Homework Assignment #3

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Get a load of this shit.

The N.Y. Post is a Murdoch-owned rag, so we must take the story with a tablespoon of salt, but honestly, it doesn’t matter if the owner’s allegations are true or not.  If there was merit to the violations, then the inspector wasn’t doing anything wrong, and should be commended for his professionalism in continuing to write them while on-camera.  Frankly, he should get a raise.  If, on the other hand, they were bogus, then it is absolutely within the rights of the owner to document evidence of such, so that he can challenge them, thus preventing an injustice.  Either way, the inspector had no legitimate reason to object to being recorded.  A public servant, performing his official public function, in a public place no less, has no reasonable expectation of privacy, whatsoever.  None.  As the authoritarians like to say, “If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear.”  That statement applies to everyone, not just the little people.

This heavy-handed punishment of Citizens who record public officials, going about their official public duties, IN PUBLIC, and then dare to demand one Goddamn iota of accountability from them, has got to stop.  It’s happened in Rochester and elsewhere, it’s already been challenged in court, it’s widespread, and it’s unequivocally unconstitutional.  The Police know it’s unconstitutional, too, which is why they’ve had to resort to intimidation so that people will back off.

Isn’t it funny that The Powers That Be keep saying that widespread surveillance is a good thing and makes us all safer, but as soon as Citizens take that to heart and start using cameras to promote the rule of Law, everybody gets their panties in a twist?  Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

Rats Pressing Levers

This is cross-posted at the Farmers & Builders website.

In 1954, two biologists named Olds and Milner identified regions in the brain where, if stimulated in response to an action, animals would repeat that action as if they had been rewarded. It was an enormous breakthrough in understanding animal behavior, as Olds and Milner inferred that these are the brain areas that activate when an animal engaged in evolutionarily sound behavior – eating when hungry, for example, or drinking when thirsty, or reproducing. Olds and Milner studied rats.

Like our smaller mammalian brethren, humans also have centers in our brains that activate when engage in the behaviors naturally selected for over the millions of years of human evolution and billions of years of life on earth. It makes sense, too; if there was a trait by which the brain rewarded behaviors such as not eating or not reproducing, all the animals with that trait would die without passing it down to other generations. Olds and Milner found a shortcut around having to perform the behavior that is hardwired to the reward center, just activating the center itself with an electrical impulse.

Humans, in our seemingly endless ingenuity, have found similar shortcuts. Instead of hooking electrodes up to our brains (though in a way we do do this – it’s one way that cocaine and methamphetamine work), we have created incredibly ready access to all the food we could possibly eat. Granted, this is through no small amount of environmental, human, and other animal exploitation, but every time we bite into that El Nino Burrito, we are rewarded by our brain thanks to the circuitry deep within us that evolved because it kept us alive. Because we are rewarded in this fashion, however, all of the things that go into making that burrito are also rewarded: factory farmed beef, human slave labor picking tomatoes (are there tomatoes on an El Nino?), fossil fuel based pesticides that poison our water and put environmental pressures in place to create super-pests, the petroleum needed to ship all of these things all over the world and attendant pollution and global warning, and so on, and so forth. Because our brains reward us, we ignore big picture “externalities” in pursuit of the things that create the reward. We think of them as things that make life better or more comfortable, but we are killing ourselves in their pursuit. In countries with the readiest access to high-calorie food, there the highest rates of heart disease, diabetes, stroke, osteoporosis, and a host of other ailments. Americans and Chinese contribute the most greenhouse gases contributing to global climate change. We are pulling natural gas out of the ground through means that contaminate groundwater and create earthquakes. We have eaten almost all of the big fish in the ocean.

The rats in Olds and Milner’s study would activate their reward centers by pushing on a lever attached to the electrode in their brain. Later scientists found that rats would push the lever, self-stimulating to the point of exhaustion. Rats would run over shock grids and ignore warning signals of impending shock in order to self-stimulate and would even starve themselves to death, self-stimulating by pressing the lever instead of eating. Perhaps humans, in our seemingly endless ingenuity, can find a way to feed ourselves, reproduce, and live without taking such disastrous shortcuts.

Occupy Yourself

This is cross-posted at the Farmers & Builders website.

In a little more than a week, the Occupy Wall Street protests will be 3 months old and, especially since their evictions, no more immune to the criticism that they haven’t done anything more than make a big stink in a public place. Irrespective of the “victories” of inserting “income inequality” back into the public discourse and Cuomo’s reconsideration of the millionaire’s tax, there is still a lot wrong in the State of America. People are still making a stink, however (there have been two days of action of note even this week: the Occupy Food protest of U.S. agricultural policy and today’s Occupy Homes seizure of bank-owned foreclosed houses), and the opposition is still calling the “movement” a bunch of smelly crybabies who should just get jobs. This accusation can be stressful to people sympathetic to the occupations as they strive with general assemblies and resolutions to validate their existence and speak directly to policies. While I have no problem with the protesters engaging in such noble pursuits, I submit that change in the system was unlikely to ever come from the protest camps themselves, but rather spring up from the larger ideological movement that the camps are a symptom or projection of.

