Front De Troglodistes

I'm completely blown away. I've just heard that NYC indymedia activist, and a great and funny guy, Brad Will was murdered by paramilitaries in Mexico. I haven't seen Brad in at least two years. I haven't been involved in activist stuff, other than my own projects, for that long, so I am in no way in the loop. But this is really awful. We were never close friends, but I always thought well of him. I met him for the first time ages ago at a microradio conference in Vegas, when he was with Steal This Radio in New York and I was with Radio Clandestina in LA. We crossed paths many times over the years and overall he was a great guy. Truly sad news. More info here:
http://publish.indymedia.org/en/2006/10/849305.shtml

I’m about to confess something that I think many North American activists secretly know to be true but have never had the nerve to say aloud: protests don’t work anymore, they may have worked in the past and they may still work to some degree on small focused campaigns but, generally, protesting is a futile and ineffective activity. If you don’t believe me, then name an American protest movement in the last 25 years that has accomplished anything of significance. Anyone? Anyone? Yeah, I can’t either. One could suggest the anti-apartheid movement of the 80's and 90's, but in that case we were just doing our part and in no way can it be said that the American anti-apartheid movement was directly responsible for the defeat of apartheid in South Africa--that distinction goes to the South African people and to exile groups like the British AAM (ACTSA). What about the anti-globalization movement? Well, what about it? For American activists, it was a fad, the political equivalent of ugg boots, and it collapsed like the rest of the left in the wake of that stiff wind called 9/11. What about the contemporary peace movement? Just kidding, no one would seriously suggest the contemporary peace movement has accomplished anything.

What if you count direct action as form of protest? Well I do, since what passes for direct action among North American activists is not direct action at all, it’s really just another form of symbolic protest. While it’s true that you may be able to find the occasional direct action campaign that saves a copse of trees somewhere in the Northwest or frees a few hundred puppies from a research lab, at the end of the day, even the most impressive victories through direct action are nullified by the overall rapid destruction of our environment and the wholesale slaughter of animals worldwide. It’s pretty astonishing when you think about it: such a huge chunk of activist’s time and effort goes into planing, promoting, and attending protests. Yet, if you look at the results we get from our labors it’s not just astonishing, it’s shocking.

Why do we keep doing things we know aren’t working? Part of the reason stems from the reactive nature of American activist culture. We don’t make things happen, we react to the awful things that other people make happen. We haven’t been really active, in the sense of actually creating the world we want to see, since the labor movement and anti-fascist movements of the 1930's. Add to this a simple lack of imagination and an unwillingness from most activists to buck the stifling dominant activist culture of “protest, rinse, repeat” and the result is the marginalized ineffectual state of affairs we have now. But even all these reasons pale in comparison to the simple fact that we really don’t know what we want. Of course, we know what we’re against, but we only vaguely know what we’re for. The left has no coherent plan for changing society, and it’s a pretty sad state of affairs when marginal nutball groups like the Revolutionary Communist Party have more coherent plans than anyone else on the left. The RCP’s plan is horrible, scary, and as old as the hills but at least they know what they want.

And so does the right wing in this country, they know exactly what they want. But unlike the RCP and most left groupings, they know how to play nice with each other. The right, like the left is composed of a plethora of large and small groups with agendas often seemingly at odds with each other. The more radical groups are just as committed to accomplishing their goals as any radical left group. Why are right wing groups able to accomplish so much? Because they know what they want and they have a plan to get what they want, and they don’t sweat the small stuff like ideological differences. The ideological differences part is where the left gets stuck every time. People on the left seem to enjoy arguing about things like how the liberals will betray “us” and try to water down the “revolutionary message” of this or that protest or campaign while the liberals and “progressives” have an all too eager tendency to turn on or distance themselves from the people who are willing to take the most risks.

When you know what you want and you have made a plan for yourself to get what you want, you tend not to waste time with ideological arguments or other bullshit. It’s only people stuck in the political backwaters who care about ideological minutia and the whole left is in a political backwater. But the most marginalized and irrelevant groups and sects best illustrate this because they have nothing better to do but complain about the authoritarianism of other irrelevant and equally powerless groups--yes I’m talking about you my anarchist friends. I’ve read lengthy dire treatises from anarchists on the danger to the left from dogmatic newspaper selling clowns because they organize protests better than anarchists can. I don’t know about that, but I can tell you what IS NOT in danger: the left IS NOT in danger of becoming relevant while broken up into little sects that stare up each other asses the live long day. And the left IS NOT in danger of doing anything worth a damn while we focus on protests at the expense of organizing in the real world among real people.

It’s actually funny that people on the left think huge protests are really important because, guess what? No one else thinks this. No one cares. You’re arguing in a vacuum. You are people no one cares about criticizing other people that no one cares about for engaging in activities that no one cares about. What the fuck is wrong with all of you?

