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From: bluegreenearth@yahoogroups.com
To: bluegreenearth@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2007 12:01 AM
Subject: **JUNK** [bluegreenearth] Digest Number 2338
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Messages In This Digest (20 Messages)
1. The RIAA vs. The World, by David Rovics From: Tim Barton / BlueGreenEarth
2. Derailing a deal, by Noam Chomsky From: Tim Barton / BlueGreenEarth
3. fwd: The Price of Intolerance [wp] From: paul illich
4. The new coal age, by Monbiot From: Tim Barton / BlueGreenEarth
5. fwd: The Economy of the New Human Being From: paul illich
6. CANADA: Native Way of Life Vanishing into the Clear-Cut From: Tim Barton /
BlueGreenEarth
7. FEMINIST FIGHTBACK 2007 From: Tim Barton / BlueGreenEarth
8. fwd: A Quest for Energy in the Globe’s Remote Places [nyt] From: paul
illich
9. fwd: Obama Proposes Capping Greenhouse Gas Emissions & Making Pollut From:
paul illich
10. fwd: Oct. 9, 1967, Latin American guerrilla leader Che Guevara was e From:
paul illich
11. Missouri Coalition for the Environment: EPA Postpones Decision - Act From:
Tim Barton / BlueGreenEarth
12. fwd: U.S. finally taking warming seriously: Gorbachev From: paul illich
13. fwd: Scientists Find Organic Agriculture Can Feed the World & More From:
paul illich
14. fwd: CLIMATE CHANGE: Entire Landscapes on the Move From: paul illich
15. fwd: Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse From: paul illich
16. Interview with David Suzuki From: Tim Barton / BlueGreenEarth
17. The laughing Noam From: Tim Barton / BlueGreenEarth
18. "No War, No Warming" From: President, USA Exile Govt
19. ~~~Update: onedollardvdproject~~~ From: ronaldneil@...
20. fwd: summary of the Ecuadorian revolution: the rise of the Constitue From:
paul illich
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1. The RIAA vs. The World, by David Rovics
Posted by: "Tim Barton / BlueGreenEarth" tim_decenter@... tim_decenter
Tue Oct 9, 2007 11:21 am (PST)
The RIAA vs. The World
David Rovics
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), representing massive
multinational
corporations with tentacles in every corner of the global economy including
the music business,
has just won a lawsuit against a mother of two who refused to be pushed
around. Jamie Thomas€ ¦’²
pockets were not nearly deep enough to mount the kind of legal defense for the
occasion, but she
rightly thought that paying an out-of-court settlement of several thousand
dollars for the € ¦’³crime€ ¦’´
of sharing music online was ridiculous. So she told the RIAA they€ ¦’²d
have to take her to court.
They did, and they won.
The fact that one of these cases actually went to trial, the amount of money
involved, and the
fact that the defendant could have been your neighbor, a middle-aged single
mother of two who was
not selling anything, but was just engaging in commonplace song-swapping via
Kazaa€ ¦’²s peer-to-peer
network, has made this case newsworthy. But what lies beneath it are the
ever-growing tens of
thousands of people who have been spied upon, harassed and threatened with
lawsuits if they didn€ ¦’²t
pay the RIAA thousands of dollars for sharing copywritten music in a way the
RIAA, the US
government, the World Trade Organization, etc., deem inappropriate.
In spite of the RIAA€ ¦’²s campaign to staunch the profit losses of
it€ ¦’²s corporate members by waging a
campaign of fear and intimidation against your average everyday music fan, the
numbers of legal
and € ¦’³illegal€ ¦’´ downloads continue to rise rapidly. However,
the industry€ ¦’²s campaign is not just
about robbing working class American music fans of hundreds of millions of
their hard-earned
dollars. The music industry is waging a war for the hearts and minds of the
people of the US and
the world, spending tremendous amounts of money on advertising campaigns to
convince us of the
rightness of their cause and the wrongness of our actions.
The RIAA is both powerful and desperate. They are a multibillion-dollar
industry that has been
€ ¦’³suffering€ ¦’´ financially for years, and they are up against
the very nature of the internet € ¦’¶ that
being peer-to-peer sharing of information in whatever form (stories, songs,
videos, etc.). The
internet has given rise to unprecedented levels of global cultural
cross-pollination, and it has
led to a democratization of where our news, information, music, etc., comes
from that has not been
seen since the days of the wandering troubadors who went from town to town
spreading the news of
the day.
The RIAA is trying to use a combination of the law, financial largesse, and
encryption and other
technologies to try to reassert their dominance over global culture. But
perhaps most importantly,
they are trying to reassert the moral virtue of their position, the rightness
of their positions
vis-a-vis the concept of intellectual property and the notion that the fear
campaign they€ ¦’²re
engaged in somehow benefits society overall and artists in particular.
The success of their campaign to convince us that the average person is
essentially part of a
massive band of thieves can be easily seen. Look at the comments section
following an article
about the recent lawsuit, for example, and you will find people generally
saying they thought Ms.
Thomas was wrong but that the amount of money involved with the lawsuit is
outrageous. You will
find people admitting that they also download music illegally, and they feel
bad about it, but
it€ ¦’²s just too easy and the music in the stores is too expensive.
Obviously the idea of anyone being financially bankrupted for the rest of
their lives because they
shared some songs online is preposterous, and very few people fail to see
that. But the idea that
Ms. Thomas did something wrong is prevalent, even among her fellow €
¦’³thieves,€ ¦’´ and I think it needs
to be challenged on various fronts.
€ ¦’³We€ ¦’²re doing this for artists€ ¦’´
The RIAA represents artists about as effectively as the big pharmaceutical
companies represent
sick people. I€ ¦’²ll explain. The vast majority of innovation in
medicine comes from university
campuses. The usual pattern is Big Pharma then comes in and uses the research
that€ ¦’²s already been
done to then patent it and turn it into an obscenely profitable drug
(especially if it€ ¦’²s good for
treating a disease common among people in rich countries). Then they say
anybody else who makes
cheap or free versions of the drug is stealing, and by doing so we€
¦’²re stifling innovation and
acting immorally.
Similarly, the vast majority of musical innovation happens on the streets by
people who are not
being paid by anyone. The machine that is the music industry then snatches a
bit of that popular
culture, sanitizes it, and then sells it back to us at a premium. They create
a superstar or two
out of cultural traditions of their choosing and to hell with the rest of
them. Sometimes the
musicians they promote are really good, but that€ ¦’²s not the point.
The point is that if the RIAA
were truly interested in promoting good artists, they€ ¦’²d be doing
lots of smaller record contracts
with a wide variety of artists representing a broad cross-section of musical
traditions. But as it
is, if it were up to the RIAA we€ ¦’²d be listening to the music of a
small handful of
multimillionaire pop stars and the other 99.9% of musicians would starve.
The overwhelming majority of great music in the US (and most certainly in the
rest of the world)
is not supported by the RIAA. Rather, it is marginalized as much as possible.
€ ¦’³Payola€ ¦’´ is alive
and well. The commercial radio stations are paid to play RIAA artists and paid
not to play anyone
else. A strategic, financial decision is made to promote a few styles of
formulaic anti-music,
each style represented by a few antiseptic pop stars, the lowest common
denominator that can be
created by the corporations behind the curtain. On the other hand, the
overwhelming majority of
great writers, recording artists and performers are ignored, denied record
contracts, promotion,
airplay, distribution, etc.
In short, the RIAA does their best to stifle art, at the expense of money.
They represent some
artists, no doubt € ¦’¶ a few very well-off ones, the few (occasionally
very talented) beneficiaries
of their money-making schemes. In the US, even the system through which
royalties are distributed
ends up benefitting only the industry and a few pop stars. The comparatively
little airplay
independent artists receive is measured by organizations like ASCAP in such a
way that it is
largely ignored, and royalties we should be receiving end up in the pockets of
the industry.
€ ¦’³Downloads hurt CD sales of our artists€ ¦’´
OK, so the RIAA€ ¦’²s claims to represent artists in general may be
laughable, but surely they have a
point when they complain about the annually decreasing CD sales of Coldplay
and the Rolling
Stones? Even if they are just a cartel representing the interests of the few
and trying to prevent
access or representation by the many, surely suing average music listeners is
at least some kind
of response to their artists losing sales to these free downloads?
The kind of logic that sees loss of CD sales for major label artists as a
direct response to being
able to download their music online for free is flawed. It assumes that people
would be buying the
CD€ ¦’²s of these artists were it not available for free. The reality,
I€ ¦’²d suggest, is very different
and also hard to measure with any degree of accuracy.
With the rise of the worldwide web has come an explosion of interest in an
ever-broadening array
of music. People are downloading for free and paying for new music from all
over. When bigtime
artists get loads of conventional publicity and everybody can€ ¦’²t
avoid knowing that Janet Jackson
has a new CD out because this news is covering the sides of every bus in the
city, many people
will go ahead and download tracks from her new CD if they can find them on the
web for free. But
would they bother buying the CD in the current, rich musical environment of
the internet
otherwise? Or would they just move on and download other stuff from the
independent artists
they€ ¦’²re constantly discovering out there on the web instead?
I€ ¦’²d suggest the latter, and I€ ¦’²d further suggest that there
is no reliable way of knowing whether
or not I€ ¦’²m correct. If the major artists are losing sales because of
the availability of their
songs for free on the web, I couldn€ ¦’²t care less. However, I think
what is more the case is they
are losing sales to the internet itself, as a result of the blossoming of
grassroots musical
culture that the internet is fostering.
€ ¦’³Giving away music hurts small artists€ ¦’´
This is an argument the RIAA is fond of putting forward. Sadly, many of my
colleagues, many other
independent recording artists, believe it. They seem to think that if the
major artists are losing
sales to the internet, it must be happening to us, too. Either deliberately or
through inaction,
they don€ ¦’²t put their music up on the web for free download. Fans of
theirs, it often seems,
respect this and don€ ¦’²t put up the music either (sometimes). I€
¦’²m convinced this is all born out of
confusion, and these artists are shooting themselves in the foot.
What€ ¦’²s good for GM is definitely not what€ ¦’²s good for the
guy in Iowa City making electric cars out
of his garage. I constantly run into people who assume that I must be losing
CD sales and
suffering financially as a result of the fact that I put up all of my music on
the web for free
download. Sometimes they are artists who think I€ ¦’²m something of a
scab. Other times they€ ¦’²re fans
who appreciate the free music but are concerned for my financial well-being.
Principles aside for the moment, on a purely practical level, the reality is
that many independent
artists, most definitely including myself, have benefitted from the phenomenon
of the free MP3.
Like others, the fact that I€ ¦’²m making a living at all at music --
unlike the overwhelming majority
of musicians € ¦’¶ is largely attributable to the internet, and
specifically to free downloads.
It€ ¦’²s not simple, and it€ ¦’²s fairly easy to hypothesize one
thing or another and back it up with
selective information. But overall, my experience has been that I sold a few
thousand CD€ ¦’²s a year
before the internet, and have continued to sell a few thousand CD€ ¦’²s
a year after the internet. Gig
offers and fans in far-off places have multiplied, however, and in so many of
these cases it€ ¦’²s
clear that they first heard my music on the internet, usually because someone
they knew guided
them to my website.
Every year, over 100,000 songs are downloaded for free from my website, and
many more from many
other websites where they are hosted in one form or another. This represents
many times what CD
sales could possibly have been for me without a major record contract,
previous to the internet.
My conclusion is that the free download phenomenon behaves more like radio
airplay that I never
would have had otherwise. And it€ ¦’²s international airplay that has
led me to tours in countries
around the world and gigs in remote corners of the US that resulted directly
from someone telling
someone else about songs of mine they could find online for free.
The reality, pop stars aside, is that the overwhelming majority of musicians
who are able to make
a living from their music make it from performing. For DIY musicians who are
not having their
tours booked by Sony BMG€ ¦’²s booking agencies, the most valuable
resource are fans, especially the
ones who are well-organized and enthusiastic enough that they want to organize
a gig for us
somewhere. Through fans like this, we can cobble together another tour. This
process has been
helped immensely by the € ¦’³viral marketing,€ ¦’´ the buzz that
can happen when music people like is
freely available on the web.
I€ ¦’²m sure that there are many people who would have bought my latest
CD if they weren€ ¦’²t able to
download it for free. Of this there is no doubt. But to think that this is
therefore how the free
download phenomenon works in general is extremely simplistic. For every person
who downloads the
songs instead of buying the CD, I€ ¦’²d guess there are 100 who hear the
music on the web for the
first time, who would probably never have heard it otherwise. For every 100
people who hear the
music for free, say one of them will buy a CD to support the artist. For every
1,000, maybe one
will organize a paying gig. This may not cause a big rise in CD sales, but
ultimately it doesn€ ¦’²t
hurt them, either, and what it does for sure is dramatically increase the
overall audience of
independent artists around the world.
€ ¦’³But people are stealing private property on those P2P networks€
¦’´
There are many ways to try to compensate artists for original work, scientists
for ground-breaking
research, inventors for great new inventions, etc. There is no single, sacred
way to do this.
There are many ways to support art and artists in society and reward them for
their work. Paying
royalties based on airplay, downloads and/or CD sales is one way among many.
If royalties are going to be a primary way artists are compensated, there are
many ways to do
this, too. With CD sales, according to the current system, the songwriter gets
something like 7
cents per song per CD sold in the stores. With radio airplay, the onus on
paying the royalties
that may eventually get to some of the artists is on the radio stations, and
the radio stations
are usually supported by corporate advertisers.
If the RIAA really thought their artists could compete with the rest of the
world€ ¦’²s artists on a
relatively open playing field, they€ ¦’²d probably be busily trying to
create some kind of web-based
infrastructure where corporate advertising would pay some kind of royalties
for their artists. If
this infrastructure existed, people would drift towards it as the path of
least resistance,
compared to finding music on P2P networks.
The problem is, the RIAA doesn€ ¦’²t control the internet the way they
control the commercial radio
airwaves, and they know that the musical tastes of the people are broadening,
and threatening
their pop star system, threatening their profit margins. They can€ ¦’²t
keep out the competition, so
they€ ¦’²re trying hard to control the environment in a way that€
¦’²s most beneficial to their corporate
interests -- screw everybody else. Screw independent artists and screw the
public at large.
I don€ ¦’²t know if anybody can predict these things with certainty, but
it seems to me the basic
nature of the internet will ultimately triumph over the narrow interests of
the music industry.
The music industry will not cease to exist by any means, but it will shrink
somewhat, and will
have to give way to the flourishing grassroots music scene which the internet
has nurtured.
It seems to me that the most relevant question in terms of the efforts of the
RIAA is, at what
cost to society at large? How far will they go to maintain this broken system,
to maintain the
inequities of their star-making machinery?
And another crucial question: why should a system be allowed to continue that
massively rewards a
few artists for their € ¦’³original€ ¦’´ records full of €
¦’³original€ ¦’´ songs, while leaving destitute the
masses of musicians and others who created the cultural seas in which these
€ ¦’³original€ ¦’´ artists
swim?
Musicians, as a whole, represent some of the richest people in the society and
many of the
poorest. The music industry€ ¦’²s system, in conceptual terms and in
practical terms, is broken. It
represents the interests of the monopolies against the interests of the rest
of the world€ ¦’²s
people, cultures, musical traditions and musical innovations.
To my fellow musicians I say put all your music up for free download, help
your careers and screw
the music industry. To music fans I say keep on downloading, don€ ¦’²t
feel bad about it -- and try
not to get caught.
http://www.davidrovics.com
drovics@...
http://www.myspace.com/davidrovics
http://www.soundclick.com/davidrovics
bluegreenearth.com
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2. Derailing a deal, by Noam Chomsky
Posted by: "Tim Barton / BlueGreenEarth" tim_decenter@... tim_decenter
Tue Oct 9, 2007 11:22 am (PST)
Derailing a deal
By Noam Chomsky
10/08/07 "Khaleej Times" -- -- NUCLEAR-armed states are criminal states. They
have a legal
obligation, confirmed by the World Court, to live up to Article 6 of the
Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty, which calls on them to carry out good-faith negotiations to eliminate
nuclear weapons
entirely. None of the nuclear states has lived up to it.
The United States is a leading violator, especially the Bush administration,
which even has stated
that it isn't subject to Article 6.
On July 27, Washington entered into an agreement with India that guts the
central part of the NPT,
though there remains substantial opposition in both countries. India, like
Israel and Pakistan
(but unlike Iran), is not an NPT signatory, and has developed nuclear weapons
outside the treaty.
With this new agreement, the Bush administration effectively endorses and
facilitates this outlaw
behaviour. The agreement violates US law, and bypasses the Nuclear Suppliers
Group, the 45 nations
that have established strict rules to lessen the danger of proliferation of
nuclear weapons.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, observes
that the agreement
doesn't bar further Indian nuclear testing and, "incredibly, ... commits
Washington to help New
Delhi secure fuel supplies from other countries even if India resumes
testing." It also permits
India to "free up its limited domestic supplies for bomb production." All
these steps are in
direct violation of international nonproliferation agreements.
