MEXICO GAS LINE EXPLOSIONS FORCE MAJOR FACTORIES TO CLOSE DOWN
September 12th, 2007I can’t think of a time in history when the individual insurgent has had such an incredible asymmetric advantage over his opponent. Hierarchical dominator systems—now enjoying primacy on a global scale—exist atop a delicate grid of undefended energy and information infrastructures. With just a bit of intelligent planning, today’s insurgent can turn a small improvised explosive into a weapon of mass profit destruction. Killing soldiers and cops is a waste of time and energy. Killing profits does far more damage to the enemy than killing any number of troops.
Different societies and opponents, however, lend themselves to different forms of asymmetric warfare.
In America (and wealthier parts of the “West” in general), people don’t have to blow up a natural gas pipeline and shut down a factory or cut enough fiber to crash the NYSE and the NASDAQ market systems for a few minutes, hours or days. Voluntary simplicity, or, living well on very little money, kicks evil people in the nuts and gouges out their eyes. (Pacifists may think of this as sending the enemy Joy and Happiness if they desire.) Doing this in the U.S. has a force multiplier effect because the U.S. is the largest source of the funds that keep the global ponzi scheme running. When people in wealthy countries opt out, the action causes major economic damage to the machine.
Look at me and Rebecca. In the “normal” world, in our “normal” careers, we would have an annual combined income of roughly US$100,000. What horror would the U.S. government commit with the portion of the taxes it would demand from us? We now live well on a tiny fraction of what we would make in our “normal” careers. We have no debt. We own our small farm and our vehicles outright. We convert what’s left over at the end of the month into cash savings and gold. We also give money to people who are doing good work.
Whether you decide to leave the U.S. (like we did), or not, doesn’t matter. Living well on very little, encouraging others to do the same and actually funding people who are doing good work (allocating resources to values) are the main tactics of the frugal insurgent.
There’s a big difference between choosing to live well on a low income, on your terms, and being broke on someone else’s. My friend TR summed it up this way: “It’s easier to out through the bottom than the top.”
It’s true.
It’s a matter of hacking The Matrix in an efficient and innovative manner to reduce your monthly expenses to a fraction of previous levels. The extraction/domination system in the U.S. has few effective defenses against people who opt out—to the extent possible—by making smart use of available resources. The system assumes that you’ll stay hooked forever on a lifestyle built around profligate waste and going deep into debt to buy crap that you don’t really want, or need. Indeed, most people are content to go through life this way.
Living simply on very little money kills the system slowly. This is actually a good thing. Why don’t I advocate all out war against the many Achilles heels in the infrastructure of the American Corporate State? It’s simple really: nuclear weapons.
Threaten the system too fast and too effectively and the release of nuclear weapons becomes increasingly likely. The U.S. is not going to simply fade away without a fight. The greatest trick of all for U.S. Military commanders will be to prevent the release of nuclear weapons as U.S. power declines.
After so many decades of genocide and theft, the U.S. has made many, very real enemies. Those enemies might use sudden infrastructure collapse as an opportunity to deliver a kill shot to the U.S. The chances of cooler heads prevailing in the U.S. will be lower with massive infrastructure attacks threatening the country. Such attacks could easily be perceived as the opening phases of a Strategic Information Warfare campaign by a foreign military.
Therefore, while it’s easy to theorize strategic infrastructure attacks against U.S. targets, the law of unintended consequences, especially with regard to nuclear weapons, should cause any would be insurgents to consider very carefully, not just the severity, but the pace at which their attacks are to unfold.
In other words, stop buying toothpaste and grow your own tomatoes! Start somewhere, and use the sense of power and accomplishment to find other ways to resist, teach others and direct resources to help people who are doing good work. In a society like the U.S., defunding fascists via voluntary simplicity is the most effective form of resistance that I am aware of.
In a society like Mexico, though…
Via: AP:
More than 60 per cent of Mexico’s steel production was halted and two major auto plants, including Volkswagen’s only manufacturing facility in North America, shut down Tuesday after explosions claimed by a leftist group cut natural gas supplies.
Petroleos Mexicanos said the attacks on its oil and natural gas pipelines would cause hundreds of millions of dollars in production losses for the state-owned oil company and affect 10 states. Private-sector groups told Mexican news media that the attacks and subsequent precautionary shutdowns would cost businesses close to US$90 million.
Mexico’s steel industry chamber Canacero said Tuesday that more than 60 per cent of the country’s steel production has been halted, and that it could take up to seven days to resume.
In a statement, Canacero said losses would “significantly” exceed the $36 million the industry suffered from similar attacks on pipelines in July.
