- Since I am one of the few people who has pled guilty to certain crimes from May 1st, 2012, including Riot, I do not necessarily face the same risks in talking about—and defending—the riot as a tactic or the impulses behind it.
[...]
I’m not even speaking on behalf of this specific riot, but instead on behalf of rioting as such, in the abstract. The question “Why Riot” is not simply: why did you engage in this riot, but, instead, why riot at all? And the perspective given here is that of a rioter.
I'm currently sitting in a van en route to Detroit. My team and I are going to do some work with a high school renovating some classrooms and tutoring some elementary school kids after school. But reading this makes me feel frustrated and very apathetic. I can't even formulate a thoughtful response as I'm currently too resentful at the author's words, which make me feel that if I'm not actively working towards the removal of capitalism, I'm feeding the beast. Min, what do you think?
While you and mk were in the Netherlands I forwarded you an email from blackbootz about him coming to Detroit. Buy him a beer on me!
That's pretty much true. I guess what really needs to happen is organization, whether by affinity group or mass, but that's hard. I do what I can, resist in my own small ways when the opportunity presents itself, and try to make friends with like-minded people. I endorse the views of the author.
Because it gives those without a voice or influence some sort of pressure-relief. That being said, it's unwise to riot in this day and age, what with the hypermilitarization of police and law-enforcement, not to mention the bought-and-sold judges.
We, the people, have nothing to bring to the field that even compares to what the protectors of the parasites have. We have only out numbers and our labor. So why not use our weakness as a weapon? The system seems all-powerful and inescapable. That's a fallacy. The system, in order to function, has to be paid with something (be it labor, energy or money). What do you think would happen if a thousand people in a community would stand up and say 'No. I will no longer play this game.'?
Because that's all it is, folks: a game and the rules are ever changed in your disadvantage. There is absolutely no reason nor obligation you should paticipate in any system, in any game if you choose not to do so. You want to stop this system? Then Stop Playing The Game.
Say 'no.', be it against police invasiveness, random stop-and-searches, video surveillance, whatever.
"No" against the politicians who are either inept, corrupt or clueless.
Do not pay taxes if you have no say in what they are spent on.
Or better, stop participating altogether: get your community together and talk amognst yourselves how you wish to govern yourselves and then do so. Imagine a thousand people knocking politely on the door of city hall, giving the politicians their 2 weeks notice WILL make an impression,
Of course it's illegal to fight the system, that's why the system made it illegal. But as long as you remember that all it is are just lines on a piece of paper, and nothing more, what power do these lines have over you, should you choose not to participate? You want this system over? Imagine that you could stop paying for it then, with your taxes, VAT's, whatever. Barter, Grow it yourself. Make it yourself. Cooperate with your friends, family and neighbours. And when the system comes knocking, ask who they think they are since they've made an almighty cock-up of the whole situation in the first place.
Imagine what would happen if you do not lose your calm, but remain honorable, polite and in good standing. Yet equally politely tell them you do not participate. What can they do? Lock you up? You're already in a cell, albeit with bars you cannot see. Will return later with a more thorough rebuttal.
It does a damn good job of making those who believe they do not have a voice or influence who use this tactic look bad. Consider this article posted a while ago. Now put yourself in the assaultee's shoes. Are you going to think "Maaaan I was totally being part of The System, I feel bad" or "Why did that dumb fucker decide to steal and smash my shit when I was walking down the street minding my own business?" I'll feel bad for The People when The People stop being fuckwads who seem to believe that their disadvantage is an excuse to be uncivilized. Their actions (and some of the positions a good bit of them hold) alienate people who might otherwise be their allies.Because it gives those without a voice or influence some sort of pressure-relief.
This article may come in handy for determining what exactly we're up against:
http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/files/14093613.pdf Particularly, from pg. 368-9: 1. Industria is a homogenizing force. 2. Industria is a container. 3. Industria is the opposite of wilderness. 4. Industria is expansionary. 5. Industria is a system of knowledge and power, not an ideology.
