#Racism Impoverishes the Whole Economy

[ausetkmt]

Racism Impoverishes the Whole Economy - The New York Times

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Discrimination hurts just about everyone, not only its direct victims.

New research shows that while the immediate targets of racism are unquestionably hurt the most, discrimination inflicts a staggering cost on the entire economy, reducing the wealth and income of millions of people, including many who do not customarily view themselves as victims.

The pernicious effects of discrimination on the wages and educational attainment of its direct targets are being freshly documented in inventive ways by scholarship. From the lost wages of African-Americans because of President Woodrow Wilson’s segregation of the Civil Service, to the losses suffered by Black and Hispanic students because of California’s ban on affirmative action, to the scarcity of Black girls in higher-level high school math courses, the scope of the toll continues to grow.

But farther-reaching effects of systemic racism may be less well understood. Economists are increasingly considering the cost of racially based misallocation of talent to everyone in the economy.

My own research demonstrates, for example, how hate-related violence can reduce the level and long-term growth of the U.S. economy. Using patents as a proxy for invention and innovation, I calculated how many were never issued because of the violence — riots, lynchings and Jim Crow laws — to which African Americans were subjected between 1870 and 1940.

The loss was considerable: The patents that African-Americans could have been expected to receive, given equal opportunity, would have roughly equaled the total for a medium-size European country during that time.

Those enormous creative losses can be expected to have had a direct effect on business investment and therefore on total economic activity and growth.

Other economists are beginning to estimate harm to the economy caused by racism in broad ways.

An important principle suggests that the person who can produce a product or service at a lower opportunity cost than his or her peers has a comparative advantage in that activity. Recent research calculates the effects of the discriminatory practice of placing highly skilled African-American workers, who might have flourished as, say, doctors, into lower-skilled occupations where they had no comparative advantage. Such practices 50 years ago — which linger, to a lesser extent, today — have cost the economy up to 40 percent of aggregate productivity and output today.

Similarly, other research estimates that aggregate economic output would have been $16 trillion higher since 2000 if racial gaps had been closed. To put that total in context, the gross domestic product of the United States in 2019 was $21.4 trillion. The researchers estimate that economic activity could be $5 trillion higher over the next five years if equal opportunity is achieved.

Right now, if more women and African-Americans were participating in the technical innovation that leads to patents, the economist Yanyan Yang and I calculate that G.D.P. per capita could be 0.6 to 4.4 percent higher. That is, it would be between $58,841 to $61,064 per person compared with $58,490 per person in 2019.

This entire line of research suggests that organizations — companies, laboratories, colleges and universities — are leaving colossal sums of money on the table by not maximizing talent and living standards for all Americans.

I have thought and written a lot about remedies. Here are a few ideas aimed at addressing discrimination in the innovation economy. First, we need more training in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), like the extensive and highly successful program once sponsored by Bell Labs to encourage participation in these fields by women and underrepresented minorities

STEM fields should not be the sole target, however, because the innovation economy encompasses more than this narrow set of subjects. Two of the last three people I’ve talked to at tech firms have a B.A. in international relations and a Ph.D. in political science. Clearly, problem-solving skills matter, but these skills are not unique to the STEM majors.

Second, there is substantial evidence of systemic racism in education, which needs to be addressed. Research shows that professors are less likely to respond to email inquiries about graduate study from Black, Hispanic and female students than from people who are discernibly white and male. A system of incentives — and penalties — could hold those responsible accountable at every level of the education and training process.

At the invention stage, such as at corporate, government and university labs, my research shows that mixed-gender teams are more prolific than those whose members are all female or male. And a large body of literature has documented the positive effects of diversity in teams. Managers at each level should be held responsible for being good stewards of the resources of their companies and promoting diverse teams and behavior and, therefore, better outcomes.

When invention is commercialized and companies sell shares to the public, the wealth gaps are stark. Seven of the world’s 10 richest people on the Forbes list are associated with tech companies that commercialize inventions. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are in the top five. None among the top 10 (or 50) is Black.

The statistics for venture capital funding are striking. In 2014, less than 1 percent of venture capital funding went to businesses founded by African-American women, and in 2015, only 2 percent of all venture capitalists were African-American.

A number of worthwhile recommendations have been made to address the lack of diversity at the commercialization stage of innovation. These include:

Enhancing mentoring opportunities through programs such as those of the Small Business Administration.

Seeking and recruiting founders to invest in places like Atlanta, and not exclusively in Silicon Valley.

Addressing systemic racism at every level of management and within venture capital firms.

Diversifying corporate boards so that senior leadership will be held accountable for diversity and workplace climate. (California has done this with women on the boards of public companies.)

The Kapor Center, a think tank that promotes participation by underrepresented minorities in tech fields and education, has proposed noteworthy remedies at many stages, including at the pre-college level.

The social compact most societies have with their governments is that standards of living will rise continually and that each successive generation will be better off than preceding ones. We are robbing countless people of higher standards of living and well-being when we allow racial discrimination to flourish from

[float-me-now]

I don’t hate my country, but I fucking hate a lot of the people living in it.

Right-wings parties have been wrecking Italy for *years*, and yet they fucking won.

They are literally composed of people who have been living off public money their whole lives while the citizens became more and more impoverished because of their incompetence and greed. A lot of them are known for their contacts with different mafia groups and for crimes like corruption or fraud. Not to mention all of the fascism-related scandals, the misogyny, homophobia, racism and the hateful and disgusting use of medias to twist truth and facts and spread their shameful propaganda. They lie nonstop, about everything. 

They want women to be confined at home to serve men and give birth to children with no future. They want to have the right to attack and insult LGBTQ+ people because they're different from their bigoted idea of "normality". Italy's economy sucks, but the only people who will benefit from their economic policies are the rich. Entrepreneurs, tax evaders, top managers, other politicians.

When they talk about freedom, they mean “freedom to oppress others without consequence and not wear a cloth on my face on public transports”. They hate immigrants, they hate women, LGBTQ+ people, animals. They don’t give two shits about science or the environment, they support the coal and oil lobbies and we’re in the middle of the biggest climate crisis ever seen. The impact of climate change in Italy has already begun to show and so far it's been devastating. But sure, go on, say that they are the right choice.

These politicians will NEVER be on people’s side, because it doesn’t benefit them. They feed on people’s anger and stupidity, they don’t want to help them. And yet they are still there, and people still voted for them.

I fucking hate you people. With this vote you consigned Italy to the criminals who made it the butt of the joke in Europe for years and who thrived while the people suffered. You have no fucking memory and make no effort to do some fucking research because no one in their right mind would ever vote for this bunch of disgusting buffoons.

But this is what most fucking Italians do. Complain, complain and then vote for the people who largely caused the situations they complain about instead of fucking thinking, reasoning and trying to change things.

Fucking enjoy your fascist government, you bunch of turds. We'll see if you'll still be happy about it in a couple years. Meanwhile, we'll resist, stand strong and support each other.

For tonight, I’ve fucking had it.

[bookclub4m]

25 Economics books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed

Get Good with Money: Ten Simple Steps to Becoming Financially Whole by Tiffany Aliche

Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo

Consumed: On Colonialism, Climate Change, Consumerism, and the Need for Collective Change by Aja Barber

The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans—And How We Can Fix It by Dorothy A. Brown

23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang

Edible Economics: A Hungry Economist Explains the World by Ha-Joon Chang

Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk by Satyajit Das

The Reconciliation Manifesto: Recovering the Land, Rebuilding the Economy by Grand Chief Ronald Derrickson and Arthur Manuel

Wolf Hustle: A Black Woman on Wall Street by Cin Fabré

Build the Damn Thing: How to Start a Successful Business If You're Not a Rich White Guy by Kathryn Finney

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas

Indigenomics: Taking a Seat at the Economic Table by Carol Anne Hilton

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex edited by Incite! Women of Colour Against Violence

Upholding Indigenous Economic Relationships: Nehiyawak Narratives by Shalene Wuttunee Jobin

How We Can Win: Race, History and Changing the Money Game That's Rigged by Kimberly Jones

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee

Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice by Jessica Gordon Nembhard

Can’t We Just Print More Money? Economics in Ten Simple Questions by Rupal Patel

The Black Tax: The Cost of Being Black in America by Shawn D. Rochester

Karl Marx's Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy by Kohei Saito

The Wisdom of Sustainability: Buddist Economics for the 21st Century by Sulak Sivaraksa

Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance by Edgar Villanueva

The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today by Linda Yueh

Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism by Muhammad Yunus

[newstfionline]

Sunday, September 12, 2021

Americans less positive about civil liberties: AP-NORC poll (AP) Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, Americans were reasonably positive about the state of their rights and liberties. Today, after 20 years, not as much. Far fewer people now say the government is doing a good job protecting rights including the freedom of speech, the right to vote, the right to bear arms and others. For example, the poll finds that 45% of Americans now say they think the U.S. government is doing a good job defending freedom of speech, compared with 32% who say it’s doing a poor job and 23% who say neither. The share saying the government is doing a good job is down from 71% in 2011 and from 59% in 2015. Dee Geddes, 73, a retiree in Chamberlain, South Dakota, said she was frustrated at the government’s apparent lack of ability to safeguard the amount of private information available, especially online. “It bothers me when I can go on the internet and find pretty much anything about anybody. It makes me feel sort of naked,” said Geddes. About half now say the government is doing a good job protecting freedom of religion, compared with three-quarters who said the same in 2011.

20 years later, fallout from toxic WTC dust cloud grows (AP) The dust cloud caught Carl Sadler near the East River, turning his clothes and hair white as he looked for a way out of Manhattan after escaping from his office at the World Trade Center. Gray powder billowed through the open windows and terrace door of Mariama James’ downtown apartment, settling, inches thick in places, into her rugs and children’s bedroom furniture. Barbara Burnette, a police detective, spat the soot from her mouth and throat for weeks as she worked on the burning rubble pile without a protective mask. Today, all three are among more than 111,000 people enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program, which gives free medical care to people with health problems potentially linked to the dust. Two decades after the twin towers’ collapse, people are still coming forward to report illnesses that might be related to the attacks.

US producer prices jump an unprecedented 8.3% in August (AP) Inflation at the wholesale level climbed 8.3% last month from August 2020, the biggest annual gain since the Labor Department started calculating the 12-month number in 2010. Inflation has been stirring as the economy recovers from last year’s brief but intense coronavirus recession. Supply chain bottlenecks and a shortage of workers have pushed prices higher. Food prices were up 2.9% last month after falling in July. Over the past year, wholesale food prices have climbed 12.7%, including surges of 59.2% for beef and 43.5% for shortening and cooking oil. Energy prices rose 0.4% from July and are up 32.3% over the past year.

Wigged out: A Venezuelan spymaster’s life on the lam (AP) Wigs, a fake moustache, plastic surgery and a new safe house every three months—these are just some of the tools of deception authorities in Spain believe a former Venezuelan spymaster relied on to evade capture on a U.S. warrant for narcoterrorism. The two-year manhunt for Gen. Hugo Carvajal ended Thursday night when police raided a rundown apartment in a quiet Madrid neighborhood where they found the fugitive in a back room holding a sharp knife in what they described as a last desperate attempt to evade arrest. Nicknamed “El Pollo” (“The Chicken”), Carvajal has been a thorn in the side of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration since 2014, when he was arrested in Aruba on a U.S. warrant only to go free after President Nicolás Maduro’s government pressured the small Dutch Caribbean island to release him. While on the lam, he was rumored to be in Portugal, then a hideout in the Caribbean. The reality was much simpler: The 61-year-old had never left Madrid. His last hideout was a mere 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) from the headquarters of the National Police.

Denmark lifts all coronavirus restrictions and celebrates ‘a whole new era’ (Washington Post) Some countries are setting records for daily covid-19 infections. Others are pursuing sweeping rules to mandate vaccination. But in Denmark, something like normal life has resumed. After nearly 550 days, the Scandinavian country has lifted the last of its domestic pandemic-era restrictions, declaring that the coronavirus is no longer a “critical threat to society.” Denmark appears to be the first European Union member to issue such a declaration, potentially providing a glimpse into the future of the bloc’s recovery—or serving as a cautionary tale of a nation that moved too quickly. The country’s leaders have pointed to its high vaccination rates—among the best in the world, with nearly 75 percent of residents fully immunized—as evidence that the step is justified.

Russia begins major military drills with Belarus after moves toward closer integration (Washington Post) Russia and Belarus began a massive week-long military exercise on NATO’s borders Friday after President Vladimir Putin and Belarus’s leader agreed on a new effort toward integrating the nations, including creating a “single defense space.” The Zapad 2021 exercise, involving 200,000 personnel, has NATO members and other neighboring countries on edge, echoing worries this spring over an unannounced Russian military buildup near Ukraine. The Zapad (meaning West) exercise is held regularly, but this iteration comes as Russian relations with NATO are increasingly fraught.

Pope Francis to visit impoverished Roma quarter in Slovakia (AP) Pope Francis is paying a visit next week to a neighborhood in Slovakia most Slovaks would not even think about going, which until recently even the police would avoid after dark. Francis will make the visit to the Roma community in the Lunik IX quarter of Slovakia’s second largest city of Kosice one of the highlights of his pilgrimage to “the heart of Europe.” Francis will be the first pontiff to meet the most socially excluded minority group in Slovakia. A fitting place to go for the “pope of the peripheries,” Lunik XI is the biggest of about 600 shabby, segregated settlements where the poorest 20% of the country’s 400,000 Roma live. Most lack basics such as running water or sewage systems, gas or electricity. “It’s a huge honor for us,” said Lunik IX mayor Marcel Sana, who has been a local resident since he was 2. “Even if he says just a few words, his presence will be a big boost for all those living here, the socially disadvantaged and poor people who need such support.”

Fleeing China, Hong Kongers flock to Britain (Los Angeles Times) He has no job, he’s still grappling with English and the climate is often cold and wet, but Dennis Chan is still grateful to be setting up his life in Britain. The 34-year-old arrived in Edinburgh, the Scottish capital, alone in April after quitting his job as a cargo officer for Cathay Pacific airlines in Hong Kong. He had never set foot in Britain before. But he also felt he didn’t recognize his own homeland any longer amid China’s relentless crackdown on political dissent and civic freedoms. After Beijing imposed a sweeping new national security law on Hong Kong in July of last year, he felt an urgency to leave. Within two months of making the British National Overseas visa available in January, the British government received 34,000 applications. It estimates that about 300,000 people could take up the offer within five years; others say the figure could wind up being closer to 500,000. For many new arrivals like Chan, who is still living in a rented room and finding his bearings, the transition has not been easy. Although Britain boasts a well-established Chinese community, many of the Hong Kongers who have immigrated in recent months have found it difficult to land a job and make connections, especially in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. They miss—or even fear for—loved ones left behind, and they sometimes feel the sting of racism here in the land that ruled Hong Kong for 156 years as part of its globe-straddling empire.

Lebanon gets a new government after 13 months of collapse (Washington Post) Lebanon finally got a new government Friday, after 13 months of tortuous negotiations that left the country leaderless and paralyzed during the worst economic and financial collapse in its history. The formation of the new cabinet, headed by billionaire tycoon Najib Mikati and seemingly supported by almost all factions, means the country will be able to get down to the business of steering its way out of the crisis, which has wiped billions of dollars from the banking system and impoverished millions. Mikati, the new prime minister and one of the country’s wealthiest men, seemed to fight back tears as he delivered his inaugural speech, describing the problems of parents who cannot afford to feed their children, send them to school or find medicine to treat them when they are sick. But given the country’s kleptocratic system of government, there are few reasons to believe that Mikati’s administration will be capable of undertaking the radical reforms that are essential if Lebanon is to climb out of its depression, analysts say.

[happymetalgirl]

Black Lives Matter (adapted from previous post)

I was finishing up my April albums post but I honestly couldn’t write about the albums I needed to without getting this out there first, and (as usual) it ended up being really long, so I separated it and made it its own post here.

I’m writing this part now at the beginning of June after an already tumultuous April and May, and now I’m just making myself sit down and do this because, well, honestly, it’s been pretty hard to justify spending my time writing about anything else with all all of what is going on right now. (I can’t wait to see what July throws at us.) But again, in all seriousness, I’m not looking for any pity or sympathy for my relatively mild circumstances at all because in all honesty, my assorted privileges have allowed my life to be pretty okay and proceed mostly uninterrupted in the midst of everything going on.

