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Posted on September 4th, 2010 No comments
This is another MUST SEE documentary on the State of the Planet and about how we will need massive change to do anything about the horrors our species has helped create on Earth.
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COLLAPSE! Michael Ruppert lays the facts on the table!
Posted on September 4th, 2010 No commentsThis is a documentary EVERYONE needs to see, but it is unfortunately not streaming online. I recommend you “find it” by other means and take a look. It will freak you out, but it speaks to the truth of what comes from what we have done to the planet and what WILL happen eventually on this track of destruction.
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Anarchism: Necessary But Not Sufficient
Posted on September 4th, 2010 No commentsPosted by Anna Morgenstern on C4ss.org
In discussion with a few people, talking about the extra-anarchistic aspects of various forms of social justice, I said “Anarchism is necessary, but not sufficient, to create a just society.” It seemed like a statement that warranted a bit of expansion, so here we go.
Anarchism is necessary, we can say, to create a just society. As far as I can tell, the best definition of anarchism is “the belief that no one has any special authority to do anything that anyone else doesn’t have.” Anarchy, then, is a society in which this principle is widespread enough to be a truism. If one group of people can arrogate special authority to themselves to rule over others, this alone is a vast injustice in and of itself. But it also creates a cascade of further injustices.
Under statism, the overall socioeconomic system tends to divide into classes, some more privileged than others. This allows people in the more privileged classes to use their power to bully others or manipulate them, even without direct coercion. An example of this is “survival prostitution”. There are people who are so abject and miserably poor that they are willing to do anything for enough money to survive until tomorrow. They do not have the option to say “no”, if they want to live, they must say yes. Wage slavery in the modern corporate capitalist world is, for many people, merely a more extended version of this.
Now yes, the state can and does sometimes offer marginalized groups protection from some of the worst effects of their marginalization, but it is the state which put them in the position of needing that protection in the first place. It is the state which makes people economically dependent. It is the state which destroys the wealth of the lower middle class and poor. It is the state which shifts the supply/demand balance of the labor market so workers are chasing jobs, rather than the other way around. And though everything in our world is not economic, in the sense of being about trade and production, economic freedom gives people more space to carve out social freedom. It is difficult if not impossible to wield social power if you’re barely subsisting.
Also, the state even at best is a double edged sword. If you’re an LGBT person in the USA you know what I’m talking about. Laws against sodomy, laws against gay marriage, indecent exposure and attempted solicitation laws being applied unjustly against MTF trans people, and much, much more. Let’s not forget schools. Public schools under statism are state schools. If a pressure group can take over the school board, they can impose their will on the curriculum, as they have in Texas. This pattern applies to just about anything in a statist society. The immigration laws in Arizona are a good example. Even though there are plenty of nice, non-racist people in Arizona, they aren’t the ones in control over the state, and they still have to live under those laws, or dare to defy them. And even when the state passes a law that most people believe will bring about “justice”, some innocent people are going to get fucked over by it. There’s no getting around that, because justice is situational and fluid. There is no centralized legal code that can avoid fucking people over.
And then there are the ethical implications of statism itself. Statism tends to favor the social manipulators, the bullies and the ass-kissers of the world. It rewards the fraudulent and the corrupt, and creates a myth of elitism that is not removable as long as there is a state. The primary view of humanity that the state espouses is Neo-Hobbesian. That humans left to their own devices are inherently self destructive and deplorable, but that there is an elite group of people, such that if they are in charge of the world, they can uplift the rest of us, or at least force us all to live relatively peacefully with one another.
Over and beyond all that you have the problem of selective enforcement. When the rubber meets the road, the state means cops. This means that the law gets enforced when the cops want it to. Every state in history has eventually reached a point where the sheer volume and overlap of contradictory laws allows the police to act as local dictators of a sort. Most people of color will know just what I’m talking about. Anecdotes abound about getting pulled over for DWB: Driving While Black. Arrest to Conviction ratios clearly seem to show a pattern of racial and class bias. And this is not likely to change as long as there is a state. Sure, some places might be better than others, but no matter how fluid, the state holds a territorial monopoly over law enforcement, and so there will always be a certain scale of injustice built into the system. There aren’t many, if any statist societies I’ve seen in which “resisting arrest” isn’t a crime, for example.