The Indo-US agreement is likely to prompt others to break the rules as well.
Pakistan is reported
to be building a plutonium production reactor for nuclear weapons, apparently
beginning a more
advanced phase of weapons design. Israel, the regional nuclear superpower, has
been lobbying
Congress for privileges similar to India's, and has approached the Nuclear
Suppliers Group with
requests for exemption from its rules. Now France, Russia and Australia have
moved to pursue
nuclear deals with India, as China has with Pakistan € ¦’· hardly a
surprise, once the global
superpower has opened the door.
The Indo-US deal mixes military and commercial motives. Nuclear weapons
specialist Gary Milhollin
noted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's testimony to Congress that the
agreement was "crafted
with the private sector firmly in mind," particularly aircraft and reactors
and, Milhollin
stresses, military aircraft. By undermining the barriers against nuclear war,
he adds, the
agreement not only increases regional tensions but also "may hasten the day
when a nuclear
explosion destroys an American city." Washington's message is that "export
controls are less
important to the United States than money" € ¦’· that is, profits for US
corporations € ¦’· whatever the
potential threat. Kimball points out that the United States is granting India
"terms of nuclear
trade more favourable than those for states that have assumed all the
obligations and
responsibilities" of the NPT. In most of the world, few can fail to see the
cynicism. Washington
rewards allies and clients that ignore the NPT rules entirely, while
threatening war against Iran,
which is not known to have violated the NPT, despite extreme provocation: The
United States has
occupied two of Iran's neighbours and openly sought to overthrow the Iranian
regime since it broke
free of US control in 1979.
Over the past few years, India and Pakistan have made strides towards easing
the tensions between
the two countries. People-to-people contacts have increased and the
governments are in discussion
over the many outstanding issues that divide the two states. Those promising
developments may well
be reversed by the Indo-US nuclear deal. One of the means to build confidence
throughout the
region was the creation of a natural gas pipeline from Iran through Pakistan
into India. The
"peace pipeline" would have tied the region together and opened the
possibilities for further
peaceful integration.
The pipeline, and the hope it offers, might become a casualty of the Indo-US
agreement, which
Washington sees as a measure to isolate its Iranian enemy by offering India
nuclear power in
exchange for Iranian gas € ¦’· though in fact India would gain only a
fraction of what Iran could
provide.
The Indo-US deal continues the pattern of Washington's taking every measure to
isolate Iran. In
2006, the US Congress passed the Hyde Act, which specifically demanded that
the US government
"secure India's full and active participation in United States efforts to
dissuade, isolate, and
if necessary, sanction and contain Iran for its efforts to acquire weapons of
mass destruction."
It is noteworthy that the great majority of Americans € ¦’· and Iranians
€ ¦’· favour converting the
entire region to a nuclear-weapons free zone, including Iran and Israel. One
may also recall that
UN Security Council Resolution 687 of April 3, 1991, to which Washington
regularly appealed when
seeking justification for its invasion of Iraq, calls for "establishing in the
Middle East a zone
free from weapons of mass destruction and all missiles for their delivery."
Clearly, ways to mitigate current crises aren't lacking.
This Indo-US agreement richly deserves to be derailed. The threat of nuclear
war is extremely
serious, and growing, and part of the reason is that the nuclear states €
¦’· led by the United States
€ ¦’· simply refuse to live up to their obligations or are significantly
violating them, this latest
effort being another step toward disaster.
The US Congress gets a chance to weigh in on this deal after the International
Atomic Energy
Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers Group vet it. Perhaps Congress, reflecting a
citizenry fed up
with nuclear gamesmanship, can reject the agreement. A better way to go
forward is to pursue the
need for global nuclear disarmament, recognising that the very survival of the
species is at
stake.
Noam Chomsky's most recent book is Interventions, a collection of his
commentary pieces
distributed by The New York Times Syndicate. Chomsky is emeritus professor of
linguistics and
philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18522.htm
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3. fwd: The Price of Intolerance [wp]
Posted by: "paul illich" paul_illich@... paul_illich
Tue Oct 9, 2007 11:25 am (PST)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/07/AR2007100701352.\
html
The Price of Intolerance
Prince William discovers that hounding immigrants doesn't come cheap.
Monday, October 8, 2007; A16
PRINCE WILLIAM County's elected leaders have balked, for the moment, at
implementing what would be one of the nation's more pernicious,
unenforceable and legally dubious local crackdowns on illegal immigrants.
Facing elections next month and political heat generated in no small part by
their own rhetoric, they may still decide to go ahead. If they do, they will
fan the flames of xenophobia in Prince William, squander the time and energy
of police officers and other agencies' employees, and, we now know, burden
county taxpayers with millions of dollars in spending that will achieve very
little.
The policy the county is considering would do two main things: require
police to coordinate more closely with federal authorities and conduct
residency checks, even in the case of minor offenses, if they think a
suspect might be in the country illegally; and deny some county services to
illegal immigrants. The first instance is an invitation to blatant racial
profiling by the police. The second is symbolism masquerading as policy.
The policy would leave it to police to determine who looks like an illegal
immigrant and who looks legitimate. The inevitable result is that most
police officers will be checking the status of Latino detainees more often
than that of other suspects. Nearly a fifth of Prince William's residents
are Latino -- most of them legal -- and the county's own Human Rights
Commission has warned of the likelihood of racial profiling. What's more,
the police action may not have much significant effect. Federal authorities
have limited capacity to pick up and detain illegal immigrants who may be
arrested in Prince William, particularly those detained for routine and
minor offenses.
The plan to deny county services to illegal immigrants would also change
little. For the most part, illegal immigrants are already denied access to
many local services (excluding schools and emergency health care, which the
courts have said are constitutionally mandated). A report prepared by county
officials did recommend that illegal immigrants who are homeless, elderly or
disabled be denied county assistance otherwise available to those groups.
Aside from establishing Prince William's reputation as the most
mean-spirited jurisdiction in America, it's hard to see what such a policy
will achieve.
What is known is that these policies would not be cheap. County officials
said it would cost $14.2 million to implement the police portion alone;
denying services -- even if dozens of agencies and hundreds of bureaucrats
could be trained and given usable guidelines to do so -- would cost even
more. That has given some county board members sticker shock; they are
considering whether the goal of harassing illegal immigrants justifies the
hefty price tag. While they are mulling, they might also consider whether
Prince William wants to be known as the nation's capital of intolerance.
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4. The new coal age, by Monbiot
Posted by: "Tim Barton / BlueGreenEarth" tim_decenter@... tim_decenter
Tue Oct 9, 2007 11:28 am (PST)
The new coal age
The government says it wants a low-carbon economy. Yet on a green hilltop in
south Wales, despite
huge opposition from locals, diggers have begun excavating what will be the
largest opencast coal
mine in Britain. Who let this happen? George Monbiot investigates
* George Monbiot
* The Guardian
* Tuesday October 9 2007
As I watched the machine scraping away the first buckets of soil, one thought
kept clanging
through my head: "If this is allowed to happen, we might as well give up now."
It didn't look like
much: just a yellow digger and a couple of trucks taking the earth away. But
in a secure compound
behind me were the heaviest beasts I have ever seen - 1,300 horsepower or more
- lined up and
ready to start digging one of the largest opencast coal mines in Europe. In
Romania perhaps? The
Czech Republic? No, on a hilltop in south Wales.
The diggers at Ffos-y-fran, on the outskirts of Merthyr Tydfil, are set to
excavate 1,000 acres of
land to a depth of 600ft. There has never been a hole quite like it in
Britain, and our
government's climate change policies are about to fall into it.
Everything about this scheme is odd. The edge of the site is just 36 metres
from the nearest
homes, yet there will be no compensation for the owners, and their concerns
have been dismissed by
the authorities. Though local people have fought the plan, their council, the
Welsh government and
the Westminster government have collaborated with the developers to force it
through, using
questionable methods. I have found evidence that suggests to me that a member
of Tony Blair's
government used false or outdated information to seek to persuade the Welsh
administration to
approve the pit. But perhaps the most remarkable fact is this: outside Merthyr
Tydfil, hardly
anyone knows it is happening.
It looks as if we are about to re-enter the coal age. Though the electricity
companies spend
millions telling us about their investments in renewable energy, at least four
of them - E.On, RWE
npower, ScottishPower and Scottish and Southern - are developing plans for new
coal-burning
generators, which produce roughly twice the carbon emissions of gas burners.
According to one
government document, there are "€ ¦£20 billion [worth of] of new
coal-fired power stations planned to
be built in the UK before 2020".
The power companies are confident that the government will back them. Its
energy white paper,
published in May, begins by explaining the need to develop a low-carbon
economy. But buried on
page 112 is a commitment to "secure the long-term future of coal-fired power
generation".
This is justified by the prospect that, one day, carbon emissions might be
captured and buried in
geological formations: a process known as carbon capture and storage, or CCS.
But while the
government has asked companies to build a demonstration plant by 2014, there
are no firm plans for
any commercial venture. The energy white paper admits that "CCS would not be
commercially viable
unless costs fell substantially ... or unless the carbon price rose
sufficiently to provide a
larger financial incentive". In a parliamentary debate in May, Alastair
Darling, then in charge of
energy, acknowledged that the technologies required for CCS "might never
become available". We
could be stuck with a new generation of coal-burning power stations, approved
on the basis of a
promise that never materialises, which commit us to massive emissions for 40
years.
There is another policy buried in the white paper that is already being
implemented. This is to
"maximise economic recovery ... from remaining coal reserves". In 2006,
British planning
authorities considered 12 applications for new opencast coal mines. They
rejected two of them and
approved 10. They have done so, the story of Ffos-y-fran shows, with the
active support of the
government.
At first, the people of Merthyr Tydfil could not understand why their
representatives were siding
with the developers. Merthyr has a long Labour tradition of social solidarity.
While many people
lament the passing of the deep mines, opencasting is unpopular. Petitions
circulated by the local
protest group raised 10,000 signatures. But the council (which is dominated by
the Labour party),
the Labour assembly member for the area and the Welsh assembly have all helped
the mining company
to fight the objectors. The answer, it now seems, according to evidence the
campaigners have
unearthed, is that the Westminster government leaned on the Welsh assembly to
force the project
through. The assembly in turn might have leaned on the local council.
One thing they are sure of is that it won't do the health of the local people
any good. There are
432 local authorities in the United Kingdom. Merthyr is 429th in the
life-expectancy table. As a
result of the legacy of heavy industry, smoking and bad diet, it has Wales's
highest rates of
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, strokes and certain heart conditions.
All these diseases
are exacerbated by air pollution and stress. The pit will be dug into a steep
hillside overhanging
the town.
To reach the 10.8 million tonnes of coal they are hoping to extract, the
developers must remove
123 million cubic metres of rock. The digging and infilling will last for 17
years, with
explosives used to loosen the rock and machines working from 7am until 11pm,
generating smoke and
dust. While the World Health Organisation identifies 57 decibels as causing
"serious annoyance",
the planning conditions set maximum noise levels at 70 decibels. When local
people say that the
scheme will ruin their lives, I do not believe they are exaggerating.
But they are not the only ones who will be affected. A tonne of coal contains
746kg of carbon:
burning it produces 2.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide. This means that the coal in
Ffos-y-fran will be
responsible for almost 30 million tonnes of CO2: equivalent to the annual
sustainable emissions of
25 million people (sustainable emissions are the quantity the planet's living
systems can absorb).
The only certain means of preventing climate change is to leave fossil fuels
in the ground: when
they are dug up, they will be used. This point has been ignored by the
government. It has
concentrated all its efforts on reducing the demand for fossil fuels, but has
done nothing to
reduce supply. It still subsidises exploration for oil and gas and it has been
pouring state money
into the coal industry.
Miller Argent, the consortium digging the pit, calls Ffos-y-fran a "land
reclamation scheme". It
will "reclaim circa 1,000 acres of acutely derelict, unsafe, unproductive and
unsightly land". By
digging out the coal, the company says, it can restore the land without the
need for public money.
The scheme will also provide "direct employment for over 200 people" and
"generate tens of
millions of pounds for the local economy and to the benefit of the local
community".
There is no doubt that some of the land in the scheme, comprising old workings
and spoil heaps, is
unsafe. But local people claim that only a small part of the site is acutely
derelict. As I saw
for myself, much of it consists of moorland and rough pasture, on which sheep
graze and the people
of Merthyr walk and picnic. "Reclamation would be sensible on some of the
worst features," one of
the objectors, Leon Stanfield, told me. "But you don't go down 600ft and blast
five days a week to
reclaim an area." Today, he says, most opencast coal mines are promoted as
reclamation schemes in
order to try to win public approval. He calculates that reclamation without
coal mining at
Ffos-y-fran would take just three years. Because Merthyr Tydfil qualifies for
European Objective
One funding, the clean-up could be sponsored by the European Union.
The protesters maintain that few of the promised benefits will come to the
town. The workers who
operate the vast machinery used in opencasting are specialists who tend to
move from mine to mine.
The pit, local people believe, will blight the area, discouraging businesses
from moving there and
driving away tourists. One of the campaigners, Terry Evans, took me on to the
hill and pointed
down to his bungalow - on the other side of the road, 36 metres away.
As far as I can discover, no other opencasting scheme in recent times comes
this close to people's
homes. In Scotland, planning rules require a buffer zone of at least 500m. But
the people of
Merthyr, through an extraordinary omission, have been left without the usual
protections: after 12
years of delays, there is still no planning guidance for coal workings in
Wales.
In 1997, the Welsh Office planned to publish a technical advice note, laying
down the conditions
new mines would have to meet. Nothing happened until the Welsh Assembly
government was formed. It
promised to publish the guidance in 2005, but the note is still only at the
draft stage. The delay
has been convenient for the developers: had the note been published, obtaining
planning permission
for schemes such as Ffos-y-fran would have been more difficult.
The draft proposes a separation zone of 350 metres between opencast workings
and the nearest
homes. It also insists that a health impact assessment is published.
Researchers at Cardiff
University twice offered to conduct an assessment of the Ffos-y-fran scheme,
but the council
turned them down on the grounds that "there was no statutory requirement". "We
have been denied
the protections the technical advice note would have given us," Leon Stanfield
told me. "No
decision should have been made until it was published." He suspects the note
has been deliberately
delayed in order to push through Ffos-y-fran and other schemes. When I
approached the Welsh
government, its spokesperson denied this. She maintained that the assembly is
awaiting the results
of "further research to look at the close geographical relationship between
coal resources in
Wales and Welsh communities".
This was not the only issue the objectors found odd. The borough council
offered an extraordinary
deal to the mining company, Miller Argent. It would allow the company to
recoup the costs of
making its case at the public inquiry - € ¦£800,000 - out of the royalties
that it would pay the
council for the coal. The people of Merthyr, in effect, paid the developers'
barristers to argue
against them. There was no such support for the objectors: they had to fund
their case at the
inquiry, which ended in 2004, out of their own pockets. They lost, and the
digging began a few
weeks ago.
Local people began to suspect that Miller Argent had friends in high places,
so they made a
freedom of information request. The results astonished them. First they
received a letter sent in
January 2004 by Stephen Timms, then minister for energy in the Westminster
government, to the
first minister of Wales, Rhodri Morgan. "My officials," Timms revealed, "have
had regular contact
with Miller Argent." He wanted the company's application "resolved with the
minimum of further
delay". Among the advantages he listed was that the mine would help to keep
the Aberthaw power
station in Barry in business: if it knew it had secure supplies from
Ffos-y-fran, the power firm
would fit sulphur scrubbers to comply with European rules, which would allow
the plant to stay
open for longer. This, in turn, would "assure the future" of the Welsh
opencasting industry.
The letter is extraordinary in three respects. First, that a minister in a
department responsible
for cutting carbon emissions (the department for trade and industry) should be
supporting an
opencast coal-mining scheme on behalf of its developer. Second, that he should
be seeking to
extend the life of one of the most inefficient coal-burning plants in the UK
(Aberthaw has been
operating since 1971). Third, that Aberthaw uses coal from many sources (50%
of it is imported)
and it is hard to see why its survival should be dependent on Ffos-y-fran.
But this was not the end of the lobbying. In December 2004, Timms' successor,
Mike O'Brien, sent
Morgan a second letter. He repeated the pleas Timms made on behalf of Miller
Argent. He also used
a new argument. Without the Ffos-y-fran scheme, Aberthaw might not be able to
stay open, because
its ability to bring in coal from abroad is "constrained by port and railway
capacity limits".