I’ll start by disseminating any ambiguity on what I’ll be talking about in these paragraphs. As I write this in the midst of a respiratory virus pandemic, another epidemic (possibly pandemic) of racist police brutality that has always existed in a culture of unhinged toxic masculinity in the United States has exploded to unbelievable and disgusting levels against Black people and peaceful protesters, ironically in wake of protests against fucking police violence, all of which is only emboldened and encouraged by local and federal leadership that is showcasing its oppressive, totalitarian ambitions in its unprecedented attempted revocations of its citizens constitutional and human rights.

I’ll make the necessary side note that this increasingly oligarchical government subservient to the will of military and prison industry has already shown its complete disregard for human rights for decades upon decades now through its violation of human rights through offensive wars and sanctions against other countries and its dehumanization of the refugees and immigrants who its actions create.

If you haven’t already checked out of this from all the political correctness breaching your conservative bubble (good job not being that person), but you’re upset because tHiS iS sUpPoSeD tO bE a MuSiC bLoG, uh, you’re on the wrong website buddy, and the potential tipping point of a long-awaited revolution in the midst of an economic depression, a viral pandemic, and a dual crisis of grotesque police violence and evolutionary transformation of proto-fascism into fascist dictatorship is no time to go about business as usual.

BUT OKAY, ENOUGH INTRODUCTION AND ENOUGH ABOUT ME! The point of this is to spotlight what to do in the wake of all of this. First of all, I don’t have all the answers and my perspective is as limited as any person’s, so if you’re an expert on any of these matters or if you have insight from having experiences that I as a white cis male have not had, if anything I’m bringing up here could be better in any way, feel absolutely free (but not obligated) to let me know.

Okay, so lots of problems at hand. The big, all-encompassing one facing all of humanity of course is the ecological disruption caused by industrially driven human-catalyzed climate change, and the rot of everything crystallizing at this current moment feeds into exacerbating that catastrophe, the next wide-reaching issue being capitalism, whose prioritization of profit and short-term gains is incredibly ill-equipped to handle a slow emergency like climate change or a more acute emergency like a global pandemic. Here in the U.S. we have a federal government so infested with corporate corruption to maximize capital profits for the country’s most wealthy that they couldn’t even choose the obvious solution of pausing the economy and providing for its people for the duration of the pandemic in the interest of public health over the appallingly quick choice of protecting the financial interests of the corporate “donors” that help them hold their positions of power, at the risk of maybe closing the gap a tiny bit between the truly despicably wealthy and the growing number of hopelessly impoverished. So while the wealthy get protection of their assets from the slow-down of business (you know, ‘cause the pandemic), the people in most need of help because of that slow-down and plunged into spiking unemployment get shit from the people meant to represent them. And that’s just the corporate rot that rears its head as a result of a pandemic!

Even in “normal” times, capitalism in this country has built its foundation on slave labor and justifying the use of slavery through racism (even after it became illegal to outright own people as slaves). That cornerstone of free/cheap labor that this country’s economy is built on whose role was served by slavery was filled by outsourcing to countries with an easily exploitable lower class (whose conditions are often exacerbated by U.S. meddling on behalf of business interests) and prison labor made possible by mass incarceration that has targeted similarly vulnerable people and communities of color through strategic, racially profiled over-policing of minority communities trapped in poverty through historic systemic racism.

The study of that global climate change I mentioned earlier is referred to as a crisis study because there isn’t an unlimited time to do something about it, and the ever-changing conditions and pivotal events of the world effect what needs to be done to combat it (and what it is too late to do). This current crisis of police brutality is one of those types of critical moments, for climate change and social justice. Police brutality didn’t become an issue when George Floyd was murdered on May 25th 2020; it’s been an ugly facet of this multifactedly ugly country for a long time now, but its being brought to light has instigated an uprising the likes of which has not been seen in a long while, and with it, an especially insidious aggression toward it by the increasingly fascist government and its authoritarian figurehead (to the point of threatening institution of martial law and suspending first amendment rights and habeas corpus) that at this point serves only to maintain complacency for the benefit of the ruling class and to the detriment of the disproportionately non-white lower working class (treated as a slave class). Consequently this is a pivotal time that obligates widespread action and ceasing of silence from privileged people like me who have been able to get away with writing about music largely apolitically for years. This is a time when we either plunge unfathomably further into the depths of fascism at the hands of the ruling class and the silence of the less-effected or we consolidate in this moment of broad energizing to both enact substantive change on the critical issue of police brutality and set a precedent and build momentum to achieve justice for LGBTQIA+ folk, other racial minorities and marginalized groups, and make the critical changes need to avoid civilizational dissolution in the face of the imperative to mitigate our impact on global warming.

Speaking of that change and the actions that this moment implores of us all to contribute our energy to: the most immediately critical issue at our feet, to both save human lives from being taken unjustly at the hands of police brutality and to galvanize this revolution to be able to demand further justice and critical social transformation, is ending police brutality. Being an institution born out of rounding up escaped slaves and given the state-supported monopoly on violence that attracts largely those seeking to satiate sadism with the license to that monopolized violence, police culture is inherently toxic and not worth even preserving for the sake of transforming structurally. While abolishing the police is obviously too ambitious of an immediate goal, there are a lot of proposed steps to defunding and largely dismantling the police as a whole. The project Campaign Zero outlines and pushes for ten tangible reforms that would (some of which have recently been proposed in Colorado) decrease police violence, especially in the majority-Black communities that suffer from it the most. The “8 Can’t Wait” proposal that has been making rounds lately is part of Campaign Zero, and donations to these projects are of course, quite helpful and a good start for this blossoming movement. Furthermore, donations to local bail funds is especially important at this time with police making wanton arrests of peaceful protests (and also just random Black people not making any disruption) to support the people going out and protesting. Because this money of course gets siphoned into the courts, and then partially to law enforcement, it’s important to also direct funds to organizations where that money will not later be used against us, but again, keeping people able to protest is of utmost importance, since that it what is driving positive change in this moment.

Also helpful is direct support of the people on the frontlines of these protests. It is a time for privileged people to take action in solidarity and support, but not one for privileged groups to take over or “lead” the movement. Right now, this is about who is hurting the most and who is being oppressed the most, and right now that is Black people, by police, hence BLACK LIVES MATTER. Now is not a time for even underprivileged white people to use these protests’ likelihood of escalating to indulge in venting frustrations against the system by inciting police violence that puts Black people disproportionately in more danger in such situations. Now is the time to use that privilege of being less prone to racism police violence to whatever extent possible to protect the people of color protesting. And again, this isn’t about being white saviors or martyrs, this is about supporting people in the way they wish, so don’t listen to my advice over the insight and requests of what Black people and the Black community have. And by all means, fucking listen to them! Read from them! Engage in good-faith conversation with them (though don’t expect any individual Black person to give you a seminar on racism when there are ample resources that don’t demand someone devoting their precious time to you)! Learn where the limits of your perspective fail you! And for fuck’s sake, don’t just cherry pick the word of one token Black friend that happens to have some class privilege to conveniently discount the testimonies of other Black people!

Lastly, on a personal note to the metalheads that read this blog, I think this is a particularly important time for the metal community, not to center itself, but to bring itself alongside social justice in a more complete way than it has in the past. Former Opeth and current Soen drummer Martín López said last year in an interview published in Blabbermouth that the metal community is very behind the curve on sociopolitical issues, and the response to his saying that from the metal community that floods Blabbermouth comment sections basically just made the case for the exact point he was making. And it’s a shame because I think such a huge part of metal is about standing up to injustice as part of or in support of the oppressed, or at least such a huge part of the metal I gravitate toward is. Without sounding too spiritual or cheesy because I’m not a really spiritual person, I feel like when I see the injustice going on, I feel that spirit of metal in all of it on the side of the oppressed. I feel like all the grindcore and deathcore and thrash and death metal I’ve been binging lately is in the spirit of the protesters standing up to and, when they have to, fighting back against the unjustified aggression of the police, and looking back at old, certified classic albums like …And Justice for All, Toxicity, and Chaos A.D. and more recent albums like Machine Head’s The Blackening, and Thy Art Is Murder’s Human Target, and Venom Prison’s Samsara, it’s always been about standing up to this kind of bullshit. So I think if there ever was a time since Sabbath birthed it for metal to prove that it’s as important as it makes itself out to be and as important as it is to everyone who listens to it in such a way that they read an obscure blog about it, now is that time to show that it’s not just about being an angry white guy. Now is the time to make Martín López happy by proving him wrong.

Well, in typical Happymetalboy fashion, I can’t seem to make anything brief.

[aclockworkfilmsnob]

I forget if I made my stance clear on tumblr, so I’ll get that out of the way first.

I back BLM and the protests 100%, cops need to be held accountable for what happened and serious changes need to be implemented to prevent anything like George Floyd’s murder from occurring again. This is far from some “freak occurance,” it speaks volumes of our country’s systemic racism built on the foundation of white privilege. The “not all cops” excuse doesn’t fly, because while the amount of them that are legitimately racist/malicious is very small, the amount that remain complacent and apathetic due to this built-in excuse is fucking overwhelmingly huge. I say this as someone who comes from a family of cops, who has backed the blue for years, who has entertained every inch of the right-wing argument combatting these claims. If it weren’t for COVID, I’d be marching with the protesters myself, and I refuse to scrutinize anybody for choosing to do so themselves.

That being said… looting is wrong. Sure, on paper I completely back the whole “we’re gonna hurt the rich, white, bigoted billionaires where it hurts the most: their wallets.” The problem is, we’re headed toward economic devastation as it is. And unless you didn’t pay attention during your economics class in high school, the economy is not an entity that is exclusive to the wellbeing of rich white folk. It impacts the livelihood of EVERYONE, and to violently kick it while it’s down is going to do so much more against lower-class/impoverished individuals than it does for the billionaires you’re turning into multi-millionaires. Not to mention how baseless so many of these looting attacks have been, with obvious examples of privately owned businesses being attacked, some of them black-owned, who did nothing against the protests and even in some cases, supported them. That’s a perfect way to distance the public from your message and display that you’re not worth backing, that you are the savages right wing media portrays you to be.

This is literally like… the worst fucking time to willingly make a negative dent in the economy. It impacts EVERYONE, not just rich white racists. We’re headed towards a recession, and in a country that is systemically rigged against the black community, that’s going to do the exact opposite of pulling them out of the poverty that has plagued them for so long. I’m sorry, but looting is fucking ridiculous.

[jaymiestrecker]

"The Next American Revolution"

Some quotes from and comments on "The Next American Revolution" by Grace Lee Boggs with Scott Kurashige. I had mixed reactions to this book and wanted to sort them out.

Main points

"Revolution, as Grace emphasizes, is not a onetime, D-day event that will happen when a critical mass of forces takes the correct action at the proper time. It is a protracted process tied to slower evolutionary changes that cannot be dismissed." — Scott Kurashige in the introduction

Examples of revolutionary activities by this definition:

"Creating new forms of community-based institutions (e.g. co-ops, small business, and community development corporations)" "to produce local goods for local needs"

Growing food in community gardens on abandoned lots

"Reinventing education to include children in community building"

A theme of the book was grassroots or bottom-up change, democratically organized with shared leadership rather than under the command of a charismatic leader.

Problems

"Our representative democracy, itself a product of the first American Revolution of 1776, trains us to focus on the results of elections. Most Americans equate democracy with voting, and they expect their elected officials to do their bidding once they put them into office. But as Grace asserts, that system, while it still has room for some admirable individuals, has been thoroughly corrupted by what the Zapatistas call the 'Empire of Money.'" — Scott Kurashige in the introduction

"Still, it becomes clearer every day that organizing or joining massive protests and demanding new policies fail to sufficiently address the crisis we face. They may demonstrate that we are on the right side politically, but they are not transformative enough. They do not change the cultural images or the symbols that play such a pivotal role in molding us into who we are."

"'When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people,' [Martin Luther King, Jr.] declared, 'the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.'"

I couldn't find the quote, but I think at some point the book characterized capitalism as a system that borrows from the future to pay for the present. In the afterword, a discussion between Boggs and Immanuel Wallerstein moderated by Scott Kurashige, Wallerstein described capitalism as a system that requires endless growth, which obviously can't go on forever. He and Boggs asked us to think about what comes after capitalism collapses. They were speaking in the middle of the recession of 2009 and saw the collapse as coming within a few decades. Now, in 2021, with the US stock market surging despite all the misfortunes of the pandemic, it seems to me that capitalism is not at all in its death throes. I've been waiting for years just for Twitter to collapse, when investors finally realize that they're throwing more and more money at a company that has never turned a profit, and even that hasn't happened. The only pyramid schemes I see possibly falling apart are the social safety net programs like Social Security that rest on the assumption of capitalism: of endless growth.

Solutions

"[Paulo] Freire argued that revolutionary work must transform the oppressed from passive victims to agents of history, seeking 'the pursuit of fuller humanity.' Thus, the emphasis is on people taking control of their own destiny—'self-determination' in the truest sense of the word. Transforming relations means that revolution is not about the 'have-nots' acquiring the material possessions of the 'haves.' It is about overcoming the 'dehumanization' that has been fostered by the commodification of everything under capitalism and building more democratic, just, and nourishing modes of relating to people."

"The revolution to be made in the United States will be the first revolution in history to require the masses to make material sacrifices rather than to acquire more material things. We must give up many of the things which this country has enjoyed at the expense of damning over one-third of the world into a state of underdevelopment, ignorance, disease, and early death…" — Jimmy Boggs

I agree that it would make the world better if the wealthier people in the world (including the US middle class) would reduce consumption, but how the heck do you convince them to do it? "A History of Future Cities" talked about India in post-colonial times turning inward (less trade with other countries) and turning socialist, but eventually people got tired of it for various reasons (bureaucracy, corruption, economic stagnation) and the pendulum swung to a recklessly unregulated capitalism. In an article in El País about the reunification of East and West Germany, an interviewee from socialist East Germany said that one of reasons they came to favor capitalism was that the people on their side were envious of the nice toys that the other side had.

"The problem is working out a strategy that combines a very short-run, immediate attempt to solve people's needs and a medium-run strategy of transforming the system. I think of the very short run as one of minimizing the pain." — Immanuel Wallerstein

It's unclear to me, and this book really didn't clear it up, how to tell the difference between reforms that are a step within evolutionary change and reforms that prop up a harmful system. Elsewhere in the book, Boggs even counterechoed Wallerstein's phrasing when criticizing "palliatives masked as 'reform'".

Changing one's mind

One theme I liked in this book was that people can and should change their minds, refine their thinking, over time. Boggs (who turned 96 the year the first edition of this book was published) talked about how her own thinking had changed over the years through reading, discussion, and trying to apply her ideas in practice. She talked about one writing of Karl Marx that people always quote, and how he was in his 20s when he wrote it, and how people tend to jump to conclusions a bit in their 20s when they would be more cautious later in their lives. She talked about how Martin Luther King Jr.'s thinking had become more radical in the last few years of his life. She quoted Mahatma Gandhi a lot from later in his life, but also mentioned how, as a young man living in London, he tried to assimilate into English culture by buying a silk hat and taking dance lessons.

Meaningful work

"Quoting the nineteenth-century political economist Henry George, King advocated 'work which improves the conditions of mankind'—the kind of 'work which extends knowledge and increases power and enriches literature and elevates thought.' This kind of work 'is not done to secure a living,' King continued. 'It is not the work of slaves, driven to their task either by masters or by animal necessities. It is the work of men who perform it for their own sake and not that they may get more to eat or drink or wear or display. In a state of society where want is abolished, work of this sort could be enormously increased.'"

