go on cryptic pseudo-intellectual ramblings all you want, but don't
come crying to this list when your (own/child's/friend's/wife's/etc)
pay and conditions or community centre or playschool go to the dogs
because no-one thought it was worth the effort to offer you/them
support.
please remember there are *real people* behind the email addresses,
and, indeed the ILWU.
with "unctious concern" for the field of critical geography in general,
ant
Quoting Jon Cloke <[log in to unmask]>:
>
>
>
> My, my – I spend so much time attempting (I think) to provoke
> some kind of genuinely critical debate in a forum allegedly dedicated to a
> topic I love beyond reason, and the posting that attracts the most attention
> for months seems to do so merely because it contains the word
> ‘fuck’. And even
> then you wait until I’m in Nicaragua helping to set up some workshops on a
> strategy for alternative energy in Central America before you approach the
> cavern of the troll Supercilious, torches in hand, egging each other on with
> boasts about the adultness of your combined attack….
>
>
>
> Let’s first of all examine the etymological psycho-social
> hinterland of our field of combat, shall we? Glib – “artfully persuasive in
> speech”: plainly you don’t mean that; “having only superficial plausibility”:
> well, it could be, except that the concept of the entire Pentagon wetting
> itself doesn’t seem even remotely plausible, does it… “marked by lack of
> intellectual depth”: now then, I think
> we might be approaching the nub of the matter.
>
>
>
> Lack of intellectual depth… entirely disassociated with, for
> example, phrases bulging in objective empiricism such as “to advance
> international left solidarity”, a concept so outside considerations
> such as ‘doxa’,
> or ‘simulacrum’ as to re-invent the phrase ‘unbegotten monad’. If
> the apogee of
> your critical analysis is represented by tired, shallow clichés such as this
> then I am heartily glad that you are ashamed of me.
>
>
>
> “Immature self-indulgence”. Mmmm, I love the sound of
> sonority in the morning, don’t you? It sounds like, like…. Vacuous
> orotundity,
> the full-bodied slithering of self-justifying autochthones braying gently in
> the Jurassic air, the sun made hazy by the heated out-gassing of
> insufficiently
> digested verbiage.
>
>
>
> “This action….is important” – not. Back in the day, those of
> us who read (for instance) the Socialist Worker in the UK
> will remember the section dedicated to new struggles. You remember, the one
> with bullet points that went: “Comrades working in the
> flange-grinding section
> of the Leyland factory in Coventry have come to the end of their tether with
> the increasingly anti-proletarian oppression of the Thatcherite
> junta and have
> vowed to go on permanent strike… this represents the 17th such
> workshop of less then 7 people to take action this year and plainly
> represents
> a strategic blow to the fascist-running-dog-hyenas of the…” etc., etc.
>
>
>
> If you want to call yourself left, then get on with it and
> don’t include me in your idiomatic, 19th century, senile maunderings.
> If you want to call yourself ‘progressive’, or ‘critical’, then a)
> go and look
> at everything on the World Social Forum website (just put that into Google),
> including all the documents in the archives and b) get a life.
>
>
>
>
>
> With unctuous concern for your future politico-philosophical
> well-being,
>
>
>
>
>
> Jon
>
>
>
>
>
> Date: Sun, 4 May 2008 10:43:21 -0400
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: ILWU shuts down all US west coast ports to protest war
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Thank you, Andrew.
>
>
>
> On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 9:41 AM, Andrew Cumbers
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Jon
>
> I don't think glib putdown comments like yours are going to advance
> international left solidarity and build bridges between different
> groups of activists, if that is indeed what you are interested in. I
> for one am ashamed that a supposed critical geographer is capable
> of such immature self-indulgence.
>
>
> This action by a major US union which, as the article says, is
> strategically placed to make powerful interventions against global
> capital, is important. Anyone with a passing interest in the
> contradictory, often deeply conservative, and sometimes imperialist
> history of US unions and their foreign policy will recognise an
> intervention such as this against the 'War on Terror' as highly
> significant. Your remarks do nothing but patronise and insult those
> courageous workers who have taken the action.
