Monday, July 04, 2022

‘Self-Actualization’ in a World of Exploitation

“The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of [others]! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else’s imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!” –Thomas Merton

Until the COVID-19 pandemic forced a total cessation of my activity and direction in life, I was only dimly aware of the true extent of my psychological condition. Not really. I was too lost at sea within my unconscious emotional through-line continuum ever vacillating between sublimated anxiety and terror to grasp it all. I had learned long ago about staying busy to keep one step ahead of it. And anxiety, after all, is the health of the economy and of the state. If I was feeling bad, as many a life-coach in that cottage industry of capitalist folklore would be quick to remind me, it had to be that I just wasn’t working hard enough or smart enough to fulfill my dreams and live up to my potential. An adjustment of “attitude” was all that was required. That’s all. My bad.

On some level, though I’m loath to admit it, somewhere along the way, I had internalized that obscene and distinctly American psychological mythology of meritocratic bullshit. It’s virtually impossible not to absorb it to some degree through osmosis because that thinking is so pervasive and absolutely fundamental to the arrangement of our entire economic order. It is a foregone conclusion that informs an unspoken thematic narrative of our education system, politics, our journalism, our entertainment, much religious instruction and alleged “self-help” culture, and consequently it is the lens through which many have a popular understanding and view of mental health itself.

The capitalist economy conditions people at a very young age to gather their sense of self through “doing”…and especially “owning.” But in the process of learning how to consciously cultivate the essence of one’s life, rather than be held hostage to an abstract perception of merely being a hapless victim of the world’s continuum of mercies, one may discover that there exists a critical distinction between “being” versus “doing”. The postmodern world obscures that truth. Society insists that something is wrong if we’re not busy doing something “to build a legacy,” if even only to selfishly accumulate resources. We’re “wasting time.” The commodification of everyday life and everyone and everything in it penetrates to the core. We are at a time when at the very beginning of summer, the temperatures in the Pacific Northwest are soaring around 110 degrees. After publishing thousands of articles on climate change warning about these conditions back in the early 2000s, there is no doubt in my mind that this is a consequence of that very commodification as manifested in a post-industrialized world.

Now here we are as a result of the relentless, every-man-for-himself push to do and consume in the absence of being. We live in a society that exalts the “dreamers” and the “visionaries” which in itself, is basically wonderful. But less is said about the necessity of measuring and moderating personal hubris. And yet, the folly of desperate ambition is such a pillar of our capitalist mythology. It is a universal theme in storytelling transcending all genres that never gets old, so ideologically fundamental and indispensable to our system of governance and sociopolitical, cultural organization. The curious preponderance of that narrative theme of ill-fated exuberance seems to mainly exist as a palliative reassurance that our economic order is nevertheless somehow organically self-correcting –that such excessive, selfish behavior is aberrational to the status quo which is unquestionably, morally astute and upright, and shall always somehow naturally, reflexively defer back to policing moderation by the twas-ever-thus reliable, unimpeachable credo of “pride goeth before a fall”. But any serious look at much of the political leadership and its primacy of self-centered motivation should quickly disabuse that notion. Nevertheless, the myths of meritocracy and the viability of the American Dream are still somehow resilient and hold sway in the popular imagination even in the face of its monumental fallacies bringing the world to the brink of total annihilation. All within 250 years. The obscene lie of the democratic accessibility of gaudy upper tier treasures and their utility as a means to self-realization are still far too scintillating and tantalizing to put down apparently. Even NOW. Everything is negotiable. Post something about it. There. That feels better –next…

An outgrowth of our economic system is a whole industry of self-help and recovery literature dedicated to the “power of positive thinking,” sometimes incorporating strains of eastern mysticism and distinctively German philosophy, in the hopes of mastering “self-actualization” in order to “manifest” personal “abundance.” Many of these books and programs, though not entirely without merit, offer a disingenuous and even ethically dubious bargain promising techniques for self-mastery as a form of mental sorcery –Nietzchean “will to power” formulas that are utterly individualistic, selfishly motivated, and conveniently in service to the larger ideology of a capitalist society that insists you only have yourself to blame for whatever misfortune befalls you. Like snake oil predators, many “self-help” gurus prey upon the innocent naïveté of the less fortunate by offering false promises potentially awaiting them beyond the gateway of the liminal intermediary state of consciousness.

But learning to identify closely with one’s mind carries certain risks of getting carried away with whatever desires are subsequently unearthed, provoked and encouraged. And when one fails to “realize one’s potential” as a consequence of a constellation of social and environmental factors largely outside of their control, and that very likely have little to do with one’s presentation of willpower, the perceived failures can be so much more devastating and psychologically damaging because they have been personalized and internalized, swallowing whole this sad, self-deceptive matrix of meaning as spiritual truth about their personal self-worth. Self-actualization can and does have its limits, no matter how seductively expansive and appealing one’s imagination may be dwelling in Never Never Land. Eventually, unless one is financially and socially inoculated from the truth, material realities will come into conflict with these addictive daydreams–as coping mechanism–as way of life. And if you’re lucky, the bullshit will finally start to stink like it should.

