The problem with America is....

Once again it's “Deja vu all over again.” Never ending white entitlement, delusional history and the usual threats of violence are now playing out at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern Oregon, one of the more important bird and wildlife sanctuaries in the country and located in an isolated corner of Oregon.

Malheur is being occupied by a handful of white (Christian?) terrorists with the apparent and enthusiastic support of ISIS no less. The Refuge, however, happens to belong to all the people of the United States.

But like a shopworn morality play our wild-wild-West has a familiar ring to it, going back to when the Europeans claimed ownership of those “empty” spaces following the American Civil War. The through-line or theme, nevertheless, has remained the same right up to the present time.

As early as 1805 two different creation stories appeared in an attempt to explain the founding of the United States. One was, later to be called the “Jeffersonian interpretation,” and the other known as the “natural” outcome of the Revolution of 1776. These versions of America's creation have been swirling around, re-imagined, and debated and argued about for more than 200 years.

It's all ours

At the end of the Civil War European-American turned their gaze toward our western frontier. It was now time for our pent up ambitions to be fulfilled—our (white) Manifest Destiny.

Coincidentally, the philosophy of Social Darwinism first appeared in Great Britain in the 1870s, which had little to do with evolution or Darwin, but did provide a justification and underpinning for white supremacy across the globe. It was adopted enthusiastically by America's elite, but for the average white American it merely confirmed what had been felt, culturally and socially, from the very start of the Republic.

The final piece in the “occupation” of the West was the railroad, the cutting edge technology of the 19^th century. By the end of the century the railroad had helped make America a global trading partner, and by the end of World War I in 1918 the United States had become the premier economic power in the world. The start, however, was quite different from the fairy tales found in the average history book or the backs of cereal boxes.

“....the triumph of the unfit...”

For a fascinating and detailed history of the transcontinental railroad it's worth reading Richard White's book Railroaded. You'd recognize the Bernie Madoffs of the 19^th century, the assorted speculators and those that created the 19^th century equivalent of sub-prime loans and credit default swaps.

But the making of the West had little to do with the fanciful rugged individual or some 19^th century libertarian John Gault wearing chaps and armed to the teeth. It had much more to do with large corporation colluding with the government, for private gains at public expense. It is a remarkable story of greed, incompetence and welfare capitalism at its supreme worst. Abraham Lincoln in 1864 said that, “Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow.” He was most certainly right.

Unfortunately, along with the laughable business “tycoon” and corrupt government official and politician, there was a very dark side. It is a dismal story of genocide, racism, environmental destruction and overall depravity, which even by 19^th century standards was simply barbaric.

Last but certainly not least is the iconic oil painting of cattle and cowboys adorning the boardroom walls of cattlemen associations, offices of western politicians—and the pages of comic strips.

Like the railroads, large cattle corporations were created, frequently by people that knew absolutely nothing about cows, cowboys and ranching. It was a kind of learning by doing, the ends of course justifying any means. Cattle corporations just like the railroads were often accused of violating anti-monopoly laws. There were numerous examples of unlawful enclosure of public lands, fraudulent attempts at controlling water resources, overgrazing and the cruelty of mass starvation of cattle.

Very much like the railroad corporations the cattle industry lived by financial illusion, where the numbers had virtually nothing to do with reality. As Richard White has said, in reference to the cattle business, “These land grabs were attempts by a classic nineteenth-century monopoly to claim a public resource for a privileged few.”

The cowboy himself was largely a myth even after the short-lived cattle drives ended. More often than not the average cowboy was underpaid, exploited, illiterate and old or dead by the time he was thirty-five.

Land belongs to (some of) us because we're the people

The short version is that the land around the current Malheur National Wildlife Refuge had originally belonged to the Northern Paiute Indian tribe, who had probably lived in the area for hundreds of years. They of course were eventually “removed” from the land by European-Americans in the 1870s.

President Theodore Roosevelt ( himself part of white American mythology) in 1908 created the Malheur refuge, one of the first sanctuaries in the United States, which was at that time unclaimed government lands, which consists today of more than 187,700 acres, including 120,000 acres of wetlands. The reason Roosevelt created this national wildlife refuge is because photographers in the 1880s discovered that plume hunters had decimated many North American birds. Feathers for ladies hats were popular at the time. Just your average American entrepreneur meeting a demand.

Not to worry, plenty of everything

B.J. Soper, a resident of the county where the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is located, while not a supporter of the illegal occupation of the refuge, nevertheless probably expressed the view of many westerners when he said to a journalist that, “What people in Western States are dealing with is the destruction of their way of life.” Fair enough, but whose way of life? Should we go back to the 1950s, the 1890s or possibly before any white person had set foot on what is now called the United States?

It must have seemed bountiful beyond belief when the first white people started moving west, All this “free” stuff as far as the eye could see and all for the taking. Capitalism globally since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the past 220 years or so, never really took into account what actual costs were. Such things as grass, water, the degradation of grasslands, pollution of the air, the overuse of toxic chemicals, the slaughter of wildlife never entered any balance sheet. It's still resisted today, even though the rhetoric has been updated.

