tree from sea to shining sea with our technology, but that would just reveal that the government was giving away the store.

These early examples of reforestation also imply that democracy is too damned slow and ineffective, but Diamond is not going to be the man who points this out. He shines the way on a path through bottom up, grassroots change and this is exactly why he's so popular with environmental movements.

What I did find useful in reading this 500 page tome, was gleaned from his criticism of Joseph Tainter's book, "The Collapse of Complex Societies". (I've been trying to get this book for over a year now, but it's not in any public library, just at Stanford University to which I have no direct access and it's not cheap to buy.) Tainter's book informs the peak-oil community and is the basis of their discussions, thus I can now make a distinction between the environmental movement and the peak oil movement.

Diamond thinks that Tainter didn't get it about environmental degradation, but Diamond refuses to get Tainter's point about the economic forces of complex societies, which is, if I might simplify, that the solutions necessary to make our complex society sustainable, will require even more complexity and use of resources. Readers of both authors can decide which leads to sustainability—Diamonds path to regulate and restrict industry or Tainter's path to work towards dismantling and simplifying our complex society. One is politically plausible; the other may be politically impossible.

The Last American Man

2007-01-08T21:54:00.000-08:00

I didn't know it was still possible to live off the land in the old style, but this highly readable biography of Eustace Conway, the buckskin clad, just turning 40, mountain man who devotes his life to persuading others to follow him, is a lesson in itself. If this charismatic, picture perfect frontiersman could not create a movement of followers devoted to returning to the land base, then knowing this has saved me the frustration of thinking people could change significantly enough to help themselves out of current mess we're in.

The real pleasure of reading this book is the skill with which Elizabeth Gilbert renders her subject with an eye that is both awed by him and onto him. She starts by showing him giving his mesmerizing talks at schools and chatting up anyone willing to listen, then deeply explores his telling relationship with his exacting and authoritarian father. The largely self-taught journey that Eustace takes to learn to live off the land is an incredible story in itself, but it goes on to include his vision to buy an entire valley in the forests of North Carolina where he can operate a wilderness camp. That he turns out to be a tyrant and a perfectionist is not at all surprising given his unrelenting drive.

Elizabeth also gives the story just enough context, in reviewing the history of similarly visioned men and the idea of the frontiersman as the American ideal. A useful insight into a part of American culture. And as a woman, she puts Eustace in his place when it comes to his naive and immature ideas of female companionship.

In the end, what Eustace discovers about the deterioration of skills within the American culture confirms my own suspicions. He comments that children today don't know basic physical laws of nature—leverage, inertia, momentum and thermodynamics. This means they have trouble using tools, doing chores efficiently or solving physical problems. They are also incredibly spoiled— as confirmed by the author—used to being asked what they want for very little in return. Those that show up at the camp to intern with Eustace seem particularly lost, lacking emotional resilience or ability to govern themselves. There are stunning exceptions that prove the rule, but the lesson here is that we as a culture have lost so much already.
My thanks to coalandice for recommending this book. www.wnyc.org/books/3438

Days of War Nights of Love: Crimethink For Beginners

2006-12-27T11:29:00.000-08:00

A mixed bag of anarchist essays professing to teach the reader to think for him/her self. Very little new material contained herein made me wonder where I had already learned this stuff. Kurt Vonnegut, Earnest Callenbach and Howard Zinn came to mind. The writers of this interesting Adbuster/Zine like presentation understand the sociopolitical constructs that keep people from thinking for themselves, but I'm not sure the belligerent, disembodied tone of the articles actually allow readers to think for themselves either. The provocative creation of the word CrimethInc! implies revolutionary thinking, but it's really the same territory that artists, queers and outsiders have understood all along. Shoplifting is as much crime as it gets.

Still the analysis of capitalism and the bourgeoisie (better explained as what keeps people inside a middle class perspective) may be useful. The use of words like "bourgeoisie" brings to mind the Marxists rantings of young feminists I met at UC Santa Cruz and that just about captures the tone of this book - young, arrogant, privileged and lost. The only underlying raison d'etre I could find was the pursuit of happiness and encouragement to define that in your own terms. This anarchy thing, then, is just another face of the culture of hyper individualism that has eaten the West inside out by replacing meaning and purpose with individual happiness.