I’ll admit, I’ve basically said most of this before, and the last time I tried to be more restrained and even handed, but I’ve grown really tired and disgusted. I don’t really want to be restrained and even handed about this anymore, it’s too important. How bad does it have to get before we pull our heads out of our asses? I’m going to make things real simple so that it might sink in to even the slowest and the most hidebound. Leftists love their lists of demands, so here’s my list of “demands” to the left in general and anarchists in particular.

1) Protests are a show of strength, nothing more, if you have no base you have no strength and if you have no strength, no muscles to flex, then don’t organize large protests.

I don’t know how I could make it simpler folks! Protests used to be a way to show the world how many people you had doing real-world things. The protest was not an end in itself, it was a way to show the world how strong your movement was. What you did outside of the protest is what mattered and what made the protest itself even relevant. We don’t have this anymore. Now protests are the only thing we do, it’s an end in itself and the most significant activity that most activists engage in, which is to say that most activists don’t do anything of significance. Can activists legitimately call themselves “activists” when all they do is protest in one form or another?

2) We want to have political and social power or we don’t. If we don’t, then stop wasting the time of people who do want to have the power to change things. Either shit or get off the pot.

This goes for anarchists in particular, but also the left in general. It’s time we faced the fact that, gee, we want to have power. We want everyone to have the power to change their own lives, but to want everyone to have power is to still want power. Stop being coy about this and start acting like you mean it. Stop acting like you’re asking a hypothetical fucking question and start making it happen. Either that or just shut the fuck up, stay home, and jerk off to your Spanish Civil War posters.

3) If you are even remotely serious about changing the world you’re going to have to work with people you don’t necessarily agree with. Duh!

You have no base. You are completely fucking irrelevant. The only hope you have of doing ANYTHING at all is by working with other groups that might not agree with every word that comes out of your mouth. And by “working with”, I don’t mean attaching yourselves like some parasite to a protest that other people did the heavy lifting to make happen and call them fascists when they are not entirely cool with your plans that you didn’t even have the courtesy to run by them in the first place. It’s just pathetic folks. I’ve been to too many of these kinds of fiascos and I’m embarrassed to have defended some of the shitty things that anarchists had unilaterally chosen to do at these things. Protesting is generally a waste of time, but it’s even more pathetic when you have to hijack someone else’s waste of time because you couldn’t be bothered to organize your own.

Even anarchists need to compromise. This isn’t the revolution and there isn’t going to be any revolution anytime soon. If you want something to happen and if you actually believe in things like participatory decision making then you are going to have to accept viewpoints that are different from your own and hammer out some course of action that may be watered down a bit, but might actually lead somewhere. Either you intend to make your ideas mainstream or you’re just fucking around. And if you do intend to make your ideas mainstream, then you have to get out there in the world and work with people who don’t think like you. There is simply no other way, anyone who tells you different is full of shit.

4) Understand that if you are not building institutions, then you are doing nothing to change the world.

In their heyday, the communists had schools, summer camps, neighborhood organizations, they had sympathizers and fellow travelers elected to political office, their organizers where among the backbone of the labor movement, they were organized and they had solid institutions that they could use as a base to realize their goals. The religious right now have similar institutions in place and they are growing stronger by the day. If you are not changing existing institutions or building new institutions to replace existing ones, you are doing nothing. Don’t kid yourself. You can chant till your blue in the face, wave signs until your wrists break, break enough windows to affect the stock price of glass manufacturers and nothing you have done will even come close to the people who unionize a workplace, or found radio stations, coops, or alternative schools and universities.

Just to be clear: what I mean by founding an institution is not the same as setting up a flophouse for your cool friends or an exclusive club that admits only the ideologically pure. Anarchists and other radical activists do a lot of things that cosmetically resemble institution building but are actually just bullshit projects to impress people in the scene. Ban “infoshop” from you vocabulary and learn words like “mutual aid society”, “grassroots medical insurance”, and “cooperative”. Fuck! Even founding a credit union has a more positive impact on society than some sign waving song and dance.

5) If you’re not thinking about how people will feed and clothe themselves, or how things will be made, or how the trains will continue to run after you’ve taken over society, then you’re just not serious.

I’ve heard it all before: this will all take care of itself after the revolution...but we don’t need trains anymore ‘cause trains destroy the earth...we’ll all go back to the woods and live as hunter-gatherers...we’ll all put on our chairman mao suits and live as shiny happy workers in a smokestack ridden socialist paradise. Blah, blah, blah. Tell it to someone who gives a damn. Oh, that’s right, no one gives a damn about any of this. That ignorant rabble we claim to want to liberate obstinately insists on having indoor plumbing and living in a house with heat and electricity, they want to have a better standard of living than what they have now, they actually think working in a factory sucks ass, the philistines!

