Notes

We Shall Destroy All of Them

1 Quoted in the The Sun, March 2004, 48.
2 I first wrote this sentence using the words would and if instead of will and when. I can’t tell you how good it feels—and how important it is—to use the latter words instead of the former.
3 Schmitt, 7. It all reminds me of a website I heard about the other day: Masturbate for Peace: Using Self-Love to End Conflict (http://www.masturbateforpeace.com). At first I thought it was a brilliant satire of so much of our so-called resistance, with rhetoric like, “Joining this movement is simple. Just masturbate in your own way, focusing your thoughts and energy towards love and peace. Encourage others to do the same.” It also has slogans like “Peace is spiffy, stroke your stiffy,” or “War is silly, whack your willy.” But the site also has a bunch of fairly disgusting stuff, like a link to a photo of a man who pulled the skin off his penis by trying to masturbate using a running vacuum cleaner.
4 See, for example, the rape of women by men.
5 Last year I read about someone who died after being bitten by a shark. She was wearing a wetsuit and swimming with seals. Seals are a major prey of sharks. Wetsuits can make you look like a seal. I remember thinking when I read about this death that with so many risks one can take in one’s life, I do not think that dressing up like shark food and swimming through some sharks’ kitchen is one I want to take.
6 To be fair, some of those killed by police are legitimate killings, where people shoot at the cops, or are men who are holding their wives at gunpoint, and so on. But, and this is really the point, a great many are not. And there is no effective accountability for police who kill. Right now there is a big controversy in San Francisco over whether the district attorney will seek the death penalty for someone who shot a cop, with nearly everyone clamoring for the person’s life. I actually have no problem with that, or would have no problem with it, if those police who inappropriately killed people were subject to the same penalty. There is no acknowledgment of irony in the fact that the same newspaper carrying opinions about executing this person who killed a cop also carrying an article saying that the government is refusing to prosecute guards at a California Youth Authority prison who were caught on videotape beating the hell out of some of the kids under their authority. That is premise four in action.
7 And so far as the war on women, there are plenty of men willing to use their penises to similar ends.
8 The same is true, of course, on an individual level. You cannot make peace with an abuser. You will lose the peace as surely as you will lose the arguments. There is only one way not to lose to an abuser, which is to get that person out of your life. That the same is true on the larger cultural level should by now be obvious. Something else that should be obvious is that on the larger cultural level, we can no longer just leave. If we cannot leave, how will we get the abuser that is this culture out of our lives? The answer seems pretty clear.
9 I much prefer the response I once heard from an activist: “When those in power talk about trying to create a win-win situation, I reach for my gun.”
10 And don’t give me the same old tired line about how, if we individually give these up, the culture will stop killing the planet. We’ve already discussed this, but it just doesn’t seem to matter. You or I changing our lifestyles will not stop the culture from killing the planet. The system needs to be broken down.
11 I am defining winning as I did above: I want to live in a world with more wild salmon every year than the year before, a world with more migratory songbirds every year than the year before, a world with more ancient forests every year than the year before, a world with less dioxin in each mother’s breast milk every year than the year before, a world with wild tigers and grizzly bears and great apes and marlins and swordfish. I want to live on a livable planet.
12 In A Language Older Than Words I said I grew up in Montana. I did this only because my former publisher insisted, because he was afraid my father would sue for libel. It is typical for abusers to use such lawsuits—or even their threat—to silence their victims. The publishers at The Sun even insisted that I use a pseudonym for an interview I did of Judith Herman about the aftermath of violence. If my father was able to impose his will on two separate sets of publishers he has never met and force me, his adult son, to use a fictitious name and tell lies about where I grew up in order to protect him, imagine the degree of captivity routinely experienced by a significant portion of children and partners every day and every night.
13 The redwood trees respond: “I’m sorry, but we do not mew like kittens or sing like whales: they copy us.”
14 I have never claimed that I am never stupid.
15 Both physically and spiritually.
16 Can you say global warming? Cancer? Premature puberty?

