"The End of Suburbia" and life as we know it.

Neo liberalism is relying on a society based on fear. Globalization is just a subset of colonialism and exploitation. When will they learn that this is not the way of achieving, or maintaining the status quo. We must learn soon.

We watched "The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Decline of the American Dream" which quickly showed how things are going to have to change in the first world. The first time I watched it was after the big march last winter for the G8 meetings that were taking palce in Montreal. At the time, the discussion was intense and heated because I was in a room full of angry activist types. This time, we watched it in class of mine about suburban fiction. This isn't fiction, it is truth. The rapidity in which we exploit oil and gas and all other natural resources is phenomenal. The movie explained how American geography is constructed around the fact that we have cars. It also explained that the oil reserves are depleting. This will make oil and gas more expensive in the future. Once prices are too high for the majority of the population, all of these suburbs will no longer be able to subsist the way they are now. There are major suburbs and town all along major highways. People commute to work, hours a day, because they can. But this way of life won't be able to survive for very long. We take our actions for granted, and our dreams are the justification. We don't want to change the status quo because we are comfortable. Any shift would mean a questioning of our way of life. But the movie points out so much. Like how international trade relies on expensive cross ocean transport systems. Once the oil is gone, these voyages will be impossible. Thus all of this easy outsourcing we rely on will not longer be valid.

Its strange how so many people won't see this movie, but how crucial it is to understand what needs to happen in the near future.

The Ecology of Commerce.

I met a shaman type guy in the park the other day and he gave me a book called "The Ecology of Commerce".


The truth about the environment crisis worldwide has always been a casualty because of the efforts of business and the ongoings of the economy, although the movement is gaining some momentum. From the "The Ecology of Commerce" (which I keep calling the ecology of hope to my friends- for some reason completely disillusioned in this ambitious book), Paul Hawken clearly sets up an array of important social criticisms that should guide is un the manner in which we approach future expansion in business. He argues " the concept of freedom is so vital to the American psyche that we often dismiss the missteps of corporations as aberrations. We know there can be greed, vanity and raw power at the heart of corporate America, but we hope that the equilibrating forces of the marketplaces will sort out the winners and losers in such a way that our own freedoms are not impinged upon, and our own vices remain unscathed" (77). Paul Hawken is one of the leading social philosophers, environmental policy analysts and sustainability developers of our time. He also believes that politically, we have to stand up for stronger moral grounds. He points out that “ the problems to be faced are vast and complex, but come down to this: 5.5 billion people are breeding exponentially. The process of fulfilling their wants and needs is stripping the earth of its biotic capacity to produce life; a climactic bust of consumption by a single species is overwhelming the skies, earth, waters and faune. Making matter worse, we are in the middle of a once- in – billion year blowout sale of hydrocarbons. They are being combusted at a rate that will effectively double-glaze the planet within the next fifty year…”. Don’t get me started about donuts.

In every which manner this book highlighted what I have come to learn in my studies in international development, economics and environmental policy. We need to redesign the economic system so that business itself doesn’t kill us in the long run. Enough with dealing with the problem on the micro level, it takes a great overview to get past the generalizations made in the media, and in our dialogue about the subject. Each paragraph underlines vital economic paradigms that continue to stain the way in which we deal with the third world. I think that we should look to such a book for inspiration for the way that each human being looks at his/her own responsibility in the decades to come. It is aberrant that the capitalist system, with the United States as its motherboard, allows the exploitation of land and people in such an expansive manner. Both my education from childhood and that which I have learned throughout my university career have taught me to be cynical of the "progress and innovation" that we seem so proud of. In no way do I want to dismiss what current scientific advancements are being made. However, I have seen significant tropes and disillusionments from the international community as to how to curb the destruction and neglect brought about by taking advantage of the third world, and even communities and environments very close to home. As an example here, I would like to refer to my years of tree planting where I was working for toilet paper and newspaper's corporate giants. These giants are destroying the beautiful Canadian landscapes that we so often admire as "picture perfect". As I would stand there in the middle of my planted plot of this new forest, I would cry. Not to say that us hippies don't benefit from these jobs. My friends came back a few weeks ago from British Columbia where they racked up a nice $22,000 each for their summer student jobs. Ethically the consequences are much larger than they seem. You try absently to forget that the very trees that you are planting will be cut down in 15-40 years for yet another copy of yesterday's news.

