Slavery & 500 Years of Racial Injustice
Justice initiative – November 10, 2019 – Heather Gray
https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Slavery—500-Years-of-Racial-Injustice.html?soid=1109359583686&aid=qaMs8pc4EJc
[Here] is Part Two of this series on Bartolomé de las Casas which was issued by Origins in 2015 marking 500 years of racial injustice in the Americas. It offers more details about the treatment of native Americans by the Spanish and Portuguese invaders in the Americas as well as about the beginning of the African slave trade.
.. Until his death, Bartolomé de las Casas, worked tirelessly to prevent the enslavement of all native people and later regretted wholeheartedly his advocacy of African slavery. Indigenous and black activists and protestors for 500 years have taken up his arguments to push for changes to the systems that have made them second-class citizens. As we look around the world today at the legal and economic situation of many indigenous communities, one wonders what Las Casas would make of it all and how much further we need to go.
Michael Moore Was Right
Jacobin Magazine – November 6, 2019 – Meagan Day
https://jacobinmag.com/2019/11/michael-moore-roger-me-flint-michigan-gm-bernie-sanders
Mocked and derided for his impassioned defense of poor and working people, Michael Moore is finally being vindicated. He hasn’t changed his tune. The political culture’s just catching up with him.
How Big Oil Committed the Greatest Scam in History and Smeared Climate Science
Informed Comment – November 11, 2019 – Naomi Oreskes
https://www.juancole.com/2019/11/committed-greatest-history.html
Despite hundreds of scientific reports and assessments, tens of thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers, and countless conferences on the issue, man-made climate change is now a living crisis on this planet… Scientists working on the issue have often told me that, once upon a time, they assumed, if they did their jobs, politicians would act upon the information. That, of course, hasn’t happened. Anything but, across much of the planet. Worse yet, science failed to have the necessary impact in significant part because of disinformation promoted by the major fossil-fuel companies, which have succeeded in diverting attention from climate change and successfully blocking meaningful action… Big Energy’s climate-change scam is ongoing and our civilization is, quite literally, at stake. When citizens are inactive, democracy fails — and this time, if democracy fails, as burning California shows, so much else could fail as well. Science isn’t enough. The rest of us are needed. And we are needed now.
Historian William Dalrymple Warns of Unchecked Corporate Power in His Latest Book
Time Magazine – November 6, 2019 – Abhishyant Kidangoor/ Hong Kong
https://time.com/5716016/william-dalrymple-british-east-india-company/
His new book “Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company” explores how the firm, with its own military wing, “executed a corporate coup unparalleled in history,” and in doing so tacitly points to the dangers of unchecked corporatism. He also writes about how India’s subjugation started not with the British government but with a for-profit corporation that later spread its wings across Asia. In doing so, it helped to build a British Empire that, at its peak, was one “on which the sun never sets.”… Today, a modern corporation like Google or Facebook doesn’t need to have armies and military regiments like the East India Company did. They are listening to every word we say. And that’s more dangerous than any military.
Why Billionaires Don’t Really Like Capitalism
Robert Reich’s Blog – November 13, 2019
https://robertreich.org/post/188985940802
There are basically only five ways to accumulate a billion dollars, and none of them has to do with being successful in free market capitalism. The first way is to exploit a monopoly… A second way to make a billion is to get insider information unavailable to other investors… A third way to make a billion is to buy off politicians… The fourth way to make a billion is to extort big investors… The fifth way to be a billionaire is to get the money from rich parents or relatives… Capitalism doesn’t work well with monopolies, insider-trading, political payoffs, fraud, and large amounts of inherited wealth. Billionaires who don’t like Sanders’s and Warren’s wealth tax should at least support reforms that end these anti-capitalist advantages.