Relatedly, from a book I just started reading, "Good Economics for Hard Times":

"Economists have a tendency to adopt of notion of well-being that is often too narrow, some version of income or material consumption. And yet all of us need much more than that to have a fulfilling life: the respect of the community, the comforts of family and friends, dignity, lightness, pleasure. The focus on income alone is not just a convenient shortcut. It is a distorting lens that often has led the smartest economists down the wrong path, policy makers to the wrong decisions, and all too many of us to the wrong obsessions. It is what persuades so many of us that the whole world is waiting at the door to take our well-paying jobs. It is what has led to a single-minded focus on restoring the Western nations to some glorious past of fast economic growth. It is what makes us simultaneously deeply suspicious of those who don't have money and terrified to find ourselves in their shoes. It is also what makes the trade-off between the growth of the economy and the survival of the planet seem so stark." — Abhijit V. Bannerjee and Esther Duflo

That all sounds good to me. I would love to get to a point where the world's surplus is used to provide a basic income for everyone, and where the tedious jobs are all automated, so that everyone has the chance to do something purposeful with their life. That requires moving forward, but the thing I disliked most about "The Next American Revolution" is it seemed to want to move backward:

"The main reason why Western civilizations lack Spirituality, or an awareness of our interconnectedness with one another and the universe, according to Gandhi, is that it has given priority to economic and technological development over human and community development. Advanced technology has made it possible for people to perform miracles, but it has impoverished us spiritually because it has made us feel that outside forces determine who and what we are. Traditional societies lacked our material comforts and conveniences, but individuals had more Soul, or a belief in the individual's power to make moral choices, because these societies valued the community relationships that they depended on for survival."

"We're having to go back to when people shared things and started taking care of each other." — Will Allen

"During the struggle for independence, Gandhi recognized that the educational system… had been designed to supply the next generation of clerks to sign, stamp, and file the paperwork to run the British Empire. As a result, most elite Indian students found manual work 'irksome.' However, he retorted, the development of a true intellect necessitated the balanced and 'harmonious growth of body, mind and soul.'"

I would counter that with a quote from "The Jungle":

"Now set aside the modern system of pneumatic house-cleaning, and the economies of co-operative cooking; and consider one single item, the washing of dishes. Surely it is moderate to say that the dish-washing for a family of five takes half an hour a day; with ten hours as a day’s work, it takes, therefore, half a million able-bodied persons—mostly women—to do the dish-washing of the country. And note that this is most filthy and deadening and brutalizing work; that it is a cause of anemia, nervousness, ugliness, and ill-temper; of prostitution, suicide, and insanity; of drunken husbands and degenerate children—for all of which things the community has naturally to pay." — Upton Sinclair

That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it does seem like a waste to make humans do boring chores that could be easily automated, when we only have, what, 80 or 90 years if we're lucky to try to figure out what we're supposed to do here and try to learn as much as we can and try to plant some ideas or good deeds or whatever that will live on for a while after we're gone. I don't think the question is whether we should try to preserve mind-numbing work for some reason (whether to keep people from losing their jobs or to provide some sort of moral benefit), but how much we can automate in an environmentally sustainable way, and how much we can automate without degrading the quality of the product or service, and how to provide income and education for people who will lose their jobs. How do we optimize for well-being rather than for profit?

Furthermore! What is this supposedly more virtuous, more spiritual past that Gandhi and Allen are talking about? Nostalgia for a past that never existed.

One reason I'm frustrated with this back-to-farming vision is that I feel like there's no place for me and the work that I find meaningful, i.e. software development. If I'm going to have something interesting to work on (as opposed to simple websites that don't need any programming, for example), then I really have to look beyond this town. The whole turning inward / providing local services thing doesn't work for me. I like globalization in that respect. I like how I'm building on pieces of software that are made by too many people to count in many different places, most of whom have never met.

I'm trying to imagine how Boggs would respond to this (she's dead now), if I could manage to explain it to her (disappointingly, she really didn't seem to understand science or technology at all). I suppose she would say that the farming in Detroit was just an example, not something everyone has to do. She did say at one point that she envisioned this revolution being brought about not by some vanguard of activists, but by people of many different jobs doing what they could with their skills in their realm.

The trouble with that is, I still can't figure out what I can do with the skills that I have that would actually be useful toward reform/revolution.

Soul, heart, love

Boggs talked a lot about "growing our souls". I found this frustrating on multiple levels.

I disagreed with how she placed the "soul" or "heart" in opposition to the mind. In the most egregious example, she talked about "… rejecting scientific rationalism (based on the Cartesian body-mind dichotomy), which recognizes as real only that which can be measured and therefore excludes the knowledge that comes from the heart or from relationships between people." First, I don't think that's an accurate depiction of what scientists today generally believe, or what a more modern philosophy of science would say. Second, science has shown that the body and mind are interrelated, which is why for example we treat anxiety and depression with a combination of drugs and cognitive behavioral therapy. Emotions aren't a separate system from analytical thinking.

I'm not sure how to differentiate between "growing my soul" as opposed to an individualistic and regressive approach of doing "charity" because it makes me feel like a good person.

Another recurring word was "love" (and King's "beloved community"). As an extreme introvert and an atheist, I felt kind of left out by all this talk of "souls" and "love". So I was relieved to come across this passage:

"Shea Howell, Oakland University rhetoric professor and former director of Detroit Summer, has helped hundred of students and community organizers appreciate what Jimmy meant: Love isn't just something you feel. It's something you do every day when you go out and pick up the papers and bottles scattered the night before on the corner, when you stop and talk to a neighbor, when you argue passionately for what you believe with whoever will listen, when you call a friend to see how they're doing, when you write a letter to the newspaper, when you give a speech and give 'em hell, when you never stop believing that we can all be more than we are. In other words, Love isn't about what we did yesterday; it's about what we do today and tomorrow and the day after."

Phew, some of those things seem doable. I'm still not sure what I personally can do that would actually be effective toward reform/revolution, but at least I don't feel like I should just give up.

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

A Farewell to Tossers (Or ‘Trump is Out: Hooray!’)

TRIGGER WARNING: COVID; Discussion of Racism; ‘It’s the Great Rape Satsuma, Charlie Brown!’

Well then. Trump is no longer President Elect of the United States and the world breathes a sigh of relief. At last, we can all stop worrying that the increasingly unstable leader of the free world is going to blow us all up with nukes because he mistook the big red thermonuclear button for the ‘send’ button on fucking Twitter! It actually feels nice to go back to worrying about more nebulous threats that don’t come with a fuck-ugly face and a dubious web presence attached. This being space-year 2020, we still have to cower in fear of COVID, the collapse of the global economy and a slow, choking death courtesy of a climate and planetary ecology that are frankly sick of our bullshit, but it’s still good to celebrate the fact that there’s one less dangerous, narcissistic prick with serious political power. The last four years have felt like a deeply disturbing docudrama answering the question ‘What if the Annoying Orange Ever Got its Hands on Real Power’, but the nightmare is over now. Well, I say ‘Annoying Orange’. He’s really more of a Rapey Satsuma, but let’s not split hairs of semantics. The tosser’s on his way out and that’s a cause for delight.

Now, obviously, this blog is somewhat overdue. Sorry, humans, but I just haven’t had the time to compose snarky think-pieces on major news items in real time. I’ve been busy being in love with- and making love to- an amazing woman (who’s also my sometime glamorous assistant over on my Youtube channel where I post magic vids), writing four novels, playing through the recent rash of Crash Bandicoot games and trying weed for the first, last and only time in my life (the only effect it had on me was to make me crave Mars Bars, which happens to me on a semi-regular basis anyway). However, don’t mistake my taciturnity for ambiguity! I am overjoyed that America has finally gotten rid of the psychotic Cheesy Whatsit who spent not quite half a decade shitting on the poor and disenfranchised while stumbling disastrously around the international stage like a very stupid, ill-tempered bear that’s suddenly found itself in the middle of a production of The Importance of Being Earnest. Like most of my American readers and probably every sane, right-thinking person outside America, I greeted the news that he was on his way out with a fist-pump and a little dance of happiness. I might have twerked. I can neither confirm nor deny twerking.

But what lessons can we learn from this election and the fact that Trump clawed his way into power in the first place? Surely the last four years weren’t just the result of one nation’s collective brain-fart and their abrupt end nothing more than a spontaneous return to sanity? Well, no. The main reason Trump managed to grab hold of power was because he pretended to care about the American working classes. He didn’t, obviously: as soon as he got into power, he started taking away the social securities on which many of the poorest depend and dismantling their access to healthcare, because he’s a megalomaniacal rich dickhead. But he pretended to care well enough to convince an enormous quantity of people who felt alienated and disenfranchised by modern politics and- in particular- by a version of liberalism that seemed entirely focused on city-dwelling, self-consciously woke hipsters and regarded everyone else as a joke. A large part of the reason Joe Biden was able to wrest power back from the tantrum-throwing saveloy wanker was because he bothered to go out to the most impoverished parts of his country and remind that them that yes, the Democratic party did know they existed and did give a shit. Admittedly, he wasn’t the best candidate for working class voters- that would have been Bernie Sanders- but he was the best guy to get the message across in a way that wouldn’t seem patronising. So, Lesson One: ignore the gargantuan body of unskilled and menial labourers who power your country’s economy only at your own peril.

The second, related lesson should probably be something along the lines of ‘maybe prioritise rigorous analytical thinking as part of your country’s education strategy from a young age’. Seriously, it might seem obvious to you or I that Trump is a dangerous bullshit artist, but he hoodwinked a lot of people. And no, they’re not just naturally, randomly stupid. Okay, some of them are- nature bestows a fresh bounty of total fucking clods on the human race with every new generation, after all. But the point is that natural idiocy doesn’t adequately explain why so many people voted for a twat who clearly didn’t have their best interests at heart. The ability to recognise predatory charlatans is a subset of the ability to think critically about information with which you’re presented. Both the US and the UK education systems fail spectacularly to give people the mental tools they need to do this early on, with a heavier emphasis on learning rote facts and formulas which- while useful- only help to build crystallised intelligence not vital fluid intelligence (one is just stats and dry information, the other is the skills you need to navigate modern civilisation). Because fluid intelligence becomes harder and harder to acquire as one gets older, teaching people critical thinking skills early on is really important. Neither the UK nor US education systems really start to seriously teach it until pupils are almost adolescent, meaning that by the time they get to adulthood, they just don’t have the ability to peer through the miasma of obfuscating horseshit that surrounds most political candidates and accurately assess who is going to fuck them in the gall-bladder least. Biden was able to win this time round partly because he was really good at putting his message in a non-obfuscating way that helped to mobilise people regardless of their level of critical thinking. That’s great for him, and anything that helped oust Trump is a good thing, but it doesn’t address the underlying problem. The underlying problem, of course, is that, so long as education doesn’t take analytical skills seriously, the political system will always favour candidates with big, simple messages over more nuanced politicians with complex and ambiguous views, regardless of who the most qualified person is.

If Lessons One and Two were about understanding why people voted for Trump four years ago and why the didn’t this time, Lesson Three is our big ‘fuck humans’ moment, because one thing the election of Trump made is clear is that racism is alive and well in modern America. Yes, many of his voters were hoodwinked. Yes, many of them were legitimately alienated. But a significant percentage of them were also just xenophobic, racist arseholes who voted for him because they thought he’d get rid of some Mexicans for them. It’s tragic that these attitudes still persist in the modern world, but they do. Worse still, I’m not sure how you could easily address it. Fear and hatred of difference- even if it’s a superficial difference like skin colour or accent- seems to be hardwired into some people. While we can work to build a world where these attitudes aren’t acceptable, so long as we humans think of ourselves as belonging to different nations and groups, it’s almost impossible to extinguish them entirely. We’re just not at the point we need to be at: the point where we think of ourselves as a species with common goals and needs, not a disparate collection of tribes and interest groups. Trump and his election to power were symptomatic of this problem. His recent de-election might help alleviate it for awhile. However, only time and repeated, positive mutual interaction between different groups of people (on both the global and individual level) can ever cure the disease itself. And that shit’s going to take time. There’s years of genocide and exploitation and war and rivalry and mistrust to make up for and, frankly, it’s still going on, which just makes it harder to drag the human race in the right direction.

Fuck, that got deep. This was meant to be a funny, celebratory blog about how we no longer have to put up with that prat Trump, and instead it turned into a lengthy disquisition on the failure of education and the problems inherent in how humans relate to one another through Tajfel’s Social Identity Theory (that’s the whole in-group/out-group/fear-and-distrust-among-nations-and-peoples thing I was going on about). Sorry, folks, sometimes life is just like that: you tune in for laughs and get punched in the dick with a dry, depressing polemic on our failings as a species. Happy 2020, everyone! Anyway, tune in soon for a review of Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, which I promise not to turn into a didactic on the role of Nietzsche’s hypothetical superman in a civilisation that relies on the suppression of certain, key choices… aaaaaalthough…

[crimethinc]

Borders: The Global Caste System – A New Poster Illustrating Why People Migrate, the Risks They Face, and Who Benefits

We’ve worked with some of our favorite artists to produce a new full-color poster in the same series as our classic “Capitalism Is a Pyramid Scheme” design. “Borders: The Global Caste System” illustrates all the different elements that make up the border, from the extraction of resources on one side to wage disparities on the other—and all the brutality and injustice in between. In visual narrative, the poster depicts the reasons people migrate, the forces ranged against them, and the ones who benefit from this state of affairs.

Just as the pyramid poster accompanied our earlier book, Work, this poster functions as a companion to our new book, No Wall They Can Build: A Guide to Borders & Migration Across North America. This poster illuminates the ideas set forth in that book, presenting them in a form that can appear on the walls of your town to stimulate conversation and show solidarity with everyone who is affected by borders.

Click above for a downloadable PDF.

This poster is 14 x 23 inches, full-color, double-sided, and printed on white book paper. It is equally suitable for hanging in a classroom and for wheatpasting downtown.

The border does not divide one world from another. There is only one world, and the border is tearing it apart.

Borders: The Global Caste System

The border is not just a wall or a line on a map. It’s a power structure, a system of control. The border is everywhere that people live in fear of deportation, everywhere migrants are denied the rights accorded citizens, everywhere human beings are segregated into included and excluded.

The border divides the whole world into gated communities and prisons, one within the other in concentric circles of privilege and control. At one end of the continuum, there are billionaires who can fly anywhere in private jets; at the other end, inmates in solitary confinement. As long as there is a border between you and those less fortunate than you, you can be sure there will be a border above you, too, keeping you from the things you need. And who will tear down that second border with you, if not the people separated from you by the first?

Defying Global Apartheid

Speak of freedom all you like—we live in a world of walls.

There used to be few enough that we could keep up with them—Hadrian’s Wall, the Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall. Now they’re everywhere. The walls of the old days have gone viral, penetrating every level of society. Wall Street, named after a stockade built by African slaves to protect European colonists, exemplifies this transformation: it’s no longer a question of fencing out the natives, but of a market economy that imposes divisions throughout the entire world.

These divisions take many forms. There are physical boundaries—the walls of detention centers, the fences of concrete and barbed wire, the perimeters that enclose private campuses and gated communities. There are boundaries controlling the flow of information: security clearances, classified databases, internet firewalls that cordon off entire countries. There are social boundaries—the privileges of citizenship, the barriers of racism, all the ways that money calibrates what each person can and cannot do.

All of these divisions are predicated on ceaseless violence. For some, this means imprisonment, deportation, torture, solitary confinement, vigilante attacks, state-sanctioned murder. For others, it means police patrols, security checkpoints, traffic stops, background checks, street harassment, surveillance, bureaucracy, propaganda.

Borders don’t just divide countries: they exist wherever people live in fear of immigration raids, wherever people have to accept lower wages because they have no documents. The world isn’t just divided horizontally into different jurisdictions—it is divided socially into different zones of privilege, of access. The US-Mexico border is part of the same structure as the chain-link fence that keeps homeless people out of an empty parking lot and the price bracket that keeps day laborers from buying the “organic” option at the grocery store even if they were the ones who picked the vegetables.

The purpose of the border is not to regulate migration. It is to control communities on both sides of the wall. The border regime enables the authorities to force down wages, suppress dissent, and channel resentment towards those who have the least power in society rather than those who have the most.

We’re told that borders protect us from outsiders. But how did they become outside in the first place? We are all joined in a single worldwide economy, in which resources are extracted from one country and sent to another, in which profits made in one country are hoarded in another. This isn’t new—it’s been going on since the colonization of the Americas.

