Tuesday, 29 June 2021

What I've Been Reading, May 2021

Links

Above the Fold

  • No. This is a Genuine Revolution - Interview with Graeber by Evrensel Newspaper, by David Graeber and Pinar Öğünç, Libcom.org
    This interview is about Graeber's impression of Rojava after visiting there.
  • Learning My Left From My Right, by John Halstead, Gods & Radicals Press
    "We have witnessed the creep (and sometimes the sprint) of fascism in recent years into the center of American political life, and yet most people still have no idea what fascism is—much less its opposite, anarchism. (Even some on the left are confused.) Fascism will continue to shape our political future in the coming decades, so we need to educate people, in terms that they can understand, without the jargon or theoretical minutiae, about hierarchy and the state, and the possibility of a world without either. This is the lesson I learned after having my work co-opted by fascists: It is not enough to articulate a critique of capitalism—as I did in my article about distributism; if we do not also clearly distinguish ourselves from the fascists, then we will end up losing the debate to both."
  • Divide And Brainwash: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix, by Caitlin Johnstone, Caitlin's Newsletter
    "One of the biggest challenges for a developing anti-imperialist, at least in my experience, is learning to differentiate between those who actually want to end the oligarchic empire and those who just want the empire to act a bit more cosmetically nice than it does. These are two completely different positions, especially because the latter is pure fantasy: you cannot have a globe-dominating unipolar power structure that doesn't use violent force to maintain that world order. Yet the two groups often wind up moving in overlapping circles."
  • It’s Time To Ditch The Abundance Mindset — It Paves The Way to Inequality, by Jessica Wildfire, Medium
    "We need collective growth, not just personal."
    "If you’re one of those positivity wranglers, maybe it’s time for you to shut up and listen. Follow some of that advice you give about having an open mind and hearing hard truths."
  • What would happen if the world stopped shopping? by J. B. Mackinnon, Fast Company
    "Fast fashion is destructive and exploitative—and yet millions of people rely on it for work. In a new book, J.B. MacKinnon explores these complexities."
  • How equality slipped away, by Kim Sterelny, Aeon
    "For 97 per cent of human history, all people had about the same power and access to goods. How did inequality ratchet up?"
  • The Poorest in Society are Not Worth Saving, by Adebayo Adeniran, Medium
    "Despite the yawning chasm between the haves and have nots and the perpetual gaslighting of the poorest in our midst, why do the poor keep voting against their interests?"
    "I am sorry that I have to say this, for as long as the poorest continue to vote against their interests, they aren’t worth saving — they should watch as the NHS is being dismantled and privatized to silicon valley, post Brexit or see how much smaller their world is about to become without the ECHR acting as a bulwark against the insatiably rapacious excesses of the tech giants."
    I have remarked many times about poor Americans voting Republican and poor Canadians voting Conservative. Here, at some length is an of similar behaviour in the UK.

Miscellaneous

The Other News

News that is being ignored by North American mass media

Structural Violence

Suddenly, "liberal" is a dirty word

And with good reason, it seems.

  • The Centrist Delusion: ‘Middle Ground’ Politics Aren’t Moderate, They’re Dangerous, by Raoul Martinez, Novara Media
    "In a world of competing narratives serving competing interests, there’s always a temptation to gravitate to the political centre ground, the would-be midpoint between two apparent extremes, with its aura of moderation, reasonableness and realism. After all, isn’t the truth supposed to be ‘somewhere in the middle’, a composite of competing claims? The simple answer is no. Not in science and not in politics. When there are two opposing sides to a debate, sometimes the midway position is empirically false or morally abhorrent. In every civilisation, the centre ground of political opinion has been home to dangerous, inaccurate and oppressive ideas."

Coronavirus

Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

The New Fascism, the Far-Right and Antifa

I hear a lot of well educated people saying that the people some of us are calling fascists don't meet all the criteria for being "real" fascists. Others have even accused us of calling anyone we disagree with a fascist. I predict that a few decades (maybe just a few years) from now those same people will be saying they wish they hadn't been quite so fussy with their definitions, and had acted sooner to oppose these "new fascists", even if they weren't identical to the fascists of the twentieth century.

