Food Not Bombs Still Feeding the Hungry and Homeless After 40 Year
27 Monday Dec 2021
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26 Sunday Dec 2021
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Beware: Gaia may destroy humans before we destroy the Earth
The Guardian – November 2, 2021 – James Lovelock
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/02/beware-gaia-theory-climate-crisis-earth
I don’t know if it is too late for humanity to avert a climate catastrophe, but I am sure there is no chance if we continue to treat global heating and the destruction of nature as separate problems… This division is as much of a mistake as the error made by universities when they teach chemistry in a different class from biology and physics. It is impossible to understand these subjects in isolation because they are interconnected. The same is true of living organisms that greatly influence the global environment. The composition of the Earth’s atmosphere and the temperature of the surface is actively maintained and regulated by the biosphere, by life, by what the ancient Greeks used to call Gaia… Almost 60 years ago, I suggested our planet self-regulated like a living organism. I called this the Gaia theory, and was later joined by biologist Lynn Margulis, who also espoused this idea. Both of us were roundly criticised by scientists in academia… Because subjects like astronomy, geology, and meteorology are taught separately in schools and universities, few people are aware of the natural forces affecting the Earth’s surface temperature… Lowering these risks and adapting to those we can no longer avoid will require a mobilisation of resources on the scale of a war economy. We have no choice but to reduce the burning of fossil fuels or face even worse consequences… My fellow humans must learn to live in partnership with the Earth, otherwise the rest of creation will, as part of Gaia, unconsciously move the Earth to a new state in which humans may no longer be welcome.
Himalayan glaciers melting at an ‘exceptional’ rate because of global warming, study finds
USA Today – December 21, 2021 – Doyle Rice
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/himalayan-glaciers-melting-at-an-exceptional-rate-because-of-global-warming-study-finds/ar-AARYOp1
“Our findings clearly show that ice is now being lost from Himalayan glaciers at a rate that is at least 10 times higher than the average rate over past centuries,” the study’s lead author, Jonathan Carrivick of the University of Leeds, said in a statement. “This acceleration in the rate of loss has only emerged within the last few decades and coincides with human-induced climate change.”… The glaciers are a critical source of water for about 250 million people in the mountains and an additional 1.65 billion who live in the river valleys below, according to a report in 2019. These rivers include the Ganges, Indus and Brahmaputra… Study co-author Simon Cook of the University of Dundee said “people in the region are already seeing changes that are beyond anything witnessed for centuries. “This research is just the latest confirmation that those changes are accelerating and that they will have a significant impact on entire nations and regions,” Cook said.
Keep it in the Ground: We can’t limit Global Heating to Safe Levels unless We Ban all new Oil and Gas Fields
Informed Comment – December 25, 2021 – David Waltham
https://www.juancole.com/2021/12/global-heating-fields.html
The conclusion seems clear: if we are serious about limiting global warming (already at 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels) to “well below 2°C” – as specified by the Paris Agreement on climate change – we can only burn a small fraction of our known fossil fuel reserves. Others have arrived at the same realisation. A recent, more detailed analysis in Nature similarly concluded that to reach global climate targets, most planned fossil fuel extraction projects can’t go ahead. And in May, the International Energy Agency (IEA) explicitly called for an end to new oil and gas fields, as well as to new coal mines and mine extensions, around the world… Surprisingly, an end to new oil and gas fields could be in the financial interests of fossil fuel companies.
Fossil Fuel Company Enbridge: Climate Change Means We Need to Make Money Now, Not Later
Jacobin – December 21, 2021 – Julia Rock
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/12/enbridge-oil-pipline-fossil-fuels-climate-crisis-energy-costs
“There is something ironic about pipeline companies like Enbridge conceding that they can see the writing on the wall, they’re not going to be competitive or needed less than twenty years from today, and, as a result, they have to raise prices today to account for that,” said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School. “There’s something incongruous about that.”
Private planes, mansions and superyachts: What gives billionaires like Musk and Abramovich such a massive carbon footprint
The Conversation – February 16, 2021 – Richard Wilk and Beatriz Barros
https://theconversation.com/private-planes-mansions-and-superyachts-what-gives-billionaires-like-musk-and-abramovich-such-a-massive-carbon-footprint-152514
The wealthy own yachts, planes and multiple mansions, all of which contribute greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. For example, a superyacht with a permanent crew, helicopter pad, submarines and pools emits about 7,020 tons of CO2 a year, according to our calculations, making it by the far worst asset to own from an environmental standpoint. Transportation and real estate make up the lion’s share of most people’s carbon footprint, so we focused on calculating those categories for each billionaire.
How Capitalism Stole Christmas (And Killed the Planet Along the Way)
EcoWatrch – December 19, 2021
https://www.ecowatch.com/holiday-consumerism-climate-crisis-2656063226.html
Every year, the connections from consumerism to capitalism to the climate crisis are once again laid bare. Today we dive into the holidays and the manufactured desire for more to understand how capitalism is driving the climate crisis. But it’s not enough to just critique, we will also try to understand what will dismantle our current system and develop an ecologically sound and ethical world in its stead.
‘An act of rebellion’: the young farmers revolutionizing Puerto Rico’s agriculture
The Guardian – December 23, 2021 – Nina Lakhani
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/23/puerto-rico-agroecology-farmers
The island imports 85% of its food but these three farms are part of the agroecology movement that seeks food sovereignty and climate solutions… Agroecology is low impact agriculture that works with nature and local conditions to produce food sustainably so as to protect biodiversity and soil quality while drawing carbon out of the atmosphere.
Major Survey Finds 100 Million Americans See US Healthcare System as ‘Expensive’ or ‘Broken’
Common Dreams – December 14, 2021 – Jake Johnson
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/12/14/major-survey-finds-100-million-americans-see-us-healthcare-system-expensive-or
The largest survey of its kind since the start of the Covid-19 crisis found that 38% of respondents—representing around 100 million Americans—characterized the for-profit U.S. healthcare system as either “expensive” or “broken,” an indication that the pandemic has markedly shifted public opinion. Gallup and West Health, the two organizations behind the new survey out Tuesday, began the polling process by asking respondents to concisely describe the U.S. healthcare system in their own words. Nearly 40% used the word “expensive” and 13% said the system is “broken”—the two most common descriptors offered by respondents.
This Scientist Created a Rapid Test Just Weeks Into the Pandemic. Here’s Why You Still Can’t Get It.
ProPublica – December 21, 2021 – Lydia DePillis
https://www.propublica.org/article/this-scientist-created-a-rapid-test-just-weeks-into-the-pandemic-heres-why-you-still-cant-get-it
When COVID-19 started sweeping across America in the spring of 2020, Irene Bosch knew she was in a unique position to help. The Harvard-trained scientist had just developed quick, inexpensive tests for several tropical diseases, and her method could be adapted for the novel coronavirus. So Bosch and the company she had co-founded two years earlier seemed well-suited to address an enormous testing shortage. Within a few weeks, Bosch and her colleagues had a test that would detect coronavirus in 15 minutes and produce a red line on a little chemical strip. The factory where they were planning to make tests for dengue fever could quickly retool to produce at least 100,000 COVID-19 tests per week, she said, priced at less than $10 apiece, or cheaper at a higher scale. A green light from the FDA could have made a big difference for the many Americans who were then frantically trying to find doctors to swab their noses, with results, if they were lucky, coming back only days later. But the go-ahead never came.
How Accurate Are At-Home Covid Tests? Here’s a Quick Guide
The New York Times – December 17, 2021 – Emily Anthes
https://www.nytimes.com/article/at-home-covid-tests-accuracy.html
A handful of rapid antigen tests are available without a prescription, including the Abbott BinaxNOW, the Ellume Covid-19 Home Test and the Quidel QuickVue At-Home Covid-19 Test. Prices start at about $7 per test, although President Biden has announced plans to reduce prices by roughly one-third. All three detect small viral proteins, called antigens. The tests require rubbing a shallow nasal swab inside your nostrils and then exposing the swab to a few drops of chemicals. They provide results in about 15 minutes.
