End:Civ Resist or Die (Full Movie), with Waziyatawin, Lierre Keith, Stephanie McMillan, Qwatsinas, Derrick Jensen and more

"Environmentalism", to me, is the White Man's term to describe something that is part of non-defiled Indigenous traditions called "living". The White Man seeks to defile and destroy everything he possibly can about Indigenous life--including the people. But also the ways of being, the values, the worldview, the practices, and the spirituality and religions. When people tell me "I'm anti-religion" I wonder what religions they are speaking about--well, I don't, actually. I already know: they mean one or two of three religions--the Ibrahimic/Abrahamic ones: Islam, Christianity, Judaism, named here in reverse chronological order. They never, ever mean Indigenous religion, because they don't think of Indigenous people as having a religion. They don't think of Indigenous people, usually.

Environmentalism is what white men have done with Indigenous ways of being, pretending it is the White Man who must save the day, and the Earth. These men ignore not only the on-going work of Indigenous activists globally, but of ecofeminists. Environmentalists are a notoriously sexist/misogynist bunch of men; virtually all bunches of men are sexist and misogynistic. They ought not be listened to, made into heroes, leaders, given awards, proclaimed as the new Messiah, and so on. The White Man must follow, not lead. He has led us into hell and he doesn't know how to get us out.

In case it isn't yet clear, I don't have faith in the White Man's ways of being, his values, worldview, practices, or spirituality and religions. He appropriates and exploits everything he touches. It's like The Midas Touch story except that everything he touches turns to CRAP.

There are very few white men I hold deep respect and regard for. Most of the activists I feature on this blog are neither white nor male, for a reason. I believe both whiteness and manhood, as socially constructed and politically acted out, are poisonous and inhumane. One of the white men I believe is doing good work is Derrick Jensen, and he is one of the key people involved in the production of a new film called End:Civ Resist or Die.

Derrick asks: “If your homeland was invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air, and contaminated the food supply, would you resist?”

The answer is that many people have been resisting all along, but not nearly enough people who are white and male, and those who are activist resisters who are white and male do not usually hold themselves accountable to activists who are women of color.

I am drawn to watch this movie because it is not a movie about the experiences of white men only, as most films are in North America. This means that actual human beings who are not white or are not male are spoken to and with as if they had something important to say. You won't find that happening on CRAPitalist media, unless the women or men of color are saying exactly what the White Man wants them to say.

Please click on the link below to return to the film's web page. All that follows if from there. At some point I may offer a review of the film here. But for now, please watch it.

http://endciv.com/

END:CIV examines our culture’s addiction to systematic violence and environmental exploitation, and probes the resulting epidemic of poisoned landscapes and shell-shocked nations. Based in part on Endgame, the best-selling book by Derrick Jensen, END:CIV asks: “If your homeland was invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air, and contaminated the food supply, would you resist?”

The causes underlying the collapse of civilizations are usually traced to overuse of resources. As we write this, the world is reeling from economic chaos, peak oil, climate change, environmental degradation, and political turmoil. Every day, the headlines re-hash stories of scandal and betrayal of the public trust. We don’t have to make outraged demands for the end of the current global system — it seems to be coming apart already.

But acts of courage, compassion and altruism abound, even in the most damaged places. By documenting the resilience of the people hit hardest by war and repression, and the heroism of those coming forward to confront the crisis head-on, END:CIV illuminates a way out of this all-consuming madness and into a saner future.

Backed by Jensen’s narrative, the film calls on us to act as if we truly love this land. The film trips along at a brisk pace, using music, archival footage, motion graphics, animation, slapstick and satire to deconstruct the global economic system, even as it implodes around us. END:CIV illustrates first-person stories of sacrifice and heroism with intense, emotionally-charged images that match Jensen’s poetic and intuitive approach. Scenes shot in the back country provide interludes of breathtaking natural beauty alongside clearcut evidence of horrific but commonplace destruction.

END:CIV features interviews with Paul Watson, Waziyatawin,  Gord Hill, Michael Becker, Peter Gelderloos, Lierre Keith, James Howard Kunstler, Stephanie McMillan, Qwatsinas, Rod Coronado, John Zerzan and more.