A few days after I read that letter, I found a document published by O'Brien's
department earlier
in the same year. It contained the following statement: "Problems were
experienced in the year
2000 when demand for imported coal increased substantially ... This has been
largely overcome by
investment in new rolling stock and some upgrading of rail links ... there
appears to be
sufficient capacity." As for port constraints that might prevent imports of
coal, the document
reveals that "there is a surplus of capacity on the west coast" - which
includes Wales. It seems
to me that O'Brien has used false information to seek to persuade Rhodri
Morgan to approve the
scheme. When I challenged him, a government spokesman was deputed to tell me
that "the letter
referred to information that we had at the time. There is no question of Mike
O'Brien misleading
the minister".
This is not the only support the government has given to coal mining. Between
2000 and 2002 it
gave Britain's coal producers € ¦£162m in subsidies, much of which went
into big opencast mines. In
2003 and 2004 it gave the industry a further € ¦£58.5m.
In late 2006, Blair's government established a body called the Coal Forum,
composed of coal
producers, electricity companies and government ministers and officials, whose
purpose was to
lobby for the future of coal. The opencast companies used the forum to rail
against the planning
laws that allow local people to hold up their schemes and to demand a faster
approval process.
They asked for a government statement explaining the benefits of a diversity
of energy sources, in
order to prevent climate policies from favouring gas. They hoped that this
would appear in the
energy white paper. They have received everything they wanted. We know that
the Labour party has a
long-standing relationship with coal miners and their unions. But while New
Labour has maintained
its support for the industry, its allegiance appears to have switched from the
workers to the
bosses.
To see what will come to Merthyr Tydfil, I visited the Selar opencast scheme
in the Neath Valley.
It is not quite as big as Ffos-y-fran, but it is hard to convey the size of
the hole. From the
edge of the pit the monster trucks on the other side were reduced to yellow
specks. Despite this
breadth, I could not see the bottom. The roads zigzagged down the grey slopes
for hundreds of feet
until they disappeared beneath the cliff on which I stood. Even from the top
of Mynydd Pen-Y-Cae,
1,500ft above the edge of the hole, the mine dominated the view. I camped on
the mountain and
watched the lights moving up and down the pit long after dark. When you think
of the fuss people
make about a few wind turbines, the neglect of this issue seems
incomprehensible.
I hope that this will change. I hope that a new mobilisation, supporting the
people of Merthyr
Tydfil and other blighted communities, will stop the government from dragging
us back into the
coal age.
€ ¦· George Monbiot's book Heat: how to stop the planet burning is
published in paperback, with new
material, by Penguin, priced € ¦£8.99.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/oct/09/energy
bluegreenearth.com
europeansocialecologyinstitute.org
irelandfrombelow.org
socialecologyinstitute.blogspot.com
myspace.com/socialecologyinstituteEU
anamnesis.net/incineration
global community, ecological, environmental
and social reportage, opinion and analysis
__________________________________________________________
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5. fwd: The Economy of the New Human Being
Posted by: "paul illich" paul_illich@... paul_illich
Tue Oct 9, 2007 11:31 am (PST)
The Economy of the New Human Being
With Raul Castro's recent call for structural changes in the Cuban economy,
Che Guevara's earlier ideas on the economic incentives allows us to rethink
Socialism of the 21st Century
http://www.juventudrebelde.co.cu/cuba/2007-10-08/the-economy-of-the-new-human-be\
ing/
By: Amaury E. del Valle
Most of the work of Che Guevara is still a mystery to study. His life is
closely linked to intellectual work that, as he confessed in a letter in
February 1964, can sometimes seem a little € «obscure,€ » precisely
because it
was written mainly when € «my watch read past midnight.€ »
However, to read it slowly is to find a great many reflections, some of them
marked by the historical moment in which he lived, while others that are
still incredibly valid. Many of his thoughts were ahead of the times that we
have experienced over the last several years, such as the collapse of what
he called the € «Soviet model of socialism.€ »
In his writings and discussions, Che was most concerned with the economy,
national and international policy, and liberation struggles.
Needed Pillars
Che€ ’²s economic thought is not an undecipherable riddle or a
theoretical
Minotaur impossible to defeat. Even in its unfinished nature it can be
summarized, as he did in his essay El socialismo y el hombre (officially
titled € «Socialism and Man€ » in the 1960s). In a prophetic phrase
that still
remains as a challenge, he said € «To build communism, we have to build a
new
(person) at the same time that we build the material base.€ »
One of the pillars of Che€ ’²s economic concepts was precisely the
creation of
a structure in which the most important element would be not only the
satisfaction of the basic needs of people, but also their education, in
order to make them aware of themselves as being the real owners and main
beneficiaries of the means of production.
One of the essential moments in his thought was the controversy about the
direction of the newly born socialist economy in Cuba, between 1963 and
1964. The argument emerged from issues that were merely national, and
eventually became a debate over the appropriateness of the economic model
implemented in the socialist countries at that time.
Regarding the matter, Che himself warned against € «blind apologetics;€
» he
criticized those who wanted to import experiences that were alien to Cuban
reality, saying that € «The law which supposedly governs the transition
from
socialism to communism is a mechanistic and conservative concept, an attempt
to put Soviet reality in step with the theory, to put aside all analysis and
ignore the harsh problems that would arise if a truly revolutionary course
were taken.€ »
In his work € «Neither Imitation Nor Copy: Che Guevara and the Pursuit of
a
New Socialism,€ » researcher Michael L€ öwy says that, contrary to the
tendencies of copying the Soviet model that was in fashion in his time, the
guerrilla commander believed that building socialism was € «an heroic
attempt
to create something new, the pursuit € ’·interrupted and unfinished€
’· of a
different paradigm for socialism, which in a many aspects was radically
opposed to the € ’±really existing€ ’² bureaucratic caricature.€
»
Other Che specialists think similarly to this, especially regarding the
debate on Cuban economy between 1963 and 1964, when they acknowledge that at
the time there were evident tensions and contradictions between the ideals
of the Cuban Revolution and those of the leadership in the Soviet Union. The
internationalist ideals of the socialist national liberation of the Cuban
Revolution were opposed to the Soviet system and its ideology, which despite
being mechanistic and subordinated to € «building of socialism in one
country,€ » was the strongest force operating and speaking on behalf of
Marxism.€ »
It was not in vain that Che himself highlighted the € «great boldness€
» of
questioning not only the model of socialism implemented at the time, but
also the role of the USSR itself in the international arena, which he
thought many times behaved like an imperialistic superpower.
In a speech he made in Algeria in February, 1965, he said openly, alluding
to the USSR, that € «there won€ ’²t be socialism if there is not a
change in
conscience among peoples that leads to a attitude of solidarity; this must
change both at the individual level and in the society in which socialism
has been or is being built, and worldwide, because of all the peoples who
are subjected to imperialist oppression.
Cuban economist Osvaldo Martinez referenced Che€ ’²s own words, when he
said
that it was € «heresy€ » and € «audacity€ » to refer to a plan
to write a true
Marxist political economy, one which was non-apologetic, but more like a
€ «scream from the bottom of underdevelopment.€ »
There is not doubt that the objective of Che € ’·and of Fidel Castro and
other
revolutionaries€ ’· was to establish a framework of thought
characteristic of
the Cuban Revolution, which was far from what was then understood as
€ «Marxism-Leninism.€ »
What had been feed to Cuba and the rest of the world under that name were no
more than professed € «truths€ » that were held up as being eternal,
when in
fact they responded more to the concrete realities of the USSR € ’·even
distorting Marxist theory€ ’· than to truly creative and €
’³ecumenical" thought
about socialism, as Che called it in his reflections.
To Build the 21st Century
Aspects that most concerned Che in his reflections were the search for
economic efficiency, the application of science and technology as the means
of increasing production levels, and especially the use of the moral
incentives as a complement and even a necessary support for people€ ’²s
attitudes toward work.
In € «Socialism and Man in Cuba€ »
(http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/slatta/hi216/documents/chesocandman.htm), he
referred directly to this idea when he affirmed that € ’³The pipe dream
that
socialism can be achieved with the help of the dull instruments left to us
by capitalism (the commodity as the economic cell, profitability, individual
material interest as a lever, etc.) can lead into a blind alley. And you
wind up there after having travelled a long distance with many crossroads,
and it is hard to figure out just where you took the wrong turn. Meanwhile,
the economic foundation that has been laid has done its work of undermining
the development of consciousness. To build communism it is necessary,
simultaneous with the new material foundations, to build the new (person).€
»
Equally, in a letter sent to Fidel before his departure to the Congo, he
maintained that € «communism is a phenomenon of conscience; you don't
arrive
there through a leap into the void, a change in the productive quality, or
the simple clash between the productive forces and the productive relations.
Communism is a phenomenon of conscience; it is necessary to develop that
consciousness in people, where individual and collective education for
communism is a constituent part of them. We cannot measure in terms of per
capita income the possibility of entering the communist stage... € »
However, Che did not have his back turned to reality; nor was he an
incurable idealist, as some have wanted to paint him € ’¶ trying to
mystify his
figure so as to minimize his thought.
A profound observer, constantly studying and an untiring traveller, he
quickly concluded that socialism would be going down the wrong road if it
attempted to compete with the overproduction of capitalism, precisely the
basis upon which that entire system of exploitation is built.
€ «The communist model of production presupposes a considerable abundance
of
material goods, but not necessarily a strict comparison with capitalism,€
» he
held, when asserting that instead of disproportionate production, €
«planning
and economic efficiency€ » would be imposed. These were pillars of his
theory
in the field of economics.
€ «We have a great gap in our system: how to integrate the person into
their
work in such a way that is not necessary to use what we call material
disincentives, how to make each worker feel the vital necessity to support
their revolution and, at the same time, make work a pleasure... € », wrote
Che
in that same letter to Fidel.
He himself questioned the situation about which he assured it was necessary
to € «thoroughly study.€ » He proposed in a meeting of at the Ministry
of
Industries € «to fight with all our force so that moral incentives replace
the
material incentives to the degree possible and within the shortest time
possible. This means we are establishing a relative process; we are not
excluding material incentives, we are simply saying that we should fight for
moral incentives to become, in the least possible time, the decisive factor
in the performance of workers.€ »
However, he didn't assume a utopian position and reject the necessity of
recognizing material rewards to those who work better than others. He
maintained that € «workers must be rewarded, but not with money based on
the
percentage they have exceeded the norm, but by their capacity to acquire a
greater capacity. Let€ ’²s take the example of someone going to school
... and
graduating with a higher qualification. Returning to the workplace with the
new qualification would automatically translate into a wage increase €
’¶ that
is to say, a material incentive... € »
A promoter of voluntary work, which characterized him as a true
revolutionary, the economic thought of Che went into such specific details,
given his position as the minister of Industry, that he ended up
theoretically and practically involving himself in the determination of how
wages would be determined in the socialist society in the making.
€ «How much is invested for the work of a soldier and how much for a
teacher?
How much for a minister and how much for a worker? Lenin, in€ «State and
Revolution,€ » had an idea (Marxist) that rejected the comparison of
officials' salaries and those of laborers, but I am not convinced that his
reversal is correct,€ » questioned Che when criticizing the €
’³Fundamentals of
Political Economy€ ’´ of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, then taken
almost
like a € «Bible€ » for socialist construction.
He himself responded, analyzing the reality he saw in the Soviet Union and
Cuba, that € «the real essence of all of today difficulties is the false
conception of the communist person, based on a long-term economic practice
that tends to and will continue to tend to make people just a number in the
production process through the lever of their material interest.€ » He
also
noted that € «trying to raise productivity by individual rewards is
falling
even lower than capitalists.€ »
Educating the new person with a new approach to production was the principal
thesis championed by Che, although it was not always well understood, or
applied, neither in Cuba nor in the Soviet Union.
Foretelling the Soviet Collapse
Perhaps the importance of Che€ ’²s economic thought, in the light of
current
events and the challenges faced by Cuba, have not been weighed enough.
This is partly because many of his writings were not published until
recently, and also because of the mystification of Che as a guerrilla
commander and a man of action has often overshadowed his side as a
philosopher and a Marxist economist € ’¶ self-taught but well trained.
While in Prague, after leaving the Congo, Che wrote to Orlando Borrego, one
of his closest collaborators. The said that he was thinking on €
«initiating a
work on the manual of Political Economy from the Academy,€ » referring to
the
material from the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.
These notes, which were unpublished only recently, as well as others he
wrote down in the Bolivian jungle on philosophy, are some of the most
illustrious of Che€ ’²s visions on socialism, and especially on the
Soviet
Union.
His worry came as a result of his visit to that country, a year and half
earlier, in which he perceived some € «dangerously capitalists
arguments€ » in
his exchanges with Soviet leaders and academics.
Fueled by the controversy about the Cuban economy in the construction of
socialism € ’·of which Che was a main actor in its first years€ ’·
the idea of the
thirst for profits and productive competition with capitalism being the
driving force of development worried him greatly.
Argentinean academic N€ éstor Kohan said, € «Guevara believed that in
the
transition to socialism the survival of the law of value had to be surpassed
by socialist planning or... there would be a return to capitalism.€ »
Likewise, he criticised the siren songs of the praised Soviet manual of
Political Economy that spoke of the € «general crisis of capitalism,€
» a phrase
about which he said € «people must be careful...€ » €
«Crumbling€ » has a clear
meaning in language; a fully grown man cannot undergo any more physiological
changes, but he€ ’²s doesn€ ’²t agonize. The capitalist system has
reached its
total maturity under imperialism, yet it has not taken full advantage of its
possibilities at the current moment and has great vitality. It is more
precise to say € «fully developed€ » or to say that it has reached the
limits of
its possibilities for development.
At the same time, Che was not convinced that the Soviets were knocking at
the doors of communism, as they asserted; nor did he believe that setting
economic goals to compete with capitalism was the ideal way of reaching that
objective. As he said,€ «no one can set € ’±bread and butter€
’² goals for reaching
communism.€ »
This double characteristic of criticising capitalism while rejecting
€ «sanctified€ » models was the largest contribution of his economic
work,
unfinished and based on notes, it was an effort € «aimed at inviting
people to
think, to take Marxism with the seriousness this giant doctrine deserved.€
»
That is the reason why Che could formulate that warning thirty years prior
that € «The Soviet Union is returning to capitalism.€ » At the same
time he set
the foundations for the path to the socialism for its construction in the
21st century, which was intended to break with any narrow simplification of
political economy. As he said in a 1965 interview with the Algerian
newspaper The Avant-Garde, € «this new society is the result of
conscience.
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6. CANADA: Native Way of Life Vanishing into the Clear-Cut
Posted by: "Tim Barton / BlueGreenEarth" tim_decenter@... tim_decenter
Tue Oct 9, 2007 12:35 pm (PST)
CANADA: Native Way of Life Vanishing into the Clear-Cut
By Am Johal
VANCOUVER, Oct 9 (IPS) - As the Ontario election draws to a close on
Wednesday, a long-running
land rights battle continues in the east-central Canadian province between
First Nations groups
and mining and logging interests that have been granted concessions to exploit
the resources in a
vast boreal forest known as Grassy Narrows.
Asubpeeschoseewagong, the indigenous or Ojibway name for Grassy Narrows, is
situated 80 kilometres
north of Kenora, Ontario. The band membership is approximately 1,000, and
their traditional land
use area spans some 4,000 kilometres. About half of the community still
follows a subsistence way
of life that relies on hunting, trapping, and gathering berries and medicines
from the land.
The community says that 50 percent of their traditional lands have already
been clear-cut by
multinational logging companies, and the current licenses issued by Ontario
authorities will
permit continued clear-cutting for more than 25 more years.
"Mining issues continue and permits are handed out despite the Supreme Court
decision around
native land rights," John Cutfeet of the nearby Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug
First Nations near
Grassy Narrows told IPS.
The Grassy Narrows First Nation is within an 1873 treaty that recognises the
right of the
Anishnaabe peoples "to pursue their avocations of hunting and fishing
throughout the tract."
Recent Supreme Court decisions have upheld the government's duty to conduct
meaningful discussions
with native groups before carrying out projects that impact their lands.
In early September, the Ontario government appointed former Supreme Court
Justice Frank Iacobucci
to facilitate a negotiated process and make recommendations to solve the
impasse. Talks are
expected to begin in November.
"Companies are drilling without following the rule of law," Cutfeet said.
"There has been
virtually no consultation or accommodation of our people. Treaty land was a
fulfillment of the
land claims process. The government and the companies have an illegal presence
in our
territories."
The Grassy Narrows community has suffered many traumas over the years,
including forced attendance
in Canada's notorious and now-defunct boarding schools, forced relocation away
from their
traditional living areas, flooding of sacred grounds and burial sites by
hydroelectric dam
projects, and clear-cut logging of their forests. Mercury waste from a paper
mill constructed in
the 1970s contaminated local rivers and created devastating long-term health
problems.
Compared to other racial and cultural groups in Canada, indigenous people have
the lowest life
expectancies, highest infant mortality rates, most substandard and overcrowded
housing, lower
education and employment levels, and the highest incarceration rates. Native
people lead in the
statistics of suicide, alcoholism, and family abuse.