AOC in Conversation With Noam Chomsky
Jacobin – December 15, 2021 – interview by Laura Flanders
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/12/noam-chomsky-aoc-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-conversation
We should, first of all, recognize that we’ve been living through about forty-five years of a particular socioeconomic political system, neoliberalism. Some people think that “neoliberalism” means a completely marketized society. But that’s never really been the case. What we’ve really had for forty-five years is what so many economists have called a “bailout economy.” We have the obvious consequences, financial crisis after financial crisis. And every time it comes, there’s a taxpayer-funded bailout… We’ve been living in the kind of system that you described, a one-sided class war: markets for the poor, protection for the rich.
Noam Chomsky: US-China Cooperation Is Essential to Avert a New Cold War
Truthout – December 22, 2021 – C.J. Polychroniou
https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chomsky-us-china-cooperation-is-essential-to-avert-a-new-cold-war/
After the fall of the USSR, there was much euphoria about the end of history with “liberal democracy” (a code word for the U.S.) having achieved total victory. A corollary was that China could now be brought within the “rule-based international order.” The latter is a now-conventional phrase, one worth pondering. It refers to an international order in which the U.S. sets the rules, displacing the international order established by the United Nations, which the U.S. deems antiquated and irrelevant… By now it’s widely recognized — including a joint statement by Henry Kissinger, Reagan’s Secretary of State George Shultz, the Senate’s leading specialist on armaments Sam Nunn and former Secretary of Defense William Perry — that we should move expeditiously to eliminate nuclear weapons, a process that the signers of the nonproliferation treaty are obligated to undertake. The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entered into force this year. Though not yet implemented because of U.S. interference, nuclear weapons-free zones have been established in much of the world. In brief, there are ways to greatly enhance security. China so far has held back in nuclear weapons development. It would be wise to continue this policy. The U.S. can facilitate it by ending its highly provocative actions and moving towards an arms-control agreement with China. There are feasible means, outlined by arms control specialists.
The Pentagon’s 20-Year Killing Spree Has Always Treated Civilians as Expendable
Reader Supported News – December 20, 2021 – Norman Solomon
https://www.rsn.org/001/the-pentagons-20year-killing-spree-has-always-treated-civilians-as-expendable.html
Evidence of widespread civilian casualties emerged soon after the “war on terror” started two decades ago. Leaks with extensive documentation began to surface more than 10 years ago, thanks to stark revelations from courageous whistleblowers and the independent media outlet WikiLeaks. The retribution for their truth-telling has been fierce and unrelenting. WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange is in a British prison, facing imminent extradition to the United States, where the chances of a fair trial are essentially zero. Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning spent seven years in a military prison. Former U.S. Air Force analyst Daniel Hale, who revealed murderous effects of U.S. drone warfare, is currently serving a 45-month prison sentence. They had the clarity of mind and heart to share vital information with the public, disclosing not just “mistakes” but patterns of war crimes… The killings have resulted from policies that gave very low priority to prevention of civilian deaths.
Hidden Pentagon Records Reveal Patterns of Failure in Deadly Airstrikes
The New York Times – December 18, 2021 – Azmat Khan
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/18/us/airstrikes-pentagon-records-civilian-deaths.html
These cases are drawn from a hidden Pentagon archive of the American air war in the Middle East since 2014. The trove of documents — the military’s own confidential assessments of more than 1,300 reports of civilian casualties, obtained by The New York Times — lays bare how the air war has been marked by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and often imprecise targeting, and the deaths of thousands of civilians, many of them children, a sharp contrast to the American government’s image of war waged by all-seeing drones and precision bombs. The documents show, too, that despite the Pentagon’s highly codified system for examining civilian casualties, pledges of transparency and accountability have given way to opacity and impunity.
The American Drone War Is My Lai on Repeat
Esquire Magazine – December 20, 2021 – Charles P. Pierce
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a38569713/united-states-drones-civilian-casualties/
What is most galling is the continued insistence by administrations of both parties on clinging to the fantasy that all our causes are just, all our anger is justified, all our weapons superior, and all our intentions pure. We make war in places the way that human beings always make war in places: with bloody certainty and for our own purposes, until we decide not to make war in that place anymore… Jesus, it’s 20 years since 9/11 and we still don’t know anything about the places we’ve been making war, or the people who live there and just want to continue to live there.
Why the US Is Paying More for the Military After the Afghanistan War Is Over
Vox- December 22, 2021 – Jonathan Guyer
https://www.vox.com/22840615/us-defense-spending-increase-afghanistan-withdrawal
Congress last week approved what is by some measures the biggest defense spending bill in history, to the tune of $768 billion. It’s bigger than those passed during the Vietnam and Korean War years, and bigger than Ronald Reagan’s military buildup. The only time this bill has been larger, adjusted for inflation, was in 2011, at a moment when the US had a peak in troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. How could it be that even with those wars ending, Congress has authorized about $30 billion more than President Donald Trump’s last budget? … The short answer: The US national security establishment sees China as the most urgent threat of the moment, while the entrenched interests of the arms industry endure. Put another way, although the US is no longer in Afghanistan, taxpayers continue to pay for the American military’s massive global presence. Absent a fundamental rethinking of how the US sees national security and the role the military plays in foreign policy, big cuts are unlikely.
US conservative parents push for book bans – and unintentionally make reading cool again
The Guardian – December 23, 2021 – Luke Winkie
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/dec/23/us-book-bans-conservative-parents-reading
Narratives about race, gender and inequality are being banned around the US – but sales are rising as the frenzy appears to cause the opposite effect… “We’ve always said this organization is about creating a safe space for everyone to talk about who they are, and what their struggles are. Not just in our school community, but in their lives,” says Edha Gupta, a senior at Central York high school and a member of the Panthers Anti-Racist Union. “Any healthy way for people to genuinely express how they’re feeling about these matters. We want a place for students to feel like they have the authority to speak up about what they’re passionate about.”
Altercation: The Sins of the Mainstream Media
The American Prospect – December 23, 2021 – Eric Alterman
https://prospect.org/politics/altercation-sins-of-the-mainstream-media/
The many reasons why the media is failing to reckon with the loss of our democracy… Many reporters across the traditional news media are struggling against institutional tics and timidities that make ‘balance’ a false idol.” The result: “The inadvertent normalization of existential threats to democracy and public health by one party and its right-wing media echo chamber.” Bernstein points the finger at Times mid-level editors. They are often the ones “who are more timid, more ready to water down or reject a story.” But, she notes, “They’re trying to do what they think the top editors want.” This is how an allegedly liberal newspaper ends up whitewashing Republican corruption, cruelty, and purposeful (often, but not always) faux stupidity, because it’s really true that “reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
Report shows the extent of Republican efforts to sabotage democracy
The Guardian – December 21, 2021 – Ed Pilkington
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/23/voter-suppression-election-interference-republicans
A year-end report from pro-democracy groups identifies no fewer than 262 bills introduced in 41 states that hijack the election process. Of those, 32 bills have become law in 17 states…. “We’re seeing an effort to hijack elections in this country, and ultimately, to take power away from the American people. If we don’t want politicians deciding our elections, we all need to start paying attention,” said Joanna Lydgate, CEO of the States United Democracy Center which is one of the three groups behind the report. Protect Democracy and Law Forward also participated. One of the key ways that Trump-inspired state lawmakers have tried to sabotage future elections is by changing the rules to give legislatures control over vote counts… Jess Marsden, Counsel at Protect Democracy, said that the nationwide trend of state legislatures attempting to interfere with the work of nonpartisan election officials was gaining momentum. “It’s leading us down an anti-democratic path toward an election crisis,” she said.
Everything Going Great: Bad Faith, Worse News and Julian Assange
Edward Snowden’s website – December 23, 2021
https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/assange01
It was Jesus who begged forgiveness for his crucifiers by saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” but these excruciating practitioners of bad faith invert the formula: they know exactly what they do, and yet they do it. I wonder if they can even forgive themselves… I agree with my friends (and lawyers) at the ACLU: the US government’s indictment of Assange amounts to the criminalization of investigative journalism. And I agree with myriad friends (and lawyers) throughout the world that at the core of this criminalization is a cruel and unsual paradox: namely, the fact that many of the activities that the US government would rather hush up are perpetrated in foreign countries, whose journalism will now be answerable to the US court system. And the precedent established here will be exploited by all manner of authoritarian leaders across the globe… That chill in the air this Christmas season? If Assange’s prosecution is allowed to continue, it will become a freeze. Bundle up.