This shows us that although we might want to perceive our efforts to be positive, mostly we don’t understand the deeper pictures.

Lack of Focus...

"Even with the apparent acknowledgement of economic development being an important issue in achieving press freedom, there does seem to be a clearly Western notion of what consitutes press freedom- notably that in general the less state influence in the news media the freer the press."(Campbell 49)

CNN as an open-ended news format. Instead of being about the validity and accuracy of the report, the emphasis shifts to the strength of impression of validity and accuracy because of a demonstration of presence at the time. This is a kind of "immersive storytelling"(251). The journalists themselves tend to lose the capacity to organize their thoughts in a manner that is constructive. Rather , the viewer feels voyeurisitic, as we are given glimpse of news through what the newsroom finds crucial and important.

"An ongoing problem and, what I think, is a constraint to democracy and the freedom of expression within the media freedom press is the question of whether purchase of media entities, especially television networks, by large corporations limits journalistic freedom. "(Freedom House, 2004).

This is where the internet now comes into play. The internet is allowing us to voice our personal opinion and to mobilize along those lines, rather than presupposed and preguided world views and thought processes. This could allow information anarchism where the major news outlets are consistently questioned for the accuracy of their data, as well as their biased opinions. As discussed in class, the internet has a variety of different benefits, although not without their own problems. The most emphasized at this point of time, is a lack of attached credibility from a number of sources. It becomes very hard to distinguish fact from fiction. Nevertheless, it has allowed for everyone to make their point on-line. This has allowed the increase of citizen journalism, in areas that had before been monopolized by media elites. Now, anyone can comment and make their own suggestive attempts at reasoning.

It also has allowed a voice for the voiceless.

My cousin Nisha is working presently in Thailand, next to the northern border with Burma/ Myanmar. There are several refugee camps there that need a voice because they have long been forgotten by the Burmese government, and have no real space within Thailand. Nisha works in a school there with people my age, young adults, and is trying to create a program that links the schools there with schools in the West. This is not only to access new resources but also to create dialogue between cultures that know close to nothing about each other. This has benefited the refugee population in many ways, as well as created some hope for the citizens of Burma. However, the case of Burma is so far from being solved, it is hard to get a grasp at the problems there, as well as in the bordering refugee camps. It seems like Burma is a lost cause for the UN. With more public exposure and pressure, there has been a push of interest from the international community. But it’s been a long time coming. The US government has only recently recognized that extended economic sanctions against the country aren't having enough impact on the situation, it is only deteriorating the country’s infrastructure even more. What needs to happen is a promoting of democratic ideals and a focus in alleviating massive human rights violations within the country. Rather than isolating the state, the US should follow the lead of ASEAN countries and engage with the leader. The military junta in power there has repackaged itself with the new name “State Peace and Development Council”, but the terror remains the same within its borders. Not to mention the crippling economic environment that has led to horrific living conditions, the regime also has a horrible human rights record that involved repression of political dissidents ( namely Aung Suu Kyi and followers), forced labor, ethnic persecution, lack of religious freedom and trade in persons indiscriminately.

The humanitarian crisis there is a given, like so many that have happened before.

What should be more important for the US is that Burma (Myanmar) is at the nexus between China and India, the two international powers that the US should be most aware of in the following decade. There is much to say about this and I won't go into it now. The point is that the US government should start listening to the truth about what is going on the country, rather than sitting on the sidelines, believing that non-action is the way to go. There is now a generation of youth that were born in refugee camps. They do not have a country of origin and they feel like they will be misplaced and forgotten forever. Nonetheless, their words are on-line just waiting to be read. We must follow through with our obligations as citizens of the Earth.

