Catalina

monja_alferez @ 2009-12-24T15:10:00

2009-12-24T21:11:33Z

Excerpt from this page.

The Historical role of Biphopia- Policing the Treaty

Underpinning this paper is the belief in that many if not all heterosexual identifying people can be bisexual and that the majority are to some extent not privately monosexual. The majority status of bisexuality does not make it normal nor ideal however I mention it because it is important to realise that the invisibility of bisexuality requires extraordinary effort to maintain and it’s repression occurs against all people not just a few “natural” bisexuals.

To understand the historical role that biphobia has played and the historical position of bisexuality it is necessary to recognise homosexuality as a creation of western patriarchal and homophobic medical science. Women have always loved women and men have always loved men but the classification of these experiences as a sexuality with little or no element of choice and a biological or individual psychological basis was given currency in the 19th century by a professional class that feared same sex desire. Their construction of homosexuality shaped and informs Western cultural understanding of sexuality “not in the first place because of its meaningfulness to those whom it defines but because of its indispensableness to those who define themselves against it.” (Segal, L. p145) for it was and is needed “not only for the persecutory regulation of a nascent minority of distinctly homosexual men (and women) but also for the regulation of the male (and female) homosocial bonds that structure all culture - at any rate all public or heterosexual culture.” (Eve Sedgewick in Segal, L. pp194-5) Early psychoanalytic texts were quite explicit that the project was to police all male and female relationships warning “teachers and parents not to take too lightly friendships among girls which become passionate” and society to “be more concerned with the degree of heterosexuality or homosexuality in an individual than they are with the question of whether he has ever had an experience of either sort”. “The real danger from homosexuality” was seen to lie “not in actual sex association but in homosexual attitudes towards life” such as the negative attitudes of “thousands of women ... toward men, marriage and family life” influenced by “latent homosexuality” for “neurotic attitudes about love and marriage can prove contagious.” (Caprio, F. pp 6 -11)

Generally, prior to this the western world had relied on Christianity to dictate the terms of sexuality. Whether sexual attraction was “natural” was no defence under a regime which tended to view “natural” sexual desires as needing control from a religious authority. The medical establishment faced the dilemma of replacing religious authorities without having any utilitarian basis for the repression of same sex desire.

The construction of homosexuality as a distinct condition was to define normality as exclusive heterosexuality. In fact heterosexuality was simply the condition of being human. Sexual behaviour became a product of a persons condition; the “human condition” producing normal heterosexual behaviour. There was now no need for a religious justification for preferencing the heterosexual over the homosexual because behaviour was not a matter of choice but a matter of whether or not you were ill; Well or sane people simply didn’t want to have sex with people of their own gender.

This was presented as a more humane response to homosexuality than religious condemnation or incarceration. Psychiatrists often called themselves compassionate as they argued for an adoption of “scientific” curative responses to homosexuality. (Caprio, F, p.xi)
The majority gay and lesbian movement accepted the shifting of sexuality into an area for science and have embraced the notion of a biological basis or early psychological basis for sexuality. Their fight has largely been for homosexuality to be treated as incurable and it follows natural and equally valid alternative to heterosexuality, jettisoning any agenda to argue that is better. Only a minority have argued that homosexuality is a political choice and an option for everyone.

With both sides ceasing hostilities, when homosexuality was delisted as a mental illness in 1973 (Altman,D.,p5), institutionalised heterosexuality and gays and lesbians overt interests have moved to coincide.Victories to normalise homosexuality also normalise heterosexuality's dominance by depoliticising sexuality in general. In 1993 when a homosexuality gene was “discovered” a genetic basis for the majority status of heterosexuality was created though not declared. Anyone who would argue that the commonality of heterosexuality might have something to do with social programming and institutional support can now be said to be messing with nature.

The proud bisexual threatens this peaceful coexistence of the heterosexual majority and homosexual minority. Recognition of our bisexuality requires a validation of our sexual relationships with people of our own gender based on choice rather than the agreed legitimate biological basis. Such choice may be personal or circumstantial but also political or moral. Normalising bisexuality with a biological cause won’t defuse it’s threat though it could contain it if it relegates us to a fixed minority status. Society still has to reckon with why we choose to validate relationships with people of our own gender by identifying as bisexual. We reopen old debates that many who have found safety in a biological basis for their monosexual identity want to keep closed. (I will revisit this fear in the last section, Bisexuality and the Future when I discuss Bi supremacy.)