There is so much “Triumph of the Will” in the American discursive atmosphere of rugged individualism, one can be forgiven for absorbing some of it, or getting a smear on their belief system. “Manifest Destiny” is nothing if not a national religion of selfishness and barbaric conquest enshrined. The new age hosannas and exhortations for atomized individuals “to manifest” and bend the sheer fabric of their personal reality to meet their wills have become ever more shrill precisely as the fallacy of the United States’ economic order of meritocracy as advertised decays and collapses in all of its absurdity. The conceit of capitalism is that we live in a spiritually dead universe of limitless material bounty and equitable life chances, and that one need only apply the proper formula of elbow grease to really make it work for you in order to have a good life. A nice, simple, totally fictional, utopian, linear narrative of A+B=C. But as it turns out or may happen, your wedding party might get bombed by a predator drone, wiping out your entire family. You could be born black, female, Palestinian or Uighur. Native American. Anyone not white. Or on the island of Tuvalu as the water rises, along with the plastic and waste from Fukushima and BP oil within it. Or in a “land of the free” in which liberties you long took for granted may be suddenly erased with the stroke of a pen by a cynical minority who would in truth prefer you just go away and drop dead unless you have something tangible for them to take and exploit in some way. Despite what some political forces with vested interests would have you believe, if it still has somehow not been made clear enough, we are not each born onto a level playing field of life chances, choices and limitless resources. The would-be testimonies of fifty-three migrants discovered a few days ago baked to death in a tractor trailer by the Texas heat might beg to differ.

The myth of the invincible, self-made individual who rises up to master and marshal all forces of God and nature still holds sinister sway in advanced stage capitalism even as everything unravels all around us as a result of that way of thinking. In the process of exterminating false consciousness, one may find that this project is inextricably linked to disentangling oneself from that unconsciously adopted, poisonous ideology. For years I thought that was exactly what I was doing as someone who identified as an anarchist. But oh, was the joke on me. No, if anything, that self-conscious, ostentatious bit of shirtsleeve ideology, however genuine and well intentioned, also undeniably expressed a reactionary rage and frustration that was proportionate to just how much I was in fact helplessly in the grips of punitive material self-identification. My stadium-level, amplified rejection of materialist values, however sincere, was to some extent in vain, a statement revealing how much my own lack of self-worth had been penetrated and defined by them.

In the process of self-discovery, while exploring the roots of unquestioned assumptions informing consciousness, it may become apparent on a sublime level how far-reaching this energetic approach to life –how much human activity– has been infused with the absurd and obscene spirit of acquisitiveness and attainment. This is the frantic mentality and spiritual poverty of the addict. Could it even be called a transactional motivation informing behavior and relationships? Because that might imply that the atomized individual is offering something in exchange for something else. No, to live as a fully matriculated member of capitalist society is to have been indoctrinated on some level into the ontological order of the parasite. The consumer. The invasive, selfish preoccupations with risk versus reward composing the spiritual DNA of existence in moment to moment decision-making. “What’s in it for me?” It’s understandable that someone having CPTSD (such as myself) might naturally adapt with this harried, hoarding and craven constitution. But it’s no doubt also underwritten into the very fabric of our capitalist culture predicated as it is on a “power over” versus “power shared” dynamic of social relations. We live in a world in which “self-fulfillment” and “living your best life” is stressed as the single-most, ultimate ambition and purpose for being. At all costs. The credo of “fuck ‘em all” is no longer considered an unseemly, disturbed, and antisocial posture but one to be lauded, venerated and even emulated as bold, “edgy” and audacious, if not virtuous. The poetically apt name Donald Trump should disabuse any skepticism about the significance of this state of affairs. It wouldn’t be unfathomable to redesign the American flag to permanently incorporate “The Punisher” logo as so many seem eager to do.

Again and again, we are bombarded everywhere we turn with impossible, objectified standards of “beauty” and “success” reinforcing the message that most of us are “not good enough” and will never have the hope of being anything other than a lowly prole buying things to ease the pain of “not measuring up,” or living vicariously through the lives of “society’s winners”. We are constantly informed that we are “only as good as our last movie,” our last job, and just whatever exactly accounts for this suspicious gap on our resume. We see how life has been reduced to a public relations game in which it is always in everyone’s interest to “get ahead of the narrative” by obsessing over a presentational, if not completely virtual, discourse with life. Personal photographs are routinely rendered through filters augmenting faces and places not as they are but as we want them to be seen. And all of this is just so banal and boringly ordinary now. Society as a whole has been conditioned to be narcissistically in love with story and narrative, as one look at any social media platform will easily attest. But more specifically, particularly in our popular narrative forms of discourse on TV, films and “news”, we have been taught to expect life to conform to a simplistic, linear storyline of experience and progress, and the societal pressure to produce an easily objectifiable, condensed, large print, reductive myth to present to the world for approval and validation. It is to see the self not as a person but as a brand. A children’s storybook foretold. Yeah, shit ain’t like that. Ask any bird.

