Drop by Carolyn Baker’s Speaking Truth to Power and read the two-parter on the Domestic Politics of War.

Part 1 Part 2

Posted by stan as Analysis at 7:01 AM PST

Editorial intervention from Stan Goff

De Clarke forwarded the latest from Jim Kunstler via Life After the Oil Crash (LATOC), wherein Kunstler manages to drip his “critique” of Senator Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy with effortless sexism and racism, and LATOC follows on enthusiastically with references to “bitch-slapping” contests.

We are obliged, then, as a site that echoes some of the themes for which Kunstler and LATOC are known (unsustainability and looming energy crisis), to denounce both for this gratuitious attack on women, and Kunstler’s execreble references to “oriental despots” and obvious reference to Black men as “lumpen baby-daddy’s.”

Kunstler’s cluelessness about gender as a system of social power is apparently as limitless as that of the right-wingers against whom he postures as their intellecutal superior; and LATOC (in an editor’s note by Matt Savinar) not only gives Kunslter’s screed its enthusiastic seal of approval, it includes extensive quotes from Kunstler’s worst pop-Freudian rants about the “crisis” of American “manhood”.

In the past, I have made special and extended efforts to point out the dangers inhering in the neo-malthusian account of the energy crisis. This account is attractive to privileged metropolitan white men like Kunstler and Savinar because it hangs its entire account on nicely disembodied empirical data. Inevitably, this narrow reading of the “energy” issue becomes both racist and masculinist.

Insurgent American emphatically rejects this approach; and with it, we reject and denounce all attacks on any public figures that are gendered. We bow to no one in our opposition to Senator Clinton’s war-mongering, her unequivocal support for the crimes of the State of Israel, her crass political opportunism, and her devotion to the right-wing DLC. All these can be critiqued without resorting to misogynist slurs that are, intrinsically, attacks on all women.

The struggle against patriarchy — in its economic, political, cultural, and psychological dimensions — remains not merely a goal of any revolutionary project, but an absolute and inexorable precondition of the revolution. We will not take shortcuts across the bloodied bodies of women.

Those who recognize the necessity of incorporating an ecological account into revolutionary thought and work must come to understand that the whole trope of “conquering nature” is intimately bound up with the “conquest” of women and all things “female,” (including “orientals”). This is a colonial mentality. We are obliged to assimilate this insight into the very DNA of our practice; and to struggle against it.

Kunstler and Savinar, for shame!

* * *

****Comments can be posted at Feral Scholar. Read the comment rules there first.****

Posted by stan as Analysis at 6:43 AM PST

Hat tip to De for this one on school lunch programs… a very fertile ground for local politics (no pun intended)…

Even the most intractable pathology can disappear, sometimes relatively quickly. A sign above a water fountain proclaiming “no coloreds” would cause any American to flinch today. Just half a century ago throughout the South, such abominations formed a banal part of the built landscape.

I got to thinking about deep-rooted problems and rapid change a few days ago while talking with Ann Cooper, a former star chef who now proudly styles herself a “renegade lunch lady.”

FULL

Posted by stan as News at 5:32 PM PST

A Girl Like Me is a film by Kiri Davis, a young Black woman, that is one of the finest pieces of cultural criticism you may ever see. (7 minutes)

Theologian Ched Myers’ discusses The Parable of the Sower, showing us one theology of liberation. (1 hour, 48 minutes)

The Alameda Point Youth Collaborative is a redemptive account of how food praxis looks among inner city youth. (Part 1, 5 minutes)

Here is the link to James Minton’s rough cut of the film “Veterans’ Gulf March Documentary.” (1 hour, 20 minutes)

See our complete and growing list of AV links.

Posted by stan as News at 9:32 AM PST

From the Christian Science Monitor:

While only 24 percent of likely voters nationwide approve of Mr. Bush’s handling of the war, slightly more voters say it has been worth the loss of American lives, according to a Zogby poll released Friday. “It’s now clearly a Republican war,” says pollster John Zogby, noting that 59 percent of Republicans agree that the war has been worth the loss of life, compared with 20 percent of Democrats and 33 percent of independents.

“But Democrats also have this internal debate over just how far they can go. They are still afraid of being perceived by the American people as being antitroops or antipatriotic,” he adds. A strong showing from antiwar voters – expressed in e-mails, phone calls, or turnout at protests – “could provide an extra prod for Democrats to go that step further,” Mr. Zogby adds.

But never fear. In the same article, the intrepid Brookings Institution graces us with the think-tank wisdom of imperial equivocation in the face of all that agitation from the Great Unwashed:

In response, some defense analysts say that polling data can be misleading. “Because only 30 percent say they still support the war doesn’t mean that 70 percent are prepared to pack up and leave, no matter what happens to the region as a result,” says Michael O’Hanlon at the Brookings Institution.

“It’s the position of a third to half the Congress that we can still salvage something in Iraq,” says Mr. O’Hanlon, noting that most of the Democratic leadership is not in that camp. “We haven’t had a sophisticated development of Plan B in Iraq. Congress is in a good position to flesh out some options.”

