Category: The Problem: Civilization

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(Not) Making Sense of Ferguson

Deep Green Resistance member Will Falk has written a piece exploring the inevitability of the decision not to indict the Ferguson police officer who recently killed an unarmed black youth. As described in Operation Ghetto Storm, such killings are tragically routine, as is the failure to hold executioners accountable.

Falk examines the question of reform vs revolution: are these incidents mistakes that can be corrected within the system, or is it all working precisely how it’s meant to? Drawing on authors and researchers Derrick Jensen, Michelle Alexander, and Omaha Samuel Walker, and on his own experience as a public defender, Falk argues convincingly that the entire policing and “justice” system must be dismantled for us to achieve the rest of our goals as environmental and social justice activists.

I do not write this to undermine, in any way, the justifiable rage being expressed around the country. I write this in the hopes that we can accurately diagnose the cancer characterized by the symptoms we have seen – symptoms like the death of another young black man at the hands of a white policeman, the failure of a grand jury to indict that policeman, and a mainstream media determined to paint acts taken in retaliation as somehow too extreme. Once we have accurately diagnosed the cancer, I want us to locate the tumors and remove them.

Read Will Falk’s entire article at Deep Green Resistance Southwest Coalition

Derrick Jensen’s Resistance Radio on youtube and archive page

Almost every Sunday, Derrick Jensen interviews an activist, biophile scientist, land restorationist, or other person similarly engaged in building a culture of resistance. The interviews are always worth listening to, packed with interesting information and insights drawn out by Jensen’s experienced questions.

The interviews are available as mp3 downloads or audio streams from our Resistance Radio archive page, and we’ve now made them available on Youtube as audio with a still image of the interviewee, accessible to those who prefer to browse Youtube or want to add the episodes into playlists. We’ll keep adding new interviews as they’re released. See them all at the Deep Green Resistance Youtube channel, and please share these important conversations widely!

Will Falk’s DIY Resistance series

Will Falk of Deep Green Resistance San Diego has been writing prolifically this year on various resistance topics, notably about his time at the Unis’tot’en Camp. More recently, he has published an ongoing series of essays on the theme of “Do-It-Yourself Resistance.” We’ll keep this post updated with new additions, and here are all his excellent pieces so far:

River’s Song: A Poem

Calliope Braintree is the protagonist of two novels by Anne Pyterek, whose work explores rape culture from both the personal and planetary perspective. The poem River’s Song was “written” by Calliope as a tribute to the Chicago River, poisoned and channeled by industrial humans but still living a life of her own.

I am the Atoms and the Space in between,
the Unmanifested heard, felt, smelt, tasted and seen
I am Anger
and Forgiveness
all in one stream.
For I am the Source,

I am the Dream…
I am the scent of holy things,
the sound of shadowy, unseen wings…
ominous…
foretelling black endarkenings.
I flow slowly, ever to the Sea.

I am Wildness,
Authenticity.

Download the whole 40-page narrative poem for free: River’s Song: A Poem.

Robert Newman’s History of Oil

Geopolitical history, though critically important to understanding real life today, is generally pretty boring. Stand-up comedy, though highly enjoyable when done well, is generally pretty meaningless. Robert Newman’s genius is in combining the best of both worlds on the subject of oil: “the terrifying 100-year history brought to life.”

In a scant 45 minutes, Newman covers a lot of ground. He starts by highlighting British and US adventurism, interference, and warmongering from WWI, through the 1953 CIA replacement of Iran’s democratic government with a dictator friendly to the US, to the present occupation of Iraq (sold by governments and corporate media to the public with a straight face and no apparent shame as “bringing democracy to the middle east.)

He also touches on peak oil, its implications on our food production, and the fact that “there is no way out.” His coverage of the problem is good, though he concludes with a plea for society to pursue widespread implementation of green technologies and renewable energy. (See the Deep Green Resistance presentation “False Solutions of Green Energy” to understand the problems with that as a solution.) It’d be great to see him instead work the strategy of Decisive Ecological Warfare into his pitch.

Though you may already know some or much of what Newman presents, he probably has some surprises for you, too. This is a very pleasant way to brush up on history, even for those who consider themselves apolitical and normally uninterested in this sort of thing. Share with your friends and family!

Myths of Biofuels presentation by David Fridley

In 2007, David Fridley of Lawrence Berkeley Labs and San Francisco Oil Awareness presented a well researched and thorough debunking of the idea that biofuels are sustainable, environmentally friendly, good for farmers, or a path to energy independence. Fridley and his audience approach the issue from an industrial-human-centric standpoint concerned about peak oil, rather than from a holistic earth-centric and anti-civilization perspective, but his presentation is excellent for what it is. This is a great way to get up to speed on the dramatic, across the board problems and limitations of biofuels.

Radical analysis of the war in Iraq

The March 25, 2013 episode of Liberation Radio focused on the war in Iraq, in commemoration of the 10 year anniversary of the US invasion. Alla Baker shares her perspective moving from Iraq to the US and feeling shocked by the ignorance people displayed of conditions in Iraq, and especially of the effects of US imperialism in other countries. Kevin Baker (no relation) describes some of the horrific aftermath in Iraq, and presents the March Forward campaign to help active service members resist deployment.

