On this edition of Media Roots Radio, Robbie and Abby Martin discuss the notion of structural violence within the corporatocracy and the pipe dream of the ‘free market’ when it comes to the idea that deregulation results in corporate accountability. They also outline the latest developments in 3D printing, and talk about how the technology could be as revolutionary as the Internet by democratizing production and manufacturing, leveling the playing field for innovators all over the world.

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Some of you may already be familiar with Zeitgeist, a controversial documentary film trilogy that challenges everything you think you know about the world. If you aren’t, do yourself a favor and get acquainted.

The first movie release, Zeitgeist, analyzes the social constructs that keep humanity’s consciousness stunted; Zeitgeist: Addendum dissects the unsustainability of the current economic system; The epilogue, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, outlines the notion of structural violence, mechanization and the blueprint for a new system – one that can exist harmoniously with nature.

The viral film series has since spawned a global collective called The Zeitgeist Movement or TZM, an international initiative of activism and awareness pushing the notion that the current social and economic structure is inherently flawed, and must be transformed in order to ensure a sustainable future for all.

The Zeitgeist trilogy, as well as its follow-up Culture in Decline series, have challenged many of my preconceived paradigms as well as greatly inspired my activism, so it was awesome to sit down with Peter Joseph, founder of The Zeitgeist Movement Global, for an in-depth interview. Whether or not you agree with his philosophy, it’s undeniably thought-provoking and deserves to be heard.

Abby 

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Peter Joseph Breaks the Set on The Zeitgeist Movement

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“What we have been living for three decades is frontier capitalism, with the frontier constantly shifting location from crisis to crisis, moving on as soon as the law catches up.”

Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine is a book that shifts your socio-political paradigm even if you didn’t know that you had one.

Klein’s pointed, clear cut and stimulating parallel of shock therapy to our government’s own shock based, corporate fueled crusade is jaw dropping. After reading her book, my retired activism resurged with a stronger and more cohesive message: end corporate rule.

While I wouldn’t necessarily call her book uplifting, there is something about the unveiling of a previously blurred reality that feels refreshing; it’s a naked, un-photoshopped, un-moisturized truth that invigorates you to react.

Ignorance isn’t bliss, it’s ignorance. Real progress cannot manifest on the false notion that the people have democratic control, so the longer we pretend that the United States isn’t a kleptocratic plutocracy, the longer we allow its government to pillage our rights and destroy our planet.

It’s the same idea that Klein highlights in her latest article, ‘How Science is Telling us all to Revolt’ in New Statesman.

Over the course of history, science has provided us a wide array of truths – from the earth being round to dinosaurs and Jesus not kicking it together in the deserts of Israel. Now, science is concluding that our economic paradigm is a threat to ecological survival, and the only way the future can shift away from its cataclysmic doomsday is through pockets of resistance.

Despite the At the American Geophysical Union’s 2012 Fall Meeting, complex systems researcher Brad Werner, presented “Is Earth Fucked? Dynamic Futility of Global Environmental Management and Possibilities for Sustainability via Direct Action Activism.”

Werner created an advanced computer program that found, through a series of complex calculations, that “global capitalism has made the depletion of resources so rapid, convenient and barrier-free that ‘earth-human systems’ are becoming dangerously unstable in response.” And in response to the “Are we fucked” question, Werner said, “More or less.”

The hopeful spin atop this morbid scientific certainty?

Revolt.

As Werner calls it, “people or groups of people” that “adopt a certain set of dynamics that does not fit within the capitalist culture.” At the very least, these people are slowing down the inevitable destruction of the natural planet.

In other words, we can avoid the man-made destruction of the earth by giving a shit and doing something about it. 

The idea of caring about the world around you is not alien – it means taking stock of your surroundings and processing them in a meaningful way. It begins with disseminating the truth amidst the corporate media sewage by seeking out alternative sources of information.

Thankfully, independent media is blasting out these stories every hour of every day worldwide, despite the extraordinary efforts to keep them buried. Throughout the intake of information about the self-destructive nature of the current system, you will probably feel overwhelmed with anger, disappointment, disgust or a viscous blend of the three.

From this stage, action is almost inherent.

The truth then permeates from print to mind to mouth, from conversation to conversation, Facebook post to day of action.

As Klein says:

“…the truth is getting out anyway. The fact that business-as-usual pursuit of profits and growth is destabilizing life on earth is no longer something we need to read out in scientific journals. The early signs are unfolding before our eyes. And increasing numbers of us are responding accordingly: blockading fracking activity in Balcombe; interfering with Arctic drilling preparations in Russian waters (at tremendous personal cost); taking tar sands operators to court for violating indigenous sovereignty; and countless other acts of resistance large and small.”

Throughout human history, all social and political change has come about through a unified resistance with pointed demands.

There’s a reason why our rights to free speech and assembly are being stripped from us – they are the tools with which we can and do fight the corporatocratic takeover of the US and the planet. So, if by using these inalienable rights on which this country was founded makes me a rogue agent, two posts and a melody away from the ‘no-fly list’, so be it.

This is how I fight, and this is how I will continue to fight.

How will you?

And do not x out of this window thinking that it wouldn’t amount to anything if you bothered to actually do something. Consider Werner, the pink-haired geophysicist.