“A fierce critique of systematic violence and industrial civilization, End:Civ is not intended for garden-variety environmentalists. If you are anywhere below, say, an 8 on that sliding scale of pissed off, then this film is going to scare you — which means you should watch it.”
-Eugene Weekly

.”A tour de force film from Franklin López which does more than justice to Derrick Jensen’s thesis that industrial civilization is destroying life on the planet.  Employing all the contemporary audio visual techniques our digital world makes possible for a single brilliant penurious filmmaker, López harvests sounds and images from our demented world to relentlessly show the rape of the mind and the earth.  To those outside the small choir who see the message of resistance as obvious, this powerful film makes them deal with it either by denial or acknowledging, yes I see it is obvious.”
James Becket
-Director of The Best Revenge

“Franklin Lopez is a fantastically talented filmmaker, who has created a powerful and important film about the most important topic ever: how to stop this culture from killing the planet.”
-Derrick Jensen, Author of Endgame

“By far the most routinely praised contemporary media activist is Franklin López. His shows and films not only possess a distinctive look and feel, but they also contain a wicked sense of humor that is often sorely lacking among alter-globalization activists. López’s work engages in constructing a new vision where popular culture serves the interests of the poor and dispossessed, where humor is reignited within activism, and the D.I.Y. ethics of punk and hip-hop allow those with talent and gumption to be the media, once again.”
-Chris Robé, Pop Matters

“Franklin Lopez’ END:CIV is a labour of love, a stunning 75 minutes film…”
John Zerzan, author of Future Primitive

“It brought me to tears…” “I recommend it to people”
-Alex Smith, Host of Radio Ecoshock

“Franklin Lopez’s END:CIV project is awesome.”
-Shannon Walsh, Director of H2Oil

“Both the quantity and the quality of this movement’s filmmaking is increasing. This is the big battlefield on which we fight right now.”
-Michael Rupert, CollapseNet.com

Franklin López will be touring with END:CIV in 2011.

The END:CIV DVD by PM Press can be ordered now. 

If you wish to book a screening in your town or want to order a DVD, simply click on the links below.

Order DVD — Book a community screening — Book a university screening
Upcoming Shows:

END:CIV with Director Franklin López  

Date	City	Venue	Country
Tour: END:CIV TOUR
05/11/11	END:CIV with Director Franklin López in Kingston, ON	AKA Autonomous Social Centre	Canada
Add Add to Google Calendar Download iCal	Time: 7:00pm. Address: 75 Queen St.. With Aric McBay
05/13/11	END:CIV with Director Franklin López in Peterborough, ON	The Cannery Art Centre	Canada
Add Add to Google Calendar Download iCal	Time: 7:00pm. Admission: Sliding Scale: $5-$50 (no one wi. Address: 168 Hunter St. W..
05/14/11	END:CIV with Director Franklin López in Toronto	Detour Bar	Canada
Add Add to Google Calendar Download iCal	Time: 7:00pm. Admission: $5-$1- PWYC – No one turned away. Address: 193 Baldwin St. Buy tickets
05/16/11	END:CIV with Director Franklin López in London, ON	Lifespin	Canada
Add Add to Google Calendar Download iCal	Time: 7:00pm. Admission: 5-10$ suggested donation (nobody. Address: 866 Dundas St.. Opening night of the London Anarchist Film Festival
05/17/11	END:CIV with Director Franklin López in Waterloo	University of Waterloo – EIT room 1015	Canada
Add Add to Google Calendar Download iCal	Time: 7:00pm. Admission: 0-50 PWYC.

END:CIV  

Date	City	Venue	Country
Tour: END:CIV TOUR
05/15/11	END:CIV in Copenhagen	Folkets Hus	Denmark
Add Add to Google Calendar Download iCal	Time: 7:00pm. Address: Stengade, 50. Sponsored by The Climate Collective A discussion will follow. “how do we fight?”
05/21/11	END:CIV in Austin	Austin Zen Center	United States
Add Add to Google Calendar Download iCal	Time: 7:00pm. Admission: FREE. Address: 3014 Washington Sq. Venue phone: 512-452-5777.

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For more tour dates click here

END:CIV by subMedia.TV is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at blip.tv.
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Order END:CIV DVD

Published by Resister on 2010/11/01 in endciv. 18 Comments

SHIPPING NOW
END:CIV DVD’s can be ordered in several ways.

1. US and Canada orders – $19.95 + $5.00 shipping.
2. International orders – $19.95 + $10 shipping
3. Pack of 10 DVD’s – $150
4. Community Screening Kit – $200*
5. For Institutions, libraries and Universities – $200
All prices include shipping world wide.
*The community screening kit includes 10 DVD’s, 10 promotional posters and a press kit.

License Type

US & Canada $24.95 International Orders $29.95 10 Pack $150.00 Institutional $200.00 Screening Kit $200.00

Region 0 DVD-NTSC
Total running time: 75 Minutes
Subtitles: Spanish, English, German, Slovak, Italian and Romanian

The END:CIV DVD is published and distributed by PM Press

"Giant Steps: Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle", Toronto, March 1, 2011

It should go without say, but must go on being said, that women comprise the brains, brawn, and organising abilities to create and maintain social justice, human rights, and liberation struggles all over the world. Yet, men take the credit and are given the credit, time and time again.