Winning

17 The Sun, October 2003, 48.
18 One of the starkest? I don’t know if I want to hear any that are starker than this.
19 Lean.
20 Kopytoff.
21 Even if we’re smart, they’re still going to kill or imprison many of us. It’s unforgivably naïve to think there will not be casualties on all sides, whether we win, lose, or make no attempt.
22 I don’t think that “using the force” would be a tactic, since it’s a spiritual attitude. A tactic would be how Luke flies and what approach he chooses to take to the tube itself. “Using the force” is a way of being. A spirituality or a way of being is not a tactic.
23 I need to be clear that I am not cynical enough to believe all relationships are this way, nor is that my experience. I was speaking specifically of those I’ve known or heard about whose specific goal of marriage was more important than either integrity or the quality of the relationship. I am also thinking about the extremely popular (and extremely morally troubling) book from a few years ago called The Rules™: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right.
24 I guess this would be a strategy. There isn’t really a word for plans to achieve operational goals the way that the words strategy and tactics exist, and in any case the terms are a bit fuzzier than I’m making them seem, as from a general’s standpoint the movement of a brigade might be tactical, but from the perspective of a lieutenant commanding a squad in that particular brigade, such movement would be strategic: it’s all about perspective.
25 I told you that you might not believe it.
26 You could also end up on an aircraft carrier or in Washington, D.C., or South Carolina.
27 And don’t give me any nonsense about how effective we are. If we were effective in the least, the world would not be getting killed.
28 I first wrote “more or less ignoring morality on the larger scale,” but that’s insane: we are not stopping those in power from killing the planet; this is not “more or less ignoring” larger-scale morality, but ignoring it to an outrageous, unbelievable, unspeakably despicable, and most important of all, unforgivable degree.
29 Men, too, are of course trained to hate women, but we probably shouldn’t talk about that, should we?
30 Similarly, women aren’t supposed to hate, lest they be called ballbusters.

Importance

31 I have two problems with this, of course. The first is that Wilson equates men with humans, and the second is that he equates humans with civilized humans. If civilized humans disappeared, the world would be a much richer place.
32 Why anyone would move to a beautiful redwood forest and cut it down to put in a lawn escapes me.
33 I’m editing this section while sitting on a beach monitoring ORV use. Every vehicle I’ve seen so far has been in violation of lax (and unenforced) regulations. For example, just now there are a couple of assholes (note to copyeditor: yes, I am aware that calling an ORV driver an asshole is redundant) chasing down birds and two more trying to pick them off with paintball guns.
34 Along with her extraordinary talent for writing, of course.
35 Larry T. B. Sunderland, “California Indian Pre-Historic Demographics,” Four Directions Institute, http://www.fourdir.com/california_indian_prehistoric_demographics.htm. See also the map “Native American Cultures Populations per Square Mile at Time of European Contact,” also part of the Four Directions Institute website, http://www.fourdir.com/aboriginal_population_per_sqmi.htm (accessed June 4, 2004).
36 Eckert, 709, n. 190.
37 Interestingly enough, the day I wrote these words I received an email attacking me for writing in another book that “trees don’t belong to us anymore than do water or air. They belong to themselves.” The letter writer told me those two sentences pretty much sum up everything that is wrong with my work and my worldview. He also commented, “I suppose a corn plant belongs to itself in your world as well.” Well, yes, it does. Women belong to themselves as well, as do children, rocks, rivers, and all of us. Within this culture the notion that everything belongs to those at the top is as common as it is destructive.
38 Mann. Even if he were correct about the amount of change brought about by Indians, which he is not, he is still, unforgivably, conflating change with destruction. I ask myself the same question about him that I did about Stossell. His transparent illogic about passenger pigeons makes me think he’s a fool, but his comment that anything goes makes it clear that he is evil.
39 Sigh. Can any of these people who support civilization ever say anything about anything without commenting that humans are “thoroughly superior”?
40 Hunn.

Identification

41 Personal communication, October 30, 2001.
42 Or rather your twisted projection of how a predator actually acts.
43 Duh.
44 Also, asbestos in the soil might kill the ORV users. The author apparently does not consider the possibility that this is the land defending itself.
45 Gaura.
46 I mean specifically the wearing of fur by other than those traditional indigenous peoples and other than those who kill and skin animals for their own use, in an ongoing and reciprocal relationship with the communities of fur-bearing animals.
47 I am not suggesting, by the way, that vivisection, factory farming, or factory fishing (or logging, mining, or oil extraction, for that matter) are utilitarian in the broadest sense of helping us to survive, since all are manifestly destructive and cruel. I am talking about perceived utility to the culture.
48 As well as, if I may get all cute and literary, destructively pointless.
49 BLM: three more letters that let me know we’re fucked. FWS would be three more, and USFS would be four more.
50 Consider the consistent refusal by governments to halt the spread of pervasive carcinogenic chemicals by the corporations that manufacture them and the CEOs who run these corporations.
51 Bancroft, 21.
52 Of course the Department arrested precisely zero Pacific Lumber employees for their illegal activities.
53 Hawley.
54 Janet Larsen, “Dead Zones Increasing in World’s Coastal Waters,” Earth Policy Institute, June 16, 2004, http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update41.htm (accessed June 20, 2004).
55 “Deepsea Fishing.”
56 Bruno.
57 Disinfopedia, s.v. “BP,” http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=BP (accessed June 22, 2004).
58 Nancy Kennedy.
59 Ibid.
60 Burton.
61 BP, Steph, http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=2010104&contentId=2001092 (accessed June 21, 2004).
62 BP; Frank, Ellen, and Griffin; http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=2010104&contentId=2001196 (accessed June 21, 2004).
63 “Study Says Five Percent.”