Under anarchism, people at least have a fighting chance to achieve widespread justice. However, anarchism alone is not enough. There might still be racists and homophobes under anarchism, there might still be sociopaths and liars. Without a statist economy, and a centralized code of laws, it will be much harder to get away with unjust acts on a large scale, over a long period of time, however.
But the question of selective enforcement and/or selective defense will still exist. Transgendered people, for instance, make up a very small fraction of the overall population. Even accounting for the fact that transgenderism is vastly underreported due to the current social milieu, it will still most likely be a tiny fraction of the human race. It would not be impossible for systematic crimes against transgendered people to go largely unpunished, even in anarchy.
And the question of population distribution also matters. A pocket of black people who live surrounded by white people who are determined to make life difficult for them will have a hard time fighting back even without a state imposing on them.
In the thinnest of thin anarchisms, in which there is no state, but nothing develops in the vacuum left behind, packs of extremely clever sociopaths could roam the land, draining community after community of their resources and good will, like a vampire gang.
So there will still be a need for social awareness and ethical debate even after the concept of “the state” has been destroyed. The arguments between the ancaps, ansocs, and the rest of us anarchists about how a valid anarchic society deals with money, contracts, property, ownership and various torts will go on after the state has become a ridiculous fiction in the mind of most people.
The good news is that a stateless society synergizes with all these other things. The amount of energy that your cause puts into getting the state to protect you from some other aspect of statist society will do much, much more good in direct action without the state getting in your way. And the amount of solidarity you’ve seen from other people is a fraction of what you’d see if people weren’t crushed under the heel of the state. A person who is slaving away to keep themselves going does not have the time or energy to help other people very much, even if they are sympathetic. And the “I gave at the congress” mentality prevails. In a statist world, where people expect the state to provide for them, even kind and sympathetic folks will expect the state to provide justice, as rough and unjust as it may turn out to be.
In an anarchist world where people feel like the buck stops with them, they’ll be more able and willing to help each other.
And there is one other factor to consider. Over time, people in an anarchist society will tend to begin to develop their own quirky interests. That thing you’ve always been into, but never had the time or money to pursue, well you will now. This unleashing of the inner weirdo that lurks within us all will tend to make people more tolerant of differences in general.
Under anarchism, if you have an idea you share with other people, you can put it into practice NOW. You don’t need permission; you don’t have to force other people to agree with you, you can just start doing it. Then you will find out what it’s like in practice.
As Allan Thornton said, “What will happen under anarchism? EVERYTHING.”
Now sure, some people are sociopaths or psychologically crippled by irrational hate and fear. And those people are always a threat. They might get together and form a small pocket of hell. But in a sense, they’ve imprisoned themselves. On that note, I can imagine anarchist “extraction teams” developing who extract people from communities in which they are being held against their will.
Again though, a lot of this psychological corruption comes from living in a state which imposes its values on you. Not only are the state’s values inherently corrupt because of the built-in elitism and hero worship and hatred of the “masses”, but those who resist this early indoctrination are tortured and torture often makes people psychotically hateful and sadistic. A world in which most children grow up without forceful indoctrination, will yield a much healthier, more positive group of people.
There is another aspect of things that I have hinted at before, but I think hasn’t really been totally understood or accepted. I believe that large scale, widespread economic injustice is impossible under anarchism. This is at the heart of the matter. I believe that economic anarchy is its own economic system, apart from what most people think of as either “capitalism” or “socialism”. It will have aspects of both, in the best sense of each of them. But it will also be much fuzzier and less rigid than either of those systems in their statist form. Public will no longer equal “owned by the state” and Private will no longer equal “owned by a small elite (who happen to run the state)”. Basically, to put it crudely, an anarchist doesn’t let a corporation or a syndicate or a commune tell them jack shit. Things like property rights and debts and contracts will be much more nebulous than they are in a system where they are predefined by a strict centralized law code enforced by cops, but more tangible and solid than they are in a system where an elite group can willy-nilly revoke them at will.
