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Collapse of Industrial Civilization

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Rise of the Deplorables

15 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by darbikrash in Capitalism, Consumerism, Corporate State, Peak Oil

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

Capitalism, Corporatocracy, Inverted Totalitarianism, Neoliberal Capitalism

Well the preprogrammed spectacle that has been the US Presidential election has finally concluded. The enormity of the result is staggering to behold, how exactly a buffoon with a third grade vocabulary can elevate himself to presumably the most powerful position in world politics boggles the mind.

Much political hand wringing awaits, as the punditry tries to make sense of their gross miscalculations, the nonstop media blitz, and the tacit realization that somehow, despite the protestations from the elitist high priests, a professional grifter has taken the top seat.


Accompanied by a rise of the correctly termed deplorables, a bolus of miscreants and malformed post-adolescent actors constituting a wave of lumpenproleteriat, swept the orange haired overlord into the center ring to claim his rightful throne. His superficial gaze ponders the land that he now lords over, a cornucopia of expansive panorama befitting a real estate baron. It is the jackpot, the mother lode, the penultimate land grab, a polity based version of accumulation by dispossession.

The alternative candidate was only marginally better.

So how does this happen? What possible explanation can be given for this outcome?

It turns out that the calculus of this is well understood, a narrative that goes back 150 years to elemental concepts of dialectic materialism and class consciousness. Viewed through the prism of class consciousness, the spectacle of Donald Trump and HRC makes perfect sense, for they are not opposites, not even opponents, they in fact occupy the same class structure. One is the unbridled face of capitalist excess, harkening back to the robber baron age of which he is a direct descendant, the other a sycophant of corporate dictate, a reliable war horse schooled in the art of fealty to the monied set. Both of the same class, he by inherited birthright and subsequent day job, she by studiously apprenticing to the political elites through a subservient career demonstrating pliability to corporate power.

Both textbook examples of the edict that money can be converted directly to social power.

But this is only part of the story, politicians are elected not by largesse and class membership, but by those that elevate them.

Irony in the extreme

It is fashionable for the left to publish scathing screeds denouncing the right wing deplorables, elitist rants that implore the gods to strike down those unworthy primates in their feeble mud huts. Why, they proclaim, we have turned the controls of the spaceship over to pooh flinging Neanderthals ransacking their disheveled Planet-of the Apes dioramas.

What is missing is a Margret Mead style field investigation to visit the deplorable on his home turf, to see him or her in situ, in their natural habitat. To do so is to witness a class decimated by opiate abuse, a cohort reduced to observer status in a consumerist driven economy-unable to participate at anything other than a token level as compared to their elitist contemporaries. A group asphyxiated by a toxic cocktail of service level jobs on the lower end of scale, counter balanced by a vastly underappreciated skilled labor component on the high end. It is this high skill level that is most misunderstood, much has been written about demeaning service jobs, the real story is not in this sector, the real story is in the upper level blue and grey collar worker. It is this group that has animated the Trump campaign

This cohort is typically not college educated, and often not exclusively white male. What it is though is productive skilled labor. On the purely blue collar side, they range from aircraft assemblers, machinists and other skilled craftsmen, to the iterant IT class, programmers, coders and mid-level technology workers.

What this group has in common is exploitation, alienation, and loss of the workmanship ideal. This coupled with an inchoate rage fanned by the fires of AM talk radio, Fox News, alt-right blogs and websites foments a misappropriated ethos of revenge, as an alienated cohort is forced to witness elites- decidedly unproductive workers- achieve high levels of undeserved success- at their expense.

These elites are living in the best houses, driving the nicest cars and fully reaping the bounty of a consumer class resplendent with trinkets and bobbles- and these people don’t know shit and they don’t do shit.

There is no greater insult in a capitalist economy than to see the spoils of plunder go to those who do nothing. And since time immemorial, this is the very essence of capitalist class exploitation, those that do the least get the most. Those of privilege subsume those without.

Deep State My Ass

Although an old story, we have at the same time amnesia and a new twist. We have lost the intellectual narrative of Das Capital, we have endured decades of abusive labor struggles, corrupted unions, and flat out wars with robber barons- and the left has lost. Labor has lost, collectivism has lost- and lost badly.

The New Deal set in motion a negotiated end to wildcat strikes and unruly pockets of labor unrest, in exchange for a social safety net and the newly formed principle of collective bargaining.

Labor disputes were to be centralized, and negotiated en masse to avoid any annoying (and costly) disruption to the capitalist class. Once so centralized, labor management was easy to co-opt, and in a few short decades was rendered impotent.

The intensity of these techniques remained vigorous during the 50’s, 60’s and early ‘70’s coinciding with the more or less chronic post war labor shortage while capital rebuilt and rolled out a highly networked system of value production. Tight labor markets confounded efforts to tamp down labor concessions- and the middle class prospered.

The laws of motion of Capital were not lost on the elites, as they moved to a neo—liberal agenda in the mid ‘70’s, specifically designed to offshore labor to low cost markets, and thwart a growing regulatory environment stateside.

This proved wildly successful (for Capital) by resetting the bar for socially necessary labor time to a new low, by using far eastern labor to dramatically undercut stateside salaries, effectively using soft power to bust labor unions. And, as any student of Marx knows, the cost of labor to Capital is driven by the cost of labor to reproduce itself, the availability of cheap foreign produced goods is consumed disproportionally by lower income workers, further enhancing the effects of globalization to benefit Capital.

These factors comprise the fundamentals of a superstructure that allows the accumulation of capital to purchase social power, and now the recipe is complete- hegemonic control over the political economy in Capital’s pursuit of unfettered value production.

This is an uncomfortable narrative for bourgeoisie economists and the punditry, they prefer to offer a new, pro-capitalist explanation for what we can observe, and they call this the Deep State. This supposedly is a secretive cabal of mysterious power brokers who operate behind the scenes to influence politics, the markets, foreign policy, and just about anything else that needs explaining.

There of course is no such thing, it’s just Capital operating with business as usual.

Early warning signs

I suppose you could trace the first spasms of the deplorables to Ned Ludd pitching his sewing machine out the third story window of 18th century England textile factory- as labor’s reaction to Capital’s scheming to suppress labor costs goes back centuries.

The first contemporary example, at least in the context of the Trump travesty, of the deplorables lashing out, is the appearance of Japanese cars in the parking lots of General Motors and Ford Motor Company, as (some) workers purchased imported cars that were better than what they were manufacturing at lower prices. The reaction from mainstream labor was swift and violent, cars were smashed by incensed co-workers as it was immediately recognized that jobs would be lost and collective labor bargaining defanged.

And of course Capital doubled down, immediately offshoring everything they could, first to the Japanese, then to the Chinese and other peripheral countries when Japanese labor rose to near US levels.

The current rise of the deplorable embodied by Trump’s supporters then is but a reconstitution of a very old sentiment, the lashing out of a cohort of the working class as they come to terms with a diffuse reality permeated with alienation, diminishing social power, and flat or declining wages. Their white collar managers are demonstrably incompetent, products of an overpriced university system turning out graduates with low level skill sets, high debt, and poor prospects for job opportunities.

To be sure, this group attracts truly unsavory subsets and species, these hangers on are not exploited worker class participants, the KKK and various and sundry white supremist groups do find common ground in the nationalist tendencies that are embedded in these movements, and one cannot discount the seriousness of these influences. But for the most part these nationalistic tendencies are reactionary, part of the inchoate response of alienation, and not deliberately predatory as is characteristic of hate groups

Media complicity

Much has been made recently of the role of the media in reporting, inaccurate polling data, the apparent rise of HRC, and the tendency to discount and even outwardly mock Trump’s rise. There are several areas to blame here, but inaccurate polling and disproportionate reporting of emails scandals are not really relevant.

One cannot forget that all the broadcast media accessible to mainstream voters are owned by Capitalist entities. They primarily make money through the sale of advertising, and nothing sells like conflict and controversy.


The instigating event to media complicity was the demise of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. This FCC policy insured that controversial subjects received fair and impartial converge by news media, and a full spectrum of competing viewpoints were to be presented by the broadcast media. The operating theory is that the airwaves were part of the publicly owned commons, and that the privatization of these airwaves could and would lead to capture of what would amount to a corporate owned propaganda tool.

Indeed, within a year of the act’s elimination, Rush Limbaugh’s show hit the AM talk radio circuit, sowing the seeds of a vast communication portal to the disenfranchised lumpen. (Limbaugh reportedly has a $70mm annual salary)

Ten years later we had the beginnings of Fox News, and the official genesis of corporate media capture for the express purpose of policy promotion and influencing elections.

The effect of these efforts was profound- the growing and increasingly vocal discontent of alienated labor was subjected to a propaganda intervention, the media tools were designed to focus this building angst to anti-government/pro-capitalist belief systems. Much of this onslaught revolves around conspiracy theories, and these media portals rely on the technique of fabricating preposterous stories, wrapped in the all knowing glow of insider only knowledge, to reassure the recipient that they are truly privileged thinkers, as they can see what only the wise can see.