Abusers

64 Caputi, Gossips, Gorgons, & Crones, 53.
65 Bancroft, 33.
66 Ibid., 34, his italics.
67 Ibid.
68 I have known many women whose husbands beat them only on their bodies, never on their faces, because that would show.
69 Bancroft, 34.
70 Ibid., 34-35, italics and bold in original.
71 Ibid., 35.
72 Ibid., 54.
73 Ibid., 151.
74 Ibid., 157.
75 Ibid., 152.
76 Faust, 81.
77 Bancroft, 197, his italics.
78 Ibid., 288, his italics.
79 Edwards, Compassionate Revolution, 81.
80 Bancroft, 43.
81 Laing, 186.
82 With self and other.
83 Bancroft, 63, his italics.
84 Note that I also disagree with his implication that guilt or empathy are specifically human emotions, and to imply that the abuser distances himself from her humanity suggests that were she not human, there would already be the distance that could enable his abuse. I’m not attacking Bancroft here, who I feel does extraordinary work, but merely trying to point out how easy it is to succumb to this culture’s rhetoric of superiority.
85 Bancroft, 196.
86 Ibid., 311.
87 Ibid., 361.
88 Ibid., his italics.
89 And I would say most often not even then.
90 Bancroft, 360.
91 And I would say most often not even then.

A Thousand Years

92 Densmore, 172.
93 DeRooy, 12.
94 “Doing nothing” in this case can include writing letters, holding signs, and other forms of protest if those doing them know their actions are symbolic, in other words, while they may get out a message, they won’t stop the destruction. It can also include writing books.
95 You didn’t know that Himalayan blackberries can speak a form of Latin, did you?
96 Pampas grass is another invasive exotic that gets shaded out when trees come up.
97 Hurdle.

Dams, Part I

98 Gide.
99 Dams and Development, xxx.
100 “Rivers Reborn: Removing Dams and Restoring Rivers in California,” Friends of the River, http://www.friendsoftheriver.org/Publications/RiversReborn/main3.html (accessed July 11, 2004).
101 Glen Martin.
102 Ibid.
103 How often have you heard a man say he doesn’t know answers?
104 Evidently during the Pliocene a species of salmon called the sabertooth salmon grew up to ten feet and weighed as much as 350 pounds.
105 Crane.
106 Montgomery, 181.
107 Ibid.
108 Crane.
109 Ibid.
110 The patching was ad hoc, as engineers crammed timbers, concrete, rubbish, and anything else they could find into the hole. Interesting, isn’t it, how members of this culture act willy-nilly when it comes to destroying things, but have to study everything literally to death before they will act to protect something? It’s insane.
111 Crane.
112 Ibid.
113 Ibid.
114 George Draffan, Endgame Research Services: A Project of the Public Information Network, http://www.endgame.org (accessed July 10, 2004).
115 Through its American subsidiary Daishowa America.
116 Gantenbein.
117 I owe the term Selective Law Enforcement Officers to Remedy, “Mattole Activists Assaulted, Arrested after Serving Subpoena for Pepper Spray Trial,” Treesit Blog, August 27, 2004, http://www.contrast.org/treesit/ (accessed August 27, 2004).
118 “Reviving the World’s Rivers: Dam Removal,” part 4, Technical Challenges, International Rivers Network, http://www.irn.org/revival/decom/brochure/rrpt5.html (accessed July 11, 2004).
119 Leap years.
120 “What’s the Dam Problem?” part 3, Dunking the Dinky Dams.
121 Dams and Development, preface.
122 Paulson.
123 “What’s the Dam Problem?” part 3, Dunking the Dinky Dams.
124 Ibid.
125 Bromley and Kelberer.
126 Dams and Development, xxxi. Note that even these fine people still ignore the natural world, except as it affects things like “downstream livelihoods.”
127 When those at the top tell you that something is going to be profitable and that it will help you, it means they’re going to rob you and assault you if you resist. You have options at that point. One is to surrender. One is to fight back. I am sure there are others. The point is that we often forget that we have options.
128 Dams and Development, xxxi
129 “What’s the Dam Problem?” part 1, Out, Damn Dam!
130 Bromley and Kelberer.