>
>
> Andy
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: A forum for critical and radical geographers on behalf of Jon Cloke
> Sent: Sat, 5/3/2008 8:03pm
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Subject: Re: ILWU shuts down all US west coast ports to protest war
>
>
>
> "Today the International Longshore and Warehouse Union has thrown a
> wrench into the American war machine."
>
> "On Thursday, May Day, the International Longshore and Warehouse
> Union will declare an eight-hour strike."
>
>
>
> An *8 hour strike*? Fuck me, I bet that's got the Pentagon wetting itself....
>
>
>
>
>
> Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 14:35:40 -0400
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: ILWU shuts down all US west coast ports to protest war
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
> Dear Critical Geographers,
>
>
> This is a response I wrote after reading about the dockworkers
> strike on the west coast and in south africa in the article
> forwarded by Deb Cowen.
>
>
> Happy May Day,
>
>
> Dean
>
>
>
>
>
> Mayday! Mayday!
> by Dean Bavington
> Today the International Longshore and Warehouse Union has thrown a
> wrench into the American war machine. The ILWU controls all ports
> of entry along the U.S. Pacific coast and workers are refusing to
> load or transport marine cargo to protest the horror that is the
> Iraq war. Last week longshore workers in South Africa refused to
> unload a Chinese container ship loaded with weapons bound for
> Zimbabwe. These political acts of solidarity inspire hope and
> reveal that the present is pregnant with possibilities given the
> obligatory passage points that exist in the global economy.
>
> Unlike capital which can flow at the speed of light anywhere on the
> planet, material human and natural resources become bottlenecked due
> to the labor and energy required to move them to markets to be
> consumed. The virtual circuit of capital is still limited by
> material and experiential realities. Biophysical and sociocultural
> constraints dictate the maximum speed of capital accumulation. At
> obligatory passage points like the dockyard in marine transport
> systems, those whose labor is needed to "keep the capital goods
> moving" can control profits, capital aggregation, and reinvestment
> rates. Capitalists realize this, and by constantly innovating and
> updating managerial technologies continuously design new ways to
> keep the resources flowing through the necessary capital
> accumulation networks.
>
> One of the best examples to illustrate how capital accumulation has
> altered nature (and how unsustainable it has become) is to focus on
> the material and energy flows associated with industrial agri- and
> aqua- culture. The world's industrial food system (and the price of
> food) is driven by the dynamics of three main commodities:
> petroleum and biofuels, soy, and anchovies. Meals and oils made
> from a handful of plants and pelagic fish species (Brazilian farmed
> soy and Peruvian anchovies respectfully) comprise the crucial
> material components of the world's industrial food system. The
> commodity price of soy meal and oil is heavily dependent on the
> success of a handful of corporate Brazilian and American soy
> producers and global demand for biofuels. The world's supply of
> fish meal and oil is heavily dependent on the fortunes of the
> Peruvian anchovy fishery. The commodity price of fish meal and oil
> fluctuates with El Nino/El Nina events since the cyclical currents
> in the Pacific influence the spawning success of anchovies that
> make up over 70% of the world's fish meal and oil market.
>
> The complex interconnections and price fluctuations among these
> three exchangeable industrial oil commodities (fuel, soy, and fish)
> dictate the dynamics of industrially produced chickens, pigs,
> cattle, and fish that are processed into industrial foods primarily
> for the world's one billion overdeveloped, clinically obese people.
> The 800 million underdeveloped malnourished people in the world are
> left to compete with the expanding gas tanks of hundreds of
> millions of cars and the ravenous mouths of billions of
> industrially farmed chickens, pigs, cattle and fish for the
> calories, carbohydrates, protein and fat necessary for bare-life
> survival.