A bisexual identity simply has to be defined as confused or an exception to the rule. Individuals have to be pressured to fit themselves into one or the other category. In a secular society without moral taboos people can’t be allowed to entertain the idea that their partners gender is political. Also, understandably gays and lesbians know those moral taboos still hold significant power so many still see their best option as policing the treaty based on the attribution of their sexuality to a biological or psychological cause.

monja_alferez @ 2009-12-24T14:02:00

2009-12-24T20:03:12Z

Two tears in a bucket, motherfuck it.

Green Innovations from Cuba

2009-12-19T18:25:02Z

We have much to learn from the Cuban people's response to the collapse of the socialist economic block and decades of merciless U.S. economic oppression. These innovations are testament to the kind of grassroots democracy that thrives in Cuba, alongside/interpenetrating the bureaucratic-authoritarian apparatuses of the state. As has been observed by some Cuba analysts, one of the principle contradictions of the Cuban revolution is that local and workplace democracy function pretty well (arguably better than in liberal "democratic" states), while it is largely absent at the higher levels.

We can see this in the first video, especially, because it is the vigor of the Cuban revolution that has made it possible for ordinary people to have more control of such important things as their food supply - a democratic freedom if ever there was one. Juxtapose that with what is going on in other parts of Latin America: Peasants being driven off the land because of the influx of highly-subsidized U.S. agriproducts (and therefore forced to grow Coca), as in Colombia; water being privatized in Bolivia, effectively making this essential component of life too expensive for the majority of the population (and therefore initiating an effective, indigenous-led fightback). Consider that the next time you hear someone speak of the total failure of the Cuban revolution.

Nepali Maoist Leader Speaks

2009-12-19T17:45:05Z

Baburam Bhattarai: On Nepal’s Social Revolution

The following interview with Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, a leader of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), was conducted by members of the World People’s Resistance Movement (Britain & Ireland) who recently spent six weeks on a delegation in Nepal during August and September 2009

****Excerpt****

Baburam Bhattarai: This question of democracy and dictatorship is also very important for the communist movement. In principle every state is a dictatorship of a certain class, so-called democracy is also a form of bourgeois dictatorship. This is a basic tenet of MLM [Marxism-Leninism-Maoism] and nobody can deny that. But what was practiced in the 20th century in different people’s democracies and socialist countries was, though in theory correct, in practice the real democratic institutions and processes were minimised. Democracy is a class concept, and bourgeois democracy has its own rules, but proletarian democracy also needs to be developed. What happened in the Soviet Union was that the Soviet, a democratic institution, and the working class became very functional, especially during Comrade Stalin’s time. In reality the Soviets couldn’t be very functional and they gradually turned into a bureaucratic state apparatus. After the counter-revolution in the Soviet Union, Comrade Mao Zedong drew certain lessons and he wanted to expand the scope of proletarian democracy. That’s what he practiced during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. There were certain new institutions of people’s committees and Red Guards to expand people’s democracy. But this experience was very short and after Comrade Mao died, the counter-revolution in China took place.

Now it is up to the revolutionaries of the 21st century to learn from those lessons of the 20th century and develop a new concept of proletarian democracy. Our party discussed this thoroughly and made a review of the positive and negative aspects of revolution in the 20th century. We came to the conclusion that though the basic concept of MLM on state and democracy remains valid, because the Soviet apparatus was no longer functional, when the Soviet state turned into a bureaucratic state, and with the lesson of Mao’s experiment of Cultural Revolution against that negative experience of the Soviet Union, we have to develop the concept of proletarian democracy further. Our conclusion was that basically we need more room for the masses of the people to supervise and intervene in the state. If that will not happen then after the revolution the initiative of the masses will be diminished, and only the few of the bureaucratic elite will rule over the state in the name of the proletariat and the revolution would not be carried further.

To check this we have to create certain mechanisms whereby the constant mobilising of the masses and the constant vigilance and intervention of the masses is ensured so the state doesn’t turn into a bureaucratic state. To create such an institution one of the ideas is to provide democracy as was practiced during the Paris Commune days, or to again go towards the Soviet model of democracy, or draw lessons from the Cultural Revolution. We want to take lessons from all these three experiences, so our party’s conclusion was that within a socialist framework, within the framework of the dictatorship of the proletariat, competition should be organised among the masses of the people, so the masses will be constantly energised and it will prevent only a few people having a monopoly over the state.

