110th blog post on Ferguson

Surely I have something original to add on racial injustice in America, I mean, not everything has been said? Right? Ad Nauseum, around and over, through and through? Hey, I was around for the race riots of the sixties, not that they were the first by any means. And I remember Rodney King. So having established my credentials, I just want to make one more point tying the Black Panthers and Bill Cosby and Barack Obama and The Scottsboro Boys together and that is: Race is a construct that serves power. Preserves the status quo. And makes for fascinating Spectacle. Hope folks of color start asking why. Sooner rather than later.

It's About Keystone, Stupid

This pipeline issue is the perfect symbol for everything that is wrong with capitalist democracy. See the two Parties scrambling to see which can take credit for setting off a carbon bomb which is "game over" for the planet. See the "working class" crawling over themselves to get one of the precious jobs which will kill their children. See the South Dakota Sioux Nation vowing to close their borders to prevent the Pipe, saying they are not at war with the government, but with the Project (which of course are one and the same) And of course the Canadians are being forced to look in the mirror and see they are not so different from Americans, a harsh reality check. Because it's not just what they pump tomorrow, it's the signal it sends to investors who are looking at a fifty year horizon on returns. It's also the signal it sends to Bill McKibben and all those marchers in D.C. and all those kids trying to get their universities to divest. The perfect symbol of impunity.

Down Down Down

A barrel of oil is now below 75 dollars, the lowest since 2010 in the heart of the recession. NPR interviewed working poor people, asking if the price drop helped their budget, which of course it does. One guy said yeah, he drives a Suburban and this saves him 10$ on a tank of gas! There are so many things wrong with this, one doesn't know quite where to begin. One place would be NPR which reports this as a "feel good" story because precarious people can now drive their old vehicles more and fails to provide any context, perspective, analysis from the climate point of view. They could send a reporter out to figure out why low prices incentivize eco-cide. But that ain't gonna happen. The feeding frenzy is already on in the Oil Field Services industry where Halliburton is using the falling profits to snatch up smaller firms. When Montana oil workers get laid off and have to go back to work at Mc Donalds and get their trucks repossessed there will be some real issues up here. But that is just "creative destruction", as we all know, and they are surplus. Other parts of the economy will take up the slack. There are forecasts of increased Holiday spending, more manufacturing, more travel etc...Big Coal may be in a bit of a pickle, with the Chinese demand falling but the rate of emmisions continues to rise.

Death of a Radical

When I first met Amanda Curtis she was wearing the Red and Black of the Industrial Workers of the World and singing the old songs, you know, Solidarity Forever. The "black" is the black "sabotage" cat of anarcho-syndicalism though Amanda never struck me as someone who read a lot of Bakunin or thought much about political-economy. She just wanted the workers to enjoy the fruits of their labor and honor the old struggles of Butte lore. Membership statewide was only about forty people with the majority in our Missoula branch but we would gather in Butte occasionally and go visit Frank Little's grave. Then Amanda went into "politics", and here I use scare quotes because the political sphere is just a hollowed out Kubuki theatre intended to provide the illusion of democratic rule. She won a seat in the State House and got to listen to knucklehead ideologues rant about wolves and property rights and Big Government day in and day out. Then she was picked by The Party to run for the US Senate! (long story,Baucus, Walsh,plagiarism,chaos)Unknown radical teacher gets a chance to make a name for herself! So all the Democratic operatives and handlers and consultants tell her exactly what she has to say (and not say)so she can raise money and appeal to The Center. Basically, here in Montana, you have to talk out of both sides of your mouth, be for the environment and for the Keystone XL and above all else, for "Jobs". Jobs are the Holy Grail. Of course she gets her ass kicked, along with the rest of The Party, And she gets to go back to her little life knowing she had the spotlight and never once mentioned the profit system, that she bowed and scraped before her Corporate Masters and played the game exactly as she was required to play it,denying her beliefs and distancing herself from her old comrades. Well done Amanda, there may yet be a place for you in the oligarchy if you play your cards right.

OK I'm The Oil Blog

Down, down ,down the price goes, 76 a barrel this morning. Sorry if this is a distraction from the Election News, (All my astute readers know that election news is a distraction from Real Events, with apologies to Jaques Lacan) but here in Montana oil prices are a big deal. So what is happening? OK, well you've got your Saudis, you've got your Iranians, Russians and Venezuelans, bunch of little countries in Africa changing hands almost daily. Right? With me so far? and you've got the US of A. Oh yeah, and fracking. yep, and Cartels, which are a weird part of the Free market. Of course if we wanted to go deep we would have to talk about Kurdistan and Iraq and the Ukraine and Nigeria but I'm trying to keep this a broad overview with a climate change/war on terror over-lay. And not lose anymore readers. Yo, readers, hello? So where were we? Basically we have dictators and armies and giant trans-national corporations and a global economic system totally dependent on the sticky goo and if the price goes up, guys out in the Montana oil patch buy new trucks and drive around a lot and if the price goes down everybody else buys new trucks and drive around a lot. And there you have it.