Tag: empire

Science Fiction Can Tell Us What We Need to Know About Space Force

By Joseph Orosco (November 2, 2018)

Mark Bould shows us that if you know the science fiction of alien invasion you can pretty much analyze the reasoning behind Trump’s proposal for Space Force:

“Vice President Mike Pence’s August 9 Space Force press junket made clear that this great big bullying blustering pussy-grab for space, this effort to Make America Great Again and recover all that was lost to the perfidy of previous administrations is about just one thing: occupying the high ground. Getting out of the gravity well so as to be able to rain down shit on anyone who gets out of line. It is just a tired reboot of the old imperial fantasy of control from above. It can be traced through nineteenth-century science fiction about airborne anarchists and dirigible dictators, and through Winston Churchill’s bombing of Iraqi Kurds; it can be seen in the fruity fascist overtones of the Wings Over the World global law enforcers in Things to Come (1936), and in the Strategic Defense Initiative first advocated by sundry SF writers and then by Ronald Reagan; and it can be seen in the murderous drone program overseen by Bush, Jr., Obama, and Trump.”

You can read more here.

A painful, radical truth: we are the problem

 

By S. Brian Willson (September 21, 2016)

As much as we choose to blame politicians, corporations, the military industrial complex, capitalist economics, etc., for causing our severe problems, in the end, virtually all of us moderns are complicit. None of these institutions have been created in a vacuum. They are creations of human beings like ourselves, and most “First World” peoples demand continuance of incredible material consumption at the expense of outsourcing unspeakable consequences to other people and the Earth. We have become slaves to money, things, technology, and comfort and convenience (me, too). This is totally unsustainable – ecologically, or morally.

Our own lifestyles provide the political and economic fuel feeding this system. Our lives are now totally dependent upon the elaborate infrastructure of imperial plunder, gouging the earth and other cultures of their lifeblood, including electricity, requiring mining of and burning carbon. And most of us are in debt to sustain this modern materialism, precluding the kind of fierce independence needed for serious collective obstruction of business as usual while abandoning our dependence upon the system.

We have been the problem; now we have the opportunity to save ourselves by becoming the solution – not by obeying or abiding by the system, but by re-configuring ourselves in very local, simple tool and food sufficient communities – thousands of them in communication with one another. The stakes are high – our survival with dignity, even if with substantially reduced numbers.

RX: Radical downsizing/simplicity, replacing national currency with local community cooperation and sharing. In essence, sharing and caring in communities within each bioregion.

Endless War and Neoliberal Resistance: Impressions on The Force Awakens

 

By Arun Gupta (January 5, 2016)

This sums up my feelings about Star Wars: a fun ride, well-executed, and utterly unoriginal. Continue reading “Endless War and Neoliberal Resistance: Impressions on The Force Awakens”

Were Attacks on Beirut and Baghdad Attacks on Humanity, Too?

By Adam Hefty (November 14, 2015)

I spent last night, like many, watching the news from Paris unfold, feeling relief as my friends who live there posted that they were alright, worrying about UC students who might be in proximity at UC Paris which a friend said was close to one of the attack sites, worrying about the possible backlash and the instant expansion of the security state. Continue reading “Were Attacks on Beirut and Baghdad Attacks on Humanity, Too?”

Is it Ethical to Colonize Mars?

 

By Joseph Orosco (November 4, 2015)

Adam Frank, thinking about the success of Matt Damon’s new film The Martian, asks whether it would be moral to explore and colonize Mars. One of his concerns has to do with how we will treat any possible life forms that we encounter there, even at the microbial level. Continue reading “Is it Ethical to Colonize Mars?”