A Trump tax break to help the poor went to a rich GOP donor’s superyacht marina
Propublica – November 14, 2019 – Justin Elliott, Jeff Ernsthausen and Kyle Edwards
https://www.propublica.org/article/superyacht-marina-west-palm-beach-opportunity-zone-trump-tax-break-to-help-the-poor-went-to-a-rich-gop-donor
The Trump tax law gave governors the authority to distribute valuable tax breaks, and they have wielded it to benefit the politically connected. “That’s the real scary part of this program, that you give such incredible power to politicians to designate zones,” said Nathan Jensen, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies economic development. “The fact that this process was not transparent in almost any state is shocking.”
Climate crisis will affect lifelong health of young, warn doctors
The Guardian – November 13, 2019 – Damian Carrington
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/13/climate-crisis-will-affect-lifelong-health-of-young-warn-doctors
Children are especially vulnerable and the global team of researchers say rising temperatures mean the bacteria causing deadly diarrhoea will thrive while poorer crop yields could lead to more malnutrition… Nick Watts, executive director of the Lancet Countdown, said: “Children’s bodies and immune systems are still developing, leaving them more susceptible to disease and environmental pollutants. The damage done in early childhood lasts a lifetime. Without immediate action from all countries climate change will come to define the health of an entire generation.”.. The path that the world chooses today will irreversibly mark our children’s futures. We must listen to the millions of young people who have led the wave of school strikes for urgent action.
European Investment Bank Moves to Stop Funding Most Fossil Fuel Projects
Common Dreams – November 14, 2019 – Friends of the Earth
https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2019/11/14/eib-moves-stop-funding-most-fossil-fuel-projects
Colin Roche, fossil free campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe, said: “Today’s decision is a significant victory for the climate movement. Finally, the world’s largest public bank has bowed to public pressure and recognised that funding for all fossil fuels must end – and now all other banks, public and private must follow their lead.
Radical warming in Siberia leaves millions on unstable ground
The Washington Post – October 3, 2019 – Anton Troianovski and Chris Mooney
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/climate-environment/climate-change-siberia/
A Washington Post analysis found that the region near the town of Zyryanka, in an enormous wedge of eastern Siberia called Yakutia, has warmed by more than 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times — roughly triple the global average. The permafrost that once sustained farming — and upon which villages and cities are built — is in the midst of a great thaw, blanketing the region with swamps, lakes and odd bubbles of earth that render the land virtually useless… As the permafrost thaws, animals and plants frozen for thousands of years begin to decompose and send a steady flow of carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere — accelerating climate change. “The permafrost is thawing so fast,” said Anna Liljedahl, an associate professor at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. “We scientists can’t keep up anymore.”
Rising Seas Will Erase More Cities by 2050, New Research Shows
The New York Times – October 29, 2019 – Denise Lu and Christopher Flavelle
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/29/climate/coastal-cities-underwater.html
Climate change will put pressure on cities in multiple ways, said Loretta Hieber Girardet, a Bangkok resident and United Nations disaster risk-reduction official. Even as global warming floods more places, it will also push poor farmers off the land to seek work in cities. “It is a dire formula,” she said… Over all, the research shows that countries should start preparing now for more citizens to relocate internally, according to Dina Ionesco of the International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental group that coordinates action on migrants and development. “We’ve been trying to ring the alarm bells,” Ms. Ionesco said. “We know that it’s coming.” There is little modern precedent for this scale of population movement, she added.
Destruction of Biodiversity and Climate Change Are Causing Events Like Australia’s Forest Fires
Reader Supported News – November 15, 2019 – Leonardo DiCaprio
https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/59757-focus-destruction-of-biodiversity-and-climate-change-are-causing-events-like-australias-forest-fires
Australian conservation efforts need a radical overhaul. Mitigating the intensity of these fires, mostly set by humans and their activities, can be achieved by restoring our native ecosystem engineers, such as bandicoots, bettongs and potoroos. These species help to maintain healthy forests by continually turning over and breaking down forest leaf litter, thereby drastically reducing fuel load. In their absence, fires are more intense, often reaching the treetops, which can affect populations of species already on the brink, like the Koala. Slow growing and ancient Australian East coast temperate forests are of global significance, as these forests have some of the highest carbon storage on the planet. Fires of this intensity threaten their very existence but managing wildlife to reduce fire intensity and protect forests is underappreciated for its importance in reducing the release of carbon into the atmosphere.