All that was missing was the appearance of a strong man- preferably with television media bonafides- to step up and receive the mantle of authenticity from a fawning media hungry for click throughs and profits.

It is important to note the promotion of Stephen Brannon as a senior advisor in the Trump cabinet, this move insures that the alt-right media is directly plugged into the highest level of White House proceedings. The significance of this is that Brannon has now become a de facto Minister of Information for the Trump administration, specifically chosen to disseminate spin to the alt-right media, keeping his proto-Fascist base properly satiated.

The Trump Dominion

So what might the Trump “brand” bring to American governance? We can again view this through the lens of capitalist valorization, as without question Trump’s hyper-capitalist underpinnings will animate his presidency.

First, at the personal level we know that hyper-capitalists in powerful political positions become de facto kleptocrats, using their position to personally enrich themselves, their immediate families, and associated cronies. Look for foreign policy relationships with other kleptocrats such as Putin and Mexican president Enrique Nieto. His business entities are inseparable from his political responsibilities, so we can and should expect an explosion of cross pollinated corruption as he intermingles his empire holdings with American political gravitas.

We should expect these “leadership” qualities to normalize the prioritization of capitalist objectives over any other considerations, and this ethos will quickly trickle down through the entire business ecosystem.

Make no mistake, this election result is an unmitigated disaster for the environment, for social and financial equality, and for the planet. There may well be no recovery from this, as the take away is unbridled, runaway capitalist value production, ironically, that will have the largest negative impact on the deplorable base constituency which elected him in the first place.

To help visualize the form that his rule will likely take, we might look to Mainland China for an example of what happens when State Capitalism intersects authoritarian rule. China may be called a Communist country, but it is very clearly a State Capitalist political economy under authoritarian rule. The State is used to clear the way for capitalist expansion at all costs, no regulations for any initiative that creates value production, the deconstruction of labor into quasi-prison conditions, and plenty of accumulation by dispossession in the form of displacing rice farmers into labor camps dedicated to capitalist production.

Trump’s stated focus on trade policies contain contradictions, but we might postulate that at least some of these policies might mirror Chinese action which attempt to bias trade agreements to allow for one sided tariff systems as well as technology transfers.

A further characteristic of China’s trade policy was massive investment in internal infrastructure, a policy Trump is almost certain to pursue.

We might also expect attempts to repatriate US corporations offshore profits, stockpiled over the last 10 years as a result of quasi-legal tax dodges, as well as significant reduction in corporate tax rates.

Many of his campaign promises contain intrinsic contradictions, or outright measures not favorable to value production. This is almost always due to ignorance of the laws of motion of Capitalism, and will quickly prove untenable.

An example would be his infamous anti-immigration wall. Apparently unbeknownst to Trump, Capital requires a permanent underclass to process seasonal labor, such as migrant farm work. Other low margin industries also require an undocumented underclass that can be further exploited outside of the mainstream minimum wage and benefits systems- such as car washes, restaurants, domestic help and gardeners for the upper class.

None of these industries can support payroll at the prevailing fair market wage. You’d have $10 tomatoes and $100 car washes, which of course just won’t do. This was tried under the Reagan administration when ICE was first formed, workplace raids were soon discontinued at the bequest of Capital as soon as they proved effective. Expect the same results with Trump’s wall, which will be stillborn.

This pattern will continue with most of his campaign promises, expect tangible change only in areas where Capital is the clear winner, such as infrastructure spending which will benefit Trump’s construction cronies. The same fate awaits the vaunted unraveling of Obama care, this will be watered down and ultimately look very similar to what is currently in place.

When will the deplorables first acknowledge that they have been duped?

Revolutions and the decline of the left

This situation is directly attributable to the failure of the left. What passes for the left in this country is not really leftist, but rather progressive. This political energy has been misdirected to insidious social issues, such as whether or not plastic bags should be provided in supermarkets, Big Gulp soft drink bans, and an inordinate amount of attention to LBGT issues. I’m not suggesting these issues are without merit, just not at the current energy spend that is being allocated.

These tactics result in inflaming the value systems of the deplorables, they lash out (rightly so) at the prospect of behavioral overreach of the progressive movement, this coupled with their sanctimonious highbrow attitude delegitimizes progressive causes, and expensive political capital is expended on third tier issues.

This energy is misdirected and disproportionate, the left should stand for anti-Capitalist causes, first and foremost. The left should be demonstrating frequently and loudly with well-defined objectives and messaging, so as to become a thorn in the side of value production, and at the same time, persistently contradicting the alt-right media propaganda that tries to evangelize the Capitalist mode of production.

The center of mass of the right’s “deplorables” is largely alienated labor and this should be recognized and reinforced with consistency.

This cohort shares much in common with Bernie Sander’s coalition for example, but the media shapes the perceptions to create an adversarial identity politics. In the main, the groups share the same sensibilities, but are compartmentalized by fabricated ideologies that bear little resemblance to reality.

Certainly they do not reflect a fundamental understanding of the laws of motion of Capital value production- from either side.

Work still needs to be done by the left to comprehend new forms of value production that are rapidly materializing. Examples would be the emergence of cognitive capital, which is the production of use value without labor participation, and reputational capital, which is the occurrence of supra profits without commiserate labor value through the use of branding and vanity labeling of commodities.

Capital is rolling out new forms of exploitation faster than the left can process these changes into a coherent theory of value.

The right invests in this type of intellectual post processing through the use of corporate funded think tanks, but of course, this is not available to leftist interests for obvious reasons, so other methods must be employed, such as university level study into post Capitalist possibilities.


Next steps

Much of the misdirection of the current election is due to the inability to recognize fundamental symptoms of alienated labor. The Democrats missed it, and so did the mainstream Republicans.

Alienated labor is unquestionably the domain of anti-Capitalist ideology, this is the only group that not only recognizes the depth of the problem, but has a narrative that explains how it occurs and what to do about it.

Any suggested corrective action at the political level is going to be cold comfort to those who recognize the complete collapse of the environment that is occurring around us. We must keep in mind that it took Capital 400 years to get to this point, and it will not be erased overnight excepting some planet scale calamity- which we cannot of course rule out.

But political level initiatives can prove effective in the meantime.

If the focus is kept on discouraging value production and dismantling socially necessary labor time, inroads can be made against the Capitalist mode of production.

Some tactics to achieve this are to shift focus to the point of realization, which is to attack Capital from the retail front. Some of these measures start out as Pollyannaish, such as don’t shop at chain stores, use credit unions not banks, do not use credit cards, look to buy commodity goods from businesses organized as collectives whenever possible.

But quickly we can see some areas that offer the potential for concrete change, if you feel you can start a business do so, but do so as a collective, e.g. structure the business to return profits in an equitable distribution to employees. This collapses the class structure and eliminates exploitation in a shift away from the principle of socially necessary labor time.

A compilation of such businesses at the community scale can then extend favorable conditions to supply chain partners that are also collectives, and non-favorable terms to traditional corporate models, whenever possible.

To promote these types of entities beyond a given community, state wide tax incentives can be used to encourage the creation and operation of collectives. One strategy might be to allow these businesses to operate tax free, while traditional corporate structures have to pay full freight.

Initiatives that support privatization in any form should be vigorously opposed- and protested. Examples would be the obvious attempts to privatize social security, national parks, etc., but awareness and activism should also extend to resisting privatization of intellectual property as well, such as attempts to extend the duration of protection on utility patents, new efforts to privatize internet IP, and drug compound monopolization- to name but a few.

This is a grass roots style build out, when successful at the state or regional level, this can expand to the national level, where with sufficient political strength, more substantial measures can be deployed to discourage traditional corporate value production. Examples might be limiting businesses to less than 500 employees maximum, by applying draconian tax structures when these employment numbers are exceeded.

Longer term, energy production should be nationalized, as well as the financial system.

Taken as an integrated system, these measures redirect, however slowly, towards a more equitable system that ultimately can be based on needs production, instead of the bottomless pit of value production.

Or we can just wait until the next election.

 

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Living in Bizzaro World

22 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Empire, Environmental Degradation, Peak Oil

≈ 171 Comments

Tags

Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Amazon Deforestation, American Empire, Blowback, Capitalism, Climate Change, Climate Change Denial, Climate Sensitivity of Earth, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporatocracy, Desertification, Duped! Delusion Denial and the End of the American Dream, Extremist Ideologies, Global Coal Consumption, Infectious Diseases in a Warming World, Inverted Totalitarianism, ISIS, Military Industrial Complex, Myth of the 2ºC Climate Goal, Nafeez Ahmed, Peak Antibiotics, Planetary Tipping Points, Professor Jerry Kroth, Psychological Displacement, Resource Wars, São Paulo Water Crisis, Snuff Films

bizarro

“Bizzaro Code: Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!”

