Tag Archives: capitalism

Bearing Witness

“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.” – Carl Sagan

We are all witnesses to the Great Dying, a sixth mass extinction, the last one being 65 million years ago which wiped out the dinosaurs. This is not hyperbole; it is a defining feature of our age.

Countless species are falling prey to the wealthy’s indifference, militarism and folly everyday. As in ancient civilizations, the wealthy and the privileged are generally the last to feel the pain of collapse, yet are most often the root cause. And compared to the mass of humanity we share this planet with, and as a result of rapacious exploitation and plunder, Americans, and westerners in general, are the wealthy and the privileged of modern civilization.

Despite overwhelming evidence of crashing ecosystems, many of us living in the twilight years of the American empire seem oblivious to the canaries in the coal mine. Every human being who has ever lived, lived here, on this little, saltwater drenched rock suspended in the endless, cold ocean of space. Yet so often one can feel as if they were alone, wandering among zombies and phantoms, unaware of or uninterested in grappling with what lies ahead of us. The magicians and merchants of corporate consumerism foster this disconnection gleefully, and create a labyrinth of distractions and doubts that add to the self-delusion.

Insipid optimism is the demand of our corporate kingdom. Eternal youth, popularity, and economic fortune, are to be believed not only possible, but necessary for fulfillment and social connection. This is not an optimism that enjoins the soul to more wondrous places, or that stirs a connection to the nature we are all born of. This is the kind of optimism that unhinges you from reality; and that chaffs the skin of your soul. It is like a chisel set against your skull. It is the kind of optimism that condescendingly tells us that “everything is going to be okay.” Even if this were somehow true, everything is NOT okay for millions of people and countless species around the planet right now. And not acknowledging that underscores the inherent callousness in this way of thinking. It masquerades as hope; but it is merely cruelty obscured by a deceptive, mocking jingle.

In our society we are temporarily appeased by objects created for one use. In fact many wars of our age are fought for just this purpose. The plastic items that are choking our oceans were born in the darkness of oil wells and tar sands, drilled and scraped clean for the ease of a fleeting moment, and tossed away to become forgotten, yet enduring pollution. The shaming evidence is scuttled away in the darkness of the early morning, so that our day, our very important day, is not inconvenienced by the unending moan of the nature we crush under busy, productive feet.

Plastic debris that has washed up along the shore of the Azores. Photo courtesy of 5 Gyres.

The petro-dollar has made our penchant for convenience and self-delusion incredibly efficient. It has spawned the neoliberal economics that repress hundreds of millions of people and that is now driving us all toward extinction. And we have been conditioned to see this all as merely “the way of progress,” and to malign and ridicule those whose hearts see such sights and mourn the enormous weight of history, the staggering lack of empathy and the gaping dearth of a viable future for a species callously divorced from its soul.

We have been meticulously trained to separate life itself into worthiness categories, in fact, to be seen only as useful if it serves our copious desire for more. We house millions of sentient beings in concentration camps, bereft of comfort or even the ability to turn around, often brutally beaten and mutilated, stripped of the dignity any creature has a birthright to, all to sate our unending appetite for flesh.

We avert our eyes to the plastic bags clinging to the branches of decrepit trees, or the bottle caps that outnumber seashells on the shore, or the birthday balloons floating atop the waves at the beach, even while knowing their destination will in all likelihood be the stomach of some hapless sea turtle. After all, paying attention might cause us to question. It might cause us to change. It might reignite the sacred reverence our ancestors knew. It might cause us to face the demons of our cupidity and the resulting devastation and suffering they cause.

(photo: Chris Jordan)

We can remain in denial about the ecocide we are all witness to, as the cult of optimism would have us do, or we can acknowledge and embrace the sorrow that is a natural response to loss, devastation and catastrophe. In grief we make a choice to honor the lost and their existence. We speak in a clear voice, to anyone who will listen, that their lives mattered. And we are also forced to face our own mortality in the process.