So who is invading whom? The corporations that plunder the south, or the migrants who go north, following the resources and opportunities that have been taken away? If anyone has a right to cross these lands, isn’t it the descendants of the peoples who lived here before European settlement?

There are 11 million undocumented people living in the United States today. They are essential to the functioning of the economy; without their cheap labor, agriculture and construction work would grind to a halt. Many of them have lived in the US for many years or decades. Of those who cross from Mexico without papers, fully half of them are deportees attempting to return to their families in the US.

The border is not intended to keep undocumented people out. The goal is to make sure that entering the United States without papers is dangerous, traumatizing, and expensive—but possible. The point of deportations is not to empty the US of undocumented people. It is to terrorize those who live in the US with the threat of deportation. This serves to maintain a caste system by blackmailing a captive population.

So long as a massive part of the US population lives in constant danger and without any rights, employers have access to a vast pool of disposable labor that is easy to exploit. This drives down wages for workers with US citizenship, too. But it’s not undocumented immigrants who are “stealing their jobs”—it’s the border itself.

Accusing migrants of stealing jobs from US citizens is blaming the victim. If everyone were accorded the same rights, if national boundaries did not artificially create impoverished populations in countries that are stripped of natural resources and treated as garbage dumps, migrant labor could not undercut anyone else’s job opportunities. If not for all the risks and pressures undocumented workers face, they would be able to obtain the same price for their labor as everyone else. Time and again, undocumented workers have demonstrated their courage in struggles for higher wages, despite having to overcome obstacles other workers do not face. But border enforcement drives down wages across the board. That’s the point of it.

In deporting people who have lived in the US for decades, the US government is using Mexico as a concentration camp to conceal unemployment and other problems. The desperation and the firearms produced in the US reappear in Mexico in a brutal illegal economy driven by the appetite of US consumers for narcotics. This is a way of exporting the violence that is essential to maintaining such tremendous imbalances of power. And as it has become more difficult and therefore more expensive to enter the United States without documents, the cartels have been drawn into the business, creating a feedback loop of brutality that the US authorities use to justify further the clampdowns.

The cycle repeats and intensifies.

The border sends resources and profits one way, and human beings the other. This is how the rich amass great concentrations of wealth: not just by accumulating resources in one place, but also by excluding people from them.

If a prisoner is a person contained by walls, what does that make us? Prisons don’t just contain the people inside them. When the border is everywhere, everyone is transformed into a prisoner or prison guard.

It’s easy to be bribed by the advantages of citizenship: being able to travel more freely, being allowed to participate legally in the labor market, being able to access what is left of government assistance, being acknowledged as a part of society. Yet these privileges come at a terrible cost, for the documents one person holds only have value because others are without them. Their value is based on artificial scarcity.

As long as there is a border between you and those less fortunate than you, you can be sure there will also be borders above you, keeping you from things that you need. Some people are deported, others are evicted, but the fundamental mechanisms are the same. And who will help you tear down the borders above you, if not the people separated from you by the borders below?

Borders are just social constructs—they are imaginary frameworks imposed on the real world. There is nothing necessary or inevitable about them. Were it not for the violence of the believers, they would cease to exist.

Crossing the border without documents is a way of resisting. So is getting to know people who are affected by the border in ways that you are not, setting out to understand and share their struggles. Together, we can make the border unenforceable—a step towards creating a world in which everyone will be free to travel wherever they desire, to use their creative energy however they see fit, to fulfill their potential on their own terms.

To learn more, order or download No Wall They Can Build: A Guide to Borders & Migration Across North America.

To get involved in solidarity work, consider volunteering with a group like No More Deaths.

[insideanairport]

Éric Alliez & Maurizio Lazzarato’s Wars and Capital

❍❍❍

The book is examining Wars and Capital, with State in between as an important element to constitute the notion of politics (in a Schmittian & Greek sense). I came across the book in an exhibition titled Crossings in Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen this Christmas. The cover description of the book says: “A critique of capital through the lens of war, and a critique of war through the lens of the revolution of 1968.” I have read some of the works of Lazzarato before on notion of sovereignty, which made me interested to read this one.

The book is drawing heavily from the Nazi racist political scientist Carl Schmitt (who was going as far as demanding that all publications by Jewish scientists should henceforth be marked with a small symbol) and at the same time political works of Foucault and Deleuze. Unsurprisingly, Foucault has been criticized for being too liberal, specifically in chapter 7: “The Limits of the Liberalism of Foucault”. That’s also probably, the reason that Schmitt’s Naziism has not been mentioned throughout the whole book. Schmitt has been cited more than 35 times and one chapter is dedicated to him alongside Lenin. (Chapter 8: The Primacy of Capture, Between Schmitt and Lenin)

Alliez and Lazzarato seem to fully agree with Wallerstein’s world-system theory. Creation of the term "War of subjectivity” (which is also another fancy word for identity-politics) is a big part of the concept. Since today everyone has recognized that mostly white-boys are complaining about identity politics (for obvious reasons), writers have become creative in coming up with this new term “War of subjectivity”. However, the essence of the book is pushing for the same good-old critiques: fascism is not so different from Capitalism / Anthropocene is Capitalocene / poor White workers in England suffered as much as slaves in America (page 115, 374) / Postmodernism is bad, class-consciousness is needed… etc. etc.

“During colonization, entire peoples, after having been expropriated from their ‘life as savages,’ let themselves die off rather than fall into a slavery that could include the option of ‘free labor.’ ‘Free labor’ that the practice of working to death in workshops and manufactures brings so close to slavery itself that the Morning Star—the organ of the English free-traders—could exclaim: ‘Our white slaves, who are toiled into the grave, for the most part silently pine and die.’”

The centrality of the debt-economy concept is always present in the background of the book. Also, neoliberalism is defined as the “Global Civil War”. At some point, I questioned myself if he’s just adding the word WAR at the end of anything that capital is to blame for? War here is referred to as “the most deterritorial form of sovereignty”. “War of Subjectivity”, “War of Race, class, gender, sex, etc..”. This is also not a new strategy, orthodox white-boy Marxists have been presenting all sorts of privileges (especially “white-privilege” and “male privilege”) as a divider and a sidetrack for class wars. Borrowing from Giovanni Arrighi, they inserted a passage that clearly shows how they think about colonialism. They blame almost everything aside from the most important element: “racism”.

“The synergy between capitalism, industrialism, and militarism, driven by interstate competition, did indeed engender a virtuous circle of enrichment and empowerment for the peoples of European descent and a corresponding vicious circle of impoverishment and disempowerment for most other peoples.”

Methodologically, the book almost never steps out of Europe. Although there are some great historical references to wars and interventions in developing countries, which are also the intersection of capitalism and colonialism -examples such as Haiti’s slave rebellion of Saint-Domingue. The strength of the book is in identifying all different modes of governmental industrial militarism, or “military Keynesianism”, which enabled colonial power to quite down internal civil war during the process of colonialism. The example of Nazi Germany’s full population employment due to war was very aligned with these analyses. In section 9.6 of the book, the writers argue how post-war welfare states were able to erase the differences between war-time and peace-time, which was part of the larger debate on how “warfare states” transferred to “welfare states”. This is also the same reason I kept reading all the 430 pages of the book.

In 1957 the Nazi Carl Schmitt invited Kojeve to give a lecture addressing representatives of “Rhine capitalism” at an exclusive club in Düsseldorf. The title of the talk was "Colonialism from a European Perspective". Alexandre Kojeve, a right-wing Hegelian bureaucrat, dissected colonialism into two categories of “giving colonialism” and “taking colonialism”. He says: “Thus one must really ask the question today: how can colonialism be economically reconstructed in a "Fordist" way, so to speak? On the face of it, there are three conceivable methods, and all three have already been suggested.” Lazzarato probably turned on by this distinction, references Kojeve alongside Schmitt and replaces the word “colonialism” with “capitalism” to flatten all ambiguities that colonialism is the same as capitalism. Following the reminder that the Capitalist mode of production is simultaneously a mode of destruction.  

The biggest problem that I have with the book, is that it equalizes the poor white workers of the 17-19th century in Europe to the slaves in Africa and the Americas. I call this act “theoretical colonization”. While race-blindness remains an issue in the book, it’s another problem to reduce the suffering of racial slavery in order to equalize them with Western white workers.

It’s very comical that in one instant they called Foucault’s theory “Eurocentric” and also “British-centric”!? Showing that they actually have no clue what these terms mean or where it's coming from. I agree with Spivak that to some extend Foucault’s work is slightly Eurocentric, but to hear this from a conservative white boy like Lazzarato is admittedly a bit humorous.

What came to my mind during reading Wars and Capital was the film “Lincoln (2012)”. By attacking 19th-century-liberals, the film made all the right-wing people happy (including those radicals who hated Obama and later in 2016, voted for Trump). In the background of this recollection is also the most racist film of all times "The Birth of a Nation (1925)” by D. W. Griffith, which depicted the abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens very negatively.

The writers attack the liberalism of John Locke and his support of slavery. By using this 17th-century example, they are constructing a case that centrism (the equivalent of today’s conflicts of subjectivity, which for them falls under the bigger umbrella of liberalism) is the secret motor of liberal governmentality. What Lazzarato is neglecting is not class consciousness but the fact that what constitutes an abolitionist position in the West, is not the race-blindness of homo oeconomicus but is a consciousness of race, culture, and colonialism.

Expectedly and appropriately, there is no actual examination of what racism is in the book. Similar to other orthodox leftists, writers refuse to get into any analysis of racism. They hijack the notion of racism when it intersects with wage-gab, or harsh working conditions in Europe. The only race that exists is the race of workers, problem solved! Classic! In most cases, they use the word racism as a supplement to show the intensity of a particular concept (environmental racism, anti-labor racism, war-racism, eugenics of labor force). The ultimate aim is to reduce racism solely to market-violence. In other words, all sorts of social inequalities are a side-effect of the world’s economic system and therefore fall under the same category of social reproduction.

Éric Alliez and Maurizio Lazzarato are so orthodox that for them the radical white kids from ’60s are heterodox. 

They are so orthodox when mentioning Korea, they don’t put south or north before it. 

They are so orthodox that for them talking about “Black Power” is the same as talking about “White Power” because it is talking about race!

What Marxism needs is not another corps of the orthodoxy wrapped in the cutting-edge hip and fancy vocabulary, but a fresh inclusive, race-conscious framework that acknowledges people’s differences and culture prior to the call for unification of the workers. That’s the only way it can come out of the dark archaic place where it is now. Similar to Carl Schmitt critique of liberalism in the “The Concept of Political”, today, the same critique comes from people such as Bolsonaro, Trump, Putin, Erdogan, and the rest. 

Here is a selection on Griffith’s work, from Sergei Eisenstein in the collection of essays, titled: Dickens Griffith and the Film Today (1944). The critique of liberalism seems to do nothing but to direct attention to the position of the writer. This passage precedes a description of a video made in mockery of Menshevik addressing in the Second Congress of Soviets.

“The role of Griffith is enormous, but our cinema is neither a poor relative nor an insolvent debtor of his. It was natural that the spirit and content of our country itself, in themes and subjects, would stride far ahead of Griffith's ideals as well their reflection in artistic images. In social attitudes Griffith was always a liberal, never departing far from the slightly sentimental humanism of the good old gentlemen and sweet old ladies of Victorian England, just as Dickens loved to picture them. His tender-hearted morals go no higher than a level of Christian accusation of human injustice and nowhere in his films is there sounded a protest against social injustice.”

The depiction of abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens in the racist film “The Birth of a Nation 1915” by D. W. Griffith.

The depiction of Thaddeus Stevens in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln (2012)″

The depiction of “The Birth of a Nation 1915” in Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman (2018)″

Bib.

De Vries, Erik. 2001. “Alexandre Kojeve, ’Colonialism from a European Perspective’ 29 (1):”, no. 29 (1) (January), 115-30. Eisenstein, Sergei. 2014. Film Form. HMH. Koonz, Claudia. 2003. The Nazi Conscience. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Schmitt, Carl. 2008. The Concept of the Political. University of Chicago Press.

[newstfionline]

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing (NYT) At first, I didn’t recognize the symptoms that we all had in common. It wasn’t burnout—we still had energy. It wasn’t depression—we didn’t feel hopeless. We just felt somewhat joyless and aimless. It turns out there’s a name for that: languishing. Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield. And it might be the dominant emotion of 2021. Languishing is the neglected middle child of mental health. It’s the void between depression and flourishing—the absence of well-being. You don’t have symptoms of mental illness, but you’re not the picture of mental health either. You’re not functioning at full capacity. Languishing dulls your motivation, disrupts your ability to focus, and triples the odds that you’ll cut back on work. Part of the danger is that when you’re languishing, you might not notice the dulling of delight or the dwindling of drive. You don’t catch yourself slipping slowly into solitude; you’re indifferent to your indifference. When you can’t see your own suffering, you don’t seek help or even do much to help yourself.

Biden’s virtual climate summit: Diplomacy sans human touch (AP) There will be no hands to shake or backs to slap, no way to look a foreign leader in the eye. The small human moments that define statecraft will be reduced to images on a screen. President Joe Biden, a most hands-on politician, this week will host a major climate summit with dozens of world leaders—all of them stuck on Zoom. Streamed 100% live with no backroom give-and-take, the summit will be more geared to sending a message about America’s return to the climate fight and nudging the world toward a greener planet than about specific deals or action. Climate activists may hope for dramatic moments when countries like Japan, South Korea or even China are suddenly inspired by Biden and announce they will stop funding other nations’ coal power plants. But Henry “Jake” Jacoby, who cofounded the MIT Center for Global Change Science, just laughs at the idea: “On a Zoom call with 40 nations of the world watching? Yeah, not a chance.”

Chauvin guilty of murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s death (AP) Former Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted Tuesday of murder and manslaughter for pinning George Floyd to the pavement with his knee on the Black man’s neck in a case that triggered worldwide protests, violence and a furious reexamination of racism and policing in the U.S. Chauvin, 45, was immediately led away with his hands cuffed behind his back and could be sent to prison for decades. The verdict — guilty on all counts, in a clear-cut victory for Floyd’s supporters — set off jubilation tinged with sorrow around the city. Hundreds of people poured into the streets, some running through traffic with banners. Cars blared their horns.

Teen’s death puts focus on split-second police decisions (AP) It happened in less than a second. Thirteen-year-old Adam Toledo dropped the gun he’d been holding, turned and began raising his hands just as the officer had commanded. Then the cop fired a single shot, killing the boy in the dark Chicago alley. The graphic video that became the latest tragic touchstone in the nation’s reckoning with race and policing puts a microscope on those split-second decisions with far-reaching and grave consequences. It takes the brain about three-fourths of a second to react to a perceived threat, said Chris Burbank, a former police chief in Salt Lake City who is now with the Center for Policing Equity. Most police can then draw a gun and fire two accurate rounds in 1.5 seconds, so the pivotal portion of a confrontation can be over in less than three seconds.

Journalism problems (American Press Institute) The latest World Press Freedom Index from Reporters Without Borders found that journalism was impeded or constrained in 73% of the 180 countries that the index evaluated. The report finds that the pandemic severely curbed journalists’ access to sources and reporting in the field. Meanwhile, the he2021 Edelman Trust barometer, which surveyed people in 28 countries, found that 58% of respondents said journalists deliberately misled the public by reporting information that they knew was false. The United States ranks 44th out 180 countries in press freedom and is rated “fairly good”; the top five countries when it comes to press freedom are Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Costa Rica.

Covid in Brazil: Hunger worsens in city slums (BBC) The queue snakes around the block and each day it gets longer: hungry residents of Heliopolis, São Paulo’s largest favela, waiting in line for the handout that will keep them going until the next morning. They are given a bowl of pasta with meat and a portion of rice, two packets of biscuits and a carton of milk, shared between a whole household and usually their only meal of the day. Before the pandemic, 300 people would queue up here. Now it is over 1,000, and the charity that runs it has 650 others across São Paulo. “The vast majority of people who live in the favelas work in the informal economy, as cleaners in homes or helping to bake cakes, so when businesses close or houses stop using them, they feel the impact,” says Marcivan Barreto, the local co-ordinator. “You see people queuing up at 03:00 for food. I’m very worried that as the pandemic continues, a hungry father will start looting supermarkets. When you’re starving, despair hits.”