It will be much harder to hold onto capital in some places, but much easier in other places. A lot of it may depend on good will. Likely, any sort of currency, no matter what it’s backed by ostensibly, will practically function much like “obs” in E.F. Russell’s wonderful “And then there were none”. The economy will be situational, fluid and creative, like we will be. There will be trial, and there will be error, but there will be change, and we will learn how to “do it right”. Because we will be able to.
C4SS Contributing Writer Anna O. Morgenstern has been an anarchist of one stripe or another for almost 30 years. Her intellectual interests include economic history, social psychology and voluntary organization theory. She likes piña coladas, but not getting caught in the rain. -
Former BP Contractor Turned Whistleblower Tells All
Posted on July 13th, 2010 No comments -
Sunday Times Reports Exxon And Chevron Receive Green Light From Obama To Plot Takeover
Posted on July 13th, 2010 No commentsSource: Zero Hedge
You know someone is losing (a lot of) money when the heavy artillery of the rumormill department goes into overdrive. According to the Sunday Times, the Obama administration has given its blessing to Exxon and Chevron to consider takeover bids of the troubled major unimpeded. Because obviously any deal in the current environment must first and foremost get the Obama stamp of approval or else the Steve Rattners of the world will be sic-ed on your sorry derriere, and before you know it your equity will be trading above your vendor payables in right of guarantee. It is refreshing to know that the other majors can somehow handicap the outcome of the tens if not hundreds of billions in liabilities that will tie down BP in random lawsuits for decades, and that will make WR Grace et al seem like a PG-13 dress rehearsal for Scores when Lindsay Lohan is in town.
More from Dow Jones/WSJ, this time presumably without the Fed’s preclearance:
U.S. oil major Exxon has sought clearance from Washington DC to examine a takeover bid for BP PLC (BP.LN), according to the Sunday Times.According to oil industry sources, the Obama administration had told Exxon and one other U.S. oil company, thought to be Chevron, that it would not stand in the way of a deal that could value BP at up to GBP100 billion, the newspaper said.
The sources said there was no certainty that Exxon would make a move, but said talks with Washington indicated a renewed interest as BP came closer to plugging their oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.
“There have been talks at a high level, and Exxon has expressed a serious interest. It is too early to talk about a bid yet, but they are clearing the way,” a senior oil industry source told the newspaper.
A spokesman for Exxon declined to comment, the paper said.
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Toxicologist: Oil/Corexit mix caused heart trouble, organ damage, rectal bleeding
Posted on July 13th, 2010 No commentsSource: RawStory
Shrimpers who were exposed to a mixture of oil and Corexit dispersant in the Gulf of Mexico suffered severe symptoms such as muscle spasms, heart palpitations, headaches that last for weeks and bleeding from the rectum, according to a marine toxicologist who issued the warning Friday on a cable news network.
Dr. Susan Shaw, founder and director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute, said during a CNN broadcast that after personally diving the oil spill in late May, a “very fiery sore throat” plagued her from inhaling fumes coming off the water. Because she was covered from head to toe in a protective suit, Dr. Shaw was spared direct exposure.
Shrimpers who had bare-skin contact with the mixture of oil and Corexit, she said, were not so lucky.
During her segment with anchor Rick Sanchez, Dr. Shaw specified that stories shrimpers had told her were from when BP was deploying “the more toxic” Corexit 9527. BP has allegedly switched to Corexit 9500, which Dr. Shaw has also taken to task in a widely-publicized essay.
The company responsible for producing the various Corexit formulas is Nalco, Co., which was created by former members of the boards of directors at BP and Exxon. Their product is essentially by the oil industry, for the oil industry. That’s why, even in the face of an alternative like Dispersit which is half as toxic as Corexit, Nalco’s product is still in much greater supply.
Dr. Shaw offered a stark analysis of Corexit 9500 in her piece for The New York Times.