For the past few days I’ve been nursing a bacterial infection on the dorsal aspect of my left hand with topical cream and oral antibiotics, and my hand appears to be healing quickly. I’m relatively healthy and this is the first time I’ve ever had this sort of thing happen to me. Left untreated, such an infection could fester for months, perhaps developing into an abscess and becoming life threatening. In a world of post-antibiotics, a tiny break in your skin could spell death for you. Despite a recent discovery of a new class of antibiotics, we’re still headed for a post-antibiotic age and unless we reform our system of profit-incentivized healthcare, infectious diseases will have plenty of poverty-stricken hosts within which to flourish and spread throughout the world. The wealthy are not hermetically sealed off from such human disease vectors. Anthropogenic climate disruption is already increasing the expansion of such pathogens and as with everything else connected to this grand climate experiment we’re conducting on ourselves, preparing for the consequences is an afterthought:

“We have to admit we’re not winning the war against emerging diseases,” Brooks says. “We’re not anticipating them. We’re not paying attention to their basic biology, where they might come from and the potential for new pathogens to be introduced.” – Link

Leading UK climate scientist Kevin Anderson has a new lecture out in which he explains how the world can have a 50% chance of staying below a 2ºC world (40% emissions cuts by 2018 from the wealthy, 70% by 2024, and over 90% by 2030.) The global wealthy are those defined as earning $30,000 a year. I posted Kevin Anderson’s video on a thread at Peakoil.com , and vox_mundi replied:

I’ve been following Kevin Anderson since his presentation at the 4 Degrees and Beyond International Climate Conference in 2009 at Oxford.

His points are inarguable – and that was before the positive feedback which we are beginning to see. His analysis is covered in the paper, Beyond Dangerous, and other participants assessments are here.

Whether or not Sao Paulo survives this year is immaterial because climate change is not going to be kind to their part of the planet in the coming decades. Unfortunately, this applies to just about everywhere else.

Vox_mundi is the one helping to keep all of us updated on the water crisis in São Paulo with his postings. The evidence tells me we have breached the tipping point for the desertification of Brazil. One thing to always keep in mind about the 2ºC climate goal is that it’s an arbitrary and politically convenient number set by business-as-usual bureaucrats:

…Why was the limit set at 2ºC?
It was pretty much arbitrary, but characterized by policy and political folks as the amount of warming that the scientific community had established would “prevent dangerous” climate impacts. Danger, of course, being a relative concept. Former NASA scientist James Hansen and other researchers have concluded that 2°C of human-made warming would trigger natural feedbacks that could end up doubling that amount of warming. Setting the limit was widely seen, however, as one of the few positive outcomes from the 2009 U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen…
– Link

By all evidence(both scientific and individual observation), climate sensitivity of the Earth is much higher than most know and even a 1ºC rise is too much. The idea that staying at or just below a 2ºC warming can save us from catastrophe is a myth. For those who don’t know, climate sensitivity is:

…defined as how much the average global surface temperature will increase if there is a doubling of greenhouse gases (expressed as carbon dioxide equivalents) in the air, once the planet has had a chance to settle into a new equilibrium after the increase occurs. In other words, it’s a direct measure of how the Earth’s climate will respond to that doubling.

We currently have a CO2e of 484ppm, nearly double that of the pre-industrial levels. As we approach the doubling level of 560ppm, then we can expect an average global increase in temperature of somewhere between “1.5 to 4.5ºC”, according to the latest mainstream research. The argument can therefore be made that we have already triggered the collapse of industrial civilization just by considering only the one global tipping point of climate change out of a total of nine planetary boundaries currently being monitored, four of which we have already crossed.

With the following headlines recurring every year, who are we fooling that these emissions will be reined in within our lifetimes:

Snap 2015-02-22 at 15.19.15 Snap 2015-02-22 at 15.20.04

To deal with the uncomfortable realities of manmade climate change, the Right practice denial of manmade climate change, while the Left employ the psychological process of displacement. Thus, no real solutions will ever come to fruition due to a great degree by these self-defeating mental traps. It’s also easy to forget or overlook these harsh truths when, as Democracy Later tweeted, “It is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcotized by technological diversions.” 

Capitalist industrial civilization has created a real bizarro world for itself from all the geopolitical blowback of resource wars and dark politricks, the entrenched vested interests of the military industrial complex and fossil-fuel conglomerates, the financial chicanery of the wealthy elite, and all the hi-tech gadgetry and weapons in the hands of every virulent extremist. ISIS now appears to even have their own TV show interviewing prisoners in cages before they make another snuff film. The world just seems to be getting more screw-balled by the hour. What the fuck is this?:

Screen Shot 2015-02-22 at 12.59.31 PM

Nafeez Ahmed has an excellent article on the failed state of Yemen and its slow collapse into a post-oil, post-water Mad Max land. Their primary crop is now qat, a mild narcotic plant whose cultivation sucks up even more of their dwindling water aquifers. As someone on Reddit said:

I know its sexier to focus on the collapse of rich states, such as America and various nations in Europe and Asia, but it will most likely be Yemen and other nations that provide a prediction of a future to come. Largely the modern nation or multicultural state will start to break down, beset by escalating crises in disaster, capital, and factional management until civil war breaks out. From that death spiral, who knows how far it will go…

In addition to a perfect storm of ecological and social problems that include overpopulation, resource depletion and climate change, there is also the baggage of imperialist U.S. foreign policies –arming and aiding corrupt and brutal kings/dictators, funding and arming radical extremists like Osama bin Laden’s jihadists in Afghanistan during the 1980’s, etc. in an effort to control global oil supplies and trade routes. In Bizzaro world, don’t expect any leaders of American Empire to touch those root causes with a 10,000 mile remote-controlled drone.

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Spectating at the End of the World

02 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Empire, Environmental Degradation, Military Industrial Complex, Peak Oil, Pollution

≈ 205 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Abrupt Climate Change, Antarctic Ice Melt, Anthropogenic Climate Disruption (ACD), Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate State, Corporatocracy, Davi Kopenawa, Eco-Apocalypse, Extinction of Man, Green Washing, Guy McPherson, Inverted Totalitarianism, Military Industrial Complex, Mr. Natural, Neoliberal Capitalism, Robert Crumb, Security and Surveillance State, Social Psychology and Theories of Consumer Culture: A Political Economy

hourglass2

Front Row Seat to the Eco-Apocalypse

“I fear their euphoria of merchandise will have no end and they will entangle themselves to the point of chaos. They do not seem concerned that they are making us all perish with the epidemic of fumes that escape from all these things…” ~ Davi Kopenawa, Yanomami leader and shaman

Another year has turned over on Earth, home to an exothermic, bipedal omnivore known as capitalist carbon man whose expanding numbers and army of fossil-fueled machinery spans the globe. There’s nothing subtle or restrained about his reign of terror. He pokes and prods the climate change beast while taking for granted the stability of the Holocene, a peculiar aberration in the paleoclimate record. Plotted on a graph, the history of Earth’s climate resembles the jagged teeth of a demonic monster, a volatile creature whose abrupt and catastrophic shifts have wiped landscapes clean of most life. The consequences of burning the equivalent of an olympic sized swimming pool of oil (300,000 liters) per second, year after year, into the atmosphere will ultimately prove lethal to the planet’s habitability. Recently, scientists were surprised to discover a “Delaware-sized methane cloud” hovering over the U.S. southwest, the remnant of “years of intentionally released and errantly leaked natural gas during fossil fuel drilling operations.” No less problematic to the Earth’s homeostasis are the many other destructive habits of capitalist carbon man such as moving ten times more dirt than all natural processes, fixing more nitrogen than all terrestrial bacteria, and producing more sulfate than all ocean phytoplankton.

The exponential melting of Earth’s cryospheric regions is a foreboding harbinger of devastating sea level rise, altering oceanic and jet stream circulation, changing hydrologic cycles, and wholesale disruption of the entire planet’s biospheric system. A brief retrospective of our unfolding environmental meltdown by a major news source concludes that “2014 will likely go down as the year that melting polar ice caps graduated from being a geographic abstraction to a symbol of the irreversible ways we’ve warped the planet.” News reports continue to grow more ominous with recent warnings that the oceans are on the verge of belching their decades of stored heat from human industrial activity. CIVILIZATION is in the process of going ‘poof’ as its leaders play monkey politics and the masses are drowned in a sea of consumerist images. As Dr. McPherson recently pointed out, gallows humor is the 6th stage of grief for coping with a civilization that is blind to its own demise.

c19704e35d1108c4ac877d02c3160943

“Going Green” is a Marketing Slogan and Inverted Totalitarianism is the Most Successful Form of Tyranny

The unsettling truth is that the slogan “going green” has become a marketing ploy to greenwash capitalism and keep business-as-usual going. The speeches of corporate and political leaders are sprinkled with conscious-soothing key words such as “sustainable”, “eco-friendly”, and “2°C climate goal”, but there’s nothing sustainable about globalized techno-capitalism and the target of limiting warming to 2°C is a cruel illusion. So-called “green energy” is severely limited by suitable geography and intermittency of power production. The behemoth Google learned from its own extensive research that “today’s renewable energy technologies won’t save us.” The top business firms appear to be having a problem squaring their green rhetoric with reality, and there seems to be no way to make automobiles truly sustainable. Germany, the poster child for a green economy, is now “burning more coal than at any point since 1990.“:

“We already are on the edge of what is possible,” Mr. Löllgen said in an interview at his Düsseldorf office. “Is it worth it if we as a country succeed in reaching our targets in reducing carbon emissions, but sacrifice good jobs and our industrial base?”

