The last chapter is a laughably shite pacifist anarchist j/o sesh about occupy but I enjoyed the other chapters because they were all just the personal stories of people trying to survive under capitalism, just interviews of people with depressing, horrible lives because of capitalism basically: reservation life, living in a decayed former manurfacturing city, living in west virginia, life of a fruit picking slave in florida
a short and easy to read intro level america is shit book for your middle class liberal
lol:
tears posted:Amazon.com and washington post book of the year Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt by chris hedges and joe sacco
The last chapter is a laughably shite pacifist anarchist j/o sesh about occupy but I enjoyed the other chapters because they were all just the personal stories of people trying to survive under capitalism, just interviews of people with depressing, horrible lives because of capitalism basically: reservation life, living in a decayed former manurfacturing city, living in west virginia, life of a fruit picking slave in florida
a short and easy to read intro level america is shit book for your middle class liberal
lol:
sounds like Studs Terkel's Working, it's definitely a product of its time but really interesting
The best thing I've read on trans death stats, if anyone cares @Goatstein. Turns out the victims of "transphobic murder" usually are non-white prostitutes, or are killed by their partners. Also lol:
Notably, white trans women were killed less often per capita than cis white women. Yes, there are issues with applying one white trans death per year against the white trans population, and yes, there are other forms of violence (in addition to murder), but the point is that transphobic murder appears to be an issue almost exclusively affecting trans women of color.
The most cited source for trans victimization is the National Trans Discrimination Survey - that's where the infamous "41% of trans people attempt suicide" statistic comes from, even though it was 41% of the survey respondents - which included cross dressers, drag queens, and other identities that trans women typically want nothing to do with because they're nothing like us, right? Right!
the NTDS was distributed online and through trans/LGBT networks and support groups, so there's probably a degree of selection bias since the people taking the survey were the people closest to the trans community. It seems unlikely that there were a lot of stealth respondents or individuals who transitioned and moved on, so 'positive' or 'neutral' trans experiences are likely undercounted. The survey respondents also don't reflect the general demographics of the United States, so the data is neither random nor representative, yet many cite it as though it represents the entirety of the trans community. Also worth noting is that the survey methodology reports that the 'attempted suicide' count itself may be inflated, as many people 'count' non-serious attempts, etc.
This is good because it means that trans advocates over-inflate the experience of a minority of mentally ill internet trans people, so actually most trans people aren't as insane as tumblr activism makes them out to be.
Cheers.
Edited by COINTELBRO ()
c_man posted:dank_xiaopeng posted:pynchon has his moments that i really love but the endless trope of women falling hopelessly, helplessly for patriarchal Authority is backwards as fuk
this is a big issue for me with inherent vice. for all his energy spent on unraveling this grand pattern of economic and political influence his take on the the effects of patriarchal relations is really garbage
How's about JR, the female characters are really weak and basically seem to be saint harpy and whore. Amy is the saint Mrs Di Cephalis is the harpy and Rhoda is the whore. Rhoda is actually kind of cool though.
I really liked Pynchon's Against The Day. It's probably my favorite Pynchon work.
ilmdge posted:How's about JR, the female characters are really weak and basically seem to be saint harpy and whore. Amy is the saint Mrs Di Cephalis is the harpy and Rhoda is the whore. Rhoda is actually kind of cool though.
yeah i feel like both JR and inherent vice have very similar issues. not just in terms of gender but also because their political content is extremely limited due to them being focused on white first world drama while massive toll on the lives of nonwhite people either driven out of the area like the black groups in IV or in the third world in both play out as staging for the goofy white drama where everything gets back to the status quo at the end like a sitcom
c_man posted:yeah thats sort of my point. the fact that one of the major characters instigated a war in africa is one of a dozen goofy mini-subplots. a cynical but jokey novel about the idiocy of finance cant really exist until the death and destruction of capitalism are outsourced to offstage. same with IV, bigfoot isnt casually executing communists while doc is riding in his car slurping on a chocolate covered banana because all the insane violence can be shunted offstage. basically what i mean is that you cant have a basically jokey novel about how stupid capitalism in america is until the incredible tragedy of capitalism starts to get shunted somewhere outside of america in real life, they need globalized capitalism and deindustrialization in the core to at least be well underway.
sorry, not trying to be rude, but i really don't understand what you're saying. i mean yes the violence and repercussions of JR's shenanigans are being externalized. this reflects reality. these outcomes are slyly noted by gaddis as they occur along the way. what would you have him do differently?
https://www.guernicamag.com/daily/hyatt-bass-lessons-from-cubas-incarceration-model/
and while doing some research i stumbled upon the claims of cia spy alan gross about his time spent in prison in which
He described his first year in prison as “no picnic.”