This concept of competition within the framework of socialism, of proletarian dictatorship, we have developed this basic concept. But this is only a general concept, the actual mode of that competition we have still to work out. Our general feeling is still under discussion, we haven’t reached any final conclusion. But we have proposed multi-party competition within the socialist framework. Why do we need many parties? Though the proletarian class is one class, the proletarian consciousness is different, there is uneven consciousness. If there is competition among them then the most revolutionary section will be in a position to lead this process through democratic means. All the masses of the working class can be mobilised, and in such mode of constantly mobilising the masses of people we will limit the chance of degeneration of this democracy into a bureaucratic set-up. That’s why we are thinking one of the options is to allow multi-party competition among the proletarian and progressive classes within the framework of the leadership of the proletariat and a socialist constitutional framework.

This is one of the options that we have proposed but it just a proposal, we haven’t reached any conclusion. This is what I discussed in that article, it is a preliminary article, we have proposed this but I think it needs to be discussed in the international proletarian movement and developed further. Otherwise we will not be able to draw lessons from the failures of the teachings of socialism and proletarian revolution in the 20th century and lead revolution forward into the 21st century. The basic point of departure is still from the Cultural Revolution, where Mao went beyond the traditional framework of the state system and gave more power to the masses of the people to rebel against the bureaucratic system within the party and within the state. That is the general orientation. But the right institutions have not been developed yet. The job of the revolutionaries in the 21st century will be to develop that concept further and to develop certain institutions and procedures whereby the proletarian class gets mobilised to carry forward the revolution. With this is mind, we are putting forward this concept of competition within the New Democratic and socialist state framework.

monja_alferez @ 2009-12-19T02:07:00

2009-12-19T08:07:39Z

Slavoj Zizek 'Of all the couples in the history of modern thought (Freud and Lacan, Marx and Lenin...), Kant and Sade is perhaps the most problematic: the statement "Kant is Sade" is the "infinite judgement" of modern ethics, positing the sign of equation between the two radical opposites, i.e. asserting that the sublime disinterested ethical attitude is somehow identical to, or overlaps with, the unrestrained indulgence in pleasurable violence. A lot-everything, perhaps-is at stake here: is there a line from Kantian formalist ethics to the cold-blooded Auschwitz killing machine? Are concentration camps and killing as a neutral business the inherent outcome of the enlightened insistence on the autonomy of Reason? Is there at least a legitimate lineage from Sade to Fascist torturing, as is implied by Pasolini's film version of Saló, which transposes it into the dark days of Mussolini's Salo republic? Lacan developed this link first in his Seminar on The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1958-59)¹ , and then in the Écrits "Kant with Sade" of 1963² .' 1.

'For Lacan, Sade consequently deployed the inherent potential of the Kantian philosophical revolution, in the precise sense that he honestly externalized the Voice of Conscience. The first association here is, of course: what's all the fuss about? Today, in our postidealist Freudian era, doesn't everybody know what the point of the "with" is-the truth of Kant's ethical rigorism is the sadism of the Law, i.e. the Kantian Law is a superego agency that sadistically enjoys the subject's deadlock, his inability to meet its inexorable demands, like the proverbial teacher who tortures pupils with impossible tasks and secretly savors their failings?' 1. Lacan, Jacques, Le seminaire, Livre VII: L'éthique de la psychanalyse, Paris: Seuil, 1986, chap. VI. 2. Lacan, J., "Kant avec Sade," in Écrits, Paris: Seuil, 1966, p. 765-790.

"Kant avec Sade"

2009-12-19T08:01:38Z

ICE ICE ICE

2009-12-19T07:52:44Z

ICE ICE ICE

2009-12-19T07:31:30Z

Mao more than ever

2009-12-18T06:50:48Z

Nepal's Maoists Seize Kathmandu KATHMANDU: Maoists on Wednesday announced the seizure of the Nepalese capital Kathmandu declaring it an autonomous region, after storming into heavily guarded Durbar Square, in a development that could trigger a new political confrontation.