Another misleading headline I get tired of reading states that humans may be headed for a 6th mass extinction. Let’s clarify this statement once and for all by admitting emphatically that we are well in the throes of a mass extinction which will likely include ourselves within this century. By all rational evidence, industrial civilization with its billions of inhabitants cannot survive without fossil fuels. The only way capitalist carbon man will ever be sustainable is as fertilizer beneath the crumbled concrete and asphalt ruins of industrial civilization. Don’t expect any mea culpa from a culture which has been programmed to believe converting all of nature into inanimate symbols of wealth is “progress” and “development”. Not even the dire warnings of esteemed scientists and religious leaders can break the spell cast by capitalism and its definition of progress. Our institutions have become intransigent, petrified monoliths to which all will be sacrificed.

“I think the notions of free will and self-determination have the appearance of reality during a civilization’s gestation and expansion phases, when there is more opportunity and social mobility. As things calcify, instruments becoming institutions that serve their own ends, the facade is harder to maintain. Human existence has always been contingent and constrained by circumstances. These ‘free’ notions are illusions, narrow windows of perception with a limited range of influence during times of transient prosperity.” ~ BP

The term inverted totalitarianism, coined a decade ago by philosopher Sheldon Wolin, describes America’s brand of despotism in which “every natural resource and every living being is commodified and exploited to collapse as the citizenry is lulled and manipulated into surrendering their liberties and their participation in government through excess consumerism and sensationalism.” Opposition to this dominant consumer culture is systematically co-opted and suppressed by the marginalization and alienation of alternative thought. Neoliberal capitalism governs not only states and economies, but extends right down to an individual’s behavior and way of living:

One of the goals of neoliberalism is to foster a population of individuals who will play an active role in their own self-governance by interacting with the market and consumption through calculated acts and investments… sets of rules and conditions are established between institutions, economic and social practices, and patterns of behavior. They generally function outside of conscious awareness and they habitually influence social behavior. Examples of dominant consumer culture discourse include the political linking of consumer sovereignty and choice with freedom, the linking of citizenship and national pride with consumption, the work and spend treadmill that many people choose to pursue, the commercialization of childhood and adolescence, and the celebration of consumer values through the mass media and advertising.
– Social Psychology and Theories of Consumer Culture: A Political Economy

Who better to label people as “unpatriotic” if they acknowledge the reality of climate change than the host of TV’s quintessential symbol of capitalism, The Wheel of Fortune? Beneath this digital web of commercials and TV infotainment is the iron fist of militarized local police and the panopticon surveillance state which can quickly stomp out those troublesome malcontents who break free of the American hologram. What better way is there for controlling entire populations than to condition them to enjoy their chains of slavery? America’s form of tyranny, a blend of covert and overt oppression, is the most successful in the history of mankind.

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None of This Can Really Be Happening, Can It?

With all the disjointed and delusional thinking out there, I feel compelled to write a blog post periodically to get the facts straight and assure myself that what I see and hear every day is really happening. Yes, we really are terraforming the Earth into a barren wasteland while convincing ourselves that it’s worth it for the sake of a cubicle job and life in cookie-cutter suburbia. Yes, we really are ruled by the Washington-Wall Street-Pentagon complex. No, you will never get the raw truth from mainstream news outlets. Yes, I’m getting older and need to exercise more because a sedentary lifestyle is as bad as smoking. Yes, industrial civilization is still on track to collapse within my lifetime. As Robert Crumb’s mystic guru Mr. Natural exclaimed, “The whole universe is completely insane!”

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Death by Dollar$ and Suicide by CO2

08 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Pollution

≈ 179 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Bliss Point of Sugar, Capitalism, Carrying Capacity, Climate Change, Climate Change Denial, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate $tate, Corporatocracy, Dalai Lama, Death by Dollars, Dr. Suzanne de la Monte, Eco-Apocalypse, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Geoengineering, Hydropower, Inverted Totalitarianism, IPCC, Kurt Vonnegut, Mass Die Off, Nate Hagens, Overpopulation, Paul Chefurka, Processed Food, Senator James Inhofe, Senator Mitch McConnell, Suicide by CO2, The Unsustainability of Mega-Cities, Tragedy of Privatizing the Commons, WWF's Living Planet Report

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Unresponsive and Corrupt Governments

Another election cycle passes and the American people responded with the lowest voter turnout since WWII. The staged events of today’s political rallies will soon be composed solely of people paid off with corporate bribes to wave flags and chant slogans. As ever more corporate money floods into the faux democratic process, participation by the average citizenry has plummeted. Americans are now more disillusioned with the charade of “American democracy” than at any time in history:

Confidence in Congress as an institution is at 7%, the lowest measurement in history and lower than any other institution tested, including organized labor, banks and big business. Views of the honesty and ethics of members of Congress are at 8% on average, one percentage point above lobbyists, but one point below car salesmen… – link

We are also undoubtedly becoming more callous and insensitive to our fellow-man when a 90-year-old gentleman is arrested for feeding the homeless from a church kitchen. In fact, we’ve lost all our humanity and exchanged it for the almighty dollar. Neoliberal capitalism has permeated very aspect of social and civic life, creating a new epitaph for the demise of such a mean-spirited culture —‘death by dollars’.

You Are What You Eat

I just became aware of Dr. Suzanne de la Monte’s studies on the food industry’s use of sugar in all its products in order to fabricate a consumer “bliss point” for maximizing sales. Capitalist industrial civilization has bred a morbidly obese creature conditioned to overeat processed food spiked with sugar, fat, and salt. A high-fructose diet has undoubtedly turned the cognitive skills of many into mush. John Oliver recently used a clip from her work in his takedown of the sugar industry:

“De la Monte has done her research by feeding healthy rats the equivalent of a North American diet, complete with all the sugars and fat. All her rats ended up demented.” – from the documentary The Secrets of Sugar

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The Dopamine Rush of Fossil Fuels

With the recent elections the lunatics have taken control of the asylum. Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe, recipient of 2012 Rubber Dodo Award, is in line to chair the Senate’s top environmental job, and incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says his first priority will be to “do whatever I can to get the EPA reined in.” At least a dozen newly-elected climate science deniers will be there to help Mitch compete with China and India in a race to global mass extinction.

The IPCC stated back in 2007 that emissions would have to peak in 2015 to avoid a rise of 2°C, but since that is not going to happen, they are putting their hopes in technology that could pull CO2 out of the atmosphere while conceding that such techniques are “uncertain” and “limited”. Mankind’s grave is already deep enough, yet we keep digging. Just as China’s coal consumption has registered a drop for the first time this century, India has announced it will pick up the slack by planning to double its coal production to meet the country’s soaring energy demand. Poland has rejected the IPCC target of zero emissions by 2100. In the U.S., new data has revealed that climate change has become the most politically divisive issue in the U.S.

According to energy expert Nate Hagens, modern-day carbon man’s metabolic energy consumption makes each of us a 30-ton primate. It appears the Pavlovian conditioning of modern man to energy dense fossil fuels and capitalist wealth have irrevocably hacked and rewired his brain’s reward system. The autopsy results for the age of the Anthropocene will read: “fossil fuel overdose” and “suicide by CO2”.

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Hydropower is Not Green

Even overlooking the GHG emissions from a dam’s construction and maintenance, hydropower is seen by some as a “renewable energy source”, yet it is apparently a much larger source of methane emissions than once thought, perhaps releasing nearly as much as the methane emissions that accompany the burning of fossil fuels:

…In 2012 study, researchers in Singapore found that greenhouse gas emissions from hydropower reservoirs globally are likely greater than previously estimated, warning that “rapid hydropower development and increasing carbon emissions from hydroelectric reservoirs to the atmosphere should not be downplayed.”