Brant Olson of the Rainforest Action Project told IPS, "Amnesty International
and many groups have
verified the problems at Grassy Narrows. The historical and political context
is dire due to the
logging industry. Since the mid-1960s, large portions of the community have
been uninhabitable and
there have been enduring health problems and 25 percent unemployment. That led
to the Grassy
Narrows group to call for a moratorium on development [in January]. We want to
ensure that buyers
of the wood honour the moratorium."
"The community doesn't trust the intentions of companies like Abitibi
Consolidated and
Weyerhauser," said Olson.
Jim Loney, a member of the Christian Peacemakers Team, which had a delegation
in the region, told
IPS that the traditional land use area where they hunt, trap and fish has been
logged by the
forestry company Abitibi-Consolidated. According to Loney, trap lines have
disappeared into the
clear-cuts, some of which are a kilometre long.
In December 2002, a group of people from the community, including high school
students, formed a
blockade to stop clear-cutting. Human rights organisations such as the
Christian Peacemakers Team
and Amnesty International came to Ontario at the invitation of Grassy Narrows
Environmental
Committee to be present at the site of the blockade.
International civil society organisations have since helped to build political
support for the
objectives of the blockade and have alerted U.N. authorities. "There has been
a lot of reaching
out, educating the public, building allies and alliances, and building
solidarity in support of
the Grassy Narrows community," said Loney.
Last month, environmental and aboriginal groups unfurled a 75-metre-long
arrow-shaped banner on
the lawn of the Ontario legislature that demanded "Native Land Rights Now."
The public
demonstration was organised by Rainforest Action Network and Christian
Peacemaker Teams.
Rainforest Action Network is organising a campaign to try to stop lumber giant
Weyerhauser from
obtaining wood from clear-cutting.
Loney added that provincial and federal governments should honour their
commitments and
responsibilities with First Nations people and consult on matters related to
the use of native
land. As mining and forestry companies are moving ahead with development,
there are concerns about
creating a high-profile and credible process to mediate the land rights
dispute.
First Nation representatives at the Sep. 21 event described how such projects
degrade the land,
disrupt traditional cultural practices, and reverse economic rights guaranteed
to them under the
Canadian Constitution.
"We, the grassroots people of the Anishnabeg, have an obligation to protect
the land and the
culture and our way of life for the future of our children and grandchildren,"
Judy Da Silva of
the Grassy Narrows First Nations said in a statement.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39576
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7. FEMINIST FIGHTBACK 2007
Posted by: "Tim Barton / BlueGreenEarth" tim_decenter@... tim_decenter
Tue Oct 9, 2007 12:44 pm (PST)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Debra Shaw [mailto:D.Shaw@...]
FEMINIST FIGHTBACK 2007
Saturday 20 October 2007 12-6pm
University of East London, Docklands campus, 4-6 University way, London
E16 (Cyprus DLR)
Back for a second year, the Feminist Fightback activist conference is
organised by a group of socialist feminists,including the Education Not
for Sale student network. It aims to bring together feminists from a
wide range of perspectives to debate ideas and develop practical
strategies for fighting women's oppression and exploitation.
Fightback 07 will build on the success of last year's conference,
attended by over 220 people, which gave rise to several activist
initiatives, including the March 3 2007 Torch-Lit March for Abortion
Rights.
This year we will continue our campaign to defend and extend abortion
rights and our discussions will include...
IS SEXY ALWAYS SEXIST? FEMINISM, LADS MAGS AND PORNOGRAPHY
ECOFEMINISM FEMINISTS AGAINST BORDERS ISLAMIC FEMINISM RACE, SEX,
CLASS THE GENDER PAY GAP, LOW PAY AND THE CLASS STRUGGLE WOMEN
AGAINST SWEATSHOPS PLUS FILM SHOWINGS...
LOVE, HONOUR AND DISOBEY: A FILM BY SOUTHALL BLACK SISTERS A PLACE OF
RAGE: WOMEN IN THE BLACK CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Feminist Fightback's supporters include the National Union of Students
Women's Campaign, the RMT Women's Committee and the International Union
of Sex Workers. For more information, or to register, ring 07890 209
479, email feminist.fightback@... or visit
www.feministfightback.org.uk
> Dr Debra Benita Shaw
> Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies
> School of Social Sciences, Media & Cultural Studies University of East
> London
>
>
bluegreenearth.com
europeansocialecologyinstitute.org
irelandfrombelow.org
socialecologyinstitute.blogspot.com
myspace.com/socialecologyinstituteEU
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8. fwd: A Quest for Energy in the Globe’s Remote Places [nyt]
Posted by: "paul illich" paul_illich@... paul_illich
Tue Oct 9, 2007 12:50 pm (PST)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/business/worldbusiness/09polar.html
A Quest for Energy in the Globe€ ’²s Remote Places
By JAD MOUAWAD
HAMMERFEST, Norway € ’· For a quarter-century, energy executives were
tantalized by vast quantities of natural gas in one of the world€ ’²s
least
hospitable places € ’· 90 miles off Norway€ ’²s northern coast,
beneath the Arctic
Ocean.
Bitter winds and frequent snowstorms lash the region. The sun disappears for
two months a year. No oil company knew how to operate in such a harsh
environment.
But Norway has finally solved the problem. The other day, on an island just
offshore, a giant yellow flame illuminated the sky here. It was just a
temporary flare for excess gas, but it signaled a new era in energy
production.
Across the bay from this small fishing town, where reindeer wander the
streets, one of the world€ ’²s most advanced natural gas plants is
coming to
life.
Within weeks, gas will start crossing the ocean in specially designed ships,
feeding into the pipeline network for the American East Coast. Before
Christmas, furnaces in Brooklyn and stoves in Washington will be burning the
gas. It will be the first commercial energy production from waters north of
the Arctic Circle.
As global demand soars and prices rise, energy companies are going to the
ends of the earth to find new supplies.
In Kazakhstan, petroleum engineers are braving wild temperature swings in
the shallow waters of the Caspian Sea to tap the biggest oil discovery of
the last 30 years. They are drilling wells six miles deep in the Gulf of
Mexico. And on the island of Sakhalin, off far eastern Russia, they have
drilled horizontal wells through miles of rock to produce oil from a stretch
of ocean notable for giant icebergs.
But as the industry extends its reach, the quest is becoming more arduous.
The cost of producing new oil and gas is rising fast, and companies are
troubled by worsening delays. Drilling rigs are scarce. Engineers,
geologists and petroleum specialists are in critically short supply.
And the politics of oil and gas are getting trickier, with producing
countries demanding a bigger share of the revenue and growing angry about
project delays that postpone their payments.
Industry executives say their ability to keep up with global demand is badly
strained.
€ ’³We€ ’²re facing bigger risks and bigger difficulties when we
go into new
frontier regions,€ ’´ said Odd A. Mosbergvik, a senior manager at the
dominant
Norwegian energy company, StatoilHydro. € ’³But this is why the oil
industry is
for big boys. It€ ’²s a big gamble.€ ’´
The industry€ ’²s new reach is shifting the economics of energy
extraction.
According to a recent study, discovery and development costs, a key
indicator for the industry, tripled from 1999 to 2006, to nearly $15 a
barrel.
Last year alone, companies spent $200 billion developing new energy projects
worldwide, according to the study by the consulting firms John S. Herold
Inc. and Harrison Lovegrove € ’· an amount larger than the economies of
147
countries.
These higher costs mean that the industry needs higher energy prices to
finance new projects. They are also constraining its ability to expand
quickly.
€ ’³There are no easy barrels left,€ ’´ said J. Robinson West,
chairman of PFC
Energy, an industry consulting firm in Washington. € ’³The only barrels
are
going to be the tough barrels.€ ’´
There is plenty of oil and gas still in the ground, energy executives say.
But global consumption is rising so fast that they must keep looking for new
sources. Despite worldwide concern over global warming and the role of
fossil fuels in causing it, United States government specialists project
that global oil and gas demand will increase by some 50 percent in the next
25 years.
At the same time, the big discoveries of the last three decades, like those
in the North Sea and on the North Slope of Alaska, are drying up. This is
leading oil companies to remote places like Hammerfest.
The United States will need to import about a fifth of the natural gas it
uses by 2030, mostly in a liquefied form shipped across the seas in tankers.
Such imports are expected to swell more than sixfold from 2005 to 2030,
according to the Energy Information Administration. And consumption is
rising fast in the economically booming Asian countries.
Producing oil and gas in polar regions is not entirely new, of course.
Russian engineers have been doing it in Siberia for decades, with mixed
results, and Alaska€ ’²s North Slope was long the most important United
States
oil field.
But those fields are on land. The Norwegian field is the first Arctic
project to tap oil and gas reserves far offshore, in water more than 1,000
feet deep, where traditional exploration methods would be too costly.
The gas field, 340 miles north of the Arctic Circle beneath a stretch of
ocean more commonly known as the Barents Sea, is called Snow White € ’·
Snohvit
in Norwegian, where energy projects are named after mythical characters.
Though the field was discovered in 1981, oil executives long considered
Snohvit out of reach, because of the Barents Sea€ ’²s shifting ice
packs,
brutal waves and extreme cold.
€ ’³This is considered an unfriendly place, even by Norwegian
standards,€ ’´ Mr.
Mosbergvik said.
Another big problem the engineers faced here was that Snohvit is situated
hundreds of miles from Norway€ ’²s traditional pipeline network.
Over the years, Statoil considered many ways to get at the gas, including
huge offshore platforms armored against the waves, but discarded them as too
costly. Building a vast undersea pipeline that would take the gas south
along the country€ ’²s stretched coastline was also out of the question.
Statoil engineers eventually came up with an ingenious solution. They
installed production equipment directly on the seafloor, with no rigs
breaking the surface. The wellheads are linked by 90 miles of pipe to a
small island just off Hammerfest. Anti-freeze is injected into the pipes to
prevent the natural gas from clogging on its way to shore.
On the island, Melkoya, Statoil built a processing facility to separate the
brew of natural gas, oil, water and carbon dioxide that flows out of the
field. The natural gas is cooled to a temperature of 260 degrees below zero,
shrinking its volume to one-six hundredth and turning it into a liquid that
can be shipped in tankers.
Construction of the liquefaction plant over the last several years involved
22,000 workers, one of the largest industrial projects in Europe, and cost
nearly $10 billion, up from $6 billion when the project was begun in 2002.
€ ’³We did not have the experience to operate in an environment like
this,€ ’´ Mr.
Mosbergvik acknowledged.
The field is so large that it could eventually supply nearly 10 percent of
the demand for natural gas demand in eastern states of the United States.
Dominion, an energy company, has expanded a gas import terminal at Cove
Point, Md., to accommodate the Arctic gas, according to Donald R. Raikes,
its vice president for marketing and customer services.
By the end of October, Statoil€ ’²s gas will begin flowing through a
network of
pipes to a stretch of the country from Maryland to Massachusetts, the
largest consumer market in the United States, with some 16 million
residential customers and 5 million industrial clients.
With the plant nearly ready, Statoil maintains that the Barents Sea could
turn into a major oil and gas region in coming decades. Indeed, the world€
’²s
fast-rising use of fossil fuels, by contributing to global warming, could
eventually make the Arctic more accessible for oil and gas production.
In Hammerfest,residents have welcomed Statoil€ ’²s project, hoping it
will
offset declines in fishing. Modern buildings are rising to house the influx
of gas workers. New taxes from the gas plant are helping finance a cultural
center.
Statoil hopes to double its capacity on Melkoya by 2015. That will require
finding new gas fields in the Barents Sea.
Hans M. Gjennestad, strategy manager at Statoil for the Barents region,
said, € ’³We believe this resource potential may contribute
significantly to
the long-term security of supplies of Europe and the United States.€ ’´
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9. fwd: Obama Proposes Capping Greenhouse Gas Emissions & Making Pollut
Posted by: "paul illich" paul_illich@... paul_illich
Tue Oct 9, 2007 12:54 pm (PST)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/us/politics/09obama.html
Obama Proposes Capping Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Making Polluters Pay
By JEFF ZELENY
WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 € ’· Senator Barack Obama presented a plan on Monday
to
decrease the nation€ ’²s dependence on foreign oil and fight global
warming by
creating an auction system requiring power companies and other industries to
pay for their pollution. By the year 2020, he said, emissions would be
reduced to levels from 1990.
In a speech in New Hampshire, Mr. Obama, the Democratic presidential
candidate from Illinois, called for imposing a national cap on carbon
emissions, investing $150 billion over 10 years to develop new energy
sources and reducing dependence on foreign oil by 35 percent by 2030.
€ ’³No business will be allowed to emit any greenhouse gases for
free,€ ’´ Mr.
Obama said in Portsmouth, N.H. € ’³Businesses don€ ’²t own the
sky, the public
does, and if we want them to stop polluting it, we have to put a price on
all pollution.€ ’´
The energy speech was the latest effort by Mr. Obama to cast himself as a
critic of how business has been conducted in Washington. Every president
since Gerald R. Ford, Mr. Obama argued, has pledged to curb fossil fuel use,
but the United States€ ’² dependence on foreign oil has climbed.
He proposed instituting a mandatory € ’³cap and trade€ ’´ program
across the
economy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the level recommended by top
scientists, a figure that he did not specify Monday. Under his plan,
businesses would be required to buy allowances to pollute, which would
create financial incentives to limit energy use or reduce emissions.
Mr. Obama said if he was elected, the government would set a national cap on
carbon emissions, which by 2050 would be reduced to 80 percent below the
levels in 1990. Though he did not mention his campaign rivals by name, Mr.
Obama criticized those who opposed gradual increases in gasoline mileage
standards for cars, which included Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New
York.
€ ’³When they had the chance to stand up and require automakers to raise
their
fuel standards, they refused,€ ’´ Mr. Obama said. € ’³When they
had multiple
chances to reduce our dependence on foreign oil by investing in renewable
fuels that we can literally grow right here in America, they said no.€
’´
Mr. Obama, who had faced criticism from some environmental groups for
supporting the Bush administration€ ’²s energy bill in 2005 and for
pushing
legislation to help Illinois€ ’² coal industry, was praised Monday by
the
League of Conservation Voters, an independent group. The group€ ’²s
president,
Gene Karpinski, said, € ’³By embracing a mandatory cap-and-trade
program, the
Obama energy plan would provide incentives to cut production of carbon
dioxide and other pollutants that cause global warming.€ ’´
In Iowa, meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton began a € ’³rebuilding the middle
class€ ’´ bus
tour on Monday that included a 50-minute speech on economic prosperity with
new proposals to benefit unions and homeowners in particular.
Speaking in Cedar Rapids, she called for reviewing pacts like the North
American Free Trade Agreement every five years € ’· not as aggressive a
position as John Edwards€ ’²s call for renegotiating Nafta or
Representative
Dennis J. Kucinich€ ’²s call for canceling it, but an idea that received
applause nonetheless.
And she proposed giving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac new flexibility to help
companies and homeowners replace expiring adjustable-rate mortgages with
fixed-rate loans.
Patrick Healy contributed reporting from Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
__________________________________________________________
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10. fwd: Oct. 9, 1967, Latin American guerrilla leader Che Guevara was e
Posted by: "paul illich" paul_illich@... paul_illich
Tue Oct 9, 2007 12:56 pm (PST)
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20071009.html
Bolivia Confirms Guevara's Death; Body Displayed
Army Reports Fingerprints Prove Rebel Leader Was Killed in Sunday Clash
Confession Described He Made Himself Known and Admitted Failure Before He
Died, General Says Bolivian Army Identifies body of Guerilla Slain in Clash
Confession Made, General Reports Fingerprints Are Checked--Admission of
Failure by Rebel Leader Described
By REUTERS
Valle Grande, Bolivia, Oct. 10--The army high command officially confirmed
today that Ernesto Che Guevara, the Latin revolutionary leader, was killed
in a clash between guerrillas and Bolivian troops in southeastern Bolivia
last Sunday.
The armed forces commander, Gen. Alfredo Ovando Candia, said Mr. Guevara had
admitted his identity before dying of his wounds. General Ovando said at a
news conference that the guerrilla leader had also admitted that he failed
in the seven-month guerrilla campaign he organized in Bolivia.
The identification of the body was made after fingerprinting by the Eighth
Army command.
[United States officials in Washington reacted cautiously to the Bolivian
reports that Mr. Guevara had been killed, but there was an increasing
tendency to regard them as true. Page 18.]
Arrives on Helicopter
The body was flown here yesterday, lashed to the landing runners of a
helicopter that brought it from the mountain scene of the clash. The army
said yesterday that it had received a report that Mr. Guevara had been
killed near Higueras, but it declined to make immediate positive
identification at the time.
After the body, dressed in bloody clothes, arrived here, it was
fingerprinted and embalmed.
