this was an email conversation between two of us today… first for the stimulius which we were debating.

The Original email…

“let me know what you think.

http://fixedgeargallery.com/2008/sept/2/Cestovatel.htm

1st Response email…

so, my first observation is that he is very content with simplicity. his mountain bike is obviously wal-mart quality but he only sees it for it’s utility rather than aesthetics. maybe it’s just a function of his circumstance, being a underpaid volunteer in a third world country which helps him to think this way, of it could be a social conscious that says he probably should not go all out on a bike in Nicaragua, or it could be the kind of ignorance of what quality really is that misleads so many in our society into a sense of peace which evades people like us because we know too much about quality and the lack of it.

also, he is a peace corps volunteer. people volunteer for things for different reasons. he could be volunteering because he really cares about the people in his host country, because he dosent know what to do with his life, because he thinks the experiance would benefit his learning experiance or a variety of other reasons. what i’m trying to say tho is that i think most ppl join the peace corps for selfish reasons. they want to feel good about themselves, have a certian cliched experiance popularized by the beatnic literature or just learn about the world and travel for free. of course, good people with good intentions do join, but if thats the case, we should look at the wisdom behind his decision, because of what we know about how our gov. uses the organization.

this means that if he really is a volunteer for self-less reasons, he probably dosent have enough history and economic theory to really understand the implications of his actions, which makes his out look on his bicycle less relevant. in other words, even if he is trying to keep a low profile with his bike and ride something that wont make him stand out too much in the eyes of nicaraguans, his efforts and concepts about activism and his role in a third world country are probably misguided.

on the other hand, if he does understand all the vagarities of the nicaraguan economy, us imperalism and the usary of the peace corps by the policy elite, then he probably believes his bicycle really is of a high quality, and is very happy with his shitty shimano components and tiawanese bicyle with the crank that breaks all the time.

let me know what you got out of it.

2nd Response email…

i got nothing but warmness, but that might just be me

And finally, you can guess what the final response to this might be….

A friend let me know about this struggle, and I felt compelled to pass it along.

” I don’t know if you’ve already heard about this, but these days in Korea there are candle demonstrations’ being held in downtown Seoul almost every night, against the government’s recent agreement with the U.S. on the import of American beef that has high risk of transferring mad-cow disease. 10,000 people, at least, to 60,000 at most gather at the place called Cheong-gye which is, ironically, the current president’s most well-known accomplishment as a former mayor of Seoul of turning the old and dirty place into a modern, water-streaming, river walk sort of facility where young people hang out and enjoy their nights. Now it’s a place of grassroots opposition, against the president who boasts his career with Cheong-gye.

The candel demonstrations were first seen back in 2002 when two U.S. military tankers ran over two school girls, either by mistake or on purpose, but the officers and soldiers responsible for the accident were aquitted by the U.S. military court over which Korean police and prosecution has no jurisdiction. Citizens voluntarily took to the streets holding up candles and demanding the trial of those responsible by the Korean court, which of course did not happen.

 The interesting and, more importantly, different thing about the candel demonstrations taking place now from those of 2002 is the composition of the people gathered at Cheong-gye: they are mostly middle and high school girls, yes, not boys, but girls. In 2002, though the majority were grassroots, it was mainly political groups and activists who led the demonstrations. Let’s say, the former started it, the latter took it over. The demonstrations were eventually labeled anti-American, pro-North Korean propaganda, losing popular support. The candels of 2008 are enormously different: it is just too hard to imagine that 13, 14, 15 year-old school girls have any sufficient knowledge and understanding of the medical science associated with the transfer of mad-cow disease, nor would they have serious ‘political’ motivation behind their uprising. What promoted them to rise?

Many thinkers, both liberal and conservative, are trying to interpret their behavior, the former saying that youngsters are siding with the left and the latter saying the kids are propagated and organized by anti-American leftists. But none of them seems to have come up with the right analysis. Why students, not from universities but from middle and high schools? Why more girls than boys? Do they know what they’re doing?