The six explosions affected a dozen natural gas pipelines and one oil pipeline in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, sending flames and black smoke shooting into the air but causing no direct injuries. The blasts occurred at valve stations where different pipelines intersect.
Industry and national-security experts say the small leftist group claiming responsibility has proved it is a force to be reckoned with.
I don’t get the toothpaste joke.
Just look at what young people did to the recording industry. Yes, a painful lesson for both artists and execs alike, but a mass movement indeed. It is easy to blame “illegal downloads” for end of RIAA, but the truth is far more complex. As small labels were bought up by General Electric and the like, artists were losing out anyway, they would get cut. True artists were starving on the streets, living hand to mouth because they couldn’t get exposure anyway. The bigger name companies went increasingly toward mass appeal, and McDonaldization of music.
Next step, steal the crap they offer because, quite frankly, it wasn’t even worth free. The entire industry were pushing commercials as “art”, but the kids quit buying it. They crave true art, somewhere in their minds en masse, they recognized that their generation’s authentic voice was being obliterated by mass comsumptive noise appropriate for casinos, malls, and Red Lobster dining.
Now they want to sell you ring tones and T-shirts, while cell phones are tapped and the shirt you wear might get you thrown out of class or off the plane. Now the kids are smarter than we give them credit for. The first generation post-9/11.
They have been beaten back quite well, and they are aware of it. Every mass movement of youth engagement in modernity has coincided with a musical revolution. You didn’t see the revolution this time becuase the kids have been beaten to pulp to behave, sit up and shutup or sign up, or get on your knees and pray for the end of the world. What future have we given them? Not a fucking bright one, for sure.
So the brought the industry to it’s knees. Godd for them. For all the artists who never got paid, who got cut, who were used, exploited, left overs, good. For every artist who had real talent, and was overlooked for the likes of Britney Spears and Boyz to Men, good. When we said we wanted our MTV we meant it, and you went and perverted it into one long commericalization of Spring Breaks and Award Ceremonies. Good. Cuz it’s only a matter of time MTV, before you are revealed as the unrecognizable piece of crap you are.
Okay I am done with my rant part, just wanted to point out the similarities of the opt out situation.
People are playing smaller venues, recording themselves, selling at shows, actually plaing for each other, and it is a smaller scale, but boy is there a REWARD! REAL art.
i like it when you write stuff like this. I would say do it more, but maybe you are (like me) someone who needs to save up their rant quota and then let it all out at once. So do it exactly as much as you like. 🙂
It suddenly occurred to me the other day (partly off the back of that ‘The world without us’ book) quite how bad a fast crash would be. Even aside from deliberate launching of nuclear missiles, there is the small problem of unsecured material – like post-1990 Soviet Union, but many times worse. Without people to dismantle nukes, they will eventually degrade and poison their immediate area, but presumably not explode. Probabaly worse would be chemical factories and such like. There’s something in the book about worldwide release of certain materials causing a global poison cloud and/or particulate matter affecting the climate.
Obviously, lots of people could die in any kind of crash, but this stuff needs to be secured, or it won’t just be the system that goes down but a sizable proportion of the ecosphere. I like to think that there would be enough intent and know-how left to do it, but there is a danger that all the people who know where this stuff is could no longer be around. If we were sensible (insert hollow laugh here) we would be using our declining resources to make safe the world right now.
I mean, it’s not that I was (entirely) hoping for a fast crash, cos lots of hypothetical people (other than me) were probably going to die, but suddenly I realised that there is no escaping the system on the global level, that our fates are all still mutually intertwined for good or for ill no matter where we live.
That all sounds really depressing. I’m in quite a good mood today! you should see me when I’m down.
I read the article twice to understand the responses, but all I could come up with was:
ah, the rantings of youth.
A) Emo is still pop.
B) We don’t need nukes to blow up lots of stuff.
C) You’re not not going to be destroyed by nukes. If you are, consider yourself lucky. They want to chip you and take your identity (it’s already happening in China and some parts of the US.)
D) If you don’t learn to forage or farm, you will have to get chipped in the very near future.
E) Based on medical reports this means you will die of cancer.
F) One world government is bad.
G) Any unity crap you hear in your “classic music” between smoking spliffs is to get you into the idea of saying “F*** you” to your national identity so you can be a more pliable tool.
H) You likely have no idea of what I am talking about and think I am a troll.
Congrats, Kev. You are the new Eddie Vedder for this 15-minute period 😛
Funny how some people cannot seem to comprehend plainly written English. I wonder what language they do understand? Fox? CNN? NYT? Newspeak? Please Kevin, don’t let your offspring become a “product” of the “education” system.