Who in the hell is the Brookings Institution, and why in the hell should any of us listen to them? Another academic policy mush-mill, with heavy recipe crossovers from the Democratic Leadership Council and its own mush-mill, the Progressive Policy Institute.

Here’s what to do with these remarks from the Brookings Institution and all the other “centrist” mush-mills. Stuff a stack of their aimless pontifications into your handbag while you walk the dog, and use the pages to pick up shit.

Then go home and bombard these bobbing, weaving elected officials with a clear message that doesn’t get past the rent-a-cops at the think tanks’ front doors: Not one more day, not one more dime, not one more life, not one more lie.

Cut the money. Cut it all. Cut it now.

My own decision-allergic Congressman, who I will out here in a national venue, David Price, is now blathering about “exit strategy” (a think tank term if ever there was one) to avoid the issue of defunding the war. But he is on the defensive, as he was when 400 of us encamped in front of his office - with others inside, refusing to leave - to (successfully) pressure him to vote against the 2002 authorization for war (which he now proudly slaps on his website’s front page. (Of course, he has voted every time since then to re-fund the war… Price is deep-down DLC).

My point? We did turn him on a vote, and it was civil disobedience - a 26-hour sit-in at his Chapel Hill office in October 2002 - that did the trick.

There is something about being polite when the blood is running down the gutters that should strike us all as obscene… sinful even.

Who qualifies for Congressional office occupations? Anyone and everyone who still votes money for the war. Period. Take great big signs along that explain a very simple thing: An exit is a command, not a strategy. And take vets and military family members with you. Call us, and we’ll go there so when the police show up to trespass us, you can videotape vets and military families being dragged out of Congressional offices in flex-cuffs. It’s an irresistable image.

Contact Veterans For Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, and Gold Star Families for Peace, to identify their local membership and tell them when and where you are planning to take action.

Most elected officials do not want to take firm positions on anything, even on a bloodbath like the occupation of Iraq. It’s their nature… the nature of the system. So we have to constrain their options. Don’t think of them as peers and neighbors. They are gatekeepers, selected by big money. Work with them like you would with a bad mule. Give them a choice to cut the money or have ugly pictures of their offices on the front page.

Occupations to end the occupation.

Posted by stan as Analysis at 4:27 AM PST

We have a new piece in the Analysis-Synthesis section by Steve McClure called On Tactics, DC, and National Movements.

The central feature of a convergence is a very general schematic outline of a scenario and media messaging centered on a specific place and time. The role of an open body in this is to organize and co-ordinate logistics housing, health care, legal support, training, messaging, and parameters of the resulting protest. Without an emphasis on stages and tactics, individual small groups can formulate their own plans in the context of the broader scenario. San Francisco was shut down for three days after the start of the Iraq invasion not by secretive planning by a small cadre of activists, but by everyday citizens openly planning a disruptive protest.

Posted by BrianR as Analysis at 6:28 PM PST

The chapter Death from Stan Goff’s book Sex & War is now available on this site. You can also purchase a paper back copy too. Books make good gifts. Thanks!

Posted by BrianR as Books at 5:29 PM PST

Here is a link to search results for “bell hooks” on Google Video. Lots of the video is on YouTube. You’ll find Hook’s Cultural Criticism & Transformation video and more.

bell hooks is one of America’s most accessible public intellectuals. In this two-part video, extensively illustrated with many of the images under analysis, she makes a compelling argument for the transformative power of cultural criticism.

In Part One, hooks discusses the theoretical foundations and positions that inform her work (such as the motives behind representations, as well as their power in social and cultural life). hooks also explains why she insists on using the phrase “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” to describe the interlocking systems of domination that define our reality.

Posted by BrianR as Analysis at 5:06 PM PST

Vandana Shiva: Planting the Seeds for Change: Women’s Struggle Against Corporate Control of Biodiversity

Vandana Shiva is one of the world’s most powerful voices for global environmental justice and cultural and ecological diversity. She is the … all » founding director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in New Delhi. Vandana Shiva is also the author of numerous books including Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply. Series: “Walter H. Capps Center Series” [Public Affairs]

Posted by BrianR as Analysis at 4:58 PM PST

From Aron Wisner, LocalFuture.org
Find other copies of this video and a transcript here.

Summary
The growth of oil production is slowing, forcing up oil and gasoline prices, firing inflation, driving unemployment, straining our global economy and threatening to collapse our entire system.

We are reaching Peak Oil and we need to prepare.

In a compact new 10 minute summary video, Aaron Wissner explains the details of Peak Oil: the evidence, the impacts and the solutions.

Other links in Video:
The Relocalization Network
The Community Solution
Order the film The Power of Community: How Cuba survived Peak Oil

Hat tip to MySpace user Insurgency Now for sharing the above Google video.

Posted by BrianR as News at 12:25 PM PST