But who cares? I need to be able to compete in life. To be seen. What can I do to get people to finally notice me? Who do I have to become to make that happen? Since clearly the person who I am is terminally insufficient. But then, according to reports from that narrow margin of professionals who successfully make it to the other side, it is like an episodic trope of Twilight Zone in which having attained a certain amount of public recognition, everyone treats you as a fictional representation of yourself rather than the person you really are, and therefore you are still never truly seen because you long ago forfeited your soul somewhere in the process of this ritualized prostitution. This is how we are as a people now only a little over 200 years after the invention of the camera.

How many moments of truth are forfeited to these conceits? It is so easy –second nature, you could say with devastating accuracy– to fall into these false meanings of affective realism. Watered down copies upon copies of behavior. Pointless simulacra, the only purpose of which is to fill space and time with empty calories in order to avoid uncomfortable feelings from the unknown. And to some extent, almost everyone seems to do this now, regurgitating the trendy vernacular of pop culture cliches. Because the squeakiest wheels get the grease, and those wheels are what keep the lightrail of capitalism accelerated. And so we talk like prefabricated idiots slinging catchphrases and slang authored by Madison Avenue and Z-grade TV showrunners over brunch al fresco in this or that new city of commercial conquest, comparing consumption notes and reviews, because what else is there to do? Who exactly is suggesting anything else? Except pose at just the right angle for a definitive selfie in order to best emulate someone else doing the exact same thing some other place just like they saw them do a moment ago. Or maybe, if one is so exceptionally inclined, to parrot political talking points within the parameters of acceptable discourse as dictated by the guardians of the economic status quo in the corporate media, all of whom have an unspoken stake in keeping things “meritocratically” imbalanced in their favor. Like the band The Who’s rock opera “Tommy,” we are each made unwittingly deaf, dumb and blind by an atomizing system of necessary alienation fundamentally at odds with love, conscientious spirit, patience and kindness in the service of fodder for the machine of ruthless self-aggrandizement and capital accumulation.

And so here we stand, collectively dispersed from friend, family and foe alike in quite possibly the final death throes of the consequences of a culture that has been based on the exaltation of the individual. Here is the apotheosis of “every person for themselves” and the unquestioned acceptance of the idea that the greatest achievement of self-realization/actualization is to rise above one’s peers. And we find that there is nothing unusual or aberrational whatsoever at all about narcissism. It is who we are. But unfortunately to our collective detriment, it is the ironic, self-seeking instinct of every atomized, alienated narcissist to deny their very entropic nature, to preserve their precious, cultivated illusions….to save face. Back to scrolling.

Happy Independence Day.

My generation is obsessed with the cult of wellness – but all that striving to be your best self can be dangerous

People have become transfixed with the idea that being well is the most impressive thing you can do – and as someone who is permanently unwell I will always be considered lesser

‘Wellness, in the 21st century, has replaced religion as the moral signposting by which we live our lives’.

Photograph: rbkomar/Getty Images

Ione Gamble
Thu 23 Jun 2022

Ihave spent a huge part of my 20s learning to accept that I will never be healthy, after being diagnosed with an incurable illness – Crohn’s disease – two weeks after my 19th birthday. And although being “healthy” has never been a priority for me (I’ve never stepped foot in a gym and find it impossible to eat 10 portions of fruit and veg a day) my ambivalence towards “wellness” grew as I dealt with being permanently unwell. It has also made me an anomaly among my peers.

From my bed, unable to move, I watched my generation become obsessed with being their best selves. We have become utterly transfixed with the idea that wellness is the key to a successful life; that our relationships, careers, friendships and mental health will all suffer unless we pursue being “well” above all else.

We seem to have arrived at the collective assumption that if you aren’t actively preventing ill health then you’re an irresponsible nihilist. It is no longer enough to simply deal with sickness as it comes – we must be actively battling against it at all times. Where wellness was once a niche lifestyle pursuit peddled by Hollywood stars such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Kourtney Kardashian, it has become commonplace to partake in practices many would once have ridiculed: juice cleanses, vitamin drips and sunrise yoga sessions have replaced trips to the hairdressers and a simple slick of lippy.

What’s more, it is just as common to find health advice on social media as it is influencers’ fashion hauls or hot takes by political pundits. We are urged to consider our health and wellbeing as a determining factor in every decision we make, and are constantly looking for ways to improve our existence by optimising our insides. Wellness, in the 21st century, has replaced religion as the moral signposting by which we live our lives. We no longer avoid sinning for fear we’ll be shut out of heaven; instead, we avoid unhealthy behaviour for fear it will make us sick.

Millennials drink alcohol less often than the generation before them, while Gen Z drink 20% less than millennials, and 87% of them exercise more than three times a week. Smoking is no longer cool, recreational drug use is for losers, and being “well” is the most impressive thing you can do for yourself. It’s implied that the key to a happy life is to be well – and that contentment is impossible without good health.

On the surface, it’s hard to find the fault in the way that health has shifted from being purely a medical concern to an all-encompassing way of life. Understanding how your body works and what it needs is, surely, no bad thing. But placing health concerns and responsibilities on individuals, rather than pushing for improved government legislation, creates more problems than it solves. Especially when, for many of us, absolute health is an unattainable goal. As long as there is no cure for Crohn’s disease, I will always be considered as lesser than those who can dedicate their lives to whichever wellness fad is trending that week.