(What I really think is happening though, in some part, is that Burma is part of the Golden Triangle of the opium trade. Resolutely, I think that the US may be proposing counternarcotics efforts, but in some ways they don’t want the trade to stop. This is an entire new topic: “America’s War on Drugs”, which I have many issues with. Realistically, although the newspapers may claim that there has been major law-enforcement within the borders between the three countries, the results have little to no effect within the population. When I was in Northern Thailand, I met a few travelers- might I say junkies- who explained how simple it was to get opium from Burma. All you needed was money, and it wasn’t even that much. Mirrored in this conversation is the Columbian problem of cocaine trade, and how the US has failed to implement major changes there. The amount of internal corruption in these two countries, as well as the fact that the steady flow of drugs assures compensation for the country’s leaders, continuous a vicious cycle that is not so easily overlooked…In Columbia the war on drugs is a war on the South American poor who extract the resource for a living. Rather than reaping the benefits, they are just another clog in a massive industry. Bush’ war on drugs is missing the point. The US has consistently misunderstood their battles within Columbia, blurring the lines between counterdrug and counterinsurgency missions there.)


Works cited:

Cambell, Vincent "Information Age Journalism: journalism in an international context" London: Arnold, 2004

Freedom House Freedom of the Press 2004- a global survey of media independence Lanham: Rowaman &Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2004

Seib, Philip "Going Live: getting the news right in a real-time, online world" updated edition Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2002

guns, germs, steel!

Its a value judgment. A strange social Darwinism that deserves mentioning. We tend to use science, physics, logic to justify our economic stronghold and social hierarchy. We tend to shift history so that the truth about the matter is not obvious. Tis is pointed out in Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. The book is an elaborate account of the truth about history

It’s all about greed. It’s been about super eugenics since colonization started happening.

Our society has become klepto- we just want to steal and feed ourselves. because we think we have the right. We think we should be proud of our conquests because we think that it makes us stronger.

Ultimately the explanation of the current international order, does not rely on humanity itself, but on the resources that societies have. In my case here, that's exactly the point. The world leaders are taking away from others what does not belong to them. This can relate to our study in class of traditional knowledge. Finally, now there are steps that are being taken that will allow information development on knowledge to give back to the people.

"The Fog of War": Uncertainty in the Midst

Today, I will talk about the "Fog of War" directed by Errol Morris, because it hit me really hard and close to home. The movie is a retrospective view into the life of Robert McNamara, as he sought it. The title explains the cloud of uncertainty that rests on government heads and policy providers when in the midst of a crisis. We have up close shots of a one-on- one interview with the man when he reaches his 85 years of age. What’s interesting is that he doesn’t really regret that much of what he has done, and of his straight-edge, black heart policies that went down from time he was Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968 during the Vietnam War period. As well as being somewhat of an apologetic plea, it also highlights some of the most important events of the 20th century, including the outcomes of the Cold War. His policies were propelled by an “Active role” management philosophy.

He points out some major mistakes of foreign affair policy in the movie. For example, he regrets recommending to Kennedy to go ahead with the Bay of Pigs invasion. In retrospect, had it succeeded, it would have been disastrous for both sides of this war- no longer cold but turned horribly costly.

He was also very involved in what happened during the war in Vietnam and how that played out. What he mentions in the movie is that the American government had failed to understand what was going on in that region before they went in. More than just another proxy war, this one was being fought by the Vietnamese themselves, and the American soldiers were not ready for what was about to happen there. Also, it is important to stress what McNamara did, himself stating that his strategy for winning the war there had failed. It is also fascinating to note that he then became the President of the World Bank (1968-1981). He probably learnt a lot during that time as well.What is so impressive about this documentary is how humble McNamara is in his old age, but how energized and bright his comments are.

What is interesting here, is that since the American government was so determined in countering communism, the failure to win this war had massive consequences for development in Vietnam when Saigon fell to the North. For a long time Vietnam was in isolation to international integration in the market economy. Also, the US was in denial that they had lost the war there for a long time after they knew that their efforts were in vain. Post war, anti-communist propaganda, and a memory of failure within the country itself, lead the American government, as well as the international community to kind of leave Vietnam to its own doings. However, in November, Vietnam will access to the WTO as its 150th member, no small feat. It has also been nominated to join the UN Security Council in 2008. These two events show that Vietnam is now ready to re-emerge on the international arena. “It is the first time that the UN is presenting a harmonized vision of the UN’s support to Vietnam, which is translated in synergistic and efficient country plans for the next five years”(source: http://www.un.org.vn/mr/2005/engl/050307e.htm) Economic successes in Vietnam have been increasing rates of economic growth, and can thus soon join the other Asian Tigers.