Pretend You Are a River

131 Personal communication, October 30, 2001.
132 Lame Deer and Erdoes, 146.
133 Kathleen Moore and Jonathan Moore.
134 Ibid.
135 Ibid.
136 Montgomery, 29. The rest of the paragraph is from Montgomery; Kathleen Moore and Jonathan Moore; and “Herring and Salmon,” Raincoast Research Society, http://www.raincoastresearch.org/herring-salmon.htm (accessed July 16, 2004).
137 Kathleen Moore and Jonathan Moore.
138 Ibid.
139 Montgomery, 39.
140 Kathleen Moore and Jonathan Moore.

Dams, Part II

141 The Sun, October 2003, 48.
142 Dam Removal.
143 Most of this is from Pitt.
144 “About FEMA,” FEMA, http://www.fema.gov/about/ (accessed July 21, 2004).
145 Harry V. Martin.
146 Steve Wingate, “The OMEGA File—Concentration Camps: Federal Emergency Management Agency,” http://www.posse-comitatus.org/govt/FEMA-Camp.html (accessed July 21, 2004).
147 Harry V. Martin.
148 Ibid.
149 Wingate.
150 Hicks.
151 Ibid.
152 Ibid.
153 Farrell.
154 Hicks.
155 “Learn about EPRI,” EPRI, http://www.epri.com/about/default.asp (accessed July 22, 2004).
156 “About CMD,” Center for Media and Democracy, Publishers of PR Watch, http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/ (accessed July 22, 2004).
157 “Flack Attack.”
158 Patton Boggs, “Profile,” http://www.pattonboggs.com/AboutUs/index.html (accessed July 22, 2004).
159 The article cites one other Interior Department employee who also insisted on anonymity for fear of retaliation.
160 Harden.
161 Barringer.

Dams, Part III

162 Notes from Nowhere, 148.
163 Dams are one reason, by the way, that rich people’s ocean-view houses in southern California are falling off cliffs. The dams stop sediment from reaching the ocean and recharging beaches.
164 McConnell.
165 Bancroft, 311.
166 Ibid., 361.
167 Ibid., 360.

Dams, Part IV

168 Lyons.
169 I’m writing this, for example, while I sit in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, and if you can believe it, I’m even having a good time here. I’m writing! Yay! (Although I must admit that after sitting in this plastic chair for two hours listening to cartoons on the TV interspersed with the loud hacking laughter of smokers, I’m ready to write somewhere else.)
170 In case that’s an important question.
171 There’s a small concrete structure not far from my home that was recently (and legally) refitted to allow fish passage. All that was required was for a notch to be cut into the foot-tall dam so fish could swim through the opening.

Too Much to Lose (Short Term Loss, Long Term Gain)

172 Marcos, 420.
173 Then vacuum packed in plastic. Oh well.
174 By which I mean wild salmon, but it’s true for all salmon as well, since factory-farmed salmon won’t survive the fall of civilization.
175 Thompson.
176 McCarthy, “Disaster.”
177 Bauman, 203.
178 I am indebted to Nita Halstead for this section.

Psychopathology

179 Jensen, Walking.
180 Although inside the psychological and psychiatric industry the term sociopath has come into more prevalent use than psychopath to mean much the same thing, I am choosing the word psychopath because it still seems to hold sway in common usage.
181 New Columbia Encyclopedia, 4th ed., s.v. “psychopath.”
182 Ramsland.
183 Ibid.
184 The bit about growth in marine fish stocks is utter nonsense, of course.
185 Revkin.
186 Atcheson.
187 McCarthy, “Greenhouse Gas.”
188 Duh!
189 Blakeslee.
190 “Antisocial Personality Disorder,” Mental Health Matters, http://www.mental-health-matters.com/disorders/dis_details.php?disID=8 (accessed August 6, 2004).
191 If you consume the flesh of another, you now must take responsibility for the continuation of the other’s community.
192 Whose name has been, of course, stolen by the U.S. military for use in a helicopter used now to kill those who oppose the interests of those who run the United States. Have I mentioned that I hate this culture?
193 Blaisdell, 84-85.
194 I got this simile from Ward Churchill.