Having studied in Cleaver’s class, it seems to me that the students are refusing not (only) mad-cow disease but what’s been suppressing them: the capitalist organization of life in which they’re forced to study like souless zombies and become productive workers. Those now in their teenage have been notoriously exploited by their parents who, ironically, are the generation that resisted military dictatorship and capitalism in the 1980s.

Having realized the importance of having stable, highly-paid jobs during the asian economic crisis in 1998, their parents forced their children to study more crazily than any other generation in Korea. News reported for the last 10 years the lives of 8, 9 year-old kids who studied until midnight after school.

But they now realize, seeing my generation in their mid and late 20s, that even if they win the capitalist competition in school and enter good universities, they will experience the same thing that my generation is experiencing: unemployment. Why study crazy and win over their friends, if their future will be no more different than what they see with us now? I came to this conclusion having heard the criticisms made by some people that the students don’t know shit about mad-cow disease but they just want to quit studying and goof off. Yes. Precisely. That’s what they’re doing. They’re posing a productivity crisis. In fact, students do really make speeches against detention and excessive studying in school. As they say: “we study crazy trying to enter good universities, but we might die eating american beef provided through school meal service. Even if we don’t die, we’ll be unemployed after graduating from university.” 

You know, I used to ask my self why my generation does not have the willingness and power to resist, and submit to capitalist competition more obediently than any other generation seen on this peninsula. Part of an answer could come from the fact that when we saw Korea in economic crisis in 1998, we were already in high school and thought that studying hard is the only way to be successful and avoid unemployment. So we did but the result is more serious unemployment. Teenagers know this. Two days ago, the peaceful candle demonstrations partly turned violent after participation by older generations, including university students and activist groups. 37 people were arrested, one of whom was a high schooler. Where is all this going? What is going to happen? I don’t know. It just started taking place this month. I’ll have to keep watching. “

Make sure you check out the pictures on iReport @ http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-26354

You get John Hagee, a Christian Zionist, endorsing, Republican presidential candidate John McCain. What a lovely combination.

Here is the low down on Christian Zionism.

Basically it disregards Judaism in the present day as a legitimate religion, by in the long run “saving Jews in the latter days”, along with the political agenda of the area where the recently reestablished nation state of Israel is located. This religious movement is guided by the Christian Bible in its most literal of ways. At what point does faith begin to take US-Israeli international politics by the reigns? At what point does the American’s tax dollar begin to influenced someone he will never know but, but will truly impact. At what point does an American’s freedom of religious exercise begin to be another’s politics?

Here is the article to the McCain-Hagee relationship.

    The actor Jason Scott Lee who can usually be seen bruising it up in the big screen can no be seen in a documentary on his new way of life of existence without exploiting our natural resources. Living Pono is the name of the documentary. Here is a YouTube excerpt of the documentary with him so you can get an idea of how he lives. It’s rather nice, simple and bit attractive. It looks so happy.

The realization that it’s irrational to be concerned with one aspect of social problems without being concerned with the others struck me today. And although many of us are concerned with multiple facets, some find it convenient to be an environmentalist for example, but not a workers’ rights advocate.

Take the case of food discarded by a grocer. The grocer receives a case of individual jars of pasta sauce, but one jar breaks while sitting in the store room. Instead of cleaning up the remaining jars and stocking the product, many retailers just throw the whole mess out.

It has to do with the opportunity cost of cleaning the remaining jars up. If the cost of paying a worker to wash the jars is greater than simply ordering a new case of sauce, it’s unlikely anyone will be paid to do it.

This is simple enough and not suprising, still, what led me to this is what happens next. Most commonly, the other 11 or 17 jars will be discarded in the box, without so much as opening the box to look. The point is that perfectly good food is being discarded.