The section on work is telling. I was inclined to re-label the whole anarchist philosophy "looser think" based on how the rubber meets the road here. If the same desire not to work for "the man" were reframed in the hyper positive "do what you love and the money will come" language of entrepreneurs who want to "be their own boss", the freedom that these anarchists seek would cover the same territory only not nearly as successfully or as happily. And while entrepreneurs profess to help people and society in general, our anarchists, here, talk only of supporting each other. Bringing down the system is optional and only if you feel up to it.

I did enjoy the little historical stories of subversive acts tucked throughout the book like a scavenger hunt. The section on hypocrisy was genuinely helpful in addressing the tendency of activists to want to be pure in integrating our beliefs and actions. Also the bit about identity being the scarcity economics of self was a good critique of our tendency to be attached to political ideologies. A little gem in Jeanette Winterson's essay titled "Product is the Excrement of Action" hit close to home in her example of making art from experience.

Into The Forest

2006-12-24T06:53:00.000-08:00

Back to the end of civilization, only now in fiction. A 15 year old girl living in a cabin with her sister narrates this account of how their family survived when the power goes out everywhere they know of, followed by gas and food shortages. At first they have their father to help them cope, but when they bury him it becomes a very grim tale indeed. I stay with it because of the details and because it is grounded in a no-nonsense practicality with a slightly progressive feminist air to it and no religious/spiritual/myth making baggage. It is also well written unlike a lot of fiction based on a contrived scenario and it takes place in Northern California just outside of Redwood so has a familiar setting. The grimness goes on so long that I start trying to re-imagine the story to help out our book loving, studious heroine. Then suddenly the story turns in an unexpected, but transformative shift and a new grace follows our survivors to a satisfying end. Written ten years ago.

Gut Symmetries

2006-12-22T06:33:00.000-08:00

For relief from too much reality, Jeanette Winterson's cubistic, asymmetrical narrative of a love triangle does the trick. I selected it for its plot, the part where the mistress falls in love with the wife, but am equally entertained by the mathematical metaphors and the over the top family history of the characters. What plot is squeezed in is so outrageous that the images summoned become metaphors too.

Some in the lesbian community think that Winterson is intellectually pretentious, while others find her incomprehensible. Later I discover that she is one of the authors of a collection of anarchistic essays recommended by flickr friend coalandice. This somehow doesn't surprise me. The lesbian community was once a hideaway of anarchistic ideas, but now the youngsters just want to get married and have babies. Gack.

Planet of Slums

2006-12-01T15:39:00.000-08:00

Nobody should have any delusions about the global economy raising all boats, after reading this. Fascinating details, thoroughly researched and footnoted. Has a Dante's Inferno quality to it as the author describes the conditions and peels back the myths about the poor and the neo-liberal free market solutions that have been bestowed on them.

This thesis exposes the fallout of the International Monetary Fund policies as it works its way through each third world country for the benefit of those fleecing the world for every last penny. Though I already knew about IMF policies wreaking havoc on local economies, agriculture and the environment, I had no idea that exploiting the poor could be so profitable, but because there are so increasingly many of them congregating in such concentrated areas, they are a large market for all the things that the IMF forced the host country to take away ie, housing, food, power and water.

One of the slums mentioned a number of times is Klong Toey which is within walking distance of my house in Bangkok. I never ventured into it, only drove past.

His parenthetical references to his sources breaks up the narrative a bit and he assumes that one should know where all these cities are. Quick where is Kinshassa, Dakar and Port-au-Prince? Being a British publication, the author may have assumed a higher level of education of his reader, but I appreciated the global sweep of his coverage.

The final analysis by the Pentagon is as revealing as their report on Global Warming was. Something here for everyone whether you fear economic collapse, terrorism or bird flu. A much needed perspective for anyone wanting to fathom solutions for planetary problems. Luckily he is working on another book about how the poor are resisting. After all, after the Inferno comes Purgatory. Would be nice to have a Paradisio too.