Seven Years Ahead

I found a fantastic article about Edward O. Wilson in SEED magazine, who very much synthesizes what I want to get at. Mr. Wilson very accurately reconciles the problems that we have built up between science and religion. His innovations have helped many scientists worldwide accept their faith, without having to justify it to the greater public. We have taken for granted the natural laws of business and economics and found the best possible way to be efficient in our exploitation of the third world. It just seems to make sense (to some, not I). We see it as truthfully applying all of our conceptions of good in a structure that allows many various cultures to "benefit" from what we are doing.

However, we cannot forget that we what are doing is systematically destroying these same cultures utilizing a capitalist system that hegemonically dominates the way in which we live today. Our short term, pragmatic economic goals tend to destroy whatever goals we have in the future to continue going as we are.

We must use the media to expose the inefficiencies of the system, otherwise we will continue to dig our own graves.

The native Indians believe that we must act today while taking into consideration the seven next generations. The strength and the virility we think we have is, indeed, unreal and it is not safe of us to believe such irrationalities. We must think of our own children.

In terms of globalization, I think that the way in which it has allowed populations and cultures to reach beyond borders through the internet and other means of communication is nothing less than phenomenal. Bypassing all thoughts on cultural hegemony and social Darwinism, it will allow other voices to create new truths, rather than this devastating onesidedness that has come to be the status quo within our own society. I, for one, have become extremely skeptical of much of the information given to me. Consequently, I find myself double checking all of my sources to ensure that they are relevant and non-biased in a manner that is detrimental to the construction of my own thoughts and applications.

Case in fact/: I have found myself questioning the entire concept of development and the manner in which the Western world is going about it. The imposition of our concepts, those of democracy, freedom of speech, etc. have created a society that is consciously self-nullifying. We don't know where to draw the line because we are worried about being politically correct, maintaining that we can say whatever we want, without actually putting actions where are mouths are.

The capitalist system that is put in place at the current moment is one that is supported by people that are voiceless and do not have the access to the technology and the information. We are marginal. Our attempts to change the bureaucracy are left in vain.

Wilson says that " its become fashionable in the intellectual world to believe there are many truths, each particular to a subject of human concern- which are not connected to each other- that exist independently". But this splintered knowledge base is misrepresentative. It tends to justify certain biases in some fields, while forgetting the HUMAN responsibility we have to the fellow citizens of the earth. We have forgotten the natural order of things. Sooner or later, all of this misinformation and the actions that are associated to them will cause a major backlash. We forget that the earth's anger tends to throw us off guard. The "first" world is acting like a solemn teenage whose demands are through the roof. However, this time, mother is not there to reprimand at each new uprising. Like Wilson I am a biophile, a person with an innate affinity for natural environments. In my field of studies I have not ventured into such microscopic investigations of the physical world, but rather have gone into the rather horrific macroeconomic sectors between the northern countries and those below the equitorial border. Wilson is pushing disciplinary and ideological boundaries in his seminal synthesis " The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth". There has been such wishywashy policy changes from the American congress, but I fail to see why they don't understand that if there are not changes made now, then the future seems a little bleak. Don't they get it! This was highlighted in the /"green issue" of vanity fair awhile back. Don't laugh. Vanity Fair is a thoroughly read magazine and they have some pretty disastrous pictures of the white house under water, and also most of New York City in a few decades. if global warming isn't decreased, then the permafrost WILL melt and cities will drown in their own sorrow. And it is melting already. In "an Inconvenient Truth" there is a picture of the first ever crack in the arctic permafrost, a fact that has stunned scientists since it happened. Some of the most stunning images of the book are those of the receding glaciers. There are time framed pictures of the glaciers dating from the 1920s until now. It is amazing that no one actually pays much attention to how these simple natural environments are losing their capacity to hold ecosystems together.