As Klein points out,

“He [Werner] isn’t saying that his research drove him to take action to stop a particular policy; he is saying that his research shows that our entire economic paradigm is a threat to ecological stability. And indeed that challenging this economic paradigm – through mass-movement counter-pressure – is humanity’s best shot at avoiding catastrophe.”

By following his passion for computer models and geophysics, Werner has not only engaged in a far-reaching activism, he’s scientifically demanded for it.

If everyone felt that what they did wasn’t big enough, nothing would ever change. Every dictatorship would be alive and well, with the 99% merely complaining over their shackles and rations.

Even a share of this website is an act of resistance.

Let your passion fuel and guide you. If you have an enthusiasm for film making, fuse that with socio-political commentary. If you have an interest in baking, make 99% cookies using only non-GMO ingredients and spread awareness through a bake sale. These may seem negligible actions when projected against the great wall of corruption facing us, but remember that even the biggest wall is only comprised of smaller pieces.

Each one of our small acts, when united, are 99% bigger than their wall. So as science recommends and our reality demands: think, react and do something.

Written by Eleanor Goldfield, activist and member of the band Rooftop Revolutionaries. Watch an interview with Eleanor on Abby Martin’s Breaking the Set.

Austerity is a word we don’t hear much in the United States, as business elites, politicians and the corporate media avoid saying it at all costs. Instead, they talk at great length about “deficits,” “out-of-control spending,” and the need for all of us to “share the pain.” This is a convenient dodge and an intentional one, for it shifts attention away from the Super Rich and the unprecedented upward redistribution of wealth we’ve experienced in the last forty years.

People in the rest of the world, as well as people of color here, by contrast, are all too familiar with austerity. They’ve been force-fed in large doses over many years, largely to the benefit of U.S. investors and often literally at gunpoint. Though each case varies, the general scenario is similar: to qualify for much-needed, high interest loans, states around the globe cut social programs, submit to privatization of public services, bust unions and slash wages while loosening regulations that protect the environment and workplaces.

The results invariably are the further impoverishment of the vast majority, greater profits for investors and an increase in the purchase by states of the weaponry required to quell the social unrest that generally follows (weaponry the U.S. is all too eager to supply). Never mind the misery of large swaths of the populace, the violent repression of dissent, overflowing prisons or all those dead bodies; to business elites, all are acceptable offshoots of profit-taking. Name a country in the global South and it has almost certainly been through this ringer, often more than once and sometimes with no end.

Now the same phenomenon is being inflicted on the people of the industrialized North, beginning with Europe, which was hit earlier and more harshly than the United States. With few exceptions, the people of the nations of Europe have experienced a decline in recent years in their living standards, all except for corporate and banking elites, who are wealthier than ever. Since the fall of Communism, Eastern Europe – to cite just the most extreme case – has become a huge new source of highly profitable investment opportunities for global capital, and the resulting pauperization of that part of the world has, for now, shattered the dreams of 1989-90.

The U.S. is no longer immune to austerity and President Obama’s decision to slash Social Security and Medicare benefits is only the latest blow. As living standards for most of us fall ever lower, the richest of the rich grow ever richer, far richer than any ruling class has ever been. Austerity is and will continue to be a truly bipartisan affair and liberals who think the Democrats are a significant alternative and right-wingers who believe the Democrats have been taken over by Marxist-Leninists would do well to consider that 1.) more wealth was redistributed from the 99% to the Super Rich under Clinton than Reagan and 2.) President Obama, with his cohort of Goldman Sachs advisors and GE executives, is carrying out virtually the same policies as his predecessor.

For much of the 20th century, a large portion of the U.S. population was shielded from the ravages of global capitalism and believed they had a stake in empire. Though those illusions are rapidly being shed, many turn not to resistance but to narcotics such as alcohol, pornography and sports; more ominous is the state’s incessant and intimidating call to rally around the flag in opposition to this season’s bogeyman – Saddam Hussein, Qaddaffi, Chavez, bin Laden, Assad, Milosevic, Aristide, Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Un, and on and on and on.

The most effective and dangerous ploy, however, is the Super Rich’s trick of fomenting divisions within the populace where they might otherwise be united. Thus we get the hilarious spectacle of welfare queen Michelle Bachmann, a long-time recipient of large agribusiness handouts, rallying a segment of the population by railing against benefit programs for the poor and working class, her words received by the intelligentsia with grim seriousness rather than the derision they warrant.
From the Arab Spring to the ongoing and frequently massive demonstrations in England, Portugal, Spain, Greece and other countries in Europe to – perhaps most significantly – the Bolivarian Revolution sweeping Latin America, the dictates of the business class have been met with extraordinary resistance. Domestically, vibrant organizing in communities of color along with Occupy Wall Street and its hundreds of offshoots are leading the way. The tasks now are to revitalize the Occupy spirit, expand resistance and strengthen solidarity with people around the world who are fighting the same battle we are. Those are not easy tasks but the alternative – the rise in human misery to previously unimaginable levels – is increasingly becoming reality.

Andy Piascik is a long-time activist and award-winning author who has written for Z Magazine, The Indypendent, Counterpunch and many other publications. He can be reached at [email protected].