Mr president, tear down these dams

Green politics, Natural World
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Paul Greenberg has a modest proposal:

Throughout the United States, there are tens of thousands of dams that today serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever. Most of them were built on streams and rivers during the Industrial Revolution, providing mechanical hydropower to textile mills and other private manufacturers, primarily in the Northeast. But as manufacturing moved away from New England during the 20th century, many of the companies that built and maintained these dams went bankrupt. Unfortunately, when they closed up shop they left their stream barriers in place.

While these dams were once a way of building up the American economy, today they represent a tremendous force pulling it down. Dams, even when they no longer serve industry, continue to do one pernicious thing very effectively: block the passage of fish to and from the sea.

And salmon represent just a tiny percentage of the sea-run, or “diadromous,” fish that could be recovered should non-power-producing dams be removed. Principal to river ecosystems are shad, eels, alewives, and other smaller fish that yearly make the run either from salt to fresh or fresh to salt. These “forage” fish are the short-term credit of marine ecology. Practically everything eats them, from delicious white-fleshed striped bass to tasty summer flounder to thousand-pound bluefin tuna. Remove them from the ecosystem, and you are depriving the fish we love most of their best source of protein. Return them, and you have the potential to increase the biotic wealth of the ocean profoundly. Imagine the value to the American economy of a fisheries sector producing surpluses rather than running deficits.

Politicised punishment

Activism, Policing
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The Flying Rodent expands on the same Blood & Treasure post I commented on below and argues:

Similarly, judges frown upon people being assaulted in the Houses of Parliament and attacks on policemen, not least because they also frown upon attacks on judges, but also because the H’es of P and the cops are symbols of democracy and good order. For obvious reasons, those who make the law want citizens to think twice before getting into boxing matches with the constabulary.

Now, you might think this is unfair. You might think it’s scandalous and symptomatic of whatever societal ills, but the one thing it isn’t is politicised. Get caught committing these types of offences, and it’s Wormwood Scrubs for you. If anything, half of these folk could’ve been given far worse sentences and they wouldn’t have had many grounds for complaint.

With which I disagree much more than I did with Jamie’s post. Not so much the idea that if you engage in civil disobedience you should be prepared for jail time, but the idea that the laws under which you are convicted are not politicised. If you punish an attack on a cop more than the same attack on a citizen because the former is a symbol of “democracy and good order”, how is that not a political decision? That’s the state arguing that crimes against its representatives are more harmful than crimes against ordinary people so should be punished harsher. Which is a view of the state that’s political, small c conservative.

Furthermore, consider Otis Ferry. Remember him? The twatty son of popular rock star Bryan Ferry, who invaded parliament back in 2004 to intimidate MPs into voting against the hunting ban? He got a 450 pound fine for his offence, but Jonnie Marbles got six weeks. Same offence, well, minus one pie, different punishment.

Activists need to own their activism

Activism
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Jamie says, activists need to own their bullshit:

There’s certainly a case that the sentences that he and others have got are on the harsh side. There have also been cases, as in the Fortnum occupation, where demonstrators were hauled up on highly dubious and somewhat draconian charges that were later dropped. But there’s an odd note of naivety in the discussion about these things, almost a kind of reverse Baader-Meinhof syndrome. The RAF believed that selective acts of terrorism would cause the state to drop its democratic façade and reveal the true violence of its nature. Certain protestors these days seem to believe that the state and associated power holders are bad people doing bad things, but also that unstructured and sometimes potentially dangerous acts of random activism will cause them to reveal their true cuddly nature. In this, there’s a strong air of acting up to get daddy’s attention and then being surprised when you don’t like the kind of attention daddy gives you.

Very much agree with this, though it still galls to see a hapless idiot like marbles having to go to prison for pulling a stupid prank, when fsckers like Murdoch pere and fils are largely left alone. More seriously, civil disobedience does not necessarily include having to accept the punishment the state decideds to hand out for your activism. Punishing Rosa Parks for sitting in the wrong in the bus was legal but wrong. Not that Marbles was a Rosa Parks.

The only thing worse than being harassed…

Feminism
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Melissa McEwan on how for some women, not being harassed on the streets by assholes like they see happening to other women makes them question their own self worth, even though they’re fully aware that this harassement is not in any way desirable:

It’s a terrible predicament, this place of horrible and shameful “envy,” that most women (especially feminist women) probably experience at one time or another during their lives. An older woman finally free of being hit on and cat-called and told to smile may suddenly “miss” the harassment the despised, because its void is not born of a long-sought respect, but of a silent commentary on her diminished worth as a sex object per the Patriarchy’s horseshit standards. Two female friends of different races might alternately “envy” each other for the unique forms of objectification by which they’re respectively targeted: She gets harassed by people who ignore me because she looks like the Girl Next Door. She gets harassed by people who ignore me because she looks Exotic. Etc.

Everyday authoritarianism in America

Civil liberties, Natural World, Video
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Found this video by accident, a couple of young dudes on a road somewhere in the US being stopped by a copper because the passenger is videotaping his mate, which is supposedly illegal.



What I actually wanted to see was this video, for Palau: a baby sloth yawning:



Which just is the most adorable thing I’ve seen in a long time.