Album Review: “Modern Man” by The Filthy Politicians

Album Review: “Modern Man” by The Filthy Politicians

By Max Wilbert / Deep Green Resistance Great Basin

Most popular music makes me sick. If it isn’t misogyny and objectification of women, it’s blatant materialism. Even music that doesn’t fit into popular oppression is likely to be completely vapid, empty of any soul, culture, or political meaning.

That’s why I’m so pleased with British Columbia-based hip-hop artist The Filthy Politicians. Their latest album, “The Modern Man”, is also their first full-length album, with eleven tracks, and it’s a great album.

The music is characterized by samples from popular songs, elegant mixing, and humble, intensely political lyrics that just about anyone can relate to. Dan Peters, the vocalist and producer, largely avoids the contrived feeling that some political music conveys; instead, his lyrics come across as personal. Most hip-hop fans will enjoy just about every track on the album.

The album starts off with a strong beat in “On The Level”, where Peters raps:

Everything about now is fucked and I’m tired of tip-toeing around it.

Other strong tracks include the title track, “Modern Man”, which critiques the modern lifestyle, “6am”, which looks at the alcohol-fueled lifestyle of the average 20-something, and “200 Species Every Day”, which follows a hypothetical duo of underground saboteurs dedicated to shutting down industrial civilization.

Yes, that’s really what the song is about. And it’s great.

The Filthy Politicians don’t have a website or bio online, but I did find this:

In a world held captive by empty plastic promises, Dan Peters of the filthy politicians is trying to figure out how it’s all come to this and what we might do about it.  Beyond the shallow, token analysis and solutions offered up by the ones that continue to benefit from the destruction of our Mother Earth, the filthy politicians set out to take a deep look at an extreme situation and urge those with more human than machine left inside to respond accordingly- at the risk of being labeled extreme ourselves.  Equal parts urgency, analysis, vitriol, and encouragement, the effort is completely DIY with all tracks composed, recorded, and produced in the woods on a small farm on a small island.  the filthy politicians just released his first full length album ‘Modern Man’ on February 14, 2014.  If you love life then check it.

Learn more about The Filthy Politicians and check out their music here:
Bandcamp: http://thefilthypoliticians.bandcamp.com/ (free download of “Modern Man”)
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcj4UIyXiGZrXj7naWxp5lw (includes some old music videos)
SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/thefilthypoliticians (every song they’ve ever made)

Time is Short: War of the Flea: A Review

Time is Short: War of the Flea: A Review

As radicals, we believe that another world—a world without patriarchy, white supremacism, capitalism, colonialism, or ecocide—is possible. But in the face of the reality in which we live our day to day lives, it can become difficult to remember not only the possibility of successful resistance to power, but also its rich and proud history, of which we are a part. This is all the more true when we recognize that a potent resistance movement will have to include militant, underground resistance. Being aware of our place within that legacy and re-telling the stories of past movements serves to fan the flames of our own will to resist, and are crucial pieces in building a culture of resistance.

But beyond simply reminding us of the potential for struggle against brutality, turning a sharp and studious eye towards that history can lend us invaluable strategic insights as well. Through a thorough examination of past movements, we can learn to recognize pitfalls and traps to be avoided, as well as strategies and tactics that can be applied to our own situation.

War of the Flea, written by Robert Taber is one such examination. Originally published in 1965, the book takes a detailed and critical look at the conditions and strategy of guerrilla war. Rather than focusing on the particulars of one specific conflict, Taber draws his conclusions from an analysis of the patterns that repeat across a variety of such struggles: Cuba, Greece, Cyprus, Israel & Palestine, Malaysia, both of the Vietnamese wars for independence, the Irish struggle for independence, and more. A closely interwoven narrative of specific real-world examples and abstract theory & strategy, War of the Flea presents an easily accessible yet very informative mapping of guerrilla anti-colonial and liberation wars.

Taber’s insights hold great value for resisters today, with much we can learn from past movements and their strategies, successes and failures. He outlines the guerrilla struggle as being primarily a political engagement, rather than one of military force. The goal of the guerrilla or insurgent group is not to militarily defeat those in power, but to create a ‘climate of collapse’ in which it becomes impossible to maintain the status quo, and that house of cards comes tumbling down around former rulers.

