Is ‘Sustainable Australia’ racist?

Um, by their accounts, no. But actually, yes.

How?

Well, the Sustainable Australia party says they are (surprise) all about making Australia sustainable. Specifically, their core argument when you dig through the back story, is that Australia has exceeded or will exceed its carrying capacity. It’s not very clear what they think Australia’s carrying capacity is in terms of absolute numbers, but basically their bogeyman is that there is/might be too many of us for the continent to support.

That’s a fair point to make, to an extent. It could suggest that they are interested in ensuring that all of the resources that are used by the continent’s population are sourced from within the continent and the resultant wastes similarly processed within the continent. However, they don’t say anything much about that. They do talk about re-use and recycling, but there are plenty of reports highlighting the futility of relying on recycling in particular as a sustainable strategy – put simply, higher income nations in the main create far more waste than can be recycled. Further, recycling is the least effective way of addressing the impacts of consumption. Apart from the fact that we don’t recycle all of our waste, recycling in itself is resource intensive and there are limits to what can be recycled and how many times it can be recycled. The issue is consumption.

They don’t, however, say much *at all* about the consumption elephant in the room, which is where the racism creeps in. Higher income nations consume far more resources than the planet can sustain and also tend to be European nations that have historically built that wealth and consumption on extraction in and exploitation of other nations. Many still do. Look hard at your mobile phone and think about the cobalt in its battery and the insanely complex supply chains that eventually can be traced to mining practices in Africa that create high levels of human and environmental harm. Is there anything on the party’s website about enforcing supply chain reporting on the goods that we import? No, because their platform is more about maintaining the quality of life of Australians as it is, regardless of whether that comes at the expense of someone (or somewhere) else’s, as it currently does.

While the Sustainable Australia party’s website and policies do talk about waste reduction and emissions reductions, the focus is pretty heavily on assuming technological breakthroughs will do this. Again, this is a dubious through to dangerous proposition that can imply that keeping on consuming is fine because technology will fix it. Also, again with the silence on consumption.

There’s a lot of traditional ‘green’ issues on their website – stopping fracking, increasing conservation management, stopping old growth logging – which are all fine. However, there is nothing about making sure those things aren’t happening overseas either by tackling the levels and patterns of consumption that drive the over-exploitation of other countries and their people. So the racism isn’t Fortress Australia so much as Castle Australia, with the drawbridge firmly drawn up to keep the peasants out so that everyone inside can keep (over)eating their quail and oysters.

A vignette: Bangladesh banned plastic bags over a decade ago and their sky didn’t fall. Individual supermarket chains in Australia sometimes try to impose bans on plastic bags and we end up with people punching each other in carparks. Our footprint is over 9 global hectares per person per annum. Bangladesh’s is 0.72. Is the problem too many people? Damn straight, if you are talking about people with multiple plasma TVs taking the plane to holiday in Fiji every year and losing their shit if they can’t carry their over-packaged goods home in yet more plastic. We need to take a good, hard look at ourselves and our habits, not slam the door on others.

The Australian Conservation Foundation used to have a consumption atlas that mapped energy and water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions against LGAs and it overwhelmingly showed that within Australia, higher income regions consumed far more resources and produced far more waste. I remain curious as to why they took the atlas down.

From the Sustainable Australia party’s website, I cannot see how their policies will bring Australia’s consumption and impact levels down to anything that is sustainable on a per capita basis. It reeks of entitlement, painted green – ‘we will shut down immigration and preserve our environmental heritage so that we can live in a sparsely populated paradise and mine poorer countries for all they’ve got to support our over-consumption, then spew the remains out into the atmosphere so that low-lying countries can drown’.

So while the party can say ‘we’re not racist – we have brown friends and will still let some brown people in’, there is a complete blindness to systemic and structural racism and their sustainability policies as they currently stand will reinforce those dynamics. Apart from being bad sustainability policy (and ferociously unjust given that we can expect to start seeing climate refugees that our consumption levels have created), their stance on immigration is a major dog-whistle, whether they intend it or not.

Don’t want to be seen as racist? Here, have some greenwash. Hide behind this tree.