Argentina’s Misery Deepens in the Pandemic (NYT) Before the pandemic, Carla Huanca and her family were making modest but meaningful improvements to their cramped apartment in the slums of Buenos Aires. She was working as a hairstylist. Her partner was tending bar at a nightclub. Together, they were bringing home about 25,000 pesos ($270) a week — enough to add a second story to their home, creating extra space for their three boys. They were about to plaster the walls. “Then, everything closed,” said Ms. Huanca, 33. “We were left with nothing.” The global economic devastation that has accompanied Covid-19 has been especially stark in Argentina, a country that entered the pandemic deep in crisis. Its economy shrank nearly 10 percent in 2020, the third straight year of recession. The pandemic has accelerated an exodus of foreign investment, which has pushed down the value of the Argentine peso. That has increased the costs of imports like food and fertilizer, and kept the inflation rate above 40 percent. More than four in 10 Argentines are mired in poverty. Hanging over national life is an inevitable renegotiation later this year with the International Monetary Fund, an institution that Argentines widely detest for having imposed crippling budget austerity as part of a rescue package two decades ago.

Britcoin (Foreign Policy) The Bank of England is exploring whether to follow the lead of China in developing its own digital currency. The proposal, dubbed “Britcoin” by U.K. Finance Minister Rishi Sunak, is in early stages: A task force between the U.K. Treasury and Bank of England has been formed to investigate the viability of such a move. The European Central Bank said last week that it was also looking at electronic cash, but that implementation was years away.

A Quiet Arms Race Is Rapidly Heating Up Between the Two Koreas (NYT) Pride and jealousy have driven North and South Korea to engage in propaganda shouting matches and compete over who could build a taller flagpole on their border. Now that one-upmanship is intensifying a much more dangerous side of their rivalry: the arms race. Earlier this month, South Korea’s dream of building its own supersonic fighter jet was realized when it unveiled the KF-21, developed at a cost of $7.8 billion. The country also recently revealed plans to acquire dozens of new American combat helicopters. When President Moon Jae-in visited the Defense Ministry’s Agency for Defense Development last year, he said South Korea had “developed a short-range ballistic missile with one of the largest warheads in the world.” Unlike North Korea, the South lacks nuclear weapons. But in recent years the country has revved up its military spending, procuring American stealth jets and building increasingly powerful conventional missiles capable of targeting North Korean missile facilities and war bunkers. The impoverished North has used those moves to justify expanding its own arsenal, and has threatened to tip its short-range missiles with nuclear warheads and make them harder to intercept. Experts warn that the ensuing arms race between the two countries is jeopardizing the delicate balance of peace on the Korean Peninsula.

China Plans a Communist Birthday Bash (NYT) Movie theaters in China are being ordered to screen patriotic films with titles like “The Sacrifice” and “The Red Sun.” Elementary students in some cities are being told to create paintings and calligraphy extolling the “Chinese dream.” Buses and subways are broadcasting nationalistic messages about revolutionary heroes. China’s Communist Party is gearing up for a patriotic extravaganza to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding on July 1. Officials are going into overdrive to make sure commemorations go off without a hitch—and hammer home the message that the party alone can restore China to what Beijing considers the country’s rightful place as a global power. While much of the focus will be on the past, the party’s centenary will have significant repercussions for China’s future. The celebrations will give China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, a forum to present himself as a transformative figure on par with Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. “We need to educate and guide the whole party to vigorously carry forward the red tradition,” Mr. Xi said during a recent conference call with political leaders about the centenary, according to People’s Daily, an official newspaper. Chinese officials, using the slogan “Follow the Party Forever,” are keen to trumpet China’s strength in a pandemic-ravaged world and justify the party’s increasingly tight grip on daily life in China.

Beijing’s control over Hong Kong (Washington Post) For a place that has been stripped of its democratic rights during a pandemic, some days in Hong Kong still feel routine. April 15, however, was not. That occasion, the first “National Security Education Day” since China imposed a tough security law in June, was the most visible display of Hong Kong’s fall from a relatively free, boisterous territory to an Orwellian place that resembles the repressive mainland. Directed at children and designed to rehabilitate the image of the Hong Kong Police Force, last week’s campaign showed how the authorities are enforcing a single narrative of the protests—meddlesome foreign forces stirring up trouble—and how no expense will be spared to fully integrate the financial center into China’s authoritarian system. The day started with flag-raising ceremonies at most schools and the singing of the Chinese national anthem, the “March of the Volunteers.” Many schools also organized national security puzzle games and asked students to write “wish cards” pledging support for the new security law—the resulting works resembling the message-covered “Lennon Walls” synonymous with the democracy movement. Hong Kong’s best legal minds continually tell me the law is a vague catchall, creating broadly worded crimes that could land people in jail for playing a song or uttering a slogan. They call the law “one of the greatest threats to human rights and the rule of law” in Hong Kong since the handover; it has already driven out thousands of people and led some companies, most notably the New York Times, to move employees elsewhere. Now, it was being portrayed to youngsters as something universal and observant of human rights. One elementary school teacher said her 10-year-old pupils can’t comprehend this nuance—and so have become part of a “brainwashing” campaign.

Hugs, tears as Australia-New Zealand travel bubble opens (AFP) Emotions ran high Monday as excited passengers set off on the first flights to take advantage of a quarantine-free travel bubble between Australia and New Zealand, allowing families split when borders closed almost 400 days ago to finally reunite. “(I’ll) yell, scream, cry, hug, kiss, (feel) happy—all of these emotions at once,” Denise O’Donoghue, 63, told AFP at Sydney airport as she prepared to board her flight. The arrangement means that for the first time since the pandemic closed borders worldwide, passengers can fly in either direction across the Tasman Sea without undergoing mandatory Covid-19 quarantine when they arrive. “It’s a very big day and exciting for families and friends,” said New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who hailed the success of both countries in containing the virus as a key factor in allowing the travel corridor.

Fleeing a Modern War, Syrians Seek Refuge in Ancient Ruins (NYT) AL-KFEIR, Syria—As the sun set, children in dirty clothes and battered shoes herded sheep past the towering stone walls of a Byzantine settlement abandoned more than 1,000 years ago, leading them into an ancient cave nearby where the animals would spend the night. Abu Ramadan, 38, said he cared little for the site’s history as a trading and agricultural center, but appreciated the sturdy walls that blunted the wind and the abundance of cut stones that a family who had lost everything could salvage to piece together a new life. “We built these from the ruins,” he said, pointing to a chicken coop and wood-burning stove. “We, too, have become ruins.” As Syria’s 10-year civil war has displaced millions of people, families like Abu Ramadan’s have sought refuge from a modern war behind the walls of dozens of ancient villages sprinkled across the hills of the country’s northwest, a region still out of the control of President Bashar al-Assad’s government. Since their original owners left them between the eighth and 10th centuries, these ruins have remained in remarkably good condition for more than 1,000 years, their stone structures largely withstanding the passing of empires and battering by the wind and rain. And many Syrians, with noplace else to go, have taken refuge in them.

President of Chad Is Killed as Soldiers Clash With Rebels (NYT) Gunshots rang out in the capital of Chad Monday night into early Tuesday morning as supporters of the president, Idriss Déby, fired in the air celebrating the announcement that after three decades of iron-fisted rule, he had just won a sixth term. Meanwhile, Mr. Déby was dying on a battlefield north of the capital, Ndjamena, of wounds sustained while fighting rebels trying to overthrow his government, his military generals said. His death was announced on Tuesday. The death of Mr. Déby, who brooked no dissent and was feared by his own people, could spark a battle for succession and leave a gaping hole in a country heavily relied upon by the West in its wars against Islamist extremists in West and Central Africa. Chad is a desert nation three times the size of California, surrounded on all sides by countries facing serious instability, like Libya, to the north, and Nigeria to the south. Its military forces have been key to both the war in the Sahel, a vast stretch of territory to the south of the Sahara, and the fight against Boko Haram and its splinter groups in the Lake Chad region.

Home accidents (WSJ) The scars of 2020 are in some cases quite literal: A study published in Injury Epidemiology found that 26 percent of about 2,000 respondents surveyed between March and June 2020 reported a household injury, up from a 2017 version of the same survey where 14 percent reported one in the preceding three months. New hobbies, home improvement projects, at-home exercise routines, all the random things people did to divert their attention in the inaugural months of the pandemic in some cases came back to bite them. I, for one, learned a valuable lesson about the melting point of solder vs. the melting point of thumbs over the summer that I would not care to repeat.

[happymetalgirl]

April 2020

WELL! I have been gone awhile, very busy, and look what happens when I slow down writing about metal: the world starts to fucking fall apart. But no, in all seriousness. I’m writing this part now at the beginning of June after an already tumultuous April and May, and now I’m just making myself sit down and do this because, well, honestly, it’s been pretty hard to justify spending my time writing about music with all the fuck shit going on right now. (I can’t wait to see what July throws at us.) But again, in all seriousness, I’m not looking for any pity or sympathy for my relatively mild circumstances at all because in all honesty, my white privilege has allowed my life to be pretty okay and proceed mostly uninterrupted in the midst of everything going on.

I’m probably going to repost this part in its own post, but I feel like I have to get this out of the way before I write any more about music. I’ll start by disseminating any ambiguity on what I’ll be talking about in these paragraphs that I am intentionally bolding.

As I write this in the midst of a fucking respiratory virus pandemic, another epidemic (possibly pandemic) of racist police brutality that has always existed in a culture of unhinged toxic masculinity in my increasingly embarrassing country has exploded to unbelievable and disgusting levels against Black people and peaceful protesters in the United States, ironically in wake of protests against fucking police violence, all of which is only emboldened and encouraged by local and federal leadership that is showcasing its oppressive, totalitarian ambitions in its unprecedented attempted revocations of its citizens constitutional and human rights.

I’ll make the necessary side note that this increasingly oligarchical government subservient to the will of military and prison industry has already shown its complete disregard for human rights for decades upon decades now through its violation of human rights through offensive wars and sanctions against other countries and its dehumanization of the refugees and immigrants who its actions create.

If you haven’t already checked out of this from all the political correctness breaching your conservative bubble (good job not being that person), but you’re upset because tHiS iS sUpPoSeD tO bE a MuSiC bLoG, uh, you’re on the wrong website buddy, and the potential tipping point of a long-awaited revolution in the midst of an economic depression, a viral pandemic, and a dual crisis of grotesque police violence and evolutionary transformation of proto-fascism into fascist dictatorship is no time to go about business as usual.

BUT HOLY SHIT, ENOUGH INTRODUCTION AND ENOUGH ABOUT ME! The point of this is to spotlight what to do in the wake of all of this. First of all, I don’t have all the answers and my perspective is as limited as any person’s, so if you’re an expert on any of these matters or if you have insight from having experiences that I as a white cis male have not had, if anything I’m bringing up here could be better in any way, feel absolutely free (but not obligated) to let me know.

Okay, so lots of problems at hand. The big, all-encompassing one facing all of humanity of course is the ecological disruption caused by industrially driven human-catalyzed climate change, and the rot of everything crystallizing at this current moment feeds into exacerbating that catastrophe, the next wide-reaching issue being capitalism, whose prioritization of profit and short-term gains is incredibly ill-equipped to handle a slow emergency like climate change or a more acute emergency like a global pandemic. Here in the U.S. we have a federal government so infested with corporate corruption to maximize capital profits for the country’s most wealthy that they couldn’t even choose the obvious solution of pausing the economy and providing for its people for the duration of the pandemic in the interest of public health over the appallingly quick choice of protecting the financial interests of the corporate “donors” that help them hold their positions of power, at the risk of maybe closing the gap a tiny bit between the truly despicably wealthy and the growing number of hopelessly impoverished. So while the wealthy get protection of their assets from the slow-down of business (you know, ‘cause the pandemic), the people in most need of help because of that slow-down and plunged into spiking unemployment get shit from the people meant to represent them. And that’s just the corporate rot that rears its head as a result of a pandemic!

Even in “normal” times, capitalism in this country has built its foundation on slave labor and justifying the use of slavery through racism (even after it became illegal to outright own people as slaves). That cornerstone of free/cheap labor that this country’s economy is built on whose role was served by slavery was filled by outsourcing to countries with an easily exploitable lower class (whose conditions are often exacerbated by U.S. meddling on behalf of business interests) and prison labor made possible by mass incarceration that has targeted similarly vulnerable people and communities of color through strategic, racially profiled over-policing of minority communities trapped in poverty through historic systemic racism.

The study of that global climate change I mentioned earlier is referred to as a crisis study because there isn’t an unlimited time to do something about it, and the ever-changing conditions and pivotal events of the world effect what needs to be done to combat it (and what it is too late to do). This current crisis of police brutality is one of those types of critical moments, for climate change and social justice. Police brutality didn’t become an issue when George Floyd was murdered on May 25th 2020; it’s been an ugly facet of this multifactedly ugly country for a long time now, but its being brought to light has instigated an uprising the likes of which has not been seen in a long while, and with it, an especially insidious aggression toward it by the increasingly fascist government and its authoritarian figurehead (to the point of threatening institution of martial law and suspending first amendment rights and habeas corpus) that at this point serves only to maintain complacency for the benefit of the ruling class and to the detriment of the disproportionately non-white lower working class (treated as a slave class). Consequently this is a pivotal time that obligates widespread action and ceasing of silence from privileged people like me who have been able to get away with writing about music largely apolitically for years. This is a time when we either plunge unfathomably further into the depths of fascism at the hands of the ruling class and the silence of the less-effected or we consolidate in this moment of broad energizing to both enact substantive change on the critical issue of police brutality and set a precedent and build momentum to achieve justice for LGBTQIA+ folk, other racial minorities and marginalized groups, and make the critical changes need to avoid civilizational dissolution in the face of the imperative to mitigate our impact on global warming.

Speaking of that change and the actions that this moment implores of us all to contribute our energy to: the most immediately critical issue at our feet, to both save human lives from being taken unjustly at the hands of police brutality and to galvanize this revolution to be able to demand further justice and critical social transformation, is ending police brutality. Being an institution born out of rounding up escaped slaves and given the state-supported monopoly on violence that attracts largely those seeking to satiate sadism with the license to that monopolized violence, police culture is inherently toxic and not worth even preserving for the sake of transforming structurally. While abolishing the police is obviously too ambitious of an immediate goal, there are a lot of proposed steps to defunding and largely dismantling the police as a whole. The project Campaign Zero outlines and pushes for ten tangible reforms that would (some of which have recently been proposed in Colorado) decrease police violence, especially in the majority-Black communities that suffer from it the most. The “8 Can’t Wait” proposal that has been making rounds lately is part of Campaign Zero, and donations to these projects are of course, quite helpful and a good start for this blossoming movement. Furthermore, donations to local bail funds is especially important at this time with police making wanton arrests of peaceful protests (and also just random Black people not making any disruption) to support the people going out and protesting. Because this money of course gets siphoned into the courts, and then partially to law enforcement, it’s important to also direct funds to organizations where that money will not later be used against us, but again, keeping people able to protest is of utmost importance, since that it what is driving positive change in this moment.

Also helpful is direct support of the people on the frontlines of these protests. It is a time for privileged people to take action in solidarity and support, but not one for privileged groups to take over or “lead” the movement. Right now, this is about who is hurting the most and who is being oppressed the most, and right now that is Black people, by police, hence BLACK LIVES MATTER. Now is not a time for even underprivileged white people to use these protests’ likelihood of escalating to indulge in venting frustrations against the system by inciting police violence that puts Black people disproportionately in more danger in such situations. Now is the time to use that privilege of being less prone to racism police violence to whatever extent possible to protect the people of color protesting. And again, this isn’t about being white saviors or martyrs, this is about supporting people in the way they wish, so don’t listen to my advice over the insight and requests of what Black people and the Black community have. And by all means, fucking listen to them! Read from them! Engage in good-faith conversation with them (though don’t expect any individual Black person to give you a seminar on racism, there are ample resources that don’t demand someone devoting their precious time to you)! Learn where the limits of your perspective fail you! And for fuck’s sake, don’t just cherry pick the word of one token Black friend that happens to have some class privilege to conveniently discount the testimonies of other Black people!