Agreeing to walk through our grief honestly can be a catalyst for creative defiance and undaunted dissent. It is perhaps the only resistance we can offer to the insistence of apathy imposed on us from the wraiths on Wall Street and Madison Avenue. The unnatural barriers they have erected to mask our humanity crumble in the rancid pile they deserve when a soul is set free to grieve. It is in grief that we find ourselves to be inseparable from each other, and from the nature from which we are all born. In this way, sorrow is the only coherent answer to extinction. It is a wail of conscience.

(photo: Getty Images)

Bearing witness to the unprecedented crime of ecocide sweeping our planet is not accepting the carnage, it is lending another voice to testify on the behalf of the victims. And in doing so, it succeeds in making the difficult case for the worth of the human soul.

Kenn Orphan 2014

Humanity’s Epitaph

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Last month hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of major cities, most especially New York, for the People’s Climate March ahead of the neutered Climate Summit at the United Nations. It was a remarkable moment for the environmental movement which, in the United States at least, has become largely mainstreamed into corporate doublespeak, wedded to the establishment and co-opted for political gain by the Democratic Party. The enthusiasm and desire for a better future in the vast majority of these protestors should not be questioned or criticized; but the effectiveness of this march, if we truly wish to see any success from it, should.

Within the last decade there have been monumental shifts in climate models leaving even the conservative IPCC shocked and frightened. The overriding consensus within the climate science community is that things are far more dire than anyone had previously anticipated. Now we are beginning to see the first stirrings of climate chaos; and it is set against the ominous backdrop of corporate capitalism’s incessant, insatiable and rapacious plunder of an already ravaged planet. Catastrophic flooding, record breaking temperature extremes and intractable drought have become the defining norm of the 21st century.

(A public bus traverses flood waters in Calgary, Alberta. Photo: Larry MacDougal/The Canadian Press)

By many estimations the proverbial 11th hour for the climate. and thus for humanity itself, has been drastically reduced to one minute before midnight. Yet in this unprecedented moment in human history ineptitude, lack of will and doltish denial continue to reign within the avenues of power. The machinery of entrenched political power and wealth is a formidable adversary and any change in direction is generally derailed if the masters of the machine cannot profit from it. Appealing to this depraved and ultimately suicidal sensibility has proven to be ruinous for any meaningful progress to stem the advance of climate change.

The People’s Climate March was arguably a noble venture to raise awareness and prick the ears of the powers that be. It could be dismissed as naive or even a foolish waste of time by some; after all promoting or peddling false hope or optimism only serves the status quo of doing nothing. But the misanthropy of weary activists itself will damn the efficacy of the movement just as much as rampant denialism, intransigence or profiteering at the expense of the climate.

(photo: Associated Press)

Worldwide weather patterns are rapidly becoming chaotic and severe. Reality asserts that we may have already passed the tipping point and climate catastrophe is only a matter of time. Therefore the need for a realistic approach has never been more paramount than it is today, if for no other reason than to attempt to alleviate the suffering we see today and that will inevitably follow.

We must face the fact that climate change is here to stay and it is growing angrier by the minute. We must accept our culpability in the ecocide that is vanishing countless species from the earth at breakneck speed. We must also realize that the powerful are, despite their strident assertions, not in control and have instead chosen the easy path of playing on people’s prejudices, ignorance and fears in order to exact the largest profit they can as the lights go out. They have used our precious resources to build walls to protect them, free speech zones to insulate them from voices of dissent, and institutions to defend their crimes. They stoke the fires of bigotry and Bronze Age mythology in order to distract us from their theft and murder. They create new enemies to be fought so that the public does not see how utterly inept they are at dealing with the real and urgent threats to collective humanity.

(Well heeled 1% look on in bewildered amusement at Occupy Wall Street protestors. Photo: Associated Press)

If this movement is to have any success it must move quickly to disrupt and dismantle the mechanisms of industrialization via fossil fuels that are driving us rapidly towards calamity. It must divorce itself from Wall Street and corporate wealth. It must tear down the old vestiges of prejudice, racism and bigotry that merely serve to embolden state violence and reinforce repression. It must shake off the privilege of Western neoliberal economics that have served to exploit impoverished nations through the lie of “free trade” and devastate ecosystems. In so doing, it must derive its strength from the bottom up, dismissing any enticements from parasitic political entities that only seek to render it anemic through guile and deceitful placation. And it must identify and align itself with the poor and disenfranchised of the planet.