“I had nothing to read. I had no television, no radio, no insect-free food,” Gross said.
...
”I never thought I wouldn’t get out,” he said. “I always sensed I’d be out before the 15 years.”
Gross said he walked 10,000 steps daily, sometimes in circles, just to stay active. He would also try to find something to laugh at daily. One of the most important factors motivating him, he said, was his family’s past. Gross said parts of his family from Hungary survived the Holocaust.
...
Gross was detained with constant, bright fluorescent lighting overhead and bugs in the food, he said. For his first year, he had a “lack of any mental stimulation whatsoever,” he said.
“The worst part of my imprisonment was isolation,” he said.
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Alan-Gross-Recounts-5-Year-Imprisonment-Asks-US-to-End-Cuban-Embargo-372164352.html
http://pilotonline.com/news/local/alan-gross-speaks-to-odu-on-five-year-experience-as/article_96d7b1b9-11c0-5d45-a46e-960356e9478c.html
at which point i dug up this diplomatic cable written during his first year in prison
https://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09HAVANA772_a.html
ARREST CONDITIONS
-----------------
5. (C) Gross declared that he was being treated well and was
not physically abused by GOC officials. However, he did
reveal that the interrogation schedule had been very intense
at first; he estimated that it had endured on average 2 hours
daily. He repeated that GOC officials had treated him with
respect. His cell has a television and a fan; however, he
expressed concern about having to share it with two other
individuals. He told the CGthat although he was wearing his
own clothes, this was the first day he had been allowed to
use a belt and shoelaces. Gross said that he had been
permitted outside for a walk in the organic garden belonging
to the prison. He confirmed that he had spoken twice by
telephone with his wife on December 6 and December 23.
and the reason his teeth were in bad condition is because the last couple years or something he refused medical or dental care but hes on social media tweeting as if it was from heinous conditions
tears posted:Haven't read working, or anything by Terkel, *looks over at forlorn copy of Race, untouched since purchace*, but from a little bit of looking, days of destruction is much more light-weight (only 4 stories, with parts illustrated as comics) and very much from an anti-capitalist angle, which is mostly why I enjoyed it despite its wonky politics, dont know if Working takes the same stance.
you should read working. working is good if basically a historical document by now but a very useful one because it occurs right as mass deindustrialization was just getting started
aerdil posted:well theyre white male writers who live and work in the first world. if u want to read a book of fiction that emphasizes those other topics you should read people of color in the third world. which you should. the fact that the former and not the latter are spotlighted is a problem with our chauvinist, racist, and sexist culture not necessarily a flaw with pynchon.
why rationalise this despicable shit? Just say that you like it, don't say that "it's part of the culture". sure, I agree in reading widely, but part of that is "third world literature" often exists already in its own little marginalised box, and that there is more to white male writers than fucking Pynchon.
aerdil posted:http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/opinion/john-mccain-salute-to-a-communist.html?_r=0lol
critical.... support? for mr mccain
A brief, and like my review somewhat rambling and scatter-shot, book examining industrial farming under capitalism, climate change, cars and peak oil and promoting something called "Earth Democracy" as the solution. As with most books by non-Marxist environmentalists, Shiva does a good job outlying the problems, albeit briefly, while failing to put forward a realistic program for the future, at best straying into infeasible “deep-green” primitivist solutions and at worse proposing solutions implemented fully within capitalism which will massively negatively effect the proletariat and peasantry while meaning business as usual for the bourgeoisie. Of note to a western readership is that the book is written with a predominantly Indian focus with some good information about Indian agriculture, with its high proportion of peasant farmers, rather than a western perspective. I have never read anything by Shiva before.