In the 80s, political economist Robert Crawford theorised that a then recent move towards prioritising individual health had become popular in response to disappointment at the lack of positive change during the politically charged 60s and 70s. With traditional activism appearing stagnant, and our governments failing us both then and now, it appears many have once again turned inwards – feeling the world around them to be immovable.

Chronic illness aside, only a tiny portion of society can afford to pour its income into wellness treatments, the effectiveness of which often remains unproven. Pseudoscientific treatments, diet plans and supplements can also contribute to false information infiltrating social media feeds under the guise of health advice. But ultimately, so long as we view our health as an individual plight, we’re letting elected health officials off the hook. As we guzzle down the newest superfood, the NHS is being stretched beyond its means. Our infatuation with wellness continues to set a dangerous precedent that as long as we take care of ourselves, we shouldn’t need it at all.

Ione Gamble is the author of Poor Little Sick Girls: A Love Letter to Unacceptable Women

FROM THE ZIONIST PRESS

US appeals court rules anti-boycott laws not unconstitutional

Appeals court upholds Arkansas law that restricts Israel boycotts, ruling it does not violate First Amendment.

Andrew Lapin, JTA

Jun 23, 2022,

A federal appeals court upheld an Arkansas state law requiring all public contractors to promise they won’t boycott Israel on Wednesday, overturning an earlier ruling that the contract violated the First Amendment.

The ruling by the the St. Louis-based US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit was a major victory for pro-Israel activists who have pushed around 30 states to adopt so-called “anti-BDS” laws — intended to strike back against the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement targeting Israel — in recent years. The plaintiffs say they plan to appeal to the Supreme Court, a process which could result in a nationwide showdown over the constitutionality of all anti-boycott laws.

It was the first time a federal appeals court ruled in favor of laws forbidding public contractors from being involved in any Israel boycott movements.

Such laws have been heavily opposed by civil liberties groups and press freedom advocates, who say they violate free speech. Federal courts have previously ruled that similar anti-boycott state laws in Georgia, Arizona, Kansas and Texas are unconstitutional.

But the Eighth Circuit, minus one dissenting judge, found that an anti-boycott contract provision does not infringe on the signer’s free speech rights because it “does not require them to publicly endorse or disseminate a message.” Instead, the court said, the clause requests “compliance” with a financial regulation — which the court says is a form of “noncommunicative” speech not protected by the First Amendment. The Eighth Circuit is considered to have a conservative makeup.

Arkansas had introduced the law in 2017, and the public University of Arkansas was sued by Little Rock-based alt weekly the Arkansas Times in 2018. The paper had sued the university because its Pulaski Technical College affiliate, a regular advertiser with the paper, had refused to continue advertising unless the Arkansas Times signed the anti-boycott pledge, citing the state law.

“Though boycotting Israel could not have been further from our minds and though state funding is a significant source of our income, our answer was no. We don’t take political positions in return for advertising,” Arkansas Times publisher Alan Leveritt wrote in a New York Times op-ed last year explaining his paper’s decision. The paper was represented in court by an attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union, and its case was featured in the recent documentary “Boycott,” which followed legal battles over state anti-BDS laws

The lawsuit was dismissed by a district court judge in 2019, who ruled that the boycott ban was not a First Amendment violation because it only extended to the paper’s commercial activities, not its editorial content. The newspaper appealed the decision, and a three-judge panel for the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that the law was unconstitutional before the full court granted the state’s request to rehear the case.

“We are not aware of any cases where a court has held that a certification requirement concerning unprotected, nondiscriminatory conduct is unconstitutionally compelled speech,” the court said in its ruling.

Jewish and pro-Israel groups including the Orthodox Union, the American Jewish Committee, StandWithUs and the Brandeis Center, joined 16 states in filing briefs defending the state law.

Eugene Kontorovich, a George Mason University law professor who has played a major role in crafting anti-BDS laws and organized a filing from professors in support of the Arkansas one, celebrated the ruling. He told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency he hopes it will pave the way for federal anti-BDS legislation

“The Court ruled that the laws only regulate business activity, not expressive conduct, and thus raise no issues under the First Amendment,” Kontorovich said. “It is time the idea that these laws intrude on constitutional rights be retired, so that states should not have to give taxpayer dollars to companies engaged in bigotry.”

Liberal and progressive Jewish groups including J Street, T’ruah and Jewish Voice for Peace joined the Council on American Islamic Relations, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and several pro-boycott groups in filing briefs on behalf of the Arkansas Times.

Jill Jacobs, CEO of T’ruah, told JTA that while her group doesn’t support Israel boycotts, it filed a brief on behalf of the paper because it believes that boycotts are constitutionally protected speech.

“This decision is extremely dangerous because it essentially says that boycott itself, the economic activity, is not protected free speech,” Jacobs said.

Opponents of the law warn it could pave the way for other statewide bans on boycotts relating to issues that have nothing to do with Israel — such as recent Texas legislation that restricts state contractors from working with entities that boycott fossil fuel companies and firearms makers.

“That has really serious implications for something most of us have long believed is a free speech right,” Jacobs said.