First someone had to grow the tomatoes and other produce using fertilizer, water, seed, pesticide, farm workers’ labor and farm subsidies as inputs. As a side note, most fertilizer in use in the united states today is derived from petroleum rather than manure. The produce is then transported to a canning facility using labor, diesel fuel, and wear and tear on a truck. Canning requires new inputs like crates and glass jars, which also had to be manufactured. More labor is employed and electricity derived mostly from coal is consumed to cook the sauce, sterilize the jars and run the machinery After being canned, the jars are boxed in cardboard made from tree pulp, wrapped in petroleum based plastic on wooden pallets and loaded by a fork lift operator onto a truck.

I could continue, but I think I make the point that natural recourses (water, coal, oil, wood), time, human labor and of course food (something millions are dying from lack of right now) are all utilized so some profit-maximizing retailer can just throw it all in a garbage can.

Having worked for grocery chain several years ago, I know how it goes. if a 24 pack of soda has a damaged can, if a 60 lb bag of dog food gets a small tear, if a piece of produce falls on the floor, it’s store policy to trash it all.

What is wrong with society when all the resources we work to extract from the world just end up buried in a landfill without having been consumed?

The infamous Rachael Love pulled off a badass trick today at the Treasure City Thrift Shop, the Free Market Festival. Having nothing whatsoever to do with free-markets, but rather with bins full of amazing second hand goods that donors took time to gather and donate.

For now, check out the website up for the event, witch will be recurring several times this summer.

http://www.treasurecitythrift.org/node/161

I’ll add a link to some cool pics here when I get them off my camera.

Act now and you can reserve an audience with the pope in the vatican! The total cost will be just 32 euro! What could be better than a cheap consumption based religon that will sell you salvation and a plane ticket at the same time!

http://www.myvaticantour.com/vatican_special.aspx

Now, before I go into this, a disclaimer. I know many of you will read this and think it’s trite and unimportant, but it’s actually very telling of the way a large number of Americans think, and exemplifies the apathy and ignorance of the population as a microcosm of our policy issues.

My friends and I went to see CAKE play at southwestern university last night, which is located in Georgetown, TX in the heart of Williamson county. Williamson county is oppressive to begin with, and for background you can read about their antics at www.eyeonwilliamson.org.

Anyway, I’ve known about the pitfalls of entering that jurisdiction for some time, but until yesterday, I’d never realized how cultural the oppression was. Sure, we waited in line for an hour because police were searching anyone that beeped when they went through the metal detector. Luckily, I thought ahead and tied my camera inside my jeans so they could not see the strap when I pulled my shirt up. Anyway, the event is not the point of this entry, but how it played after I made it in.

After the cover band, I made my way to the stage. I made it a point to let people know I only needed to get in front of them so I could get footage for youtube, but everyone just said the same thing, that I should have got there sooner. Still, I managed to make it about 5 feet from the stage. The whole time, people kept asking me WHY i had a camera, not how I got it in, but WHY I would sneak a camera in. When I told them I was a photographer I just got rude comments like “why don’t you have a press pass?” and “we have rules for a reason!”. I tried to explain, I asked the girls that were complaining about the camera if they wanted to stand in front of me, but they decided to call the stage manager and try to have my camera confiscated. Keep in mind these are 20 something students at southwestern university, the supposed free-thinkers of our country. Yet, all they could think about was that I was breaking the rules, They completely ignored my explanation that the rules were oppressive and arbitrary.

Anyway, after recording several songs from that vantage point, i decided to move back because i could tell they were conspiring. So i fell back 10 feet to a group of friends and had one hold my camera when i was not filming. I managed to fill my 4gb card and get 5 full songs recorded, and the closer to the end of the set it got, the more brazen i became, finally, with the second to last song i was doing a full hail mary got myself seen. luckily tho, it took them until the end of the song to find me in the crowd and escort me out. So, I missed one song, but I stood up to this subtle form of oppression and accomplished my goal.

I’ll post links to youtube when I get the media online.

Social bribery is believing that one’s talent lies in tangible commodities. What is this? I’m not even sure how this got a hold of our e-mail. We can thank our beautiful higher education facility for this.

Conscious Hip Hop