>
> Most natural and human resource management involves assessing,
> developing and learning how to predictably engineer flows of fuel,
> soy and fish oils and attempts to deal with the consequences of
> their production and consumption. If those deemed "resources"
> resist integration into global commodity chains and cycles (even for
> just one hour or day) the extremely profitable but ultimately
> precarious accumulation process ceases. Herein lies great hope and
> danger.
>
> Happy May Day!
>
>
> *Dean Bavington's work is presently centered on critiquing
> managerialism--the processes through which life is transformed into
> human and natural resources in the service of capital accumulation
> and reinvestment. He can be reached at [log in to unmask] and
> www.deanbavington.com
>
>
>
>
> On May 1, 2008, at 11:32 AM, Deborah Cowen wrote:
>
>
> Longshore union strikes against war
> By PETER COLE
> GUEST COLUMNIST
>
>
> On Thursday, May Day, the International Longshore and Warehouse
> Union will declare an eight-hour strike to protest the war in Iraq.
> Since the ILWU controls every port along the U.S. Pacific Coast,
> including Seattle and Tacoma, this strike demonstrates the
> collective power of workers willing to use it.
>
>
>
> The ILWU is demanding "an immediate end to the war and occupation in
> Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the
> Middle East." Although the majority of Americans repeatedly have
> expressed their desire to end the war, President Bush has not
> obliged us, so it drags on. Because our leaders refuse to listen,
> ILWU members are taking the next logical step for workers: Strike.
>
>
>
> For those unfamiliar, the ILWU is perhaps the most militant and
> politicized worker organization in the nation. It operates in one of
> the most important sectors of the world economy -- marine transport
> -- and, thus, is in a strategic location to put peace above profits.
>
>
>
> Forged in the fires of 1930s worker struggles to gain basic rights,
> the ILWU was born in 1934 when longshoremen (there were no women in
> the industry then, though there are now) performed the incredibly
> hard, dangerous and important work of loading and unloading ships.
> To improve their wages and wrest some control over their lives, men
> all along the coast struck -- and in a few instances died -- to gain
> union recognition.
>
>
>
> The ILWU is highly democratic. A caucus of more than 100 longshore
> workers representing every union local establishes policies for the
> Longshore Division. It was this caucus that voted to declare the May
> Day strike.
>
>
>
> Dockworkers, including those in the ILWU, have a proud tradition of
> political action. For example, in the 1980s the ILWU respected the
> strike of British dockworkers by refusing to unload a ship worked by
> scab labor. Just last week, union longshoremen in South Africa
> refused to unload a Chinese vessel carrying military supplies
> destined for autocratic Zimbabwe -- a tremendous example of
> solidarity.
>
>
>
> That the ILWU chose International Workers' Day to declare this
> strike suggests its political commitment and internationalism.
> Around the world, workers honor labor by taking a holiday. What few
> Americans know is that the tradition of a May Day strike originated
> not in the Soviet Union in the 1950s but the United States of the
> 1880s.
>
>
>
> These days, such examples of worker power are increasingly rare in
> the U.S. The tragedy is that, historically, labor activism gave us
> the 40-hour workweek (and the weekend) and helped humanize the
> exploitative excesses of unregulated capitalism. As income
> inequality continues to grow in the United States, it is wise to
> remember how, in the past, strong unions created a larger middle
> class as well as a more democratic and egalitarian nation.
>
>
>
> The ILWU strike also reminds us that unions still have an important
> role in public discussions beyond the workplace. As a democratic
> institution, the ILWU is precisely the sort of "civic society" that
> the Bush administration has been trying to create in Iraq. On May 1,
> dockworkers will speak loud and clear -- end the endless war in
> Iraq. Other American workers who want to support our troops by
> bringing them home can make their voices heard by joining with the
> brave men and women of the ILWU and taking the day off.
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Colleen McTague
> Director of Undergraduate Studies
> Department of Geography
> University of Cincinnati
>
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