In the environmental case, the problem isn't that there isn't information out there. The issue is that the American government isn't taking responsibility for things that have been highlighted time and time again, as mentioned in About Kyoto: Filtering the News.

And case in fact, this is detrimental to America's own growth. We are exporting know-how and innovation to Asia, a continent that is only growing and enjoying our stupidity as we hand off the hardest obstacles to them. We hand off scientific integrity and blow it apart with religious claims owing our existence to God. We continue basing this faith, and forget that in doing so, we are destroying the very world that this God built. God cannot save us from our own sins, no matter how much we repent.

Case in fact: when the president of the united states consults science fiction writers for global warming advance, hundreds of scientists protest, with perhaps dozens making their way into print media.

The human upstages the information. Unfortunately, the American’s vaunted national imagination has been severed from the discipline and skill they need to make them great. At the top levels of government there is a global embarrassment that disregards science in favor of dogma. This has led to continuing problems in terms of social and environmental policy at home and abroad, and a system whose conclusion at this time is idiotically ironic. The population must understand what is at stake. Although the information may be out there, the leader is not the prophet he needs to be in the international arena. As an international leader, he has lost all weight and validity. George Bush is a clown. The thing, he just doesn't see it- and so many citizens actually believe in him. Call me stupid but....

Source:

free press... really?

The major media outlets are "operating on the best available information". They are fighting for the creation of courage and truth. We can't really blame the journalists, we need a more systematic understanding of war and coverage. Everyone is working for someone, for a person, a company or branch, for money, for collateral, to save their neck, etc. News has timeless and immediate value, and this is based on journalism’s efficiency. The CNN effect means that we are live 24 hours a day. But, is it only entertainment? Can what is seen as crucial information, the "truth", be taken at face value now, when there is such intense competition for viewership and there are such high audience expectations (48)? This has led to a growing gap between occasional, and well-edited footage of genuine newsworthiness, and a superfluity of shallow and attention-deficit discourse on television. Thus, the end of hard news. The current oligarchy doesn't need an educated public, it only needs people with a great card, or a few extra hours on the couch.

John Stewart, Host of “The Daily Show”:
“There is some good news coming out of the hunt for WMDs as coalititon forces in Iraq have, in fact, uncovered and disarmed one of the most dangerous and destructive weapons known to man: the free press"

But the population is misled, drowning in information and controlled by the media. Mostly, this is a psychological phenomenon, both involving the involuntary input of certain sensory ideas, and also this collective stance, where we are within earshot of news and information sources. Even if we want to be objective in our stance, it is very hard to maintain this within the culture we live in today. This is equally as important in the Western world, as it is every where else. For example, at the Nuremberg trials, American prosecutors wanted the German media on trial for supporting, or at least promoting Hitler’s policies during the second world war. But- you see how strange it is of a dilemma? It wasn’t there fault, no more was it the fault of the Hitler youth to get involved in the first place. In Rwanda, the hate radio was a major part in mobilizing conflict there, instigating radical Hutus, and organizing- in some part- the massacre of over 800, 000 men, women and children. And, although news reporters there did their best to show the fatalities, I fail to see why nothing was done, or why the United Nations didn’t interfere more quickly. Is it because policy makers chose to turn a blind eye? Was it that the sight of machetes falling wasn’t enough for them to mobilize? I fail to see why this genocide had to take place under the eyes of the world. Failure to really address the issue has resulted in a variety of wars within the African continent over the same issue, having effect in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Burundi, not to mention the thousands of refugees that have been displaced because of the violence.

Another example which hits close to home was the Serb-Croat war in the former Yugoslavia. When I was in high school, for some reason there was a massive influx of refugees that just happened to come to Hull, Quebec, and to my school, specifically. Anyways, I was in the international development program there, and we got to discuss the conflict in detail since there were so many people that had been influenced first hand. My focus here, was that the war turned into an Antenna War. American intervention was influenced by Bosnians in the Pentagon who believed that intervention was not in the vital interests of the US, and that it was too dangerous to interfere anyways. Thus, civilian agencies continued as they would in the form of ethnic hatred between groups. This caused hyper-nationalistic attitudes to be heightened, rather than downplayed. Rather than using the medium for dialogue, and the spread of information and communication, it became the drumbeat for violence within the country. Since the conflict has ended, things have eased up.