(Indigenous Brazilians protest the construction of the Belo Monte dam on the Xingu river. Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images)

If it cannot do this then it was nothing more than a vain political spectacle that should be fast replaced. Otherwise it will only serve as humanity’s epitaph.

Kenn Orphan 2014

Photo: Protesters in New York City – Mel Evans/AP

Self Destruction Writ Large

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Recently, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, one of the most conservative, scientific/political organizations, issued its most dire report to date. It warned that climate change will have “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts” in coming decades. It goes on to say that “the risk of abrupt and irreversible change increases as the magnitude of the warming increases.” Unknown to most of the public is that this panel is very conservative and years behind reality in its assessments. Their reports are also subject to being watered down for geopolitical and economic reasons. As a UN body, the IPCC responds to its masters. And, like the World Bank, they follow the dictates of neoliberal capitalism. The common definition of neoliberalism, the dominant geopolitical force of our age, refers to “economic liberalization, privatization, free trade, open markets, deregulation, and reductions in government spending in order to enhance the role of the private sector in the economy.”

Economic neoliberalism attaches a monetary value to everything that exists and, in doing so, catastrophically demeans that value, transforming it into something that is easily disposable. It commodifies the very building blocks of life. It dismantles the commons by enforcing private ownership. It replaces citizenship with consumerism. It hustles us toward extinction and ecocide with a jingle in our heads and a shopping bag in our hand. It endorses endless war, endless distraction and the rape of the natural world, because these are the only things that will sustain its existence. It is self destruction, writ large.

The malignant tide that brought us to this place is rising fast. Centuries of plunder and exploitation are rendering the oceans and the planet barren and fallow. Soon it will be impossible for any human being to traverse this landscape unsullied, where the snares of a beleaguered ecosystem are ubiquitous, the currency of the state is violence, and the native tongue of its leaders is cruelty. In fact, the established plutocratic class is getting nervous. They do not have a plan outside of maintaining their current campaigns of plunder, distracting the public, and constructing a police state to insure their power and wealth remain intact. So it is a fair assumption that their well deserved paranoia will spark even more heavy handed repression and violence.

But more people are beginning to shake off the shackles of endless fear mongering and war drumming imposed on them from the powers that be. More are beginning to tire of the vapid celebrity worship, the car-wrecks of cruel humiliation that pass as entertainment, and the empty promises of fulfillment and wholeness that feckless cupidity and consumerism offer. More are beginning to see through the lies.

It is unclear if our species will weather the coming storms, droughts, social unrest, police state violence, corporate plunder and threat of nuclear war. Indeed our right to go on is questionable given our long history of horrific treatment of the most vulnerable among us, and the countless species with whom we share this planet. But one thing is certain; no one will be able to take this journey unmolested. Even as it is being decimated, we are all inextricably connected to this marvelous world. And perhaps, with that in mind, we can turn away from the self-indulgent madness of our time and appreciate what is left and realize just how good we had it.

Kenn Orphan 2014

The company you keep, the atrocities you ignore.

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Few in the civilized world would ever see the beheading of a human being as anything less than abject evil. A state that executes scores of people every day, many on charges of apostasy or sorcery, routinely imprisons and tortures people with different ethnicities or religious beliefs, and has been implicated in supporting various terrorist factions throughout the Middle-east is deserving of the most scathing reproach. The state that I am referring to in this instance is not IS (Islamic State). It is one of the United States biggest allies; the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

There is a veritable mountain of evidence documenting the ongoing, systemic brutality of the House of Saud and the medieval theocracy it imposes. The Kingdom stones women to death for witchcraft or for being unaccompanied. It amputates the limbs of men accused of stealing. It crucifies anyone displaying a religious symbol that is not Wahhabist (ultra-fundamentalist Islam). Immigrant workers, too, are not spared from the savagery. Treated as slaves with no rights, they are routinely raped, beaten and murdered with impunity.