Not here.

What's wrong with this image from V magazine (summer 2011, "The Asian Issue")?

How about "everything". 

image of V magazine cover is from here

There use of the female body, turned into something utterly unnatural, to sell magazines is nothing new. The use of white and Asian women, and Black and Brown and Indigenous women, presented in sexist ways to sell magazines is nothing new. What's new for me is seeing a white-Western magazine which promotes itself as "The Asian Issue" wherein a white woman is made to have three heads, one of which is Asian. I suppose I'm supposed to think about dragons, what with the issue being about Asian people and all. Even if the dragon as a symbol is specific to only some ancient and contemporary Asian cultures.

Ableism, ageism, sexism, heterosexism, racism, and classism combine to form this image. Take those elements out, there's nothing left but the grey background.

The cover image alone--without venturing into the interior of the magazine--is enough to make you wonder what ever happened to human rights struggles for dignity and respect. I'm not sure there's much else to say about this image, other than, "shame on V". I don't expect them to get it. I do hope you won't get it--the magazine, that is.

Chellis Glendinning on Empire, Europe, and Global Sustainability

With thanks to Lauren for letting me know about her work. Thanks, Lauren!! And thank you, Chellis, for writing about CRAP and dissociation. I'm only now beginning to familiarise myself with Chellis's work.

Black Swan (2010) starring Natalie Portman, story and screenplay by Andrés Heinz; screenplay also by Mark Heyman and John J. McLaughlin, is one of the most misogynist movies I've ever seen

image of movie poster is from here

Plot summary paragraph added on 8 May 2011. 

There's a lengthy rant before the review. 
If you want to cut to the chase, go down about ten paragraphs. This note was added on 21 Sept. 2012. 
***Added 12 Oct. 2012: Even easier--scroll down to the row of red asterisks!***

This post concerns misogyny, whiteness, darkness, and movie-making. I'm unsure of how it is that misogyny about white women is so revered and celebrated by men as a form of entertainment. I only know that it is, as is misogyny against any woman--it's just that Hollywood knows that if it makes movies about white people, more white people will go see the movie, in theatres or by renting the DVD. In a racist society in which there are white people--a majority population or not--where the economic system is racist too, whites will rule both socially and economically.

In the West, white men will possess more money than any other group and will hoard it using any and all means necessary, including military, legal, and police force. This is the current news story of the U.S. economic crisis--not mentioned this way exactly. Nowhere are rich white men calling for and end to the racism or the classism, coded into  financial and cultural currency, that keeps them rich, and richer, and richer. These white boys just did a calculated sell-off of oil futures. They knew that the U.S. people wouldn't tolerate gas prices above 4 bucks a gallon, and voila, as soon as that became the national average, they make their profits and now will wait to see how much more money they can make in the next quarter of the year. What is it that oil is sometimes called? Ah yes: Black Gold.

It takes a lot of men to make so many movies featuring misogyny. It also takes the support of a lot of women too. Jodie Foster is now promoting her film made with racist-misogynist Mel Gibson. As I understand it, he revealed the latest depths of his racist-misogynist raging and ranting, and abusiveness and terrorism, only after shooting of the film was completed--this is according to Jodie, who appeared on David Letterman's show and only quickly noted that Mel's behavior cannot be excused--but she said nothing else about him and has only publicly defended him as a good person.

She's quite willfully maintained a professional relationship with him long enough to determine that he's a racist misogynist--if you consider what he's said in public and done in private to be racist and misogynistic, that is--without making excuses for him.

To blame Mel's attitudes about and treatment of women across race, and of people of color across gender, and of Jews, as only a consequence of his drinking, which Roger Ebert does EXPLICITLY *here*, is to make it seem like alcohol possesses the ability to determine our attitudes about specific groups of people, which it does not. Shame on Roger Ebert for avoiding the truth of Mel Gibson's life, and to pretend his career and his abuses of women are not intimately linked. See this snippet of his review:

[H]ere is another of Mel Gibson's fine performances, a reminder that he is after all a superb actor. His personal life is in ruins because of the disease of alcoholism, which he is still struggling with. Though he's responsible for his outrageous acts and statements, I think this is not the good man I have met many times. From what I know about alcoholism, I believe he goes through personality changes, that he is content on some days and consumed by rage and madness on others, and that such changes are symptoms of the disease. Make your own diagnosis.