Pacifism, Part I

195 Burroughs.
196 Gandhi-ites throw this one at me all the time, but it’s possible that Gandhi never actually said it. The quote is all over the internet, and it was in the movie Gandhi, but David Lean was not known for the historical accuracy of his films.
197 Lorde, 112.
198 Ibid., italics in the original.
199 I am grateful to Lierre Keith for this paragraph.
200 I am grateful to Mary Jensen for these two paragraphs.
201 I am grateful to Tiiu Ruben for this analysis.
202 What the fuck does Gandhi believe that children who are being beaten and raped have on their lips, besides immeasurable courage and compassion (and probably their father’s cum)? Yet this does not stop their fathers. How dare Gandhi say this!
203 Fischer, 380.
204 Ibid., 348.
205 Gandhi, 32.
206 Bancroft, 288.
207 Ibid., his italics.
208 Once again, I’ve yet to see confirmation in print of this line. It’s all over the internet, and it’s in the movie Gandhi. The point is that it’s thrown out ad nauseum and is not out of line with the other quotes we know are his. And I need to emphasize that even through this argument, the point is not Gandhi but rather pacifism, and this is one of pacifism’s rallying cries.
209 “Too Hot for Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader,” Trivial Hall of Fame, http://www.trivialhalloffame.com/Gandhi.htm (accessed August 8, 2004).
210 I’m not alone, by the way, in my distaste for Gandhi. My introduction to this disgust came by way of a student from India in one of my classes at Eastern Washington University. She began my education into the real Gandhi. I’ve since encountered many Indians who do not deify Gandhi the way white activists so often do. In fact, many can’t stand him.

Responsibility

211 Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, electronic ed., vers.1.1, s.v. “responsible.”
212 Online Etymology Dictionary, http://www.etymonline.com (accessed August 14, 2004), s.v. “responsible” and “respond.”

Pacifism, Part II

213 Douglass, 204.
214 Insofar as we can make a meaningful distinction.
215 I’m embarrassed to admit I made this same assertion in my book A Language Older Than Words. I don’t know what to say, except that I hadn’t thought it through. I was wrong.
216 I am grateful to Lierre Keith for this final story.
217 Bettelheim was a terrible person, far worse than Gandhi. He was accused, most probably accurately, of physical and sexual assault on children. His attitudes on autism were despicable: he blames mothers for it. His attitudes on anti-Semitism were essentially as bad: he once shouted at an audience of Jews, “Anti-Semitism, whose fault is it? Yours! . . . Because you don’t assimilate, it is your fault. If you assimilated, there would be no anti-Semitism. Why don’t you assimilate?” But the reason I include a few of the despicable Bettelheim’s sins in a footnote and a few of Gandhi’s in the body of the text is that Bettelheim’s position is not one that people claim carries moral high ground (Bettelheim’s analysis here concerns tactical responses to violence), yet that is, so far as I can tell, the main thing Gandhi really has going for him: his adherents claim (as often and as loudly as they can) that Gandhi’s position carries the day because it carries moral weight. This makes an examination of his own morality and the morality of his positions eminently relevant.
218 Bettelheim, vi.
219 Ibid., xiv.
220 Churchill, Pacifism, 107, n. 19.
221 Bettelheim, xii.
222 Ibid., vii.
223 Ibid., viii.
224 Churchill, Pacifism, 36. As a sign of disrespect, Churchill never capitalizes the word nazi.
225 Bettelheim, xii-xiii.

What It Means to Be Human

226 Mason, 14.
227 My thanks to Gabrielle Benton for this paragraph.
228 I tell this story in A Language Older Than Words.
229 “Third National Incidence Study.”
230 Figures for childhood sexual abuse vary widely. I’ve chosen representative rates. For much higher figures (53 percent for women, 31 percent for men), see “Child Sexual Abuse.” For thorough examinations, see Diana E. H. Russell (both books in the bibliography) and Jim Hopper, “Child Abuse: Statistics, Research, and Resources,” last revised February 25, 2006, http://www.jimhopper.com/abstats/ (accessed August 19, 2004), among many others.
231 Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language, 2nd ed., s.v. “civilization.”
232 Oxford English Dictionary, compact ed., s.v. “civilization.”
233 Effects of Strategic Bombing, 13.