The resonance of this with the strategy of attacking infrastructure to aid in the collapse of civilization should be obvious. And that similarity between the core strategy behind the asymmetric guerrilla conflicts Taber studies and a resistance movement to bring down civilization extends further to the general strategy.

Perhaps the ultimate achievement of War of the Flea is the detailed grounding it brings to the strategy behind these struggles. As Taber notes, protracted popular warfare consistently follows a three-stage strategy. In the first stage—the strategic defensive—the guerrilla force focuses on building capacity while avoiding any sort of serious confrontation with the overwhelming force of the opponent. Then the struggle moves into a phase of strategic stalemate, wherein neither side has the force or resources necessary for a decisive victory. Finally, as the guerrilla group builds the necessary strength—and the opponent group suffers a slow eroding of its power base (thanks to the ‘climate of collapse’), the conflict moves in the strategic offensive stage, where the guerrilla force takes the initiative and brings down the government or opponent group.

That this can be applied to our own situation should be readily apparent, even if it is a more figurative than literal equivalent. The core of Taber’s analysis of a staged strategy, focusing first on survival and asymmetric action and scaling up to more coordinated and decisive action as resisters take the initiative, can and should be applied to our own radical movements today. While out-and-out armed battles of any sort are both unlikely and unwise, the principles that have made the ‘war of the flea’ successful over and over around the world hold much promise for us, if we’re ready to learn from them and develop our own strategy for waging—and winning—a decisive ecological war.

That said, the book is not without its shortcomings, the most obvious being that it was written almost fifty years ago, and much has changed since Taber’s time, and the time of the movements and struggles he cites. Those in power have found new ways to both divert or channel dissent back into supporting the status quo, and to disrupt or neutralize those who stand against them. While this is by no means Taber’s own fault, it should be taken into consideration when putting his work in context.

The more important limitation of applying Taber’s analysis to our own times stems from the fact that our struggles, for all they share in common with those Taber surveys, may have a fundamental difference.

A movement to dismantle civilization is unlikely to be waged as a guerrilla operation. Protracted popular war requires popular support—something a movement to dismantle civilization will likely never have, at least in the Global North. Without the sustained loyalty and material support of the general population, the guerrilla model of struggle will never be a realistic option.  Additionally, while the guerrillas in all the conflicts Taber cites fought for greater self-determination, they were not fighting against the basis of their own society and subsistence, as a resistance movement against civilization within the privileged world would be.

Yet while War of the Flea may not be a straightforward blueprint for a resistance movement against civilization, there are still critical points we can take away from it.

Perhaps the most apparent of these is that our movement—a movement to dismantle civilization—will likely never be a guerrilla military struggle, so we shouldn’t act like it is one. There’s a tendency within radical circles to glorify or romanticize guerrilla conflicts (and militant resistance in general). Combined with the machismo that continues to characterize the culture of the Left, we’re left with much romantic masculine posturing about pitched battles with the police and those in power, which both destroys the movement and distracts us from more productive work.

One of the most valuable parts of the book comes as Taber posits several criteria necessary for successful insurgency; general pre-requisites to be met before people will take up arms. These include political, social and economic instability; a compelling moral and ideological political objective (or “cause”); the proven impossibility of acceptable compromise with the opponent; and finally, established revolutionary political organization(s) capable of providing leadership towards the accepted goal. While Taber draws these points from his study of guerrilla resistance movements, these “ingredients” stand on their own as shaping conditions for effective struggle through other means as well, and can doubtlessly be applied to our own situation.

Of additional note is the breadth of struggles cited and overviewed in the book. If nothing, this alone makes War of the Flea worth reading. Taber’s analysis goes well beyond the romantic and rhetorical, examining the strategies, successes and failures of an impressive variety of 20th Century insurgencies; from the IRA in Ireland to EOKA in Cyprus, the Viet Cong in Vietnam to the Communists in Greece, from Mao Tse-tung to Che Guevara. It is, without a doubt, a serious study of armed resistance movements and their dynamics.

