If all you care about is making more stuff, capitalism may be the best system ever. But if you want to save the planet from environmental catastrophe our current economic system is a dead end.
I remember in my socialist youth often being told: “Your ideas sound good but that’s just not how things work in real life.”
In my socialist sixties these same words seem appropriate as an analysis of mainstream environmentalism today.
Here is the harsh reality:
The capitalist drive to maximize profits explains the externalizing of environmental costs. Capitalism allows small minorities to profit at the expense of others. Private ownership …
In the last month, the U.S. government has reversed course on its intention to attack Syria, and it conveyed the impression that it wants to mitigate Washington’s long-term hostility toward Iran. Is a new era of peace and friendship emanating from the Obama Administration? Or is it, perhaps, a move to both spare President Obama a rejection of his war plans by Congress and to further U.S. global interests?
A few weeks ago, President Obama was determined to attack Syria over President Assad’s alleged order to his army to use outlawed chemical weapons against civilians in a suburb of Damascus. Both …
Binyamin Netanyahu aroused my pity. From my 10 years of membership in the Knesset I know how unpleasant it is to speak before an empty hall.
His die-hard followers – a pathetic residue of Casino magnates and burnt-out Zionist right-wingers – sat in the gallery and an over-blown Israeli delegation sat in the hall, but they only underlined the general emptiness. Depressing.
How different from President Hassan Rouhani’s reception! Then the hall was overcrowded, the General Secretary and the other dignitaries leapt from their seats to congratulate him at the end, the international media could not get enough of him.
by East Timor & Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) / October 4th, 2013
President Obama must emphasize human rights and the rule of law in U.S.-Indonesia relations. The president is scheduled to travel to Indonesia this weekend.
“The U.S. must not ignore injustice and human rights violations to advance narrow strategic and economic interests that have little to do with the well-being of the U.S. or Indonesian people,” said ETAN National Coordinator John M. Miller. “While much has changed in Indonesia since the Suharto dictatorship, U.S. security assistance does not promote further change. Instead it encourages impunity and further violations of human rights.”
“We are calling for a new relationship between the two countries built …
When midnight comes a host of dogs and men
Go out and track the badger to his den
— John Clare – The Badger
One always knows that when government Ministers resort to defending Ministry policy in the local press, they are losing the argument with Joe Public. So it came as no surprise to read in the Gloucester Echo the justifications for the highly unpopular badger cull as written by Owen Paterson, UK Minister for the Department of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) – he who loves England’s green and pleasant land so much that, among other environmentally unfriendly practices, …
A Victorian bishop’s wife allegedly reacted to Darwin’s findings as follows: “My dear, descended from the apes! Let us hope it is not true, but if it is, let us pray that it will not become generally known.” ((Alleged quotation from the Bishop of Worcester’s wife, 1860.))
In this article, I consider three books which claim races and nations are “constructed”: Imagined Communities, by Benedict Anderson, ((Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, Verso, 1983 (new edition 2006).)) The Invention of the Jewish People, by Shlomo Sand, ((Shlomo …
Is it the ability to do whatever you like without regard for anyone but yourself?
Some people think so. But more often than not there will eventually come a time of the great hang-over, when that ultimate freedom that had been sought so diligently has somehow lost its meaning.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
This is what Shakespeare’s Macbeth laments after his wife, driven by her feelings of guilt, has committed …
Tokelau, an independent territory of New Zealand, is a small three island archipelago of about 1,400 residents about 300 miles north of American Samoa in the South Pacific. In October 2012, the Polynesian nation turned off the last of its diesel generators and became the first country to use solar power as its only energy source.
“We know that the longer the fossil fuel industry gets its way, the worse climate change will be, and the more sea-level rise will threaten our islands,” wrote Mikalele Maiava, one of its residents.
About 9,300 miles west of Tokelau is Saudi Arabia. Beneath its sands …
In 2008, the Armed Forces Journal published a prescient piece by Colonel Charles W. Williamson III, a staff judge advocate with the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, the National Security Agency listening post focused on intercepting communications from Latin America, the Middle East and Europe.
Titled “Carpet bombing in cyberspace,” Col. Williamson wrote that “America needs a network that can project power by building an af.mil robot network (botnet) that can direct such massive amounts of traffic to target computers that they can no longer communicate and become no more …
To ask whether public banks would interfere with free markets assumes that we have free markets, which we don’t. Banking is heavily subsidized and is monopolized by Wall Street, which has effectively “bought” Congress. Banks have been bailed out by the government, when in a free market …
We Won’t Be Fooled By Rigged Corporate Trade Agreements
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / October 2nd, 2013
This week, President Obama will attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Coordination (APEC) meeting in Bali, Indonesia where he is expected to announce his goal of having the Trans-Pacific Partnership signed into law by the end of 2013. Obama will host a meeting of the leaders of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) nations during the APEC conference.