Dominion

2006-11-07T16:43:00.000-08:00

Interesting perspective in the eco-disaster genre from 1995. Establishes that humans are the only species to have separated from local ecosystems through culture, defined as the ability to use our brains to make tools and to leverage the odds of our survival by taking control of our food supply thus separating us from the limits of biology and the ecosystem. Having made this separation we then went on to create stories about how glorious we were and how God told us we were to have dominion over the earth. Asks the question "can nature and culture co-exist?"

Presents the conclusion that we will not escape the limitations of the ecosystem, it's just not going to be a local catastrophe, but a global one. Due to the global nature of our economic system we have to exploit all the corners of the earth before we will know that there's nothing left to feed us.

Joins the chorus of authors urging us to tell new stories of cooperation with nature and stewardship of the earth. Is this a job for the bigger brain?

Shoveling Fuel For A Runaway Train

2006-09-06T09:43:00.000-07:00

Shoveling Fuel For A Runaway Train
Originally uploaded by Earthworm.

Intelligent, smart analysis of our growth economy and how it will destroy us. Unbridled economic growth is one of my pet peeves, so this book gave me a lot of ammunition. The author has working class attitude, but has also found Marxism to be outdated in light of our consumer culture.

He makes a calm, rational case with a great deal of cross pollination between disciplines, ie. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Darwin on mating practices, politics in academia, biological limits and social class. He offers language for the discussion - "neoclassical economics" vs "ecology economics", "economic bloating" to describe growth economics, "liquidators" to describe those participating in spending down our natural capital and "steady stateism" to describe the steady downsizing of our appetites. I like the term liquidators. It's much more succinct than glutonous or greed. His term for those on a sustainable path is a bit awkward, but "sustainable" is a word that is loosing its meaning from overuse.

He also discusses how to best persuade the population to develop a distaste for gross consumption, much as people once had to develop a distaste for slavery or child labor and those who used them. His solution is to go after the 1 percent that are the most conspicuous consumers while making sure to leave the middle alone for fear of alienating professionals who influence politics and could be well intentioned. A very convincing presentation plus comments on what it really means to be self-actualized.

The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight

2006-09-05T08:16:00.000-07:00

The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight
Originally uploaded by Earthworm.

Much better written than most impending ecological disaster books and this was one of the earlier ones published in 2000. A good overview of all the pertinent issues from deforestation, to water drying up, to climate change. The ancient sunlight refers to oil and other fossil fuels. Hartman has a nice anecdotal style.

Like the previous book I read on the subject, The Great Turning, he also sees that the solution lies in a cultural shift. He is not nearly as preachy and I like his solution to get in touch with the sacred, with every day ritual, tribal community, appropriate technology, personal reflection and steady consistent political work. He gives a special look at the pitfalls of the ":something-will-save" us outlook.

I do believe that this "what do we do in the shadow of planetary disaster question" is the metaphysical test of our time. If we do nothing, disaster will most definately befall us. And it may if we do, but the process of facing it squarely will enlighten us.

The Great Turning

2006-08-06T08:15:00.000-07:00

The Great Turning
Originally uploaded by Earthworm.

Dry reading, but a good recap of Empire building and the destruction it has wrought. Heavy reference to Riane Eisler's Chalice and the Blade and to Joanna Macy and other women of note. Of the same genre as other disaster books, but with much more emphasis on how to turn things around to what the author calls Earth Community. He prescribes a cultural shift in the stories we tell, first by dropping the myth of imperial prosperity for all, as embodied in the free market system, and creating stories of cooperation and community.

Divides population into a hierarchy of consciousnes based on the concept of cultural creatives. Starting with magical consciousness of the child, the soul moves through imperial consciousness to socialized consciousness where most remain. Those who progress further gain cultural consciousness and then spiritual consciousness. It is the job of these last two to influence the swing vote of those of mainstream socialized consciousness.

Includes a thorough description of the caterpillar to butterfly transformation as an example of how transformation happens one cell at a time until those cells have a network. Lots of interesting ideas that need to be fleshed out and illustrated with real life scenarios or metaphors. Author is one of the founders of Yes Magazine.