It would be accurate to designate the IS as fiendishly barbaric. Yet when it comes to denunciation of the tyrannical House of Saud for routinely carrying out the same atrocities, and doing so for far longer, the United States is curiously quiet. There may be paltry criticisms here and there, but nothing tantamount to the priggish blustering we see recently emanating from Washington regarding IS. This is for an important reason.

Within the halls of empire such hypocritical rants are essential to advancing its interests, which are unequivocally tied to its wealth and power. The American empire is an expert at the art of spinning atrocities to align with its foreign policy objectives which line the pockets of the weapons and fossil fuel industry. And with a corporate media in tow, the job is anything but difficult.

Once again we are witness to the ratcheting up of war rhetoric and the endless war machine working itself into a self-righteous frenzy. Once again the corporate media dutifully serves its masters in regurgitating state narratives as absolute truth. Once again we are doused with collective amnesia as they court the doom of war. And once again we are chided for daring to remember the last time they lied to us, and the tremendous cost it exacted.

Kenn Orphan 2014

The Earth and Her Raging Fever

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From a months worth of rain falling in a matter of hours, to wildfires devouring the lush rainforests and the icy Arctic tundra, we are witnessing records being broken one after another with each passing day. One does not need to be a scientist to see a shocking increase of extreme weather events. Yet, still, denialism persists. “We must grow the economy!” “Drill, baby drill!” It is madness on an epic scale.

The earth doesn’t care about our economy. She has no use for our political protestations either. She responds only to our folly. And she is groaning from the injuries we have inflicted on her. She has a fever; and if she does not treat it soon the results will prove dire for her future.

No greater visual exists to demonstrate her malady than the Alberta Tar Sands. It is a blight that covers an area the size of Florida and can be seen from space. It is a cancerous tumor, a melanoma on the skin of the earth that continues to grow and metastasize, spewing its noxious breath into the atmosphere while being fueled by the fallacious myth of infinite growth on a finite planet.

The West continues to be mired in a corporate fantasy world, drowning as we toast our good fortune. All the while the real world, that every species relies on for sustenance and survival, is withering and suffocating before our eyes. Those who call attention to the ecocide are often maligned and marginalized, living as exiles from the Kingdom of Eternal Optimism. The oceans are acidifying, intractable drought threatens our food and water supply, floods threaten our cities. We are facing extinction; not just of countless other species but of our own. Yet there is little to no alarm or pause from the mass media and popular culture.

We may be alone in this universe, but it is unlikely. Perhaps it is filled with other species who made it as far as we did and survived or even thrived. Or perhaps it is littered with the bones of long dead societies who had similar aspirations. We may never know. What we do know is this, the planet that we live on is rapidly changing before our eyes. The earth, our only home, has a raging fever. And she will not wait for our over indulgent deliberations. Her prognosis is good though. She is going to survive her disease. For humanity, however, it isn’t looking so good.

Kenn Orphan 2014

Photo Credits:

Alberta Tar Sands, once pristine boreal forest. Photographer Peter Essick

Alberta Tar Sands at night. Photographer Garth Lenz

Pristine Alberta boreal forest before destruction/National Geographic

They are Preparing, and We Should Too.

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The militaristic crackdown on largely peaceful protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, this past summer, following the shooting death of an unarmed black youth should not be seen as an anomaly. In fact, American police forces have been steadily militarized over the past decade by the Pentagon, which according to a recent report has made it a priority to address the risks of social unrest that will undoubtedly arise as climate change worsens. It would be supremely naive to think their preparations are concerned with community development, supplying adequate resources or social justice. To be sure their approach will be in line with their history and will be about social control and the suppression of dissent.

Americans got a taste of this approach during the lock down of Boston last year in the search for the alleged perpetrator of the Boston Marathon bombing. For the first time in this century an entire American city was placed under what could accurately be defined as a type of martial law. While this may have been voluntary, few would deny that defying the lock down would have been met with severe consequences. Americans saw a major US city transform into something that resembled the streets of Grozny or Sarajevo. Tanks rolled down leafy New England streets. Police sharpshooters trained their sights on picket fenced, saltbox houses. Families were marched out of their living rooms and down the sidewalks with hands plastered to their heads. And all of this proceeded with nary a protest or whimper from the mainstream media. On the contrary, this over the top spectacle garnered praise from politicians and reporters alike. And after it was over many in the public lined the streets to thank a jackbooted police force, even though the alleged terrorist was discovered by a civilian.