It took some courage on the part of Jodie Foster to direct this film. I believes she knows Gibson's good side and respects his talent. He was certainly the right choice for this material. All of his troubles through recent years are summed up by her opening shot, of an exhausted man floating on a raft in a swimming pool, his arms wide like the crucified Christ. A voice (later revealed to be the Beaver's) informs us this is Walter Black, a man so deep in depression, he has alienated his family and nearly destroyed his business.

We meet his much-suffering wife Meredith (Jodie Foster), his resentful son Porter (Anton Yelchin) and his disbelieving colleagues. Meredith finally throws him out, not without love. He buys a bottle, checks into a motel, tries to kill himself and is interrupted by the hand puppet.

And we get to feel so sorry for another privileged white het male abuser of women and his child, and of many other people too. Got it. Spare me the violins.

I understand Jodie wanting to make money off of her film. I can only hope it is her last professional collaboration with Mel Gibson. I recommend boycotting The Beaver. (And pleeease with the title--and the ridiculous story. It's not funny. It's not cute. The movie sucks. It's yet another "oh, the poor, poor very privileged MAN" movies. There have been entirely too many of those. We need far more murder-suicides where the murder isn't of a woman and the suicide is of a man who takes his own life before, not after, ruining the lives of others.) One last note on "The Beaver". (And we're not talking about *this* Beaver either, although it too celebrates the colonisation and domestication of white women.) How does one decide to name a movie after a misogynist insult to women? Jodie explained, semi-facetiously, that the title might help it sell well on DVD, because there will be het men wanting pornography who will order it. What a great idea for the selling of a serious film! (Not.) She also told us about how almost entirely wonderful her two sons are, how much better it is to have sons than daughters, and how wretchedly insulting to her Jodie's overbearing mother has been, except to her sons as a grandmother. It appears we cannot escape these themes of man-adoring and woman-hating.

I'm not sure who has more social clout: Roger Ebert or Jodie Foster. He reviews movies. She makes them. He's male and heterosexual. She's not. I've witnessed for a long time how if a woman is marginalised in some ways in Hollywood, by appearance, by sexuality, by age, or by race, she is expected to publicly support MEN, by those who pay her, more than it is expected of other women who are less marginalised. Even and especially, it appears, the most misogynistic among the menfolk are expected to be supported. What if we all stopped supporting misogynist and racist men? And stopped featuring them in movies and TV series and other programming (for example: Charlie Sheen). But there is non-gay boy-bonding of course, and it does preclude any man from speaking out against abuses that are primarily perpetrated by men against women.

Another theme in society is that when men are entranced by boys or men, they will betray women and girls utterly. This goes alongside the theme that when men are entranced by girls and women, they will betray women and girls utterly.

I guess it's men being entranced that's the problem. For when in such as state, men routinely conclude they are not in power, they are not in control, even while they take possession of and kill all who they are entranced by. That's a curious bit of logical phallusy, now isn't it? When women have been accused of taking possession of boys--such as in custody conflicts with abusive men, or of men's penises in the night, as in some of the witch trials, that never works out well for the women. If they don't burn her, they tie a stone to her ankle and toss her into the river: if she sinks, she was not a witch; if she floats, she is a witch and must be burned. Clever men: they get to destroy women either way.


***********************************************************

But on with the featured show.

This cinematic psychological thriller is called "Black Swan". The title comes from the ballet. The ballet comes from some of the cultures of Russia and Germany but was written by Pyotr Tchaikovsky and was later modified by his brother Modes. Almost immediately, I waged a bet with myself, not knowing much about the film's creators. I bet myself that the writers and director were all male. I bet that no woman was involved in constructing this story, as it appeared, in every respect, to be nothing other than a tangle of men's misogynist fantasies about pretty pale young females, as men define pretty, pale, young, and female, put on film. Indeed, we are led to believe that Winona Ryder, who plays the "aging" dancer, is so far over the hill that she might as well be dead. Oh, that's practically a spoiler alert. To the extent that she is alive, one has to ask: why is she alive and for whom? Surely not herself.

Here's the main plot: a young, thin, white woman who is pretty according to conventional Hollywood and Madison Avenue standards, is grossly and abusively manipulated in body and mind by a prestigious white het male choreographer of a revival of the ballet, Swan Lake. She hopes he will cast her in the role of Swan Queen which would allow her to perform (dance) as both the White Swan and the Black Swan. She lives with her mother; she is attracted to another woman dancer. And she is battling with various forms of psychosis as she is brought close to a complete mental breakdown well-choreographed by the instructor/choreographer.