6. Industria pays the bills for a large chunk of the population at the end of the day (see Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs), and given human existence prior to the Industrial Revolution, human quality of life would probably be a lot worse without it (see expansion in healthcare, decrease in disease burden, and other stuff). The answer is not to go all anarcho-primitivist and stuff but, at least with respect to the whole 'industria vs. wilderness' thing going on, make industria a place amenable to wilderness. There are plenty of smaller efforts out there to change, for example, monoculture practices in agriculture. Notably, in his references to agriculture and other things technological, he doesn't actually cite many papers from these fields that have, as a centerpiece, actual data analysis. Here is the list, out of 127 sources, of 18 sources from either journals that generally require some kind of data analysis or otherwise concrete stuff to analyze or publications which, it can be inferred from the title, probably use data to advance their thesis: CANADIAN ENDANGERED SPECIES CONSERVATION COUNCIL 2001 Wild Species 2000: The General Status of Species in Canada
(Ottawa, Ontario: Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada) FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS 2003a KOPASSUS Army Special Force Command Federation of American Scientists website. http://www.fas.org/irp/world/indonesia/kopassus.htm (accessed 17 November 2003) HARRIS, L. 1995 ‘The east coast fisheries’ in Resource and Environmental Management in Canada, ed B. Mitchell (Toronto,
Ontario: Oxford University Press) 130–150 HECHT, S., and COCKBURN, A. 1989 The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers, and Defenders of the Amazon (London:
Verso) JACKSON, J.B.C., KIRBY, M.X., BERGER, W.H., BJORNDAL, L.W., BOTSFORD, K.A., BOURQUE, B.J., BRADBURY, R.H., COOKE, R., ERLANDSON, J., ESTES, J.A., HUGHES, T.P., KIDWELL, S., LANGE, C.B., LENIHAN, H.S., PANDOLFI, J.M., PETERSON, C.H., STENECK, R.S., TEGNER, M.J. and WARNER, R.R. 2001 ‘Historical overfishing and the recent collapse of coastal ecosystems’ Science 293(5530—27 July 2003), 629–638 KARL, T.R., and TRENBERTH, K.E. 2003 ‘Modern global climate change’ Science 302(5651—5 December 2001), 1719–1723 KAUFMAN, D.G., and FRANZ, C.M. 1993 Biosphere 2000: Protecting Our Global Environment (New York: Harper Collins College
Publishers) MARGULIS, L. 1998 Symbiotic Planet: A New Look At Evolution (New York: Basic Books) (written by Lynn Margulis, an actual biologist, but this book is mostly an advancement of the Gaia hypothesis, which is the target of not unconsiderable criticism by other actual biologists; she was influential in advancing endosymbiotic theory, which turns out to be correct, and at the same time, later in life she became an AIDS denialist. Make your own evaluation here.) MCGINNIS, M.V., ed. 1999 Bioregionalism (London: Routledge) MCTAGGART, W.D. 1993 ‘Bioregionalism and regional geography: place, people, and networks’ The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien 37(4), 307–319 NAYLOR, R.L., EAGLE, J. and SMITH, W.L. 2003 ‘Salmon aquaculture in the Pacific Northwest: a global industry with local impacts’ Environment 45(8), 18–39 PERRY, D.A. 1988 ‘An overview of sustainable forestry’ Journal of Pesticide Reform 8(3), 8–12 RESOURCE FUTURES INTERNATIONAL 2001 Persistent Organic Pollutants and the StockholmConvention:A ResourceGuide