“Though all dispersants are potentially dangerous when applied in such volumes, Corexit [9500] is particularly toxic,” she wrote. “It contains petroleum solvents and a chemical that, when ingested, ruptures red blood cells and causes internal bleeding. It is also bioaccumulative, meaning its concentration intensifies as it moves up the food chain.”
“BP refused an Environmental Protection Agency order in late May to significantly cut down its use of dispersants, as well as another to find and use a less toxic substance than Corexit, saying that it ‘continues to believe that Corexit EC9500A is the best alternative’ available in the necessary amount,” a blog with the Natural Resources Defense Council noted.The EPA lists Corexit 9500 as “useful on oil spills in salt water” and prescribes an application of “2 to 10 U.S. gallons per acre”. They further said in a media advisory that Corexit 9500 will “biodegrade.”
The EPA’s description is only slightly less enthusiastic than a list of Corexit talking points featured on Nalco’s Web site, which claims (among other things) …
*All of the ingredients contained in Nalco’s dispersants are safe and found in common household products, such as food, packaging, cosmetics, and household cleaners.
*Individually and collectively the ingredients are safe when used as directed.
*Corexit is approved for use by the EPA because it falls well within the agency’s range of allowable toxicity levels.
*Corexit products biodegrade rapidly, do not bioaccumulate, are not human carcinogens, do not degrade into endocrine disruptors, and are not reproductive toxins.
*This is 1/10th of 1 percent of the level of the product tested under EPA standards and a far lower level than the EPA allows in drinking water of several non-biodegradable elements that are highly toxic, carcinogenic, and/or reproductive toxins.
The portion about bioaccumulation and carcinogenic effect is interesting, considering Nalco’s own Dr. David Horsup stated in a media advisory that “additional testing” is needed in order to assess “biodegradation, bioaccumulation, carcinogenicity and effectiveness.”
Such conflicting statements would seem to undermine the company line.
“Yes, the dispersants have made for cleaner beaches,” Dr. Shaw wrote. “But they’re not worth the destruction they cause at sea, far out of sight. It would be better to halt their use and just siphon and skim as much of the oil off the surface as we can. The Deepwater Horizon spill has done enough damage, without our adding to it.”
Speaking to CNN on Friday, her message was a bit more dire.
“It ruptures red blood cells, causes internal bleeding and liver and kidney damage,” Dr. Shaw said. “This stuff is so toxic — combined, it’s not the oil alone, it’s not the dispersant — the dispersed oil that still contains this stuff, it’s very, very toxic and it goes right through skin.”
The claims would seem to echo a fellow toxicologist who described the effects of Corexit as the disruption of oil bilipid layers, which he called “the very basis of life.”
“Each of us is made out of cells,” Dr. Chris Pincetich explained in a recent interview. “Those cells are nothing more than an oil layer surrounding our proteins and RNA and all the other molecules talking to each other. You put in a chemical that disrupts that basic biological structure and you are putting yourself at risk from umpteen effects.”
Mixed with toxic compounds leached from crude oil, said “umpteen effects” are completely unknown at this point, with Dr. Shaw’s statements being among the first reports on the dire health effects of dispersed oil exposure.
None of the most recent news bodes well for U.S. residents anywhere near the Gulf dcoast. Some reports have suggested that new chemical compounds formed in the Gulf’s hot, salty summer waters are evaporating and potentially returning in rains across the south-eastern U.S. There’s also the case of an amateur video shot in Louisiana after a heavy rain, in which the videographer claims to be witnessing an oil sheen on almost all surfaces touched by the condensation.
While the claim of oil rain was not confirmed, it still caused a significant stir online. Crude oil cannot evaporate, but there are legitimate fears that some of the lighter oil or compounds leached out of it and significantly thinned by Corexit, may have come aground in condensation. It is also possible that a strong storm or water-spout at sea simply picked up a volume of oily mixture and deposited it across an area of land, but the odds of that are small.