Also opposing the legislation was Rabbi Barry Block of Congregation B’nai Israel in Little Rock, the largest Jewish congregation in Arkansas. In previous testimony, Block said the legislators who drafted the law did not consult the local Jewish community.

The Arkansas Times and its ACLU legal representatives said in a statement that they intend to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

“We are obviously disappointed and note that these laws, which were originally passed in over 30 states, have been overturned in every court except this one,” Leveritt said in a statement. “We consider being banned from doing business with our state government for refusing to sign a pledge not to boycott Israel a ridiculous government overreach that has nothing to do with Arkansas.”

In Deep Water: Shipping in the Global Economy

BY JOSEPH GROSSOFacebook

Ultrabulk cargo ship, Astoria, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

It is perhaps a wonder that it was not until experiencing the fallout from a global pandemic, that most Americans were forced to read or hear the words ‘supply chain’ or ‘logistics.’ Surprising both because it is on these things that the basic essentials of modern life are dependent and because of the revolutionary changes in these arenas over the past generation. Yet with COVID still haunting the global economy, as of this writing China is only just emerging from the largest COVID lockdown since Wuhan, and with inflation at the highest it’s been in decades, uncertainty about supply chains lingers.

Over the past twelve months this uncertainty has assumed many forms. There have been reports of shutdowns of factories in Asia, with workers reluctant to return to their jobs, ships backed up by the dozen at American ports, a shortage of truck drivers, and exploding wealth for the likes of Jeff Bezos. Obviously, the immediate trigger to the crisis would appear to be a mix of COVID and as a result Americans greatly increasing their online shopping. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, e-commerce sales jumped nearly 32 percent in 2020, and 50.5 percent since 2019. Overall, online sales now account for 19 percent of retail. Given the $400 billion in government stimulus and much of the outdoor service economy locked down (i.e. restaurants, movies, sports events, etc.), Americans spent nearly $1 trillion more in goods in 2021 compared to pre-pandemic times. Hard to see any supply chain not getting strained. Still, in May 2022 only 11 percent of shipments from Asia arrived in North America on time, down from 59 percent in May 2020.

By the end of 2021 the cost of shipping from Asia to the west coast of the U.S. had risen 330 percent in one year. According to the Freightos Baltic Index, as of June 22^nd the average global price to ship a 40-foot container was $7261, down from a peak of over $11,000 in September 2021, but still five times higher than before the pandemic. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimated that higher shipping rates during the lockdown raised the inflation rate by 1.5 percent.

Step back further though and a fuller picture emerges, one featuring globalization, exploitation, and deindustrialization. It is no secret that the U.S. has lost millions of manufacturing jobs over the past generation- about 7.5 million since 1980. While automation has been a big factor in the decline, so has outsourcing and subcontracting. From 1970 to 2010 the number of manufacturing jobs in East Asia more than tripled from 31 million to 97 million. In the decade from 1997 to 2007 value of East Asian exports increased from $269 billion to nearly $1.5 trillion. Of course, the emergence of China as the world’s factory played a vital role. Foreign direct investment into China increased from $57 million in 1980 to $114.7 billion in 2010. Imports from China reached $506 billion in 2021 (with $151 billion in exports headed the other way, a trade deficit of $355 billion). Imports from Vietnam have also exploded over the past two decades. In 2020, Vietnam was the 6^th largest supplier of U.S. imports, up 21.2 percent from just 2019, and 436 percent from 2010. In a way, Vietnam has been the winner of the U.S. trade war with China. The U.S. trade deficit with Vietnam exploded nearly threefold to $90 billion since 2018 (as for the effectiveness of the U.S. tariffs: a good amount of the exports from Vietnam originate in Chinese-owned factories). Indonesia imports are up 23 percent since 2010.

Nothing exemplifies the supply chain crisis quite like the sight of cargo ships backed up by the dozens outside the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Containerships transport 90 percent of global trade and these two ports handle about 40 percent of U.S. imports. A ship from China takes 15-20 day journey to an American port. The process of turning a ship around from China to the U.S. typically takes around 60 days. The process is supposed to be timed for maximum efficiency, one ship in, one out. COVID fouled up the system. At peak chaos there were over 100 ships waiting to dock. If all the waiting containers had been laid out the line would actually have stretched from Los Angeles to Chicago. The turnover time increased to 100 days. Biden eventually ordered the ports to work 24/7 and some ships were diverted to other ports. Ships waiting outside the LA ports fell by half by the beginning of 2022, though this spring a dozen plus ships were often backed up at ports around the U.S. As of May nearly 20 percent of container vessels globally were still waiting outside congested ports, including hundreds in China.

In a perfectly surreal example of built-in absurdity, the price hike made a trip from Asia to the U.S. 20 times more expensive than a trip going the other way. Therefore through the pandemic there were reports of ships returning to Asia with many of their containers empty. The shippers have been rejecting U.S. agricultural exports. It is more profitable to simply return to Asia and refill there rather than wait for food to be loaded and carried back. This past holiday season, some of the largest U.S. retailers were chartering their own, smaller ships to get around the backlog, docking at smaller ports around the country. Of course, this option was beyond the great majority of U.S. businesses.