America is experiencing an intractable drought across much of the southwest. In the northeast and west, catastrophic flooding and record rainfall is fast becoming the norm. In the mid-west the Ogallala aquifer, the dominant source of water for the country’s agriculture, is being fast depleted. And in the west the Colorado River which supplies tens of millions of people with drinking water is beginning to show a severe slowdown. With such extremes comes crop failure, water shortages and species extinction. Many scientists are also deeply worried that the methane clathrate gun has been fired triggering runaway climate change. And regardless of anti-science politicians who are on the dole of the fossil fuel industry, the Pentagon is taking all of this very seriously.

With the collapse of essential services and the failure of leadership to mitigate the damage, public anger will undoubtedly rise. It is within this kind of perfect storm that atrocities are often committed and tyrannies are frequently born. The Pentagon and other powerful government agencies have demonstrated time after time that their first priority is to protect corporate interests. Understanding all of this is crucial to facing what may be on the horizon. Maintaining an independent media is key to avoiding the pitfalls of mass paranoia, scapegoating and divide and conquer strategies that the corporate media is expert at. And it is only through grassroots community organizing and non-violent protest that ordinary people can find the leverage needed to hold the established power class accountable and at bay, and assert the innate dignity of all human beings even in the midst of calamity.

The Pentagon’s approach for dealing with the dire times that lie ahead is nothing less than terrifying. Social control appears to be their goal. Violence seems to be their method. And they have all the equipment needed to enforce their plan. Peaceful resistance and solidarity is the only viable response ordinary people have.

They are preparing. And we should too.

Kenn Orphan 2014

(Photo on top is of an unarmed protestor in Ferguson Missouri facing a militarized police force/AP)

Looking South

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There is no justice for the victims of western imperialism, at least not in the American courtroom. This year, a U.S. court of appeals ruled in favor of Chiquita Brands International who admitted to funding the United Self-Defense Committees of Colombia (AUC), a rightwing paramilitary group, that slaughtered scores of Columbians in recent years. It underscores a long history of corporate impunity that is drenched in the blood of the poor.

On December 6, 1928 thousands of Columbians were massacred in the town of Ciénaga on behalf of the United Fruit Company, now Chiquita Brands International. The slaughter of these workers was at the behest of the US government who threatened to invade Columbia to defend UFC’s interests. This was only one example of this company wrecking havoc and subverting democracy throughout the hemisphere with the assistance of the US government.

In 1954 a mercenary army hired by the United Fruit Company and assisted by the US government, staged a military coup which overthrew the democratically elected, reform oriented government of Guatemala and replaced it with a fascist, military dictatorship and, essentially, neo-feudalism. When some Mayans protested their oppression all Mayans in the country were collectively punished, culminating in the genocide of nearly 250,000 people and creating at least 1 million refugees.

Israel was also complicit in the genocide, supplying arms and training mercenaries. General Rios Montt, the military general who is largely blamed for directing the slaughter, gave his personal thanks to both the US and Israel for assisting him in the rape, torture and slaughter of the country’s indigenous population. Montt was an evangelical Christian minister and a personal friend of both Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. He was also unquestioningly supported and praised by President Ronald Reagan.

“President Ríos Montt,” Reagan said, “is a man of great personal integrity and commitment . . . . I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice.”

According to a 2004 report on the massacre by the Inter-American Court on Human rights, Montt’s forces:

“separated the children and the young women aged from about 15 to 20. Then the massacre began. First they tortured the old people, saying they were guerrillas, then they threw two grenades and fired their guns. Finally they sprayed petrol around and set fire to the house… [The next day, Buenaventura Manuel Jeronimo] emerged from his hiding place to see the destruction they had caused. Along with Eulalio Grave Ramírez and his brothers Juan, Buenaventura, and Esteban, they put out the flames that were still consuming the bodies. Those that weren’t totally charred showed signs of torture, as did the naked bodies of the youngest women.”