At best, it’s badly thought out. At worst, it’s a Trojan Horse for racists. They are also notably thin on policies concerning Australia’s First Peoples and describe themselves as from the ‘common-sense political centre’ – that massive overlap in the Venn diagram that is the LNP-ALP interface, which as we know has drifted somewhat alarmingly to the right. There are other parties that are just as concerned about logging, mining, renewable energy, community control over planning, affordable housing, and moving our economy onto something other than digging stuff up or cutting it down. Those parties tend to also be far more vocal about substantial matters regarding Australia’s First Peoples, have humane migration policies, and do not carry the risk of calling the racist dogs.

Could Sustainable Australia redeem themselves? Absolutely, if they explained what they will do to tackle per capita over-consumption in Australia and the impacts of supply chain dynamics. Specify a circular economy or zero waste platform. Tackle over-fishing and monocultural agriculture. Push to ban plastics. Make big business foot the bill through their profit margins and tax obligations so it’s not just sustainability for those who can afford it. Especially if these policies were combined with a migration policy that stipulated that we will prioritise people fleeing terror and climate change. Apart from that arguably being our moral obligation, chances are they would know a shitload more about responsible consumption than we do.

Vote well, folks. Here’s a song:

No, srsly, enough with the fascism

Look at this man. Look at his face.

thanks, wikipedia

This is the smiling face of the far right and it is now the face of Australia’s Prime Minister. I don’t say “our Prime Minister” because other than a few dozen members of the far right of the LNP, none of us voted for him to be Prime Minister.

So let’s call him, the Far Right’s Prime Minister. Or Rupert Murdoch’s Prime Minister. Same same.

It’s a genial, smiling face, yes? Not the unnerving scowl of Peter Dutton, who played a very good boogeyman to make ScoMo look reasonable:

KnowYourMeme

And gee, doesn’t ScoMo look reasonable? So reasonable… Hey, let’s check the Reason-o-Matic over at They Vote for You:

Voted very strongly for

• A citizenship test
• A plebiscite on the carbon pricing mechanism
• A same-sex marriage plebiscite
• An Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC)
• Charging postgraduate research students fees
• Civil celebrants having the right to refuse to marry same-sex couples
• Compensating victims of overseas terrorism since the September 11 attack*
• Decreasing ABC and SBS funding
• Decreasing availability of welfare payments
• Deregulating undergraduate university fees
• Drug testing welfare recipients
• Getting rid of Sunday and public holiday penalty rates
• Government administered paid parental leave
• Greater control over items brought into immigration detention centres
• Increasing eligibility requirements for Australian citizenship
• Increasing funding for road infrastructure
• Increasing indexation of HECS-HELP debts
• Increasing the initial tax rate for working holiday makers to 19%
• Increasing the Medicare Levy to pay for the National Disability Insurance Scheme
• Increasing the price of subsidised medicine
• Live animal export
• Making more water from Murray-Darling Basin available to use
• Privatising government assets
• Putting welfare payments onto restricted debit cards
• Recognising local government in the Constitution*
• Reducing the corporate tax rate
• Senate electoral reform
• Strengthening gun control laws*
• Temporary protection visas
• The Coalition’s new schools funding policy (“Gonski 2.0”)*
• The Intervention in the Northern Territory
• Tighter means testing of family payments
• Turning back asylum boats when possible
• Voluntary student union fees

*Woo – strongly supported 4 non-evil things. Go ScoMo.

The reasonable. It burns me.

