[-empyre-] WH vs sanctuary cities

[Alan Sondheim]

Hi Brian, for me the key here is the phrase "the blind violence of war" - 
but this war, these wars, are precisely not blind on any level - not only 
the obvious ones of surveillance, hacking, drones, etc., but also in 
terems of destruction and its consequences. The regime does not care about 
collateral damage; the rich (Mike Davis et al) remain enclaved, and that's 
fundamental. An example is this:

"What the U.S. House of Representatives did today actually a very narrow 
majority of the House was shameful. Cruel. Callous. Venal.

The vote in favor of H.J. Resolution 69, authored by Alaskas Rep. Don 
Young, was 225 to 193. Those 225 members voted to overturn a federal rule 
years in the works, and crafted by professional wildlife managers at the 
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service  to stop some of the most appalling 
practices ever imagined in the contemporary era of wildlife management. 
Denning of wolf pups, killing hibernating bears, spotting grizzly bears 
from aircraft and then shooting them after landing, and trapping grizzly 
bears and black bears with steel-jawed leghold traps and snares. The stuff 
of wildlife snuff films."

Again: "This eye-opening gap is also growing rapidly: Over roughly the 
last 15 years, life expectancy increased by 2.34 years for men and 2.91 
years for women who are among the top 5 percent of income earners in 
America, but by just 0.32 and 0.04 years for men and women in the bottom 5 
percent of the income tables.

When we think about income inequality in the United States, we think that 
low-income Americans cant afford to purchase the same homes, live in the 
same neighborhoods, and buy the same goods and services as higher-income 
Americans, says Michael Stepner, a PhD candidate in MITs Department of 
Economics. But the fact that they can on average expect to have 10 or 15 
fewer years of life really demonstrates the level of inequality weve had 
in the United States." (MIT news)

We like to think that war is blind, that somehow it represents a 
fundamentally "crippled" condition. But today that isn't the case; war is 
simply one of many actions carried out by regimes, militia groups, and so 
forth; it is literally daily bread. The US has an increasing number of 
militias, neo-nazi groups, etc., as well.

War is a culling by any means possible.

I find my own theoretical underpinnings, by the way, dissolving in a 
recognition of brute force, a force which has been a long time coming.
One of our main environmental interests here is in the caretaking of 
manatees off the U.S. eastern coasts. They're dwindling in numbers, but 
they're potentially being taken off the endangered species list (and that 
itself may be eliminated). There are only a few thousand left. For 
researchers and environmentalists, it's easy to identify them - every 
single one of them, except for very young calves, are recognized by the 
brutal scars on their back, left by boat propellers. It would be easy to 
stop this (which also results in death of course) - prop guards are 
inexpensive, but the boaters and skiiers fight back on this. There's no 
blindness here; everyone knows what's happening, manatees are monitored, 
thermoclines of waters around power plants are studied, etc. But people 
who might make a difference don't care.

I think this all of this requires a different model of violence - not 
blind violence, but all-seeing violence, big-data violence which also 
presents foresight and hindsight, theory and analysis - a kind of violence 
where the only blindness might be modeled by snow-blindness, too much 
light, too much knowledge. But data mining also involves totalizations and 
analysis - it's never just raw - and the violence is one, I think, of 
total knowledge and analytics. From the position of a gun collector or 
high-income enclave, no one cares.

And it's a long way from Vietnam, say, where the over-stated Pentagon kill 
stats (etc. etc.) needed unraveling (again I refer to Fire in the Lake).

Finally, there's not, of course, just one or two wars (Native American 
lands, environments), there are many; the country seethes with them...

- Alan (hope I'm not off the mark here)