[The Guevara fingerprints are on file with the Argentine federal police. As
an Argentine citizen, Mr. Guevara was required to be fingerprinted to obtain
a passport when he left his homeland in 1952. These official records have
provided the basis for comparison with the fingerprints taken by the
Bolivians from the body said to be that of Mr. Guevara.]
The scanty beard, shoulder-length hair and shape of the head resembled the
features of Mr. Guevara as shown in earlier photographs. He was 39 years
old.
An Englishman in the crowd, which except for the press was kept away at
bayonet point, said that he had seen Mr. Guevara in Cuba and that he was
"absolutely convinced" it was the long- sought revolutionary leader.
The body appeared to bear wounds in at least three places--two in the neck
and one in the throat.
It was dressed in a green jacket with a zippered front, patched and faded
green denim pants, green woolen socks and a pair of homemade moccasins.
A nun assisted doctors and intelligence men in preparing the body for
display. After the work was finished, the body was raised on a stretcher for
the crowd, which appeared jubilant.
General Ovando arrived from la Paz and immediately went to the officers'
mess to pay his respect to the four soldiers killed in the clash.
The first news of the fight was brought to Valle Grande, 80 miles southwest
of Santa Cruz [CHECK] by Col. Joaquin Zenteno Anaya, commander of the Eighth
Division.
Others Reported Slain
He said that six other guerrillas had been killed in the clash and that
their bodies would also be brought here. He said four of them were Cubans.
Mr. Guevara was a familiar bearded figure in olive green fatigues in Havana,
where he was Minister of Industries before he dropped out of sight in March,
1965.
His whereabouts since has remained a mystery, leading to rumors that he had
been killed in a dispute with Premier Fidel Castro and later that he was
leading guerrillas in various parts of Latin America.
His name was linked with guerrilla activity in Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil,
Argentina, Peru and Bolivia.
On Sept. 10, the Bolivian President, Rene Barrientos Ortuno, described
reports that Mr. Guevara was active in Bolivia as a myth. The next day he
announced a $5,000 reward for his capture dead or alive.
Reports published in the press here today said that a diary believed to have
belonged to Mr. Guevara was in Army hands. These reports said that the diary
had been found in a knapsack owned by the guerrilla leader.
Report Ignored in Havana
A non-Cuban informant, reached by telephone in Havana last night, said that
officials of the Castro regime were regarding the reports of Mr. Guevara's
death as unconfirmed and were declining to comment on them. The Cuban
broadcasts ignored the news, the informant said, adding: "My feeling is that
the newspapers tomorrow won't publish a line."
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11. Missouri Coalition for the Environment: EPA Postpones Decision - Act
Posted by: "Tim Barton / BlueGreenEarth" tim_decenter@... tim_decenter
Tue Oct 9, 2007 12:58 pm (PST)
--- Kat Logan Smith <moenviron@...> wrote:
EPA Postpones Decision on St. Louis Radioactive Waste Dump
October 9, 2007
For more on West Lake watch KTVI- Fox 2 News, 9 p.m. Tuesday 10/9/07
EPA has postponed the release of its decision about the West Lake Landfill
next to Earth City,
where thousands of cubic yards of radioactive waste were dumped illegally in
1973, in the Missouri
River floodplain. In 2006, the EPA presented a proposed plan for the site,
which was to leave the
waste on site, under a layer of clay, rubble and rock.
The agency was to unveil its Record of Decision by October 1st of 2007 but is
delaying that, to
add an announcement that a groundwater study is to be initiated. The EPA
decision may include
capping the wastes before the study is completed.
The EPA proposal would leave highly radioactive waste in the Missouri River
floodplain upstream
from drinking water intakes for North St. Louis County and St. Louis City.
This raises many
concerns about the long-term safety of residents of the region, and beyond.
The City Councils for Bridgeton, Hazelwood, and Florissant have passed
resolutions asking the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency to remove the waste from the floodplain,
rather than leaving it
there to continue contaminating the groundwater, river and air for generations
to come.
The uranium residues at West Lake Landfill came from the early production of
nuclear weapons. They
should be excavated and transported to a federally licensed radioactive waste
facility, away from
water and away from people. During excavation, the radioactive waste area
should be covered by a
structure equipped with filters to capture contaminated dust and gases.
1. The wastes are radioactively hot. The International Atomic Energy Agency
published a report in
1963 that ranks radionuclides "according to the risk of biological injury
which they may cause
when they have become incorporated in the human body." Eleven of the most
highly toxic
radionuclides listed are present at West Lake, including protactinium-231,
actinium-227,
thorium-230, radium-226 and 228, and polonium-210.
2. The wastes are migrating and eroding within and beyond the floodplain.
Buried wastes can
continue contaminating the groundwater that flows toward the Missouri River, a
major St. Louis
drinking water source. The North County water intake, in Florissant, is only
8€ ¦½ miles downstream
from West Lake. And the Missouri River flows into the Mississippi, just
upstream from the major
water intake for the City of St. Louis.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been removing the same type of highly
radioactive wastes from
the Downtown Mallinckrodt site, the Airport site, the Latty site in Hazelwood,
Coldwater Creek and
many vicinity properties. The Corps should be directed to clean up this final
site of nuclear
weapons wastes before the Corps' contractors and trained personnel are
dispersed to other cities.
The EPA must hear your concerns. Please write to:
Senator "Kit" Bond
St. Louis Office
7700 Bonhomme, #615
St. Louis, MO 63105
(314) 725-4484
and Senator Claire McCaskill
St. Louis
5850 A Delmar Blvd
St. Louis, MO 63112
(314) 367-1364
Please stay tuned,
Kathleen Logan Smith
Missouri Coalition for the Environment
email: klogansmith@...
phone: 314-727-0600
web: http://www.moenviron.org
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12. fwd: U.S. finally taking warming seriously: Gorbachev
Posted by: "paul illich" paul_illich@... paul_illich
Tue Oct 9, 2007 1:18 pm (PST)
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN0524512220071007
U.S. finally taking warming seriously: Gorbachev
Fri Oct 5, 2007 8:03pm EDT
By Russell McCulley
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Much time has been lost in the fight to stop global
warming, but the United States, the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has
finally begun to take the problem seriously, former Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev said on Friday.
He made his comments in New Orleans, which is recovering from Hurricane
Katrina, the powerful 2005 storm that some experts have said was part of a
trend toward stronger and more frequent hurricanes due to man-made warming.
"I'm sorry the United States has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol," Gorbachev
said, referring to the international accord to reduce emissions of gases
that contribute to global warming.
"But I see that the U.S. position is changing, that the U.S. is making
serious proposals that will be important in the future," he told Reuters
through a translator.
"But we have lost and we are still losing time," said the 76-year-old
Gorbachev, who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until
its collapse in 1991. He heads environmental group Green Cross International
and was in town for its international general assembly.
"We are facing a conflict between men and the rest of nature. We have come
to a red line in that conflict," he later told reporters.
The Bush administration, which refused to join in the Kyoto Protocol, has
been skeptical about the effect of human activity on global warming, but
recently hosted an international meeting about it.
President George W. Bush called for a long-term goal to reduce warming, but
did not endorse mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
A branch of Green Cross -- Global Green USA -- has been working on projects
to rebuild New Orleans in an environmentally friendly way. Actor Brad Pitt,
who has a house in New Orleans' French Quarter, has been involved in some of
the work.
Green Cross, founded by Gorbachev in 1992, held its assembly in New Orleans
to highlight the city's needs and the "green" possibilities there.
"It took just a couple of weeks to find billions of dollars -- hundreds of
billions of dollars -- to fight the war," Gorbachev said, apparently
referring to U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"But here, the urgency is tremendous, and I think that what will be
happening to New Orleans will be a test, a benchmark, of what we are worth
as human beings," Gorbachev said.
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13. fwd: Scientists Find Organic Agriculture Can Feed the World & More
Posted by: "paul illich" paul_illich@... paul_illich
Tue Oct 9, 2007 1:24 pm (PST)
Scientists Find Organic Agriculture Can Feed the World & More
Comprehensive study gives the lie to claims that organic agriculture cannot
feed the world because it gives low yields and there is insufficient organic
fertilizer. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
Scientists refute common misconceptions about organic agriculture
Two usual objections are levelled against the proposal that organic
agriculture can feed the world. Organic agriculture, opponents claim, gives
low yields, and there isn€ ’²t enough organic fertilizer to boost yields
substantially.
A team of scientists led by Catherine Badgley at the University of Michgan
Ann Arbor in the United States has now refuted those common misconceptions
about organic agriculture. Organic agriculture gives yields roughly
comparable to conventional agriculture in developed countries and much
higher yields in developing countries; and more than enough nitrogen can be
fixed in the soil by using green manure alone [1].
The research team compared yields of organic and conventional agriculture
(including low-intensive food production) in 293 examples, and estimated the
average yield ratio (organic versus non-organic) of different food
categories for the developed and the developing world. With the average
yield ratios, they modelled the global food supply that could be grown
organically in the current agricultural land base. The results indicate that
organic methods could produce enough food to sustain the current human
population, and potentially an even larger population, without increasing
the agricultural land base.
They also estimated the amount of nitrogen potentially available from
nitrogen fixation by legumes as cover crops. Data from temperate and
tropical agroecosystmes suggest that they could fix enough nitrogen to
replace all of the synthetic fertilizer currently in use.
The report concluded: € ’³These results indicate that organic
agriculture has
the potential to contribute quite substantially to the global food supply,
while reducing the detrimental environmental impacts of conventional
agriculture.€ ’´
Price of the Green Revolution
The researchers are quick to point out that the Green Revolution has been a
stunning technological achievement; for even with the doubling of the human
population in the past 50 years, more than enough food has been produced to
meet the caloric requirements for all; if food were distributed more
equitably.
However, there is great uncertainty about the future, given the projection
of 9 to 10 billion in the human population by 2050 and the global trends of
increasing meat consumption (requiring much more grain) while grain harvests
are decreasing. They have not mentioned the additional pressure on
agricultural production from the growing demand for biofuels [2] (Biofuels:
Biodevastation, Hunger & False Carbon Credits, SiS 33), which has already
created € ’³a looming food crisis€ ’´ worldwide, as John Vidal
reports in detail
in The Guardian [3]. The climate extremes - droughts and floods € ’¶
brought on
by climate change are almost certainly making matters a great deal worse.
Much of the current reduction in grain harvests is due to environmental
degradation from decades of unsustainable practices of the Green Revolution:
massive soil erosion, loss of soil fertility, loss of agricultural land
through salination, depletion of water tables and increased pest resistance.
Other environmental costs of the Green Revolution include surface and
groundwater contamination, release of greenhouse gases (especially through
deforestation and conversion into agricultural land), and loss of
biodiversity.
Many have argued that more sustainable methods of food production are
essential. Notably, the Independent Science Panel consisting of dozens of
scientists from around the world have issued a report in 2003, calling for a
comprehensive shift to sustainable, organic agriculture [4] (The Case for A
GM-Free Sustainable World). It is no coincidence that those most opposed to
organic agriculture are also the strongest supporters of genetically
modified crops, and they see the recent rise in demand for biofuels as yet
another opportunity to promote a technology that has failed miserably to
deliver its promises in 30 years, while evidence of serious health risks
continue to emerge [5] (No to GMOs, No to GM Science, SiS 35).
Wide variety of organic agriculture
The organic agriculture examples reviewed by the Michigan University team
cover a wide spectrum of farms that are agroecological, sustainable or
ecological, but not necessarily certified organic. They rely on natural
nutrient-cycling processes, exclude or rarely use synthetic pesticides, and
sustain or regenerate soil quality. Farming practices include cover crops,
manure application, composting, crop rotation, intercropping, and biological
pest control.
The 293 studies reviewed consist of 160 that compared organic with
conventional methods and 133 cases comparing organic with low-intensive
methods. Most studies are from the peer-reviewed published literature, a
minority from conference proceedings, technical reports or website of an
agricultural research station. They range from a single growing season to
over 20 years. Some examples are based on yields before and after conversion
to organic in the same farm.
To estimate global food supply from organic agriculture, the average ratios
of the yields of organic versus non-organic are applied to current food
production values minus post harvest losses from the UN Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) database for 2001.
Organic yields beat conventional
The yield ratios summarised in Table 1 are grouped into 10 categories
covering the major plant and animal components of human diets.
Table 1. Yield ratios of organic versus conventional agriculture
As can be seen, the average yields of organic and non-organic produce are
about the same in the developed world, but it is in the developing world -
where most food is needed and where farmers can least afford to pay for
expensive synthetic fertilizers and pesticides - that the major gains in
organic agriculture are most evident. Yield ratios of organic versus
conventional range from about 1.6 to 4.0. The ratio averaged over all
foodstuffs for the world is 1.3.
More than enough organic food to feed the world
The team has worked out two models of global food production. Model 1 is
conservative, and applies the yield ratios derived from studies in the
developed countries to the entire global agricultural land base; Model 2,
more realistically, applies the yield ratios determined for the developed
and the developing countries back to the respective regions. The calories
per capita resulting from the models are estimated by multiplying the
average yields by FAO estimates of calorific content in the food category.
The amount of food available in Model 1 is about the same as currently
available. The main gain is in reducing energy and fossil fuel intensive
inputs, and avoiding all the collateral damages from conventional
agriculture. Model 2 results in real gains of 1.3 to 2.9-fold of various
foods available in addition.
Both models show that organic agriculture could sustain the current human
population. In terms of daily caloric intake, the current world food supply
after losses provides 2786 kcal/per/day. The average requirement for a
healthy adult is between 2200 and 2500. Model 1 yields 2641 kcal/day, above
the recommended level (94.8 percent of current level). Model 2 yields 4381
kcal/day, 157.3 percent of what is current available. Thus, organic
production has the potential to support a substantially larger human
population than currently exists.
More than enough nitrate through biological nitrogen fixation
The main limiting macronutrient for agricultural production is nitrogen in
most areas. Nitrogen amendments in organic farming derive from crop
residues, animal manure, compost and biologically fixed N from legumes
(green manure). In the tropics, legumes grown between plantings of other
crops can fix substantial amounts of nitrogen in just 40 to 60 days.
The estimate of N available globally is determined from the rates of N
availability or N-fertilizer equivalence reported in 77 studies, 33 for
temperate regions and 44 for the tropics, including three from arid regions
and 18 of paddy rice.
The availability of N in kg/ha are obtained from studies as either
€ ’±fertilizer-replacement value€ ’² (i.e., the amount of N
fertilizer needed to
achieve equivalent yields to those obtained using N from cover crops), or
calculated as 66 percent of N fixed by a cover crop becoming available for
uptake by plants during the growing seasons following the cover crop.
In 2001, the global use of synthetic N fertilizers was 82 Mt. The estimated
N fixed by additional legume crops as fertilizer is 140 Mt, based on an
average N availability of 102.8 kg N/ha (the average N availability of
temperate and tropical regions are 95.1 kg N /ha and 108.6kg/ha
respectively). This is 171 percent of current synthetic N used globally, or
58 Mt more. Even in the US where conventional agriculture predominates, the
estimate shows a surplus of available N through the additional use of
leguminous cover crops between normal cropping periods.
In temperate regions, winter cover crops grow well in the autumn after
harvest and in early spring before the planting of main food crops. Research
at the Rodale Institute (Pennsylvania) showed that red clover and hairy
vetch as winter covers in an oat/wheat-corn-soybean rotation with no
additional fertilizer achieved yields comparable to those in conventional
controls [6]. The Farm System Trial at the Rodale Institute uses legume
cover crops grown between main crops every third year as the only source of
N fertility. Non-legume winter cover crops are used in other years to
maintain soil quality and fertility and to suppress weeds.
In arid and semi-arid tropical regions, where water is limiting between
periods of crop production, drought-resistant green manures, such as pigeon
peas or groundnuts, can be used to fix N. Using cover crops in arid regions
has been shown to increase soil moisture retention.
These estimates of N available do not include other practices for increasing
biologically fixed N, such as intercropping, alley cropping with leguminous
tress, rotation of livestock with annual crops, and inoculation of soil with
free-living N-fixers. In addition, rotation of food-crop legumes, such as
pulses, soy, or groundnuts, can contribute as much as 75 kgN/ha to the
grains that follow the legumes.
Promises and remaining challenges
The implications of the University of Michigan study are far reaching. The
results imply that even with rather conservative estimates, no additional
land area is required to grow enough food to feed the world if we were to
switch to organic, and enough biologically available N can be obtained to
entirely replace the current use of synthetic N fertilizers.
There are numerous other benefits of switching to organic agriculture not
mentioned in the paper that are documented in the Independent Science Panel
Report [4] and elsewhere. (See also [7] FAO Promotes Organic Agriculture,
SiS 36).
The largest gains from organic agriculture arise from the savings on the
damages to public health and the environment, estimated at more than US
$59.6 billion a year in the United States [6, 8] (Organic Agriculture Enters
Mainstream, Organic Yields on Par with Conventional & Ahead during Drought
Years, SiS 28).