Voted very strongly against

• A carbon price
• A minerals resource rent tax
• A Royal Commission into Violence and Abuse against People with Disability
• An NBN (using fibre to the premises) (pat on the head from Uncle Rupert for that)
• Carbon farming
• Decreasing the private health insurance rebate
• Ending illegal logging
• Ending immigration detention on Manus Island
• Ending immigration detention on Nauru
• Extending government benefits to same-sex couples
• Increasing Aboriginal land rights
• Increasing access under Freedom of Information law
• Increasing consumer protections
• Increasing fishing restrictions
• Increasing funding for university education
• Increasing investment in renewable energy
• Increasing penalties for breach of data
• Increasing protection of Australia’s fresh water
• Increasing restrictions on gambling
• Increasing scrutiny of asylum seeker management
• Increasing the diversity of media ownership
• Increasing trade unions’ powers in the workplace
• Increasing transparency of big business by making information public
• Letting environmental groups challenge the legality of certain government decisions
• Protecting the Great Barrier Reef
• Re-approving/ re-registering agvet chemicals
• Removing children from immigration detention
• Requiring every native title claimant to sign land use agreements
• Restricting donations to political parties
• Restricting foreign ownership
• Same-sex marriage equality
• Stopping tax avoidance or aggressive tax minimisation
• The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme
• Tobacco plain packaging

So, yep, reasonable af. If you are from the UpsideDown.

Read those lists and use them to educate and arm yourself.

Over the next few months, this man will be portrayed by himself and the Murdoch press as benign and reasonable, his policies rational, even maybe inevitable. Your friends and loved ones may come to believe this. Look, how bad can he be? At least he’s not Dutton…

You may feel yourself starting to believe it.

Don’t, and don’t let your loved ones. Use these lists to remind yourself and others why this man must never, ever be returned to a position of power. Amongst his many other regressive moves, this man concocted the policy and slogan to ‘stop the boats’ and as a result this week a 12 year old under our care tried to set herself alight.

Use the lists as a frigging mantra to keep yourself, your loved ones, our society, and those who seek refuge here safe. Invert the lists and recite them to bring about the PM that you want and that we need.

Friends don’t let friends fall for smooth-talking, smiling hatemongers. We now categorically have one as PM and the full might of Murdoch’s media empire and the shrieking shock jocks will be behind him.

Get organised, get active:

• Australia ReMade
• GetUp
• Sydney Alliance
• Community Action Against Homophobia
• Australian Youth Climate Coalition
• SEED Indigenous Youth Climate Network
• Australian Unions

Sometimes you can’t go past the classics:

Conquistador of Mexico, the Zulu and the Navaho
The Belgians in the Congo short memory
Plantation in Virginia, the Raj in British India
The deadline in South Africa short memory
The story of El Salvador, the silence of Hiroshima
Destruction of Cambodia short memory
Short memory, must have a, short memory

The sight of hotels by the Nile, the designated Hilton style
With running water specially bought short memory
A smallish man Afghanistan, a watch dog in a nervous land
They’re only there to lend a hand short memory
Wake up in sweat at dead of night
And in the tents new rifles hey short memory

If you read the history books you’ll see the same things happen again and again
Repeat repeat short memory they’ve all got it
When are we going to play it again
Got a short, got a short, got a short, got a short
They’ve got a short must have a short they’ve got a short aah
Short memory, they’ve got a.

Urgh. Here comes the fascism. Kill it with fire!!!

Forgive me for not doing the happy dance that so many are currently doing about the pending ‘split‘ of the right wing of Australian federal politics. Rather than a death knell, the message from Brexit and Trump is that these moments signal the emergence of the very cunning manipulation of public opinion, including possibly through big data, to the benefit of neofascist agendas. Neither Brexit nor Trump indicate an actual majority of the respective national population genuinely backing the entirety of the corporato-fascist (is that a word??) agenda of the protagonists. Yet those elections were won on the back of campaigns of intolerance coupled with dizzyingly ironic appeals to the working and middle classes by people categorically removed from working or middle class lives, realities, or concerns.

To be blunt: extremely wealthy individuals who benefit directly from the economic and political alignments shorthanded as ‘neoliberalism’ played the average punter very, very well into thinking that Brexit or Trump would deliver them from the very real malaise caused by neoliberalism. Yes, you read that right. The fat cats sitting on nearly all the bikkies telling the punters the refugees, or the government, or the gays will take the last bikkie… So campaigns focused on tried and true boogeymen such as job losses through nonsensical nationalist rhetoric peppered with rabid fearmongering about terrorists, or basically anyone other than white cis hetero men. It played to the basest fears of many, offering escape and redress through heady promises of doing away with business-as-usual. Now, however, many of the punters have awoken from the dream with morning-after regrets.

