2. Right Wing Enviro–Denial

May-18-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Few aspects of reality threaten unbridled capitalism more than the increasing evidence that it’s destroying the planet. So clearly, that news must be blocked. In the US, right-wingers fund outrageous campaigns of lies; in Canada, where they control the government they simply muzzle scientists, or defund research that might report the wrong results. Elizabeth May, the head of Canada’s Green Party, lists 18 items attacking environmental protection, all buried in Bill C-38.

* US Think Tank Compares Belief In Global Warming To Mass Murder Guardian

It really is hard to know where to begin with this one. But let’s start with: “What on earth were they thinking?”

The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based rightwing thinktank notorious for promoting climate scepticism, has launched quite possibly one of the most ill-judged poster campaigns in the history of ill-judged poster campaigns.

I’ll let its own press release for its upcoming conference explain, as there’s simply no need to finesse it further:

“Billboards in Chicago paid for by The Heartland Institute point out that some of the world’s most notorious criminals say they “still believe in global warming” – and ask viewers if they do, too…The billboard series features Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber; Charles Manson, a mass murderer; and Fidel Castro, a tyrant. Other global warming alarmists who may appear on future billboards include Osama bin Laden and James J. Lee (who took hostages inside the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in 2010).
These rogues and villains were chosen because they made public statements about how man-made global warming is a crisis and how mankind must take immediate and drastic actions to stop it.
Why did Heartland choose to feature these people on its billboards? Because what these murderers and madmen have said differs very little from what spokespersons for the United Nations, journalists for the “mainstream” media, and liberal politicians say about global warming.”

But then comes the best bit:

“Of course, not all global warming alarmists are murderers or tyrants.”

* Conservative Thinktanks Step Up Attacks Against Obama’s Clean Energy Strategy The Guardian

A network of ultra-conservative groups is ramping up an offensive on multiple fronts to turn the American public against wind farms and Barack Obama’s energy agenda. A number of rightwing organisations, including Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, are attacking Obama for his support for solar and wind power. The American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which also has financial links to the Kochs, has drafted bills to overturn state laws promoting wind energy.

Now a confidential strategy memo seen by the Guardian advises using “subversion” to build a national movement of wind farm protesters. The strategy proposal was prepared by a fellow of the American Tradition Institute (ATI) – although the thinktank has formally disavowed the project. The proposal was discussed at a meeting of self-styled ‘wind warriors’ from across the country in Washington DC last February.

* Tories Admit To Closing Enviro Research Group Because They Disliked Results The Hook

The federal government has confirmed what the rumour mill suspected: it shut down an arm’s length, independent advisory group because it didn’t like the advice it was getting on addressing climate change. Funding for the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) was cut in the last budget, giving the group just one year to live. Since 1988, it has been producing research on how business and government policies can work together for sustainable development — including the idea of introducing carbon taxes.

Environment Minister Peter Kent had initially said the reason for the closure was because such research can now be easily accessed through the Internet, and through universities and other think tanks. But Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said Monday the shuttering of the round table had more to do with the content of the research itself.

“Why should taxpayers have to pay for more than 10 reports promoting a carbon tax, something that the people of Canada have repeatedly rejected?” Baird said in response to a question by Liberal Leader Bob Rae during question period. “It should agree with Canadians. It should agree with the government.”

* Bill C-38: the Environmental Destruction Act Elizabeth May The Tyee

Here’s what is in C-38 on the environment. (C-38 threatens more than environmental damage, but this should give you a sense of why I am determined to stop this bill.)

Canadian Environmental Assessment Act ditched.

Canadian Environmental Protection Act undercut.

Fisheries Act seriously weakened.

Energy Board Act neutered.

Species at Risk Act hamstrung.

Canadian Oil and Gas Operations Act made more industry friendly.

Canada Seeds Act inspections privatized.

Editor’s note: 11 more items in full list, with explanations

5. Prisons, and Profits

May-18-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: A reminder: here’s last month’s graphic of the number of people incarcerated in the US. When crime is dropping, why are more people in prison? Because it pays, just as the slave trade paid. And of course, it targets the same people. A tremendous evil and a brutal destruction of what might be achieved: the closing article from the Atlantic has an excellent infographic on the human and financial cost of this system.

* Private Prison Corporations Are Modern Day Slave Traders AlterNet

The nation’s largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America, is on a buying spree. With a war chest of $250 million, the corporation, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, earlier this year sent letters to 48 states, offering to buy their prisons outright. To ensure their profitability, the corporation insists that it be guaranteed that the prisons be kept at least 90 percent full. Plus, the corporate jailers demand a 20-year management contract, on top of the profits they expect to extract by spending less money per prisoner.

…The attempted prison grab is also defensive in nature. If private companies can gain both ownership and management of enough prisons, they can set the prices without open-bid competition for prison services, creating a guaranteed cost-plus monopoly like that which exists between the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex. But, for a better analogy, we must go back to the American slave system, a thoroughly capitalist enterprise that reduced human beings to units of labor and sale… Investors are warned that profits would go down if the demand for prisoners declines. That is, if the world’s largest police state shrinks, so does the corporate bottom line. Dangers to profitability include “relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws.” The corporation spells it out: “any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.”