Those researchers suggest all large reservoirs globally could emit up to 104 teragrams of methane annually. By comparison, NASA estimates that global methane emissions associated with burning fossil fuels totals between 80 and 120 teragrams annually…

Nonetheless, industrial civilization is currently damming up every large river on the planet:

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The Unraveling Web of Life

The WWF(World Wildlife Fund) released its biennial ‘Living Planet Report’ which some on Twitter are calling the ‘Dead Planet Report’. The silence of mass extinction draws ever nearer…

The report writers, based on data kept by the Zoological Society of London, studied 10,380 populations of 3,038 species of amphibians, birds, fish, mammals and reptiles from 1970 to 2010. Over these four decades, the average decline of these vertebrate species was 52 per cent – all in less than two human generations.

Amongst freshwater species the population decline was a staggering 76 per cent, owing to habitat loss, land fragmentation, pollution and invasive species.

In the same period terrestrial species declined by 39 per cent through unsustainable land use and increased poaching, often spurred on by wildlife crime syndicates.

Marine species declined also by 39 per cent, to include large migratory seabirds, many shark species and also sea turtles.

A major contributory factor to marine loss of life was through by catching (accidentally catching, in certain fish net sizes, species which were of no market value and then casting these dead fish overboard), illegal fishing and overfishing of the same fishing grounds.

Currently we need a 50 per cent bigger Earth to allow the regeneration of the natural resources we consume…

…By 2050, we will have an extra 2.4 billion people in our world, with urban populations increasing from 3.6 billion in 2011 to 6.3 billion. In 1970, there were only two megacities (over 10 million people) – New York and Tokyo; in 2014 there are 28 such cities – 16 in Asia, three each in Europe and Africa, four in Latin America and two in North America, all totalling 12 per cent of the world’s urban population.

The United Nations (UN) predicts that in 2025, there will be 37 megacities with eight new ones in Asia. Also in the pipeline are meta-cities – conurbations of over 20 million people – through the amalgamation of megacities…

…The report interestingly mentions that the diversity of human languages in our world is strongly correlated to areas of high plant diversity. Some linguists have predicted that 90 per cent of the world’s languages will expire by the end of this century…

Here is an interesting graph created by Paul Chefurka which shows that the combined biomass of humans with their farm animals exceeds the natural carrying capacity of the earth sevenfold:

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In the graphic, the “wild animal” biomass doesn’t include insects, bacteria, or marine organisms.

I used three data sources to develop the chart: a paper by world-respected ecological scientist Vaclav Smil, called “Harvesting the Biosphere”, linked below; world population estimates from the Wikipedia article of the same name; and the UN’s Medium Fertility variant for the human population in 2050 (9.6 billion).

The definition I used for Global Carrying Capacity is, “The biomass the planet can support without the assistance of human technology or fossil fuels.” The impact of human activity has gradually eroded the Earth’s carrying capacity over time, which is why I show the red dotted line sloping down to the right. The degree of erosion is very hard to estimate. My guess is that we may have lost around 25% by this point, some of which would of course be naturally regenerated over time in the absence of human activity. Any biomass above that dotted line has to be supported by human technology and energy supplies (which at this point are mostly from fossil fuels).

The conclusion is that we have been living in the midst of an accelerating Global Mass Extinction Event for over 100 years already. Unfortunately we’ve been too fixated on human issues like economics and politics to even notice, let alone realize what it means. Those who did realize the significance, both to wildlife and the human species, have been powerless to act in the face of economics and politics.

Paul gives the following further explanation for the graph:

The definition one uses for “carrying capacity” is so loose as to make it quite arbitrary. Here’s the definition I used: “The global carrying capacity is the total biomass of the organisms under consideration that the planet can support without the assistance of technology or fossil fuels.”

Accordingly, I estimated the carrying capacity in this case as being about the same as the world’s wild animal biomass in 10,000 BCE, with the assumption that the unassisted carrying capacity of the world would have been fully utilized at that point. I estimated the wild animal biomass in 10,000 BCE as being somewhat less than the combined wild and domestic animal biomass in 1900, per Smil. I made it lower in order to account for the technological intensification of farming already well under way by that time.

The slope of the carrying capacity line is arbitrary, because it’s impossible to determine how much we have actually eroded the world’s unassisted carrying capacity. We just know that we have. I chose the slope to correspond to my belief that we’ve eroded it by about 25% at this point. The actual slope is therefore somewhat editorial.

The Dalai Lama says, “Affection, a sense of community and a sense of concern for others are not some kind of luxury. They’re about the survival of humanity,” but the socio-economic system that rules the world is characterized by hyper-individualism and self-interest devoid of moral constraints. A system that enshrines greed and mocks equity and the public good will never be able to find a solution to the tragedy of privatizing the commons.

All lights are about to go out. No more electricity. All forms of transportation are about to stop, and the planet Earth will soon have a crust of skulls and bones and dead machinery. And nobody can do a thing about it. It’s too late in the game. Don’t spoil the party, but here’s the truth: We have squandered our planet’s resources, including air and water, as though there were no tomorrow, so now there isn’t going to be one.
~ Kurt Vonnegut

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This Way Out

06 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by darbikrash in Capitalism, Corporate State, Empire

≈ 100 Comments

Tags

Capitalism, Inverted Totalitarianism, Neoliberal Capitalism, Professor Peter Hudis, Regulatory Capture

Who’s got a hand on the crackdown?
Who’s got the word on the double talk?
Hands on the wheel in a flash of steel
We got a secret letter with a government seal
……
Nerves are pinched but the heads are calm
The cargo’s all loaded and the red light’s on
Check the map, you navigator sap
Or we’ll all end up with our heads in our lap

Only with capitalism does commodity exchange become the universal source of social interaction through the commodification of labor power, value then becomes the defining principle of social reproduction.

There are many criticisms against Capitalism, but not much in the way of concrete alternatives. I’ve just finished reading Professor Peter Hudis’ book “The Alternative to Capitalism”, and while he does not offer much specificity in the way of concrete alternatives, he does offer a useful and provocative analysis of Marx’s theories pertaining to what might come next. The book is unique in that it distills down and interprets thousands of pages of Marx’s writing into a handful of useful conclusions that illustrate what Marx envisioned in a post Capitalist society.

Below is a recent podcast in which Professor Hudis is interviewed, and this gives a quick overview of the concepts and conclusions of his vision of a post Capitalist society.

http://fromalpha2omega.podomatic.com/entry/2014-08-16T14_40_49-07_00

The central argument in Hudis’ reading of Marx is that any Post Capitalist society that is to succeed must at first recognize, then dismantle, the system of value production. This differs significantly from conventional anti-capitalist thinking which suggests that the capitalist mode of production and the system of private property ownership are principally responsible for the contradictions and subsequent failures in Capitalism.

Additionally, he points out that Marx expressly disagreed with the popularized notion that to achieve this, the ownership of the means of production must transfer to the State. Marx was very clear that ownership of the means of production must not belong to the Capitalist, nor the State, rather, to those in the involved with the actual production process.

Hudis suggests that these palliative measures are not only misplaced, but wrong.

To dive further into what is being said here, some discussion of the meaning of the phrase value production is in order.

Value production in a capitalist society means that all social relations are governed by the drive to augment and increase value, with no regard for human needs or capacities.

This suggests (and Hudis does a good supporting his thesis with an academically rigorous approach in his book) that the essence of the perpetually expanding nature of Capital, the expansion that consumes resources and poisons the planet, stems from this fundamental conclusion.

Value is not material wealth, it is wealth computed in terms of money. As Hudis points out, once such a system of value production becomes the dominant form of social relations, the drive to constantly increase value becomes unstoppable.

Drilling deeper into the construct of value production, what comes forward is that one of the key contributors to this unstoppable force is the notion of socially necessary labor time. On this subject, it becomes evident that not even the Capitalists themselves have control of the system, as even they are not able to manage the forces that control production. Time becomes inverted, the predicate becomes the subject, and the whole process leads to the incredulous discovery that the products we produce control all of human relations.

And it was always supposed to be the other way around.

The concept of socially necessary labor time dictates several key factors, principally, that goods are produced in accordance with average labor inputs, and any production labor in excess of the social average is wasted and deemed not useful. This means that Capitalists that engage in production are not in control of their exchange values, this is communicated by the market and discovered when goods reach the point of sale. It is then that the Capitalist determines if his goods are competitively priced, and if he can monetize his exchange value. If another firm has produced the same commodity using less labor (or cheaper labor) at the same quality, then the original capitalist will not be able to monetize his surplus value.

This uncertainty, coupled with the intrinsic self expansive nature of Capital, sets into motion a destructive and unstoppable cycle of ever decreasing inputs of labor time.

Time, in the pursuit of commodity production, becomes our master, we work longer, faster, to achieve the same standard of living.

These factors were not present in pre-capitalist societies. And Hudis argues that they cannot be present in any post Capitalist society either. These conditions of value production in general, and of socially necessary labor time in particular are unique to Capitalism.

We see in the news today disturbing events, loss of personal liberties, privacy issues, destruction of the planet and wanton disregard for resource depletion- it is hard to know which bogey to fear first and foremost.