Deep Survival

2005-10-28T06:05:00.000-07:00

Fascinating case studies of wilderness adventures gone awry, plane crashes, boating accidents all to illustrate what distinguishes those who survive from those who don't plus interesting stuff about how the mind and memory works. Exhilirating to read because it confirms my own life values in general.

Beyond Treason

2005-09-05T06:31:00.000-07:00

Everything you need to know about depleted uranium which the U.S. has been using illegally to bomb Iraq and Yugoslavia. Depleted uranium has a half life of a billion years, so basically that land is done for. When a baby is born in Iraq, they don't ask if it's a boy or girl, they ask "is it normal". Horrific pictures of deformed babies. Most US soldiers are also exposed. Their babies might be born normal then implode at six months. Government cover-up includes war tribunal that took place in Japan.

Dirty Truths

2005-09-03T06:32:00.000-07:00

Written ten years ago, but nothing has changed

To Kill A Nation

2005-09-02T11:17:00.000-07:00

According to Parenti, Milosevich was not the evil dictator he was made out to be. He was a socialist. Yugoslavia made the mistake of borrowing money from the IMF to modernize their industry after the Soviet collapse. The IMF wrecked the economy, created massive unemployment and disrupted what was once a peacefully coexisting population of Serbs and Croations. The violence that ensued, though instigated by both sides, was attributed to only one, which gave Clinton the excuse to bomb them. Evil capitalist corporations could then feast on the spoils and help Yugoslavia "rebuild" and establish a free market. Neither a borrower nor a lender be.

Against Empire

2005-08-01T11:15:00.000-07:00

After reading this slim volume I was euphoric because finally here was a voice that affirms what I've been seeing all my life. That development brings havoc to once self sufficient nations. That trickle down economics doesn't. That government was originally set up to protect property and what democracy there is is fought for by citizens every step of the way. How GATT, NAFTA and the WTO all work to penetrate markets by violating sovereign powers - the powers of the local people to regulate trade, protect labor and the environment. In particular he points out the relentless need of capitalism to squelch even the smallest example of an alternative to a free market system especially if it serves the people first. He identified himself as part of the suppressed left, a university professor.

End of Suburbia

2005-07-31T15:53:00.000-07:00

Being a visual learner, movies are eagerly consumed by the Bigger Brain. This one served up several authors already known to the BB including Heinenberg, Ruppert and James Kunstler who wrote The Geography of Nowwhere. Most intriguing of the talking heads was Mathew Simmons who was part of Cheney's energy committee. (This is the committee that wouldn't release their report.) The BB showed increased growth when Simmons casually explained how we have reached our limits in electricity generation, which proved to the BB that the administration is well aware of our limitations and has used that information to set its agenda.

A good introduction to peak oil. Has a campy period piece flair for what suburbia was intended to be and how it will become a ghost town when gasoline isn't cheap anymore

Crossing the Rubicon

2005-07-06T21:03:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Brain blazed through the 600 hundred pages of this mother of all 9/11 investigations. It appeared to be better summer reading than any mystery novel. Already stimulated by the premise of peak oil as the underlying motive for all that takes place in history today, the Bigger Brain found plenty of technical details about aspects of this country that had never before been a subject of interest. From the laundering of drug money to the high grade of intelligence technology to bioterrorism to who has what power under emergency circumstances. Already understood was the insider trading activity that took place that week and the dire consequence of peak oil as well as an inkling of CIA activity in proping up ugly dictators to destabilize developing countries.

This ex-police detective lays out only the facts that would stand up in court. And that's plenty enough to condemn the Bush administration for not only exploiting 9/11 to go to war in the Middle East, but facilitating the execution of 9/11. Bush wants the American public to think that we are vulnerable, but in truth our intelligence is/was so solid that they not only saw every move of every terrorist of the hijackings, but protected them in order to have them do the dirty deed at least that one time. Includes analysis of the very important war games (practice drills) that were used to confuse/cover up what was going on that day as well as explanation of the technology used in spyware and flying planes by remote control.