Lastly, on a personal note to the metalheads that read this blog, I think this is a particularly important time for the metal community, not to center itself, but to bring itself alongside social justice in a more complete way than it has in the past. Former Opeth and current Soen drummer Martín López said last year in an interview published in Blabbermouth that the metal community is very behind the curve on sociopolitical issues, and the response to his saying that from the metal community that floods Blabbermouth comment sections basically just made the case for the exact point he was making. And it’s a shame because I think such a huge part of metal is about standing up to injustice as part of or in support of the oppressed, or at least such a huge part of the metal I gravitate toward is. Without sounding too spiritual or cheesy because I’m not a really spiritual person, I feel like when I see the injustice going on, I feel that spirit of metal in all of it on the side of the oppressed. I feel like all the grindcore and deathcore and thrash and death metal I’ve been binging lately is in the spirit of the protesters standing up to and, when they have to, fighting back against the unjustified aggression of the police, and looking back at old, certified classic albums like ...And Justice for All, Toxicity, and Chaos A.D. and more recent albums like Machine Head’s The Blackening, and Thy Art Is Murder’s Human Target, and Venom Prison’s Samsara, it’s always been about standing up to this kind of bullshit. So I think if there ever was a time since Sabbath birthed it for metal to prove that it’s as important as it makes itself out to be and as important as it is to everyone who listens to it in such a way that they read an obscure blog about it, now is that time to show that it’s not just about being an angry white guy. Now is the time to make Martín López happy by proving him wrong.

Well, in typical Happymetalboy fashion, I can’t seem to make anything brief. So, with that said, let’s talk about the metal music that came out in the good ol’ days of April 2020. Wow. 

Well, April was a pretty big month. Lots of albums coming out, the whole music industry still the throes of the pandemic, it’s a damn shame we got what might be the best album I’ve ever reviewed on this blog in the midst of all this soul-crushing stagnance and financial despair in the music world. I mean, I���m certainly very glad to be getting such a great album among other great albums at a time when music is definitely helping me to keep going as well. It just sucks knowing these artists aren’t going to be able to tour in celebration of their great artistic achievements, and the first one on this list definitely deserves to celebrate.

Oranssi Pazuzu - Mestarin Kynsi

I already reviewed the Finnish band’s fifth full-length in great detail, which I highly suggest checking out because I wrote a lot about that album and I wrote it quite enthusiastically. It feels weird in a way to make the rest of the albums on this list follow my recount of an album that I already detailed in great length to be one of the best albums I have heard in years, quite possibly the best album I’ve reviewed in this blog’s existence, but I have to make sure that it doesn’t get lost at the end of this undoubtedly long-ass post. Anyway, Oranssi Pazuzu have fucking outdone themselves on this one and in many ways, black metal in general. The band have been building their synthy, psychedelic sound for over a decade now, but Mestarin Kynsi is the crystallization of everything the band has been working toward, which I think last year’s Waste of Space Orchestra collaboration played a big part in catalyzing. The album is so immersive and in so many ways feels like it has a soul of its own, made possible by the band’s absolute chemistry and dedication to ego-lessly channeling this album’s transcendent ethos as a team rather than elevating themselves individually, and what they conjure on here is such a leap up from their already heady psychedelic black metal and out of this fucking world. Mestarin Kynsi is the kind of terrifying, yet transfixing light that pulls you in even as you know of its malevolence, because it is just too goddamn beautiful and compelling to resist. The score should be such a big deal, but I know that any time this kind of score is thrown out there it prompts all sorts of distracting question regarding the flaws of the album, but I stand by my original score. I love this album, and I don’t see anything about it that makes me think it’s any less.

10/10

Okay, now on to the unfortunate rest of April’s releases that had to follow this up.

Testament - Titans of Creation

Testament rode a pretty vibrant comeback wave with Chuck Billy’s beating cancer on 2008’s The Formation of Damnation and 2012’s Dark Roots of the Earth, but that hot steak came to an end on the rather droll effort they put out in 2016, Brotherhood of the Snake. Back when concerts were a thing, I caught them when they opened up for the rest of the stacked lineup of Slayer’s farewell tour; they put on a great show, and I was reminded of what made them, still, such a prominent force in thrash, hopeful for a rejuvenation on whatever record came next. And as much as I wish I liked this new album of theirs more, I just can’t get into it all that much for so many of the same reasons I couldn’t get into its predecessor. I’d say it has much brighter moments, but it suffers from much of the same recycling of thrash compositional tropes (with not enough elaboration) that Brotherhood of the Snake did. It’s the kind of album that at first listen will seem flavorful and engaging, but it loses it pretty quickly like a snack that isn’t that filling or easy to keep eating due to it’s overwhelming taste, despite its empty calories.

5/10

Abysmal Dawn - Phylogenesis

After six years during which I had thought they might have disbanded or been dropped from Relapse Records, Abysmal Dawn return from the shadows on Season of Mist with the tight, concise brand of modestly technical modern death metal that made them such a sell in the first place on their fifth record, Phylogenesis. Not deviating at all from what they know they do well, Abysmal Dawn stick to a direct death metal attack with no bells and whistles, relying on their speed and agility to guide them, and their strengths serve them well as they manage to highlight what makes death metal so appealing at its core.

8/10

WVRM - Colony Collapse

While not listening to Oranssi Pazuzu or straight-up depressive shit, I have had a massive hankering for filthy grindcore that has been graciously satiated in part by WVRM’s Colony Collapse. Airing heavily on the hardcore side of the genre, incorporating some slower slamming grooves and deep, dirty gutteral vocals into their otherwise true-to-the-genre grindcore, WVRM do indeed put forth a more intense slab of grindcore than your usual twenty-something minute LP, which is made possible largely by the dynamic that they inject with their willingness to incorporate so much tasty, hardcore riffage and nasty sludge.

7/10

Red - Declaration

After what I’ve now come to see as their worst album, 2017′s Gone, Red immediately bounce back onto the positive trajectory that Of Beauty and Rage set them on and back to the symphonic 2000′s alternative metal that they built their early reputation on, with their shortest, possibly most direct album to date, comprised of just ten tight tracks that focus their cathartic brand of alternative metal into surprisingly dense packages that undoubtedly include some of the best of the band’s whole career, like “All for You”, “The Evening Hate”, and the especially cathartic “The War We Made”. I can only hope every band that has stumbled so hard lately can pick themselves back up as quickly and convincingly as Red has on their aptly named seventh LP here.

8/10

August Burns Red - Guardians

I have to say, despite being a pretty standard slab of melodic 2010’s metalcore, this album has kind of grown on me a bit in the past few weeks of listening to it. The album shows that the band are doing well to keep an eye on what’s going on in metalcore, stylistically spanning old and new pretty well. And while we sometimes get cheesy Hot Topic melodicism on songs like “Lighthouse”, other tracks encapsulate old and new in the space of a single song with respectable tact. The track “Defender” for example features two metalcore breakdowns, the first of which is generic as fuck from the 2000’s, but the second is distinctly more creative and forward-thinking, showing that the band are aware of the genre’s evolution and their trajectory alongside it. I also have to point out the highlight “Dismembered Memory” is in the track list with its emotive, Gothenburg-style guitar melody mixed with some distinct Architects-inspired vocal melodies. The closing track, “Three Fountains”, also ends the album on a strong note with its powerful melodic vocals in particular. Again, most of this project is pretty unsurprising metalcore, but the band at least shows some sense of awareness of how to progress their sound, and the strength of the highlights here makes the album worth at least checking out to find them.

6/10

Benighted - Obscene Repressed

While it is a well-performed, well-produced offering, Obscene Repressed is little more than a competent modern horror/brutal death metal album whose campiness in its shots for grotesqueness and creepiness can actually end up working against it. It’s a fun enough death metal album for while it’s on with some impressive flashes of percussion in particular, but it’s memorable mostly for its goofy moments and much less for its songwriting.

6/10

Aborted - La Grande Mascarade

Well, three more songs of relentless modern brutal death metal from Aborted is surely hard to get worked up about, and that goes in the positive and negative direction. On the EP’s three tracks, the band basically just goes through the motions in a way that makes me question what the point of putting these tracks out on this EP as opposed to keeping them for the next album (and potentially grooming them further) was. I mean, I can’t complain too much, the band are solid on these cuts in all the ways we come to expect them to be, but what makes these songs unfit for the next album or really demands they be released on this EP?

6/10

Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts V: Together & Ghosts VI: Locusts

I don’t want to knock Nine Inch Nails’ more ambient works, as I do think Trent Reznor has proven he has the chops to thrive in dark ambiance, but I just couldn’t get too excited about this watered down three hours worth of dark ambiance that he put out this year. It certainly works on the baseline level that all dark ambient music operates on an generally seeks to achieve, but it really doesn’t go above and beyond anywhere and it just kind of settles for the passing grade. At the most charitable, both are the kinds of ambient albums that exist solely to provide an eerie, droning sonic background with a few notable shifts coming from song to song, but that’s not enough to get me excited for either of them.

5/10 & 6/10

The Black Dahlia Murder - Verminous

I have to say, I’ve kind of softened in my earlier perception The Black Dahlia Murder being overrated, and Verminous is an album that really helps their case. Its name is pretty apt for the band’s blackened style of melodeath in general, but the dynamic between their delicious melodic side and their muscularly heavy side on Verminous is quite possibly at its most comprehensively displayed. I know that the band’s fans don’t really see them as having any misses in their catalog, though there seems to be some consistent favoritism toward Nocturnal, but I would wager that Verminous has captured their composition at its most advanced and their sound its most savory.

8/10

MASTER BOOT RECORD - Floppy Disk Overdrive

I’ve not been keeping up too closely with the prolific MASTER BOOT RECORD project, but I do regret missing and not covering the dynamic Internet Protocol EP that was released last year. Floppy Disk Overdrive, aptly named, is a bit more of the usual overload of synthetically instrumental, chiptune-seasoned death metal that keeps me from getting too excited about new MASTER BOOT RECORD releases. Once again, the focus is on solid production of the instruments and minor tricks with the sonic aesthetic, but composition again seems to fall by the wayside, and there isn’t enough intriguing stylistic diversity to make up for it.

5/10

Caustic Wound - Death Posture

More delicious, nasty grindcore to ravage my ears with in between listens to Oranssi Pazuzu and Okkervil River. The debut album by the Seattle-based supergroup of sorts is as pummeling as I would expect given the pedigree of the members involved. Death Posture is nasty, gutteral, and relentless in all the ways anyone could want their grindcore to be. The monstrously bellowing growls in particular make me feel like I’m listening to Primitive Man playing grindcore (which is a good thing). While I have been in quite the grindcore binge lately, Death Posture is more than just your standard, straight-line-through grindcore record, taking an old-school death metal knack for dynamic accents, tasty isolated bass lines, bursts of speed, bursts of thickened walls of sound, and wailing solos. It sounds sort of like if Morbid Angel was directing Primitive Man’s deathgrind adventure, also a good thing. I definitely love this one, probably my favorite grindcore album so far this year.

8/10

Khemmis - Doomed Heavy Metal

While we (if not just I) eagerly await the Colorado act’s forthcoming Nuclear Blast debut (and follow-up to 2018′s perfect Desolation), the band offers a little compilation EP to hold us over until then. Of the six tracks, only the first is new material (and it’s a cover song), two are songs from previous non-album releases, and the other three are live tracks. The band’s cover of Dio’s “Rainbow in the Dark” transposes the iconic keyboard part onto guitar in classic Khemmis fashion, and the vocal and guitar harmonies give the already inspiring song a new sense of melancholic triumph that I have come to love so much from Khemmis. It’s definitely worth checking out for the fresh take it offers to the Dio classic. As for the rest of the EP, the one-off single “Empty Throne” feels rather B-side-level by the band’s lofty standards, as does their odd, but enjoyable melodic doom rendition of the folk tune “A Conversation with Death”. The sampling of live cuts gets one great song from each of the band’s previous LPs, and the band sounds pretty true to their studio form for the most part, the vocals on “Bloodletting” being noticeably rough though.

Compilation in the Dark/10

Me and That Man - New Man, New Songs, Same Shit, Vol. 1

The second album from Nergal’s folky satanic rock side project comes with a pretty star-studded line-up, and honestly it’s a pretty fun time and I don’t have many complaints about the concise, catchy tunes that Nergal and company are churning out. “Run with the Devil” is a brilliantly composed opener, “Burning Churches” is a catchy-as-fuck pub-type tune, and guests Ihsahn, Corey Taylor, and especially Matt Heafy showcase the versatility of their vocal styles on their respective features. It’s more a fun heresy-laden time explicitly not overthought than the usual heady blackened death metal that Behemoth pedals.

7/10

Medico Peste - ב :The Black Bile

Taking very apparent cues from black metal’s (and experimental metal’s) more esoteric figures like Deathspell Omega and even Tool, Medico Peste comes through with an at least very aesthetically intriguing listen, even if some of the compositions run kind of long without enough in the way of substantive musical ideas to last quite as long as they’re intended to. While the influences the band wears on their sleeve are at least quite respectably sonically pervasive, it can get occasionally uncanny. The main riff of “All Too Human” sounds like it could have come straight from the Ænema recording sessions, and “Numinous Catastrophe” even sounds like it pulls from Oranssi Pazuzu. But despite the influences on its sleeves, ב :The Black Bile is unique and diverse enough as a whole to sustain an exciting listen and one that I have enjoyed returning to.

7/10

Omega Infinity - Solar Spectre

I had not heard of Omega Infinity until this album, and out of the gate it really sounded like some cliché ambient black metal, but as the album unfolds, it really does reveal itself to be so much more than that. Hard to capture in a single word, the cosmos-themed album definitely captures the wide, chilling vastness of space through instrumental and compositional techniques that provide a fittingly alien, but not explicitly sci-fi, twist on the usual elements of ambient black metal, and it works wonderfully. 

8/10

Black Curse - Endless Wound

I heard a good bit of hype over this project, but I’m honestly having a hard time hearing what’s supposed to be such a big deal. We’ve got some solid performances and the occasional compositional flash of brilliance, but for the most part, Endless Wound is very standard blackened death metal with meek ambitions. Like don’t get me wrong, it’s not awful, and I don’t hate it. It just doesn’t depart nearly enough from the beaten, and crowded, path or really stand above the crowd on that path enough to get me excited. I kind of wish the band would delve more into the slower, sludgier, more savory sections of they dip their toes in, like that of “Enraptured by Decay” and the more eccentric takes on black metal dark ritualism on “Seared Eyes”. But until they really commit more to things they can do to get their head above the death metal crowd, it’s going to be hard to get excited about another Black Curse project in the near future.

5/10

Vermicide Violence - The Praxis of Prophylaxis

It was only a matter of time until the pandemic delivered unto us an at least partially coronavirus-themed medical deathcore album, which I am of course not complaining about the obnoxious, ridiculous prospect of. There is a lot of silly, gimmicky deathcore (and metal in general) out there that is pretty superficial, but also plenty that makes a lot of great use of whatever gimmick it’s applying. In this case, the natural grotesquery (if that’s a word) of medical practice does give Vermicide Violence just that little bit of extra tangibility and realness to the nasty deathcore they’re pedaling. From breakdown lines of “vaccinate your fucking kids” and “you only hear once so just buy fucking plugs” (a twist on Suicide Silence’s “You Only Live Once”) to songs about asthmatic asphyxiation, coronavirus infection, West Nile virus, and breast cancer, it’s at the very least somewhat lyrically fresh and fun for any medical metalheads to have a good time nerding out with.

6/10

Vatican Falling - WAR

So I found out about Vatican Falling through the deathcoredads meme page, don’t judge me, but I’m glad I did, because this album, WAR, is some deliciously disgusting deathcore with lots of different flavors. They’re not exactly pushing any boundaries for the genre, but WAR certainly does branch out into melodic territory more boldly and successfully than your average deathcore album, and with good results. It has its low points where some of the experimentation doesn’t work, like the annoyingly repetitive clean vocal sample on the title track, but for the most part, the band’s use of more tangible, cleaner melodies goes over well and supplements the music nicely with a sense of raised stakes. If anything, I wish they did more in that vein because the band’s deathcore grooves at the core aren’t as above average on their own. That being said, songs like “King of Vermin” and “Kill All Humans” show that the band can really raise their game at the base deathcore front and outcompete their contemporaries if they need to.