Economic Contraction and Growing Inequality

Agriculture

Recipes and Cooking

Genetic Engineering

Before jumping to the erroneous conclusion that this section was paid for by Monsanto, stop for a moment and understand that organic agriculture/food is a multi-billion dollar per year industry that relies on fear to get people to buy its product. Millions of dollars are spent to convince you that non-organic food is dangerous. In fact both conventionally grown and organic foods are equally safe. Sadly neither method of agriculture is even remotely substainable.

  • Panic-free GMOs, A Grist Special Series by Nathanael Johnson
    "It’s easy to get information about genetically modified food. There are the dubious anti-GM horror stories that recirculate through social networks. On the other side, there’s the dismissive sighing, eye-rolling, and hand patting of pro-GM partisans. But if you just want a level-headed assessment of the evidence in plain English, that’s in pretty short supply. Fortunately, you’ve found the trove."
    A series of articles that does a pretty good job of presenting the facts about GMOs. I plan to include one article from this series here each month. (This month it's two closely related articles.)
  • In the insecticide wars, GMOs have so far been a force for good, by Nathanael Johnson, Grist
    "Plants engineered to produce their own bug-killing toxins really have helped farmers cut the use of nastier chemical insecticides. "
  • Roundup-ready, aim, spray: How GM crops lead to herbicide addiction, by Nathanael Johnson, Grist
    "Herbicide-resistant crops make it easy for farmers to rely on hefty quantities of weedkiller. Then the weeds evolve, and we have to up the ante."

Practical Skills

American Politics

Debunking Resources

These are of such importance that I've decide to leave them here on an ongoing basis.

Science

  • Nova in Cassiopeia brightens suddenly, by Bob King, Sky & Telescope
    "A star in the constellation Cassiopeia that flared into view during mid-March has erupted to naked-eye visibility. Catch it while you can!"
  • Practical science at home in a pandemic world, by Daren J. Caruana, Christoph G. Salzmann & Andrea Sella, Nature—Chemistry
    "There are plenty of online resources to ensure that learning can continue for students who cannot access universities during a pandemic, but what options are there for practical aspects of science courses? Daren J. Caruana, Christoph G. Salzmann and Andrea Sella offer a manifesto for home-based experiments."

Lacking an Owner's Manual

The human body/mind/spirit doesn't come with an owner's manual, and we continually struggle to figure out how best to operate them.

Gender and Sexuality

  • The Fight for Partial Freedom in Vietnam, by Mèo Mun, libcom.org
    At the start, this piece seems to be about far left politics, but read a little further and you'll see it's really about LGBTQ issues. And of course, the two go together rather well.

There is No God, and Thou Shall Have No Other Gods

I don't think I've made any secret of the fact that I am an atheist, but I may not have made it clear that I think any sort of worship is a bad thing and that believing in things is to be avoided whenever possible. Indeed, I do not believe in belief itself. That's what the "Thou shall have no other gods" is about—it's not enough to quit believing in whatever God or Gods you were raised to believe in, but also we must avoid other gods, including material wealth, power and fame.

Further, many people today (including most atheists) follow the religion of "progress", which is based on the belief that mankind is destined to follow a road that leads from the caves ever upward to the stars, and that however bad things seem today, they are bound to be better tomorrow due to technological advancement and economic growth. This is very convenient for those who benefit most from economic growth, but it is hardly based on any sort of science and leads to a great deal of confused thinking.

  • Is Belief in God a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? by Tessa Schlesinger, Medium
    This article raises an interesting question, and ends up justifying belief in God, but not belief in religion. As it happens, I disagree, and see no justification for either.

Books

Fiction

I re-read several books by Steven Gould this month. Books which I find myself coming back to about once a year. Nothing profound, but a good distraction.

Non-Fiction

I finally finished reading A Peoples History of the United States. And I am over half way through Hierarchy in the Forest, by Christopher Boehm.

  • Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior, by Christopher Boehm
    "Are humans by nature hierarchical or egalitarian? Hierarchy in the Forest addresses this question by examining the evolutionary origins of social and political behavior. Christopher Boehm, an anthropologist whose fieldwork has focused on the political arrangements of human and nonhuman primate groups, postulates that egalitarianism is in effect a hierarchy in which the weak combine forces to dominate the strong."
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