The Bundy crowd and their camp followers are nothing new. Some 30 years ago a conservative land-use doctrine called Wise Use emerged, a successor if you will to the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s, which goes back even farther to to the anti-national park movement, which goes back ultimately to Plymouth Rock and the European understanding of what was “developed land” in the early 17^th century.

The Wise Use doctrine claims that moral primacy in the West belongs to ranching families, logging and all natural resource companies. The goal is to eliminate such things as most of our environmental regulations, get rid of the Endangered Species Act, promise unrestricted use of off-road vehicles and privatize virtually everything. What a grand vision!

Above all else the true believers will tell anyone that listens that they are far better stewards of the land than any government entity. Needless to say the timber industry, the mining and oil industry, among others, while not necessarily in support of armed bandits with automatic weapons, tell us that these poor souls are victims of government overreach. Of course they are.

Death eaters, dead-enders and the profitable business of victimhood

In a perfect world Cliven Bundy, the family patriarch, would willingly pay the extremely modest grazing fee ( now up to some $1 million ) as a functioning citizen of the United States, in order to keep his cattle on my property—or--he would be living out his days in a federal prison and his cows sold on the open market.

Ammon Bundy, the oldest son of Cliven and the self-proclaimed leader of the white terrorist militia at Malheur, is a recipient of a small business government loan, courtesy of my tax dollars. He is not even a rancher but an owner of a trucking business in Arizona.

It is not that we can not find any ranchers in the West today who understand modern land ecology, different ways of raising cattle, the importance of large natural sanctuaries, the value of predators in a healthy ecosystem, climate change, as well as ultimately preserving a future legacy for all Americans; it's that we still have, hovering over everything, a thuggish history of human plundering, a disrespect for nature and above all the decaying ideology of white entitlement and self-serving victimhood.

Most likely the majority of people that are sympathetic to these various white militia groups do not want to go to prison or get shot, but it's pretty clear there is a core group of deadenders that long for a cowbilly Valhalla. We as a society must get on with the 21^st century if we want to preserve anything worthwhile.

We took away their country and their means of support, broke up their mode of living, their habits of life, introduced disease and decay among them, and it was for this and against this they made war. Could any one expec t less. Then, why wonder at Indian difficulties.

(General Philip Henry Sheridan, Commanding Army General in Army Report of 1878)

White America's secret, part 2

Men, women and children were piled up on that little flat in one confused mass. Blood ran like water ...

Big Foot's band was converted into good Indians.

(A soldier who participated in The Wounded Knee Massacre, December 29, 1890)

A lust for conquest had already destroyed the Great Republic, because trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home.

(Mark Twain, during U.S. conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1902 )

Verscharfte Vernehmung [Enhanced Interrogation]

(The Gestapo's Methods of Examination, from a directive by the Gestapo chief, Muller, 1937)

Mohammed was also subjected to rectal rehydration 'without a determination of medical need.' Mohammed's chief interrogator described use of the process as emblematic of their 'total control over the detainee.'

(excerpt from Senate report on CIA torture, December 2014)

Um-m, before post-racial America

Approximately 20 Africans arrived in the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, but we think they were treated as indentured servants. Some supposedly achieved their freedom and became property owners. A lot of historians cite John Punch who, in July 1640, became the first official slave in the English colonies, supposedly because he decided to leave his employer before he'd finished his indentured servitude. The two white men that left with Punch had their servitude extended for a few years unlike Punch, who was placed in permanent bondage for the remainder of his life, with no rights. He became human property.

The “formal institution” of slavery was a gradual process and it took another 150 years or so before it was thoroughly and “legally” entrenched into the fabric of the entire country. Edward Baptist, professor of history at Cornell, has written an economic history of slavery, entitled The Half Has Never Been Told.

Many American history texts have portrayed slavery as a marginal system in the South, a relic of feudalism and perpetrated by a handful of landowners, with many slaves often becoming part of the slave owner’s family or variations of this relatively benign theme. I certainly have known a number of white southerners, who were far from being ignorant racist troglodytes or in any way thought slavery was “not all that bad,” but who still cling to some version of the Gone with the Wind nonsense.

The “war of northern aggression,” as some white southerners still today call the American Civil War, was not about slavery, but was about state's rights. This is a belief still offered by far too many. It is why Baptist's book is an important contribution in sweeping away the illusions of many white Americans and better understanding the very long legacy of slavery, that is far from being a relic of the past. Go to Hate Map to see where some of these groups reside at the present time.

According to Professor Baptist, America's rise to power ( and white privilege ) was very much connected to black slaves. It is a story about global capitalism and where “personal” property superseded all other rights. It most definitely was not a marginal system practiced by a few backwater southern plantation owners. In fact, Baptist doesn't speak of plantations but of slave labor camps. Think of Stalin's Gulags, North Korea's labor camps, and Nazi concentration camps. Work Sets You Free—Arbeit Macht Frei.