Canadian International Development Agency and the World Bank website (accessed 4 August 2003) SANDBERG, L.A. 1991 ‘Forest policy in Nova Scotia: the big lease, Cape Breton Island, 1899–1960’ Acadiensis 20(2), 105–128 SAUER, C.O. 1963 (orig. 1925) ‘Plant and animal destruction in ancient history’ in Land and Life, ed J. Leighly (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press) 145–154 WILLIAMS, M. 1989 ‘Deforestation: past and present’ Progress in Human Geography 13(2), 176–208 ZIMMERER, K.S. 1994 ‘Human geography and the ‘‘new ecology’’: the prospect and promise of integration’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 84(1), 108–125 The rest is shit with titles like "Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity" or "The Colonizer’s Model of the World: Geographical
Diffusionism and Eurocentric History" or "The trouble with wilderness, or getting back to the wrong nature" or "Ecological metaphors of security: world politics in the biosphere" or "Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia" (wtf) or "Multiplicity and Becoming: The Pluralist Empiricism of Gilles Deleuze" or "‘They’ve got no stake in where they’re at’’: radical ecology, the Fourth World and local identity in the Bella Coola region" or "The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War" or "Beyond sovereign territory: the space of ecopolitics" or "Against His-story, Against Leviathan!" or "Socialism and monotheism: a response to Jenson and Keyman" or "Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization" or "Place and Placelessness" or "Person/Planet: The Creative Disintegration of Industrial Society" or "War and state making as organized crime" or "A Christian reading of the global economy" or "Deleuze in the postcolonial: on nomads and indigenous politics". Hell, he even cites The Matrix. Yes, the movie. In short, I can't take seriously anyone who's trying to publish a commentary on stuff describable by data whose argument doesn't rely very much on it. I mean, hell, he refers to publications by Nietzsche and Spinoza, who, while they were influential philosophers, were decidedly not data wranglers, and there's even a reference titled 'Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West', which sounds... pretty fucking wacky. Knowledge ain't such a bad thing.BOARDMAN, R., ed. 1992 Canadian Environmental Policy: Ecosystems, Politics, and Process (Toronto, Ontario: Oxford University Press)
I was not expecting such a passionate reaction. Your point (or argument, let's say) on "shit with titles like" is flawed. For example, This clearly shows you are judging a book by its cover without reading critically. The citations that you are berating merely for their word choice or format (such as a movie) are not there for the data. They are there to establish the philosophical terms that the author uses. To me it sounds like you simply don't understand. And here you reveal you've missed one of the main points of the article, if you read anything beyond the bibliography. Industria is not a place. It is a network of knowledge and power; invisible, but its affects are everywhere. And furthermore, its a hypothesis. The author isn't parading around claiming absolute truth like you are: The answer is... Just because 'a large chunk of the population' (of what?) acts in a certain way does not make it sustainable. In fact, there are plenty of societies that do not operate in the same technological milieu, just ask any freshman anthropology student. Not all knowledge is good knowledge. "Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia" (wtf)
at least with respect to the whole 'industria vs. wilderness' thing going on, make industria a place amenable to wilderness.
6. Industria pays the bills for a large chunk of the population at the end of the day (see Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs), and given human existence prior to the Industrial Revolution, human quality of life would probably be a lot worse without it (see expansion in healthcare, decrease in disease burden, and other stuff).