Another is the key issue of food security. Findings from the Rodale
Institute also confirm that organic management retains more nutrients,
organic carbon and moisture in the soil, all of which make organic crops
more able to withstand climatic stress. So it is not surprising that while
organic yields are comparable to conventional during normal years, they are
well ahead in drought years [6, 8].
There are substantial savings on carbon emissions and fossil fuels to
mitigate climate change simply from phasing out pesticides and synthetic
fertilizers, not to mention the extra carbon sequestered in organic soils.
The study has not even considered all the existing options for renewable
energies [9] (Which Energy?, ISIS Report) or systems of farming that turns
wastes into food and energy resources, thereby potentially phasing out
fossil fuels altogether [10] (How to Beat Climate Change & Be Food and
Energy Rich - Dream Farm 2, ISIS Report). Nor does it mention the many
social, economic, and health benefits from organic agriculture [4, 7].
The case for a global shift to organic agriculture has never appeared more
compelling and more urgent.
The Michigan University team see numerous challenges for implementing a
comprehensive shift to organic agriculture, however promising it seems. The
practice of organic agriculture on a large scale requires support from
research institutions dedicated to agroecological methods of soil fertility
and pest management, a strong extension system and a committed public.
Also needed are strong government commitment and support, and policy changes
that favour and encourage a globall shift to organic, sustainable
agriculture [11].
Most of all, it is time to put to rest the debate about whether or not
organic agriculture can make a substantial contribution to the food supply.
We should be debating instead the allocation of resources for research on
agroecological food production, the creation of incentives for farmers and
consumers; and the policies needed at the national and international levels
to promote and facilitate the global transition.
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14. fwd: CLIMATE CHANGE: Entire Landscapes on the Move
Posted by: "paul illich" paul_illich@... paul_illich
Tue Oct 9, 2007 1:48 pm (PST)
CLIMATE CHANGE: Entire Landscapes on the Move
By Stephen Leahy
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39531
BROOKLIN, Canada, Oct 4 (IPS) - The hot breath of global warming has now
touched some of the coldest northern regions of world, turning the frozen
landscape into mush as temperatures soar 15 degrees C. above normal.
Entire hillsides, sometimes more than a kilometre long, simply let go and
slid like a vast green carpet into valleys and rivers on Melville Island in
Canada's northwest Arctic region of Nunavut this summer, says Scott
Lamoureux of Queens University in Canada and leader of one the of
International Polar Year projects.
"The entire landscape is on the move, it was very difficult to find any
slopes that were unaltered," said Lamoureux, who led a scientific expedition
to the remote and uninhabited island.
The topography and ecology of Melville Island is rapidly being rearranged by
climate change.
"Every day it looked different," he told IPS. "This is a permanent change."
Normally Melville Island's 42,500 sq kms are locked in sea ice all year
round, as it is part of the high region that has been relatively unaffected
by the dramatic declines in Arctic sea ice over the past decade. Until this
year, that is. This summer, southern parts of the island were free of sea
ice, Lamoureux told IPS. He has led expeditions to the island every year
since 2003.
On land at Mould Bay on the island's northwest side, his research team
measured record-shattering temperatures of between 15 to 22 degrees C in
July. Until then, the normal July average temperature had been between 4 and
5 degrees C.
The extraordinary heat thawed the tundra permafrost -- permanently frozen
ground -- to depths of more than a metre, he said. At that depth, there is
mostly ice and when it melts, it destabilises the thin, top layer of plants
and soil that has patiently built up over thousands of years.
Enormous amounts of water and sediments are being discharged into rivers,
lakes and oceans. Studies are underway to determine the impact on birds,
fish, musk oxen and other creatures that live there in the summer. Given the
extent of the changes, there is little doubt there will be significant
ecological impacts, he said.
The record low level of sea ice in the entire Arctic Ocean will also change
regional and even global weather patterns. Much more snow will fall in the
Arctic due to the increased moisture from the increased amounts of open
water. All that water is also dark and heat-absorbing instead of
sunlight-reflecting ice, so the region gets warmer, melting more ice in what
is a strong positive feedback loop.
Other parts of the Arctic region have already changed dramatically in the
past 50 years.
"There are trees and lawns in Nome (Alaska) now," said Patricia Cochran,
chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council.
"I never thought I'd see trees growing on the tundra," Cochran said about
her hometown, which lies on the Bering Sea and was once too cold for trees
to grow.
"Beavers are overrunning the area now that there is food for them. They are
even in Barrow, north of the Arctic Circle," she told IPS from her office in
Anchorage.
The tundra is also melting, resulting in coffins disturbingly popping out of
the ground in graveyards, roads crumbling and giant sink holes opening up
everywhere, including in some towns, she said.
Every summer brings plants, animals, birds and insects that no one has seen
before. Dragonflies and turtles now roam the lands that had been too icy for
tens of thousands of years.
"Everyone living here has seen the changes," Cochran said.
And there are more changes to come even if politicians and corporate CEOs
stop pretending to act and actually curb emissions of greenhouse gases.
"The Arctic Ocean will be ice free in the summer, it's just a matter of how
soon," said Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at the School of Earth and Ocean
Sciences in the University of Victoria, Canada.
A new study led by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
this week revealed that the Arctic's thick, year-round sea ice cover
declined 2.6 million square kilometres beyond the summer average minimum
since satellites started measurements in 1979. That's about the size of the
province of Ontario.
"That decline is nothing short of stunning," Weaver told IPS.
It's also a permanent decline because while the ice will re-form over the
six-month-long winter when there is no sunlight, it will be much thinner and
likely to melt quickly next summer, he said.
Because Arctic sea ice is floating, the melting will not affect sea levels
but it will "wreak absolute havoc on Arctic ecosystems".
The rapid meltdown is pushing the upper end of the climate experts'
projections, he said, noting that new research shows that change in the
Arctic could happen abruptly. In other words, the worst case scenarios and
beyond may come to pass. They may even be on their way right now.
Oil and gas exploration may one day reach remote Meville Island if there's a
summer ice-free path because of the extensive natural gas and oil reserves
there, said Lamoureux.
Burning such fossil fuels is the major reason why the Arctic is losing ice.
Scientists and native people note that it would be more than ironic should
those emissions facilitate the extraction of even more fossil fuels with
which to further warm our overheating global greenhouse.
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15. fwd: Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse
Posted by: "paul illich" paul_illich@... paul_illich
Tue Oct 9, 2007 1:55 pm (PST)
http://www.counterpunch.org/boal09112007.html
Specters of Malthus:
Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse
Iain Boal in conversation with David Martinez
Iain Boal is an Irish social historian of science and technics, associated
with Retort, a group of antinomian writers, artisans and artists based in
the San Francisco Bay Area. He is one of the authors of Retort's Afflicted
Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War (2nd edn, Verso, 2006).
This chapter is based on a conversation prompted by David Martinez, a San
Francisco-based filmmaker and journalist, in late 2005. It also draws on
material from a forthcoming book by Iain Boal, entitled The Long Theft:
Episodes in the History of Enclosure.
David Martinez: I'd like to talk with you about "scarcity" and
"catastrophe". On the talk shows there is even discussion of an impending
collapse of society due to dwindling oil supply. The concepts of scarcity
and collapse are hardly new, and obviously the invasion of Iraq brought the
issue of oil into sharp focus. Can we start with the sacred cow of scarcity?
Iain Boal: Sure. With respect to oil, we should begin with the observation
that the general problem for the petro-barons has always been glut, or to
put it another way, how to keep oil scarce. They've done a pretty good job,
although all monopolies have to be measured against De Beers, who have the
corner on diamonds. They are the world's masters at constructing scarcity,
in this case, of crystalline carbon, which is actually rather common in the
earth's crust. So one thing to make clear is that the invasion and
occupation of Iraq is not about absolute scarcity. For sure, the history of
oil is complex, and the fluctuations in the supply of oil have an
extraordinarily complicated relation to price, demand, and reserves. But in
order to understand scarcity - whether of oil in particular or of
commodities under capitalism in general - you have to look at the discourses
of scarcity and of poverty. And that means you have to look at the
historical moment of the institutionalizing of economics € ’¶ defined in
the
textbooks as "the study of choice under scarcity" € ’¶ as the dominant
way of
talking about the world, and the relation of these to capitalist modernity.
And that story is indeed interesting.
In order to understand "scarcity" as a sacred cow, we have to go back to the
Reverend Thomas Malthus. Because, no question, we are living in a Malthusian
world. By that I mean that Malthus' way of framing the issue of human
welfare has triumphed. And I think it's especially important for the Left to
understand this. Particularly those who got drawn into politics through
concern about the environment, who count themselves as "green". Scratch an
environmentalist and probably you'll find a Malthusian. What do I mean by
that? What is it to be Malthusian? Well, it's to subscribe to the view that
the fundamental problems humanity faces have their roots in the scarcity of
the resources that sustain life, because the world is finite and we are
exhausting those resources and also perhaps because we are polluting them.
Notice how this mirrors the basic assumption of modern economics € ’¶
choice
under scarcity. In his notorious essay published in 1798, Malthus argued, or
rather asserted, that population growth, especially of poor bastards, would
inevitably outrun food supply, unless the propertyless were restrained from
breeding. He advocated that poor people be crowded together in unhealthy
housing, as a way of checking the growth of population. Remember, this is
the world's very first economist we're talking about here.
And don't forget that Malthus was in his own time consciously devising a
counter-revolutionary science of economics and demography: his essay was a
response to a famous best-seller by the utopian anarchist William Godwin,
husband of the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and father of Mary Shelley who
later wrote Frankenstein as a warning against the hubris of (male) science.
Godwin had written An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice during the
euphoric period after the storming of the Bastille in 1789 and the overthrow
of the French monarchy. Godwin's optimistic, atheist, rationalism was born
of the revolutionary events happening across the Channel € ’¶ "Bliss was
it in
that dawn to be alive", in the indelible line of Wordsworth. But as the
counter-revolution set in, Thomas Malthus felt emboldened to compose his
Essay on the Principle of Population as an explicit response to Godwin's
vision of an ample life for all. Malthus invented an "iron law of nature"
intended, rhetorically, to put a damper on Godwin and the perfectibilians,
and in practical political terms to discourage "idling" and illegitimacy and
to cut away the existing welfare system which was a safety net for the poor.
DM: So help us understand Thomas Malthus.
IB: Malthus was born into a well-off family in late 18th century England,
and although he was ordained in the Anglican Church, he becomes the world's
first paid economist, in the service of the East India Company. The company
started in 1600 with a charter from Elizabeth 1 to monopolize trade with
Asia, and by Malthus' day agents of the company ruled India, Burma and Hong
Kong for the British crown, so that no less than one fifth of the world's
population was under its authority, backed by the company€ ’²s own
armies, who
fought under the English flag of St George. It's no coincidence that
somebody in Malthus' position, at that time and place, would be involved in
devising a science of "economics", and its associated discourses of
"scarcity", "laissez faire", and "poverty". The English scene that Malthus
is born into was in radical transition from a world of custom and common
land to one based on the absolutization of private property, in which the
actual producers of food are being cut off from the land as a means of
livelihood. And that's a very specific move that the capitalists and
landlords in parliament are making.
So here is the essential point: the people of England, I mean the commoners,
in 1800 are being literally excluded by fences enclosing the common lands
that had sustained them for centuries. They are living the new scarcity that
is being produced around them.
This is the same process that is now ruthlessly in train around the globe
under the sign of "structural adjustment" and "conditionalities" devised by
the IMF and the World Bank, being applied to the global South. But it was
first described as long ago as 1515 in a powerful essay by Thomas More
called Utopia, because he saw it happening all around him in England five
hundred years ago.
George Caffentzis, the philosopher of money, and his colleagues in the
Midnight Notes Collective were the first, in the early 1980s, to develop the
idea that the neoliberal project is, in its essence, a form of "new
enclosures", taking the tactics of the English enclosures to a planetary
level and creating this time a fully globalized proletariat.
Expropriation of the commons was, in other words, not a one-time event at
the dawn of capitalism. And Malthus was the economist rationalizing and
justifying the cutting off, or another way to put it is the rendering
scarce, of the means of subsistence for the laboring poor, in the name of
thrift and self-control and the efficiency of private property.
So the "dismal" science of economics is being born at the same time as this
process of proletarianization is happening. It would be hard to exaggerate
the role of Malthus and the way his assumptions are built not just into
economics, but into a whole range of modern forms of knowledge, for example,
biology, genetics, demography. These disciplines all bear the stamp of
Malthus.
In the same way, it's no coincidence that the sixties counterculture, which
was to some extent a gift economy and had a kind of primitivist strain,
could inspire a book like Stone Age Economics, written by the anthropologist
Marshall Sahlins to combat the projection of capitalist scarcity back onto
all of human history. It's an interesting counter-myth, that conjures a
neolithic world of abundance rather than scarcity. Nevertheless, if you look
at the impulses behind the environmental movement of the sixties and events
like Earth Day, or back-to-the-landers and their bible The Whole Earth
Catalog, you will find the spectres of Malthus € ’¶ scarcity,
overpopulation,
famine. The same goes for the Berkeley bumper-sticker "Live Simply, That
Others May Simply Live." Or the countercultural manifesto for vegetarians,
Diet For A Small Planet. Francis Moore Lappe's book was enormously popular
in the 1970s, and it begins with a discussion about "reaching the very
limits of the earth's capacity to produce food" and how a vegetarian diet
was a way out of the "the earth's natural limitations".
DM: So how do you answer the question of carrying capacity? Are you saying
that the earth's resources are infinite? That we're just going to go on and
on and on?
IB: No, not at all. I want to make this very clear: I am not in any way
saying that the earth's resources should be used up willy-nilly, that
societies shouldn't concern themselves with how to live on the planet in the
most sane and sustainable way possible. But it's always € ’¶
historically € ’¶ an
empirical, local, question: How much water is available? How much grazing
will a pasture allow? Who's encroaching? How much mast for the pigs or
firewood is X entitled to? Will we have to send Y away to work in the city?
What I'm trying to say here is that the vulgar error made by modern
Malthusians is to assume that the human story hasn't in fact been about
dealing with this problem of the carrying capacity, if you want to put it
that way, of particular patches of land. There's a word for it. It's called
stinting. Commoners have "use-rights" - say, to pasture animals, to take
fodder, to gather firewood, to harvest fruits and berries and nuts - but
only if you live there, and only certain amounts, depending on the
ecological, historical knowledge of the local community about what would
stretch it too far. Action informed by local knowledge, typically, is not
going to cause ecocide. I'm not saying ecological destruction hasn't
occurred in the human past - the deforestation of the coastal areas around
the Mediterranean sea is a classic case, caused by centuries of Imperial
Roman overfarming - but it tends to be by non-locals and elites. Let's call
it the state. The major culprit in modern times is capitalist farming in
private hands.
Despite this reality, the blame is laid at the door of the world's
commoners. Take for example Garrett Hardin's famous 1968 essay, "The tragedy
of the commons", published in the journal Science. This was an enormously
influential text by a Texan zoologist, based on no sociological research
whatsoever, and in profound ignorance of the actual history of commoning.
Hardin asserted that all common resources (such as pasture, a favorite
example) will inevitably end in ruin because of over-exploitation by selfish
individuals. Hardin's fable was taken up by the gathering forces of
neo-liberal reaction in the 1970s, and his essay became the "scientific"
foundation of World Bank and IMF policies, viz. enclosure of commons and
privatization of public property. The plausibility of Hardin's Malthusian
claims doesn€ ’²t survive a moment's scrutiny. Ask yourself - was the
disaster
of the Dust Bowl a tragedy of the commons or of capitalist agriculture under
private ownership?
But the historical facts are irrelevant. The case is an ideological one, and
Hardin was holding up a mirror to modern homo economicus. The message is
clear: we must never treat the earth as a "common treasury". We must be
ruthless and greedy or else we will perish.
Carrying capacity is now very hard to discuss in a context of extensive
agriculture under a capitalist regime which by any accounting (by anyone
other than a capitalist economist) is extremely inefficient. It is not well
known, for example, that by a unilateral act of Congress the navy seized
dozens of small islands around the world in the late 19th century to secure
supplies of guano, in order to fertilize the US continental soil which was
being ruthlessly depleted by the Western farmers. Today instead we are
dependent on fossil fuels, and that too goes along with vast subsidies,
price fixing, tax breaks, and hidden costs. What would the price of a gallon
of gasoline be if you factored in the cost of the Sixth Fleet and all
military bases around the world?