Now, despite parts of ‘the left’ being able to see that Turnbull would be bollocks because of the neofascists’ firm grasp on said appendages, the last election here in Australia was a knife-edge, followed by his eventual victory. There is no room here for complacency, or for thinking the New Left/Third Way bullshit that the Labor Party have been peddling for decades is anything like up to withstanding the criticism of business-as-usual politics that both Brexit and Trump (and Sanders, but we’ll get to him) represented, and which will no doubt start to take hold here now that the hard right is feeling its oats.

Let’s hope the Labor Party have actually been paying attention and don’t dismiss this the way the DNC dismissed both Sanders and Trump, paving the way for the latter’s claim on the White House. Ideally, this is where Labor partners with the Greens to finally form a coalition with some actual social and ecological justice objectives to provide a viable and attractive alternative to the neofascists, rather than merely sticking with business-as-usual and pooh-poohing Bernardi, One Nation, et al, then getting stunned by the subsequent victory of some combination of the latter.

The metadata company that enabled Brexit and Trump, Cambridge Analytica, has already had contact from Australia, but no-one knows if this is a legitimate claim, or which player/s that contact was from. It is entirely possible that the suits at Cambridge Analytica are just using recent events to market themselves. Data transparency issues aside, the fact that swathes of the population may be getting played to neofascist agendas warrants some attention. It may not signal the actual rise of a majority of bigots, but it certainly emboldens those that do walk amongst our communities, to horrific effect.

I and others were dismissed when we said the DNC’s smug rejection of Sanders and promotion of Clinton would mean Trump’s victory. I am willing to stick my neck out again, and desperately look forward to being completely wrong. The movements in the extreme right of Australian politics MUST be treated as a genuine threat. We have seen the repercussions of ‘progressives’ blithely, derisively laughing along with Jon Stewart while Trump played both the margins and people’s concerns to pull the election off a knife edge.

To do anything like challenge the emergence of the hard right on the back of populism, the emboldening of hate through Brexit and Trump, and ongoing fearmongering, the Labor Party has got to develop some big, fat, visibly recognisable ethics that they will unflinchingly assert and that speak directly to issues of actual import, many of which poll after poll tell us a majority of Australia’s people actually care about. These include: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ autonomy, strength, and dignity as the continent’s First Peoples; LGBTIQA+ rights; climate change; the refugee imperative; and, all of the other insanity and bastardry that the foul brew of colonialism and neoliberalism have wrought in terms of inequitable politics and the gutting and selling of our common humanity, legacies, assets, and services.

That is, they need to adopt something that looks a fair bit like the Greens’ policy platform in a meaningful way, or get right the hell out of the way. Remember the DNC’s dismissal of Sanders (and yes, he had his limits but it might have at least opened the space up) and the literal millions of people who mobilised behind him because his grassroots campaign was based in individuals and communities recognising, empowering, and mobilising their desire for their country and society to be better, hm? How well did that go? Step up, Labor. This is not business-as-usual. Dismiss this at everyone’s peril.

The only musical interlude that will work here is this, because:

a) Depeche Mode;

b) Depeche Mode; and

c) the bleeding obvious.

End of cultural politics in 3…2…

OK, so I have been slow on the uptake about Laibach playing in North Korea in two days’ time.

When I saw this come through on my feed, I had to read it twice. While frantically clicking through to the John Oliver piece which missed the point so widely that I’m still reeling, I alternately dismissed it as a typo, or a deeply, profoundly, utterly pomo joke. Because, really, that’s what it is. So unbelievably pomo as to possibly represent or in fact even trigger, the end of all twentieth century cultural politics.

In fact, I believe this will tip the entire notion of the twentieth century over the event horizon.

For those of you going ‘wtf woman, you’ve lost me now’…

Laibach are basically the music department of Neue Slowenische Kunst – a performance/political art collective straight outta early 1980s Slovenia, and still going strong. NSK and its affiliated entities including Laibach are all rather excellent. According to the NSK State website:

“Neue Slowenische Kunst was founded in Ljubljana in 1984 as socialist Yugoslavia was beginning to fracture. By the end of the decade the NSK groups had won a reputation throughout Europe, North America and Japan. Their works and actions commented on many of the political events of the past three decades, and NSK is now generally acknowledged to have played a key role in the political and cultural history of Slovenia and the former Yugoslavia; it is credited, among other things, with making a substantial contribution to the pluralisation of society and culture in the 1980s.”