Another account was from a survivor:

“After having killed our wives, they brought out our children. They grabbed their feet and beat their heads against the house posts. I had six children. They all died, and my wife as well.. All my life my heart will cry because of it.”
– sole survivor of San Francisco massacre in Huehuetenango, Guatemala

General Mott was charged with genocide, but his monied legal team has successfully stalled due process of the trial on technicalities.

United Fruit Company (Chiquita Brands International) was also complicit in aiding the Honduran dictator General Oswaldo López Arellano into power, later deposed, in 1972. Fast forward to 2009 it is not too difficult to connect the dots between the coup that removed democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya, who proposed a 60% raise in the minimum wage, to Chiquita, who vehemently opposed such a move.

We are seeing the tragic repercussions of neoliberal economic policies that allow US corporations to spread tyranny and terror abroad in the name of profit. Now thousands of child refugees are flowing over the border, sent by their families in a desperate attempt to escape the hellish conditions that are a direct result of US foreign and economic policy. If the American government was serious about stemming the flow of immigrants to the US it would begin by holding corporations accountable for their crimes and abuses. But despite the catchy slogans, imperialism is about dominance and plunder, not democracy and human rights.

There is hope to be found, but it does not lie in the kangaroo courts of oligarchs or corrupt governments of US supported banana republics. Several South American nations, spurred on by the courageous persistence of the late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, have mounted laudable opposition to US imperialism. But their struggle does not come without consequences. They may not suffer the unjust isolation that Cuba has, but they face a tide of belligerence from the corporate media and undoubtedly covert subversion from Washington.

Nevertheless their struggle against corporate tyranny should stand as testament to the persistence of social justice. And Americans may soon need to look south for inspiration as we face what is fast becoming a corporate police state here at home.

Kenn Orphan 2014

Miltarism: an Ideology of Death

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“Militarism has been by far the commonest cause of the breakdown of civilizations. The single art of war makes progress at the expense of all the arts of peace.” – Arnold J. Toynbee

Pablo Picasso’s Guernica depicts the tragic results of militarism. In this epic painting he captured the horror suffered by the residents of a small village in the Basque countryside, bombed mercilessly into ruins. It is a powerful display of the reality of war in that it shows the victims are disproportionately civilians, animals and the earth itself.

Since World War II more civilians have been killed in armed conflict, despite having protection under international law. Americans have largely been shielded from the atrocity that is war. We do not see the bodies of children blown apart by US drone strikes or the humiliation and terror that comes from being occupied by a foreign army. It is because of this ignorance that militarism has flourished.

Militarism is the aggressive reply to every social problem. It is extremely profitable and therefore a perfect partner of capitalism. Its merchants have been successful in convincing the public over and over to believe the insane contradiction of war bringing peace, bombs bringing democracy and occupation bringing justice. They are masters at massaging our innate fears, those fears that produce the most visceral responses to manufactured illusions of imminent danger.

The powerful pull out the most primitive emotional reactions in us, responses we developed in ancient fields when we needed to escape the very real predators that lurked around us throughout the long history of our evolutionary heritage. They stoke primal paranoia of the other and encourage scapegoating as a means of alleviating the anxiety associated with the unknown and the responsibility of ethical conscience. They distract us from their malfeasance. They provoke rage at imaginary threats against the homeland, the religion, the tribe. In essence, they manufacture the belief that militarism is inevitable, even desirable.

The boogieman needed to maintain militarism changes faces, but they are almost always two-dimensional figures whose evil is absolute. Whether they be communists or Islamists, the pretext is always the same; they are cast as an immediate threat to western civilization and must be dealt with in the most violent way possible. Unsurprisingly, this ideology has wreaked havoc around the world.

Decades of neoliberal economic policies, arms deals, military coups, toppling of democratically elected governments, and the support of practically every despotic and corrupt regime the world has ever known has created a 21st century map of the world that contains more human caused catastrophes than it does countries. This long and bloody history of exploitation has enabled fanatical or extremist movements, loosely based on religion, to sweep entire regions. It has deftly created them with each new massacre and atrocity borne as a gruesome trophy to its fury.