If your plan for changing society does not seriously take into account how society is going to function, if you’re not doing the work to make sure society actually will function after you’re done, then all your high-falutin’ ideas are little more than shit-talking. Not breaking the basic functionality of society is pretty key and if you intend to make your ideas mainstream you should know that instinctively. Now, I know that some people want to totally break down society and see it go away, but I’m not talking to them. Let the misanthropes have their fantasies, I’m only interested in the people who are trying to make things better, not worse.

I can already hear the criticism of this piece: You’re arguing for mere reformism...you want us to emulate the right wingers and the communists...you’re telling us to abandon revolutionary praxis (whatever the fuck that is). But these criticisms will all be wrong. What I’m advocating is that people actually get serious about what they claim they want and believe.

It’s easy to go to protests and to organize them, it’s even easy to get arrested--people get arrested all the time, it’s really no big deal. (I have always felt a bit like an ass for even thinking of feeling somehow noble for going to jail for a few hours and getting treated a million times better than the shoplifter in the cell next to me.) None of these things requires a life commitment, although some people do make a life out of this and similar activity. What does require a life commitment is institution building and union and community organizing. But that kind of work is boring and often thankless, it also requires competence and responsibility, and spending tremendous amounts of time with ordinary people who don’t dress cool or listen to hip music, who might be a bit racist or a bit sexist, or who just might simply be insufferable assholes. However, with these people lies the only hope of changing this society for the better. Until, activists get out there among these people and start actually building the world they claim they want to see we aren’t doing anything at all.

This is an informal guide I’ve put together after doing a lot of research on buying a new car and I thought some people might find it useful. I am not an expert on any of this, I’m simply sharing what I’ve learned from doing my own research. Obviously, the most ecological choice you can make when it comes to buying a car is to not buy or own a car at all. Unfortunately, for a great many people, particularly in rural and suburban areas, going car-less is not an option. I hope this guide will help people who cannot practically do without a car make the most ecological choice of vehicle.

Shopping Suggestions:

Buy used: From an ecological perspective, it’s better to buy a used car over a new car and it will also be a lot cheaper for you. However, used cars tend to have more mechanical problems than new cars, so if you buy a used car, I would recommend buying a fairly recent used car that still has at least a year or two of the manufacturers warranty still in effect. Also, as cars get older, they tend to be less fuel efficient unless they are very well taken care of. Very old cars (more than ten years old) tend to be less fuel efficient, less safe, and will cost you more in parts and repairs. I’m assuming most people reading this do not know how to fix a car themselves, so unless you are a mechanic who can do your own repairs I would avoid buying a used car older than, say, seven years. (Should you keep a car, longer than seven years? Yes, if you take good care of it. Just don’t buy one older than that.)

In addition to used cars, there are essentially new cars that you can often purchase for a significant discount off the full retail price and still have many of the benefits of having a completely new car. Some nearly new cars you can find at a dealership include:

The test drive or showroom model: Some small dealerships, expecting their customers to order the exact car they want (with accessories and options), will have only one or two cars of a certain model for display and test drive purposes. These cars will often have milage in excess of 100 miles giving you room to bargain on the price. If you can settle for the showroom or test drive model on the lot you can often get a better deal on the price, and you will also be helping to save on the use of fossil fuels from shipping and manufacturing a new car that you have custom ordered.

“Damaged in shipping” models: almost all well connected dealerships will get a few cars from the manufacturer that had problems in shipping and can’t be sold as new. For example, some foreign cars often get doused with sea water when they are aboard ships en route to the US or they get soot on them from the ship’s exhaust. The car is otherwise perfectly fine and still brand new, but due to manufacturer’s quality standards and some state laws they must be sold at a discount as used. Ask about these kinds of cars when you go to a dealership. Again you will be saving on the use of fossil fuels by not ordering a custom car, and you will be getting a new car at a discount.

Buy the car that will get the job done: If you really need a pick-up truck to haul materials around, it might make sense to just get a pick-up instead of a vehicle that does not suit your needs but is more fuel efficient. However, you should make sure that you really do need a pick-up or an SUV. Do you mostly just need all-wheel drive? Then maybe a Subaru wagon or their Baja mini-truck might be better than a pick-up since all Subaru’s are all-wheel drive, are better made than other AWD vehicles, and have better gas milage than most other AWD vehicles. Do you need to haul stuff around, but you really don’t need as much space as an SUV or truck provides, then maybe you should go for a fuel efficient wagon, like the Toyota Matrix, or a flexible compact, like the Honda Fit. But in the end, if you really do need a truck or van, then get one since it’s better to use a truck to make one trip hauling things than making two or three trips, or more, with a “fuel efficient” vehicle that isn’t suited to your needs. Just try to get a fuel efficient truck if you must get a truck or van. As for SUVs almost no one actually needs an SUV. I would avoid buying one even if it’s a hybrid.