At the Corrections Corporation of America, human freedom is a dirty word.

* Louisiana Is The World’s Prison Capital nola

The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana’s incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran’s, seven times China’s and 10 times Germany’s. The hidden engine behind the state’s well-oiled prison machine is cold, hard cash. A majority of Louisiana inmates are housed in for-profit facilities, which must be supplied with a constant influx of human beings or a $182 million industry will go bankrupt.

Several homegrown private prison companies command a slice of the market. But in a uniquely Louisiana twist, most prison entrepreneurs are rural sheriffs, who hold tremendous sway in remote parishes like Madison, Avoyelles, East Carroll and Concordia. A good portion of Louisiana law enforcement is financed with dollars legally skimmed off the top of prison operations. If the inmate count dips, sheriffs bleed money. Their constituents lose jobs. The prison lobby ensures this does not happen by thwarting nearly every reform that could result in fewer people behind bars.

* One Year of Prison Costs More Than One Year at Princeton Atlantic Magazine

One year at Princeton University: $37,000. One year at a New Jersey state prison: $44,000. Prison and college “are the two most divergent paths one can take in life,” Joseph Staten, an info-graphic researcher with Public Administration, says. Whereas one is a positive experience that increases lifetime earning potential, the other is a near dead end, which is why Staten found it striking that the lion’s share of government funding goes toward incarceration…..

[T]his chart helps illustrate a large discrepancy in this country: America has the highest incarceration rate by population, but is only 6th in the world when it comes to college degrees. Our government’s spending reflects that fact accordingly.

6. Followups

May-18-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: When we’re away for two weeks, there are more items to followup. In Canada, most of the press on the F35 has focussed on the financial debacle, and the lies the Conservatives have used to cover up. But it’s becoming clearer that the plane itself is a disaster, at any price. Then, a long New Yorker article looks in detail at geo-engineering, (correcting global warming by changing the planet) and why we’re probably going to try it, and the political disasters that will ensue. We missed Mother’s Day, but it’s worth noting that it started as a political act, not as a Hallmark promo. And there’s a fine summary of all the things that aren’t torture according to the US. May they never happen to any of us.

* F35: The Jet That Ate The Pentagon The Toronto Star

Already unaffordable, the F-35’s price is headed in one direction — due north. The F-35 isn’t only expensive — it’s way behind schedule. The first plan was to have an initial batch of F-35s available for combat in 2010. Then first deployment was to be 2012. More recently, the military services have said the deployment date is “to be determined.” A new target date of 2019 has been informally suggested in testimony — almost 10 years late.

If the F-35’s performance were spectacular, it might be worth the cost and wait. But it is not. Even if the aircraft lived up to its original specifications — and it will not — it would be a huge disappointment. The reason it is such a mediocrity also explains why it is unaffordable and, for years to come, unobtainable.

….This grotesquely unpromising plan has already resulted in multitudes of problems — and 80 per cent of the flight testing remains. A virtual flying piano, the F-35 lacks the F-16’s agility in the air-to-air mode and the F-15E’s range and payload in the bombing mode, and it can’t even begin to compare to the A-10 at low-altitude close air support for troops engaged in combat. Worse yet, it won’t be able to get into the air as often to perform any mission — or, just as important, to train pilots — because its complexity prolongs maintenance and limits availability. The aircraft most like the F-35, the F-22, was able to get into the air on average for only 15 hours per month in 2010 when it was fully operational….

The bottom line: The F-35 is not the wonder its advocates claim. It is a gigantic performance disappointment, and in some respects a step backward. The problems, integral to the design, cannot be fixed without starting from a clean sheet of paper.

* Geo-Engineering The New Yorker

For years, even to entertain the possibility of human intervention on such a scale—geoengineering, as the practice is known—has been denounced as hubris. Predicting long-term climatic behavior by using computer models has proved difficult, and the notion of fiddling with the planet’s climate based on the results generated by those models worries even scientists who are fully engaged in the research. “There will be no easy victories, but at some point we are going to have to take the facts seriously,’’ David Keith, a professor of engineering and public policy at Harvard and one of geoengineering’s most thoughtful supporters, told me. “Nonetheless,’’ he added, “it is hyperbolic to say this, but no less true: when you start to reflect light away from the planet, you can easily imagine a chain of events that would extinguish life on earth.” There is only one reason to consider deploying a scheme with even a tiny chance of causing such a catastrophe: if the risks of not deploying it were clearly higher. No one is yet prepared to make such a calculation, but researchers are moving in that direction.

….Unfortunately, the least risky approach politically is also the most dangerous: do nothing until the world is faced with a cataclysm and then slip into a frenzied crisis mode. The political implications of any such action would be impossible to overstate. What would happen, for example, if one country decided to embark on such a program without the agreement of other countries? Or if industrialized nations agreed to inject sulfur particles into the stratosphere and accidentally set off a climate emergency that caused drought in China, India, or Africa?