While no study of past movements will do the work of the present, work such as War of the Flea provide us with important insights, allowing us to learn from the mistakes of those who’ve come before us, and lend us the strategic knowledge that is crucial to success. They also remind us of our place within a long and proud history of people who’ve fought against the odds and the numbers—and won. If we are to have any hope of dismantling civilization, we’ll need to learn everything we can from them.

Time is Short: Reports, Reflections & Analysis on Underground Resistance is a biweekly bulletin dedicated to promoting and normalizing underground resistance, as well as dissecting and studying its forms and implementation, including essays and articles about underground resistance, surveys of current and historical resistance movements, militant theory and praxis, strategic analysis, and more. We welcome you to contact us with comments, questions, or other ideas at undergroundpromotion@deepgreenresistance.org

Film Review: The Wind That Shakes the Barley

Film Review: The Wind That Shakes the Barley

By Ben Barker / Deep Green Resistance

Based in 1920’s British-occupied Ireland, this film is the absolute best I’ve seen in terms of what a serious, militant resistance movement might look like.

It follows a chapter of the IRA (Irish Republican Army) as they recruit, build, and train an armed resistance movement to force the British–who had murdered and humiliated them for generations–from their homeland.

 But, they didn’t stop with the British. A large faction of the Irish people signed a treaty with the crown to create a new “Irish Free State”, which meant their independence was meaningful only to the extent of the whims of the British. To fight for real justice and freedom for all people–not just the ruling class–the resistance movement had to battle amongst fellow Irish.

All people interested in a living planet–and the resistance movement it will take to make that a reality–should watch this film. The courage found within every one forming their amazing culture of resistance–militant and non; including those who set up alternative courts, sang traditional songs and speak the traditional Gaelic language, open their homes for members of the resistance–is more than i have ever experienced, yet exactly what is needed in our current crisis. Those who fought back endured torture, murder, and the destruction of their communities. Yet, they still fought because they were guided by love and by what is right.

It’s time we fight back. Watch this film and discuss it with those you love, with your comrades. The next question becomes: How?

From Kid Cutbank: http://kidcutbank.blogspot.com/2011/12/recommended-film-wind-that-shakes.html

Book Review: Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization

Book Review: Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization

By Max Wilbert / Deep Green Resistance

Lester Brown’s exhaustively researched book, Plan B 4.0 – Mobilizing to Save Civilization, is a bold and impressive effort to chart a course to ecological sustainability, one of very few books that attempts this worthwhile goal. Brown lists 4 steps that Plan B 4.0 focuses on to achieve sustainability:

  1. Stabilize climate by cutting emissions by at least 80% by 2020
  2. Stabilize population at 8 billion or lower
  3. Eradicate poverty
  4. Restore natural earth systems (soil, aquifers, forests, grasslands, oceans)

These are excellent goals to begin with, and show that Brown is extremely serious about his mission, and is truly concerned about justice and the welfare of the human population. They also show that he understands one of the fundamental obstacles to true change – the interlocking relationship between environmental destruction and human exploitation. For example, Brown calls for debt relief for poor nations – an admirable position against the interests of international financiers and for the interests of poor and exploited people. Few analysts truly understand this relationship at both a theoretical and real-world level, and Brown moves beyond the average call for sustainability by acknowledging the seriousness of this issue.

Plan B lays out a compelling and comprehensive vision of the converging crises that are threatening life on earth – from oceanic collapse and peak oil to soil erosion and food instability. Brown understands that the collapse of global civilization is likely if business-as-usual continues. The undermining of the biological life-support systems of the earth has left life as we know it teetering on the brink. For many species and communities around the world, it is already too late.

The fundamental basis of Brown’s approach is that it is a social change approach. Brown understands that social problems require social solutions. While personal lifestyle changes (to transport, diet, and other consumption) are an important and moral way to address these problems, they are not sufficient to solve ecological and social injustice by themselves. This is an important step – a foundation for serious political work. From here, we can analyze each of the goals of Plan B 4.0 for strategic soundness, moral rigor, and good scholarship.

Step 1: Stabilize Climate

Brown’s approach to solving the climate problem relies on several strategies. First, he advocates massive adoption of alternative energy. Second, he calls for replanting of billions of trees to sequester carbon and rehabilitate habitat. Third, he describes an efficiency revolution centering on recycling, reusing, and refining urban planning and architecture and material flows throughout global society.