The only thing missing was how to handle the emotional fall out of taking in such information. How is one to live under an administration that would purposely murder its citizens in order to put into place a higher plan that is clearly flawed. The Bigger Brain was somewhat relieved that it was being presented with a complete story that made sense however complex.

Hijacking Catastrophe

2005-07-05T20:46:00.000-07:00

The Brain Growth team was relieved to find something a little less controversial, but equally persuasive in its analysis of the selling of the Iraq war to the American public.Begins with the introduction of the makers of the Contract for a New American Century and points out the need for another "Pearl Harbor".

Shows how fear was generated in the American public and how that fear was used to sucker punch the Constitution with the Patriot Act. Brings up peak oil and shows how the war in Afghanistan was used to introduce American military bases along the proposed oil pipeline. And how having a military presence in Iraq allows the U.S. to target all the oil rich countries in the Middle East including Saudi Arabia.

Lots of interviews, including insigtful comments from Norman Mailer, Medea Benjamin, Noam Chomsky. Because the discussion highlights the psychology of manipulating the public the film is accessible to those who have little interest in politics.

911 In Plan Site

2005-06-12T20:14:00.000-07:00

A client gave this DVD to the Brain Growth team saying he refused to watch it himself because it just looked to far fetched. The team decided to check the gullibility of the Bigger Brain and found that viewing this documentary caused a considerable growth spurt.

"How come we never asked these questions before?" commented A. Kovattana, host of the bigger brain.

"I'm ordering copies for my boss and my mother," said her partner Catherine.

The pair have since called upon their friends to view this eye-opening film.

"It just makes me so mad," said friend Peggy who was highly skeptical, and didn't want to see it, "I mean if there was no plane at the Pentagon then who died, where did the plane go? I mean real people did die."

"I'm glad more people are beginning to consider the lies we've been told," said Martine who is French and had a head start.

Answers to these and other questions sent the Bigger Brain on a new quest.

Hype About Hydrogen

2005-06-06T08:47:00.000-07:00

By Joseph J. Romm, 2004

This subject was a stretch for the Bigger Brain. We are not used to numbers and technological geeky stuff. This is also a confusing subject because there is too much information, too many methods of making hydrogen and fuel cell cars have so far to go before they are viable, if ever. The book forces the reader to study all the options in order to begin to know what is important even though Romm is trying to tell us. He's just trying to tell us everything.

It is easy to see why the public is so easily duped on this one. The questions to ask are:
1) How is the hydrogen made and at what cost?
2) Who will pay for the infrastructure?
3) Will fuel cell cars ever be affordable and therefore commerically viable when hybrid solutions are so much more feasible?

Hydrogen takes four times more energy to make from water for use in a fuel cell car than is used in an electric car for equivalent number of miles. Not counting the energy needed to keep it under pressure and to transport it to fueling stations. More emissions created to make hydrogen using current electical grid than if we just used gasoline. Unlilke Iceland we will likely never have more renewable energy than we know what to do with. Best use of hydrogen fuel cells would be for stationary application to power buildings.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

2005-03-28T07:55:00.000-08:00

By John Perkins, 2004

Were it not for the tortured confessional aspect of his writing style, this revealing book might read like a real life James Bond story as Perkins describes the serendipitous sequence of events that led to him becoming an EMH, the mysterious women who furthered his education, his jet setting life rubbing elbows with foreign leaders all over the world and the part he played in leading these heads of state down the garden path.Yet, Perkins desperately wants the reader to know how our foreign policy has created a world that views us with less than open hearts and gratitude.

By exaggerating the energy needs of a country, economic hit men facilitate the granting of huge loans by the World Bank to developing countries. American corporations like Bechtel and Halliburton get the contracts to build dams, electrical grids, sanitation, etc that must then be maintained by them. The already wealthy local businessmen get richer, the poor are exploited as cheap labor while loosing their land and natural resources, the new project doesn't pay back as much as promised and the national budget is forever tied up in paying back the loan. Any money left over cannot begin to solve the problems created. The country is beholden to the bank and sucked dry by our corporations. And we're none the wiser because the veil of corporate privacy hides what happens to taxpayers' money. Yes our money in the form of U.S. aid to developing countries that hire these consultants.