The Forgotten Christmas Truce of 1914. Unlearned Lessons which could have Prevented a Century of War (1914 – 2014)
Global Research – December 25, 2021 – Dr. Gary G. Kohls
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-forgotten-christmas-truce-of-1914-unlearned-lessons-which-could-have-prevented-a-century-of-war-1914-2014/5420256
Unknown to the higher echelon commanding officers – who were enjoying good food and drink in their warm bunkers out of the range of the artillery barrages and machine gun bursts – the grunts on either side of the battle line suddenly sensed the stupidity of killing someone that was just like them and who had never done them any harm. Many of the men that experienced the moment knew that something deeply profound had happened: a spiritual experience of mutual respect and love that epitomized their mutual Christian upbringing – and they refused to fight and kill when the war was ordered to re-start. Some soldiers were punished for their disobedience and many of them had to be replaced with fresh troops that had been in the reserve trenches the day before (corporal Adolf Hitler was among the ones who did not experience the front line fraternization.) The Christmas Truce of 1914 had come close to ending the futile and ultimately suicidal war that destroyed 4 empires and an entire generation of young men that had been bamboozled into joining up.
19 Sunday Dec 2021
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America witnessed a coup attempt. Now it’s sleep-walking into another disaster
The Guardian – December 13, 2021 – Rebecca Solnit
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/13/america-witnessed-a-coup-attempt-now-its-sleep-walking-into-another-disaster
Had they succeeded in grabbing power with such an openly lawless act, they could have kept it only by suspending the rule of law. This is what a dictatorship is, and this is what they wanted: a government in which laws are nothing and the ruling junta or thug is everything. What the American people and foreign nations would have done in response might have overturned it further down the road, had it not failed that day, but the whole business is still terrifying, and the threat is not over… The crisis isn’t just that we had a coup attempt almost a year ago, but that the Republican party has itself become so venal, so corrupt, so ruthless in its quest for power, that it seems assured that we will see further attempts to overrule any election outcomes they don’t like… The crisis isn’t just that we had a coup attempt and have a political party that has gone rogue, but that much of the rest of the nation seems to be normalizing or forgetting or sleepwalking through the crisis. The warnings are getting more urgent.
Trump’s Jan. 6 Coup: How It Worked, How Close It Came, and Why It Failed
Common Dreams – December 17, 2021 – Will Bunch
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/12/17/trumps-jan-6-coup-how-it-worked-how-close-it-came-and-why-it-failed
Something happened that arguably altered the course of history. People on the left who’d spent four years actively resisting Trump in the streets shared a surprising new message in those two weeks ahead of the insurrection: Stay home on January 6. This was reinforced by a number of Democratic officials who pushed out the same message to both traditional leftists and Black Lives Matter activists… tThe question is less whether there were plans for a coup on January 6—clearly, there were—but who needs to be held accountable for the greatest assault on U.S. democracy since 1861. Keep in mind something else rather shocking that we learned this week—that even knowing that the violent Capitol Hill insurrection was the work of Trump supporters, and horribly wrong, key Fox News hosts like Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity went on national TV that night continuing to suggest antifa might somehow be to blame. Because once the script for a coup has been written, apparently it’s hard to break character.
Meadows and the Band of Loyalists: How They Fought to Keep Trump in Power
The New York Times – December 15, 2021 – Katie Benner, Catie Edmondson, Luke Broadwater and Alan Feuer
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/us/politics/trump-meadows-republicans-congress-jan-6.html
A half-dozen right-wing members of Congress became key foot soldiers in Trump’s effort to overturn the election, according to dozens of interviews and a review of hundreds of pages of congressional testimony about the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6. The lawmakers — all of them members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus — worked closely with the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, whose central role in Trump’s efforts to overturn a democratic election is coming into focus as the congressional investigation into Jan. 6 gains traction.
What the GOP Does to Its Own Dissenters
Atlantic Magazine – December 7, 2021 – Tim Alberta
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/01/peter-meijer-freshman-republican-impeach/620844/
After January 6, Peter Meijer thought he could help lead the Republican Party away from an abyss. Now he laughs at his own naïveté…. At one point, Meijer described to me the psychological forces at work in his party, the reasons so many Republicans have refused to confront the tragedy of January 6 and the nature of the ongoing threat. Some people are motivated by raw power, he said. Others have acted out of partisan spite, or ignorance, or warped perceptions of truth and lies. But the chief explanation, he said, is fear. People are afraid for their safety. They are afraid for their careers. Above all, they are afraid of fighting a losing battle in an empty foxhole.
When the Myth of Voter Fraud Comes for You
Atlantic Magazine – December 14, 2021 – Vann R. Newkirk II
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/01/voter-fraud-myth-election-lie/620846/
The idea that systemic fraud has subverted the democratic process demands a search for evidence of such fraud. The point of this effort is not merely to support spurious claims that Donald Trump won the 2020 election or to stockpile spurious arguments in advance of 2024. It is to lay a foundation for the resurgence of a specific form of Jim Crow–style disenfranchisement. Jim Crow relied on outright bans at the ballot box and threats of violence to ensure white political power. But eliminating the Black vote during that era was accomplished in subtler ways as well: by undermining community cohesion, by sapping time and energy, by sheer frustration. The modern effort relies on similar tactics. The so-called Big Lie is built on small lies, about the actions and intentions of individuals—the kinds of lies that can destroy lives and families… There is something in this moment reminiscent of the insidious bureaucratic character of Jim Crow. As all-encompassing as we know it to have been, Jim Crow was not imposed by a single stroke. It was built community by community, year by year, ruined life by ruined life, law by law, and lie by lie.
‘We are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe,’ new study says
The Washington Post – December 17, 2021 – Dana Milbank
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/17/how-civil-wars-start-barbara-walter-research/
Barbara F. Walter, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego, serves on a CIA advisory panel called the Political Instability Task Force that monitors countries around the world and predicts which of them are most at risk of deteriorating into violence… Her bottom line: “We are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe.” She lays out the argument in detail in her must-read book, “How Civil Wars Start,” out in January. “No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war,” she writes. But, “if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America — the same way you’d look at events in Ukraine or the Ivory Coast or Venezuela — you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely. And what you would find is that the United States, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory.”
Top Dem senator assails Biden on Cuba policy
Responsible Statecraft – December 8, 2021 – Jim Lobe
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/12/08/top-dem-senator-assails-biden-on-cuba-policy/
In a blistering critique of the Biden administration’s failure to roll back former President Trump’s sanctions against Cuba, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy Monday described the current situation between the two countries as “bewildering, tragic, and exasperating.” “Exasperating,” he declared, “because anyone who understands Cuba could have predicted what has happened since the Trump administration reversed the Obama administration’s policy of engagement and would have taken steps to mitigate it. Instead, the current policy is making the situation worse.”Leahy blasted the administration for not taking action in the 10 months of its existence, noting that Trump’s policy of “trying to bludgeon the Cuban authorities into submission” has failed.
Why Don’t We Call Corporate Handouts “Corruption”?
Jacobin – December 9, 2021 – Andrew Perez
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/12/corporate-corruption-joe-biden-administration-covid-testing-jen-psaki
Corruption robs citizens of equal access to vital services, denying the right to quality health care, public safety, and education,” the Biden administration wrote Monday, adding that corruption “has been shown to significantly curtail the ability of states to respond effectively to public health crises.” These were the key findings of the first-ever “United States Strategy on Countering Corruption,” coordinated by President Joe Biden’s National Security Council. But the strategy paper noticeably avoided mention of a particular form of corruption: corporate capture, where companies and their financial interests completely dominate the policymaking process.
“An Outrage”: House Passes Largest Military Budget in Generations Despite End of Afghanistan War
Democracy Now! – December 9, 2021 – Ami Goodman interviews William Hartung
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/12/9/biden_military_spending_bill_approval
“The last thing we need to do is be throwing more money at the Pentagon,” says William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. “This whole idea that China and Russia are military threats to the United States has primarily been manufactured to jump up the military budget.”… We’ve got deep problems of racial and economic injustice in this country. We’ve got an insurrection and violence trying to undermine our democracy. So the last thing we need to do is be throwing more money at the Pentagon. And it’s a huge amount. It’s more than we spent in Vietnam, the Korean War, the Reagan buildup of the ’80s, all throughout the Cold War. And as you said, even at the time as Biden has pulled out U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the Pentagon budget keeps going up and up.