The focus on replanting of forests and restoring habitat around the world is extremely important and is an admirable goal, as is the elimination of coal and gasoline as energy sources. However, the fundamental failure of Brown’s approach to solving climate change is the insistence on maintaining an industrial way of life. Efficiency in cooking, housing, and production is doubtlessly important, but too many of Brown’s solutions call for centralized industrial production instead of local self-sufficiency – the maintenance of privileged lifestyles.

In short, while Brown’s plan is truly radical, he does not go far enough. In advocating massive production of solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars and trains, a “smart grid,” and other industrial technologies, Plan B 4.0 does not question the fundamental system of resource extraction and industrial production. It does not question global capitalism, which will continue to get rich by feeding on human and non-human communities.

The industrial products sold within the capitalist economy are created through a complex global system of mining, refining, production, distribution, and trashing/recycling. In each stage of this process, natural communities of humans and non-humans are exploited, poisoned, and destroyed for the sake of luxury goods like cars and electricity.

Electric cars and alternative energy do not address this fundamental destruction that is required for industrial technology to exist. Wind turbines, to use one example, still require mining for bauxite, the ore refined into aluminum. In central India (and other regions around the world) mountains containing bauxite are blown up and strip-mined to extract bauxite. About six tons of bauxite and a thousand tons of water a required to produce one ton of aluminum. There is no sustainable way to do this – most rich countries have exported this process to poor nations. The pollution is hidden.

This process not only destroys or displaces the non-human life on these mountains, but leads to runoff, pollution, and extirpation of indigenous communities. Smelting bauxite requires extremely high temperatures – usually provided by big dams – and leads to vast amounts of carbon emissions and other air pollution. And the entire system of distribution depends on vast ocean-going ships that burn bunker fuel, one of the dirtiest fossil fuels. It is estimated that one container ship releases as much carbon dioxide as 50 million cars.

Another example: the Toyota Prius, widely praised by environmentalists (including Brown), requires 5 times as much energy to produce as an average car due to the complex process of creating electric motors, circuitry, and batteries. Accounting for production energy and transportation fuel and average over the lifetime of the car, a Prius actually uses 1.4x as much energy per mile as the average American car.

Solar panels provide another example. The average solar cell requires the mining of about 2,000lbs of earth material for Silicon. The production process is extremely dangerous – in China, workers at a solar panel factory went on strike in 2011 because of the pollution released by the plant had toxified a lake nearby that was causing respiratory problems and cancers in the community.

This is just touching the surface of the devastation that is wrought by these “environmentally friendly” technologies. These technologies also require rare earth minerals like cadmium and tellurium, which simply do not exist in sufficient quantities to allow mass adoption of alternative energy.

This reliance on technological solutions is one the major failings of Plan B 4.0. Brown has bought into the hype surrounding these alternative technologies, when in reality they only represent more of the same – more resources extracted from poor nations, more money flowing to corporations and rich nations, more pollution, more destroyed communities. While the standards of research and scholarship in Plan B 4.0 are generally very high, Brown does not apply the same rigorous research methods to the technological solutions he advocates.

A better model for halting global warming would revolve around the creation of land-based communities that are able to take their sustenance from within healthy, flourishing ecosystems that they coexist with. This model is the way of life practiced by humans for 99% of our existence, so it is clearly not impossible, but it would require addressing the serious issue of population, to which Brown turns next.

Step 2: Stabilize Population

In addressing overpopulation Brown is facing an issue before which many have balked, with good reason. There is a history of racism, eugenics, and forced sterilization that makes population reduction a touchy issue to deal with directly.  But Plan B 4.0 takes the right tact. Brown’s plan calls for massive programs of education and empowerment of women, combined with government incentives for small families, widespread family planning programs, and universal birth control availability. This humane and effective model has been used around the world in places like Iran with great success.

