13 [Horizontal] Reasons to be Radical

By the DisOrientation Guide Collective

Although it’s commonly used nowadays as a synonym for “extreme” or “crazy,” the actual definition of the word “radical” is “of the root,” or “pertaining to the root.” Radical activists, then, seek to address the root causes of our major social problems, instead of merely treating the symptoms. The list below is chock-full of the aforementioned type of problems — namely, major ones — all of which our present political system is woefully unequipped to deal with. For our proposed radical solution to all the radical problems, you’ll have to wait until lucky number 13. Once you’re done reading this, we strongly encourage you to go out and fuck some shit up!

1. Peak Oil Theory: As the theory goes, global oil supply will “peak” sometime between now and 2012, after which the price of so-called “Black Gold” will skyrocket; travel and food delivery will become exceedingly difficult; the petroleum products we take so much for granted (plastic, for example) will no longer be viable; the global economy will collapse; and a cascade of major warfare will take place between major state powers contending for the world’s few remaining major oil reserves. Unfortunately, the theory is essentially bullet-proof, and even major petroleum companies have quietly starting admitting to its validity in recent years. There’s no solution to this problem in our present political system, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a solution (Big Hint: wait until you get to No. 13).

Recommended Reading: The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age by James Howard Kunstler; www.lifeafteroil.org

2. What Uncle Sam REALLY Wants: In short, he wants to dominate the globe and extract economic resources from the vast majority of the regions of the earth, regardless of the implications for the people living there or the natural world. The US spends nearly as much money on its military as every other country in the world combined. In an effort to project its global and economic rule on a global scale, our government has poured billions of dollars in weapons sales and economic aid “client regimes” to enact genocidal policies against their populations; ordered numerous CIA-organized coups of democratically-elected governments; and waged several of the bloodiest wars of conquest in world history, including the massacre of over three million Vietnamese from 1960-1975, 1.5 million Iraqis from 1991-2005, and 1.4 million Filipinos from 1899-1902. Proof of the maxim that, in the current global system, countries are only as powerful as they are violent.

Recommended Reading: William Blum, “Killing Hope” - http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/American_Empire_KH2004.html; What Uncle Sam Really Wants by Noam Chomsky (available online at www.zmag.org/chomsky/sam); A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

3. The Iraq War: From the moment petroleum was first discovered in Iraq, the biggest fear of US business, government, and military leaders has been that the country’s vast oil reserves will fall into the hands of an autonomous Iraqi government that would use them to enrich the country’s starving and impoverished people, rather than further enriching and empowering those in power in the US. That’s why a brutal thug like Saddam Hussein enjoyed a mutually-beneficial alliance with the US government for over 30 years, it’s why the US turned on Saddam as soon as he got just a wee bit too ambitious by invading Kuwait, and it’s why the US military continues to occupy and exert nearly an iron-fisted influence over Iraq’s “democratic” government today. Consequently, tens of thousands of people have died in this repulsive war, the natural environment of Iraq has been wrecked, and the US government increasingly can’t afford to fund basic services for its people (education, health care, disaster relief, etc.).

Recommended Reading: Iraq Under Siege edited by Robert Fisk; http://www.occupationwatch.org/; http://costofwar.com/

4. The American Holocaust: In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, landed on the mass of land known today as “Haiti,” and promptly oversaw the systematic mass murder of thousands of Arawak indians. By conservative estimates, the population of the land mass now known as the “United States” prior to European contact was greater than 12 million. Four centuries later, the count was reduced by 95% to 237 thousand. US termination policy against Native Americans was perhaps every bit as genocidal as the Jewish Holocaust, if not as efficient. Today, indigenous peoples continue to fight to stave off cultural genocide in regions all over the world, and little has fundamentally changed.

Recommended Reading: A Little Matter of Genocide by Ward Churchill; www.thirdworldtraveler.com/history/american-holocaust.htm

5. Neoliberal Economics (i.e., “Globalization”): The set of ideas used to justify the increasing concentration of wealth and resources in the hands of a marginal number of global elites. See our article posted at www.sbdisorientation.org for more details.