Current Dispute Over ICBMs Is a Quarrel Over How to Fine-Tune the Doomsday Machinery
Reader Supported News – December 15, 2021 – Norman Solomon
https://www.rsn.org/001/current-dispute-over-icbms-is-a-quarrel-over-how-to-finetune-the-doomsday-machinery.html
Nuclear weapons are at the pinnacle of what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.” If you’d rather not think about them, that’s understandable. But such a coping strategy has limited value. And those who are making vast profits from preparations for global annihilation are further empowered by our avoidance. At the level of national policy, nuclear derangement is so normalized that few give it a second thought. Yet normal does not mean sane. As an epigraph to his brilliant book The Doomsday Machine, Daniel Ellsberg provides a chillingly apt quote from Friedrich Nietzsche: “Madness in individuals is something rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.”… ICBMs are the opposite of a deterrent. In effect, they’re prime targets for a nuclear first strike because of their vulnerability, and for the same reason would have no “deterrent” capacity to retaliate. ICBMs have only one foreseeable function — to be a “sponge” to absorb the start of a nuclear war.
The security provided by nuclear weapons is an illusion—the reality is much more dangerous
Prism – December 17, 2021 – Tamar Sarai Davis
https://prismreports.org/2021/12/17/the-security-provided-by-nuclear-weapons-is-an-illusion-the-reality-is-much-more-dangerous/
Marena Blanchard, a Oakland-based organizer and a campaigner with Roots Action, is working alongside Arianna Nason, a Minnesota-based organizer, in a forthcoming coalition-based campaign calling for the abolition of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs)… “Generally speaking, the military industrial complex is a threat to all life on Earth but one of the deadliest dangers are nuclear weapons,” said Blanchard… “There’s this prevailing militaristic idea that somehow having these weapons of mass extinction makes us safer when it’s actually the inverse that’s true,” said Blanchard. “These weapons make us all at risk. All life on Earth is at risk because these weapons can destroy so much.”
The Nobel Peace Prize That Paved the Way for War
The New York Times – December 15, 2021 – Declan Walsh
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/world/africa/ethiopia-abiy-ahmed-nobel-war.html
The Nobel win stemmed largely from the unlikely peace deal Mr. Abiy struck with Isaias Afwerki, the authoritarian leader of Eritrea, within months of coming to power in 2018. That pact ended two decades of hostility and war between the neighboring rivals, and inspired lofty hopes for a transformed region. Instead, the Nobel emboldened Mr. Abiy and Mr. Isaias to secretly plot a course for war against their mutual foes in Tigray, according to current and former Ethiopian officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals or protect family members inside Ethiopia.
Overturning Roe Will Make Miscarriage Care Worse
The New York Times – December 15, 2021 – Jessica Grose
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/opinion/roe-miscarriage-health.html
Abortion restrictions create a chilling effect on medical professionals who are understandably concerned about being prosecuted for anything resembling elective abortion. And so doctors in countries with restrictive laws “don’t always provide all the relevant information concerning the pregnancy, especially if they see there are complications and they’re afraid women can take drastic measures,” said Irene Donadio, a senior adviser at the International Planned Parenthood Federation.
‘Women are capable of doing this’: the doctor defying local laws to provide safe abortions by sea or mail
The Guardian – December 12, 2021 – Moira Donegan
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/12/rebecca-gomperts-doctor-defying-laws-abortions
Dr Rebecca Gomperts made waves providing abortion in international waters around the world. Now she’s prepared to help American women… Gomperts has made her career providing free or very low-cost abortions to patients in need around the world, regardless of local law. In 2018, she founded Aid Access, a site that allows women in the US to get abortions with the help of 10 US-based providers… Pills – mifepristone and misoprostol – are Gomperts’ real life’s work. The boat, the websites, the drones – all these are mere vessels for the true message that safe abortion is possible with medication, even in countries where it is illegal. Women need not ingest poison, or insert long, sharp objects through their cervix. They can just take some pills… She has the confidence of a bone-deep conviction: Women deserve to choose.
The Only Way to Resolve the Abortion Controversy
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s substack website – December 14, 2021
https://kareem.substack.com/p/the-only-way-to-resolve-the-abortion
Public support for abortion rights in the United States has never been higher. A Gallup poll in May showed a startling 80% of Americans in favor of abortion being legal in all or most cases. Several other recent polls confirm near record high support for pro-choice… It’s about power, careers, and money—not abortion. For those pandering for votes and donations, abortion is merely a popular platform to get everyone’s attention in order to promote other “products”: their political ambitions, their religious agenda, their business interests. They are like slick hucksters taking advantage of the rowdy crowd at a lynching to sell miniature gallows for the home mantel… The only good that might come out of this political and social assault on women is that they and all those who support them will rise up and show just how powerful they can be. This could prove to be the largest political movement in the history of the country and could force politicians and the rest of the country to finally recognize their value. Remember what Alice Walker (The Color Purple) said, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
AmazonSmile donated more than $40,000 to anti-vaccine groups in 2020
The Guardian – December 15, 2021 – Melody Schreiber
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/15/amazonsmile-donations-anti-vaccine-groups
The charity program of the e-commerce giant donates 0.5% from purchases to designated nonprofits – including at least a dozen organizations working against widespread vaccination in the US… “That’s really shocking,” said Peter Hotez, dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. “That’s incredible that Amazon is supporting those groups.”… The donations legitimize anti-vaccine groups, Hotez said. “Beyond the money, it has a lot of power because a powerful organization like Amazon is essentially endorsing them.”
‘Green burials’ can change our relationship with death — and help the Earth
The Washington Post – December 17, 2021 – Mallory McDuff
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/green-burials-can-change-our-relationship-with-death–and-help-the-earth/2021/12/16/85137994-5de5-11ec-bda6-25c1f558dd09_story.html
At its simplest, natural or green burial is the interment of an unembalmed body in a biodegradable container without a burial vault (a concrete receptacle that encloses the casket and keeps the ground at the cemetery level for mowing)… I saw that green burial isn’t only about protecting places, it’s also about connecting people to the mystery of death in a grounded way. This volunteer stint felt like a dress rehearsal for the end to me, in much the same way that holding a friend’s newborn was practice for having my own. The most intimate decision we make for the end of our lives connects to everything we want to protect — for now and ever more.
Acts of Rebel Sanity
Portside – The Progressive – December 18, 2021 – Frances Moore Lappé
https://www.portside.org/2021-12-18/acts-rebel-sanity
Fifty years ago, we believed that scarcity was the biggest threat. But, in fact, there is no scarcity. People go hungry not because of a lack of food, but a lack of power. Hunger is not inevitable; it is a choice we inflict on others… With the past half-century’s experience, it’s become harder to deny that suffering arises not from nature’s deficit but humanity’s failure—our failure so far to establish just rules and norms to reverse the tightening concentration of wealth and the decline of democracies around the world… We have not overrun the Earth with people. We’ve wrecked the very ecology on which all life depends. Tightly held political and economic power threatens all. But engaged citizens—stirred by crises ranging from climate change to racial justice to labor rights to reproductive choice—are beginning to come together, naming and tackling the deepest root, that of our democracy deficit… With the courage to ensure all voices are heard, we each can contribute to saving life on our small planet. What could be more glorious?
Can a new approach to funding scientific research unlock innovation?
Vox – December 18, 2021 – Kelsey Piper
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2021/12/18/22838746/biomedicine-science-grants-arc-institute
How we fund research is stifling creativity. Here’s one potential fix… Nearly all academic researchers in the sciences rely on outside grants in order to pay salaries, buy their equipment, and run their experiments. Those grants end up powerfully shaping the academic sciences… scientists argue that the constant fighting for funding undermines good work by encouraging researchers to overpromise and engage in questionable practices, overincentivizing publication in top journals, disincentivizing replications of existing work, and stifling creativity and intellectual risk-taking.
Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier’ Is Facing Threat of Imminent Collapse, Scientists Warn
Reader Supported News – December 15, 2021 – David Knowles
https://www.rsn.org/001/antarcticas-doomsday-glacier-is-facing-threat-of-imminent-collapse-scientists-warn.html
The chain reaction following the collapse of the eastern section of the glacier could threaten coastal residents around the world, many of whom may be unprepared for a sudden spike in sea level, which has risen slowly due to climate change since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Since 1880, rising global temperatures have resulted in 8 to 9 inches of sea level rise, though the rate of rise has seen a sharp uptick in recent decades. By 2100, NASA predicts, climate change will cause seas to rise by 2 to 6 feet, largely because of the melting of ice in Antarctica and Greenland.