But the mayhem abroad inevitably returns home. Militaristic societies create a machine that eventually consumes them from the inside. They lurch towards self-destruction because they feed on the pillars that support them. The arts, humanities, and science all become casualties of their rapacious appetite for growth. Jingoism replaces critical thinking. Infrastructure crumbles and the social safety net is dismantled. The well being of their citizens is reduced to a hollow promise of protection against an imaginary enemy, while the real needs and dangers are ignored. Civil rights and liberties become nuisances that get in the way of the machine, and are therefore crushed.

Militarism is the religion of America. It is the cornerstone of our culture and the currency with which the state interacts with its citizens as well as its neighbors. It is the language mass media uses in its denigration of the poor, the immigrant and the downtrodden. It is the method used to address all forms of crime. It is the very core of our economic system, based upon the rape of the natural world and the exploitation of the weakest among us. And it is the wall that prevents us from achieving lasting peace and true justice.

Picasso’s Guernica serves not only as a warning, but also as a prediction. His painting underscores the tragic futility of militarism and how it always targets the most vulnerable. It is an ideology of death that builds nothing and takes everything. It is a monster that feeds off fear and, sadly at the beginning of the 21st century, shows no sign of slowing down.

Kenn Orphan 2014

Suffering in the Congo: the High Price of Technology

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In all likelihood, the Smartphone that many Westerners carry around all day, checking messages, taking ‘selfies’ and downloading apps, was manufactured with minerals extracted from a nation decimated by genocide and imperialistic plunder. Much of the cobalt and tantalum used in the electronics industry is harvested from central Africa, and mainly from one former Belgian colony.

Beginning with the murderous, genocidal King Leopold II of Belgium, who was responsible for the murder of nearly 10 million people in the 19th century, and leading up to the US corporate raiders of this century, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been continually robbed of its rich human and natural resources. In 1961 the Belgian capitalist elite and the CIA backed the assassination of democratically elected president Patrice Lumumba. This set in motion the turmoil and suffering the people of the Congo now live with today. Lumumba, like countless other leaders around the world, was disposed of by the Western hegemony because of his gall to defend his own people against foreign robber barons. Ignored by a subservient United Nations, the new junta government murdered Lumumba by firing squad.

The US and Belgium, along with most of the West, then installed the murderous dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko. Despite his looting the country of billions of dollars and committing brutal and heinous human rights violations, Seko, enjoyed a close friendship with several US presidents and was honored at the White House by Ronald Reagan several times. Following his exile, the DRC was plunged into mayhem for over a decade. And it is estimated that 6 to 10 million Congolese have been killed in what can only be termed as genocide.

Slavery, land grabs and violence have decimated this beautiful land with seemingly no end in sight. The systematic rape, mutilation and torture of women and children has been used to demoralize and dehumanize millions of Congolese, while the mainstream media generally ignores their plight and world leaders mostly look on with apathy. And today this travesty continues chiefly by the support of US foreign policy which lends aid to its rival nations, Rwanda and Uganda, as its presidents, Paul Kagame and Yoweri Musuveni, strip it clean of its natural resources for Western corporate interests.

It is in this way more than any other that Western colonialism never ended in Africa. It continues through the vehicle of free trade and globalization, which mask the ugliest facets of neoliberalist policies. And it continues through the blind exploitation of resources for the sake of Western technology and insatiable consumerism. The Congolese have no agency while such powers are permitted to plunder for profit. And the carnage will only grow beyond what is arguably the biggest genocide the world has seen since World War II.

Kenn Orphan 2014

(Photo: REUTERS/Finbarr O’Reilly)

*For more information on this issue I highly suggest reading the fine journalistic work of Andre Vltchek.

The Map Out

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One of the most harrowing challenges of modern life in the West is navigating through the massive desert of mindless, materialistic consumerism. It is within this landscape that a soul can become lost and drenched in despair. From the endless stream of vacant eyed wraiths that glide down catwalks, to the pervasive advertising that never ceases to demean the values of empathy and compassion and hollow out any meaning associated with human connection, to the entertainment industry which revels in the depths of cruelty it can sink to, the onslaught on the psyche is both constant and merciless.