The Obama administration has been negotiating the TPP in secret for more than three years. Unlike past trade agreements, the text of the TPP is classified and members of Congress have restricted access to it. If they do read the text, they are not allowed to copy …
In his complaints against the wing of the Republican Party that engineered the present government shutdown, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid derided his opponents as “Tea Party anarchists.” It’s hard to decide who should be more annoyed — the Tea Party or the anarchists. In any case, Reid’s remark is revealing of how the long tradition of anarchist philosophy has been thrown under the bus of U.S. political discourse, then rolled over, then dragged along in mangled form so as to be pointed at when doing so seems expedient.
Many may be surprised, for example, that actual anarchists aren’t necessarily rejoicing over …
In May of 1994, the Executive Board of our local union voted to accept my idea (I was president) to hand out free Thanksgiving turkeys to our membership. This idea, while new, was far from original. Indeed, labor unions across the country had been passing out Thanksgiving turkeys for decades. But it was a new idea to us, and, as everyone knows, new ideas—even the good ones—can be tricky.
The vote was 7-2. The two dissenters presented three excellent arguments for voting against it: (1) Not knowing what the future will bring, we should be “saving for a rainy day,” not …
The government shutdown, whether it causes a minor economic bleep or major economic explosion, is another indicator of the larger crisis of global capital. This emergency is especially critical at its U.S. headquarters where a deteriorating situation has factions fighting for control and calling upon the gods of creation, madness or both in backing their efforts. This is a further sign of what international events – and some public response – may be showing more clearly.
The American people finally said no to an attack on a foreign country, Syria, and in the process added to the well-deserved decline in reputation …
Knee-jerk House tantrums hit new comic highs as the Wily E. Coyote party continues its madcap leap to self-destruction. Can’t zealots who hate government find more imaginative ways not to govern? The latest cartoon antics only dramatize what happens when the party of stupid slides further:
1) How will the TP-GOP compete nationally after this laughable “rebranding” boomerangs?
2) Will not election penalties accrue to hostage-taking poseurs “begging America to fail,” in Bill Clinton’s phrase?
3) What if Obama is the second worst Washington negotiator, bowing to the Boehner Follies?
Oblivious to shame and ridicule, Republican extremists appear to learn nothing either from the …
The furore over the recent chemical weapons attack in Syria has overshadowed disturbing events to the south, as Egypt’s generals wage a quiet war of attrition against the Hamas leadership in Gaza.
Hamas has found itself increasingly isolated, politically and geographically, since the Egyptian army ousted the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, in early July.
Hamas is paying the price for its close ties to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic movement that briefly took power through the ballot box following the revolutionary protests that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
Since the army launched its coup three months ago, jailing the …
Egypt’s new ruler, General Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, may not realize that the bond between Egypt, Palestine and especially Gaza is beyond historic, and simply cannot be severed with border restrictions, albeit they have caused immense suffering for many Palestinians.
Gaza is being ‘collectively punished’, and is now facing economic hardship and a severe fuel shortage as a result of the Egyptian army’s destroying of underground tunnels. This is nothing particularly new. In fact, such ‘collective punishment’ has defined Gaza’s relationship to Israel for the last 65 years. Successive sieges and wars have left Gaza with deep scars, but left its people …
On October 11, we’ll learn whether the Norwegian Nobel Committee is interested in reviving the Nobel Peace Prize or putting another nail in its coffin.
Alfred Nobel’s vision for the Nobel Peace Prize created in his will was a good one and, one might have thought, a legally binding one as well.
The peace prize is not supposed to be awarded to proponents of war, such as Barack Obama or the European Union.
It is not supposed to be awarded to good humanitarians whose work has little or nothing to do with peace, such as most other recent recipients. As with the …
Now that our President has handed over the resolution of the Syrian debacle to the United Nations, perhaps justice demands that he hand over resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to that international body as well. One can turn to the reality of the illegal machinations of the Israeli Zionist government any day of the week and see and know and feel the terror that exists for the occupied people who are defenseless before the impunity granted to the state of Israel for crimes that any other member nation of the UN would, as is true of Syria, be brought for …
Vanessa Gezari wrote The Tender Soldier: A True Story of War and Sacrifice. I was intrigued to read a true story of war and sacrifice. The main title, The Tender Solider, struck me as oxymoronic. I do not usually think of trained killers as tender.
There are three main protagonists, as described on the inside jacket: “an intrepid Texas blonde, a former bodyguard for Afghan president Hamid Karzai, and an ex-military intelligence sergeant.” Some might consider that quite sexist, the woman being a function of her hair color while the men are described by their occupational history.