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President Biden hosts a virtual "Summit For Democracy" for 110 countries amid rising authoritarianism in the world. Activists in Atlanta are worried about rising authoritarianism in this county and that Democrats don’t see the urgency in stopping Trump’s ongoing coup to undermine the election process to overturn the next election. In Atlanta, Black Voters Matter, … Continue reading
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Tropical forests can regenerate in just 20 years without human interference
The Guardian – December 9, 2021 – Sofia Quaglia
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/09/tropical-forests-can-regenerate-in-just-20-years-without-human-interference
An international group of researchers has found that tropical forests have the potential to almost fully regrow if they are left untouched by humans for about 20 years. This is due to a multidimensional mechanism whereby old forest flora and fauna help a new generation of forest grow – a natural process known as “secondary succession”. These new findings, published in Science, could play an important role in climate-breakdown mitigation and provide actionable advice on how to act next. They also suggest that it is not too late to undo the damage that humanity has done through catastrophic climate change over the last few decades.
A Warming World Could Add More Fuel to Tornadoes, Scientists Say
The Washington Post – December 11, 2021 – Michael Birnbaum, Brady Dennis and Jason Samenow
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/12/11/tornadoes-climate-change/
“Observed and projected future increases in certain types of extreme weather, such as heavy rainfall and extreme heat, can be directly linked to a warmer world,” the authors wrote. “Other types of extreme weather, such as tornadoes, hail, and thunderstorms, are also exhibiting changes that may be related to climate change, but scientific understanding is not yet detailed enough to confidently project the direction and magnitude of future change.”… What is unequivocal, Gensini said, is that the steady warming of the planet is making a broad array of extreme weather disasters more likely and more intense. “When you look at these things in the aggregate, it becomes pretty clear that changes are happening,” he said. “There are definitely shifts in the probability of these things happening.” … As humans have continued to pump planet-warming gases into the atmosphere, weather-related disasters are growing more extreme and affecting every region of the world.
Justice at the Heart of Climate Activism
Yes! Magazine – November 15, 2021 – Breanna Draxler
https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/a-new-social-justice/2021/11/15/justice-at-the-heart-of-climate-activism
Kiana Kazemi, the head of community operations at Intersectional Environmentalist, a nonprofit founded in 2020, defines modern environmentalism succinctly: “Understanding the interconnectedness of people and the planet.” Looking at environmentalism through this lens, it’s no wonder that today’s movements take an active role in defining and fighting for environmental justice, rather than solely serving as preservers of natural splendor. This intersectional environmentalism considers advancing housing access, racial justice, and gender equity to be as essential to the movement as protecting clean water and air. In the past five years alone, new climate activism organizations like the Sunrise Movement, Zero Hour, Extinction Rebellion, and Fridays for Future, many of them founded and led by youth, have brought environmental justice into the mainstream.
Richest 1% Took 38% of New Global Wealth Since 1995. The Bottom Half Got Just 2%
Common Dreams – December 7, 2021 – Jake Johnson
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/12/07/richest-1-took-38-new-global-wealth-1995-bottom-half-got-just-2
In the nearly three decades since 1995, members of the global 1% have captured 38% of all new wealth while the poorest half of humanity has benefited from just 2%, a finding that spotlights the stark and worsening gulf between the very rich and everyone else. That’s according to the latest iteration of the World Inequality Report, an exhaustive summary of worldwide income and wealth data that shows inequities in wealth and income are “about as great today as they were at the peak of Western imperialism in the early 20th century.”
Oil companies’ profits soared to $174bn this year as US gas prices rose
The Guardian – December 6, 2021 – Oliver Milman
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/dec/06/oil-companies-profits-exxon-chevron-shell-exclusive
“Americans looking for someone to blame for the pain they experience at the pump need look no further than the wealthy oil and gas company executives who choose to line their own pockets rather than lower gas prices with the billions of dollars in profit big oil rakes in month after month,” said Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US.
Biden Orders Federal Vehicles and Buildings to Use Renewable Energy by 2050
The New York Times – December 8, 2021 – Lisa Friedman
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/08/climate/biden-government-carbon-neutral.html
Some environmental groups, however, said they did not believe the executive orders go far enough. Bill Snape, a senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the goal of making the federal government carbon neutral by 2050 “is like a teenager promising to clean their room in 30 years.”… “Biden can’t use this one executive order to cover up the fact that Build Back Better, our best chance at meaningful climate legislation in his administration, has not passed,” Deirdre Shelly, campaign director of the Sunrise Movement, a climate change advocacy group, said. She called on Mr. Biden to “stand up against the fossil fuel industry.”
Inflation Concerns Should Not Impede Enactment of Build Back Better
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities – December 8, 2021 – Chad Stone
https://www.cbpp.org/research/economy/inflation-concerns-should-not-impede-enactment-of-build-back-better
The major ratings agencies Moody’s and Fitch both agree that BBB and the recently enacted infrastructure legislation would not add to inflationary pressures. Also, many leading economists have concluded that BBB would not make the Fed’s task of controlling inflation more difficult and should not stand in the way of enacting the needed investments in BBB, which would expand the economy’s capacity to produce goods and services in the longer term, strengthen economic growth, and ease future inflationary pressures.
The Mantra of White Supremacy
Atlantic Magazine – November 30, 2021 – Ibram X. Kendi
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/white-supremacy-mantra-anti-racism/620832/
How many Americans know that the claim that anti-racism is harmful to white people is one of the basic mantras of white-supremacist ideology? Americans are familiar with white-supremacist movements like the Klan, skinheads, neo-Nazis, and the Proud Boys. But they don’t seem to recognize white-supremacist ideology—the most venomous form of racist ideology. I suspect that many Americans don’t know how much white-supremacist ideology shapes their political thought and America’s political discourse, and allows juries to exonerate racism and convict anti-racism… History reproduces itself. But when people don’t know history—or are barred from learning it—how can they ever recognize its reproduction?
A Black couple had a white friend show their home. The appraisal rose by nearly $500,000.
The San Franscisco Chronicle – December 5, 2021 – Lauren Hepler
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Black-Marin-City-couple-sues-appraiser-for-16672840.php
Researchers at the Brookings Institution have found that owner-occupied homes in majority-Black U.S. neighborhoods are undervalued by an average $48,000 per home, representing some $156 billion in cumulative losses — a dynamic that has prompted calls for policy reform to automate more of the home valuation process and otherwise minimize bias.
We do it to Ourselves: 30 Gun Homicides in England in 2020 (167 US Equiv.), vs. 13,620 in US
Informed Comment – December 6, 2021 – Juan Cole
https://www.juancole.com/2021/12/ourselves-homicides-england.html
The US policy of constantly endangering our children is enacted by a bought-and-paid-for Congress on behalf of 10 major gun manufacturers with an $8 billion industry. Most Americans don’t have or want a gun, and 50% of all guns in the US are owned by 3% of Americans, i.e. some 6 million people out of 330 million. That three percent would be just fine if they were subjected to better security checks and a ban on assault weapons.
West Virginia Sen. Manchin Takes the Teeth Out of Democrats’ Plan for Seniors’ Dental Care
Kaiser Family Foundation – December 10, 2021 – Phil Galewitz
https://khn.org/news/article/medicare-dental-care-west-virginia-senator-joe-manchin/
Medicare doesn’t cover most dental care, but consumer advocates had hoped that would change this year after Democrats took control of the White House and Congress. President Joe Biden and progressives, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, sought to add the benefit to a major domestic spending package, the Build Back Better Act, that Democrats are seeking to pass. But those chances are looking slim because at least one Democratic senator — Joe Manchin of, yes, West Virginia — opposes adding dental and other benefits for Medicare beneficiaries. He says it will cost the federal government too much.