The beauty of Laibach in particular, is its ambiguity. Zizek claims:

“The ultimate expedient of Laibach is their deft manipulation of transference: their public (especially intellectuals) is obsessed with the “desire of the Other” – what is Laibach’s actual position, are they truly totalitarians or not? – i.e., they address Laibach with a question and expect from them an answer, failing to notice that Laibach itself does not function as an answer but a question.”

Witness the glory. Source: http://haraldmath.com/2014/03/25/an-illustrated-history-of-slavic-misery-laibach-and-neue-slowenische-kunst/

So. The glorious constellation of totalitarian imagery and post/industrial music is invited in all seriousness to play in Kim Jong-un’s horrific totalitarianism theme park. In response, Laibach claim they will perform work from the Sound of Music, and have written a song about the fact that they are going to North Korea.

In my parallel Gonzo existence, I jack up a speedball and try to get into North Korea on a NSK passport by Saturday, videoing all the way down, fuelled by vodka, nasty illicits and a peaking sense of the surreal as I become a viral sensation, roadkill, and/or political prisoner.

I still can’t believe this is real. It is perfect. So the universe is essentially a multi-faceted jewel, and within it is this shiny perfect moment. When Laibach take to the stage this weekend, there will be an audible pop, and spacetime will collapse in around the twentieth century, which will be instantly unmade.

I can’t watch. I can’t not watch. When I am not laughing uncontrollably, I can hardly breathe.

It’s. So. Beautiful.

Musical interlude, of course.

Laneways are good, but not for stoopid festival reasons, and musical interlude #3

Fuck your laneway. No, this is not an insult. It’s a directive. I think people should be entering into productive intercourse with lanes. Not because people with infuriating facial hair are going to infest them and start serving up food on bricks, but because lanes are really interesting urban interstices, particularly if they have not been the target of the sorts of arts policy that can only be brought on by the consumption of excess kale.

I have a lane nearby that I’m very fond of, but I keep forgetting to take photos. Tonight I stopped to take a photo of a rubber band that was making the outline of a spaceship, but got damn near run over by some fucker in a people mover who really HAD TO PARK RIGHT NOW despite there being no traffic and no apparent emergency.

I walk up and down the lane most days as it is a one-way shortcut to the station and the local shops, and runs counter to the traffic so is no use as a rat run. There’s an old lady who sits out the front of her house most nights and we wave at each other or call out hi. In summer the smell of the lane the morning after bin night is like a kick in the head.

I wish I’d taken a photo of the lane before it got re-surfaced, as it was like the surface of the moon. I’d ridden down it in taxis that had bottomed out, and whose drivers had sworn in disbelief. It’s all black and smooth now, which jars against the sandstone gutters, but the crappy old boundary between the prior grey mess and the stone is still visible, so that’s pleasing.

So to celebrate the lane, I will present here an exhibition of the photos I have failed to take.

#1 Groceries

This is the spilt bag of groceries left where the ice addict from the boarding house at the end of the road collapsed. He was lying very still as I walked down the lane from the station, but the woman ahead of me got to him first. He was really shitty when she finally woke him up, and staggered off without his groceries. She called after him about them, but he waved her away and kept staggering to home. His rockmelon was a split mess on the road.

#2 New life

A few weeks later, the iceman’s rockmelon sprouted in the gutter and started running rampant. It was a glorious green craziness in amongst the sandstone and gutter crap, and the gutter crap was steadily walling up behind the vine. The parent’s previous owner hadn’t been seen since a couple of days after his collapse. Not sure where he wound up.

#3 No life 1 and 2

A couple of weeks after that, the rockmelon got sprayed with poison and lay withered in the gutter, rapidly turning brown and papery. A couple of days later it was hard to tell where it had been. Maybe a shadow of stain on the sandstone.