The story braids together these themes: white heterosexualised female beauty being overpowering to presumably straight white men; men's need to control, manipulate, and dominate women sadistically, socially, and sexually; people changing from birds to humans; goodness and purity of love represented by whiteness and lightness; evil and seduction by blackness and darkness; and the on-going question men seem to have about women's sanity. The sexist and racist themes are well represented--more symbolically with the racism, more interpersonally with the sexism. (Where HAVE I heard this before??? Oh, I've written about it *here*.)

Added to those are "problems" of lesbianism and how closely it relates, to the filmmakers, to a woman's insanity. Crazy = dark = female. Crazy = dark female. Dark = crazy female. Female = dark and crazy. Remember that. When a woman is darkest, she is at her most insane, according to white het men's myths.

One of the messages of the film as written is that attraction to men is sometimes destructive, but attraction among women is only destructive and all attraction among women amounts to incest in one form or another. You know women: they can't tell one from the other! Mom sees herself in her daughter; daughter sees herself in her female dance competitor. (Sarcasm alert: Thank goodness it isn't men who mistake different women for one another! Ask any consumer of Playboy: he'll be able to tell you what distinguishes about Miss April from Miss August. But it won't be the depth or breadth of the women's humanity, I assure you.) To the extent that such attraction among white thin females is sexualised in the film, it must be presented to het men publicly for their own private enjoyment. Again and again and again. We are allowed--or is it forced?--to gaze upon Portman's breasts, covered only in a very thin white leotard. It, like her own skin, will not keep any man out.

One of many misogynist sub-plots in Black Swan might just as be described thusly: "See how male filmmakers write and direct a story requiring Natalie Portman to fake masturbation and orgasm as often as possible." Her character can try to keep her mother out of her "private" sexual life in the fantasy sequences in the film, using a wood pole, curiously. In the reality scenes, she cannot keep men out, publicly or otherwise: there aren't enough wood poles around when she needs them to beat the predatory man over the head, or to use to stab men in the crotch or the eyes. Men wouldn't write such scenes anyway. Sighted men don't stay aroused by seeing men hit in the crotch or the eyes by a woman. They "feel" such assaults viscerally, in the groin or they eyes not as pleasure. Most men want their erections and their vision too, and use both to penetrate women's bodies which, in men's stories, are everything but private.

All the disgusting invasive assaults against Portman's character--and there are so many I lost count--are meant to evoke pleasurable responses from men, or a kind of revulsion-titillation response, typical of how men view women they lust for and simultaneously hate. This movie is a het male serial rapist and fatherly incest perpetrator's delight. Just check the demographic of who is renting it. I predict it will be (or already is) mostly white het men. Like over 90%.

"Art"--using the term loosely, sometimes, is pornography: the graphic depiction of woman-as-wh*res. Women are depicted and referenced as "wh*res" throughout this film--whether or not they are "frigid" or "hot", they are wh*res and must be sexually available to men when men want them to be. Portman's character has the scratches on her back to prove it. Roger Ebert only alludes to this; he doesn't use the word "misogyny" at all, which I find shocking as I know he is conscious of it both as a term and a social reality. *Here's his review*. But true to form, the female lead only ever wants or admires the man who possesses and destroys her--even while she resists him; she only resents the woman who possesses and seeks to protect her, and also resists her. Portman's character attempts to tear down her mother's image, which fantastically mocks and shames her. But the male lead who tears at her and breaks her down can only be either secretly desired or submitted to. Alas, in misogynist cinema and other stories, is there any difference between the two?

This was one of the more disturbing films I've ever seen--unrelentingly disturbing, in fact. It wasn't just that it was gross--and it was gross--repulsive--a lot. What was repulsive was how the writers and director subjects the audience to scenes that seem only to exist to make the viewer recoil or retch. There seriously ought to be a trigger warning on this movie for anyone with an eating disorder that involves self-starvation or throwing up. It's not a safe movie; not only for that reason.

In addition to Portman's body being scratched, it is also bloodied in many other ways--indeed, menstruation is the only blood-event not mentioned. This was clue number 5000 that it was written by a man or by men. She peels back her own skin, off of her finger; she examines her cracked and bloody toenail; she gazes at lesions by her fingernails; she presses her fingers into abrasions; she sticks things into her flesh; she tears at herself. This is the most perversely self-touching movie of a young woman I've ever seen. But then again, I haven't seen much pornography in the last 25 or more years.

This fictional woman who is spawned from the utterly infertile minds of men (Russian, German, and U.S. American) has a boundary called "skin" that betrays her; or she betrays it. But underneath all the peeling, picking, pinching, poking, and bleeding, if you're paying attention, is a story of how men ruin women's lives. You just have to endure all the very graphic female self-injury along the way. It was like watching a movie of a bird systematically and painfully plucking out its own feathers. Oh, she does some of that too.