Republicans Hope Their Assault on Democracy Will Stop a Post-Roe Backlash
Atlantic Magazine – December 2, 2021 – Adam Serwer
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/supreme-court-roe-abortion-democracy/620882/
Conservatives on the Supreme Court have engineered a system that allows half the country’s population to be stripped of a fundamental constitutional right… If the Republican-appointed justices—only one of whom was appointed by a president who originally won the popular vote—sound somewhat cavalier about stripping half the country’s population of a fundamental constitutional right, well, they have good reason to be confident. They have engineered a system that allows “the people,” whose will they invoke with venomous cynicism, little power to respond.
Ending Roe v. Wade Is Part of a Long Campaign to Roll Back Democracy Itself
The Guardian – December 3, 2021 – Jill Filipovic
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/03/roe-v-wade-abortion-roll-back-democracy
American democracy is at the breaking point, and a supreme court ready to gut or overturn Roe v Wade is the latest warning sign. A radical minority is accumulating ever more power, and they’re threatening to undermine equal rights under the law, basic human freedoms, and democracy itself… It’s terrifying. And of course forcing women into subservience and traditional roles is part of this process – that’s been the strategy in authoritarian nations throughout history, and it’s a pattern we’re seeing play out now, as the same nations that are scaling back democratic norms and processes are also going after women’s rights. That American women are facing a hostile supreme court and are looking at a future without abortion rights – and potentially without the constitutional right to contraception – isn’t a matter of law or “life”. It’s a sign of a democracy in decline.
Overturning Roe v. Wade Isn’t Just About Abortion
Yes! Magazine – December 3, 2021 – Michele Gilman
https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2021/12/03/supreme-court-abortion-dobbs-decision
Reproductive health isn’t just about abortions, despite all the attention the procedures get. It’s also about access to family planning services, contraception, sex education and much else—all of which have also been under threat in recent years… If Roe v. Wade is overturned by the Supreme Court, poor women would be affected the most. Women who are denied abortions are more likely to end up in poverty, be unemployed, and turn to public assistance. By contrast, economists have established that the legalization of abortion led to improved educational, employment, and earnings outcomes for women, as well as for their children.
What It’s Like to Live In a Country With Restricted Abortion Rights
Common Dreams – Decembwr 8, 2021 – Katarzyna Wezyk
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/12/08/what-its-live-country-restricted-abortion-rights
As the US teeters on the brink of outlawing abortion, an expert from Poland explains the practical and emotional consequences of such a ban… In short: it’s lonely, humiliating, dangerous to life and health, and it undermines the rule of law. And it’s expensive.
Supreme Court signals further erosion of separation of church and state in schools
NPR – December 8, 2021 – Nina Totenberg
https://www.npr.org/2021/12/08/1062498821/supreme-court-signals-further-erosion-of-separation-of-church-and-state-in-schoo
The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority seemed poised Wednesday to hand school-choice advocates a major victory, and potentially a large expansion of state programs required to fund religious education. The handwriting on the wall came during a nearly two-hour argument involving a challenge brought by two Maine families to the state’s unusual way of providing public education. Maine is a state so rural that a majority of its school districts do not have a high school. The way the state has dealt with that problem is to contract with existing high schools to accept students from districts with no high school and, in addition, to pay the same amount to nonsectarian private schools to pick up the slack. What the state will not do is pay the same tuition for students attending religious schools.
The Ghosts of Mississippi
The New York Times – December 5, 2021 – Charles M. Blow
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/opinion/abortion-mississippi-constitutional-rights.html
In the late 1800s, opponents of progress had exercised a methodical, decades-long campaign to subjugate and oppress Black people. The same has been done to women by the opponents of abortion. It all underscores an indelible American truth: No civil rights are inviolable and permanent. Every right you win, you must defend. Rights, unfortunately, can be withdrawn. Whether Roe v. Wade falls or is significantly diminished, it will raise the question: Which rights are next? Presumably, many others could be vulnerable.
Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun
Atlantic Magazine – December 6, 2021 – Barton Gellman
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/01/january-6-insurrection-trump-coup-2024-election/620843/
January 6 was practice. Donald Trump’s GOP is much better positioned to subvert the next election… If the plot succeeds, the ballots cast by American voters will not decide the presidency in 2024. Thousands of votes will be thrown away, or millions, to produce the required effect. The winner will be declared the loser. The loser will be certified president-elect. The prospect of this democratic collapse is not remote. People with the motive to make it happen are manufacturing the means. Given the opportunity, they will act. They are acting already.
American Satyricon
Popular Resistance – December 6, 2021 – Chris Hedges
https://popularresistance.org/chris-hedges-american-satyricon/
The Epstein case is important because, however much is being covered up, it is a window into the scourge of male violence that explodes in decayed cultures, fueled by widening income disparities, the collapse of the social contract and the grotesque entitlement that comes with celebrity, political power, and wealth. When a ruling elite perverts all institutions, including the courts, into instruments that serve the exclusive interests of the entitled, when it willfully neglects and abandons larger and larger segments of the population, girls and women always suffer disproportionally. The struggle for equal pay, equal distribution of wealth and resources, access to welfare, legal aid that offers adequate protection under the law, social services, job training, healthcare, and education services, have been so degraded they barely exist for the poor, especially poor girls and women… A licentious, money-drenched, morally bankrupt and intellectually vacuous ruling class, accountable to no one and free to plunder and prey on the weak like human vultures, rise to power in societies in terminal decline. This class of parasites was savagely parodied in the first-century satirical novel “Satyricon” by Gaius Petronius, written during the reign of Nero. Epstein and his cohorts for years engaged in sexual perversions of Petronian proportions…
Bit by Bit, the Noose Is Tightening Around the Nuclear Weapons Industry
The Intercept – December 5, 2021 – Jon Schwarz
https://theintercept.com/2021/12/05/nuclear-weapons-public-pressure-pax/
Nuclear war is still a threat to humanity. It’s true that it’s generally vanished from popular culture and our imagination since the end of the Cold War 30 years ago. What almost no one knows, however, is that many serious observers believe that the actual danger of nuclear conflict is now greater than at any point in history… For years, the Dutch organization PAX has been issuing reports detailing the Armageddon that’s hiding in plain sight. The business of nuclear weapons — and it is in fact a business — does not for the most part take place in secret underground lairs. It is all around us, conducted by corporations and banks that might otherwise make cellphones or cornflakes or autonomous vacuum cleaners.
Understanding and Resisting the New Cold War
Portside – Mass Peace Action – December 11, 2021 – E. Martin Schotz, MD
https://www.portside.org/2021-12-11/understanding-and-resisting-new-cold-war
The first thing to understand is that the Cold War is psychological war waged by the US and its allies. It is carried out on a worldwide basis and especially in the United States against the public. These operations are aimed at conditioning people to accept war preparations and war operations. They involve the joint efforts of what Ray McGovern (a co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity) has called the MICIMATT Complex — the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academic-Think Tank Complex. The Cold War aims to rationalize and justify the US government’s vast war budget, its sprawling system of more than 700 foreign military bases, and a variety of military, diplomatic, and economic operations against other nations… At the heart of the Cold War is a quest for world domination under the guise of “American exceptionalism.”
Capitalism vs. Liberty
The American Prospectg – December 1, 2021 – Robert Kuttner
https://prospect.org/politics/capitalism-vs-liberty/
All that we liberals cherish—socially, economically, and politically—is being undermined by toxic capitalism. What might lie beyond it, and how might we get there?… Hyper-capitalism [is] impervious to the usual strategies of reform, turning humans and social institutions into expendable commodities, destroying the ability of people to thrive. Saving democracy, the planet, and decent lives for regular people requires moving beyond capitalism. To be an effective liberal today, you need to be a socialist… In individualistic America, the citizenry supposedly mistrusts government. But once socialistic programs are enacted, they are immensely popular. Chattanooga has the country’s cheapest and fastest broadband provided by the local public power company—pure socialism. Ask the citizens if they want to return to slower, more costly, and less reliable private broadband. Our most popular programs are the most socialistic—Social Security and Medicare. Revealed preference again… ONE BASIC STRATEGY, I think, is to keep creating islands of social ownership and to limit capitalist ones. Our colleague Ganesh Sitaraman calls these “public options.” Ideas like postal banking and other forms of public banking, such as establishing individual accounts directly at the Federal Reserve or a green development bank, can do that. Likewise public power and public broadband. Or the original public option of socialized health care. Or direct public development and distribution of patent-free drugs. Social institutions like these demonstrate the superior equity and efficiency of socially owned alternatives; they also weaken competing private ones and thus the political power of capital. As Chattanooga suggests, this can be done at the municipal level, as well as by states and the national government.