on equilibrium

Upon reading "On equilibrium" by John Ralston Saul, certain aspects of the current international system come to the forefront. First of all, he comments on humanity's rationality and common sense, a misinterpreted idea that all citizens are fighting for the same thing. However, this is incorrect. If we look at economic models of resource extraction, one would think that a human being is thinking ethically, rather than self-promotionally. This is an incorrect assumption that is indeed fully detrimental. The way in which the resource are extracted, or outsourced at the present day seems like the most irrationally efficient model to undertake. Realistically though they are the product of late-nineteenth century industrial production management theory- which shouldn't be the model that we adopt at this point in time. You would think that paradigms would shift as innovation grows. There is a difference between COMMERCE and freedom to act in international trade. Within a democracy, " citizenship comes first, along with freedom of speech, responsible individualism" (53) and of course social well-being. Nonetheless, it becomes clear that unregulated markets lead to the reinforcement of the poverty cycle and general suffering, and do nothing to encourage free speech, active citizenship and responsible businesses.

We must transcend the self in order to achieve equilibrium. I think that we have fundamentally lost respect within our society. The justification of greed maintains itself just along as the system keeps running. As soon as we have depleted and destroyed our own environments as well as those that do not belong to us, we will learn that sustainability was important.

in Maria Full of Grace

I saw Maria Full of Grace the other day which reminded me of a whole chapter of thought that I want to cover. The movie starts with Maria working in a rose factory. We see her frustration, when the manager refuses to let her go to the bathroom. Her wages are low. The dangers are high. Eventually she gets recruited to become a mule- a woman who transports compressed tablets of cocaine in order to smuggle them into the US.

The movie highlighted how "development" sometimes means complete dislocation inside factories, where multinationals own the land, and where unions don't have a voice. "At least we get them jobs" my friend commented the other day. This is true, in part. But in terms of the human side of things. The fact that most of things we buy were produced and manufactured in another country does not justify that it should continue this way in the future.
Exploitation of the third world is downplayed so much in the news I can't explain it.

At times, there are unions that are so angry about their living conditions, they put their life on the line. Why aren't these events shown "en evidence" in the US? I think its because they don't want to emphasize or validate any kind of revolutionary tendencies. They speak of freedom as if we have it. They don’t explain how you have to fight for it, and how it takes time to achieve it.

Action must now replace words. Prudence would say to stop it.

A Collective Memory

One aspect of today's culture that I find tremendously interesting is the creation of history/ truth/ separation of fact from fiction when referring to social, or collective memory. Since I am interested in the Middle East, I decided to pick up a book about the way that the American media portrayed the wars they fought, and what some of the conclusive outcomes were about what had happened.

One important aspect, "unlike personal memory, whose authority fades with time, the authority of collective memories increases as time passes, taking on new complications, nuances and interest" (Hoskins 2). They stressed also the aspect of new memory, which pushes a reliance of media data (5), rather than the real life experience, because this might be (and is) subjective to the individual. What tends to happen, however, is that the social memory collapses as the society is oversaturated with information. And so, personal goals or ambitions to change might get slighted for the majority wants to do.

The author also explained that how in the last quarter century, the mass media has propagated myths around general warfare and the plethora of battles fought be the West, calling them "limited", "surgical" and "clean". I object to this in so many respects. What happens is that the main media channels tend to censor the information so that real tragedies are over looked and under-hyped, and military strategy and tactics as well as foreign policy negotiations tend to be reemphasized. The wars are thus disconnected from the actual tragedies associated to them, and we tend to forget the bloody consequences that are not directly in our visual frame. When we are watching from our sofa, first we classify the victims as the "ENNEMY", or as "unplanned casualties" and this tends to lose the shock value of what we are actually seeing. Does familiarity with a picture, no matter how shocking, prevent its use in further reflection and potentially productive/ alternative interpretations, rather than a trite attempt at making us care?

Works cited:
Televising War from Vietnam to Iraq by Andrew Hoskins NewYork: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004