If such a picture brings to mind any notions of incompetence or inefficiency, from the perspective of the shipping industry these can be quickly cast aside. In 2021 global shipping earnings equaled the entire industry’s earnings from the previous decade. Last November, the Wall Street Journal ran an article titled ‘For Investors in Shipping, Payoff at last.’ The opening lines read: ‘Global supply-chain bottlenecks are creating headaches for retailers, delays for consumers- and big gains for financial firms that invested in container ships before the pandemic upended the logistics business.’

The emergence of COVID has not been the only recent cause of disruption for the shipping supply chain. On March 23, 2021, the 20,124 TEU containership Ever Given ran aground in the Suez Cancel (TEU stands for Twenty-Foot Equivalent Unit, meaning the number of standardized 20-feet containers a ship can carry). The shortest shipping route between Europe and Asia, up to 15 percent of global trade passes through the Suez Canal, including a million barrels of oil a day and roughly 8 percent of the supply of liquefied natural gas. On a given day that means about 50 ships. With Ever Given wedged in the canal for a week, hundreds of ships were backed up in a 60-mile queue waiting to get through. All in all, an estimated $9.6 billion a day worth of trade was held up.

On March 15 2022, another ship owned by Evergreen Marine Corp, this one named Ever Forward, went aground in Chesapeake Bay. While this blockage did not stop traffic it took a month to free the ship. The ship CSCL Jupiter did hinder ship traffic when it ran aground for a day outside the port of Antwerp in 2017.

Given that navigational technology has improved in recent years ship groundings should be becoming less common. Yet there is the sheer size of the current ships. A few months after the Ever Given jam, the largest containership ever built, Ever Ace (another by the Evergreen Marine Corp), made its way through the Suez Canal in August 2021. Measuring just over 1300 feet (about the size of the Empire State Building) with a capacity of nearly 24,000 TEU (23,992 to be exact), Ever Ace took the title from the HMM Algeciras (23,964 TEU) which took its maiden voyage hardly a year earlier. Both ships are just part of expanding fleets of mega-ships of that size soon to be sailing.

For perspective, the largest ships today are 15 times what they were in the late 1960s around the time when containerization was standardized. The world’s first commercially successful container trip, Malcolm McLean’s coverted tanker, the Ideal-X, took 58 containers from New Jersey to Texas in 1956. When the ship Encounter Bay, one of the early fully cellular containerships, went into service in 1969 its capacity was 1578 TEUs. Even by the year 2000 ship capacity topped out at around 8000 TEUs. Then when the shipping company Maersk introduced its E-Series of ships in 2006, capacity reached around 15,000 TEUs, basically doubling the capacity of the previous largest ships. Since then over 130 ships have launched with a carrying capacity between 18,000 and 24,000 TEUs. In the past decade alone or so capacity has gone up 80 percent.

Here is where the deregulation comes in. As Matt Stroller described in a Substack piece, for most of the 20^thcentury U.S. shipping law was based on the Shipping Act of 1916. The act granted shipping companies an exemption from anti-trust laws. They were allowed to form alliances with each other (something that continues today) where they would jointly set routes and prices. However there was a condition that all prices had to be public, service had to be offered on equal terms, and companies were not permitted to undermine competitors by offering volume discounts or under-the-table rebates. In addition to the Act, there were subsidies for shipbuilding and the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (known as the Jones Act) which requires all ships carrying goods between two U.S. ports to be American-built, -owned, -crewed, and-flagged. The idea was to protect smaller companies and businesses against predatory moves of larger companies by giving bargaining power (hence the public prices). National security concerns wanted to keep American shipping strong. Stable prices take the edge off a boom-and-bust industry.

The system was tossed aside by the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 1998. In a sense we were left the worst of all worlds: the anti-trust exemption was kept and the transparency was scrapped. Predictably, concentration in the industry exploded. Up to 60 of the 1000 largest ocean carriers have vanished since the early 2000s. Banks were only too eager to provide funding for the megaship arms-race. Shipping companies are good lending targets as valuable ships can simply be repossessed in the event of a default. Plus shipping often receives government subsidies.

In the midst of all this came the economic crash of 2008. The downturn meant there wasn’t enough freight to fill the growing ship capacity. With shipping prices at rock bottom the remaining large carriers formed alliances. The Top 10 shipping companies had 40 percent of the market in 1998. Today it is over 80 percent. All ten companies are part of one of the three company alliances that dominate the industry- 2M, Oceans Alliance, and The Alliance. The megaships also keep up a nice barrier to entry. New companies have a hard time breaking in with such upfront costs as a megaship. Infrastruture (railroads, ships, social media networks) tend to require a huge amount of investment to build, but not much to operate. This makes it inefficient for many companies to build competing networks. As a result it is often owned by the state of too-big-to-fail monopolies.

The larger the ship the more the shipping company is supposed to be able to squeeze out savings on construction, fuel, and staff. The larger the ships size to go with consolidation and alliance also give companies leverage over other parts of the system. This led to an arms race among the ports. Ports in Baltimore, Miami, and Norfolk began dredging projects to deepen their harbors. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey spearheaded a project to raise the Bayonne Bridge 64 feet to accommodate larger ships. The project cost $1.7 billion. Such works are quite convenient for the carriers as they get almost all the savings while the ports, and the taxpayers that often contribute funding, foot the bill. As larger ships are unable to service as many ports as smaller ones, they lead increased concentration of terminal operators and therefore port traffic, one reason the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach handle so much traffic and are therefore prone to backups.