“Let’s say the Chinese government decides their monsoon strength, upon which hundreds of millions of people rely for sustenance, is weakening,” Caldeira said. “They have reason to believe that making clouds right near the ocean might help, and they started to do that, and the Indians found out and believed—justifiably or not—that it would make their monsoon worse. What happens then? Where do we go to discuss that? We have no mechanism to settle that dispute.”

* The Radical History of Mother’s Day Nation of Change

Mother’s Day began in America in 1870 when Julia Ward Howe wrote the Mother’s Day Proclamation. Written in response to the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, her proclamation called on women to use their position as mothers to influence society in fighting for an end to all wars. She called for women to stand up against the unjust violence of war through their roles as wife and mother, to protest the futility of their sons killing other mothers’ sons.

Howe wrote:

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

* Would the Last Civil Right in America Please Remember to Close the Door on Its Way Out? Lowering the Bar

Q: What do all of the following have in common?

Prolonged isolation;
Deprivation of light;
Exposure to prolonged periods of light and/or darkness;
Extreme variations in temperature;
Sleep adjustment;
Threats of severe physical abuse;
Death threats;
Administration of psychotropic drugs;
Shackling and manacling for hours at a time;
Use of “stress” positions;
Noxious fumes that caused pain to eyes and nose;
Withholding of any mattress, pillow, sheet or blanket;
Constant surveillance;
Incommunicado detention, including denial of all contact with family and legal counsel for a 21-month period;
Denial of medical care for serious and potentially life-threatening ailments, including chest pain and difficulty breathing, as well as for treatment of the chronic, extreme pain caused by being forced to endure stress positions, resulting in severe and continuing mental and physical harm, pain, and profound disruption of the senses and personality.

Any guesses? Time’s up!

A: They’re all things that government officials could do to an American citizen and still claim later that they didn’t know they were “torturing” that citizen, according to a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

May 4th, 2012 :: Year 9, Issue 17

May-04-2012 | Comments (0)

**No Tikkunista next week, due to travel plans. Back on May 18th, insh’Allah.**

1. How’s that Global War on Terror Thing Working Out for Ya?

Bird’s Eye: The US has been waging war on terror for twelve years now. Originally framed as a hunt for Osama and Al-Qaida, the goals seemed to have …uh…diffused. Andrew Bacevitch breaks the war into three parts (Rumsfeld, Petraeus, and Michael Vickers) and examines the characteristics of each part. Glenn Greenwald looks at how the nature of the war has escalated since bin Laden’s death. And Schneier, whose log on security is always a treat, looks at the costs in money and lives of the farce through which we go when we travel via US airports.

* Scoring the Global War on Terror NationofChange

With the United States now well into the second decade of what the Pentagon has styled an “era of persistent conflict,” the war formerly known as the global war on terrorism (unofficial acronym WFKATGWOT) appears increasingly fragmented and diffuse. Without achieving victory, yet unwilling to acknowledge failure, the United States military has withdrawn from Iraq. It is trying to leave Afghanistan, where events seem equally unlikely to yield a happy outcome.

…Viewed close-up, the “war” appears to have lost form and shape. Yet by taking a couple of steps back, important patterns begin to appear. What follows is a preliminary attempt to score the WFKATGWOT, dividing the conflict into a bout of three rounds. Although there may be several additional rounds still to come, here’s what we’ve suffered through thus far.

So what tentative judgments can we offer regarding the ongoing WFKATGWOT? Operationally, a war launched by the conventionally minded has progressively fallen under the purview of those who inhabit what Dick Cheney once called “the dark side,” with implications that few seem willing to explore. Strategically, a war informed at the outset by utopian expectations continues today with no concretely stated expectations whatsoever, the forward momentum of events displacing serious consideration of purpose. Politically, a war that once occupied center stage in national politics has now slipped to the periphery, the American people moving on to other concerns and entertainments, with legal and moral questions raised by the war left dangling in midair…..

Round 3. The Vickers Era: Assassination. Unlike Donald Rumsfeld or David Petraeus, Michael Vickers has not achieved celebrity status. Yet more than anyone else in or out of uniform, Vickers, who carries the title Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, deserves recognition as the emblematic figure of the WFKATGWOT’s round three….The Vickers approach means acting aggressively to eliminate would-be killers wherever they might be found, employing whatever means are necessary. Vickers “tends to think like a gangster,” one admirer comments. “He can understand trends then change the rules of the game so they are advantageous for your side.” Round three of the WFKATGWOT is all about bending, breaking, and reinventing rules in ways thought to be advantageous to the United States. Much as COIN supplanted “shock and awe,” a broad-gauged program of targeted assassination has now displaced COIN as the prevailing expression of the American way of war

* Since Bin Ladin’s Death Glenn Greenwald Salon

In the wake of Osama bin Laden’s summary execution one year ago, many predicted that the War on Terror would finally begin to recede. Here’s what has happened since then:

*With large bipartisan majorities, Congress renewed the once-controversial Patriot Act without a single reform, and it was signed into law by President Obama; Harry Reid accused those urging reforms of putting the country at risk of a Terrorist attack.