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / October 1st, 2013
Trillions in dollars to clean up Fukushima while the Land of the Rising Radioactive Sun — Nippon (??) — wants those 50 nuclear electrical generating plants back up. Solution: Get rid of Tokyo Electric. Japan needs to raise the money (not the Olympic flag and all those hundreds of billions in taxpayer yen for bizarre architecture and gizmos for the 2020 Olympic Villages) and to have citizen oversight. — Paul Haeder, Ed.
August 29 was a typically cool, wet summer day in downtown Seattle. “We support you!” cried the crowd of 30 or so gathered outside Specialty’s Café, their voices reverberating off the glass facades of adjacent downtown buildings. To remain open, the restaurant had been forced to call in extra staff. Six of its workers had joined the national fast-food workers’ strike that day to demand $15 per hour and a union.
The crowd in front of Specialty’s was distinctly of the type able to attend an anti-corporate demonstration in the middle of a workday — young and mostly white, trying to …
Backgrounder to press release: Anyone who has watched either of the Gasland documentaries is well aware of the devastating environmental consequences of fracking. Earlier this summer warriors of Elsipogtog First Nation opposed seismic testing for shale gas by SWN Resource Canada. ((See Miles Howe, “SWN rebuffed in New Brunswick back woods,” The Dominion, 24 June 2013.)) Mi’kmaq united with environmentalists and locals opposed to fracking.
SWN Resources is still attempting to carry out seismic testing on land deemed belonging to the Crown, so the resistance to the frackers continues. ((Miles Howe, “Return of the Frack,” …
Evil — no other word has a history of causing such malevolence and death.
Is there an evil, malevolent force in the universe known as the devil or Satan? Does this negative force delight in causing human chaos and wholesale destruction on earth? Are people who commit acts counter to the tenets of their respective philosophies—acts known as sins—transported to a place of unspeakable, eternal torment after death, and are such people in hell right now, prisoners to perpetual damnation? More than a billion people would answer yes to these questions because the teachings of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all monotheistic …
In America today we are seeing a race to the bottom, the middle class is collapsing, poverty is increasing. What I saw in Immokalee is the bottom in the race to the bottom.
— Senator Bernie Saunders
Imagine getting up at 4.30 am and walking to a pick up site to begin looking for work. Over an hour later contractors turn up in pick up trucks to begin the daily selection of workers who will be lucky enough to work for ten hours in 90 degree heat. If you are picked, the contractor’s converted school bus will take you to the fields …
I’m rushing to make a deadline for a collection of writings around the intersection of climate change and race-culture-class. Sure, they accepted my initial propositions and ideas way back in May. And, while this might be a great little feather in my cap if they go with my stuff, again, it’s yet another “free” thing I undertake, this time for the tenured faculty editing and coordinating this. I am not wholly confident that my culture and class fit into any group’s schema of the concepts of class and culture tied to working class doers and multi-contextual thinkers and actors. Some …
The destruction of Syria, in many forms, is proceeding according to plan and on time. When the Western powers and their pals, the oil oligarchs, target your country, it’s time to run just as fast as you can.
I wrote “Welcome to the New Syria” on August 27, 2012. Based on known events and outcomes from the UN-NATO military action against Libya, I offered a number of predictions about the governance of the New Syria presuming a victory by Syrian rebels. At that time, the United States, Turkey, the United Kingdom, France and Gulf oligarchies, Qatar in particular, were full of …
Now that the entire population can go online and shovel even more money into the anti-human rights money pits which is the for-profit health industry, it might be nice to see who really benefits from this new “entitlement”.
Previously uninsurable. Yeah. Now they can give Wall Street cash out of their own pocket.
Previously unaffordable. Now the government can pay Wall Street directly, instead expanding Medicaid and cutting bankers out of the loop.
More of the new poor on Medicaid. See above.
Cocktail napkin numbers: 50 million uninsured today. Estimated that 25 million will become insured under Obamacare.
Putting the US on trial for genocide against the peoples of Korea, Laos, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Iraq, and elsewhere
by Kieran Kelly / September 30th, 2013
The United States of America was built on a foundation of genocide against the Indigenous peoples of North America. In fact, all successful settler colonial societies are founded in genocide. The process is one of dispossession – the erasure of one group identity and the imposition of another on the people and/or on the land. But genocide is not merely the foundation of the US nation state, it is also the foundation of the US empire. The US habit of genocide has not died, but has transformed. The US has become a serial perpetrator of genocide with the blood of …
A couple weeks ago I wrote about a Pentagon contingency that would place a ground based missile defense site in Jericho, Vermont. Meanwhile, another weapons system basing is already being hotly contested in the state. Unlike the missile site, which is currently opposed by all of Vermont’s elected representatives in Washington, this weapons system-the F-35, enjoys the support of Vermont’s entire congressional delegation, along with that of the Democratic governor, Peter Shumlin. Despite this support, the movement against what the Pentagon euphemistically calls the “bedding down” of the fighter planes is broad and certainly a player in the debate.