Along that same line, a million different and horrifying scenarios exist if a hurricane plows through the ever-growing volume of oil and spreads untold gallons across miles of populated American soil.
While no government agency has made such an announcement, considering the recently available, credible analysis, coastal residents within several miles of the Gulf would be well advised to take note, at the very least, of their exposure to sea spray, which may be carrying a higher content of toxic chemicals than normal.
This video was broadcast by CNN on Friday, July 9, 2010.
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New BP Data Show 20% of Gulf Spill Responders Exposed to Chemical That Sickened Valdez Workers
Posted on July 13th, 2010 No commentsSource: NY Times
In an under-the-radar release of new test results for its Gulf of Mexico oil spill workers, BP PLC is reporting potentially hazardous exposures to a now-discontinued dispersant chemical — a substance blamed for contributing to chronic health problems after the Exxon Valdez cleanup — among more than 20 percent of offshore responders.
BP’s new summary of chemical testing, posted to its website this week after a nearly monthlong absence of new data, also makes notable revisions to the company’s public characterization of the health risks facing Gulf workers. The oil giant now describes the government as a partner in developing the program for monitoring cleanup crews.
In a June 9 report on worker test results, BP confidently asserted that the health hazards of exposure to both dispersant chemicals and the components of leaking crude “are very low.” In its latest summary, BP replaced those three words with an assurance that health risks “have been carefully considered in the selection of the various methods employed in addressing its spill.”
The new BP summary, including results up to June 29, show a broad majority of workers testing below exposure limits set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
But the Valdez-linked chemical 2-butoxyethanol was detected at levels up to 10 parts per million (ppm) in more than 20 percent of offshore responders and 15 percent of those near shore. The NIOSH standard for 2-butoxyethanol, which lacks the force of law but is considered more health-protective than the higher OSHA limit, is 5 ppm.
Some public-health advocates pointed out that BP references the NIOSH ceiling of each chemical it tested for except 2-butoxyethanol, an ingredient in the Corexit 9527 dispersant that BP phased out after spraying it in the Gulf during the early days of the spill. “They’re playing with these numbers,” said Mark Catlin, a veteran industrial hygienist who has studied the worker-health fallout from the 1989 Valdez spill.
Natural Resources Defense Council Senior Scientist Gina Solomon described BP’s continued offshore 2-butoxyethanol detection during the month of June as “worrisome.”
“It suggests to me that there is still, clearly, a serious air-quality concern. … [Gulf] air quality, if anything, seems to be deteriorating,” Solomon said.
Hunter College toxicology professor Frank Mirer said it would be “implausible” that the ongoing detection of 2-butoxyethanol among workers could be attributable to only BP’s early use of Corexit 9527.
On June 9, BP’s testing summary stated: “BP has, for the very start, worked hard to ensure that the people involved in all the activities associated with the incident are protected.” That sentence also appeared in this week’s report, with “BP” replaced by “the Unified Area Command,” the government’s joint oil spill response effort.
More questions than answers
BP’s latest report on worker exposures adds test results for three components of crude oil not mentioned in previous monitoring summaries: toluene, xylene and ethylbenzene. Solomon praised the company for releasing more of its data amid pressure for increased transparency from members of Congress (E&E Daily, June 15).
“I was very happy to see they have presented results for many more chemicals than they were previously,” she said.
However, the company’s continued use of bar graphs that encompass ranges of exposures — without including where and under what conditions the Gulf tests are performed — left several occupational safety experts with more questions than answers.
New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health industrial hygienist David Newman, who served on a U.S. EPA expert panel that evaluated lingering public health risks after the Sept. 11 attacks, cautioned against focusing on worker testing data without considering broader details of particular on-the-job chemical exposures.
“We had a humongous amount of data after 9/11,” Newman said. “Most if not all of the data were reassuring. And yet harm was done.”
Catlin echoed Newman’s warning. “There are certainly some folks saying, ‘Look at all this data, everything looks good,’” he said, “but we saw that same thing on the Exxon Valdez. … The summary data BP provides is too sketchy to be able to give a clean bill of health.”