* For the first time, perhaps ever, a U.S. citizen was assassinated by the CIA, on orders from the President, without a shred of due process and far from any battlefield; two weeks later, his 16-year-old American son was also killed by his own government; the U.S. Attorney General then gave a speech claiming the President has the power to target U.S. citizens for death based on unproven, secret accusations of Terrorism.

* With large bipartisan majorities, Congress enacted, and the President signed, a new law codifying presidential powers of worldwide indefinite detention and an expanded statutory defintion of the War on Terror.

* Construction neared completion for a sprawling new site in Utah for the National Security Agency to enable massive domestic surveillance and to achieve “the realization of the ‘total information awareness’ program created during the first term of the Bush administration.”

* President Obama authorized the use of “signature” drone strikes in Yemen, whereby the CIA can target people for death “even when the identity of those who could be killed is not known.”

* Harms of Post-9/11 Airline Security Schneier on Security

[Previously] I made two basic arguments about post-9/11 airport security. One, we are not doing the right things: the focus on airports at the expense of the broader threat is not making us safer. And two, the things we are doing are wrong: the specific security measures put in place since 9/11 do not work. Kip Hawley doesn’t argue with the specifics of my criticisms, but instead provides anecdotes and asks us to trust that airport security—and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in particular—knows what it’s doing.

He wants us to trust that a 400-ml bottle of liquid is dangerous, but transferring it to four 100-ml bottles magically makes it safe. He wants us to trust that the butter knives given to first-class passengers are nevertheless too dangerous to be taken through a security checkpoint. He wants us to trust the no-fly list: 21,000 people so dangerous they’re not allowed to fly, yet so innocent they can’t be arrested. He wants us to trust that the deployment of expensive full-body scanners has nothing to do with the fact that the former secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, lobbies for one of the companies that makes them. He wants us to trust that there’s a reason to confiscate a cupcake (Las Vegas), a 3-inch plastic toy gun (London Gatwick), a purse with an embroidered gun on it (Norfolk, VA), a T-shirt with a picture of a gun on it (London Heathrow) and a plastic light saber that’s really a flashlight with a long cone on top (Dallas/Fort Worth).

The humiliation, the dehumanisation and the privacy violations are also harms. That Mr Hawley dismisses these as mere “costs in convenience” demonstrates how out-of-touch the TSA is from the people it claims to be protecting. Additionally, there’s actual physical harm: the radiation from full-body scanners still not publicly tested for safety; and the mental harm suffered by both abuse survivors and children: the things screeners tell them as they touch their bodies are uncomfortably similar to what child molesters say.

In 2004, the average extra waiting time due to TSA procedures was 19.5 minutes per person. That’s a total economic loss—in –America—of $10 billion per year, more than the TSA’s entire budget. The increased automobile deaths due to people deciding to drive instead of fly is 500 per year. Both of these numbers are for America only, and by themselves demonstrate that post-9/11 airport security has done more harm than good.

2. American Despair

May-04-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: To the Hopi Indians, the word “koyaanisqatsi” means “crazy life”, “life in turmoil”, “life disintegrating”, or “a state of life that calls for another way of living”.Starting with famed author E.I.Doctorow (Ragtime, World’s Fair, etc.) we offer three despairing views of what the US has had stripped away due to the last dozen years of war. Whether you believe it to be coincidence or cabal, you can’t help but see the parallels to what Naomi Klein calls “Shock Doctrine”, the use of a crisis to effect unpopular changes in governance. Chris Hedges thinks there’s hope in a return to animism…we’ll explore that further in part 5, below.

* Unexceptionalism – A Primer EL Doctorow New York Times

TO achieve unexceptionalism, the political ideal that would render the United States indistinguishable from the impoverished, traditionally undemocratic, brutal or catatonic countries of the world, do the following:

Phase One: If you’re a justice of the Supreme Court, ignore the first sacrament of a democracy and suspend the counting of ballots in a presidential election. Appoint the candidate of your choice as president. If you’re the newly anointed president, react to a terrorist attack by invading a non-terrorist country. Despite the loss or disablement of untold numbers of lives, manage your war so that its results will be indeterminate.

Using the state of war as justification, order secret surveillance of American citizens, data mine their phone calls and e-mail, make business, medical and public library records available to government agencies, perform illegal warrantless searches of homes and offices. Take to torturing terrorism suspects, here or abroad, in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment….Commit to indeterminate detention without trial those you decide are enemies.

Suspend progressive taxation so that the wealthiest pay less proportionately than the middle class. See to it that the wealth of the country accumulates to a small fraction of the population so that the gap between rich and poor widens exponentially….Deregulate the banking industry so as to create a severe recession in which enormous numbers of people lose their homes and jobs.

Before you leave office add to the Supreme Court justices like the ones who awarded you the presidency.

Phase Two….