This and boy-war movies like Platoon rank up there in "movies I plan never to see again". Watching movies about how men graphically and violently destroy other men and how men pornographically destroy women isn't my idea of a good cinematic time. But men do love their violence and violations, don't they? And it's only when feminists notice this theme that men take umbrage and deny it altogether.

Men can do whatever they want to women--men have demonstrated this enough times for it to be received as an unquestionable statement of truth. Men can and do possess women and girls. Men can and do rape women and girls. Men can and do dictate the terms by which many women live their lives, and thrust, assert, and insinuate themselves into women's and girls' lives in such ways that women's freedom with men is not possible, and the only freedom women have from invasion is to live without men. Men arrange societies so that the only way to accomplish that is by not living at all. Suicide-as-liberation, I'd argue, is not a pro-feminist idea. Liberation by murdering the male invaders, the male abusers, the male violators: that to me is pro-feminist because it removes from men the complete lack of accountability that men currently enjoy and exploit in too many ways to imagine or contemplate. Instead, it seems we all want to think of men as "good" at least some of the time. That men choose to waver dangerously between something called "goodness" to something called "evil" only shows us how easily men project their own moral and sexual struggles onto women, making women the source of all that is good or bad in men--as if men weren't in charge at all.

It is a primary conceit of contemporary corporate pornography--and all mass produced material that is about "pornos" graphically, that because women's sexual power is greater than nuclear, wind, hydraulic, and solar power combined, it must be tamed, controlled, and punished by men. So too must animals. So too must the Earth, sea, and sky. There is nothing that white men, in particular, can keep their grubby hands off of. And there is nothing they touch that is not ruined, made to feel or be utterly without value or worth. It's like The Golden Touch in reverse, a curse from which there appears to be no remedy or relief.

Black Swan (from IMDb):

Directed by

Darren Aronofsky 

Writing credits
Mark Heyman		screenplay
Andres Heinz		screenplay
John J. McLaughlin		screenplay
Andres Heinz		story

Dr. Vandana Shiva: "Understanding the Corporate Takeover"

What's above and below is from Dr. Shiva's website. You may link back by clicking on the title below.

Vandana Shiva: Understanding the Corporate Takeover 

Published on Saturday, April 30, 2011 by GRITtv
 

“The American people should see that corporations have abandoned them long ago,” says scientist, environmentalist, and food justice activist Dr. Vandana Shiva, named one of the seven most influential women in the world by Forbes magazine.

“The people will have to rebuild democracy as a living democracy.”

Dr. Shiva has been fighting corporate takeover in every area in her native India, combating a nuclear plant one week and patented, genetically modified seeds another. She joins Laura in studio to advise American activists how they can fight the merging of corporations and government here at home and around the world.

 

Who Has Moral Capital? A discussion about the good and evil people among us.

image is from here

About the image above:

Good = right, light, white, blond, angelic, and unearthly--of the sky. Evil = left, dark, black, demonic, and animalistic--horned and spiked as well as winged. For those who don't know, "human having horns" is coded visual anti-Semitism. For more on that see *here*.

"Woman" here is both good and evil. "Man" is what?

This image of a woman is designed to appeal to het men raised on anti-human images of women, generally portrayed as variations on a very narrow socially-constructed fantasy, to be large-busted and small-waisted, ensuring that many heterosexually active girls and women will--in reality, not in fantasy--feel inadequate or insecure about men being attracted to them or staying with them if they don't look like the woman above, minus the wings--angelic and demonic.

As for studies measuring evil in U.S. institutions, well, of course "evil" is a bit hard to measure or even define, and while U.S. institutions are quite probably the source of more evil stuff than any other country right now, that's only because they're the ones (currently) on top. But understanding evil, yes, that's the name of the game here. These kinds of studies are fascinating for me because, if they can be found to reveal something universal about human nature, then we can relax a little! Think of how freeing it would be to identify the moral defects that are built into every human being's architecture, and exactly what activates them. Then, instead of wasting energy castigating every person who misuses power for things that everyone in their same position would also likely do, we can get to work focusing on ways to build our own lives so that we can attempt to improve the world around us in ways that avoid the same traps.

If you click on the link embedded in the paragraph above and read the article, please note the color of the men with the word "ASS" written on their foreheads. And note what race they are not. White men, there, are presented as evil enough, but none are humiliated by having the word "ASS" written in their foreheads.