With all due respect to the occupations, at heart they are an art project, that is, a culture jam conceived by Kalle Lasn and delivered by Anonymous. Lasn, a long-time critic of American capitalism, and Anonymous, techno-Lokis extraordinaire, wanted to see what would happen if you plopped a bunch of weird, pissed-off, arty, educated, and drum-playing people on the doorstep of conservative, white-collar America. Just as they hoped, people freaked out. Cops beat people up. Other occupations in every major U.S. city cropped up. Homeland Security started advising. Ports got shut down. A big stink got made. It was awesome. But the protests are, at their core, protests. Protests don’t solve the problems, but they’re provocative. They get people going.

I would be ecstatic if the solutions to America’s ills came from the protests, but I’m skeptical. That’s where projects like Farmers & Builders come in. We are building the alternative to the system the occupiers are protesting against. We and the protests are two different projections of the abstract, deep-down sense that the status quo is unjust, unsatisfying, and unsustainable. As the protest camps are one-by-one swept away, Farmers & Builders and other alternative economies and societies stand in solidarity and ready for those who want to occupy themselves, providing as a composite for our necessities while enabling the autonomy to pursue our own ventures.

What’s your occupation?

Homework — Assignment #2

Karl Marx once said, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”  Assume that the rules of economics and the laws of physics were suspended, allowing a friendly Communist utopia to actually exist in perpetuity.  What would your abilities be in such a place?  What could you contribute to an egalitarian, peaceful society?  Ponder this.  Write some of it down.  Refer to those notes during your further studies.

Onward, Vegan Soldiers

I hear the #occupiers in Niagara Square have released a request for food donations.  Among the items they “desperately need” (their words, not mine) are “fresh tomatoes” and other assorted bourgeois white-people food, most notably Veggieburgers.  As crunchy as the Square’s new residents appear to be, they know absolutely nothing about the Earth they inhabit, and they are embarrassing themselves and everyone around them.  This post, for what it’s worth, is primarily directed to the #occupiers; I believe they have a “media tent” wherein they can access The Intertubes, so they may, in fact, actually hear what I have to say.  I could present the following at a weekly General Assembly, but this way is much easier, since I will neither have to deal with The Consensus Model™ nor my words being repeated (my words being repeated) two or three times (two or three times) so that those in the back can hear (so that those in the back can hear).  I’ve been in theater productions, I can project just fine without the crowd helping me along.  Let’s begin, then!

Bacon, Egg, and Cheese of the Gods

For the strength to defeat your enemies, begin with bacon.

Specifically, fry up two slices of thick-cut bacon in a big cast-iron frying pan[FN1]. When they’re done, put them aside and turn down the heat as low as it’ll go.

While the bacon is cooking, in a smaller non-stick pan, fry an egg to your liking in olive oil. When the egg is done, cut the heat and put the egg aside with the bacon. Then pour the eggy olive oil into the cast-iron pan. Don’t worry, it won’t spatter; hot oil + hot oil is safe, unlike hot oil + water, which will really f*ck up your day.

Alternatively, you can also fry the egg in the bacon grease if you’d prefer not to have to clean two pans.

Anyway, now you’ve got a fried egg, two cooked strips of bacon, and a whole lotta grease. What shall be done with the latter? That’s the clever part. Take two slices of bread and place them into the frying pan. Turn up the heat to medium-high. Move the bread around so it soaks up the melted oil. Then place slices of cheese on one of the pieces of bread. When the cheese starts to melt, put the egg and bacon on top of it, followed by another slice of cheese, followed by the other piece of bread. If you’re particularly skilled with a spatula, you can flip the sandwich to evenly melt the cheese and seal in the bacony, eggy goodness. (I am not this skilled.)

Enjoy, but slowly; when such immense power is concentrated in such a small space, our human digestive systems will have trouble handling it.

———-

[FN1] A well-seasoned cast-iron frying pan is an indispensable part of any kitchen. You can cook practically anything in it, and as it builds up seasoning, it will never rust. They’re practically indestructible, and won’t give you Alzheimer’s like aluminum cookware will.

Popular Sovereignty

The Declaration of Independence teaches us that governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed. Thus, a government that operates without any meaningful consent of the governed is not a legitimate one, regardless of what form it takes. It could be an absolute monarchy, a military junta, or a garden-variety corrupt banana republic in which the elections are just for show.

It could also be a nation where there is little, if any, actual difference between candidates of the two major parties; where the choice posed to the electorate is between a sociopath who lies, cheats, and steals, and a sociopath who lies, cheats, and steals slightly less, and the outcome is effectively determined by how much money is poured into the race, usually by large corporations to whom the candidates have pledged their fealty, rather than the people they claim to represent.

Homework: Assignment #1

Reading:

“Hollow States and a Crisis of Capitalism” by John Robb

“The Studen Loan Debt Abolition Movement in the United States” by George Caffentzis

“The Glass Bead Game” by John Michael Greer

Extra Credit:

Listen to “The Fall of the American Empire” by Dmitry Orlov

Demands – Rob

In talking about the spreading Occupy protests yesterday, we at 26W wondered aloud about what our top five demands would be, were we the ones with the Occupy Wall Street bullhorn. I think it would be interesting if all of us here would articulate five demands that we have of the current system (the socio-politico-econo-cultural system that the protests are aimed at). To kick things off, here are mine in no particular order:

• Forgive all student debt
• End subsidies for unsustainable agriculture
• Cease all military actions overseas
• Institute a tax on all carbon emissions for every industry
• Close tax loopholes for corporations and their officers