6/10

Ulcerate - Stare into Death and Be Still

Stare into Death and Be Still is the sixth album from sonically ambitious New Zealanders, Ulcerate. Continuing to push their brand of atmospheric, blackened technical death metal to further reaches of the unknown, guitarist Michael Hoggard’s fluid, multi-faceted melodic work continues to play a pivotal role in steering the atmospheric tone of the album, while Jamie Saint Merat’s impressive following of the music’s odd time signature shifts boosts the album’s energy with tasteful technicality while simultaneously not being too obnoxiously flashy and showcasing some flavorful technical drumming chops. The guitar work takes on so many different shapes and styles, but probably most often reminds me of the winding angularity of Portal with the primal humanness and ritual catharsis of later/current Behemoth, with some more ambient detours taken here and there that hearken to Isis and even more doom-oriented projects like Bell Witch. The swirling together of influences here is so seamless and immersive, and honestly some of Ulcerate’s best. This is not to discount Paul Kelland’s contributions of emotively harmonious bass lines and consistently bestial, yet also somehow soulful, death metal bellowing to the album’s sound; I think his contributions in particular are what help this album feel meaningful and human and not just like some soulless piece of experimental art with a little too much of its head up its ass. For an hour, this album feels like listening to the best aspects of several different styles of cutting-edge death metal, black metal, and doom metal rolled into one masterful super-album that still manages to strike a dreadful chord all its own. Yeah, this is a pretty damn great album.

9/10

Katatonia - City Burials

Honestly, the vast majority of this album feels like Katatonia going through the motions and just playing it safe, never really committing to any really bold performance or composition moves, just coasting off The Fall of Hearts. It certainly passes by the usual Katatonia rubric, but it certainly won’t be going down as one of the band’s most revered.

5/10

Trivium - What the Dead Men Say

I somehow missed out on the entire first half of this album being released as singles, but I sure caught all the hype surrounding the band’s ninth album leading up to its release and all the preemptive praise it was receiving, and I’m kind of glad I got to experience it as a whole without the experience of the singles because I feel like I can honestly soberly assess it and say that it’s definitely not the masterpiece it’s being hyped up to be. The band definitely have found their groove in the various melodic, proggy, thrashy alternative metal styles they play, but this album really just feels like the band are just feeling themselves, in the sense that they’re kind of playing it safe, but bold enough with what they know they do well to kind of mask that. The band’s ninth album is pretty noticeably a continuation of their eighth, The Sin and the Sentence, which had some of Trivium’s most potent alternative metalcore bangers to date, but also some of their most confusingly tepid compositions on the other side of their spectrum. What the Dead Men Say kind of just maintains the band’s trajectory on their previous album and narrows that range from high to low. The low points, like “Bleed into Me” and (to a lesser extent) “The Catastrophist”, aren’t as low, but the high points aren’t as high, and I don’t think I’ll be returning to the better parts of this album, like “The Defiant”, “Amongst the Shadows and the Stones”, and “Sickness Unto You” as much as I will the plethora of highlights from The Sin and the Sentence. Overall, it kind of just feels like Trivium coasting a bit, but the band is genuinely at that level of evolution in their sound where they have made a lot of gradual refinements over time to get here but haven’t just repeated themselves, so they can kind of get away with it. Even if it’s not my favorite Trivium album, it’s sure a hell of a lot better than anything Trapt has ever released.

7/10

[chisimage]

The sadness of Southeast Asian migrant workers in Asia

Author/ Chi Chu

It is difficult for migrant workers, especially illegal workers, to obtain a better life (Utopia) because of social values and inadequate migrant policy. This reaction paper considers how the restriction of individual sovereignty by biopolitics imprisons migrant workers’ bodies and features perspectives from Rodriguez, Graham, Puar and other scholars. The significant observation is that ‘the system of colonial racial differentiation established a modern hierarchical system through historical identities discerned by a new global structure of the control of labour associated with specific social roles’ (Rodriguez 2018:24). In some developed countries and regions of Asia, such as Taiwan, Japan, China and Hong Kong, as a result of racism and colonisation, Southeast Asian (SEA) migrant workers have faced discrimination and exploitation. Hence, this reaction paper will outline the phenomenon through Taiwan cases.

The interaction effect of gender and racism by global capitalism generates migrant policy as ‘a biopolitical tool of governance’(Ibid:21). It means that binary relationships, such as between insiders (citizens) and outsiders (migrants), are embedded within ‘social relations shaped by the long-term implications of colonial power’ (Ibid:35). This results in the classification of ethnic groups in the social structure. This situation has been observed in Taiwan. Numerous SEA migrants, including illegal migrants, have sought a better life in Taiwan because of higher wages. Migrants respond to the demand for workers prepared to undertake dirty, dangerous and difficult labour (the ‘3Ds’). Nevertheless, concern over the influx of SEA workers has grown in Taiwanese society because these workers have become one of the leading groups in the social structure. One reason is that migrant workers replace local citizens who are not willing to work for lower wages. As a consequence, the labour structure is redistributed. Another reason is that due to ‘moral panic’ (Hall et al. 1978, cited in Rodriguez 2018:17–18) caused by the media, the stereotype of impoverished and undeveloped SEA countries is exacerbated and ingrained in public perceptions and local society. Hence, SEA migrants are classified as second-class and labelled as inferior and uncivilized. The situation is similar to the one described in Resisting Borders: A Conversation on the Daily Struggles of Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon ‘there is no one listening to or helping migrant workers. Those workers labelled as the poor group experience discriminations and social exclusion’ (Gemma, Rose, Mala, Meriam, and Julia 2016). Thus it tends to be that the racial and class boundaries under social ideology enhance the discrimination of SEA migrants in Taiwan as well. Migrants’ bodies and actions are imprisoned by social consciousness and, as Fassin (2001:4) states using Foucauldian terminology, ‘the body has become the site of inscription for the politics of immigration — biopolitics of otherness’.

Furthermore, the phenomenon of exploitation and physical maltreatment is on the rise, especially in the Taiwanese fishing industry, not only because of social values and stereotypes about SEA migrants but also because of Taiwanese migrant policy — ‘Regulations on the Authorization and Management of Overseas Employment of Foreign Crew Members’ (FA, 2019). Taiwan, as the biggest distant water vessels economy in Asia, has an oligopoly of the whole trade from catching yield to the employment of fishery workers. Also, it is one of the leading countries in the trafficking of illegal SEA migrants. In 2018, the documentary Exploitation and Lawlessness: The Dark Side of Taiwan’s Fishing Fleet, filmed by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), not only revealed that Taiwanese distant water vessels plunder the ocean’s resources but denounced the trafficking of illegal SEA migrants in the Pacific Ocean. The documentary also highlighted the fact that issues of maltreatment and exploitation are hidden in sophisticated transnational illegal trades. There are two factors that cause dehumanisation. Firstly, the systematic classification of fishery workers is the result of racism and colonisation. One agent (cited in The Reporter in 2018) said, ‘we buy cheap and obedient fishery workers from the margins of the world, such as Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand’. Fishery workers are classified by ethnic group and purchasing price. Also, according to the captains’ training book produced by the Fisheries Agency (FA), fishery workers are classified by nationality and ethnic characteristics (Ibid). Some description in the training book portrays Indonesians as less able to adapt to hard work compared to Vietnamese. These classifications not only enhance racism through subjective evaluations of different ethnic groups but also present southern countries (southeast Asian /fishery workers /poor) as colonised and oppressed by northern countries (Taiwan /captain /wealthy). These inequalities discipline fishery workers’ bodies.

Secondly, the conditions for and treatment of fishery workers on the sea are described as inhumane. According to the documentary by EJF(2018), migrants are mistreated or beaten savagely like animals and cannot receive a regular salary because employers dominate all resources. The purpose of exploitation or maltreatment is ‘maiming manifested’ (Puar 2017: 129). Puar (2017:52), studying a similar situation in Palestine, states, ‘it is another aspect of this biopolitical tactic that seeks to render impotent any future resistance’. It will be seen from this that most fishery workers have difficulties redeeming themselves or leaving the boats because of a lack of sovereignty and resources. As a result, workers stay on the sea for their entire lives. Inequality and inhumanity imprison and maim fishery workers’ bodies in an endless vicious reincarnation.

Overall, the space of migrancy, such as boats, present a dystopia for migrant workers affected by biopolitics. The testimony by migrant workers unswervingly delivers the grim praxis of exploitation, immobilisation and criminalisation in order to survive in the (in)formal economy (Graham 2011:120). It interprets symbolically ‘the position of the global migrant in this purgatorial space of a post-colonial global market economy’ (Ibid). The oppressed migrant workers often desire to escape long-term suffering and the imprisoned body rather than survive in purgatory. Death tends to become a way for migrants to emancipate themselves from discrimination and exploitation. Nevertheless, it is critical to review the biopolitics and transparency in migrant policy to improve the unequal human rights and end long-term exploitation and maltreatment.

Reference

Environmental Justice Foundation. 2018. Exploitation and Lawlessness: The Dark Side of Taiwan’s Fishing Fleet. <https://vimeo.com/258117796>.

Fassin, Didier. 2001. The biopolitics of Otherness: Undocumented foreigners and racial discrimination in French public debate. Anthropology Today 17(1): 3–7.

Fisheries Agency 2019. Regulations on the Authorization and Management of Overseas Employment of Foreign Crew Members. < https://www.fa.gov.tw/en/LegalsRegulation/content.aspx?id=31&chk=1ab5d1ef-2c1f-4df7-92db-6db044616ec9&param=pn%3d1>.

Graham, James. 2011. Postcolonial Purgatory: The Spaces of Migrancy in Stephen Frears’s Dirty Pretty Things. In Postcolonial Spaces: The Politics of Place in Contemporary Culture, edited by Andrew Teverson & Sara Upstone, 112–128. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Gemma, Rose, Mala, Meriam, and Julia 2016, Resisting borders: A conversation on the daily struggles of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon, Kohl: A Journal for Body and Gender Research, 2(2), 141–153.

Puar, Jasbir K. 2017. The Right to Maim. Durham: Duke University Press.

Rodriguez, Encarnación G. 2018. The Coloniality of Migration and the “Refugee Crisis”: On the Asylum-Migration Nexus, the Transatlantic White European Settler Colonialism-Migration and Racial Capitalism. Refuge 34(1): 16–28.

The Reporter (2018). The trades of fisheries workers of the world — why does Taiwan become an accomplice of trafficking in person? [In Chinese] <Retrieved from: https://www.twreporter.org/i/slave-fishermen-human-trafficking-gcs>.

[firstumcschenectady]

Two years ago, our niece got a new game for Christmas:  Harry Potter, Hogwarts Battle.  We usually spend New Years together, and it is a great 4 person game, so Kevin and I got to break into the game with our niece and her mother.  It is now fair to say that this is our favorite game, and the four us clocked A LOT of hours playing it.

Beyond the really fun Harry Potter connections, and the truly excellent game design, I think we all love it so much because it is a collaborative game.  The players are all working together towards a goal, so in the end either everyone wins or everyone loses.  Which also means that no one of us ends up as the winner while the rest of us have lost. Truthfully, I really like board games, and most of the ones I play have winners and losers, and I'm generally OK with that, but there is something really great about a collaborative game.  It is especially engaging because each choice we make impacts each other player, so we have to pay attention to what each person needs and what each person's strengths are, and how each person can make the best use of their strengths.

The game is hard, and we lose sometimes.  Really, we lose about half of the games we play, and we sometimes give up a game before playing just because the starting conditions are too difficult.  But the collaboration makes it interesting enough that even losing isn't THAT bad.  (Most of the time.)

I find it interesting that the collaborative game is so much fun.  When I was growing up our church had a copy “The Ungame” which was mean to be a fun game that was collaborative rather than competitive, and while I fully support the creators and their intentions it was the least fun game imaginable.  Yet, there is so much already in our capitalistic society that is inherently about winners and losers, and zero sum games, and competing against each other – and I'm really, really glad that there are now super fun games that don't buy into that model.

Collaborative games seem more like the model of working for the common good.  Maybe it is just because I was born and raised in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but the moment when I finally actually noticed the word “commonwealth” and thought about what it meant was eye-opening for me.  I think of the common good and commonwealths as other ways of speaking about the kindom.  

Over the past 3+ years we've talked about Intersectional Justice and Intersectionality a lot, but just in case the ideas are still fuzzy for you, here is MFSA's definition of its “intersectional organizing principal.”

All experiences of marginalization and injustice are interconnected because the struggle for justice is tied to concepts of power and privilege.  Intersectional organizing recognizes that injustice works on multiple and simultaneous levels. Because experiences of injustice do not happen in a vacuum, it is imperative to: develop the most effective strategies to create space for understanding privilege; organize in an intersectional framework led by marginalized communities; and build effective systems of resistance and cooperation to take action for justice. Practical intersectional organizing always focuses on collaboration and relationship building.

To bring that a little bit more into reality, intersectionality means acknowledging that working on ONE issue and making as small as possible so you can make some gains really doesn't help that much. For example, it is said that 101 years ago women gained the right to vote in NY state, that misses that it only applied to white women. That came from a choice to empower white women at the expense of women of color and was NOT intersectional organizing.  There have been a LOT of times organizing has worked this way, most of the time it has worked this way, and it has done a lot of harm.

During an anti-white supremacy training, I was taught to think holistically about power.  That is, we all know what traits are most associated with power in our society: white, male, rich, straight, English speaking, cisgender, citizen, with a full range of ableness, educated, tall... etc, right?  In each case, there is an opposite to the description that is disempowered.  I'm expecting you are following thus far.  Well, because the people who have the traits connected to power control the resources, they use most of them!  And then, it turns out, the people who are DISCONNECTED from power end up fighting to get access to the scraps of resources that the powerful are willing to share.  There are two REALLY bad parts of this – first of all, to get access to those resources usually means playing by the rules of the ones who have power, and secondly, those without power are usually set up to fight AGAINST EACH OTHER for access to those scraps.  

That is, when white women decided to try to get the vote for themselves, and not seek voting rights for all women, they made a decision to play by the rules of how power already worked, and to distance themselves from people of color to try to get what they wanted and needed.  And, this happens time and time again.

Intersectionality is about seeing the wholeness of the power dynamics, and the complicated realities of people – who all have power in some ways and lack power in others – and holding the whole together while working for good.  It is really, really hard.

It is probably also why I teared up when reading Isaiah this week.  The passage quotes God as saying, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."  The way I heard that was, don't just work for the benefit of a few, even if they are the ones you identify with – work for the well being of ALL.  And all, in all places, including enemy nations!!

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is best known for his transformational work on racial justice, work that make our country noticeably better. Yet, at the end of his life, he had broadened his work, and was organizing around poverty.  As several of the past year's Intersectional Justice Book Club books have pointed out, the powers that exist in the United States have VERY INTENTIONALLY used race to divide people, in large part so that impoverished white people and impoverished people of color wouldn't start working together against their common oppressor.  Dr. King's Poor People's Campaign was designed to bring people together for their common good, and truly for every's good.   As King once said, “In your struggle for justice, let your oppressor know that you are not attempting to defeat or humiliate him, or even to pay him back for injustices that he has heaped upon you. Let him know that you are merely seeking justice for him as well as yourself.”  Because, truly, oppressing anyone harms both the oppressed AND inherently, the oppressor.

Today, other's have picked up Dr. King's mantle, and there is an active Poor People's Campaign underway.  While their “Fundamental Principals” are expansive – there are 12 – they are a coherent whole and I couldn't edit them down.  I want you hear, and be filled with hope, and maybe even be motivated to work with this campaign, so here they are:

We are rooted in a moral analysis based on our deepest religious and constitutional values that demand justice for all. Moral revival is necessary to save the heart and soul of our democracy.

We are committed to lifting up and deepening the leadership of those most affected by systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, and ecological devastation and to building unity across lines of division.