* The US Does Not Have Justice Or Even The Rule Of Law Ian Welsh

…and whether the public approves or disapproves is irrelevant. Black letter law, on the books, makes most of what the banks did leading up to the subprime crisis illegal. It was fraud. Black letter law makes the war on Iraq a war crime, and no one went to jail for that. Black letter law does not allow freestanding resisting arrest charges, and those happen all the time. Basic law states that an accused has a right to face their accuser and see the evidence against them, that no longer occurs in many cases. Basic justice says that you can’t punish someone without a trial, and the “no-fly list” indicates that is no longer true (along with being unable to face your accusers and see the evidence against you.) The US Congress retroactively made wiretapping without a warrant “legal” and if I have to explain why retroactive immunity is wrong I give up. Basic justice says that secret laws and secret courts are unjust, yet the US has plenty of both.

This is not just an issue with the US. During the G20 up here in Toronto the Ontario government used a SECRET LAW to strip civil liberties from anyone in the downtown Toronto core. Of course, it must be said that the public couldn’t give a shit, it was not an issue in the next election. In Britain, after the riots, family members of those convicted of crimes were evicted from public housing. Collective punishment of family members is unjust…

* The Implosion of Capitalism Chris Hedges

When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. Let the seas be emptied of life. Let one useless war after another be waged. Let the masses be thrust into extreme poverty and left without jobs while the elites, drunk on hedonism, accumulate vast fortunes through exploitation, speculation, fraud and theft. Reality, at the end, gets unplugged. We live in an age when news consists of Snooki’s pregnancy, Hulk Hogan’s sex tape and Kim Kardashian’s denial that she is the naked woman cooking eggs in a photo circulating on the Internet. Politicians, including presidents, appear on late night comedy shows to do gags and they campaign on issues such as creating a moon colony….

The quest by a bankrupt elite in the final days of empire to accumulate greater and greater wealth, as Karl Marx observed, is modern society’s version of primitive fetishism. This quest, as there is less and less to exploit, leads to mounting repression, increased human suffering, a collapse of infrastructure and, finally, collective death. It is the self-deluded, those on Wall Street or among the political elite, those who entertain and inform us, those who lack the capacity to question the lusts that will ensure our self-annihilation, who are held up as exemplars of intelligence, success and progress. The World Health Organization calculates that one in four people in the United States suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression—which seems to me to be a normal reaction to our march toward collective suicide. Welcome to the asylum.

When the most basic elements that sustain life are reduced to a cash product, life has no intrinsic value. The extinguishing of “primitive” societies, those that were defined by animism and mysticism, those that celebrated ambiguity and mystery, those that respected the centrality of the human imagination, removed the only ideological counterweight to a self-devouring capitalist ideology. Those who held on to pre-modern beliefs, such as Native Americans, who structured themselves around a communal life and self-sacrifice rather than hoarding and wage exploitation, could not be accommodated within the ethic of capitalist exploitation, the cult of the self and the lust for imperial expansion. The prosaic was pitted against the allegorical. And as we race toward the collapse of the planet’s ecosystem we must restore this older vision of life if we are to survive.

5. Reasons for Hope

May-04-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: So why hope? You’ve just read four sections about how the US has turned mad abroad, and tyrannical at home, how the Israeli government is at best incompetent or mad (At worst? Both.), how the shadow of the Holocaust looms over us, and now I suggest hope? Absolutely. Orion Magazine has a longish piece suggesting the direction out of the US pit, and Uri Avnery, founder of Gush Shalom, writes about why he remains an optimist and why you should be too. And Forbes shows a realistic possible solution to the energy/ global warming crisis. Yes those were btter pills above, but now it’s sweet dessert. You’ve earned it. Have a second helping of hope… no calories, either.

* America the Possible: A Manifesto, Part I James Gustave Speth Orion Magazine (Thanks, Gabe!)

What is now desperately needed is transformative change in the system itself. To deal successfully with all the challenges America now faces, we must therefore complement reform with at least equal efforts aimed at transformative change to create a new operating system that routinely delivers good results for people and planet.

At the core of this new operating system must be a sustaining economy based on new economic thinking and driven forward by a new politics. The purpose and goal of a sustaining economy is to provide broadly shared prosperity that meets human needs while preserving the earth’s ecological integrity and resilience—in short, a flourishing people and a flourishing nature. That is the paradigm shift we must now seek.

I believe this paradigm shift in the nature and operation of America’s political economy can be best approached through a series of interacting, mutually reinforcing transformations—transformations that attack and undermine the key motivational structures of the current system, transformations that replace these old structures with new arrangements needed for a sustaining economy and a successful democracy.

* Confessions of an Optimist Uri Avnery Counterpunch

Some time ago I bumped into the writer Amos Oz at a wedding and we talked about this curiosity, my optimism. He said that he was a pessimist. Being a pessimist, he said, was a win-win situation. If things turn to the better, you are happy. If things get worse, you are still happy, because you have been right all along.

The trouble with pessimism, I told him, was that it leads nowhere. Pessimism relieves you of any urge to do something. If things are going to get worse anyhow, why bother? Pessimism is a comfortable attitude. It even allows you to be contemptuous of the optimists, who still struggle for a better world. Optimism is for simpletons.