Shifting Rhythms of the Light

2009-12-18T06:31:47Z

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Silver Morning Branches

2009-12-18T06:19:31Z

Among Bones

2009-12-18T00:44:51Z

Orlando now took a strange delight in thoughts of death and decay, and, after pacing the long galleries and ballrooms with a taper in his hand, looking at picture after picture as if he sought the likeness of somebody whom he could not find, would mount into the family pew and sit for hours watching the banners stir and the moonlight waver with a bat or a death's head moth to keep him company. Even this was not enough for him, but he must descend into the crypt where his ancestors lay, coffin piled upon coffin, for ten generations together. The place was so seldom visited that the rats had made free with the lead work, and now a thigh bone would catch at his cloak as he passed, or he would crack the skull of some old Sir Malise as it rolled beneath his foot. It was a ghastly sepulchre; dug deep beneath the foundations of the house as if the first Lord of the family, who had come from France with the Conqueror, had wished to testify how all pomp is built upon corruption; how the skeleton lies beneath the flesh; how we that dance and sing above must lie below; how the crimson velvet turns to dust; how the ring (here Orlando, stooping his lantern, would pick up a gold circle lacking a stone, that had rolled into a corner) loses its ruby and the eye which was so lustrous, shines no more. "Nothing remains of all these Princes," Orlando would say, indulging in some pardonable exaggeration of their rank, "except one digit," and he would take a skeleton hand in his and bend the joints this way and that. "Whose hand was it?" he went on to ask. "The right or the left? The hand of man or woman, of age or youth? Had it urged the war horse, or plied the needle? Had it plucked the rose, or grasped cold steel? - Had it -" but here either his invention failed him or, what is more likely, provided him with so many instances of what a hand can do that he shrank, as his wont was, from the cardinal labour of composition, which is excision, and he put it with the other bones...

- Virginia Woolf, Orlando, Ch. 2

The Slender Man

2009-12-14T07:35:44Z

My really close friend, Daniel, introduced me to the Slender Man mythos about a month ago. He was obsessed with this figure and was quite freaked out. Daniel is really into Jung and Lacan, so he had this complex archetypal-psychoanalytic explanation of Slender Man. He described all these nightmares he had been having and I didn't quite get it. Then late one night when we were hanging out outside my apartment, it was time for him to go home. But he wouldn't leave if I didn't go with him because he didn't want to drive alone. His fear really started to creep me out so I ended up going home with him and spent the rest of the night sharing a bed with him and his girlfriend Kristen. In the morning they made me chop onions and watch these videos. I wasn't that impressed with them - and even now when I watch them, I'm like, "Yeah, okay..."

But they planted some fucking dark seeds in my mind that have sprouted and taken root like the story of Hamburger Lady did when I was still in high school. I feel like I'm ten years old again, in the worst possible way. I'm literally showering with the shower curtains open because I'm so creeped out. I won't walk alone at night and I refuse to sleep alone in my apartment (I already wouldn't sleep in the bedroom, but that's another story and another entity...). I either have to sleep over at Bonnie's, which is luckily just a couple of buildings over, or at my parents' house, so I can have Nico, the rat terrier-daschound, next to me...AND I have to have the light on, if it's just Nico and me.

I just can't pull myself together theses days, and yesterday I bought a fucking banjo because of a dream I had! I want to learn to play like Kathleen Baird.

Maybe I wouldn't have been so disturbed by Slender Man if it weren't for the fact that some creepy shit was going on around the apartment complex at exactly the same time that Daniel was talking about all of this.

A. I walked home through the park one night while in a really bad mental state, and saw a strange light at the end of the first bridge that goes across the ditch that spills off from the canal. I was really disturbed by this for some reason and went the long way and took the second bridge, even though in all honesty it could have been a bicycle reflector or something like that.

B. A few days later someone tried to break into the apartment directly under mine.

C. The same day as the attempted break in, I took a walk in the woods at about 1:00PM. I was really...in a bit of a fog but thought it a decent time to walk way down the trails along the canal. While down there I noticed three signs that someone had been down the trails not long before me. There we big footprints in the mud. There was a long piece of fabric - like a strip torn from a t-shirt - tied between two branches of a bush. And there was a booby trap at one point; someone had covered this big hole in the middle of the trail with twigs and freshly plucked leaves from this invasive Chinese shrub whose name I can't recall. It was obviously designed to trip someone up. I got a really creepy vibe from all this but nevertheless stayed out in the woods for a while, feeling watched, and even jacked off at one point because I was thinking about fauns, against my better judgement.