Chapter 1: politics of climate change - eco-imperialism vs earth democracy
best chapter imo, for its concise explanation of the major problems facing us in food production. Shiva manages to cover and provide brief but damning criticism of eco-imperialism, reductionist industrial agriculture, carbon trading, nuclear energy, climate engineering and the techno-fix approach, 1st world pollution outsourcing, export first agricultural business (cash crops grown for export and food imported), Indian land grabs and the negative effects of all of these on soil and food security for Indian peasants as well as the wider world, not a bad intro to the whole fucked up situation. Each of these issues can and do have multiple books written about them, the strength of Shiva’s writing is that she ties them all together nicely in under 40 pages
At the end of this chapter Shiva explains “Earth Democracy”, a holistic approach to climate change and food production combined with a return to primitivist agriculture which if you have read any similar environmental books will be familiar with: a recognition of the interrelatedness of all environmental issues, without any sign of recognition that the abolition of global capitalism is the only possible solution to both agricultural and climatic problems and that anything else is reformist and doomed to fail if applied within a capitalist world economy
Chapter 2: Sacred cow or sacred car
Again a decent chapter in explanation of issues while being terrible in solutions. It focuses on the boom in Indian car manufacturing and domestic use as well as the explosion of road building and privately controlled, publicly funded “infrastructure development” across the country and the resultant loss of productive farmland, communities, ecosystems and biodiversity and the pollution induced murder of thousands who cant escape from constant exhaust fumes. Shiva also takes a few pages to discuss the ideological link between India's road building mania and that of the third reich, briefly detailing the similarities in promotion and marketing of the two; a good bit of insight for a non-marxist, considering capitalist road building projects are very fascist. Again however the “solutions” put forward are laughable and completely anti-peasant and anti-proletariat. Shiva at one point seriously puts forward the “need” to return to bicycle-rickshaws over cars, as if a prole peddling some bourgie around is a perfectly natural and sustainable answer to climate change, rather than the reinstatement of backbreaking labour for a mass of people and the epitome of class divide. She also states that there is a need to return to animal labour instead of mechanical labour, a typical bourgie greenie suggestion that ignores both the liberation from backbreaking manual agricultural labour that mechanisation provides and the enormous productive increases mechanisation has allowed as well as somehow thinking we're going to feed 7+ billion people without tractors. Additionally the author wants to make the peasants all either walk everywhere, or at best ride a donkey around, not seeing the anti-peasant nature of removing/denying the liberation from being tied to a single location (usually of birth) that modern transport provides. If Shiva had her way, the peasantry would be tied to the land in perpetuity, as a necessity of “saving the world”. Pish and shite.
Chapter 3: Food for Cars or People
Chapter focusing on debunking the biofuel myth as the feel good imperialism it is. Shiva correctly identifies biofuels as nothing but a cynical attempt by the west to keep the “energy infrastructure of the fossil fuel age “well oiled”” and does a good job of explaining how producing and using biofuels is worse for the environment in emissions terms than burning fossil fuels and is a startling waste of increasingly scarce water, fertiliser and productive soils as well as one of the main drivers of global deforestation and land clearance. She also touches on agri-imperialism by Cargill, Monsanto et al, and the profit boom they have seen from biofuels.
Unfortunately however, Shiva touches on all the main points but fails to draw them into a comprehensive picture of the agri-imperialist nature of the biofuels industry. That is:
Conversion of productive farmland to biofuels causes food prices to rise and remain high and thus keeps profits high for agribusinesses while maintaining and increasing agri-industrial complex seed, fertiliser, herbicide, pesticide etc sales and profits. It also decreases food security of the exploited global south by promoting a new form of the export first-import dependent globalised capitalist agricultural model, similar to other cash crops that have been foisted on the 3rd world and makes these countries further dependant on food imports from these self same agri-imperialist corporations and also accelerates land grabs from the peasantry, legitimised under the disgusting hypocrisy of “green” “eco-friendly” agriculture.