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IPCC Warns That Capitalism Is Unsustainable
Popular Resistance – November 5, 2021 – Juan Bordera
https://popularresistance.org/ipcc-warns-that-capitalism-is-unsustainable/
A leaked draft of the third part of the upcoming IPCC report establishes that we must move away from the current capitalist model to avoid exceeding planetary limits. It also confirms that, as stated in the article published by CTXT on August 7, “Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions must peak in at most four years”. The document also acknowledges that there is little chance of further economic growth. The signatories of this article, scientists and journalists, have analysed a new part of the Sixth Report, leaked by the scientists’ collective Scientist Rebellion and Extinction Rebellion Spain. The leak clearly shows the vast discrepancies between the scientific community’s understanding of what is needed to achieve an effective and just transition, and the reality of how little has been achieved. Fortunately, among the usual more timid positions, demands that would have been unthinkable not so long ago are beginning to emerge.
Nurdles: the worst toxic waste you’ve probably never heard of
The Guardian – November 29, 2021 – Karen McVeigh
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/29/nurdles-plastic-pellets-environmental-ocean-spills-toxic-waste-not-classified-hazardous
Nurdles, the colloquial term for “pre-production plastic pellets”, are the little-known building block for all our plastic products. The tiny beads can be made of polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride and other plastics. Released into the environment from plastic plants or when shipped around the world as raw material to factories, they will sink or float, depending on the density of the pellets and if they are in freshwater or saltwater. They are often mistaken for food by seabirds, fish and other wildlife. In the environment, they fragment into nanoparticles whose hazards are more complex. They are the second-largest source of micropollutants in the ocean, by weight, after tyre dust. An astounding 230,000 tonnes of nurdles end up in oceans every year… yet they are still not classified as hazardous.
US Is World’s Biggest Producer of Plastic Waste, Report Finds
EcoWatch – December 3, 2021 – Cristen Hemingway Jaynes
https://www.ecowatch.com/plastic-waste-production-us-2655916700.html
The United States is the world’s leader in the generation of plastic waste, nearly all from fossil fuels, and must develop a plan to curb its destructive impacts on the health of oceans and marine wildlife, concludes a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The first recommendation of the committee of academic experts who wrote the report is that the U.S. stop producing so much plastic, especially non-reusable materials or plastics that are not “practically recyclable,” Inside Climate News reported. The report also proposed a national cap on the production of virgin plastics.
Electric cars aren’t enough to hit climate targets: we need to develop better public transport too
Informed Comment – November 28, 2021 – Vera O’Riordan
https://www.juancole.com/2021/11/electric-climate-transport.html
Recent research from the US has shown that the electrification of cars alone will not be enough for the transport sector to reach ambitious global climate action targets aiming to prevent more than 2?°C of global warming…. The key to reducing passenger transport emissions is enabling access to and use of electric cars only where there are no other reasonable travel options. If we do this, we have a chance to end car dependency while still helping as many people as possible to travel.
The futuristic plan to fix America’s power grid
Vox – December 2, 2021 – Neel Dhanesha
https://www.vox.com/recode/22812748/storm-hurricane-heatwave-climate-infrastructure-smart-grid-ai
Sometimes called the largest machine in the world, the American power grid is a sprawling behemoth of interconnected systems, strung together over thousands of miles, that mishmashes technologies old and new… A smart grid that allows electricity to flow in both directions (in other words, not just from the power company to the consumer but from the consumer to the power company as well) would open the door for the widespread adoption of microgrids. These self-sufficient systems generate their own power, whether from renewables such as solar panels or from fossil fuel-powered generators, and can separate themselves from the larger grid to operate on their own during a blackout — think of hospitals with backup generators that kick in during storms, for example. In the current setup, there’s no way for buildings that can generate their own power to share it with others. A smart grid would allow for that kind of electricity sharing.
Europe Revisits Nuclear Power as Climate Deadlines Loom
The New York Times – November 29, 2021 – Liz Alderman and Stanley Reed
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/29/business/nuclear-power-europe-climate.html
Germany is at the head of a group of nations that want to defuse efforts to include more nuclear power in Europe’s green energy mix. They are worried about a proliferation of nuclear plants on European soil, and the radioactive waste they produce… The nuclear industry’s main selling point is a technology involving scaled-down plants, or small modular reactors, that supporters say are safe, cheap and efficient. The argument is that wind and solar power alone won’t be enough to help countries meet the goals outlined at the United Nations climate summit this month in Glasgow.
Wildfires Are Erasing Western Forests. Climate Change Is Making It Permanent.
Grist – November 29, 2021 – Nathanael Johnson
https://grist.org/climate/climate-change-forest-loss/
The driving force here is that the rising global temperature is wiping out seedlings. In many spots around the U.S. West, summer temperatures are already high enough to cook young trees before they can develop thick protective bark. Others have become so dry that seedlings shrivel before their roots can grow deep enough to reach groundwater. Both circumstances can thwart forest regeneration. Mature trees can survive in these areas long after they stop reproducing. But when fires wipe out these forests and seedings can’t get a foothold, they are replaced with grasses and dense brush. Climate change has already shifted biomes. Intense fires simply clear away the last vestiges of the old regime… “It’s already happening, it’s not just something we are modeling in the future,” Davis said. “We are definitely at a point where we are all noticing significant impacts of climate change in terms of lack of forest regeneration across the West.”… If you want to keep these forests, keep fossil fuels in the ground.
The Omicron variant reveals the true global danger of ‘vaccine apartheid’
The Guardian – November 28, 2021 – Larry Elliott
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/28/the-omicron-variant-reveals-the-true-global-danger-of-vaccine-apartheid
While the first duty of any government is to ensure the safety of its own people, there are times when this can only be done by acting collectively and this is one of them. Some problems are global in nature… There is still time to do the right thing. Rich nations need to ensure vaccine targets in poor countries are hit. They need to meet their financial pledges. They need to stop stockpiling vaccines they will never use. They need to reverse aid cuts. They need to waive patent protection. They need to stop being so short-sighted.
The WHO is seeking a new treaty on handling future pandemics. It could be a hard sell
NPR – November 28, 2021 – Jason Beaubien
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/11/28/1059025751/who-seeks-a-new-treaty-on-handling-future-pandemics-it-could-be-a-hard-sell
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, says the world has not worked well together to confront the current COVID-19 pandemic. “Everybody has seen to what extent we were really disorganized and all have seen the failures of the global system,” Tedros says. COVID-19 pandemic shows “we don’t have rules of the game” Those failures during the current pandemic have been many, says Tedros… The idea behind this upcoming session of the World Health Assembly, Tedros says, is to start sketching out a new world order to handle future health crises.
To end this pandemic, we must put human lives over pharma profits
American Friends Service Committee – December 2, 2021 – Pauline Muchina
https://www.afsc.org/blogs/news-and-commentary/to-end-pandemic-we-must-put-human-lives-over-pharma-profits
We know that vaccinating as many people as possible is critical to end the COVID-19 pandemic. The emergence of the omicron variant shows the danger of world leaders’ inaction on vaccines for all. For all our safety, we need to allow more companies globally to manufacture vaccine doses.
What Will US’s Future Look Like if Abortion Becomes a Crime Again?
The Guardian – November 29, 2021 – Jessica Glenza
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/29/us-abortion-supreme-court-roe-v-wade
Miriam Krinsky, the executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution, a group that educates newly elected local prosecutors, said her group’s brief filed to the supreme court regarding the Mississippi case “reflects a growing recognition that overturning 50 years of precedent and potentially criminalizing personal healthcare decisions could have incredibly dire consequences”. The brief was co-signed by nearly 100 prosecutors, police and high-ranking former Department of Justice officials… The nation’s preeminent association for defense attorneys has also published a report ahead of the oral arguments that lays out a future in which the US could undertake “rampant criminalization” and “mass incarceration on an unprecedented scale” in the name of the unborn.