But this is exactly what it’s all about. Only optimists can struggle. If you don’t believe in a better world, a better country, a better society, you can’t fight for them. You can only sit in your armchair in front of the TV, tut-tutting at the stupidity of the human race, and particularly your own people, and feel superior.

* Eating Less Meat Is World’s Best Chance For Timely Climate Change Forbes

Shifting the world’s reliance on fossil fuels to renewable energy sources is important, certainly. But the world’s best chance for achieving timely, disaster-averting climate change may actually be a vegetarian diet, according to a recent report in World Watch Magazine.

“The entire goal of today’s international climate objectives can be achieved by replacing just one-fourth of today’s least eco-friendly food products with better alternatives,” co-author Robert Goodland, a former World Bank Group environmental advisor wrote….A widely cited 2006 report estimated that 18% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions were attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, pigs and poultry. However, analysis performed by Goodland, with co-writer Jeff Anhang, an environmental specialist at the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation, found that figure to now more accurately be 51%.

Consequently, state the pair, replacing livestock products with meat alternatives would “have far more rapid effects on greenhouse gas emissions and their atmospheric concentrations — and thus on the rate the climate is warming — than actions to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.”

6. Followups

May-04-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: The bird is puzzled. Why has Followups been moved? The editor chirps up in response: it’s not the most important, so why bury the lead? In future issues Followups will hover somewhere between the political and the rest. This week we follow up on the look at the Canadian people’s swing to the left (as distinct to their government), at hockey players’ swings to the head, and at Noam Chomsky’s observations about the political landscape’s swing to Occupy. Of note is that our hockey commentary is by Adam Gopnik, who delivered the fourth of last year’s Massey lectures as a paean to the nobility of hockey.

* Canada’s Socially Progressive Values Now Stretch From Coast To Coast Den Tandt Montreal Gazette

An extraordinary transformation has occurred, or more precisely appeared above the waterline. It is a change so epochal, so profound, you’d think Canadians would be in the streets, cheering. But then, this is Canada: Celebratory back patting is not our cup of tea.

The big news, which will never make a bold headline, is just this: Across this country, from coast to coast to coast, there is now a nearly unanimous view that the old, divisive, angry debates about matters of individual faith and morals are over. And we’re not going back there. Not any time soon, probably not ever.

Discrimination based on race and gender and sexual orientation are history, too, for the most part. There are still racists, homophobes and gender-haters in Canada, of course. And there are aberrations (Afro-centric schools in Toronto, for example). But the shared expectation of equality under the law for all, is now so firmly embedded as to be foundational. This is something interesting, unique — and new.

We actually, finally may be living in a just society, as various past prime ministers dreamt we one day would. Not only that, but we live in a society in which the shared idea of equal rights spans the political spectrum, and also our country’s vast geography.

Too Pollyannaish by half? It sounds it. But consider the facts on the ground….

* Violence in Hockey Adam Gopnik The New Yorker

What more is there to be said about the plague of violence in hockey this spring? Last Sunday, after watching my suddenly resurgent—should that be insurgent?—Chelsea Blues come back and beat Tottenham to make one more F.A. Cup Final, I turned on the Penguins-Flyers game late, and was not entirely surprised to see that the two teams were brawling. But then, as the Flyer’s Hartnell took a “victory” turn around the ice, a sudden howl went up from the crowd, and the usually suave Doc Emrick said glumly, “The crowd is responding to a Hulk Hogan video they’re showing.” And I thought: it’s come to this? Hockey, which I had spent the past year arguing at length, on Canadian radio, is the most intrinsically beautiful and strategically lithe of all sports, now cynically samples pro wrestling to stir up a crowd? My true blue (or red and white) Canadian wife, who comes from a true hockey playing family—her great uncle is actually in the Hockey Hall of Fame—saw what was happening, shuddered, and walked away.

“The most vicious and, perhaps, disgraceful first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs” was the verdict of Stu Hackel, the former director of broadcasting for the N.H.L., and this is now close to a universal view—if you except Don Cherry and Mike Milbury, who may not actually live in this universe, but rather in some other, remote dimension, where it is forever 1959.

* What Next for Occupy? Noam Chomsky The Guardian

Q: We are interested in learning what your position is on mainstream filtering, the repression of civil liberties, and the role of money and politics as they relate to Occupy and the future of America.

A: Coverage of Occupy has been mixed. At first it was dismissive, making fun of people involved as if they were just silly kids playing games and so on. But coverage changed. In fact, one of the really remarkable and almost spectacular successes of the Occupy movement is that it has simply changed the entire framework of discussion of many issues. There were things that were sort of known, but in the margins, hidden, which are now right up front – such as the imagery of the 99% and 1%; and the dramatic facts of sharply rising inequality over the past roughly 30 years, with wealth being concentrated in actually a small fraction of 1% of the population.