Hybrid vs. Diesel: While diesel vehicles get much better milage than their gasoline vehicle counterparts, the best hybrids (Toyota Prius, Honda Insight) get vastly better milage than any diesel vehicle. Diesel vehicles are also dirtier than gasoline vehicles, even with the new cleaner burning diesel fuel. However, one major advantage of having a diesel vehicle is that it can be converted to biodiesel. If you have the equipment and resources to use biodiesel then, diesel is the correct choice for you.

Is the most fuel efficient car the best choice?: Not always. Take the Honda Insight, for example: it is the most fuel efficient car available in North America and one of the most fuel efficient cars ever made. But, unfortunately, it’s a two seater. A two seater is fine if you’re a single person who lives alone, but if you have a family or roommates, or you would like to have more space for storage, it’s not such a great choice. If you’re not single, or you want to further minimize the environmental impact of owning a vehicle by car pooling, then a hybrid like the Toyota Prius is the wiser choice. What about hybrid SUVs? I say they’re still SUVs and should be avoided, even if they get better (even respectable) gas milage. In reality, there is an incredibly small number of people who actually need SUVs or other large vehicles. More than 90% of all private vehicle owners would get along just fine with a regular mid-size car, or even a compact or subcompact. Hybrid or not, don’t perpetuate the blight of SUVs on the road by buying one.

Some good sites to help you make an informed decision about your next cars fuel economy and emissions standards

Greenest Cars of 2006

fueleconomy.gov - fuel efficiency and vehicle emmisions data

EPA Green Vehicle Guide

Driveclean.CA.Gov


Manual Transmission vs. Automatic Transmission: As a rule, manual transmission vehicles are much more fuel efficient than automatics. With a manual transmission, the driver has complete control over the vehicle’s engine. It is claimed that with modern automatic transmissions, the milage difference between automatic and manual transmission vehicles has become negligible, however, even with a hybrid car like the Honda Insight (which is the only remaining manual transmission hybrid still on the market), if you check the EPA MPG estimates for the Insight’s manual and automatic versions, the manual transmission model has a significantly better MPG rating than the automatic. One key gas saving trick that you can’t do with an automatic is coasting in neutral. A skilled manual transmission driver can save quite a lot of gas by taking every opportunity to coast in neutral (rolling down hills, rolling up to a stop, etc.). If you know how to drive a stick or you’re willing to learn, buying a manual transmission vehicle is invariably the best choice if it is available for the model you wish to purchase.

eHow Guide: How to Drive a Car with Manual Transmission

How to drive a manual transmission (stick shift) car

Busting the Myths of Driving a Manual Transmission - How not to drive a stick by Edmunds.com's editor in chief

Some manual transmission driving tips from personal experience: 1) Press the clutch ALL THE WAY DOWN when changing gears, every time you change gears. You’ll either wear down the engine or the clutch or both if you don’t press the clutch to the floor every time you change gears. 2) As a beginner, when familiarizing yourself with a manual vehicle: press down the clutch and start the engine, keep the parking break in place and put the car in first gear, then slowly release the clutch. When the engine starts to sputter push the clutch back down to keep the engine running. Keep doing this until you have a feel for where the clutch completely engages. This will make it much easier for you to get the hang of the clutch and to start driving with fewer stalls.

What are the best car makes: this is my opinion, but it is backed up by data, I suggest: Toyota, Honda, and Subaru (if you need AWD). Avoid American cars, they simply suck quality wise. Speaking generally, no one else comes close to Japanese cars in terms of quality. The best objective resource for quality car makes is Consumer Reports car buying guide. If you want free advice, you can usually just do a google search for Consumer Reports top 10 most reliable cars and use that as a starting point for your research.

After you’ve bought the car: to maximize your fuel efficiency, you should start learning good driving and car maintenance habits. The following links can provide you with some good general tips on improving fuel economy and the life of your car.

Car Talk’s Guide to Better Fuel Economy

Tips to Increase Your Gas Mileage

Synthetic or Conventional Motor Oil: Which is Better for the Environment?

I have to confess that my last post was basically just an unedited collection of paragraphs on this subject. I had too many points I wanted to make and I just gave up on organizing them and just posted what I had. Here are two better written commentaries that say what I was trying to say much more clearly:

Matt Taibbi
I, Left Gatekeeper: Why the "9/11 Truth" movement makes the "Left Behind" sci-fi series read like Shakespeare

Matthew Rothschild
Enough of the 9/11 Conspiracy Theories, Already