No Imperialism, No Racism

Racial and economic justice, and the cessation of violent conflict! Abolition of an offensive economic, military-industrial establishment...

The enemy is not personnel. It is not personal. The enemy is ignorance. The enemy is fear, xenophobia, racism and other prejudice. The enemy is aggression and violence and hate.

Here are three copies of a video I recently made, my intent was to deal with the problem of an 'us v. them' mentality, privilege and oppression, wealth disparity, socio-economic harmfulness, and I suppose, violence in general.

Videos are below the fold.

Carrying Capacity

I was listening to the radio last night. KOWA FM 106.5 on the right hand side of the dial. I just caught a few minutes of the program, someone was talking about consumption and carrying capacity. People in the USA consume resources at an astounding rate - so much so that if everyone in the world consumed at the same rate as people in the US, then there would need to be material resources on the order of what only 4 or 5 more Earth scale planets could provide. According the program, people in the USA use on average about 30 hectares of land to support their annual consumption. Scary to think about. They also said that the USA is no longer the leader in per capita consumption (although the USA still uses much much more than any other nation.) The leaders in per capita consumption are the UAE (United Arab Emirates) and Kuwait. Other nations in the top 10 included Australia, Ireland, New Zealand - and right off the top of my head I can't remember which others. KOWA Radio — Olympia, WA
http://www.kowalp.org/index.php/Main_Page

Socio-economic Inequality

This is from the September 2009 issue of The Progressive Magazine, an article called "Wall Street's Gall, by Les Leopold:

• In 1970, the ratio of the top100 corporate CEOs and the average worker's pay was 40 to 1. By 2007 it was 1,723 to 1.

• In 1970, the top 1 percent received 8 percent of the national income. By 2007, it was gobbling up 23 percent of the national income.

• In 2006, the top one-tenth of 1 percent of tax payers (about 140,000 tax returns) reported as much income as the bottom 50 percent (67.4 million tax returns). The last time we suffered from such an extreme income distribution? 1928-29.

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simply, yet absolutely, astounding - mind boggling

Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming Abuse of Rank

This is a description of a great book I was recently turned onto. It's about rankism. It is a very interesting topic. I have browsed in this book, it's available on google reader, and I have found it very compelling. The author doesn't argue against rank, hierarchy, or the existence of authorities. What he does argue against is what he describes as a culture of abuse that has developed around rank. People abuse their rank to the detriment of others. Essentially, people use their rank to hurt others. It's not right to hurt other people. Pretty simple idea. I think it's possible to have a world where people don't behave in ways that are hurtful/harmful toward each other. - Berd

Somebodies and Nobodies
Overcoming the Abuse of Rank
By Robert W. Fuller
In the on-going attempts to overcome racism and sexism in North America today, we are overlooking another kind of discrimination that is no less damaging and equally unjustifiable. It is a form of injustice that everyone knows, but no one sees: discrimination based on rank. Low rank -- signifying weakness, vulnerability, and the absence of power -- marks you for abuse in much the same way that race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation have long done.

When discrimination is race-based, we call it racism; when it's gender-based, we call it sexism. By analogy, rank-based discrimination might be called "rankism." Somebodies and Nobodies explains our reluctance to confront rankism, and argues that abuse based on power differences is no more justified than abuse based on color or gender differences. It shows where analyses based on identity fall short and, using dozens of examples to illustrate the argument, traces many forms of injustice and unfairness to rankism.

Somebodies and Nobodies unmasks rankism as The Feminine Mystique unmasked sexism. It demythologizes the prevailing social consensus -- the "Somebody Mystique" -- to demonstrate the pervasiveness and corrosiveness of rankism in our personal lives and social institutions. The book introduces new language and concepts that illuminate the subtle, often dysfunctional workings of power in our social interactions. It presents rankism as the last hurdle on the long road from aristocracy to a true meritocracy, brings into focus a dignitarian revolution that is already taking shape, and offers a preview of post-rankist society.

About the Contributor

Robert Fuller taught physics at Columbia University in New York, where he co-authored the classic text Mathematics for Classical and Quantum Physics. He then served as president of Oberlin College and, subsequently, worked internationally as a 'citizen diplomat' to promote democracy in developing nations. He has four children, and lives in Berkeley, California.


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