For the majority, real incomes have pretty much stagnated, sometimes declined. Benefits have also declined and work hours have gone up, and so on. It’s not third world misery, but it’s not what it ought to be in a rich society, the richest in the world, in fact, with plenty of wealth around, which people can see, just not in their pockets. All of this has now been brought to the fore. You can say that it’s now almost a standard framework of discussion. Even the terminology is accepted. That’s a big shift.

7. Useful Data

May-04-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Three clear charts, and the first is amazing. You select the language (default link is to “English”), and the country, and get a list of all that country’s online English newspapers. If you teach media, you could build a semester’s worth of projects from this site! The second and third are simple clear examples of well presented graphs. Watch the baby boom roll along the chart on #3!

* The Best Online Newspapers In All Countries

I need this site as a tool in my daily work. I have been searching for media databases like this. Most projects alike have not kept their focus on general news, politics, economics etc. But unfortunately included news sources of low quality and sites with very specialized media. And what is worst, the links have been broken or the URLs have been hard to remember.

I simply want to do that better to provide you easy access to major national and daily updated news sources from all over the world, whether you are journalist, researcher, online media designer, concerned traveler or student.

* Incarcerated Americans 1920–2006 Wikipedia

* US Age Distribution 1950–2050

10. New York City: The Past, The Future, The Alternative

May-04-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: From the archives, the good people at In Focus narrowed 2.2 million images of New York’s past down to 53. From the future, we offer a time lapse video of the rise of the new World Trade Center (not quite finished; that lies in the future.) And from an alternative time-stream, a set of New Yorker covers that we never got to see here, more’s the pity.

* Historic Photos From the NYC Municipal Archives - In Focus – The Atlantic

The New York City Municipal Archives just released a database of over 870,000 photos from its collection of more than 2.2 million images of New York throughout the 20th century. Their subjects include daily life, construction, crime, city business, aerial photographs, and more. I spent hours lost in these amazing photos, and gathered this group together to give you just a glimpse of what’s been made available from this remarkable collection.

* Time-Lapse Video Of Rising World Trade Center The Presurfer

* New Yorker Covers You Were Never Meant To See The New Yorker

Next week marks the publication of Françoise Mouly’s “Blown Covers,” a book whose subtitle says it all: “New Yorker covers you were never meant to see.” Mouly, who is the art editor at the magazine, describes how iconic New Yorker covers came to be, and also, how some covers never came to be. Here, she shares a selection of those new classics plus the cover ideas that were either too naughty, too crazy, or simply too ahead of their time.

12. Quote of the Week

May-04-2012 | Comments (0)

“The Tragedy of Obama: a corporatist centrist giving endless concessions to Republicans who (successfully) portray him as a radical leftist.” Anatoly Karlin

2. Voices From the Other Side of the Media

Apr-20-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: What’s the other side? The one the main stream media don’t carry. Mehanna’s speech is hugely moving, utterly cogent, depressingly convincing, essential reading. Barghouti, the Palestinian leader is also convincing on why “apartheid” is the right word. I don’t know of any other to describe this system of rule. I’ve been enjoying Cenk Uygur’s rants… and I haven’t seen that the supreme head of Iran ruled officially that the use of nuclear weapons is forbidden. Curious how all our papers and radio and TV missed that, isn’t it?

* Sentencing Statement By American Tarek Mehanna, Convicted Of Helping Al Qaeda Salon

In one of the most egregious violations of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech seen in quite some time, Tarek Mehanna, an American Muslim, was convicted this week in a federal court in Boston and then sentenced yesterday to 17 years in prison. He was found guilty of supporting Al Qaeda (by virtue of translating Terrorists’ documents into English and expressing “sympathetic views” to the group) as well as conspiring to “murder” U.S. soldiers in Iraq (i.e., to wage war against an invading army perpetrating an aggressive attack on a Muslim nation)…. I urge everyone to read something quite amazing: Mehanna’s incredibly eloquent, thoughtful statement at his sentencing hearing, before being given a 17-year prison term.

In your eyes, I’m a terrorist, and it’s perfectly reasonable that I be standing here in an orange jumpsuit. But one day, America will change and people will recognize this day for what it is. They will look at how hundreds of thousands of Muslims were killed and maimed by the US military in foreign countries, yet somehow I’m the one going to prison for “conspiring to kill and maim” in those countries – because I support the Mujahidin defending those people. They will look back on how the government spent millions of dollars to imprison me as a ”terrorist,” yet if we were to somehow bring Abeer al-Janabi back to life in the moment she was being gang-raped by your soldiers, to put her on that witness stand and ask her who the “terrorists” are, she sure wouldn’t be pointing at me.

The government says that I was obsessed with violence, obsessed with ”killing Americans.” But, as a Muslim living in these times, I can think of a lie no more ironic.

* Mustafa Barghouti to J Street: I know you don’t like the word apartheid, but what do you call a system that gives a settler 50 times more water than a Palestinian? via Mondoweiss

On March 26, at the J Street conference in Washington, D.C., Palestinian leader Mustafa Barghouti described apartheid in Palestine to a largely-Jewish audience. As he spoke, you could have heard a pin drop in a room jammed with 500 people hearing about the one-state option. His comments have resonated in the weeks since.