Most disturbing to me is the almost footnoted mention in the news media of the egregious tax avoidance strategies being employed by large multi-nationals. Companies like Tesla are now dictating terms and conditions which they will require to build production factories in a specific state. They are in effect competitively bidding individual states against each other to maximize the tax deferments and various other concessions as a condition of doing business.

Tesla has negotiated approximately $1.25 Bn dollars worth of concessions, and some analysts are claiming the return on investment for the number of jobs created is a fiction.

Additionally, these tactics are by no means limited to inside the US, there is a battle royale raging in countries like Ireland, where Apple has effectively negotiated terms that reduce their effective tax liabilities to around 2%. By their own admission, there is ‘no scientific or numerical basis’ for their arguments, meaning they just drove the best bargain they thought they could get away with, and Ireland signed up- not wanting to risk the ~6,000 jobs that Apple has in Cork County.

While many are content to lament the State’s complicity in the machinations of Capital, these events indicate something new and much more dangerous- Capital is now overtly dictating terms to the State and holding monopoly power over the State to insure conditions of production that are favorable to Capital. Again, the predicate becomes the subject, as we see an inversion of the production relations. This is very dangerous.

Next we can envision corporate sanctioned labor camps for those deemed unemployable, subsuming the State unemployment programs with privatized “camps” as an extension of the massive prison system- with better wall colors and more frequent conjugal visits.

Social relations will be transformed to support only matters of production relations, education further diluted to rote training farms, subsidized and wholly captured by the large multi-nationals, and hard wired to provide curriculum and performance standards beholden only to their interests.

The hand maidens of Capital have successfully employed an “Arsonists in Fire Chief Hats” strategy wherein they have systematically dismantled any regulatory components of the State, and then cry foul when the hobbled remains proves ineffective at its intended role.

The only logical conclusion in this outcome is of course further privatization, drowning government in the proverbial bathtub so that Capital may advance beyond its perch as owner of all assets into its newly expanded role as owner of all labor.

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American Empire: Reaping What It Has Sown in Latin America

24 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Empire, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Military Industrial Complex, Neo-Colonialism, Pollution

≈ 78 Comments

Tags

American Empire, CAFTA, Capitalism, CARSI (Central America Regional Security Initiative), Climate Change, Climate Refugees, Coffee Rust Fungus, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate State, Corporatocracy, Financial Elite, Globalization, Hemileia vastatrix, Inverted Totalitarianism, Maquiladoras, Militarization of Society, Military Industrial Complex, NAFTA, Narcotrafficking, Neoliberal Capitalism, School of the Americas, The Drug War, The Immigration Crisis, US Intervention in Latin America, William Blum, Zapatista

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The Blood-Soaked Foreign Policy of the U.S.

Citizens of the First World live in ignorance of their country’s violent imperialistic history. As Joe Bageant said, “Americans are cultivated like mushrooms from birth to death, kept in the dark and fed horseshit.” Nonetheless, the average pleb in America should realize by now that they too will be treated no different from those in the Third World exploited by empire. As illustrated by a recent study, U.S. citizens are mere cardboard cutouts in a façade of democracy with essentially no voice in their government’s actions. The wealthy elite call the shots, determining crucial government policy and the law of the land. When all the propaganda and myths are swept aside, America is revealed to be nothing more than a heartless oligarchy; you and I are simply marketing statistics and consumers, pawns and cogs within capitalist industrial civilization.

Empires weave their own self-serving and grandiose history while the vanquished are left to struggle for survival in the wreckage. A case in point is America’s current immigration crisis and its superficial analysis by the mainstream media which serves only to stoke racial fears amongst the ignorant masses while ignoring uncomfortable and disturbing root causes. The harsh reality is that America has a long history of carrying out covert and overt operations as well as instituting economic policies designed to exploit South and Central America, not to mention much of the rest of the world. One recent example was the 2009 coup of populist left-wing Honduran president Manuel Zelaya by elite military forces trained at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. Consider the following timeline of American intervention in Latin America since the 1950’s:

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‘Free Trade’ for Corporations and Misery for Local Populations

Now consider the trade deals of NAFTA, CAFTA, and other “free trade” globalization schemes which have flooded our southern neighbors with cheap, subsidized produce from U.S. Big AG, decimating small farms and pushing millions off their land and into extreme destitution:

As part of neoliberal restructuring, Mexico would have to re-orientate its economy to the export rather than the domestic market. Mexico was already heavily dependent on trade with the US, but post-1982, Mexico’s dependency has become almost akin to that of a colony. US agricultural products – most notably corn – subsidised by American taxpayers now flooded the Mexican market, undercutting small domestic producers. For Mexican farmers the consequences have been ruinous and have devastated domestic production, a process which continues under the recent government of the National Action Party (PAN)…

…From the implementation of NAFTA in 1994 to 2000, 2 million farmers abandoned their lands. Fewer Mexicans now have access to health care and education than prior to 1980 as public spending has been cut as a result of ‘reforms’. By 2005 50 percent of the population had fallen below the poverty line, pushing some 3.3 million children under the age of 14 into work. Following the government’s agreement to exchange investment rights and trade barriers for loans and financial aid, Mexicans saw huge changes in their circumstances, such that by 1988 the cost of living had risen by 90 percent, while per capita income had fallen by some 50 percent. With the abandonment of social programmes, which alleviated at least some of the worst hardships, many communities in Mexico, with little or almost no help from the state, have had to fend for themselves…

…Much farming has since been replaced by agribusiness and large-scale meat farms, mostly foreign-owned. In recent years, widespread unemployment and the inability of farmers to gain an income from the land have meant that rural towns are being emptied of their inhabitants, leading to a tremendous population drain to the cities and the United States…Impoverished Mexican workers – employed primarily because they are cheaper to exploit than their US and Canadian counterparts – work to produce commodities which have no tangible benefit for their own society…

…The improved leverage of US power over Mexico’s economy is not solely an issue of having a workforce so ‘flexible’ that much of it is forced into sweatshop labour. The maquiladora belt functions effectively as an economic colony, with the local Mexican police, paid for by the Mexican taxpayer, providing the ‘security’ necessary for factories to operate unhindered by nuisance unions and human rights activists.

One of Mexico’s chief exports, then, is labour. Just as profits and goods leave the country, significant amounts of labour time are not reflected in the Mexican economy. Corporations benefit enormously from this win-win situation resulting in the continuing breakdown of society, a state of affairs reminiscent of a colonial economy, albeit without foreign control of what in any case is a pliant government. As a result, Mexican workers in the maquiladoras, notes Delgado-Wise, are little more than ‘manpower for foreign capital’.

While many of the poor seek work in factories owned by foreign companies or quit the countryside for work in the expanding metropolises, others cross into the US. If significant swathes of the arable land of northern Mexico are emptying, this is a trend connected intimately with free trade… – link

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Militarizing the ‘Drug War’ and Arming Fascist Governments

So after destroying the means of survival for so many in Latin America, the poor and destitute turn to whatever means necessary in order to stay alive — crime, gangs, and the drug trade. The U.S. has reacted to this lawlessness by militarizing the “war on drugs”, providing even more weaponry and support to fascist governments who can then brutally squash any grassroots social movements which challenge the neoliberal capitalist order. It’s a vicious feedback loop in which the U.S. is forced to combat the very social disintegration of Latin America that U.S. economic policy has created. Thus, a fourth factor in America’s immigration crisis is the neocon militarization of the drug war and support of fascist governments aligned with U.S. corporate interests:

Narcotrafficking, like neoliberal capitalism, it seems, thrives in areas of severe poverty and unemployment where the civilian population is economically and politically disempowered and where state authorities are not powerful or willing enough to prevent the violent conflicts that narcotrafficking has produced. Additionally, for those who now have few opportunities in the traditional and legal sectors of the economy, narcotrafficking proves to be the only lucrative alternative…

…Civil society found itself vulnerable, impoverished and unable to rebuild the damaged and broken social services and infrastructure demolished by structural adjustment and neoliberal policy. Furthermore, the power and influence of the state have weakened in the last two and a half decades to the extent that in some areas drug traffickers operate quite freely and are immune to prosecution…

…With the authorities weakened, the line between the state and the narcotics industry is becoming increasingly blurred. A United Nations report estimated that between 50 and 60 percent of Mexican municipal government offices have been ‘captured or feudalised’ and coopted by narcotrafficking organisations. Mexican intelligence estimates that 62 percent of the Mexican police are presently under the control of the narco trade. According to rank and effectiveness, members of the police forces can receive anywhere between 5 to 70 thousand pesos monthly from cartels, a dramatic net increase on their state salaries. Of the 2.9 million arms given to the Mexican police forces, 57 percent are used in illicit activities.