We believe in the dismantling of unjust criminalization systems that exploit poor communities and communities of color and the transformation of the “War Economy” into a “Peace Economy” that values all humanity.

We believe that equal protection under the law is non-negotiable.

We believe that people should not live in or die from poverty in the richest nation ever to exist. Blaming the poor and claiming that the United States does not have an abundance of resources to overcome poverty are false narratives used to perpetuate economic exploitation, exclusion, and deep inequality.

We recognize the centrality of systemic racism in maintaining economic oppression must be named, detailed and exposed empirically, morally and spiritually. Poverty and economic inequality cannot be understood apart from a society built on white supremacy.

We aim to shift the distorted moral narrative often promoted by religious extremists in the nation from issues like prayer in school, abortion, and gun rights to one that is concerned with how our society treats the poor, those on the margins, the least of these, women, LGBTQIA folks, workers, immigrants, the disabled and the sick; equality and representation under the law; and the desire for peace, love and harmony within and among nations.

We will build up the power of people and state-based movements to serve as a vehicle for a powerful moral movement in the country and to transform the political, economic and moral structures of our society.

We recognize the need to organize at the state and local level—many of the most regressive policies are being passed at the state level, and these policies will have long and lasting effect, past even executive orders. The movement is not from above but below.

We will do our work in a non-partisan way—no elected officials or candidates get the stage or serve on the State Organizing Committee of the Campaign. This is not about left and right, Democrat or Republican but about right and wrong.

We uphold the need to do a season of sustained moral direct action as a way to break through the tweets and shift the moral narrative. We are demonstrating the power of people coming together across issues and geography and putting our bodies on the line to the issues that are affecting us all.

The Campaign and all its Participants and Endorsers embrace nonviolence. Violent tactics or actions will not be tolerated.

This campaign is DEEPLY good news.  I encourage you to look them up, their demands are even better (but ever longer) and well worth the read. There are a lot of opportunities to volunteer with and support the Poor People's Campaign, and I'd be happy to connect to to those who are organizing – as would your Intersectional Justice chairs.  

Working towards justice for all is really, really hard work.  It can even be overwhelming, but as Isaiah says, God is out for the well-being of the whole world.  Before you get overwhelmed though, let me remind you that God has a LOT of partners in this work and no ONE of us is called to do all the work.  In fact, we're called to trust each other and each other's work, and to carefully discern what our work is to do. Love exists, its power can spread, justice is possible, and good people are at work.  We are meant to be a light to ALL the nations, and with God at our backs, we can and we will.  And it is possible because of collaboration.  Thanks be to God.  Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 Pronouns: she/her/hers http://fumcschenectady.org/ 
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

January 19, 2019

[hellosaltysaladcollectionstuff]

DECADES AGO, Simone de Beauvoir described Christine Delphy as “France’s most exciting feminist writer.” Delphy, a French sociologist and theorist, cofounded the “Mouvement de Libération des Femmes” (the women’s liberation movement) in the 1970s and later joined forces with de Beauvoir to publish Nouvelles Questions Feministes (New Feminist Issues), a review that explores the social construct of gender and material feminism, a concept Delphy pioneered based on Marxism.

Delphy is a prolific writer whose work centers on the domestic economy and the oppression of women, rooted not in capitalism but the patriarchy. “Marxism is, by all the evidence, materialist. To this extent, it can be used by feminism. In so far as materialism concerns oppression, and inversely if we accept that to start from oppression defines among other things a materialist approach,” Delphy wrote in a 1980 issue of Feminist Review.

Delphy, who is now in her late 70s, welcomed me to her loft-like apartment in Paris’s 1st arrondissement, where she has lived and produced most of her work over the last three decades. We sat at Delphy’s kitchen table, where she smoked cigarettes and drank tea, facing a library containing books by Judith Butler and Catharine MacKinnon. Nearby hung a poster of Simone de Beauvoir. It was a Sunday afternoon in January, and that weekend, like most weekends for several months, France had been embroiled in violent protests and political turmoil. A few weeks before we met, Delphy had published a response on her blog to President Emmanuel Macron, who spoke of the anger “of the single mother, widow or divorced [women],” forming part of the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) movement. These women, Macron said, after he’d seen them on the roundabouts of French streets, no longer have the capacity to live or take care of their children; they have no hope. Their feeling of being forgotten, Delphy wrote, turned to anger.

Delphy and I discussed what this political moment — including the Gilets Jaunes and #MeToo movements — means for the feminist movement in France; whether Delphy’s theory of material feminism is a useful lens from which to understand today’s gendered and political landscape; marriage and children; and Delphy’s recent works, including a forthcoming book L’exploitation Familiale (Syllepse), and her 2015 book Separate and Dominate (Verso).

¤

ANNIE HYLTON: If I understand it correctly, material feminism started from the home and women’s oppression in the home, and that was something you witnessed with your parents from a young age. What approach does material feminism take today? Is women’s oppression rooted in something else, or is it the same?

CHRISTINE DELPHY: Women’s oppression has different facets, because it’s a system, and in a system it’s very hard to say, “This is the root.” All these different facets reinforce one another, and therefore some people would say it’s men’s authority on women’s bodies, it’s rooted in sexuality or heterosexuality, or discrimination against women. It’s not as if you pull a thread and then the whole thing would unravel; you can’t find that thread. That’s why there are so many different theories.

Material feminism is not about finding the root of women’s oppression; material feminism is about looking at what’s being done and the practices. In the 1970s, women worked as much as we work today, and in fact, they’ve always worked outside the home. Marriage, more than the home, is the place of extortion of free labor from women by men. Lots of women not only do what you call housework, but they also do all sorts of work for their husbands’ profession, and that’s never taken into account. This is what I mean by material feminism.

The oppressions related to sex as sex — not to gender, but to sex — are parts of the constraints that keep women in a lower position, and they reinforce the reality of women’s secondary status. Therefore, they encourage women to accept low-paying jobs.

Has the meaning of your theory changed over time?

No, it hasn’t changed over time. I think at the beginning of the French movement and the American movement, too, everybody was looking for the important thing. Great writers of that period wrote about how men exploit women sexually, and this is very important. But it doesn’t mean that it’s the root cause, because, in fact, women are oppressed in all areas. The book I’m writing in French [L’exploitation Familiale], which is a translation, doesn’t pretend that women’s oppression is the root of one thing, but the laws about marriage dictate one form of oppression, and this is not only in the West. You will find all over the world that men are using women as servants just as they do in the West, except it takes different justifications. Globally, women do twice as much domestic work as men, and this is what I wanted to center on.

In the 1970s, people were talking about only the differences of income from paid work between men and women, and not at all about domestic labor, so my hope is that I, and others, have put that on the map.

In France, women are still seen as providing primary care for children, and if and when they have a job, this is used by employers to discriminate against them, not pay them as much, et cetera, and men are profiting from that. In France, men, especially executives, are very often staying on in their office as long as they can — it’s called présentéisme, so that they will not be home when children have to be fed and then put to bed. This particular task of being there for children — to feed them, change their nappies — justifies women’s being paid less on the labor market and at the same time encourages their being discriminated on the labor market. It’s a kind of vicious circle.

In applying this framework and lens to the Gilets Jaunes mothers who you wrote about, what can we learn about them?

In France, the most deprived people are not the Gilets Jaunes, they are the retirees or — and this is the first time it’s being evoked in a discussion — single mothers (divorced or widowed) who are not receiving child support, so these women are impoverished. They have to feed two or three children, and they don’t get the money they’re entitled to. This is another reinforcing factor — if they’ve separated from their partner and they can’t expect that payment, it’s very difficult. Usually the courts will judge that, but the courts are not doing their job. There are laws upon laws upon laws so that women are not discriminated against in the labor market so that they’re paid the same as men, but it doesn’t work really except maybe in the case of high-level executives. So women are pushed into marriage or partnership because they will also benefit from the higher wages of the man.

There exists a pattern that women cannot live without men and vice versa. It’s considered a big failure in life to not live in a couple. We don’t know any other way to live, so this is where the culture in itself becomes reinforcing: this is the home, the home is based on your parents, but when you are an adult it’s based on reproducing precisely the same pattern. This pattern is also based on the fact that in most countries the custom is that the woman does the domestic work, and she’s supposed to help her husband and not be paid for that. By marrying a woman, a man gets hold of everything she possesses, including her labor force.

Until 1938, in France, a woman had to get her husband’s permission before selling something she’d inherited outside of the marriage. This taking by men (which the law supports) and the labor force of his wife is still absolutely true. In my book, I use the example of work a woman does on top of the housework for her husband, who is a farmer, a mechanic, a lawyer, a doctor. Very often their wives do something a secretary, an accountant, a salesperson would do; they manage the clientele of the husband, and of course, they don’t get a cent from that.

In a recent article, you quoted Macron saying he was very affected after seeing single mothers among the Gilets Jaunes on the roundabouts. Do you feel any efforts have been made to address their concerns?

No. Macron’s problem right now is that he wants to stay in power. That’s all he sees. In France, they can pass laws and then they don’t put any money or any means to achieve these aims. So even if it’s the law, it doesn’t change anything. I’ve heard for the last 30 years all sorts of plans to take the place of the delinquent fathers, but I don’t see any changes, not real changes.

I’m interested to know whether where we are now is what you envisioned and hoped for in the 1970s, or whether you’re disappointed?

I think it’s difficult to say that you’re disappointed because you didn’t envision a totally changed society. Of course, you did, but you knew the society wasn’t just, especially concerning women. There’s more oppression than I thought, for example, racism and the repercussions of racism. I think the movement has been enriched because of that.

I think some progress has been achieved, but all that takes a terribly long time. Most of the women with whom I was working in the 1970s, they didn’t realize it would take so long — like about 100 lives, or maybe more, which we didn’t have because each of us had only one life — and also they saw it as a kind of training in getting over their feeling of insecurity or inferiority and not as a longstanding struggle.

I’m not disappointed, no. What comforts me is knowing that the women’s struggle is necessary. What happens is that you struggle against one thing and then as you progress you discover other aspects of oppression, and I think in a sense that’s good. Take for example the #MeToo movement. You couldn’t have expected that to happen even 10 years ago. It’s terrible to think about what women had to suffer, but at the same time they are revolting, and that is extremely gratifying.

Broadly, in the United States that movement sprouted out of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and women speaking out about sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace. How did that look here? Was it different?

No. There are a few feminist organizations helping women here, but it’s probably less active than in the United States, where there are more organizations that get more money or subsidies. It’s not considered an urgent problem in France. But #MeToo has taken a new role. There has been a redefinition of rape, especially to try to get the courts to stop thinking that a woman is consenting because she doesn’t scream or say no to a sexual predator. Muriel Salmona, a psychiatrist, is doing a great job of explaining that women who are raped very often have PTSD and cannot say anything. I think the feminist movement is taking a second life.

At the same time, there was a bit of a backlash to the #MeToo movement here in France. What was your reaction at the time to the letter written and co-signed by 100 prominent women including Catherine Deneuve?

The vision of France that it gave, especially to American women, that was awful. What can I say, you know? The backlash came from society as a whole; no feminist took the Deneuve letter seriously. The letter didn’t cause any backlash, instead it’s the pressure of society and especially of men because women don’t like the idea of being alienated from men or seen as harpies.

Simone de Beauvoir said in 1947: “American women have only contempt for French women always too happy to please their men and too accepting of their whims.” What do you think she meant by that?

She meant what she said. American women were slightly better off than French women at that time and probably less accepting. I remember when I was a very young woman the French used to say that America was a matriarchy because men did the washing up.

Does this have any relevance today?

No. The level of tolerance for such sexist remarks has diminished, but not altogether. We still have lots of men reacting to women who write or denounce #MeToo with all sorts of insults or not taking what they have to say seriously.

I’m sure anyone of your stature would face the same, but some of your views have been seen as controversial. Why do you think that is?

I used Marx’s work but in a nonorthodox way, and that’s what I was criticized about. But this is in a very small milieu.

During the veil debate in France, I took a stand against the law that forbade young girls from going to school with a scarf. I was denounced by let’s say a majority of feminists. I think this is slightly getting better because I believe the young feminists are not so ferocious about what they call the veil; it’s a scarf. They don’t even realize that they’re racist, and that’s the problem. It’s such a controversial issue in France but not in other countries. In France, the idea of freedom of opinion and freedom of religion is not taken very seriously.

For people who may not be familiar with women’s liberation in France and your work in particular, what would you want people to understand?

First, people should go to a bookshop and buy my book Separate and Dominate by Verso.

I genuinely loved talking with you. By the way, my husband helped me come up with these questions.

Reverse exploitation!

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Annie Hylton is an independent investigative journalist and writer based in Paris.

The post The Free Labor Force of Wives: A Conversation with French Feminist Writer Christine Delphy appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://bit.ly/2uLl0jT

[longwindedbore]

Once Upon A Time Wages rose as the Economy rose

Wages have fallen way behind Gross National Product even though GNP has risen. So we are clear, the Super Rich and the Corporations have not suffered. Money that would have gone to wages for half the taxpayers was transferred to the Super Rich. Not earnings from Investment, the Super Rich still received those. I’m talking about yearly income of about $24,000 of buying power from the income of each of 70 million families (bottom half of taxpayers) = $1,680,000,000,000 per year. The Super Rich have transferred 1.7 Trillion dollars - 10% of yearly pre-tax GNP to their own pockets. In the 1950s and 60s the Super Rich had 10%of GNP; now with the extra 10% it’s 20%. In the past they were wealthy due to investments and Executive salaries of 30x what the average worker made. Now the Executives earn 300x what the average worker does. What, if anything, does the 2018 Exec do that earns this fantastic salary that the 1960s Exec did not do? PLUS, bankers and Stockbrokers receive multi-million dollar bonuses each year. What are they doing to earn they these fantastic bonuses that their predecessors were not doing?

Frankly, they have gamed the system by bribing Congress to change the tax laws & anti-trust laws that insured competition. Whole segments of the Economy have coalesced into too few players and Capitalism died in America. Replaced by Oligarchy.

Corrupted by corporate money, the Legislators changed the rules to allow “donations” to unregulated “Leadership” Funds, ‘non-profit’ Foundations and think tanks. Now we have a Congress half of whom have become millionaires while in Public office. Democracy has died to be replaced with Kleptocracy.

The bottom 50% of the taxpayers earned 20% of GNP in the 50s & 60s. Now it’s down to 11-12%. Don’t blame Millenials for not wanting to work at salaries that pay terribly. Don’t suggest it’s their “problem”. American businesses like McDonalds pay significantly more to workers in Europe or Australia/New Zealand for doing the exact same jobs. Plus better health benefits and a lot more vacation time. And those American Corporations all pay much higher taxes than in the US. Yet, they do not go bankrupt in the foreign countries. They make a good profit year after year.

America’s problem is that it is a nation governed by Weak Liberals and Racist Conservatives. Racism has for 400 years been the tool to divide & impoverish the Working Class. Racism is character - people raised in circumstances that crushed the soul’s empathy for strangers. Nothing we as a nation can do about that.

Its up to Liberals to develop a spine and stop trying to find the middle of the road. It’s not “Hillary’s turn” or the “turn” of any old timers. We need energetic firebrands with ideas as to what needs to be done! We need Medicare for all. We need any-trust laws re-instated and the “too-big-to-fail” corporations broken up. We need infra-structure not more nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines. Which means we need Corporate bribe money out of Congress. And yes, we need to raise taxes on the Rich. And when the Corporations cheat, someone goes to jail. The system has to represent the People. - not 14 Senators representing a population equal to the that of Los Angeles. We have a load of things we need to do but have failed to address for decades.

Wages have to rise. Minimum wage Legislation tends to hurt small businesses but not oligarchical large corporations. Taxation at the Federal level is key to income equality. We can’t hope to reindustrialize if the worker hasn’t any money. As part of the Economic growth plan, we have to insure that local planning is open to more than just Developers and Realtors. That affordable housing is constructed and Urban sprawl contained.

The Liberal voter has to become more active to insure Politicians are held accountable.

And that’s the problem. The average person is working themselves to death. If they have children a tremendous amount of time must be allocated for them. Suburbanization puts us too far away from support. Community is difficult to maintain. And racism and misogyny drive wedges.