Why not 'place' in a more metaphorical sense? As I said, there are efforts of a sort to integrate what you might call 'industria' - this hypothesis that the author has set force which seems to try to encompass all that is the industrialized society, or at least that's what it seems - and 'wilderness'; green tech, energy-saving technology, renewable energy sources. Anyway, the whole thing reads like a screed against everything industrialization has done for us with an undertone of anarcho-primitivism (which the author seems to predict - "Finally, ‘modernity’ is used frequently to try to capture the phenomena under discussion, but this temporal term puts opponents of the system in the untenable position of appearing to call for a return to some romantically conceived, ‘pre-modern’, Arcadian past. In normative terms, modernity’s opponents must be, by inference, ‘backwards’ or ‘behind the times’. ‘Modernity’ also unfairly universalises the problem of Industria to all of humanity, since all humans live in the ‘modern age’. Moreover, as soon as an attempt is made to situate some human groups outside this temporal modernity, one is open to
charges of romantic imaginings au Rousseau. ‘Modernity’ ignores the spatiality of the Industrian system, including the spatial limits that
make wilderness, and cultural diversity, possible. ‘Industria’ refers to an intensity that is not coextensive with either the Earth or humanity.") in some ways. Unless the point of the entire thing is merely involving, say, native Americans or indigenous Australians and so on in management of the local ecosystem, and then my primary objection is more along the lines of Roger Sandall's "Culture Cult" criticism (here's a relevant article.): yes, investigate their practices. Investigate why they work. Operationalize, quantify, hypothesize, and draw conclusions. If it's effective, which in many cases it is, integrate it into best ecological practices. But don't treat them as a culture in stasis. What do you think of the young Native Americans who seek to get off the res to do things like attend college and medical school, as many have done (the current head of the Indian Health Service is one), those who attend not only the tribal colleges but many non-tribal colleges (there are plenty of Native American student groups on campuses across the country), those who want to live and work in the same ways that white and black and Asian and all other sorts of groups do in the wider world? Don't cut them off from the rest of society, especially our advances in things like science, engineering, and medicine. Don't infantilize them or dehumanize them into valuable but stationary, powerless baubles that you get to look at on a shelf while claiming you're helping them out by sticking in a gilded cage. Don't romanticize them (and this essay is HEAVY on the romanticism, and it could be argued that from this perspective they are almost as racist as the people calling native Americans uniformly stupid drunkards or indigenous Australians a bunch of stupid violent Abos). A quote from the article I linked might sum it up well: Among the Xingu Park Indians, it is in fact safe to say that the older generation remains strongly attached to its remote lands, and intends to go on living there, hunting animals and gathering fruits. But what do younger Indians want to do with their lives? If there is one thing we have learned from modern history, it is that individuals often outgrow their ethnic cultures, find life in a fortress claustrophobic, and choose to move on. In contrast to museum exhibits, real human beings have a way of developing ideas and ambitions and desires–including for aluminum pots–beyond the ken of conservators. Fortress theory, multicultural “essentialism,” and the enduring cult of the noble savage are the enemies of those ambitions and human desires. In the final paragraph of Die If You Must, Hemming wonders uneasily whether the pessimists might have the last laugh after all–whether the Amazon’s “beautiful, ancient, and intricate cultures will be maintained only artificially as curiosities for tourists, researchers, or politically correct enthusiasts.” That is quite possible. But it is not the only undesirable eventuality. Preserving ancient cultural patterns is laudable, but it is not enough. No society in history has ever stood still, and however beautiful, and ancient, and intricate ancient cultures may be, it is wrong to lock people up inside them and throw away the key. Uprooting the dishonest and patronizing cult of the noble savage is the work of generations; but as far as today’s Amazonian Indians are concerned, the main priority must surely be to ensure that those among them who do not want to play the obliging role of historical curiosities, endlessly dressing up for visitors whose expectations they feel bound to fulfil, are able to find something else to do in the modern world–on the reservation or off it. In that quest we can only wish them well. As for this? This is a goddamned foul idea, and you know it. Knowledge is never anything but good. It is what you do with it that can be good or evil.The citations that you are berating merely for their word choice or format (such as a movie) are not there for the data. They are there to establish the philosophical terms that the author uses. To me it sounds like you simply don't understand.
Industria is not a place. It is a network of knowledge and power; invisible, but its affects are everywhere.
What Hemming is describing is the fruit of the inviolable-sanctuary approach to cultural survival. This rests on what might be called fortress theory, and has two cardinal principles: that “culture” and “people” and “land” should be seen as indivisible, and that they can be kept this way forever in a suitably constructed territorial redoubt. Whatever is happening in the world around them, ethnic cultures should as far as possible be preserved unchanged. With the help of an army of administrative personnel, custodially responsible for seeing to it that they go on wanting the same things they have always wanted, their cultural heritage will be kept alive. Social change is bad—at least as it affects these picturesque tribal peoples—and should be stopped.
Not all knowledge is good knowledge.