The passage above is part of a larger conversation that takes place underneath a recent blog post here, in which Quin links us to the results of a very interesting study, wherein people, in various contexts, are told they have or don't have various forms of power, and then are measured for how empathic or callous they become--based solely on the power they believe themselves to possess at that moment. I'd say that the study shows us something about human nature--that it is not fixed, that it is context-dependent, and that it is quite possible all of us can be manipulated by social forces to act more humanely or inhumanely towards other people. As a Jew with knowledge of my people's history, I'm quite familiar with racist societies capabilities to manipulate and destroy people, with public acquiescence and passive social approval. I know it because I live in a country, the United States, that denies it is committing genocide against American Indians.

I've raised a few challenges to the study, to its assumptions about "human beings" given that it's never just "human beings" who are studied: it's people who volunteer to be studied who are studied, and that's a particular group of people, often enough: for example, if the study is done at a university, the subjects studied might be traditional college-aged people, are often male more than female, are often white more than of color, are often middle class rather than not middle class.

The media repeatedly, unrelentingly tells us that white = human, male = human, and upper middle class or wealthier = human--also that thinner = human, Christian = human, heterosexual = human, able-bodied = human, and not-a-child and not-elderly = human.

This is to say, if you're not someone who is part of those demographic characteristics above, you're likely experiencing class-based systematic degradation, subordination, and violence, institutionally and interpersonally. If you're all of these: white, upper middle class or wealthier, male, thinner, Christian, heterosexual, able-bodied, and are not a child or elderly, you are not likely experiencing much in the way of class-based dehumanisation and oppression. Your humanity likely matters and is relatively visible to and represented by corporate media, to dominant society generally, and to the U.S. government and corporations.

I've witnessed how people who possess few of the characteristics above are not represented in media and are not valued socially. It's painful to witness. I know what it is to be rendered invisible because of not being Christian or heterosexual, to be told--in too many ways to name here--that my existence and experience is wrong, bad, or dangerous, simply due to not being a white upper middle class heterosexual Christian male.

I know what it is to feel and be invisible as a disabled person with disabilities that aren't readily visible to others. But as a white male with economic privilege I am, for the most part, visible to a large degree to a lot of people. I exist. I matter. Regardless of my own sense of myself, I matter to this country in a way that poor lesbians of color--of any faith, with any level of ability or disability--do not.

That simple while systemic reality--that possessing some characteristics means we will be seen, valued, and represented, is one that many people deny. Many people prefer to think what happens to us happens based on personal history only, or on individual qualities that are unique to us. The study linked to above puts into question this theory widely circulated in corporate media: that some people were and are born less humane and more dangerous than others. That some people are--for the whole of their lives--more brutal or savage or murderous than others. That some men are the kind of men that rape, and other men are not. That some people can be terrorists--from childhood--and others of us cannot be, no matter our age.

It is a feminist belief, in my experience, that men are not born to be rapists, and cannot be. And it is a feminist belief, in my experience, that whiteness is social and political, cultural and learned, not at all biological or natural. And that whiteness cannot be biological or natural, even while levels of pigment in human flesh is often related to matters of heredity and genetics. Pigment doesn't equal race; and having a penis-shaped genital that is medically and socially named as such doesn't make someone into a rapist. Social and political forces have to forcefully work to make people white and into men. And those forces do work, and are both systemic and systematic.

When people argue that some men are born rapists, I ask them if they believe some whites are born racists. The issue then, is: How "determining' is society? What role does it have in developing us individually and as members of various groups or classes of people, with or without entitlements and privileges, and with or without access to and use of certain forms of power exercised interpersonally and institutionally?

Let's return to the opening paragraph. I offer the following responses to the many issues and questions Quin raises.

As for studies measuring evil in U.S. institutions, well, of course "evil" is a bit hard to measure or even define, and while U.S. institutions are quite probably the source of more evil stuff than any other country right now, that's only because they're the ones (currently) on top. But understanding evil, yes, that's the name of the game here.

I think evil is measurable, depending on what you individually or collectively determine to be "evil". For example, lots of Tea Partiers and social conservatives determine "evil" to be something gay men do when they are sexual, or that white heterosexual women are because they are socially and economically subordinate to white het men; to the extent that white men socially recognise and acknowledge women of color, such women are not recognised and acknowledged as being just as human as white men are presumed to be. And various groups of Asian people, living in various regions of Asia or not, are viewed to be "potentially evil" in a way that white North Americans, living in North America, are not. This leads to images designed to sell magazines, like these:

image of magazine cover is from here

image of magazine cover is from here

We can note who Newsweek assumed "we: the audience, the public, the people" are: whites. Because that very pale baby who is "ours" above is not likely to be the child of anyone with dark skin. And the lower image is perplexing in that it makes a link between being a child of someone who is Central Asian and part of a particular political organisation, with being a Black male wearing Western clothing. In so many ways, U.S. media reinforces that light = good (if possibly racist in attitude), while being Black equals being a potential terrorist who will do harm to whites in practice, not in thought. Evil is well-understood, well-defined, and clearly represented in media. You can't miss it. Evil is never stereotyped as looking like a white het man.