A few weeks ago, in the face of raising inflation, President Biden ranted about ‘foreigned owned’ shipping companies who raised their prices by ‘as much as 100 pecent.’ He chimed ‘Every now and then something you learned makes you viscerally angry.’ On June 16th, he signed the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022. Legislation that breezes through Congress nowadays promises not to be too earthshattering. The act empowers the Federal Maritime Commission to limit ocean carriers refusing American and limit port fees. It is questionable how thoroughly it can be enforced.

Another facet to the shipping world is flags of convenience. For a fee ship owners can simply register their ships with a willing country. Countries without a nationality or residency requirement for ship registration are described as having open registry. This form of paper globalization works the same as other forms. The obvious goal is to take advantage of places with low wages and less regulation. Thus in 1960 the U.S. flag merchant fleet had almost 3000 ships. By 2019 the number was 182. Almost three-quarters of the worl’d fleet is now flagged under a country different from the ship owners. For a long time the places with the largest registries have been Panama, Liberia, and the Marshall Islands. In her book Ninety Percent of Everything, Rose George explains:

‘There are few industries as definitely opaque as shipping. Even offshore bankers have no developed a system as intricately elusive as the flag of convenience, under which ships can fly the flag of a state that has nothing to do with its owner, crew, or route.’

While the International Maritime Organization, a UN agency, has passed plenty of regulations since its inception, and the International Labor Organization (ILO) has adopted stadards for seafarers- the Maritime Labor Convention was ratified in 2006 by 80 countries and came into effect in 2013, the ocean has a tendancy to dissolve such paper. As with many things, the COVID pandemic brought the underbelly to light.

In September 2020, as 300,000 workers were stranded on ships, a Bloomberg report found dozens of labor violations. Of the 40 seafarers interviewed for the story, half didn’t have current contracts and others hadn’t been paid for months, meeting the ILO’s definition of forced labor. Shipping lines and staffing agencies (as in other industries such as meatpacking, shippers often outsource hiring to agencies), determine when and how workers return home, even holding their passports. In an industry rife with middlemen, including networks of owners, operators, and employmeny agencies, it is difficult to hold parties accountable.

By no means is shipping the only leg of the supply chain that is hellish for workers. In the U.S. when goods are unloaded from shipping containers they are moved onto truck beds. Trucks move around 70 percent of domestic goods, over ten billion tons of freight a year. Truck drivers’ wages have plummeted over the past four decades. If the adjusted average wage of a truck driver in 1980 was $110,000, by 2019 the trucker earned $45,000 a year- a decline of 60 percent. From there goods are often driven to warehouses. The turnover rate at Amazon warehouses can reach 150 percent a year. Buy commodities certified ‘Fair Trade’ as you will, just don’t assume such a concept applies to the workers that bring them to you.

Joseph Grosso is a librarian and writer in New York City. He is the author of Emerald City: How Capital Transformed New York (Zer0 Books).

New Legal Settlement Protects Coyotes, Wolves in Idaho

BY COUNTERPUNCH NEWS SERVICEFacebook

A settlement agreement between conservation groups and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management guarantees interim protections for native wildlife in Idaho pending the completion of new environmental reviews of the agencies’ actions. The settlement was reached pursuant to a lawsuit filed in Idaho District Court in 2020, asserting that Wildlife Services had violated federal law with regard to its predator management programs by relying on outdated and inadequate assessments of its policies and methods.

“We’re pleased to have added restrictions to the wildlife-killing activities that USDA Wildlife Services is pursuing across Idaho,” said Erik Molvar, Executive Director of Western Watersheds Project. “This new agreement blocks wildlife killing on protected public lands across Idaho, and blocks the use of certain lethal methods employed against native carnivores throughout the state.”

The settlement gives Wildlife Services until the end of 2024 to complete a new environmental review of its activities on federal lands, and mandates that the agency will consider an alternative restricting predator killing on certain public lands, blocking “preventative” killing of wolves and coyotes, and placing a long-term moratorium on M-44 “cyanide bomb” use.

“This settlement forces the federal agencies to come up to speed on the new science around management of native carnivores and to stop using inhumane and antiquated methods like poison or body-gripping traps,” said Lindsay Larris, Wildlife Program Director of WildEarth Guardians. “This settlement ensures that Wildlife Services won’t use gas cartridges or burn wolves alive in their dens – a practice they were unfortunately still able to lawfully employ, until today.”

In the interim, the parties agreed on a number of measures that will help protect Idaho’s native predators. The agreement halts the use of “denning” (gassing or immolating wolf pups in their dens), limits the agency’s methods of trapping, and requires reporting if Wildlife Services traps go un-checked for more than 72 hours. This is an important measure to prevent animal cruelty.