Pacifism, Part III

234 Churchill, “New Face,” 270.
235 Koopman.
236 Hey, stop laughing and bear with me on this one.
237 As part of their activism. There are of course a lot of asshole activists who, like other males within this culture, have raped women.
238 Judith Herman, 90.
239 I shamelessly stole this line from Tom Wheeler, editor of the extraordinary Alternative Press Review.
240 Judith Herman, 91.
241 Ibid.
242 Handler.
243 Wyss.
244 And presumably their doughnuts.
245 Remedy, “Mattole Activists Assaulted, Arrested after Serving Subpoena for Pepper Spray Trial,” Treesit Blog, August 27, 2004, http://www.contrast.org/treesit/ (accessed August 27, 2004).
246 Brian Martin.
247 My thanks to Lierre Keith.
248 My thanks to Curt Hubatch.
249 Diamond, 1.
250 Cockburn, “London,” quoting Jeremy Scahill.
251 Not that it did any good, in this case.
252 My thanks again to Lierre Keith.
253 Once again, I am explicitly excepting those pacifist activists like Gandhi, Berrigan, King, Helen Woodson, and so on.
254 Directly, as opposed to indirectly: I do have Crohn’s disease, a disease of industrial civilization.
255 Note, by the way, what concern he places first, and note also his exclamation point.
256 I hate his condescension.
257 Note his identification with the bank and those who work there, as opposed to those who are harmed by the actions of the bank, whom of course he does not mention.
258 Mitford, 272-73.
259 Jensen and Draffan, Machine, 220, citing Bauman, 203.
260 Jensen and Draffan, Machine, 220.
261 Elliott, 12. The italics were in the original.

Fewer Than Jesus Had Apostles

262 Havoc Mass, 18.
263 The one taught by that pocket dictator Mr. Bush (no relation) who threatened to flunk anyone who so much as chipped one of his precious test tubes.
264 See, for example, Jensen and Draffan, Machine, 26-28.

Pacifism, Part IV

265 Huntington, 51. I would of course make two changes in this quote: I would add temporarily as the third word, and I would substitute cultures for civilizations.
266 This sounds familiar. Hmm, where have we heard it? Ah, “In order to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other and especially to ourselves.”
267 Churchill, “Appreciate History.”

Get There First with the Most

268 Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 11, 2003, 11.
269 I know we’ve mostly heard this as “Get there fustest with the mostest,” but that’s just not true. As Robert Selph Henry wrote in his definitive “First with the Most” Forrest, “Forrest would have been totally incapable of so obvious and self-conscious a piece of literary carpentry. What he said, he said simply and directly—‘Get there first with the most men,’ although doubtless his pronunciation was ‘git thar fust,’ that being the idiom of the time and place. Such a phrase, compacting about as much of the art of war as has ever been put into so few words, had no need of the artificial embellishment of the double superlative” (Henry, 19).
270 Note that I’m not saying it’s true in all discourse. Not all discourse is antagonistic.
271 Thomas, 100, n. 43.
272 Sorry, wetlands.
273 Which would be like Burnside sending his troops up the hill against an enemy he thought was in the open but who is actually behind an invisible wall. And if the premises are hidden enough, maybe the enemy is actually invisible and so is the hill. Soon enough, it—both the situation and this stupid metaphor—gets out of hand.
274 Or rather, some of us are encouraged to vote; the poor, people of color, felons are all either discouraged or prohibited.
275 That’s one reason I could not encourage that sixteen-year-old to burn down a factory. I didn’t know him well enough to know if he was thinking his own thoughts. To be an adult one must not only know freedom but responsibility. As I say in Walking on Water, freedom without responsibility is immaturity, and responsibility without freedom is slavery. We need people mature enough to think for themselves. This young man may have been, or he may not have been. I didn’t know, which is one reason I couldn’t advise him.
276 If you do not love your landbase, why have you read this far into this book?
277 Which is my big beef with the pacifists: they seem to have a one-size-fits-all prescription. Well, the truth is that one size only fits one.
278 Or as one writer put it about the differences between the indigenous and the civilized: “[R]eligion rather than business being the principal business; living to live rather than to get; belonging rather than belongings as a reigning value; apparent rarity of enforced civil or military service and the apparently frivolous nature of much religious service tending to disguise the possibility that it may have been enforced; group ownership of land and wealth, and consequent tendencies toward individual cooperation rather than competition, and apparent rarity of the police and lawsuits necessary to regulate individual possession; dualism and institutionalized factionalism with consequent tendencies toward reciprocating government, toward a world in balance between two opposing forces, whether the world of thought and the spirit or the world of practical politics, rather than the Old World compulsion toward one party rule, insofar as possible, whether in religion or politics” (Brandon, 60).
279 Obviously, I didn’t have them put down their equipment or make their marks the night before. I just wanted them to see the place and sit with it, so they could spend the night visualizing their jumps the next day.
280 Did I mention that I mean anyone?
281 Why do you think the rules of war, written by governments—in other words, those who raise large armies—exclude many non-army combatants from their protection?
282 And I mean, at his disposal.
283 Blaisdell, 80.
284 Samuel Drake, 662.
285 Gordon, 343-44.
286 Blaisdell, 67.
287 Jefferson, 345.
288 Jensen and Draffan, Machine, 74.
289 Tebbel and Jennison, 212-13.
290 The citation is “In His Own Words.” I’ve taken a few minor liberties with what he said. Here’s what George W. Bush actually said:
“So we have fought the terrorists [sic] across the Earth—not for pride, not for power, but because the lives of our citizens are at stake [sic]. Our strategy is clear. We have tripled funding for homeland security [sic] and trained half a million first responders, because we are determined to protect our homeland [sic]. We are transforming our military and reforming and strengthening our intelligence services. We are staying on the offensive—striking terrorists [sic] abroad—so we do not have [sic] to face them here at home. And we are working to advance liberty [sic] in the broader Middle East, because freedom [sic] will bring a future [sic] of hope [sic], and the peace [sic] we all [sic] want [sic].”