Later that night I was over at Bonnie's apartment and my very next door neighbor, Meghan, came over. She started telling this story about how she was being stalked. She said that she drove into the apartment complex a few nights before, from a friend's house, and a mysterious car followed her and pulled into the parking lot when she did. No one ever got out. The next night, the same car showed up when it was time for her to go to work. She pulled out, and the car proceeded to follow her all the way to Piggly Wiggly's, which is about 45 minutes away. The car copied her every move; if she changed lanes, it changed lanes. At one point along a dark stretch of road the car started bumping her from behind, as if trying to make her run off the road. Luckily she made it to Piggly Wiggly's and called the cops. They gave her two knives and escorted her back home.

The next day, however, the car showed up at the apartment complex again. She called the cops again, and as they were coming down the drive, a man got out of the car and RAN DOWN THE TRAIL INTO THE WOODS. The police took the car, ran the license plate and found out it was a stolen vehicle.

I was listening to this story in horror the whole time, but I became especially horrified when she told me what time this happened. It was the same day that I took my own stroll in the woods, and the guy had disappeared down the trail ABOUT AN HOUR AND A HALF before I went down the trail. He could have been out there hiding, watching me.

I know that at the mundane level, probably none of these things are related. But they coalesced in my mind in a most frightening way. I don't know. I try to pull myself together and think reasonably about all this, but can't seem to do it. Maybe if other things in my life were better I could deal with Slender Man in a more productive way. Aside from one good thing that I have going, the past few months have been a veritable Dark Night of the Soul for me (actually, in the precise sense meant by St. John of the Cross, everything since December 2006 has been a Dark Night. It was then that I stumbled upon the Abyss but could not cross and enter the realm of the Supernals because my ego boundaries were too strong. I nevertheless had a partial experience of being stripped of "everything that man has thought, felt and experienced, passed down to us from generation to generation" and was put back together in a slightly worse way than before). The Slender Man is just one component of this horrible period, and a terrible respiratory infection that lasted for six weeks was not the least of it.

Even as I write I keep looking over my shoulder.

monja_alferez @ 2009-12-13T10:39:00

2009-12-13T16:40:28Z

monja_alferez @ 2009-12-12T19:16:00

2009-12-13T01:16:50Z

Economist Minqi Li Puts Things in Perspective

2009-12-12T23:43:42Z

Towards a Genealogy of Circumcision (Male Genital Mutilation)

2009-12-12T07:36:53Z

Wanna hear yours truly go off on the mutilative practice known as circumcision? Here's your chance!

monja_alferez @ 2009-12-11T13:27:00

2009-12-11T19:27:12Z

Lady Jaye and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Destroying Gender in Theory and Practice

2009-12-11T19:17:23Z

Judith Butler on the Coerciveness and Brutality of Gender

2009-12-11T19:00:22Z

monja_alferez @ 2009-12-11T12:41:00

2009-12-11T18:41:14Z

Famed Social Sciences Author Jared Diamond Predicts 49 Percent Chance of Civilization Collapse

2009-12-10T18:54:49Z

Wednesday, February 18, 2009
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com

[Read the article here to click on the author's embedded links: http://www.naturalnews.com/025662_civilization_food_social_sciences.html]

(NaturalNews) Jared Diamond is no doom-and-gloomer; he's a Pulitzer Prize winning author of thoughtful, carefully researched books about the rise and fall of societies. Diamond is best known for Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Soci...) and Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-St...), both of which are among my top-recommended books of all time.

When you read these books, you'll quickly realize that Diamond is perhaps the world's top expert on what might be called the "holistic, interdependent nature of complex societies." Rather than limiting his perspective to immediate, short-term actions and consequences (as most national leaders and corporations do), Diamond intelligently examines the long-term, interdependent factors that lead to any society's success or failure.

I've personally read both of Diamond's books mentioned above, and they have strongly influenced my own views about the future (or lack thereof) of western civilization. What Diamond and I both agree on is that complex civilizations are quite fragile, and short-terming thinking can easily doom a society or civilization to irreversible collapse. (Another interesting book to read on this subject, although it's quite technical and a bit older, is The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter.)

Collapse can come from many vectors. Many collapses are environmental, such as the collapse of the Anasazi Indians in North America or the collapse of the Tiwanaku in South America (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiwanaku).

Other causes of collapse include man-made accelerations of environmental change; the classic example being the rampant deforestation of Easter Island by its inhabitants (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter...).

It is the Easter Island example that perhaps most closely resembles the short-sightedness of modern western civilization. At the expense of future generations, today's CEOs, bankers and politicians are destroying our future in so many ways (financial, chemical, environmental, plundering of fossil fuels, etc.) that it is a challenge to imagine a scenario where western civilization even survives in its current form.