The American shopping mall is a reflection of this nightmare of ravenous cupidity and a message of stark disenfranchisement to the ever growing underclass. Its glossy finishes and plastic displays erect a wall of defense against anything remotely human or sacred. It entices the youngest of our society with the promise of fulfillment and social status through the acquisition of objects, the alteration of their faces and bodies, and the tacit abandonment of any connection with the natural world and all the beings that inhabit it. Concrete and glass monoliths of corporatism drive home the deepest sense of alienation and desolation by design. It is a fantasy land of the cruelest fakery, replacing the lively, chaotic and thoroughly interactive market place with the impersonal, the absurd, and the surreal. Exported around the world to some of the most impoverished nations on the planet, it is a unique, exclusionary and effective form of imperialism.

The Big Box stores, in contrast, make no pretense to that kind of romanticism. They sit shamelessly on seas of pavement in wetlands, lush meadows or downed forests, scraped and drained clean of their original life and inhabitants. They are a reflection of what America has become; a stark and depersonalized vision of depravity within the setting of a dying ecosystem. Their plastic and glossy objects fill giant bins as they fill our oceans and river systems. Their clothing racks conceal the stain of sweat shop slavery. They exude the callousness of a factory farm, encouraging and cheering on aggression, prodding livestock into its maw of spiraled decadence. This is the architecture of banal cruelty and indifference.

Understanding this landscape it should not come as a surprise that stories about vampires and zombies dominate contemporary, popular entertainment. These themes perfectly mimic the corporate capitalist economic model which glamorizes and celebrates the ghoulish and the macabre, while it rapaciously feeds upon the most vulnerable and powerless members of society for profit. The monsters in these tales are almost always fascinating, beautiful or so powerful as to be envied, while their victims are generally bereft of any identity at all. And this is exactly the way the wealthy elite want ordinary people to think of themselves. This ideology may contribute to the emergence of the mass shooter phenomenon, but it also underlies the mass acceptance of the police state model which relies on the violence of the state to reinforce the boundaries of class, and to bolster the mythology of the superiority of the powerful and wealthy.

The map out of this nightmare is often masked by the empty promises of having more stuff, altering ones outer appearance or conforming to socially acceptable shallowness. Advertising, social media and the political class, which sanctify the zombification of modern society, demand we attune and respond to their dictates and Siren song, lest we be banished from the corporate kingdom. Of course exclusion is terrifying to the elite and serf alike. We have been trained to avert our eyes from the homeless, the working poor and the far flung slaves to our insatiable consuming. If we dare look we might see our collective future. We might see exactly how our separateness is a grand deceit, a scam. And in doing so we might indeed shun otherness for the embrace of actual human beings. Free or revolutionary thought cannot be tolerated in a capitalist corporatocracy where denial, jingoism and conformity are embedded in the liturgy.

But we are coming to the end of the illusion, for better and for worse, sooner rather than later. The planet’s ecosystems are wailing from the misery our way of life has inflicted upon them. They are dying. And the humanity that has been enslaved to continue this insanity are beginning to recognize their chains. Mass extinction is fast closing in on us. All of us will be forced to face this reality whether we want to or not. An industrial, consumerist society, based upon an endless growth economic model on a planet with finite resources, is impossible to sustain. It will eventually collapse.

If there is map out of the cemetery that we have long dug for countless species by our selfish indulgences and out of the wreckage of civilization, that irony of all ironies, it may very well lie in the chance, however remote, that some of us will emerge from the ruins long enough to tell a different story of who we are. Perhaps we will have enough time to honor all that we had and mourn all that was lost. And perhaps future generations, if there are any who survive, will not hate us too much for the brutality we tolerated and the ecocide we caused.

Perhaps.

Kenn Orphan 2014

Photo Credits:
-An abandoned shopping mall in Mid-west America and is credited to Seph Lawless, courtesy of TWC (The Weather Channel)

-Courtesy of the Philosopher’s Stone

-Black Friday shoppers and is stock footage (Techno Buffalo)

-Devastation in the Niger Delta from oil pollution. Agence France Presse.

-Camel dead from consuming plastic waste. Plastic Pollution Coalition

-A polar bear on a ever dwindling Arctic ice sheet/PA

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