How the U.S. Created the World’s Largest Immigrant Detention System
The Marshall Project – September 24, 2019 – Emily Kassie
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/09/24/detained
Children sleeping on floors, changing other children’s diapers. Families torn apart at the border. Migrants crammed into fetid detention centers. These have become familiar sights as people fleeing gang violence, domestic abuse and poverty arrive on the southern border of the United States. Many will join more than 52,000 immigrants confined in jails, prisons, tents and other forms of detention—most of them for profit. The United States’ reliance on immigrant detention is not a new phenomenon, nor did it emerge with President Donald Trump (though its growth under his administration is staggering). Over the last four decades, a series of emergency stopgaps and bipartisan deals has created a new multi-billion dollar industry built on the incarceration of immigrants.
Why is the Workplace a Dictatorship?
Portside – Organizing Work – November 14, 2019 – Eric Dirnbach
https://www.portside.org/2019-11-14/why-workplace-dictatorship
I was really interested in the book “Private Government” by Elizabeth Anderson. A philosophy and women’s studies professor at the University of Michigan, Anderson covers the early development of the ideology of the “free market” and the brutal reality of the modern undemocratic workplace. She states, “We are told that our choice is between free markets and state control, when most adults live their working lives under a third thing entirely: private government.” The book centers on two of her lectures and then provides responses from other scholars… the “free market” is, strangely enough, a network of competing, centrally-planned dictatorships. Anderson objects to the lack of public scrutiny of the fact that “Most workers in the United States are governed by communist dictatorships in their work lives.” This applies to, in her estimate, the 80% of the workforce who are not managerial employees, high paid superstars, self-employed, or working under union contracts.
Big Oil Needs to Pay for the Damage It Caused
Yes! Magazine – November 15, 2019 – Tamara Toles O’Laughlin and Bill McKibben
https://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/climate-crisis-big-oil-pay-20191115
The staggering cost of inaction here demands that we co-create the solutions with a concentric circle of communities that were made vulnerable to the effects of climate change. And that starts with thinking together about aligning these movements for “climate reparations” as a necessary framework for thinking about how we move forward… At this point, even the best-case scenarios are relentlessly grim; lots of damage has been done, and far more is in the offing. We’re going to have to remake much of the world to have a chance at survival. And if we’re going to try, then that repair job shouldn’t repeat the imbalances of power and wealth that mark our current planet. Justice demands a real effort to make the last, first this time around.
The Strategic Battle for Lithium. Huge Reserves in Bolivia, Argentina, Chile
Global Research – November 14, 2019 – Enzo Pellegrin
https://www.globalresearch.ca/take-lithium-stay/5694951
From the neo-liberal point of view, their management must be taken away from the bad examples of “nationalization”. Thinking about extracting and producing lithium for the needs of the people and in respect for the environment, outside of speculative ambitions, is an attack at heart of globalized capitalist economy. This is the reason why a freely elected President who enjoys the granite consensus of the popular masses of Bolivia should be ousted and forced to resign and flee the Country. It becomes also clear which is the main enemy of the self-determination of peoples: in Bolivia there is not a song much different from the one played by the United States, NATO and the European Union in Syria, trying to break up an oil-producing country in order to throw it into easy hands to run.
Stephen Miller Is No Outlier. White Supremacy Rules the Republican Party
The Guardian – November 16, 2019 – Cas Mudde
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/16/stephen-miller-white-supremacy-republican-party
While Miller might be behind the concrete policies that harm immigrants, he is not the main white supremacist in the White House. And Trump can easily find someone else to do Miller’s work, particularly now that almost the whole Republican party has fallen in line with their president. It also externalizes white supremacy, as if it lives in the margins. But it has been hiding in plain sight within the Republican Party for decades.