Rebecca Behere

Creative strategist/ Founder. Artist. Climate, social justice, environment, strong communities. #leadership #socialimpact #digital #socialpurpose

[To Bree or not to Bree @BreeEsq]

Bleak, beautifully written stuff. If you’re looking for answers: she’s got em👇

[David Milner @DaveMilbo]

Here's me. 'No one can say they didn’t know: Israel is ethnically cleansing Gaza'

https://t.co/Jj1WpYvbev

[Climate Defiance @ClimateDefiance]

This brand-new report analyzed the emissions of 50 of the world's wealthiest billionaires. It turns out these 50 people alone emit more than the poorest 155,000,000 human beings combined. Read this again.

These numbers are not "uncomfortable." They are unconscionable.

(4/12)

[Phillip Adams @PhillipAdams_1]

Deaths on 9/11? 3000. Deaths in Gaza? 42,000

[Mike Carlton @MikeCarlton01]

Terrific Canberra Times column from @markgkenny well worth a read.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

For the last eight months people have been expressing frustration and confusion about the reluctance of celebrities to use their immense platforms to speak out against the US-backed slaughter in Gaza. But it’s not really a mystery why this happens: celebrities are reluctant to criticize the US-centralized empire because they benefit from it directly.

It’s actually a very important aspect of imperial narrative control how all of our society’s largest and most influential voices are intimately dependent on the political status quo upon which the empire is built. Fame and fortune come as a result of being elevated by the wealthy owners of media production platforms like film studios, record labels, TV and news media, and those extremely wealthy people have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo upon which their wealth is premised. Those who are threatening to the status quo are therefore not elevated to celebrity status, and the ones who get rich and famous either (A) understand this acutely or (B) are too shallow and vapid to have any interest in rocking the imperial boat.

Nobody becomes a superstar all on their own; it requires an extensively collaborative relationship with many individuals, and many of the most important of these are in positions of great wealth and power and have no desire to see socialism or anti-imperialism threaten their kingdoms by gaining a foothold in the political realities of their nation. This creates an impressively thorough gatekeeping system which filters out any clear-eyed rebels who might otherwise shine their way to the top.

Of course the filtration system isn’t perfect; sometimes someone sneaks through, or, more likely, is waved through and then has a political awakening after achieving stardom. But for every Susan Sarandon and Roger Waters there are a hundred enthusiastic celebrity supporters of the status quo, and a thousand others who just stay silent on all matters of real importance.

Just making someone a multimillionaire and giving them a cushy lifestyle is enough to make them loyal to the political status quo of the land. The mere fact that the empire is capitalist and allows the wealthy to live like gods ensures that most people who ascend to stardom will be heavily biased in favor of the system which allows for that lifestyle, and everything they say publicly will reflect this. This gives the empire a massive propaganda bullhorn which creates an information landscape where all the biggest voices speak as though the system is working perfectly, and the voices of all the ordinary people whose experience tells them otherwise are drowned out.

When Macklemore rapped about how “the music industry’s quiet, complicit in their platform of silence” about Gaza, he asked, “What happened to the artist? What d’you got to say?” And this is the answer. What happened to the most influential artists is that they stand too much to gain from supporting the status quo politics of the empire, and stand too much to lose by opposing it.

And that’s why the mainstream “artists” of today are so artless. How much depth and profundity can you express if you’re compartmentalizing away from reality like that? How authentic and meaningful can your art be while you are duty bound to help preserve the status quo of a mind-controlled dystopia where everything is fraudulent and meaningless?

Everything that draws human beings to art in the first place needs to be sacrificed to retain celebrity status — truthfulness, sincerity, rebelliousness, sensuality, inspiration, aliveness. That wild connection with something mysterious and strangely sexy which crackles just below the surface of everything.

All that needs to be flushed down the toilet to become a celebrity guardian of the information interests of the globe-spanning US-centralized empire. You’ll live like a king, but you’ll also have to sacrifice everything inside you that makes life worth living.

We are ruled by weird, phony freaks in Washington and Virginia who collaborate with weird, phony freaks at the top of the corporate world, and their rule is enforced by weird, phony freaks in New York and Los Angeles who use their celebrity status to help create an artificial mainstream culture that is mindless, heartless, soulless, and completely uninterested in the emergence of a healthy world.

That is why celebrities are silent on Gaza today.

[George Monbiot @GeorgeMonbiot]

#IDthought 2: Democracy is the problem capital is always trying to solve. Neoliberalism is the means of solving it.
It uses the power of the state to destroy democratic resistance: sweeping organised labour, protest and meaningful political choice out of the way.

[Jason Hickel @jasonhickel]

Over the past month, Zionists’ attempts to equate any critique of Israel with antisemitism have failed in spectacular fashion. Any moral person can see that we can and must stand against Israeli occupation and ethnic cleansing while also standing against antisemitism.

[marquelawyers @marquelawyers]

If all it takes to kill the Voice is two Aboriginal people who’ve been happy to front the disinformation campaign and an opposition leader whose disingenuousness can be seen from the moon, then this country is simply not capable of intelligent debate.

[Ronni🧂Salt-WhoWroteGunnawahYeahThatOne @RonniSalt]

"This is just one of 4 major fossil fuel approvals greenlit under the Albanese government.

And it’s a terrible illustration of just how broken Australia’s environment law is . . ."

(That's the Commonwealth EPBC Act he's referring to)

#ClimateCrisis
https://t.co/O2IOrg1GcH

[Alison Teal 🍃💚🍃 @alisonclareteal]

"Global spending on managing the world’s parks & reserves, its last wild places, is about the same as we spend every year on beard grooming products, and less than a third of global spending on ice cream." https://t.co/nl1NJvfJ3C @TheGreenParty @greens_can @RupertRead @CMP_voice

[Jason Hickel @jasonhickel]

Life expectancy at birth in China and the United States since 2010. World Bank data.

[Jason Hickel @jasonhickel]

If the British media devoted even a fraction of their royal-family coverage to remembering the tens of millions of people who were victims of imperialist crimes committed under their reign, and in their names, our society, and our grasp on history, would be dramatically improved.

[Peter Kalmus @ClimateHuman]

Tell everyone you know, everyone you see: We are in a genuine climate emergency, it's caused by burning fossil fuels, we risk losing everything, the way out is ending the fossil fuel industry, and the sooner we do this the less we lose

[Rebecca Behere @beccabehere]

@DangerousMere @ConversationEDU I'm glad you're not - me neither! The possibility of imaging a different future seems to be up there with enduring hardship longer than we care to - far too hard/scary/frightening it seems

[Peter Kalmus @ClimateHuman]

Without a livable planet, nothing else matters.

[Rebecca Behere @beccabehere]

@PetraKuenkel @RianeEisler Thanks for sharing @PetraKuenkel I sense this is something I need to read - for both sustenance and sanity! I will be reading your bew book too!

[Jason Hickel @jasonhickel]

Our economic system promises to satisfy infinite wants, and yet cannot meet people's most basic needs... for nutritious food, affordable housing, clean air, a habitable planet.