Jared Diamond, in fact, has publicly declared he sees only a 51 percent chance of western civilization surviving. You can hear this from his own mouth in this video interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnZg...

Peak Oil and other threats to human civilization

This is no casual number-tossing game from a newbie. Jared Diamond has studied the success and failure of world societies more closely than anyone living today. He describes himself as "cautiously optimistic" but worries that the outlandish financial decisions being made by the world's leaders have put us all in a precarious position from which western civilization may not emerge intact.

In my own view, the financial challenges facing our world are, indeed, quite severe. And they may yet bring down the entire global banking system. But in the medium term, I see Peak Oil as being the far greater threat to the continuation of human civilization as we know it. Cheap, plentiful fossil fuels discovered in the last hundred years (or so) spurred a food bubble, which led to a population bubble. Cheap oil, in other words, created the temporary conditions necessary to support a runaway population explosion that is, without question, unsustainable without cheap energy.

But cheap oil is finite. And based on all reasonable accounting, world oil production is already in a state of substantial decline. That means oil will become increasingly scarce and expensive with each passing year, precisely as the world's hunger for oil reaches unprecedented heights (cars in China, India, etc.).

When the era of cheap oil ends, the food bubble made possible by mechanized agriculture will also end. And that will usher in an era of rapid human depopulation. Long-term, in a post-Peak Oil scenario, most experts expect the planet to only be able to support about one billion people.

Massive depopulation of the human species

The current population on the planet is about 6.7 billion people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_...). That means we are likely to see a die-off of about 5.7 billion people, or roughly 6 out of every 7 people.

A loss of 6 out of 7 people -- even in the long run -- means a great de-specialization of complex societies and a return to a far more agrarian society. There is only ONE nation on Earth that has the experience and culture to handle this transition without much loss of life, and that's Papua New Guinea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_...). Many nations like Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Bolivia and certain Pacific Island nations may also fare well, given that gardening is still a way of life that's taught there (and their climates are especially conducive to easy food production).

For everybody else, the transition will be quite devastating.

The loss of population density and specialization means a collapse of technology multipliers such as mechanized agriculture, just-in-time manufacturing systems and complex industrial logistics that manufacture and deliver products quickly and cheaply. The long, complex supply lines that characterize modern society will collapse, becoming local. For example, right now fish caught in Canada are shipped to China to be filleted by low-cost laborers, then they are shipped back to Canada to be sold as fish fillets. Such outrageous examples of the wasteful use of energy (and long supply lines) will vanish almost overnight in a post-Peak Oil scenario.

Unless some cheap energy supply is quickly discovered that can magically replace oil, virtually all food will eventually become local, which means that anyone living in a region that cannot produce its own food will either starve or leave. Las Vegas, Phoenix and virtually the entire American Southwest will be mostly abandoned by humans. You can expect a mass exodus of people from virtually all cities. Los Angeles would likely become a gang-infested war zone that resembles Somalia more than America.

Those who master the skills of agriculture (and who can protect themselves from the desperate masses leaving the cities) will live and reproduce. Those who deny reality and hope for some government to save them with silly economic stimulus bills will starve and die. It is the ultimate application of Darwinian Natural Selection, on a grand and merciless scale.

In the end, about 1 out of 7 people will remain. They will be the healthy, resourceful people who are willing to work in order to survive. The masses of medicated, junk-food-eating, entitlement-minded citizens of western nations who insist someone else should save them will be removed from the human gene pool through natural processes.

Deniers who foolishly think oil will never run out, or that the global banking system can be saved by printing free money from nothing, or that western civilization will last forever will also be removed from the human gene pool.

Can it be prevented?

A dire scenario? No more dire than all the previous civilization collapses that have occurred on our planet. The history of human life on Earth is full of arrogant, short-sighted societies that believed they would last forever. Arrogance quickly crumbles into dust in the face of ecological reality (or perhaps in this case, economic reality).

Of course, all of this could be prevented if the leaders of modern nations had any real intelligence (defined as having long-term vision and understanding the future implications of present-day decisions). Human life CAN be sustainable on our planet, but only if the people are willing to elect leaders who make decisions today that protect the future instead of selling it out. Such decisions, however, are never popular with the short-sighted people living today.