Human Rights Watch reports that the military, in its purported struggle against the narcos, commits serious abuses against the civilian population, exposing its role rather as an institution of internal colonisation than one protecting society from violence. The same Mexican soldiers – potentially a force which could combat trafficking – are now deserting on a mass scale. Poor working conditions and pay led 217,000 Mexican soldiers to desert between 1993 and 2009. Among them, many leave the army to join the cartels and take their arms with them. One of the most powerful factions, the mercenary army, Los Zetas, was formed by deserters from an elite anti-drug squad of the Mexican army, taking with them their arms and training. Their sophisticated and professional tactics were developed, ironically, from training in the US by the DEA, the FBI and the US military in the war on drugs…

…Historian Miguel Tinker Salas has noted that in the case of Plan Colombia, military spending was intended to crush the strength of rural insurgents and guerrillas to offset the possibility of a popular rebellion, particularly as Colombia had among the worst levels of inequality in Latin America. In Mexico, maintaining a status quo which sees unprecedented levels of inequality and widespread poverty – exacerbated since the 1980s – is likely to involve the increasing use of force in order to quash the threat to the established order posed by social movements and popular revolt, all the more real as Mexico inches closer to collapse. Increasing attacks on organisers and activists of the anti-capitalist Zapatista initiative, La otra campaña, in Chiapas and the prolonged assault on inhabitants of Oaxaca in 2006 remind us that the state will always use military might to repress challenges to its authority and to the socio-economic order. US training of the Mexican military should be viewed in this light, bearing in mind that imperialism has two arms in Latin America – one military, the other economic.

Increasing poverty levels hardly seem to be a top priority for the leaders of the NAFTA signatories. For it is a state of affairs which benefits elites who have no interest in seeing ordinary Mexicans rise from poverty. Vast gaps between rich and poor may seem inexplicably cruel to outside observers, but within is a logic of which NAFTA was a clear expression. Rendering the population more desperate, reducing services and public spending, aggravating society’s vulnerability, rewards the powerful with greater political and economic dominance… – link

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Climate Change and the Coffee Rust Fungus

A fourth factor not discussed much is how climate change is wreaking havoc on the major South American crop of coffee which many rely upon for their livelihood and is the second most traded commodity in the world after oil. Coffee rust, known as “roya” in Spanish, first appeared in the region in the 1970s when climate change began to cause higher temperatures and excess rainfall favorable to the moisture-loving fungus. It has since mutated and spread throughout the region. Resistant coffee hybrids that scientists have created can’t keep up with the fast mutating rust fungus which seems to be growing stronger as climate change accelerates. For the past two years, the rust fungus called Hemileia vastatrix has destroyed 30% or more of the coffee harvest in Central America where coffee production employes one-third or more of the population in Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua :

All the coffee-producing countries of Central America have seen drops in production of 30% or more in each of the past two years. Some, such as Guatemala, report rising cases of chronic malnutrition in coffee workers’ children. Last week Oxfam cited coffee among other crops in a report that warned climate change was putting back the global fight against hunger “by decades”.

Nicaragua’s problem is particularly acute. Along with neighbouring Honduras, and Burma, it is already one of the three countries most affected by climate change, according to the 2013 Global Climate Risk Index. Nearly a third of its working population, about 750,000 people, depend on coffee directly or indirectly for a living. Coffee provides 20% of GDP. The Nicaraguan government is deeply worried: it has predicted that, because of falling rainfall and rising temperatures, by 2050 80% of its current coffee growing areas will no longer be usable.

This will mean disaster…

Snap 2014-07-24 at 12.38.08

Warmer temperatures are also threatening a genetically diverse type of coffee called Arabica which is considered essential to the industry and comprises 70% of global coffee production. According to a recent study, by 2080 global warming will make two-thirds of today’s farms too hot to grow Arabica.

The three countries making up the largest percentage of child migrants that have been flooding the U.S. in recent times are Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. These three countries also happen to be closely allied with the U.S. and its neo-liberal economic model. Nicaragua is an exception to its neighbors. Despite suffering similar losses to its coffee crop from rust fingus, Nicaraguan farmers did not fare as badly because they were supported by the programs of their socialist government, an anathema to America’s ruling oligarchs and neoliberal politicians:

In sharp contrast, Nicaragua, an equally poor country that receives far less U.S. aid because of our government’s hostility toward the Sandinistas, sends far fewer children across the U.S. border. Why? Since coming back into power in 2006, the Sandinistas have enacted strong programs designed to allow the poor to become self-sufficient.

The Immigration Issue: Red Meat for the American Masses

The only way to actually fix the immigration crisis is to address the root causes I have identified above. The response to date from the U.S. government has been to request billions in detention center and deportation funds, launch a PR campaign in the media of Central American countries to dissuade illegal immigration, and increase spending in law enforcement aid through CARSI (Central America Regional Security Initiative). Meanwhile, right-wing politicians fan the flames of racism and xenophobia with calls for militarizing the border to stop the hoards of swarthy barbarians at America’s doorstep. In reality, the current deteriorating social conditions in Central and South America are a direct result of the American corporatocracy and its rapacious economic system as well as anthropogenic climate disruption. The child migrants flooding across America’s border are, to a great degree, victims of U.S. foreign policy and climate change.

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Where’s the Evolution?

07 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Empire, Environmental Degradation, Military Industrial Complex, Peak Oil, Pollution

≈ 69 Comments

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Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Albert Einstein, Anthropogenic Climate Disruption (ACD), Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, E.M. Forster: “THE MACHINE STOPS”, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Ferengi of Star Trek, Inverted Totalitarianism, Joseph Tainter, Kevin Lister's The Vortex of Violence and why we are losing the battle against climate change, Military Industrial Complex, Nuclear Proliferation, Peak Oil, Resource Wars, Rudolph Herzog, Social Unrest, Thermonuclear War, War for Profit, War Profiteers

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“Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralyzed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops – but not on our lives. The Machine proceeds – but not to our goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let us die.”
~ E.M. Forster, “THE MACHINE STOPS”

Insects, birds, mammals, and fish have all been migrating to cooler zones for the past four decades in response to the cataclysmic climate disruption ignited by industrial civilization, but humans are the only organisms inhabiting this blue orb we call Earth who are not altering their behavior. They live within an energy cocoon that keeps them cool in the summer, warm in the winter, stuffed with massed produced food from mechanized factory farms, and entertained by a virtual world of digital imagery. As cracks and holes in the Earth’s biosphere grow ever larger, the natural response of capitalist carbon man ensconced within his protective energy shell is to try to put a price tag on what is being burned, i.e. fossil fuels, rather than deal with the deeper root cause of an unsustainable economic system and way of life which demands such exorbitant consumption of resources.

Our energy slaves feed us and control the climate for us while at the same time destroying the natural world that had enabled humans to create such an artificial environment. Detached from nature and enslaved by our own technological creations, we sleepwalk over the cliff of extinction. Our so-called progress will, in the end, disappear like a mirage in the scorching desert sun as nature is sacrificed to the machine of industrial civilization.

Throwing money into the maw of the ‘free market’ is the predictable modus operandi of technocapitalism’s indoctrinated disciples who believe such offerings will create a technofix, miraculously healing the planet. In the Star Trek TV series, the Ferengi were an extraterrestrial race whose culture was characterized by “a mercantile obsession with profit and trade, and their constant efforts to swindle unwary customers into unfair deals.” Just like the Ferengi species where profit is the first, last and only important factor, the high temples of private enterprise are commodifying and monetizing the atmosphere just as they have everything else in nature. The colonization of the public mind by capitalism is complete and overriding. We ignore unfolding geologic forces and instead put our faith in manmade market forces to our detriment.

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In the final days of capitalist industrial civilization, the relentless and compulsive pursuit of profit and growth has subsumed any intelligent and realistic plans for survival. In fact, with the race amongst nations for nuclear technology and sophisticated weaponry, the requisite competitive economy to support such hi-tech militaries nullifies any attempts at reducing greenhouse emissions and pushes the world towards nuclear annihilation. As Kevin Lister, author of the forthcoming book The Vortex of Violence and why we are losing the battle against climate change, points out:

…The fundamental dilemma all nuclear weapons states face is that to maintain a credible nuclear force, be it a force of one or one thousand nuclear warheads on deployment, a massive military industrial complex must be maintained. As well as building the actual nuclear weapon systems, it must also provide the conventional defence screen consisting of fighter jets, patrols planes, anti-submarine warfare technology etc. In an ultimate irony, the purpose of these becomes to defend the nuclear forces to ensure a second strike can be launched rather than to defend people, because there is no defence against a determined nuclear attack. The military industrial complex that delivers this equipment must be continually fed with new streams of contracts at increasing values otherwise the industrial complex collapses. Thus a key objective in the initial gate document which justified to parliament the early procurement of material for Trident was that, “We must retain the capability to design, build and support nuclear submarines and meet the commitment for a successor to the Vanguard Class submarines.” In other words, we build Tridents to continue building Tridents.

