Day of Action

Cheers to the aboriginal protesters that are starting to block the arteries of the Canadian death economy. I can't exclaim just how scared this makes CEOs, politicians and other servants of the death economy. What, we can't get our freshly cut "wood" to market? What about our shipment of plastic crap from China? Oh, what about the profits?

There are some criticisms that this is a violent act. Bull. They might have guns to ensure their blockades today but take an indigenous studies course or even a Canadian history course and you might get a real explanation of violence. Violence isn't always carrying a gun and blocking a road or railway like we might think. Very often it involves developing systems that decimate a population without having to resort to direct violence. These systems have taken centuries to develop in Canada and indigenous people are the primary victims.

Of all people they have the right to stand up and demonstrate the weak points of the industrial death economy for all people of good conscience.

Old is New Again

The family jewels are liberated. Finally Americans and the rest of us can have a look into the CIA's shady past: assassinations, coups, spying on citizens, torturing, mind control and more. Have a look for yourself. Of course much of this information was already available thanks to real reporters but given the timing it's quite interesting.

Because, really, none of this is actually in the past. All the same things are going on today in our beloved War on Terror. Sure the technologies are more advanced and the techniques are refined but the goal is the same: power. They'll call it national security and America's interests and all that, but ultimately it comes down to this fact: we want stuff, other people have it and we have to take it by any means necessary. And they had better not fight back or dare raise a voice in protest.

And please don't think that Canadians are innocent in this. We happily profit of the misery caused by the American military-intelligence machine. How else, but through agencies like the CIA, do you think we only pay $1 for a cup of coffee or $2,000 for a laptop?

This begs the question if we (non-elites) can ever develop enough fair trade mechanisms to counter the inherent violence in our economic system. If we can't does that mean we have to tear it down? Or do we just ignore it as best we can with a little help from our flat-screen televisions.

Keep the newly polished family jewels covered, young man!

Hess

I wrote this sitting on the steps of a defunct bar in Hess Village last night. Security eyed me suspiciously and the throng wondered why I didn't join in. All around me the Hummers roared and the Harleys pumped out death in response. The lights and beautiful people were blinding in their white glare. The booze flowed and my pen was hot on its heels:

Cacophony, the tills ring.
The long legs rattle,
To the sound of idling Hummers.
The bass rumbles back,
Look at me, look at my things.
I can see them in middle age;
Will they remember these nights,
Blurry, stumbling, intoxicating?
The pinnacle of their lives,
On the edge of annihilation.

Food or Cars?

Just reading an article about the US government's plans to develop a parallel mechanism to the Kyoto Protocol to deal with global warming. I firmly hope it goes nowhere because as bad as Kyoto is (did you know that aviation is excluded from Kyoto?) any plan developed by the Bush Administration would be a nightmare.

Anyway this article mentioned how exited the US, Brazil and other countries are in developing biofuels or biodiesel as an alternative to imported oil. Despite their glad-handing and jubilation, biodiesel is a nightmare waiting to happen.

For one it's going to make the price of food soar. This will destroy the livelihoods of poor people in Canada and beyond. Mexico is already seeing the price of their staple, corn rise in response to rich North Americans' desire to drive "sustainably". I also found an article linking a rise in beer prices in Germany to biodiesel. This is only the beginning.

Most industrial food production already relies on huge energy inputs. Currently we are essentially eating oil and taking more from the earth than we put in. To produce say 100 food calories you have to input say 1000 oil calories. This is the definition of unsustainable. So if we're going to move to biodiesel we'll need to spend most of the harvest fueling up our giant agricultural machinery.

And what will be the result. Some will drive and continue to live high on the hog while others will starve. Sounds just to me! At the same time, I recognize that the human population on earth is highly dangerous and is endangering the survival of this most perfect world. We could do with a decrease in membership.

So I find this to be a sticky situation in terms of my moral approach to this violent gamble on biodiesel. If only we could step back and choose to decrease our population in a responsible and thoughtful way instead of creating new structures that will cause intense hardship and suffering.

But that would be giving our species too much credit. And is capitalist democracy even able to make these vital choices? Does the failure of Kyoto and the primacy of the "economy" demonstrate that this is the case?