And thus it is in the interest of first world imperialist agri-industrial firms to promote the conversion of productive farmland to biofuel production to increase their own profits at the expense of, as usual, human life
This also keeps:
Fuel cheap in the 1st world
Car sales high
imperialist business as usual
while causing:
continuing increase of carbon emissions
Deforestation
Land clearance
rise in landless peasants
Water scarcity, aquifer draw-down and exhaustion
Soil erosion
increased centralisation and corporate control of the peasantries energy supplies, away from the villages
increased monoculture susceptibility to plant diseases
and of course Food price rises and starvation, which of course only really effects the 3rd world see e.g. 2008 food price riots
Chapter 4: Soil not oil
Begins with a nice introduction to our addiction to eating oil, fertilisers, and various -cides and follows with discussion of the insufficiency of simplistic NPK fertilisers to maintain soil health, fertility, organic content and life; and the rise in micro-nutrient deficiency in Indian crops and the people eating them. Further notes on food miles and export-first agriculture are rehashes of stuff previously mentioned in the book. Shiva then gets on to her suggestions for how to solve this crisis: diversification, decentralisation and organic farming.
Throughout the book, Shiva hints at, but never spells out her vision of a fucked up future. If you take the culmination of all previously discussed accelerating environmental disasters you'll see where its going. With this in mind, her solutions have their good elements, but as a holistic “solution” they are laughably unimplementable, idealistic, primitivist, capitalist and anti-worker.
The good
-A focus on shifting away from simplistic chemical driven notions of soil fertility and heath towards organic measures of soil health such as organic content, mychorizal weight, worm density, etc and an overall implementation of advanced soil science into farming with better nutrient cycling and lower reliance on energy intensive chemical inputs
-A diversification of crops and more mixed cropping with a move away from disease prone monocultures and a diversification of seed genetics away from a very few strains
-De-globalisation of food chains and the rebuilding of local food security
-reduction in the need of fossil fuel inputs in every stage of food production and distribution
The bad
Where Shiva falls down is that her analysis is purely from an anti-globalisation, anti-growth stance, and while this naturally contains an underlying anti-capitalist message, with no advocation of communism or Marxism-Leninism, and having rightly discarded the capitalist technofix Shiva is left proposing one solution: that of primitivism, de-mechanisation and a return to localism, within the structures of global (agri-)capitalism. This of course produces a bunch of dumb anti-peasant suggestions.
Shiva’s poorly laid out plan for achieving this is a primitivist agricultural model where peasants will grow their own food, without the benefit of machinery or chemistry, a return to (or continuation of) the exhausting, soul-destroying peasant agriculture of the past. The so called “earth democracy”, barely touched upon after the first chapter, is mystical idealism, anti-science, anti-technology, anti-worker and anti-human not to mention that any attempt at implementation would be crushed under the reactionary hammer of global agri-capitalism which in Shiva’s earth democracy would, I'm guessing as she never really addresses it, magically disappear.
There is no framework or, I feel, real understanding on the part of the author of how this return to primitive agriculture will occur beyond a mystical enlightenment among farmers that we need to do things differently. There is no mention of how the proletariat of the cities will be sustained and no understanding of the need for large scale collective centrally planned agriculture to sustain urban populations and ensure food security for all throughout the coming crises. No mention of the benefits of food transportation to overcome localised crop failures and “smooth” production, alleviating and preventing famine as well as enabling different regions to specialise in crops which are best suited to their climatic and soil conditions. No mention of the need to do away with the anarchy of capitalist food production and no mention of the need of the masses to violently overthrow capitalism and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. Also no recognition of the incredible increases in food productivity that scientific agriculture under capitalism has achieved. Instead Shiva wants to cast away all the advances we have made and return to the past, still within a capitalist exploitation model in order to maintain said capitalism through what is the highest stage of the crisis of capitalism. And all this despite her probably never having grown a row of anything in her life.
Overall I give this book 2/10, idealist primitivist bycicle-rickshaw loving crap, some good ideas but no Marxism-Leninism.
Edited by tears ()
tpaine posted:mainly because royal tanenbaums is one of the greatest modern films
is this serious, i've never seen it, it just looked like hipster liberal garbage of the purest strain, and its fans seem to fall into that category as well
tears posted:some good ideas but
even with those caveats it sounds interesting. i don't know anything about industrial farming. what would you recommend as an intro?
Also, what the hell is supposed to be the appeal for Pynchon anyway? All I get is an asinine excuse for complacency.