Symbolic and Non-symbolic Actions

291 Clausewitz, 226-29.
292 I just read in the capitalist press an account of a U.S. soldier using the butt of his rifle to smash the head of an unarmed, unresisting Iraqi civilian (the civilian was later tortured to death by soldiers and CIA operatives in a shower; this location was presumably chosen to make it easy to clean up the blood), but the capitalist journalist did not use any such indelicate terms as “smash.” Instead, the accepted term among capitalist journalists for smashing in someone’s head with the butt of a rifle is now “butt stroking.” And it’s not only capitalist journalists who call it this. They are (of course) parroting the U.S. military, as in this statement from National Defense Magazine: “If you can shoot your enemy, then shoot him. If you can’t do that, stick him with your bayonet, butt stroke him with your rifle butt, ram him with your rifle barrel” (Harold Kennedy).
293 Or butt stroke it several times, and discover later that it has somehow expired during interrogation (a sandbag having somehow ended over onto its head), which is what I would say if I were a capitalist journalist.
294 Steele.
295 In fact, he is already calling for more conquest abroad and repression at home. No big surprise there.
296 My thanks to Lierre Kieth.
297 The national forests have 380,000 miles of roads in them, more than the interstate highway system, enough roads to circle the globe fifteen times. Note that Clinton’s moratorium did not halt logging in roadless areas, which continued at breakneck speeds, only now the murdered trees are removed by helicopter.
298 No, I’m not making this up, and yes, you’re right, he has no sense of shame whatsoever.
299 No, I’m not making this up either, and yes, you’re right, these organizations have no sense whatsoever.

Like a Bunch of Machines

300 Churchill, “New Face,” 270.
301 Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, electronic ed., vers. 1.1, s.v. “passion.”
302 For a quick exploration of the probable causes of the fire, see, for example, “John Trudell: Last National Chairman of AIM,” Redhawks Lodge, http://siouxme.com/lodge/trudell.html (accessed September 12, 2004).
303 Trudell.
304 That’s a joke, Mr. Gonzalez: put away those electrodes.
305 My thanks to Roianne Ahn for this paragraph.
306 Remember the words of Harry Merlo, former CEO of Louisiana-Pacific: “We don’t log to a 10-inch top or an 8-inch top or even a 6-inch top. We log to infinity. Because it’s out there and we need it all, now.”
307 I am explicitly excluding the little girl from this, who may have been reachable.
308 For a reasonably thorough exploration of this, see my book The Culture of Make Believe, 174-85.