Mike Prysner, a veteran of the initial 2003 invasion, provides an outstanding analysis of the war. He begins by recapping the lies, now well known, about the US mission in Iraq, fed to young service members and citizens in general to justify the invasion. Less often heard is the story of radicalization of soldiers on the ground. The reality of serving on a violent occupation force and the daily contradictions with the official US story led Prysner and others to the understanding that Iraqi resistance is fully justified. From there, they came to realise that this invasion was not a mistake led by a specific administration gone mad, but that the entire system of capitalism depends on such wars, and that the US soldiers sent to secure foreign resources and markets for American interests have more in common with the Iraqi people than they do with those who direct and profit from the invasions.

Though this is an old episode, it has a lot of value in its retrospective analysis. Listen below, or browse all Liberation Radio episodes.

Download mp3

Con Slobodchikoff on prarie dogs & animal language

In a thematic follow-up to the interview with Culum Brown, Derrick Jensen’s August 17 Resistance Radio episode features Con Slobodchikoff. Slobodchikoff studies Gunnison’s Prairie Dogs as a model for understanding animal language, and shares some delightful and amazing observations on the complexity of their relationships and communication. For example, the prairie dogs can tell each other the equivalent of “Here is a tall thin human walking slowly wearing a blue shirt coming towards us.”

Jensen and Slobodchikoff discuss the reasons for mass die-offs, habitat destruction, and ongoing intentional eradication of prairie dogs, a topic especially heartbreaking (but important) in light of their intelligence and highly developed social structure. They also examine their role improving pastures and prairies as a keystone species in their landbases, a great bonus to their being just plain cute.

The conversation touches on many other subjects, including language in other species, what actually constitutes language, the assumptions and inherent values of science (Slobodchikoff was pressured to deafen young prairie dogs to see how it affected their language development; he refused), and the many ways science and other institutions of civilization reinforce the arrogant myths of human supremacism.

Listen to this important and enjoyable interview below, play the interview at the Deep Green Resistance Youtube Channel, or visit the website for Con Slobodchikoff’s book Chasing Dr. Doolittle: Learning the Language of Animals.

Download mp3

Browse all of Derrick Jensen’s Resistance Radio episodes.

Guy McPherson on climate chaos – Chicago March 2014

Guy McPherson: not an optimist, not a pessimist, but a realist

Dr. Guy McPherson spoke on climate change to a Chicago audience in March, from the basics to the complexities of our current predicament. He looks at the history of mainstream, conservative projections of global temperature change, the pattern of increasingly worse expectations every year, and the dozens of positive feedback loops not even taken into account in the models generating these predictions. The scientific consensus is that we must limit global temperature rise to 1°C above the predindustrial baseline to avoid triggering those feedback loops and thus catastrophic runaway climate chaos. We’re at .85°C right now and have already triggered many of these loops. This .85°C increase is the result of emissions up to 40 years ago; due to the lag time between release of carbon dioxide and its effect on temperature, we’re not yet experiencing the exponentially increasing emissions of the 1980s and 1990s, or of this century. The political target of 2°C maximum increase doubles the maximum change considered “safe” by scientists and is not being taken seriously by politicians anyway.

A study of the cooling effect of the atmospheric sulphates continually produced by industrial activity suggests that if all activity stopped today, within three days when all the sulphates have dropped out of the atmosphere, we would reach a 2°C increase. So although shutting down the industrial economy immediately is our only hope of minimizing catastrophic change, doing so would already leave us at a dangerous level of change. In short, we’re in huge trouble.

McPherson expects massive habitat die-off, as animals and especially plants are unable to adapt or migrate fast enough to cope with temperature changing ten times faster than ever experienced in the last 65 million years. Setting aside urban illusions of food coming from grocery stores and water from a tap, humans are animals dependent on this habitat, and he expects human extinction within a few decades.

Though McPherson thinks we’re already triggered too many feedback loops to avoid massive die-off of all humans and most other species, he still advocates resisting industrial civilization, fighting back, and doing our best to stop it. He points out, for example, the potential of sabotaging electrical transformers to terminate the US electrical grid. Though we know the situation is dire and that this massive die-off is in fact inevitable if civilization is allowed to carry out its endgame, we can’t fully predict the restorative potential of the earth. Life wants to live, and science does not and can not understand and foresee how the earth may recover if we can take off the pressure of further destruction and greenhouse gas release.

Watch this video, seriously contemplate our predicament, and consider how you can respond with effectiveness proportionate to the reality we face. McPherson quotes Edward Abbey: “Action is the antidote to despair,” and urges us to act. The Deep Green Resistance strategy of Decisive Ecological Warfare, and the entire Deep Green Resistance book are excellent starting points for formulating a plan.

There are many introductions by attendees; Guy’s presentation starts at 17:20.