#4 Tiny rubber aliens

Little beige rubber band, curling neatly on itself to make the perfect outline of a cutesy 1960s cartoon spaceship, the contrast with the black shiny road highlighted by the autumn twilight. Maybe tomorrow I’ll take a photo of it.

This post’s musical interlude is brought to you by what I was listening to while trying to snap the spaceship but getting run off the lane by the people mover. No, I wasn’t standing in the lane with my back to the traffic (well, solitary vehicle) and headphones in. I was square on to the van, and clearly trying to take a photo in a very quiet backstreet, so obviously in need of being parked on/at. Lanes can have fuckwits, but at least there’s very few beards attached.

How to be divisive while pretending not to, and musical interlude #2

This piece on the exploitation of terror makes me want to scream. No, “we” are not responsible for the culture of fear. Who the hell are “we”? I presume the author believes she is writing on behalf of some sort of collective, as she refers to government, the media, and “us” in considering the ever-expanding circus of hoopla and intolerance, and apportions blame to all.

This apportioning of blame only makes sense in light of her claim that “we now feel threatened by the mere presence of Middle Eastern men or Islamic accoutrements like the Burqa”. Do we? This is news to me, and I’m sure also to many other Australians who would feel similarly confused and confronted by this assertion. If “we” are scared, who are those in our community who are not scared? “Them”? Why am I them, and not we? I thought I was part of Australia, and that Australia was a great, big, diverse “us”, but that article is telling me I’m not part of it, or that Australia is some other thing. While as a white educated professional, I can dismiss the author’s assertion with nothing more than ire (albeit a fair amount), there are serious, subtle, insidious injuries performed by her assertion of the afraid “we”.

Firstly, it asserts that there is in fact a unified, homogeneous, Islamophobic “us”. Even though her argument is ostensibly trying to quash the fearmongering, this one act of (unintentional) dog-whistling is yet more fuel on the fire. Second, it sends the first point’s corollary, which is that there is a “them” or a “you” – the Other, the non-“we”, who remains nebulously undefined, yet clearly indicated by the authorial “we”. Whoever “you” are, you’re not “us”. Third, it oh-so-conveniently shifts the blame way from the near-constant shrieking of the media and the hateful rhetoric of so much of Canberra, and implies that really, Australians do actually hate each other, or at best, have somehow been naughty enough to give that impression.

Maybe I’m a pedant, but if writing an article supposedly about countering politics of hate, I’d be avoiding language that implies that while I am supposedly poo-pooing divisiveness, I’m in the “we” and talking to its other residents, and you are not part of the “we”. You can watch while we talk about what to do about trying to not hate you, you Others.

Guess I’m funny that way.

So, this is where the party ends.

Musical interlude #1

To keep myself passably sane, I’m going to post regularly about things I’ve been listening to. It may be public masturbation, but despite my at times profound privacy I actually have no shame. Not one for the grey areas. Technically this is probably #1a after sneaking Violent Femmes into my Newtown post, but we’ll cope.

So, today’s zombie thoughts were spurred on in no small part by this:

I love this one because in line with Romero’s earlier zombie films, it shows us the zombie meme and its politics were with us well before the millenial angst hit us all upside the head. Plus the plunky plunk organ and that line about the pumps… and Bowie.

Yet now
We feel that we are papers, choking on you nightly
They tell me “Son, we want you, be elusive, but don’t walk far”
For we’re breaking in the new boys, deceive your next of kin
For you’re dancing where the dogs decay, defecating ecstasy
You’re just an ally of the legion
Locator for the virgin King, but I love you in your fuck-me pumps
And your nimble dress that trails
Oh, dress yourself, my urchin one, for I hear them on the rails
Because of all we’ve seen, because of all we’ve said
We are the dead.

Rage against the pop-up machine

Seems there was a disturbance in the Force over the past few days. With pretty quick succession, I encountered these two rather excellent posts: Why startup urbanism will fail us and Everyone I know is brokenhearted*. The first one reminded me of Fuck your popup shops – another good read. The second hit home for a whole bunch of people.