Bringing Down Civilization, Part II

309 Churchill, “New Face,” 270.
310 “Index of Comments for A Boy and His Dog,” Badmovies, http://www.badmovies.org/comments/?film=185 (accessed September 17, 2004).
311 I thank Tiiu Ruben for this paragraph.
312 Neeteson. Normally when you put things in direct quotes they are direct quotes. But Neeteson’s paragraph makes obvious that English is his second language, so I cleaned it up. Here is the original: “Modern Western culture has to contend with a shortage of satisfying existential ideologies. For centuries a reduction took place from spiritual thinking towards materialistic thinking, ending in the technological consumption society. This society depends on mass production and mass consumption, on ideologies which are superficial, therefore easy to manipulate and on advanced technology and military power. One of the results of this process is that the average individual cannot obtain enough meaningful satisfaction from the common social life.”
313 Hoskins, 10.
314 Ibid., 11.
315 Ibid., 10.
316 Ibid.
317 Liddell Hart, 328.
318 “Sabotage Blamed.”

Breaking Faith

319 Hume.
320 Note that I am projecting animation onto the computer: it “gave” me error messages. We pretend the land has nothing to say and nothing to give, but our computers give us messages.
321 Just like above, I am saying that the download site “told me” something.
322 The computer is still talking to me. Too bad I don’t listen quite so well to the trees.
323 I first wrote that I reformatted my hard drive. Even after I become aware of the language, I still identify with the computer, with the machine.
324 Or at least it will save the machine.

A Matter of Time

325 Taber, 22.
326 Yergin, 487.
327 Matt Savinar, “Life After the Oil Crash: Deal with Reality, or Reality Will Deal with You,” http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net (accessed September 21, 2004).
328 Brown, 273, 449.
329 Gibbon, 3:479.
330 Tillich, 3:369.

Bringing Down Civilization, Part III

331 Churchill, “New Face,” 270.

Bringing Down Civilization, Part IV

332 Ibid.
333 This one is, I think, the real answer.
334 I somehow lost the name of the person who sent this to me, although I have the full text of the note itself. If you are the author of this and would like me to cite you, send me a note.
335 Marufu et al.
336 And said, and said.
337 This statement presumes, once again, that you’re going to have a child at all. Given overconsumption, I think it’s far more revolutionary than that to not reproduce at all.
338 And even then you didn’t get either of the points I was trying to make with the joke. The other point besides the one I mentioned earlier in this book is that she had a man’s name tattooed on her genitals, as though he owns them. Now, that’s sexist. And here’s the most recent complaint I got: because it’s just not possible for me to make up new jokes every single night, I obviously recycle them. Someone wrote a very angry blog denouncing me as a phony revolutionary because I reuse jokes. I’m not making this up. And I’m guessing that if she were to go see the Rolling Stones she would complain if they did not make up songs just for her.
339 Both human and nonhuman languages.
340 I don’t want a “flock” of anything, except I would love to see wild birds fly overhead in flocks so large they darken the sky.

The Crash

341 I would of course say the whole civilized enterprise.
342 Udall, 271.
343 Killian, xv.
344 “The Free Trade Area of the Americas and the Threat to Water,” International Forum on Globalization, http://www.ifg.org/reports/ftaawater.html (accessed September 27, 2004).
345 Jensen, Culture, parts of the chapter called “Holocausts.”

Civilization: Ongoing Holocausts

346 Bauman, 206.
347 Shirer, 1262-63.
348 Bauman, 203.
349 Shirer, 1263.
350 Reitlinger, 160.
351 George Draffan, Endgame Research Services: A Project of the Public Information Network, http://www.endgame.org (accessed July 10, 2004).
352 Estes, 177-78.
353 Jensen, “Free Press for Sale.”
354 Fox News Sunday, June 17, 2001.
355 Weizenbaum, 256.
356 Rogers.

Endgame

357 Mason, 147.
358 Bauman, 207.
359 “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.
360 Hey, no fair cheating! You were supposed to put the book down. Now go outside. I’ll see you in a couple of days.
361 I’m glad you’re back. I hope you had a nice couple of days. Now let’s compare lists.
362 Thompson.
363 My thanks to writer and activist Aric McBay for this paragraph.
364 Including U.S.-occupied United States.
365 Aric’s excellent website is http://www.inthewake.org
366 I guess that describes the current reality as well.
367 My thanks to writer and activist Aric McBay for these paragraphs.
368 My thanks to writer and activist Aric McBay for this as well.
369 Only a madman would cut down a redwood to sell it, as well.

The Return of the Salmon

370 Forbes, 154.
371 Montgomery, 39.
372 Mason, 143.
373 One look at the floor around my workspace would convince you of this.
374 My thanks to Ward Churchill for this paragraph. Also to Richard S. Grimes.