While this approach is laudable, Plan B 4.0 could use a slightly more radical feminist analysis. While Brown does call for the education of women, he does not explicitly state that empowered women rarely chose to have large numbers of children. High birth rates usually occur in patriarchal arrangements where women have few rights and little power of their own. Acknowledging this fact and working to dismantle patriarchal social forms will be a much more difficult task than the more straightforward path that Brown presents, but will lead to more lasting and fundamental change in birth rates and the overall direction of society.

Step 3: Eradicate Poverty

By acknowledging the fundamental connections between global poverty and environmental degradation, Brown goes further towards truth than many of his contemporaries. He advocates for debt relief for poor nations, which would go a long way towards relieving the pressures on “developing” nations. He calls for an increase in small gardens and other simple techniques that reduce burdens on poor people around the world, planting forests and allowing degraded lands to fallow.

However, without access to land, poor people have no chance for survival. The critique of contemporary land grabs is an important part of Plan B 4.0. Here Brown details how food importers, nations that cannot grow enough food to support their population, are purchasing and leasing arable land in poor nations to grow food for export. Many times these poor nations cannot even feed their own population, so these vast foreign-held farms must employ armed guards to ensure that the food is not taken back.

Brown understands that agriculture, logging, and overgrazing are devastating much of the land around the world through salinization, soil erosion, and desertification, and that this process is destabilizing populations and leading to poverty and social breakdown.

However, Brown is lacking a fundamental critique of industrial agriculture as a practice. He advocates the use of pesticides and fertilizers, which are overwhelmingly toxic and derived from fossil fuels. He advocates for increased efficiency in irrigation, while acknowledging the fact that 70% of the fresh water used worldwide is used for irrigation. And he advocates for the use of genetically modified and high-yield varieties, which is a gamble with the genetic code. This is also leading to a narrow range of varieties, which are more vulnerable to future disease of plague. The result has been an arms-race between GMO and pesticide companies and the constantly evolving creatures that feed on monocropped fields.

Even more fundamentally, Brown does not appreciate the fact that annual monocrop agriculture is the practice that has enabled rampant overpopulation. Population tracks food supply, and it has been well documented is recent years that many creatures (including humans) regulate their own population based on the food available. When humans began farming the land and stopped getting their food from within biodiverse, perennial ecosystems, they stopped paying attention to these natural limits. They were not sharing their food anymore.

This lack of sharing is also the foundation of modern ecological devastation. After all, agriculture is the practice of clearing natural ecosystems and replanting them for human use. The forests and grasslands that have fallen before the plow are the primary location for species loss worldwide. Ninety-eight percent of old-growth forests and 99% of native grasslands are gone. Human population has grown in direct proportion to the decline in non-human populations worldwide, because they have been consumed by civilization, by agriculture.

Brown’s failure here is the same as above – he has no fundamental critique of capitalism (the dominant economic system) and civilization (the dominant form of social organization – a way of life based on annual monocrops and life in cities). These systems are a major reason why people are poor.

By extracting resources in destructive ways and exploiting workers for less than the full value of their labor, capitalism impoverishes people around the world. A large class of poor people is required for the functioning of the global economy – it is structurally mandated. And civilization is a social form that inevitably leads to overshoot of natural limits, colonial expansion, wars of conquest, further environmental damage, and finally collapse (for a further explanation of these ideas, see Sources). Any efforts to address poverty will have to first deal with the stifling influence of capitalism and civilization.

Step 4: Restoring Earth

The final goal of Plan B 4.0 is to restore natural ecosystems around the world – oceans, grasslands, soils, and forests. In order to protect biodiversity and the range or natural services provided by these ecosystems, Brown advocates massive replanting of forests (as previously mentioned), soil conservation measures, and the creation of protected marine zones in the ocean, as well as a program of parks and other measures to protect biodiversity.

Replanting forests is an important way to restore the life-support systems of the planet, and Brown is the right advocate for it. However, he also advocates for an increase in plantation style forests to be grown for timber and pulp products. While the US Forest Service is a division of the Department of Agriculture, forests are not fields, and few soils can sustain more than three consecutive harvests of timber before soils are too depleted to continue. An imposition of human standards upon a natural system decreases the health of the system, and as such, plantations are not a long-term solution.