So there's no denying that capitalism is now threatening the basis of life
on earth. Certainly that's true. But I refuse to cave in to Malthusian
assumptions. Why is it not possible to imagine a reorganization of
agriculture, and I don€ ’²t mean some new technofix from Monsanto. It
will
surely mean agrarian revolutions, though the content of those revolutions
would be contested, to say the least. Marxists have always thrilled to the
sight of really big tractors. They don't much like to hear about watersheds
and foodmiles and small Kropotkinian communes. I will guess that among the
non-negotiable requirements will be a transvaluation of soil (stripped, by
the way, of any fascist metaphysic), along with a revolution in biology
which will need to find new roots in microbial ecology, while at the same
time reviving the disparaged arts of the naturalist.
DM: It seems that a lot of naturalists, by which I mean natural scientists,
biologists, and such, tend to weigh in on these debates. They always appear
to stand outside or above the realm of politics and economics. They are
merely talking about Nature, of which humans are just a part. I'm thinking
of Jared Diamond, and how popular he is at the moment.
IB:Yes, Diamond is another good example, a tropical ornithologist turned
historian of the fate of human societies. He must be discussed alongside
Garrett Hardin, as well as Paul "Population Bomb" Ehrlich and the
entomologist E.O. Wilson € ’¶ they all wrote hugely popular books.
Crucially,
all of these men see themselves as students of Charles Darwin, himself a
brilliant naturalist. Darwin admitted that it was none other than Malthus
the economist who provided the final, essential piece to Darwin's picture of
the workings of Nature. He sat up one night, so the story goes, when he was
reading Malthus' Essay on Population and he says that he realized "It's
Malthus! That's how I can explain evolution!" Now evolution was not the
invention of Darwin, actually his grandfather Erasmus had been a kind of
evolutionist. What was new was his conception of the mechanism, the engine
that drives evolution which leads to the formation of new species and the
staggering variety of life-forms, in all their beauty and bizarreness.
That's what he called "natural selection". The basic, Malthus-style,
argument is simple: overpopulation creates competition for the resources
available, and favors those offspring better adapted to exploit local
conditions and resources. So this is the scenario on which economics and
Darwin's account of natural history are founded € ’¶ a kind of
anti-Eden, with
too many organisms locked in a war of all against all. So Darwin was
projecting Malthus onto the realm of nature.
In Guns, Germs and Steel Jared Diamond rehearses, without knowing it, an old
18th century argument using the accidents of geography to explain, and in
fact justify, the colonization of the planet by European powers. The only
difference is that he clothes the narrative in anti-racist drag. His
conclusion is a (neo)Malthusian message: life is a struggle for survival in
a world of scarcity. True enough for millions for people, but not because of
any "iron law of nature". Diamond's latest book, Collapse, rams home the
same Malthusian message in a series of historical horror-stories of resource
exhaustion and societal catastrophe.
One Long Catastrophe
DM: I'd like to talk about why so many Americans, steeped in Judeo-Christian
ideology, are attracted to catastrophism in the first place. It seems to me
the underlying ideology is ultimately passive, it takes the world out of our
control because it's all going to end and there's nothing we can do. But
things continue on, and that's a much more difficult problem to deal with.
I think here of Derrick Jensen, who seems to witness the first signs of
extreme environmental destruction around him and therefore prophesies the
end of civilization. Would that it were that simple! In fact, societies tend
to survive catastrophe and persevere, though the result may not be pretty or
comfortable.
IB: Again, no one is saying that we aren't facing serious, extremely grave
problems. What we are questioning is the millenarianism, the endism, you
could call it, which is only part of a general ideology of "catastrophism".
This is the idea that the human drama is played out on a finite terrestrial
stage. There is an abrupt beginning and an abrupt end, the whole affair
lasting in one version just six thousand years. Darwin had to abandon his
Christian catastrophism and for that he depended upon the great geologist
Lyell who posited the very unbiblical idea of "deep time", and immensely
slow, gradual, change. Since Darwin's time, for a hundred a fifty years or
so, the predominant view in science has been gradualism.
The politics of gradualism are very important here. Conservative in many
ways, and certainly non-revolutionary. a Darwinian world is a natural
meritocracy, in which of course only the deserving survive. Perhaps you can
see why secularizing Victorian gentlemen € ’¶ imperialists, really €
’¶ would
believe that competition produces progress and the survival of the superior
races of animals and, of course, men.
So for more than a hundred years the earth sciences tended to discount
catastrophes, but towards the end of the 20th century, catastrophism begins
coming back, big time. Let's call it neo-catastrophism. Part of the
explanation is no doubt due to the rising political power of apocalyptic
Christians and evangelicals in the United States. But at least as important,
in my view, is the catastrophe of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the building
of a weapon that scientists began to believe could produce the end of
everything. Omnicide.
I would say there's been half a century of preparation for what is now a
full-blown ideological sea change, from a slow, gradual view of the world to
a universe of large scale, rapid changes that shape everything.
DM: But don't both make a certain sense? Gradualism and catastrophism? Long,
slow change and rapid dramatic change?
IB: Of course it's both! Both are true, but I'm talking about ideology here.
For sure, when you're trying to understand the natural history of earth, you
have to have consider sudden violent events as well as wind erosion.
DM: Asteroids hit the planet every once in a while?
IB: Just so. Take the major extinction event at the K/T, the
Cretaceous-Tertiary, boundary. Most in the field of earth science now
believe there was an impact in the Yucatan 65 million years ago which doomed
the dinosaurs, and produced a kind of nuclear winter effect.
DM: And produced the Gulf of Mexico?
IB: And a tsunami which was maybe a mile and a half high. An unimaginably
large event. This is not so appealing to the settled Victorian imagination
of Darwin, who preferred to contemplate the action of water, and the slow
scrutiny of a Malthusian god, selecting out the fitter organisms. Now, as
I've said, I take it that we have to investigate the world and our
condition, and our history, by examining the reality of catastrophes and
extinctions together with those gradualist principles also being at work at
the same time.
But one question we must ask is: Why are we so obsessed with catastrophe and
"endism" right now?
DM: I propose that it is a symptom of a state in which people in the First
World, in the global North, are finally seeing some of the dire results of
five centuries of capitalist exploitation. The past five hundred years have
seen cataclysmic disasters like famines, plagues, etc. all over the Third
World. Now the denizens of the overdeveloped countries are seeing oil wars,
which of course are nothing new, and mass extinctions, nothing new either.
But it is all causing folks like Jensen to claim that civilization is about
to end.
It seems like a book that helps us to understand this is Mike Davis's Late
Victorian Holocausts. Prior to that period there had been famine, but
nothing on the scale of what happened in the 19th century, in previously
healthy societies. The famines in India, and the famines in Africa, were
produced by British colonialism. And the landscape there looked like the
Apocalypse: Plague, War, Death...
IB: That's a really important point. And Amartya Sen, the sociologist of
famine, comes to same conclusion from a different angle. Sen's striking
claim is that you don't get famine, really, where there's "democratic"
entitlement to food. When you examine starvation in 19th India and Ireland,
yes, they have to do more with the history of colonialism. It is also
helpful in thinking about contemporary "natural disasters", so-called €
’¶ I'm
thinking about the huge loss of life in earthquakes in the South, and the
tsunami that drowned so many Achenese, or closer to home, to contrast
post-Katrina New Orleans with the firestorms of Malibu, where state
subsidies rountinely rebuild the houses of Hollywood executives.
So what we're saying here is: it's important to notice the ideological move
that naturalizes events which are the result of human decisions. It turns
disasters that have as much to do with human agency and decision into
natural and inevitable events.
DM: The problem is that people confuse states with peoples, empires with
humanity. Capitalism is poisoning the earth, no one is disputing that, but
the ecological Malthusians see this and claim that the species as a whole is
destroying the earth.
IB: Well, I can't say it too clearly. In my critique of scarcity, I'm not
saying that there isn't scarcity. But we have to understand why and how
scarcity is produced, and it's crucial, I think, to do the work of unpacking
the ideology behind scarcity and neo-catastrophism. For one thing, it's
interesting to ask: "Why all this talk of scarcity and collapse now?" After
all, catastrophes are a permanent feature of history. So when you hear
someone say, "The world's food supply is going to run out in such and such a
year", well, excuse me! Forty thousand children die each day from the
effects of malnutrition. Or perhaps I should say € ’¶ from the causes of
malnutrition. For these souls it's already too late. And there are millions
of people - the so-called precariat - for whom catastrophe is always
looming. This isn't the future we're talking about. It's tonight, it's
happening right now. So it seems a bit naive for Northern environmentalists
to be proclaiming apocalypse at this point.
In other words, if we look at the history of the world under five hundred
years of capitalism, we should be talking catastrophe. Of course we should.
It's been one long catastrophe. But we should refuse to do so in Malthusian
terms, blaming the state of affairs on overpopulation, poverty, or lack of
restraint in the slums of the world. And we should be aware that
catastrophism and apocalypse talk are especially congenial to
fundamentalists.
DM: Let's talk about how all of this relates to intervention, by which I
mean the perceived need for the West to come to the rescue, with food and
medicines, of the starving people of the world, particularly Africa. I think
here of the recent calls for international aid to Darfur. It's always a call
for intervention very late in the game, with no analysis of the systems that
got us here. Isn't Africa as a continent still a net exporter of food, to
this day?
IB: Indeed it is. In the global division of labor, Africa's role is to be a
source of raw materials, mineral and vegetable; value is added elsewhere. It
is true there are a few high value cash crops; for instance, jet airliners
full of refrigerated cut flowers fly out of Harare every day bound for
Europe, while millions of food-insecure Zimbabweans go to bed hungry. You're
right, of course € ’¶ intervention happens way too far downstream. It
only
confirms Africa as a hopeless basket case.
DM: And this same tone, this same kind of call, we now hear coming from Al
Gore and company, for the world to "do something" about climate change.
Again, we must do something, anything, except of course address the causes
of what got us here in the first place!
I have an idea to help with climate change: let's start with a global
moratorium on highway construction. If this winds up hurting any local
economies, Toyota and British Petroleum will gladly pay the costs, as they
want to help out with the challenge to stop global warming, right?
IB: Quite typically, BP has just offered a half billion dollars over the
next decade to the University of California and the Lawrence Berkeley
Laboratory (whose raison d'etre is to design nuclear weapons) to develop GM
crops to make alcohol to replace fossil fuel. At one stroke this is supposed
to combat global warming and to address the purported scarcity of oil.
What is so poignant is that things could be otherwise. We don't in fact live
in a world of Malthusian scarcity. Far from it. Even Malthus himself
acknowledged this when he spoke of "nature's mighty feast". And yet the
history of modernity is the history of enclosure, of the cutting off of
people from access to land, to the common treasury and to the fruits of our
own labour. Excluded by fire and sword and now "structural adjustment".
Everywhere you look, there nothing much natural about it, this kind of
scarcity. It's a story of artifice and force. No wonder the fables offered
us by modernity's clerisy are the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Tragedy of the
Commons. The premises of the science of economics are a disgrace, and so are
all the proliferating offspring of Malthus. Our first task is to kill these
sacred cows of capitalist modernity.
Iain Boal can be reached at boal@...
__________________________________________________________
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16. Interview with David Suzuki
Posted by: "Tim Barton / BlueGreenEarth" tim_decenter@... tim_decenter
Tue Oct 9, 2007 2:05 pm (PST)
Interview with David Suzuki
Dr David Suzuki, award-winning scientist and environmentalist, talks to
WWF-Australia about why
humans are the real reason our planet is degrading at such a fast rate and how
we can turn this
around.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvCm7rixdZk
bluegreenearth.com
europeansocialecologyinstitute.org
irelandfrombelow.org
socialecologyinstitute.blogspot.com
myspace.com/socialecologyinstituteEU
anamnesis.net/incineration
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and social reportage, opinion and analysis
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17. The laughing Noam
Posted by: "Tim Barton / BlueGreenEarth" tim_decenter@... tim_decenter
Tue Oct 9, 2007 2:05 pm (PST)
The laughing Noam
Steven Poole on Interventions, by Noam Chomsky (Hamish Hamilton, €
¦£12.99)
Chomsky-bashing has been back in fashion recently. Happily, this volume of his
newspaper op-eds,
covering the years 2002-06, offers more clues as to why he sends some of his
fellow opinionists
into righteous apoplexy. Perhaps it is Chomsky's undimmed delight in sarcasm:
he never applies a
subtle wristlock when an elbow to the face will do. (For instance, a 2002
"modest proposal" that
the US should encourage Iran to invade Iraq rather than do it itself:
illuminating in its
absurdity.) Or perhaps it is the craftily pre-emptive condescension displayed
when he recites a
"moral truism", such as: "We should apply to ourselves the same standards we
apply to others."
Maybe, when you see that what you are defending conflicts with such a
principle, the psychic
pressure is so great as to be relieved only by a blast of invective.
Or perhaps it is the annoying obstacle to maintaining a serene faith in the
legends of the moment
that Chomsky erects when he merely reminds his readers of facts - such as when
he notes the overt
American hostility to democracy as practised in Venezuela, or contrasts the
rhetoric about
"weapons of mass destruction" with details of the official gamings of the
Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty. Chomsky is not always right, and is sometimes badly
wrong (as on the
Balkans). Yet his enemies judge him absolutely: if he is not a saint of
rectitude then he must be
a cynic, or even a liar. It's curious how they don't apply such a merciless
standard to anyone
else, least of all their colleagues.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2184459,00.html
bluegreenearth.com
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socialecologyinstitute.blogspot.com
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and social reportage, opinion and analysis
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18. "No War, No Warming"
Posted by: "President, USA Exile Govt" prez@...
Tue Oct 9, 2007 2:06 pm (PST)
FREE VOICE OF AMERICA
A Service
of The Government of the United States of America in Exile
Via <prez@...> et al
October 6, 2007
Dear Bluegreen Colleagues,
Let's keep this NY Times piece below in perspective: none of us
should regard the current pace of Arctic melt as "shocking" because
'way back in spring '68 at the Dialectics of Liberation Conference in
London Gregory Bateson in prepared remarks said this would take place
at approximately this time.
So why was his statement so systematically ignored? Who in
addition to Big Oil/Coal is responsible for this? These are quite
important questions for real historians.
In any case, we can say that to a significant degree it's the
fault of the ill-fated NY Times itself that it now must characterize
what's happening to home planet ice-sheets as shocking. The irony of
this is much more shocking than the pace of the melt!
Within last-minute efforts to deal with our looming climate
catastrophe no one is more helpful just now than Ted Glick, who's now
with others in the second month of a Climate Emergency Fast and who
also with others is organizing actions in DC between October 21 and 23.
The main action is Monday, October 22, when folks will engage in
"NONVIOLENT CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE TO TAKE OVER CAPITOL HILL". Please go
to <nowarnowarming.org> for more info on this--or listen to him via the
archive for October 5 at <democracynow.org> or at <kpfa.org>.
Since I'm frequently quite critical of the Amy Goodman news show,
I want to thank it for providing us with a few minutes of Ted Glick's
comments yesterday. Those few minutes made a big difference to me.
Till then, I'd been using my poor health as an excuse for not being in
DC for these enormously important actions.
But now I realize that Ted is saying we all should "Take It to the
Limit One More Time". So, yes, I'm going to be there because I can
help with press relations even though at 76 I'm no longer able to be on
the streets (mainly emphysema and asthma).
Rad press relations is an old specialty of mine going back to SNCC
'64, the US anti-war movement '66-'68,
Yippie! '68, the US women's-lib movement '68, the US environmental
movement '69, the US marijuana-legalization movement early-&-mid '70s,
the all-species movement '78, the US pro-democracy movement '91, the US
exile government '01 to present, etc. In fact, I still have my press
contact lists from NYC '66-'68 [no war] and Berkeley '69-'70 [no
warming]. (I was relatively trusted at the various corporate-media
news-assignment desks because in '57 through nepotism I'd been
accredited to NATO as a Paris-based correspondent for Hearst's infamous
International News Service.)
Nonviolent civil disobedience in DC also is an old specialty of
mine. I was busted in the US Senate in '67, Pentagon '67, World Bank
'87 and Rotonda '00.
I hope that great numbers of us will on this occasion Take It to
the Limit One More Time in whichever manner we can be most helpful. If
lots of us do, this event will acquire the historical stature of
Chicago '68, Seattle '99, Genoa '01 and Cancun '03.
It may already be too late to avoid a Homo-sapiens die-back--but
it's certainly not too late to significantly influence the size of it.
The classical definition of a die-back among biologists is "the
relatively sudden loss of between one-third and two-thirds of a
species' population". Which means if we keep it to a minimum we can
save the lives of more than 2.2 billion dear humans and countless
billions of other dear species.
Meanwhile, I'll keep a close eye on the No War, No Warming website
so I can post you the latest developments. . .