At the end of the Civil War in 1865 some 4 million former slaves were set free. Eight million whites in the South, overwhelmingly poor, landless and illiterate, thought of black people as competitors. White southerners were easily manipulated. By 1874 white power in the South had regained control, and the North had lost interest in Reconstruction. We had the West to now “civilize” and for some there was a lot of money to be made. Above all we now understood industrial warfare after the carnage of the Civil War..

Continued....

"Change or be changed"

Think about what is being said in this video.

A recent, personal history of capitalism and the global depression

While David Harvey is a professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, he is relatively unknown in the United States. His fields are in the area of geography, social theory and political economy, yet, his views have had considerable influence on the study of capitalism, both positive and negative.



This video, created in 2010, offers a Marxist view of capitalism. Since the posting of this video, global capitalism has demonstrated even less reason to keep it around. Of course the question ultimately comes down to how we dismantle the current structure and begin to replace it with something that reflects a 21^st century reality, a system that is capable of benefiting the vast majority of people on a changing planet.

                                                                     

Mirror, mirror on the wall

Nick Hanauer, Seattle venture capitalist on actual 'job creators'

Cultural 'cuisine'

It was a photograph in Newsweek Magazine, a picture of a dead shark that had drowned because its fins had been cut off and then thrown back into the ocean. Shark fins are considered a delicacy among many people in Asia. Some shark species are being driven to extinction.

Whether it's the butchering of dolphins, whales, tigers, the overfishing of Blue Tuna, the simple human sickness of shooting the endangered rhinoceros or, closer to my home, the ceaseless, mindless slaughter of wolves in America, it's often referred to by its defenders as cultural cuisine.

In Asia this usually means food. “We've been doing this for 500 years.” But cultural cuisine also refers to the junk food we stuff into our minds without thinking much about it … or deliberately avoid thinking about.

No stinkin' abyss for me

In the United States it does matter what kind of society we create, not just for us Americans, but the world in general. At the moment there is no shining city or cities on the hill to step into the vacuum. In fact, the alternatives are fairly grim. We're going to have to get beyond fairly soon the nonsense about the market always knows what's best, the wonders of the global economy or we're going to have to squeeze you into serfdom in order to make you well.

Yeah, so what do we do?

What we do is begin creating those resilient communities throughout America. It could be on a regional basis, city wide, but most likely neighborhood by neighborhood. Yes, small is oftentimes beautiful and appropriate technologies are getting better and better, whether it might be for example solar and wind energy, hydroponics, local food production, 3DPrinting, local currencies and so forth. There is now a wealth of information available and people and communities who have already embarked on this new venture across the globe. The first requirement is to stop saying I don't know what to do.

This is most definitely not about some survivalists mumbling to themselves in a cave while fondling their guns. This is about building open communities that can stand on their own and encourage participation, innovation, growth and cooperation. If it ends up being about mumbling survivalists then we've failed.

William Black explains the basics of “Crony Capitalism”

Additional reading:

Don't Mess withMassachusetts (think about what this means in general for your well being)

The real death eaters: destroying the will to live

GREEN

WARNING: This film shows cruelty to animals.

May we live long and die out.

(The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement)

It's only economics

The unraveling of global capitalism over the past few years has diverted our attention from a great many things. A lot of us, especially in the West, have come to realized that the word “precarious” may not just apply to the images of starving children in some faraway land. An unease has now settled over a good part of the developed world as well.

But what has been flying under the radar, at least in the mainstream media, is the on-going devastation of forests throughout the world and wildlife in general. Part of this increasing destruction is due to the expanding middle class in east Asia.

We should not be surprised that the acquisition of “stuff” is a hallmark of our global economic system along with the insatiable need to demonstrate economic success among individuals, regardless of where they reside.

Let the people speak

Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us, has suggested that around two billion people is probably the “ideal” human population for the maintenance of a healthy, viable planet. This was the world population near the end of the 19^th century.

While we now have more than 7 billion people on Earth today we could, surprisingly, by the end of the 21^st century theoretically reduce our population by some five billion, if all fertile females had only one child over the next 88 years, according to various demographic studies that have been completed over the past several years.

Clearly this is not likely to happen during the next 100 years for a number of reasons, some all too familiar, but slowing population growth and reducing our levels of consumption are very much in our self-interest and in our ultimate survival as a species.

The rise in the price of ivory has, by some estimates, resulted in nearly one-third of the elephant population in the Cameroons being killed for their tusks. The rhinoceros on the other hand is being butchered because in some parts of Asia ground up rhino tusks are believed to improve sexual potency. Of course, tiger paws have always been considered a delicacy for the well to do and can be found in only the “very best” restaurants.

The video, Green: Death of the Forests, is emotional and difficult to watch. There is no commentary whatsoever. The images of a dying orangutan speak for themselves. We are all responsible.

As a species we are the biggest criminals on the planet. Every day we rape the planet, shed blood and cause suffering.

(Patrick Rouxel, filmmaker)

P.S. In the United States we continue to slaughter wolves for no rational reason … other than we can.