Restoring soils is perhaps the most critical task in this section. Terrestrial life as we know it is only possible because of a thin layer of topsoil – without it, plants cannot grow. Brown’s tactic of allowing steeper slopes and other marginal farmland to fallow and return to forest is a good one, but he still lacks a full critique of agriculture as a practice. Annual monocropped fields lead to erosion and loss of soil fertility – this type of agriculture kills the soil. This is true around the world, except in small river valley regions where alluvial soils are constantly replenished.

However, these natural wetlands are also biodiversity hotspots, which means the one place where agriculture can be practiced somewhat sustainably is also the place where it will lead to the biggest loss of habitat for other creatures. Brown’s plan for protecting biodiversity is not elaborate – there are almost no details in the book. But any course of action that does not challenge the human appropriation, destruction, and toxification of land, water, and atmosphere will not lead to substantial progress in the conservation of biodiversity.

Conclusion

Plan B 4.0 is a unflinching attempt to chart a course for sanity, but Lester Brown and his researchers fail to apply the same rigor to human society and proposed solutions that they apply to environmental problems. Brown states that in 1950 the world economy was based on “sustainable yield, the interest of natural systems.” This is simply not true. Europe was deforested before industrialization. So was the Middle East. The forests and soils of North Africa fueled the Roman war machine until they were exhausted, and now support only goats and olives – ecological poverty food that can survive on desiccated, impoverished soils. The forests of the United States were felled largely before the mechanical saw. While industrialism greatly accelerated in the 1950’s, the problem goes much deeper than that.

Brown’s approach, along with the approach of many other environmentalists, is fundamentally anthropocentric and short sighted. He does not account for the experience of prehistory, that span of 99.7% of human existence when the natural world flourished alongside us. He does not even mention indigenous people, the only communities that have truly lived in a sustainable manner. Any understanding of environmental sustainability must advance from the basic position that humans have the ability to coexist with the natural world. These model societies exist, but they are being destroyed by the very industrialism that Brown supports with his calls for alternative technology (for example, the Dongriah Kondh of the central Indian foothills).

Instead of exploring how human societies may better conform themselves to the needs of the land, Brown falls into the trap of reform – how can we adapt nature to better fit our needs? How can we maintain the energy grid, industrial production, a high population, and the conveniences of globalized capitalist civilization while simultaneously addressing environmental problems? The fundamental answer to this question is that such a solution is not possible. In failing to see this point, Plan B 4.0 stumbles and falls along with the vast majority of the environmental movement.

Film Review: Sophie Scholl: The Final Days

By Ben Barker / Deep Green Resistance Wisconsin

Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans, and the anti-Nazi resistance group the White Rose Society, is an example we all should look to in resisting the unjust and murderous culture in power. After watching the film based on their story, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, my heart is broken at their sacrifice and inspired by their courage to act.

Executed by Hitler’s regime for their effectiveness, the White Rose Society wrote and distributed pamphlets denouncing the Nazis, their wars and atrocities. Their organization operated secretly underground, working late at night in a private office space with printing equipment.

The Scholl siblings understood the risks they were taking by acting against the Nazis, and this was shown through every step of their interrogation and trial. Upon confessing their involvement in the resistance group and position against the Nazis, they held firm to their sentiments and were proud of them.

Courage is a great in concept, yet often difficult to have in life-threatening matters, but Sophie Scholl and members of her group show that doing what is right is more important than any one of our lives alone. This may be the most important lesson that can be learned from their story and words.

Hans and Sophie Scholl were quite young, seeking to encourage similar resistance amongst their peers. By their age, it could be guessed that they were extremely passionate and willing to fight, but the virtue of discipline may not be assumed. Their seriousness and discipline is clear from their story, and embodied in quotes like this (from Hanz): “Keep a strong spirit and a tender heart.”

After all they had done to support resistance to Hitler and the Nazis, the Scholl siblings were hung. Their spirit of resistance must not be in vain. We must speak out and act now, even if it seems no one else is doing the same. As Sophie said in what were some of her last words: “Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare express themselves as we did.”

Original pamphlets by the White Rose Society can be found and read here.

From Kid Cutbank: http://kidcutbank.blogspot.com/2012/03/recommended-film-sophie-scholl-final.html