Sadly, there is hardly a single example of a future-minded politician in America today. Rep. Dennis Kucinich may be one of the rare ones on ecological issues, and Rep. Ron Paul is of course right-minded on financial issues. I cannot think of another elected representative (nor any Senator) that has any real long-term view of a sustainable society.

Nor do most people think beyond their own paychecks and immediate circumstances. How many people are actually taking great steps to reduce their ecological footprint? How many are investing in nutrition and superfoods for healthy babies? How many are truly growing their own food and solving the problems of seed saving, irrigation, food storage and soil erosion?

Remarkably few. Most people in society today live in artificial worlds defined by indoor lighting, air conditioning, processed foods, chemical medicines, artificial wood furniture, television programming and online social networking.

None of these have anything to do with reality.

Reality is the soil, the rivers, the air, sunlight, plants and seeds. It is found in the animals, microbes, forests and aquatic ecosystems. Reality cannot be negotiated with, nor bargained with, nor put off. Reality is shaped by our decisions and actions, and what we see unfolding in the world right now -- global warming, chemical contamination, depletion of fossil fuels -- is merely a reflection of the destructive actions being mindlessly taken by people living today.

It is often said that in a Democracy, people get the government they deserve.

On a large scale, this related thought is also true: On our planet, the people get the results they create!

And it is this choice that Jared Diamond so graciously reminds us to consider. We have a choice to decide our collective future. Today's decisions create tomorrow's results.

There is absolutely no question that the decisions being made right now across the nations of western civilization will create a future world with a greatly reduced capacity for human population. If that is what modern people wish to create, they are right on track with it.

But if modern people want to create a different outcome -- a sustainable world that future generations might enjoy without a population collapse and all the suffering that goes with it -- serious changes in behavior are immediately needed in many areas: Economic, ecological, cultural, medicine, agriculture and more.

Do not be led to believe that modern civilization is anything more than an erratic blip of temporary insanity on the chart of human history.

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About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health author and technology pioneer with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a manufacturer of mercury-free, energy-efficient LED lighting products that save electricity and help prevent global warming. He's also a successful software entrepreneur, having founded a well known email marketing software company whose technology currently powers the NaturalNews email newsletters. Adams is currently the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit, and practices nature photography, Capoeira, Pilates and organic gardening. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org

monja_alferez @ 2009-12-09T20:46:00

2009-12-10T02:46:05Z

What is the Duration of "Now"? or Why Today's Man Needs to Get Fucked

2009-12-09T17:07:11Z

There is an old Zen saying about—wait, let’s start somewhere else…

Today’s man needs to be penetrated, “sexually” and otherwise. This is because the potential of the whole human species (nay, of the whole planet) is being limited by patriarchal forms of society, which are everywhere entrenched, though the foundations may be more unstable than at any other time in historical or mythological memory.

Patriarchy is one basis of class and caste society. It is a root of authoritarianism of all kinds, of racism, of homophobia, of militarism and of the destruction of the natural environment. Our long term survival is partly dependent upon the fate of patriarchy. Patriarchy must go, and one component of this process is that those people who are currently understood as “men” must learn to be penetrated.

I’m talking, for example, about being penetrated emotionally, being open to connection with others and with the larger reality which we tend to understand and experience as separate from ourselves. The things which typically keep us from relating in these more integral ways are fundamental components of patriarchy, such as aggression and the obsession with control.

You know what I’m talking about: people (and unfortunately not just men) living their lives pretending to be invulnerable, never feeling good enough or complete and therefore trying to appear larger than life.

I’m not suggesting that we should give in to fits of tears every time life throws something at us, any more than I’m saying that we should give up our obsession with control to the point of giving up trying to transform our circumstances. Strength and striving are not in themselves bad. But why waste so much energy trying to keep up a charade of invulnerability that is actually making us all the more vulnerable (i.e., blinding us to human-created threats to our very survival)? Such a waste of energy is a bit like the United States spending trillions of dollars on imperialist wars when millions of its own people do not have adequate health care and its infant mortality rate is higher than that of Cuba and Hungary, while tying with Poland and Slovakia! The point is that we could be doing more productive and fulfilling things with our personal energy, just as we, as a society, could be doing more productive and fulfilling things with our wealth.

Let’s drop patriarchy, that is, forms of society that are male-identified, male-dominated and male-centered, but which ultimately limit everyone’s potential. Can we dream, think and reach beyond it?

