On refusing to act

Here we see poor countries pressuring, trying to convince and finally begging the rich ones to cut their carbon emissions in serious numbers. As anyone would expect, the rich countries told them to suck it. The poor ones want rich industrial countries to reduce their carbon output by forty percent in the next ten years. Most of the latter are planning to cut by up to fifteen percent by then. America, of course, lags behind even such a basic measure, debating a seven percent cut. Fuck.

What's the excuse? Why won't they just do it? Money.

"I think to get to minus 40 [percent reduction in carbon emissions] is too heavy a lift," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told Reuters. Such a shift would require "going back to the drawing board" and would economically "come at a huge cost," he said.

Yes, the U.N. is also telling them to fuck off. Looks like the end of the road for all those poor client/host countries, huh? At least they can point the finger when the floods come and come. What satisfaction.

Once again, people have demonstrated that they will commit any act of violence and destruction in the name of money. Essentially, the rich countries tell the rest of the world that the western lifestyles they live are more important than anything, even some too-late attempt to "save" the planet. People up at the top know that they and their businesses are trashing every reach of the world, but they won't do anything meaningful about it, just sell you a canvas bag.

As for the climate change deniers, go for it. Give it your all. I can guarantee it won't make a fuck of a difference what you felt or said when your children live in a state of constant hunger and struggle, their houses long having been swallowed by the oceans.

Property destruction aimed at the state is not violence

I wanted to point that out because so often, in corporate news accounts of events like yesterday's G20 protests in London, the trashing of banks, government offices, multinational corporate locations or other capitalist redoubts is referred to as "violence." It is not. Breaking a window at a bank, spraypainting a police station or smashing up a McDonald's is not violence. Rather, violence emanates from these places.

Banks are the current hotspots of violence. How many people are unemployed, how many people have lost their houses or are on the verge of doing so because of investment bankers gone wild? You know about some of the debacles here, but the economy is global. Nothing that happens in America stays in America. Example:

RBS [The Royal Bank of Scotland] has been the focus of particular anger because it was bailed out by the British government after a series of disastrous deals brought it to the brink of bankruptcy. Still, its former chief executive Fred Goodwin — age 50 — managed to walk off with an annual pension of 703,000 pounds ($1.2 million) even as unemployment in Britain rises from some 2 million.

It has been often reported that the arm of AIG [American International Group] most responsible for their unpleasant financial state is based out of London. Those people are thumbing their noses and waving their pounds at America, refusing to return their bonuses.

When you cannot pay your rent, when your house has been foreclosed upon, when you try to find a job but there are none to be had, that is a direct result of violence.

"Every job I apply for there's already 150 people who have also applied," said protester Nathan Dean, 35, who lost his information technology job three weeks ago. "I have had to sign on to the dole (welfare) for the first time in my life. You end up having to pay your mortgage on your credit card and you fall into debt twice over."

Someone, or rather, a group of people, have done violence to you. How can I say that? Think about it. One of the definitions of violence is "an unjust or unwarranted exertion of force or power, as against rights or laws." Being unwillingly thrown into this economy, the least they can do is guarantee us a right to a job. And we certainly have a right to housing. It's enough that we work for you. The least you can do is give us a place to go at night. But these things are being taken away through deliberate means. They are being taken away because these capitalists are using their power to do so. The people running these institutions don't give a FUCK about those below them or how their actions affect the world. Money money money.

And the police, come on. They are violence incarnate. The only way they have any power is due to their monopoly on legal violence. When a cop tells you to move, you do it. Why? If not, you'll get shoved, hit, pepper sprayed or tasered. Violence. I do not believe that most people obey police out of respect. It's fear. Fear of violence.

Their physical violence, that's only the first step. Then they haul you off to jail, coerce you into paying bail money, extort court fees and fines and forcibly retain you in a prison. That's violence. If someone who were not a representative of the government ran you through a similar process, it would be felony kidnapping.

Property destruction can be violent though, but really only the other way around. When the police come in and trash your house, when they bust up your means to earn a living, that is violence. Most people don't have a way to easily replace those things. When banks that make billions a year and throw their executives seven figure bonuses take your house from you and leave you with nothing, that is violent. They send the police in to make sure you leave.

A window in Starbucks though, fuck. I do not have a way to quantify the financial insignificance of that. That company pulled in $10.4 billion last year. A broken window is far, far less than the equivalent of a penny to me. For fuck's sake, their insurance covers it anyway. And McDonald's? It drips with violence - against the planet, animals, and workers forced to take their shitty fucking jobs for no money out of desperation.

Genoa, Italy: July 21st, 2001

I found a lengthy, profoundly disturbing article the Guardian published a few months back detailing how vicious Italian pigs are. In this case, we are talking about how they behaved at the anti-G8 protests in July of 2001. This is obviously not a case of a few bad apples, as so many would like to believe. This goes from the streets to the prisons to the infirmary up to the high government. It's fucked. These pigs are so out of control and so violent that a bunch of them got brought up on federal charges. Seven years later, fifteen of them got convicted, but as it usually goes, they will not be doing a day in jail.

It's strange to see different arms of the state at war with one another like this. That doesn't really happen in this country. Pigs do what they want and never pay. Maybe they aren't as vicious, at least not on a wholesale basis. I know the police are totally fucked here. I know they kill, torture and maim. It's just that I'm not aware of so many of them being so violent for so long in one place at one time. I mean, for fuck's sake, they shot a protester in the face and killed him, ran him over several times, leaving him to die in the street. I don't think there has been mass police violence like this in America since the late 60s, early 70s, when they were going after Black Panthers and other Black Liberation groups. Maybe MOVE in the 80s. Whatever the case, it's fucked.

The pictures above are from someone's flickr account I found randomly.