The subtitle uses this language: "the mutating extremist threat" as if being a Black terrorist, or just Black and male, is something that is a mutation, a dangerous genetic and social threat. I'd argue that such images give whites the impression that we are "better", morally, than Black people--and that U.S. whites are better, morally, than Central Asians too. And with this attitude, "we" can commit all manner of crimes against Black people--within and beyond North America, and against Central Asian people, and still carry the status of being good and holy, not the stigma of being bad and evil. With this form of social-political moral capital, we can commit mass murder on a scale never seen from Central Asian males or African American males towards U.S. white American males ever.
 
These kinds of studies are fascinating for me because, if they can be found to reveal something universal about human nature, then we can relax a little!

I'd like to question who the "we" is in that statement who can relax? I'd argue that within the West, those who are white het male supremacists are more likely to be able to relax with this news because only those with race, sexual, and gender privileges and entitlements have moral capital. Those without moral capital might agree with the findings of the study, but lived experience will remind the oppressed who is assumed to be dangerous and who really is: whites are dangerous to people of color. Men are dangerous to women. Heterosexuals are dangerous to queer people. How relaxed is an African American lesbian woman going to be among those who oppress her in various ways? How relaxed ought she be?

Whites, men, and heterosexuals actively engage in and passively support terrorising (through interpersonal bullying or institutional discrimination). And they also dehumanise women, people of color, queer folks, and other oppressed groups--regionally, for example, in producing images like those above, and by controlling media that spits out these images faster than the human eye can register. And those groups only will get away with it due to having moral capital.

Think of how freeing it would be to identify the moral defects that are built into every human being's architecture, and exactly what activates them. 

For whom is it freeing to realise this, in reality? Feminists, for example, have argued for forty years that men's behavior is socially constructed, such as through institutional versions of what the study identifies as socially coercive forces. Does knowing that anyone can be a rapist free women to be less afraid when only women--along with children (girls twice as often as boys) are targeted for rape in the general unincarcerated population? I accept that anyone can be coerced to do anything, more or less. But this awareness doesn't stop me from seeing who, in fact, is harming whom, and with what social means and protections--legal and otherwise--they do so.

Then, instead of wasting energy castigating every person who misuses power for things that everyone in their same position would also likely do, we can get to work focusing on ways to build our own lives so that we can attempt to improve the world around us in ways that avoid the same traps. 

For me, this solution doesn't adequately call us to action against institutions which are, when they function as designed, profoundly violent--dehumanising and subordinating--against oppressed people far more routinely and with much more precision than against oppressors. And such institutions, and the people who run and support them, award moral capital only to some demographic groups. And we know who those groups are. I call them out, systematically, here on this blog.


I call us to action against the institutions and privileged, protected people who commit acts of violence against us: the us who are women, who are people of color, who are working poor people, who are lesbian and gay and Two Spirit, who are disabled, who are elderly, and who are deprived the moral and economic capital--the spiritual and material well-being reserved for the few: usually white, usually heterosexual, often men, who rule the rest of us with impunity, and often enough, with our belief in them as morally superior people. 

Michael Moore is tonight telling us that U.S. Americans "are better than them" (al Qaeda) morally, and that to celebrate the murder of Osama bin Laden without a fair trial is to give up on being an [U.S.] American. Tell the mourning citizens of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, who have lost loved ones due to terrorism committed by U.S. and NATO troops, that U.S. Americans are "better" than al Qaeda. Personally, I don't see the evidence of that at all. If we go by body count alone, the U.S. is the most evil empire on Earth.

Piers Morgan asked him if he were leader, what would his priorities be. He quickly responded that he'd end both wars and cut the military "war" budget (something I agree with him about) and use that money to stimulate jobs, to get the U.S. economy going again. The Empire's economy he wants to stimulate is deliberately, not accidentally, designed to be horrendously atrocious to girls and women, Indigenous people, people of color, the Third World, and the Earth. When do Michael Moore's beliefs and actions move from good to evil?

U.S. CRAPitalist Empire's supporters and rulers--who don't and won't call it what I just did--believe it to be so moral and so great that it is incapable of evil, and nothing will guarantee someone or some nation behaves immorally and evilly than believing itself incapable of committing atrocity.

Which is why white het male supremacist Amerikkka is so racist in thought and genocidal in practice, so heterosexist in thought and so anti-lesbian and anti-gay in practice, so misogynist in thought and gynocidal in practice, and so in denial that the U.S. empire and its dominant culture is everything other than "good".