There are various strategies for undermining patriarchy available to everyone. You just have to figure out which ones are available to you. Ask, “What strategic positions do I occupy, enabling me to affect change? Who can I work with to affect change?” (Of course, these questions should not just be asked in regard to patriarchy, but in relation to all systems of domination.)

As I alluded to before, learning to be penetrated is one of the steps that men must take in order to destabilize patriarchy. We can make progress in this direction by being penetrated physically, that is, in the anus.

The practice of anal penetration can serve as a tool in our attack on patriarchy because—in its patriarchal form—sexual penetration bears so much meaning. It is a symbol of and an instrument in men’s oppression of women. Men’s avoidance of being physically penetrated—even though it can give them immense pleasure—is symptomatic of the fear of penetration generally, because of its association with what has been designated, abjected, as the “feminine.” And yet I say: If all men would just get fucked in the ass every once in a while, the world might indeed be a better place.

Some gay and bi-identified and/or societally-labeled gay and bi men (as well as some straight-identified and/or societally-labeled straight men) already allow themselves to be penetrated anally, and they quite enjoy it. They should speak up loudly and be heard.

Men who don’t already allow themselves to be penetrated should relax and surrender to the void. It’s not as scary as it has been made out to be; in fact, you may find yourself wondering why you didn’t do it before. There’s nothing inherently “masculine” or “feminine”—active or passive—about fucking and being fucked (even though I’m still using the metaphysical language of activity and passivity here). These are just conceptual boxes which we use in an attempt to contain the amorphous goo that is human experience, thereby reinforcing existing relations of power.

If you’ve never done it before, get someone with a strap-on, an anatomical penis, a finger or a tongue to explore your delicate hole (in fact try all of these if possible). You’ll thank yourself as well as your partner(s) afterwards and perhaps during. Or maybe you’d rather start exploring on your own. What’s important is that you do something. “Make it new!” as the poet Ezra Pound used to say.

Perhaps you’ll find the following instructions useful for starters. The author also highly recommends combining these and other erotic activities with cannabis ingestion, though that is certainly not required.

1. Begin by lying in a comfortable place and in a comfortable position.

2. Take off your clothes and lightly touch your balls and perineum (the area between the anus and scrotum).

3. Breathe rhythmically, deeply and at a slow pace.

4. Then take a finger and gently trace circles around your anus.

5. Lube your finger and continue encircling your anus, and then press softly against it—rhythmically.

6. Apply more lube along the full extent of the finger and, when the sphincter is most relaxed, push into your anus.

7. Hold the finger still inside your anus. Leave it in there like that for as long as you like, noting the sensations.

8. When you’ve had enough of that, curl your finger upwards while still keeping it inside your anus, in the direction of your navel (as though you are indicating for someone to come towards you). You will feel a lump. This is your prostate, which when stimulated gives great pleasure.

Once you’ve gotten to this point I’m sure you’ll think of things to do, so I needn’t give any more instructions here. You are well on your way towards fuller, more creative uses of your body which could help undermine existing sexual and gender regimes.

If men learn to be penetrated, and we all take other steps to challenge patriarchy, what will happen? What will we become? I cannot be sure, but it is an uncertain future that we must all embrace anyway. We don’t know whether we will turn out to be successful in making the future better, though it still makes sense to fight against things which we know are harming us now. Trying to shape change is the only approach that could possibly yield a better future; doing nothing means certain death (mine is an essentially Pascalian stance). We must recognize this even as we must be careful to avoid the obsession with control which is fundamental to patriarchy.

When it comes to the sexual dimension of revolutionary praxis, I like to think in terms of the new sexuality. This is a phrase that was used boldly in the first half of the 20th Century by the English occultist Austin Osman Spare. With his enigmatic writing style, I’m not sure I understand precisely what he meant, though maybe that’s the point. The phrase—ambiguous, suggestive and even eldritch—induces my mind to wander, to imagine possibilities that lay just beyond our current reach. Some of these fantasies are utopian, others more “empirically-based” while some are wholly other. But since, as Slavoj Zizek and Jacques Lacan have suggested, it is in our fantasies that our desires are constituted, we might surmise that these fantasies are impetuses to action that can transform our world in unpredictable ways. Why not risk a new dream? Why not undertake the heroic quest of for a new ars erotica?

“Out of the past commeth this new thing.” Austin Osman Spare, The Focus of Life

monja_alferez @ 2009-12-07T12:21:00

2009-12-07T18:21:53Z