“Our settlement also means that native predators that live in Wilderness or Wilderness Study Areas in Idaho will not be killed by Wildlife Services except to protect human health and safety,” said Laurie Rule, Senior Attorney at Advocates for the West, which along with counsel from Western Watersheds Project is representing the conservation groups in the case. “These areas are intended to remain in their natural state, including allowing predators to fulfill their natural role in the ecosystem.”

The settlement follows a March 2020 settlement in an earlier lawsuit that substantially restricted the places where Wildlife Services could kill wolves in Idaho. Predator protections under both agreements will be in place until Wildlife Services completes a new environmental impact statement in 2024.

This new settlement extends the statewide ban on M-44 “cyanide bombs” of the type that poisoned 14-year-old Canyon Mansfield and his dog near Pocatello, killing the family dog, in 2017.

“Working side-by-side with the Mansfield family, as well as with other M-44 victims for over 30 years, I have witnessed the pain and loss these indiscriminate poisonous devices inflict,” said Brooks Fahy, executive director of Predator Defense, a national wildlife advocacy group. “Since M-44s can never be used safely, Wildlife Services agreeing not to use them in Idaho, even temporarily until their analysis is complete, will better protect people, pets and wildlife.”

Erik Molvar, Western Watersheds Project, emolvar@westernwatersheds.org

Lindsay Larris, WildEarth Guardians, LLarris@wildearthguardians.org

Brooks Fahy, Predator Defense, brooks@predatordefense.org

Laurie Rule, Advocates for the West, lrule@advocateswest.org

The Key Impacts of Livestock Production Upon the Land

BY GEORGE WUERTHNERFacebook

Livestock impacts is more than grazing of plants, Livestock production can socially displace native wildlife, causes water pollution, destroys soil crusts, is the reason predators like wolves are being killed, spread weeds like cheatgrass that fuels wildfires and many other impacts. Photo George Wuerthner.

Livestock is responsible for more ecological damage to the western landscape than any other human activity. However, few accounting of these impacts is ever compiled. One source is my book Welfare Ranching–the Subsidized Destruction of the West.

Remember that all ecological science is based on statistical averages, not absolutes. Therefore, not all livestock operations have the following impacts, which will vary from operation to operation, region to region.

Nevertheless, most livestock operations statistically have at least some of the following ecological impacts on the landscape.

1. Forage competition. Most forage on public lands is consumed by livestock, leaving little residual cover or food for native wildlife.

2. Livestock compact and trample soils reduce infiltration, creating higher run-off, flooding, and erosion.

3. Livestock is the West’s primary source of non-point water pollution non-point water pollution in the West.

4. Livestock destroys soil crusts that bind the soil and capture free nitrogen, making it available for plant growth. Soil crust also inhibits weed establishment.

5. Livestock are among the chief sources of weed dispersal. Also, the trampling of plants and cropping of desirable plants gives weedy species a competitive advantage.

6. Most of the West’s water is diverted for livestock forage production (i.e., hay). In Montana, for instance, 97% of all water is used by agriculture—chiefly to produce hay and alfalfa.

7. Livestock can socially displace native species like elk, deer, antelope, and other species that have been shown to avoid areas actively being grazed by domestic animals.

8. Livestock transmits disease to native species, i.e., bighorn sheep.

9. Predator and “pests” control, such as killing wolves and prairie dogs, significantly reduces the ecological integrity of the landscape.

10. Trampling of riparian areas negatively affects 75-80% of the West’s species that are riparian dependent.

11. Plant community conversion—grazing can lead to the eventual transformation of a place community—for instance, many areas are dominated by cheatgrass.

12. Livestock grazing contributes to increased fire severity because of the spread of the highly flammable cheatgrass.

13. Livestock grazing can interrupt nutrient cycles.

14. Livestock degrades the esthetics of the landscape—for instance, cow manure in many recreation areas like campgrounds.

15. Forage production on and off public lands destroys native plant communities. More than 80% of all US cropland, or approximately 300 million acres (three times the acreage of California), is devoted to livestock forage (corn, soy, hay) production, which has eliminated the natural communities.

16. Livestock affects many smaller native species that are seldom on the radar screen of most citizens, from snails to frogs to grasshoppers.

17. Livestock production is responsible for more Endangered Species than any other land use in the West.

18. Fences, water developments, and other structures used to maintain livestock operations negatively impact native species. I.e., fences block wildlife migrations, and fence posts may provide perches for birds of pretty to attack sage grouse. In addition, water developments used by livestock act as predator pits, attracting wildlife to water with little hiding cover making prey species vulnerable to predators.

19. Getting to the actual costs of livestock production is nearly impossible. The accurate price is uncountable. Even the public taxpayer subsidies are obscured by false and tricky accounting. If you fence a campground to keep cows out, it comes from the recreation budget, not the livestock budget. If you fence a spring to protect the water source, the cost is usually charged to the wildlife accounts.

20. Livestock is one of the major contributors to GHG emissions globally.

21. Public lands provide less than 4% of the forage consumed by livestock in the country yet have an overwhelmingly negative impact on the West’s ecological integrity. Eliminating livestock grazing is the most effective way to restore and heal the land.

George Wuerthner has published 36 books including Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy.

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Monday, July 04, 2022

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The Key Impacts of Livestock Production Upon the Land

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