If the Supreme Court Throws Out ‘Roe v. Wade,’ It Will Tear the Country Apart
The Washington Post – November 29, 2021 – Eugene Robinson
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/11/29/abortion-supreme-court-roe-v-wade-unity/
Roe was like a bolt from the blue, and with it the nation took a giant stride toward treating women as full and equal citizens under the law. The decision’s impact continues to this day — but perhaps not for many days longer. There are those who claim that Roe is divisive, that the ruling set the stage for years of bitter conflict by recognizing a constitutional right to abortion that cannot be unduly infringed by the states. But I believe that analysis is wrong. What’s truly divisive is abortion itself — an issue on which, for many Americans, there simply is no middle ground… If Roe is reversed — if the court rules, as its most conservative justices have argued, that no protected right to reproductive choice exists — then the political cold war over abortion will flare immediately into a roaring blaze… Roe will never please everyone, but it has served the country well. I fear this Supreme Court is foolish enough to throw it away.
My abortion story shows why the Supreme Court must save Roe v. Wade
The Washington Post – December 1, 2021 – Billie Jean King
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/01/billie-jean-king-mississippi-abortion-supreme-court/
My life’s work has been about equality for all. Nothing did more to advance women’s economic status than the right to abortion that came with Roe. According to a recent amicus brief signed by more than 150 leading economists, “for young women who experienced an unintended pregnancy, access to abortion increased the probability they finished college by nearly 20 percentage points.” And they were nearly 40 percent more likely to enter a professional occupation, the economists noted… The central premise of Roe, which Mississippi seeks to overturn, is about women’s right to make fundamental decisions about their lives, futures and families. If we lose the ability to control our bodies and our futures, so many of the gains women have made will be undone. At stake are not only indignities and inequities but the rights to self-determination and equal opportunity that would fall along with Roe.
Making Health Care “Accessible and Affordable” Isn’t the Same as Making It Universal and Free
Jacobin – December 1, 2021 – Luke Savage
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/12/democrats-health-care-universal-single-payer-profit-reform
For over a decade at least, centrist Democrats have engaged in an effective if cynical balancing act vis-à-vis their messaging on health care reform — trying, and often succeeding, to placate an electoral base strongly in favor of a universal, single-payer option and a donor class overwhelmingly opposed to all but the most tepid and toothless policy changes… The structural problem with the United States’ health care system, however, is precisely its reliance on a market-driven model — i.e., one premised on the irreconcilable contradiction between public need and private profit. There is, quite simply, no actual way to make health care a right without removing the logic of commodities from the equation altogether: a route that by definition precludes talk of better “affordability” or “access.”… The only real path toward making health care a right runs through direct confrontation with the corporate health care industry and its profit-driven model — a confrontation that’s certain not to happen as long as words like “accessible” and “affordable” remain watchwords.
Lina Khan’s Battle to Rein in Big Tech
The New Yorker – November 29, 2021 – Sheelah Kolhatkar
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/06/lina-khans-battle-to-rein-in-big-tech
An antitrust lawyer who studied the monopolistic power of Amazon and other large companies, Khan is now head of the F.T.C…. As monopolies and other large companies gain increasing control of our daily lives, Khan is Joe Biden’s pick to do something about it… “It’s incredible, once you start studying industry structure and see how much consolidation there has been across industries—in airlines, contact-lens solution, funeral caskets,” she said. “Every nook and cranny of our economy has consolidated. I was discovering this new world.”
The NRA could be winning its long game even as it appears to be in dire straits
The Conversation – November 24, 2021 – Robert Spitzer
https://theconversation.com/the-nra-could-be-winning-its-long-game-even-as-it-appears-to-be-in-dire-straits-172030
On the one hand, more states are allowing Americans to carry weapons in public without permits, and the gun-rights movement could be on the verge of a major Supreme Court victory. On the other, the National Rifle Association, which advocates on behalf of gun owners, faces an existential crisis that’s mostly due to the NRA’s own missteps. As a political scientist who has studied gun politics and policy for over 30 years, I’m confident that there is no precedent for this contradictory situation. Moreover, there’s no reason to believe that the NRA’s problems will influence how the courts treat gun-rights cases… Most Americans, especially Democrats, continue to support stricter gun laws, and yet people in the U.S. are buying guns, mostly handguns, at a record pace.
200+ Groups to Democrats in Congress: No Holiday Recess Until You Pass Voting Rights
Common Dreams – December 2, 2021 – Jake Johnson
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/12/02/200-groups-democrats-congress-no-holiday-recess-until-you-pass-voting-rights
As state-level Republicans intensify their attacks on the franchise with extreme gerrymandering and other tactics nationwide, more than 200 advocacy groups on Thursday urged Democratic congressional leaders to postpone an upcoming holiday recess in order to pass key voting rights legislation… “The foundation of our democracy is on the line,” Wade Henderson, interim president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said in a statement. “We cannot continue to operate as though communities will jump through unnecessary hurdles to exercise our right to vote and once again save our country.”
Some European Prisons Are Based On Dignity Instead Of Dehumanization
The Brennan Center – Novembr 29, 2021 – Ram Subramanian
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-some-european-prisons-are-based-dignity-instead-dehumanization
Our delegation was surprised not only by the physical aspects of the place — open, well-lit, and bright, with lots of green spaces — but also the high degree to which the conditions of confinement were organized around the normalization principle, which recognizes the inherent harms of incarceration and requires that life in prison approximate the positive aspects of life in the community. Under this principle, punishment is restricted to the separation from society mandated by the custodial sentence itself. Conditions of confinement should themselves be neither punitive nor onerous. Instead, the aim of the incarceration experience is to enable smooth reintegration of people upon release and to lead a life of social responsibility… Can Northern Europe’s “human dignity” approach to corrections guide America down a pathway to help undo the degrading, disempowering, alienating, and brutalizing nature of confinement?
Saudi Warplanes Carpet-Bomb Yemen With US Help. This Must End
The Guardian – December 3, 2021 – Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/03/saudi-warplanes-carpet-bomb-yemen-with-us-help-this-must-end
The US must end all support for the Saudi war effort in Yemen. It is fueling the largest humanitarian crisis in the world… We also must dramatically increase our diplomatic engagement to press Saudi Arabia, the Riyadh-based Republic of Yemen government, and the Houthis to accept the UN’s roadmap as the basis for a compromise that ends foreign military intervention and allow Yemenis to come to an agreement. The war has gone on too long, and it’s time we begin to take bold steps on the path to peace.
Urgent UN Action needed on Yemen Atrocities to end “Pandemic of Impunity”
Informed Comment – December 4, 2021 – Juan Cole
https://www.juancole.com/2021/12/atrocities-pandemic-impunity.html
“The suffering already inflicted on civilians in Yemen demands this step to address impunity in the ongoing conflict and send a clear warning to perpetrators on all sides that they will be held accountable for war crimes and other serious violations of internationalhumanitarian and human rights law,” the groups said in a joint statement addressed to the General Assembly’s 193 member countries.
This legendary 92-year-old biologist has some advice for saving Earth
Vox – December 2, 2021 – Benji Jones
https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/2021/12/2/22810857/eo-wilson-ants-half-earth-conservation
A rough estimate suggests that there are upward of 10 million species on the planet, and we know only a small fraction of them. [Estimates for the number of species on Earth vary, but a widely cited figure is 8.7 million, which comes from this paper.] In most cases, we just have a few specimens in museums. It would be enormously productive and useful if we made more of an effort to identify all of the species on Earth — to find out where they are and what their status is. The opportunities are endless. They represent the equivalent of the first explorations made by people when they came out of Europe and began to explore the rest of the world. That’s what we have before us… We need to not carelessly let any species slip away from us. If we want to know what is on this planet and why it is a live planet — what contributes to that life and what it all means, ultimately, for human existence — we should try to save it all.
Humility
Steady – November 30, 2021 – Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner
https://steady.substack.com/p/humility
The longer I have lived on this planet, the more I have witnessed and learned, the more I recognize that facing our world, and certainly our place in the cosmos, with humility is the only path to recognizing a key truth to our existence. … Humility should not only be considered in terms of our inabilities. Countless times in my life I have been humbled by human ingenuity, kindness, selflessness, knowledge, and community. Especially in difficult, frightening, and alienating times, we must keep these assurances in mind… We can find solace in recognizing that there is only so much we can control and predict. There is only so much that we can know and fix. But if our mind is open to accepting the winds of change that power nature, we can recognize that change is a force for creation as well as destruction. We can find ways to regroup and rebuild, together, with humility.