These spent today chatting to each other in the back of my head while I tried to do a whole bunch of things and wouldn’t shut up no matter what I threw at them, so I think I have something to say about them. First being, I think I have to start making separate posts about music on here but let’s park that for now.

The processes written about in the post about startups seem the epitome of the rage-inducing situation so epically covered in the one about heartbreak. Watch as yet another semi-decent idea like letting small-scale experimental things have some space in the city, gets hijacked as yet another tool for someone to extract wealth with, probably while displacing the people who were already there, like, y’know, living their lives. Watch the fetishisation of innovation; the hyperbolic, hyperactive scramble to find and develop the next goddamn Thing. Because clearly we haven’t got enough Things.

Putting aside the brain-itch inducing, boosterist jargon of so much of the language (pop-ups, startups, coworking, blah blah), the almost inevitable politics of a society and economy conceived and enacted in this way are plain nasty. When I think of the people who are making seriously engaged things really happen (like these guys for instance), there is a noticeable lack of spin. The plague of it amongst contemporary urban patois ultimately is nothing other than marketing hoopla seeking to grease the wheels of the grinding machine of yet more cash being made for someone.

I will eat your soul. Source

What really bothers me, though, is the personal politics that posts like this bring out once they start circulating, which got me thinking about a whole bunch of things about how everyone has become so averse to political debate, activism or, gasp, having a damn good shout about things. The post about everyone being brokenhearted thankfully went there and called on us to stop being reasonable. I think this is crucial.

A couple of things bug me about what happens when you stop being reasonable about unacceptably awful things, especially if you try to have a fairly well-justified shout. One is the avalanche of borderline-delusional intolerance of any perceived or actual negativity by people who don’t think such things are ‘helpful’. This runs in parallel with the advent of quasi-New Age philosophies or political orientations that urge people to ‘be the change they want to see’. A noble vision, but one that so easily slips into Smile or Die – that is, if you can’t positive your way out of this, it’s your fault.

That such thinking oh-so-easily aligns with the imperatives of neoliberalism cannot be coincidence. It’s the perfect religion and politics for neoliberalism, which is why pop-ups and their kin smell so damn bad. Yay. Yay for pop-ups. Transient urban use! What’s not to love? Say ‘yay’ or you’re a party pooper. Ignore the structural violence, dispossessing imperatives and extractive nature of neoliberal capitalism. You just have to yay your way outta this. Yay!! Or it’s your fault.

The other personal political option available en masse seems to be the counterposition of the Very Sensible. The Very Sensible is, sorry guys, usually male, and seems to revel in assuming the Sensible ground and paternalistically dismissing everyone who thinks we might actually be in the squishy stuff, for example, as silly, or over-reacting. Given their usually sort-of-socially-concerned orientation, the Very Sensible should know better, but has somehow become bound up in the workings of the mechanisms that are trying to eat everything on the sodding planet, and so don’t like critiquing it beyond a certain, safe concerned-but-not-being-well-silly stance.

Really, either of these make me want to break things. But how do we act, given this situation? Apart from the mundanely horrific process of sitting down to your morning breakfast while processing yet more senseless death, and trying to remember if/why your job matters, how do we actually make things better (whatever that means?).

If I was to take up the departure point of the narrative of the heartbroken post (and you know I’m going to, so sit back), it would be to mess things up yet further by thinking about the advent and appeal of zombie memes. In the early days, Romero brought us the undead milling in shopping malls, and we’ve watched them shamble, sprint and bleed out across sub/urban landscapes ever since. We even saw them as the avatar of gentrification. And we love it.

I don’t just think it’s the splatter factor.

Zombies like to shop. Source

I brought this up at a conference after seeing Ann Henderson-Sellers give a keynote on how disaster films help us prepare for environmental catastrophe, and the unimpressive subsequent dismissal of her argument by another academic. Similarly to Ann, I think zombie films help us process and try to think beyond the tropes of consumerist capitalism and disillusioned politics. As with the disaster flicks, they don’t advocate a politics other than that of surviving somehow amidst a whole bunch of really ordinary landscapes and human behaviours. Which will be a damn sight more successful than any kind of dogmatic yay-or-die or Sensible-or-dismissed balderdash.