Recommended Reading: Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins; The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi; Global Village or Global Pillage by Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello

6. Global Ecocide: An estimated 214,000 acres of forest are cut per day, an area larger than New York City (North America alone has lost 84 percent of its forest since European arrival). About 50,000 animal species are driven extinct every year. Thousands of pounds of plutonium and scores of other radioactive toxins continue to irradiate the earth. We all know about global warming. For the sake of the dead tree this guide is written on, we won’t bother continuing this list in much more detail, but suffice to say that if things continue as they are, the planet will soon be totally uninhabitable.

Recommended Readings: A Green History of the World by Clive Ponting; A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen

7. Topsoil Erosion: An incredibly serious and under-reported environmental problem is that the uppermost layer of soil in the ground, which plants generally concentrate their roots in and obtain most of their nutrients from, is being blown and washed away at an unprecedented pace. Modern industrial logging and agriculture have increased topsoil destruction to levels never before believed possible. To date, the US (which is far from alone in this trend) has lost roughly 80 percent of its topsoil. Estimates say we won’t be able to continue life as we know it in 20 years unless this trend changes.
Recommended Reading: Topsoil and Civilization by Vernon Gill Carter and Tom Dale

8. Global Racism: A problem that manifests itself in all spheres of life and complicates all of the ecological and economic processes, such as those mentioned above. The concept of race has been used throughout history by certain groups to legitimize exploitation and crass injustice. Racism, as an individual perspective, and a social structure is alive and well. It’s not enough to not be racist. In this world, one must be a vigilant anti-racist.

Recommended Reading: The World is a Ghetto by Howard Winant; Harvest of Empire, A History of Latinos in America by Juan Gonzalez

9. Global Patriarchy: Probably the most fundamental of problems, male dominance, violence, and masculinity gone awry is everywhere in our culture and politics. Major inequalities between men and women can be found in almost every society. Violence and ostrication of anyone whose sexuality differs from the heterosexual norm is everywhere.

Recommended Reading: Undoing Gender by Judith Butler; Feminist Theory, From the Margin to the Center by Bell Hooks

10. 1984 = Now: “When you go to work, stop at the store, fly in a plane, or surf the web, you are being watched. They know where you live, the value of your home, the names of your friends and family — even what you read.” Sound like a description of Oceania from George Orwell’s 1984? Nope, it’s a quote from Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow’s ultra-disturbing 2005 expose, No Place to Hide. The society he’s referring to is the United States in the year 2005.
Recommended Reading: No Place to Hide: Behind the Scenes of Our Emerging Surveillance Society by Robert O’Harrow; www.noplacetohide.net; Welcome to the Machine by Derrick Jensen and George Draffan

11. WMD, All Around: There are over 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world, with more than a thousand of them ready to launch at a moment’s notice, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. To make matters worse, the US seems increasingly intent on leading the world into a new nuclear arms race and, earlier this year, reaffirmed its so-called right to wage a “pre-emptive” nuclear strike.

Recommended Reading: The New Nuclear Danger by Helen Caldecott;
www.lasg.org
www.wslfweb.org
www.trivalleycares.org
www.wagingpeace.org

12. The Prison System and the “War on Drugs”: The US prison population now totals well over two million people, roughly 500,000 more than any other country (China is a distant second). Fueling the prison boom (from which numerous private corporations profit mightly) is largely the US’ farcical “War on Drugs,” which has prompted the number of non-violent, drug-related arrests in the country to skyrocket in the past 20 years. What makes this expanding system of incarceration all the more appalling is its fundamentally racist nature. Relative to population, roughly seven times as many black males are incarcerated as white males.

Recommended Reading: Are Prisons Obsolete? By Angela Davis; www.ednotinc.org

13. The Answer is Us: We can’t rely on this broken system of corporate “charity” and “representative democracy” to provide a magical remedy to these problems. As 1950-60s Civil Rights organizer Ella Baker observed, “People have to be made to understand they cannot look for salvation anywhere but themselves.” We have to take matters into our own hands, in ways both big and small. While problems of this magnitude will ultimately require a mass collective solution, propelled by the grassroots participation of millions of people, don’t feel like the only way to be radical is to go out into the street and protest: get confident by calling someone out in class, discussing your new-found consciousness with your friends — being radical is a process, and find the starting point that’s right for you.
Recommended Reading: 2005 UCSB DisOrientation Guide