Some people might not like the word apartheid, when we say that we live in a system of apartheid and segregation, and I understand why you wouldn’t like it. Because there is nothing to be proud about having a system of apartheid and segregation in the 21st century. But as Menachem [Klein] said, we actually live in that system. It’s one regime.

What is apartheid? Apartheid is a system where you have two laws, two different laws, for two people living in the same area. If you don’t like the word apartheid, give me an alternative to a situation where a Palestinian citizen is allowed to use no more than 50 cubic meters of water per capital year, while an Israeli illegal settler from the West Bank is allowed to use 2400. How would you classify a situation where the Israeli gdp per capita is about $30,000 while a Palestinian’s gdp per capita is less than $1400?

Yet we are obliged to pay the same prices for products as Israelis do. More than that: We are obliged to pay double the price for electricity and water that Israelis do though they make 30 times more than we do.

* Khamenei’s Fatwa against Nukes (Cenk Uygur Rant) via Informed Comment

Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks on the progressive network Current TV gives us an insightful rant on Big TV News’ lack of interest in Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s fatwa declaring making, stockpiling and using nuclear weapons a sin. He points out that you almost never hear about this fatwa on television news, and performs a thought experiment. How often would a fatwa to the opposite effect have been mentioned?

3. Occupy What?

Apr-20-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Whither or wither occupy? As spring comes, what will follow? The complaints it raised are clearly still as pressing as ever, but will the movement manage to become more than a branch of the Democratic party? And if so, how will they do it? Three intelligent perspectives look at those questions.

* The Itinerant US Left Has Found Its Home In The Occupy Movement Gary Younge The Guardian

The legacy of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is still in the making. Those who believe it came from nowhere and has disappeared just as quickly are wrong on both counts. Most occupiers were already politically active in a range of campaigns. What the occupations did was bring them together in one place and refract their disparate messages through the broader lens of inequality. The occupations were less an isolated outpouring of discontent than a decisive, dynamic moment in an evolving process.

Over the last decade in the US there has been an itinerant quality to the progressive left. Activists have sought shelter in the anti-war movement, Howard Dean’s primary campaign, gay rights, immigrants’ rights or the Obama campaign. Each more powerful and hopeful than the last; each too narrowly focused and lacking the social or economic base to sustain it. In the occupations, these political vagrants found a home.

* Is The Occupy Movement Being Hijacked? Al Jazeera English (Thanks Gabe)

After a quiet winter, Occupy Wall Street is gearing up again for a summer of protest. Four months after they were evicted from bases across the country, protesters are emerging once more to camp out in New York’s financial hub. It is a movement that, at its peak, brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets of the US – united by a common anger at the excesses of the financial industry, and a dismay at government unwillingness to rein it in. There is a day of mass protest and a general strike planned for May 1. The renewed demonstrations will undoubtedly be accompanied by renewed questions about the movement itself – some say is too unfocused in its objectives.

…But now a rival group has emerged – called the 99% Spring – which says it wants to train protesters for a campaign of peaceful protest. Critics have denounced the group as a Democratic Party attempt to galvanise support for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. Nonetheless, some former Occupy protesters are now advocating that change should come from within the government itself. So with a rival action group emerging, how is the Occupy Wall Street movement developing? Is the movement’s message in danger of getting hijacked by Obama’s re-election campaign?

* Timothy Noah, Charles Murray, and America’s Inequality The New Yorker

The most striking change in American society in the past generation—roughly since Ronald Reagan was elected President—has been the increase in the inequality of income and wealth. Timothy Noah’s “The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It” (Bloomsbury), a good general guide to the subject, tells us that in 1979 members of the much discussed “one per cent” got nine per cent of all personal income. Now they get a quarter of it. The gains have increased the farther up you go. The top tenth of one per cent get about ten per cent of income, and the top hundredth of one per cent about five per cent. While the Great Recession was felt most severely by those at the bottom, the recovery has hardly benefitted them. In 2010, ninety-three per cent of the year’s gains went to the top one per cent.

Since rich people are poorer in votes than they are in dollars, you’d think that, in an election year, the ninety-nine per cent would look to politics to get back some of what they’ve lost, and that inequality would be a big issue. So far, it hasn’t been. Occupy Wall Street and its companion movements briefly spurred President Obama to become more populist in his rhetoric, but there’s no sign that Occupy is going to turn into the kind of political force that the Tea Party movement has been.

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2. Right Wing Enviro–Denial

5. Prisons, and Profits

6. Followups

May 4th, 2012 :: Year 9, Issue 17

**No Tikkunista next week, due to travel plans. Back on May 18th, insh’Allah.**

1. How’s that Global War on Terror Thing Working Out for Ya?

2. American Despair

5. Reasons for Hope

6. Followups

7. Useful Data

10. New York City: The Past, The Future, The Alternative

12. Quote of the Week

2. Voices From the Other Side of the Media

3. Occupy What?

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