The problem with both is, apart from feeding so easily into the paternalism and victim-blaming of neoliberalism, they try to tell people how to be (which is kinda the same thing). They hinge on someone foisting their druthers on someone else, rather than starting a discussion about working out how to do things without screwing people over – which has to include not screwing over their sense of outrage, fear or whatever else that they’re feeling, or demanding they get rid of these if they are to be acceptable or of ‘use’. The feelings are real. They are what drive us, and ignoring them is weird, inhuman and buys into the dehumanising tendencies of extractive capitalism. Acknowledging them and working out what to do next is what matters.

If we needed an example, we got that too. The Force was getting funky this week. This crowd tilted a train off a man’s leg. No-one told them they had to adopt the right attitude first, or told them that wanting to tilt the train was an over-reaction. Someone saw another human in peril, people gathered, and acted. Right now, a lot of action can feel meaningless in light of the scale of issues we face (hello, climate change…) but there are a lot of us, and we saw how much that train moved.

 

* except for the bit where it implies fellatio is inherently unpleasant and disempowering to the fellator (is that even a word??). I mean, is it just me, or is there something rape culturey about that?

Things about housing that make sense

This week has had a couple of exciting things appear. The first is a working paper from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy on why and how affordable housing should be kept affordable. Whoda thunkit? The Institute’s blog announcement about it is here and the paper is here.

The second is the news from CLT East that their community land trust has got approval to build 50 homes, a doctor’s surgery and three business starters in Stretham, in the east of England. The image is c/- the East CLT facebook page. Nice work 🙂

Noice.

Blowy day in Pootown

I went for a walk to Newtown today. I intended to catch a bus to Newtown, but after a 15 minute ride along the 1km of Addison Rd, decided I was better off walking. Mercifully the driver let me off after we watched two cars inch their way through the turn of lights.

It was a great day for walking – cold and blustery, with occasional mists of near-rain. No, I’m not being sarcastic. I love winter and am very glad to see it haul its Antarctic arse into town, even if it is about 6 weeks late and still largely unconvincing. I had my new winter coat, so was keen to try it out. No such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing.

Walked up Alice St listening to the Violent Femmes. Did you do too many drugs? I did too many drugs…

But anyway, south Newtown, no cheap car parts for you! The local denizen of cheap auto goodies has been flattened and turned into this:

Get your squeegees elsewhere, pal.

Which no doubt means some overpriced and underthought townhouses or – hooray (sarcastic this time) – apartments. Who wants to bet it’s called The Alice?

Meanwhile, these are STILL standing:

We’re just as surprised as you.

Seriously, these have been abandoned for decades. Someone’s land banking for sure. The green bin is a new and conspicuous addition. I wonder just how many of the bricks and other building materials will be secreted away before the owner pleads demolition and rebuild. Oooh! Shiny new townhouses. Executive living. Lifestyle opportunity.

Anyway. I met with a group of households who want to find and retrofit a building to do a cohousing development. There was a cute baby, cake, tea and about 90 mins of my brains being picked. One of my favourite games. Especially when it has cake. Hopefully good things will come. I wish we could see some traction in this city.

Up the road on my way to my next cake instalment, I encountered this:

Communal mouthparts.

There was beer from the local, a dead animal being rotated and burnt, and more beards per square inch than was reasonable. At least now I can say I have been to the opening of a giant pair of lips (a longstanding dream). Seems a local coworking company has acquired a second building, and people were very excited about it. Now I am as happy to ork my cow as the next person, but the sheer mass of hip made me itch. I feel the urge to run whenever I hear the word ‘creative’, particularly when made a noun and then a plural. I also cannot help but giggle when implored to “hashtag us on Instagram!” I’m probably too old for this.

My second cake turned out to be a vat of tea accompanied by a discussion of vibrators (I wonder if that’s the plural form?). A guaranteed tonic. The day ended with spinning the staffie around the backyard at the end of a rubber bone and feeding the caterpillars off the broccoli to the chooks, so it was all good.

At least I didn’t post the picture of the deeply shiny poo I spotted near King St… Ah, Newtown. Home of the polished turd.