More on our pursuit of oil. How corporate America runs all of Saudi Arabia. How corporate interests became our foreign policy, the sequence of events that led to U.S. invasion of Panama, how we might now be invading Venezuela had we not been occupied with invading Iraq.

The Bigger Brain ate all this up. Having been raised in a developing country that was the closest free port to Vietnam, BB has always been suspicious of U.S. meddling and it was good to have this suspicion confirmed. Perkins answered so many questions. The brilliance of his book is that he creates a narrative that pulls all this information together with an insider's interpretation.

Powerdown: Options and Actions For a Post-Carbon World

2005-03-23T17:17:00.000-08:00

By Richard Heinberg, 2004

A short pithy book, updating his previous The Party's Over: War, Oil and the Fate of Industrial Societies. The picture looks even more grim as he describes what will be our future and all the reasons why we're not going to be saved by some miracle of technology or market economics. He also makes it the reader's responsibility to prepare for this future in his chapter "Building Lifeboats: The Path of Community, Solidarity and Preservation".

An easy 200 page read, but the Bigger Brain did not want this responsibility. After finishing this book BB wanted to do something absorbing and cleansing like sifting compost to escape from this burden. This is a gloves-off, hope-stripping narrative that clearly states the prognosis and the way out. The Bigger Brain hungers for the truth and thrives on meaty topics, but doesn't feel prepared for the effort it will take to make a bid for survival.

Language Older Than Words

2005-02-28T12:22:00.000-08:00

by Derek Jensen, 2004

Starts by asking if we can communicate with animals. What he discovers has implications that left me with a deep sense of connection to all living things especially plants. His interview of the scientist who had discovered plants have feelings and not just feelings evoked out of fear for its own well being, but out of compassion for harm being done to all sentient beings is startling in its implications. His conversations with animals pull the reader into negotiations with all life.

Mixes autobiography with social commentary with uncanny grace and insight.

He reveals the sexual abuse of his father in such brief glimpses that it has the effect of lightning illuminating a whole room. Suddenly it is clear why our culture must be silent about our abuses of the planet, of others, of ourselves and too, how these experiences of abuse at crucial times in our lives can inform our personal journey into defiance and our search for justice. A key influence of my essay Why Sponge Bob?

He questions science along with Christianity and capitalism for its objectification of that which we would otherwise be a part of.

An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire

2005-02-13T11:24:00.000-08:00

by Arundhati Roy
2004

A brilliant novelist (The God of Small Things) has given up such idle pursuits as fiction writing to join the current legion of pamphleteers in attempting to inform the American public about the propaganda of the mass media, the corporatization of the world, the ongoing violence of repressive regimes as they attempt to create good business investment climates. In this collection of talks and speeches, she pleads with us, especially the good and noble citizens of this great country, to resist the media controlled conversation and force the real issues to the forefront. She desperately believes that we still can if only we were informed and outraged enough and persistent. A muse of the resistance movement.

She has one note of hope - that George W. Bush, in his incompetence, has revealed the empire building machinery for what it is. The poetry of her writing, combined with her passion makes this slim book worth pursuing. She leaves us with the memorable metaphor of a buffalo being persued by bees. The buffalo being the mass media and the bees being the cadre of internet writers working to reveal the truth, but she reminds us that the buffalo still determines where it will go, what news it will cover. How eloquently she explains how the act of resistance is being co-opted by this crisis coverage. Protestors might dream up some news worthy spectacle only to raise the stakes so that the same act at the next protest is old hat. Non-violent protest is fast becoming ineffective as a way to garner public sympathy. Which way to turn? Not to politics for that would be to operate from a position of weakness (it takes money). Roy dreams a vision for us, though it is somewhat sketchy, that might be described as a parallel culture of higher ground where real issues are discussed with broad ideals, not just those of one note specialty interests, but a bigger picture encompassing justice for all.