Yours for solution energies for all species,
Keith Lampe, Ro-Non-So-Te,
Ponderosa Pine
----------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------
From: Ecological Options Network <eonnewsnet@...>
Date: October 5, 2007 11:39:22 AM EST
Subject: A Swiftly Melting Planet
October 4, 2007
The New York Times
A Swiftly Melting Planet
By THOMAS HOMER-DIXON
Toronto
THE Arctic ice cap melted this summer at a shocking pace, disappearing
at a far higher rate than predicted by even the most pessimistic
experts in global warming. But we shouldn€ ’²t be shocked, because
scientists have long known that major features of earth€ ’²s interlinked
climate system of air and water can change abruptly.
A big reason such change happens is feedback € ’· not the feedback that
you€ ’²d like to give your boss, but the feedback that creates a vicious
circle. This type of feedback in our global climate could determine
humankind€ ’²s future prosperity and even survival.
The vast expanse of ice floating on the surface of the Arctic Ocean
always recedes in the summer, reaching its lowest point sometime in
September. Every winter it expands again, as the long Arctic night
descends and temperatures plummet. Each summer over the past six years,
global warming has trimmed this ice€ ’²s total area a little more, and
each winter the ice€ ’²s recovery has been a little less robust. These
trends alarmed climate scientists, but most thought that sea ice
wouldn€ ’²t disappear completely in the Arctic summer before 2040 at the
earliest.
But this past summer sent scientists scrambling to redo their
estimates. Week by week, the National Snow and Ice Data Center in
Boulder, Colo., reported the trend: from 2.23 million square miles of
ice remaining on Aug. 8 to 1.6 million square miles on Sept. 16, an
astonishing drop from the previous low of 2.05 million square miles,
reached in 2005.
The loss of Arctic sea ice won€ ’²t be the last abrupt change in
earth€ ’²s
climate, because of feedbacks. One of the climate€ ’²s most important
destabilizing feedbacks involves Arctic ice. It works like this: our
release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases around the planet
causes some initial warming that melts some ice. Melting ice leaves
behind open ocean water that has a much lower reflectivity (or albedo)
than that of ice. Open ocean water absorbs about 80 percent more solar
radiation than sea ice does. And so as the sun warms the ocean, even
more ice melts, in a vicious circle. This ice-albedo feedback is one of
the main reasons warming is happening far faster in the high north,
where there are vast stretches of sea ice, than anywhere else on Earth.
There are other destabilizing feedbacks in the carbon cycle that
involve the oceans. Each year, the oceans absorb about half the carbon
dioxide that humans emit into the atmosphere. But as oceans warm, they
will absorb less carbon dioxide, partly because the gas dissolves less
readily in warmer water, and partly because warming will reduce the
mixing between deep and surface waters that provides nutrients to
plankton that absorb carbon dioxide. And when oceans take up less
carbon dioxide, warming worsens.
Scientists have done a good job incorporating some feedbacks into their
climate models, especially those, like the ice-albedo feedback, that
operate directly on the temperature of air or water. But they haven€ ’²t
incorporated as well feedbacks that operate on the atmosphere€ ’²s
concentrations of greenhouse gases or that affect the cycle of carbon
among air, land, oceans and organisms. Yet these may be the most
important feedbacks of all.
Global warming is melting large areas of permafrost in Alaska, Canada
and Siberia. As it melts, the organic matter in the permafrost starts
to rot, releasing carbon dioxide and methane (molecule for molecule,
methane traps far more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide).
Warming is also affecting wetlands and forests around the world,
helping to desiccate immense peat bogs in Indonesia, contributing to
more frequent drought in the Amazon basin, and propelling a widening
beetle infestation that€ ’²s killing enormous tracts of pine forest in
Alaska and British Columbia. (This infestation is on the brink of
crossing the Canadian Rockies into the boreal forest that extends east
to Newfoundland.) Dried peat and dead and dying forests are vulnerable
to wildfires that would emit huge quantities of carbon into the
atmosphere.
This summer€ ’²s loss of Arctic sea ice indicates that at least one
major
destabilizing feedback is gaining force quickly. Scientists have also
recently learned that the Southern Ocean, which encircles Antarctica,
appears to be absorbing less carbon, while Greenland€ ’²s ice sheet is
melting at an accelerating rate.
When warming becomes its own cause, we might not be able to stop
extremely harmful climate change no matter how much we cut our
greenhouse gas emissions. We need a far more aggressive global response
to climate change. In the 1960s, mothers learned that the milk they
were feeding their children was laced with radioactive material from
atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons and that this contamination could
increase the risk of childhood leukemia. Soon women organized
themselves in the tens of thousands to demand that nuclear powers ban
atmospheric testing. Their campaign largely succeeded.
In response to the new dangers of climate change, we need a similar
mobilization € ’· of mothers, of students and of everyone with a stake
in
the future € ’· now.
Thomas Homer-Dixon, a professor of peace and conflict studies at the
University of Toronto, is the author of € ’³The Upside of Down:
Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization.€ ’´
____________________________
EON
The Ecological Options Network
"Documenting Deep Democracy"
€ € € € € € www.eon3.net
========================================================================
==================================
----------
Leading Americans Ask Military to Refuse to Attack Iran and
Start a Global Catastrophe
Global Research, October 5, 2007
AfterDowningStreet.org - 2006-10-02
Country music legend Willie Nelson, literary icon Gore Vidal, Gold Star
Mother Cindy Sheehan, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg,
retired U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright, former Congresswoman Cynthia
McKinney, former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega, author and
radio host Thom Hartmann, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Rabbi Steven Jacobs,
and dozens of other prominent Americans have signed a letter asking the
Joint Chiefs of Staff and all U.S. military personnel to refuse orders
to launch an aggressive war on Iran.
The letter has been posted as a petition for others to sign at
http://www.dontattackiran.org
The text of the letter follows:
ATTENTION: Joint Chiefs of Staff and all U.S. Military Personnel:
Do not attack Iran.
Any preemptive U.S. attack on Iran would be illegal.
Any preemptive U.S. attack on Iran would be criminal.
We, the citizens of the United States, respectfully urge you,
courageous men and women of our military, to refuse any order to
preemptively attack Iran, a nation that represents no serious or
immediate threat to the United States. To attack Iran, a sovereign
nation of 70-million people, would be a crime of the highest magnitude.
Legal basis for our Request € ’¶ Do not attack Iran:
The Nuremberg Principles, which are part of US law, provide that all
military personnel have the obligation not to obey illegal orders. The
Army Field Manual 27-10, sec. 609 and UCMJ, art. 92, incorporate this
principle. Article 92 says: "A general order or regulation is lawful
unless it is contrary to the Constitution, the law of the United States
€ ’¥"
Any provision of an international treaty ratified by the United States
becomes the law of the United States. The United States is a party and
signatory to the United Nations Charter, of which Article II, Section 4
states, "All members shall refrain in their international relations
from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or
political independence of any state€ ’¥" As Iran has not attacked the
United States, and as the U.S. is a party and signatory to the Charter,
any attack on Iran by the U.S. would be illegal under not only
international law but under the U.S. Constitution which recognizes our
treaties as the Supreme Law of the Land. When you joined the military,
you took an oath to defend our Constitution.
Following the orders of your government or superior does not relieve
you from responsibility under international law. Under the Principles
of International Law recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg
Tribunal, complicity in the commission of war crime is a crime under
international law.
Background:
The Bush Administration's charges against Iran have not been proven.
Neither the development of nuclear weapons, nor providing assistance to
Iraq would, if proven, constitute justification for an illegal war.
An attack on Iran might prompt the formidable Iranian military to
attack U.S. troops stationed in Iraq. Thousands of our soldiers might
be killed or captured as prisoners of war. A U.S. attack against
Iranian nuclear facilities could also mean the deaths, from radiation
poisoning, of tens of thousands of innocent Iranian civilians. The
people of Iran have little control over their government, yet would
suffer tremendously should the U.S. attack. Bombing raids would amount
to collective punishment, a violation of the Geneva Convention, and
would surely sow the seeds of hatred for generations to come. Children
make up a quarter of Iran's population.
Above all, we ask you to look at the record of our actions in Iraq,
which U.S. intelligence admits is € ’³a cause celebre for jihadists€
’´ € ’¶ a
situation that did not exist before we attacked. We must face the fact
that our rash use of military solutions has created more enemies, and
made American families less safe. Diplomacy, not war, is the answer.
Know the Risks Involved in Refusing an Illegal Order or Signing This
Statement:
We knowingly and willingly make this plea, aware of the risk that, in
violation of our First Amendment rights, we could be charged under
remaining sections of the unconstitutional Espionage Act or other
unconstitutional statute, and that we could be fined, imprisoned, or
barred from government employment.
We make this plea, also aware that you have no easy options. If you
obey an illegal order to participate in an aggressive attack on Iran,
you could potentially be charged with war crimes. If you heed our call
and disobey an illegal order you could be falsely charged with crimes
including treason. You could be falsely court martialed. You could be
imprisoned. (To talk to a lawyer or to learn more about possible
consequences, contact The Central Committee for Conscientious
Objectors, Courage to Resist, Center on Conscience and War, Military
Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild 415-566-3732, or the GI
Rights Hotline at 877-447-4487.) **
Final request:
Our leaders often say that military force should be a last resort. We
beg you to make that policy a reality, and refuse illegal orders to
attack Iran. We promise to support you for protecting the American
public and innocent civilians abroad.
Our future, the future of our children and their children, rests in
your hands.
You know the horrors of war. You can stop the next one.
Sincerely,
The letter has been posted as a petition for others to sign at
http://www.dontattackiran.org
2. Please sign Petition to President and Vice President below.
Dear President Bush and Vice President Cheney,
We write to you from all over the United States and all over the world
to urge you to obey both international and U.S. law, which forbid
aggressive attacks on other nations. We oppose your proposal to attack
Iran. Iran does not possess nuclear weapons, just as Iraq did not
possess nuclear weapons. If Iran had such weapons, that would not
justify the use of force, any more than any other nation would be
justified in launching a war against the world's greatest possessor of
nuclear arms, the United States. The most effective way to prevent Iran
from developing nuclear weapons would be to closely monitor its nuclear
energy program, and to improve diplomatic relations -- two tasks made
much more difficult by threatening to bomb Iranian territory. We urge
you to lead the way to peace, not war, and to begin by making clear
that you will not commit the highest international crime by
aggressively attacking Iran.
PLEASE SIGN IT NOW: Sign This Petition.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole
responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of
the Centre for Research on Globalization.
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€ © Copyright , AfterDowningStreet.org, 2006
The url address of this article is:
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6982
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Messages in this topic (1)
19. ~~~Update: onedollardvdproject~~~
Posted by: "ronaldneil@..." ronaldneil@... wakeupthetown
Tue Oct 9, 2007 2:06 pm (PST)
Hi All,
We should all be are grateful for the success of this project. I want to thank
everyone who has participated. It seems that we are a growing concern and have
moved into the overwhelming success catagory as DVD orders are steady and
getting larger in size. The growing number of repeat buyers is especially
encouraging. Thanks to all who are spreading the message with these
documentaries.
The largest order was 1,000 Zeitgeist (edited). I have also had two other
1,000 Ron Paul orders I was not able to get out because of such short notice. I
will not let that happen again. Once I catch up, I plan to fill the shelves in
anticipation of orders, especially the larger ones.
Recently, I purchased a third duplicator and am now able to almost double my
production. Five printers barely keep up with the duplicators. I may add two
more, soon. Does anyone have an Epson R220, R260, R300 or an R580 they would
like to donate? These machines do a wonderful job of disc printing.
It seems we are usually a week behind in production, which also means, many
are using the project as a tool to educate others. I am not complaining.
We made some nice changes to the site. The Home page is more fun and a new
video clip sets the tone of our project. Be warned, the clip is a serious
wake-up call. http://onedollardvdproject.com
Please, note the order page is simpler and the full version of Zeitgeist has
been removed. I am from the old school and believe there is a God and He sent
Jesus to wake us to that reality. Part I of Zeitgeist irritates me and others as
well therefore, I will only carry the edited version containing The 9/11 Myth
and The Men Behind The Curtain.
This is no longer a one man operation. I am a new grandfather. My
daughter-n-law is now helping me twenty hours a week. The three of us, including
my four month old granddaughter, are quite a team, putting out DVDs. What a
blessing it is to look into that child's eyes and see what should be. We must
all consider what those who follow us will face, if we fail.
There is always a surge, in orders, after I send out these notes. Please, be
patient as we are working as hard as be can between nursing and changing
diapers. ha.
As always, we are looking for more documentaries that fit the project and
ideas to maintain the success we have seen. Please, take a few minutes to review
the various pages and let me know if something needs attention. The Support page
has some good ideas for those who want to help the project.
God Bless You All.
Ron Neil
http://onedollardvdproject.com
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Messages in this topic (1)
20. fwd: summary of the Ecuadorian revolution: the rise of the Constitue
Posted by: "paul illich" paul_illich@... paul_illich
Tue Oct 9, 2007 11:26 pm (PST)
http://colonos.wordpress.com/2007/10/09/summary-of-the-ecuadorian-revolution-the\
-rise-of-the-constituent-assembly/
A summary of the Ecuadorian revolution: the rise of the Constituent Assembly
Roger Burbach€ ’²s informative piece called € ’³Ecuador€ ’²s
Popular Revolt: Forging
a New Nation€ ’³, although dated October 8 seems to be written before
the
landslide victory of Correa€ ’²s alliance became clear:
€ ’³Final results won€ ’²t be known until late October, however
preliminary
results indicate that Correa€ ’²s party, Alianza Pais, won around 70% of
the
vote, giving it some 80 of the 130 assembly delegates. Correa can also
expect support in the assembly from representatives of the Socialist Party
of Ecuador € ’· Broad Front, the Movement for Popular Democracy and
indigenous
party Pachakutik € ’· Nuevo Pais.
The outcome was a huge blow to the right-wing opposition, whose traditional
parties all scored pitiful votes. The Social Christian Party, the country€
’²s
largest party, scored less than 4%. The € ’³anti-corruption€ ’´
PRIAN of Alvaro
Noboa € ’· Correa€ ’²s opponent in the presidential election
run-offs last year
and Ecuador€ ’²s richest man € ’· scored around 6%.€ ’³
However, this does not make it any less valuable - it provides a summary of
the Ecuadorian revolution that is well worth a read. Whether it quite
warrants such a conclusion is another matter:
€ ’³In Ecuador, as well as in much of Latin America, we are witnessing a
revolution from below, a popular awakening that is challenging the
traditional political parties and demanding a new system of governance that
responds to the interests and needs of the popular classes. It is this rich
mixture of forces at the grass roots that is opening up new vistas as the
21st century advances.€ ’³
There are at least two things that need to be reflected on here:
1. Ecuador has experienced an exodus since dollarisation (2000), millions of
people have left and are now working mainly in the U.S (mainly Florida) and
in Spain. Their remittances are third to only oil and bananas - and the
millions of Euro (bought and sold in the streets of Quito alongside) US
dollars are being spent in flashy, air-con supermarkets on imported
commodities. This new class of people - who vote for Correa - drive flashy
cars (the amount of which has exploded accordingly in Quito) and want more
roads, cheaper petrol. They want political stability and improvement -
development - just like in Europe, the U.S. and in Asia. They vote for
global capitalism - spanish sausage, chinese gizmos, Californian red and
Malibu rum. Perhaps there is nothing wrong with that, but the revolution,
then, looks suspiciously familiar: another middle class take over operation,
attacking the Old Guarde and mobilising the people to do so. Needless to
say, the indigenous peoples and other subsistence farmers of Ecuador - who
might be significantly more than 30% (a disputed number!) - cannot cash in
on most of this.
2. The development projects that Correa, together with, mainly, Venezuela
and Brasil, are working on are classic neo-liberal projects: dams, hidrovias
(rivers + concrete) and refinaries - and who will suffer the most, yet
again? Of course the inhabitants of the Amazon rain forest, which will be
chopped up into little pieces in the process.
This is not to say that there are no good things happening in Ecuador - by
all means necessary, do get rid of the corrupt old bastards - but what about
the young corrupt bastards that replace them? What about the rain forest? Is
there no other way forward than € ’³forward, forward forward€ ’´?
Is socialist
progress any better than any other flavour of progress when it kills the
birds and the bees? Is this socialism? No love for the trees?
Inconclusively, what is the role for socialists from outside of Ecuador with
regards to the Ecuadorian revolution - to applaud and sit back and watch the
fellow traveller create a consumerist middle class with no critical remark
to offer?
One cannot help to note that Burbach€ ’²s piece, well written and
informative
as it is, seems to focus on satisfying an anti-American or anti-imperial
sentiment (there is a big market for that) and on that account fail to
inject some criticism that could only strengthen the Ecuadorian revolution.
Hopefully the indigenous organisations, the extra-parliamentary left
(working very hard at the moment, but with little media coverage or
attention paid by anyone outside of Ecuador) and other radical forces will
keep Correa on his toes. A more critical - and that is to say, really,
constructive, perspective by socialist and of course anarchist commentators
is needed to keep the movement alive.
__________________________________________________________
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