The enormous cost of this needs to be covered by taxes, and for this some £500 billion of additional excess economic activity is needed which requires energy from fossil fuels and is the antithesis of making the urgent cut backs we need to tackle the soaring greenhouse gas overburden. Thus once the decision is made to proceed with Trident, it becomes impossible to make the climate change agreements to save the planet. In this context Trident is more dangerous than we ever first thought and it is the ultimate Faustian bargain.

Your commissioners have also failed to acknowledge in their report that the public spending that will be needed on Trident must be made at the same times as scarce public funds must be diverted to building a low carbon economy and mitigating the effects of climate change such as flooding and storm damage. This conflict will arise as tax receipts simultaneously drop through energy price rises.

The impossibility of meeting these conflicting challenges is the reason that much of the negotiations at climate change conferences takes place around the positions of the nuclear weapons states and their need to maintain large military industrial complexes and competitive and expanding economies to fund these…

…to build at huge expense a nuclear force whilst the nation is effectively bankrupt that will never provide secure protection from nuclear attack and merely encourage our competitors to reciprocate. It drives a race to the bottom where rational decisions on climate change can never be taken.

This nexus between global capitalism, the lucrative military-industrial complex, and the strategy of nuclear deterrence has locked the nations of the world into a trajectory of escalating anthropogenic climate disruption, environmental degradation and an ongoing arms race since World War II. Illustrative of this are the energy consumption levels of the U.S. DoD and war profiteering motives of defense contractors:

…The US military is the largest single consumer of energy in the world. If it were a country, the Department of Defense (DoD) would rank 34th in the world in average daily oil use, coming in just behind Iraq and just ahead of Sweden…

…Electricity usage by the military, which accounts for even more greenhouse gas emissions, is also gargantuan. In FY 2006, the DoD used almost 30,000 gigawatt hours of electricity at a cost of almost $2.2 billion. The DoD’s electricity use would supply enough electricity to power more than 2.6 million average American homes.

In fiscal year 2012, the DoD consumed about a billion gigawatt hours of site delivered energy at a cost of 20.4 billion dollars. While consuming that amount of energy, DoD emitted 70 million metric tons of CO2. And yet, total DoD energy use and costs are even higher simply because the energy use and costs arising from the contractors to support military operations both domestically and abroad are not included in DoD’s data…

…The increased propensity for war and conflict brought about by global warming is being exploited by the military-industrial complex which is planning on how to profit from it. Defense contractors are looking at climate change as a growth and profit opportunity due to the potential conflicts produced by food and water shortages. They are salivating over the potential profits to be made leading to increased stock market performance and, therefore, higher CEO compensation.

Defense contractors are setting their sights on a narrow-minded militarist approach. Indeed, the very companies most responsible for climate change are set to make a killing from its intensification. – link

Only one civilization in history has voluntarily uncomplicated/decomplexitized its society in the face of resource scarcity. According to Joseph Tainter, that civilization was the Byzantine Empire:

“After the Byzantine empire lost most of its territory to the Arabs, they simplified their entire society. Cities mostly disappeared, literacy and numeracy declined, their economy became less monetised, and they switched from professional army to peasant militia.”

 As commenter James wryly puts it:

…Because the human ape is such a competitive and vicious sort, there must be a constant “progress” in technology and development to prevent being eaten by or dominated by another nation. Evolution writ large. Without a doubt it will end soon and nothing shall remain but the Ozymandian technological skeletons of times gone by…

photo-11 Yes, where is the evolution? Teeming within the capitalist industrial civilization that is M.A.D. are 7+ billion naked apes, the most dangerous creature to ever walk the face of the Earth capable of wiping itself out within mere minutes from thermonuclear war, if anthropogenic climate disruption, ocean acidification, and global nuclear reactor meltdowns don’t do the trick.

As a warming planet cooks our brains and scrambles our environment, the trigger finger of some mentally ill and agitated soul may just belong to someone sitting at the launch button of a nuke. As Albert Einstein said, ‘I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.’

Full video here: http://www.c-span.org/video/?312985-1/book-discussion-short-history-nuclear-folly

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The Loneliness of Anti-Imperialist Fighters, by Andre Vltchek

03 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Corporate State, Empire, Inequality, Military Industrial Complex, Neo-Colonialism

≈ 22 Comments

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Andre Vltchek, Capitalism, Corporate State, Corporatocracy, Empire, Financial Elite, Inverted Totalitarianism, Investigative Journalism, Military Industrial Complex, Noam Chomsky, War for Profit, War on Terror

For a glimpse into the life of someone who is actually doing the dangerous and solitary work of true investigative reporting, exposing the dark underbelly of Western imperialism and global capitalism, please read the recent blog post of Andre Vltchek and support his work.

Richard Falk has said of Vltchek:

Chomsky and Vltchek help us to realize that an array of powerful forces are using their wealth and influence to prevent us from seeing. We are allowed to see only as much as the gatekeepers of the public mind want us to see, and yet we are not relieved from using our capacities for sight. Reading Chomsky and Vltchek removes the scales from our eyes, at least temporarily, as they have managed to elude these gatekeepers, but at considerable risk, with a display of moral courage, civic responsibility, and extraordinary intellectual energy. I learn a lesson in civics from their vigilance: as citizens of constitutional democracies we retain the freedom, and hence possess a heavy responsibility to see for ourselves what is being done in our name…

Algérie Résistance

Andre Vltchek. D.R.

It is late at night and you cannot sleep. Ebrie Lagoon is right behind the window of your hotel, but it is hardly visible at this hour. You are in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa.

You are here because you were informed that the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, also known at ‘Chocolate King’, has been getting his cocoa from the fields of this country. You are also convinced by several of your sources, based all over the world, that his confectionary empire,Roshen, is receiving its basic product from some of the most terrible plantations in Côte d’Ivoire that are still using child labor. You decided to come here, to investigate…

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Radioactive Wastelands at the End of the Anthropocene

13 Friday Jun 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Corporate State, Environmental Degradation, Military Industrial Complex, Pollution

≈ 70 Comments

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'Atoms for Peace' Propaganda Campaign, Capitalism, Chernobyl, Corporate State, Corporatocracy, Fascism, Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, Fukushima's Underground Ice Wall, Inverted Totalitarianism, Mako Oshidori, Mass Media Manipulation, Militarism, Military Industrial Complex, Near-Term Extinction, Nuclear Proliferation, Political Economy of Aristocracy, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Regulatory Capture, Security and Surveillance State, TEPCO, The Revolving Door Between Government and Corporations, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)

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A History of Cover-Ups and Ineptitude Leads to Catastrophe

One of the most costly, self-inflicted wounds engineered by techno-capitalist man is the never-ending Fukushima nuclear disaster. The groundwork for epic failure at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant began in the 1960’s when TEPCO bulldozed 25 meters off of a 35-meter-high hill in order to facilitate the delivery and set up of the plant’s large equipment, which was delivered by boat, as well as to provide easier and cheaper access to seawater used as a coolant pumped through the reactors. TEPCO then dug even further downward another 14 feet to construct the basement where emergency diesel generators would be installed. Decades later a tsunami would easily flood this area, knocking out the emergency electrical back-up generator and making nuclear meltdown a certainty.

Snap 2014-06-13 at 08.48.20In the early 1970’s, several memos circulated within the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) expressing concern over design flaws of the Mark I nuclear reactors made by General Electric, the same type installed at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. Recommendations were made to stop licensing reactors with these faulty designs and the top safety official at the AEC, Jospeh Hendrie, agreed with them but rejected their implementation on the grounds that it could do irreparable damage to the nuclear industry:

“..the acceptance of pressure suppression containment concepts by all elements in the nuclear field, including Regulatory and the ACRS, is firmly embedded in the conventional wisdom. Reversal of this beloved policy, particularly at this time, could well be the end of nuclear power. It would throw into question the continued operation of licensed plants, would make unlicensable the G.E. and Westinghouse ice condensor plants now in review, and would generally create more turmoil than I can stand thinking about.”

The last line of defense in preventing the ionizing alpha, beta and gamma radiation and radioisotopes inside melting fuel rods from spewing out into the environment is the containment vessel. The poor design of the now ruptured Mark 1 containment vessel in Fukushima is most certainly contributing to the ongoing disaster there. The U.S. apparently has 23 reactors just like the ones that melted down in Fukushima as well as the risky storage of spent fuel rods next to the reactor building itself.

When the Tōhoku tsunami struck at Fukushima, reports describe chaos and incompetency as workers had to bring protective gear and manuals from distant buildings as well as borrow equipment from contractors. The failure of the Japanese government and TEPCO to imagine such a catastrophic event and guard against it is highlighted by the fact that this exact scenario was predicted in a Japanese magna comic book.

Years went by with only a few lone voices questioning the safety of the Fukushima nuclear plant such as former engineer Toshio Kimura who worked there:

I asked my boss back in the late ’90s what would happen if a tsunami hit the Fukushima reactors. I said, “Surely a meltdown will happen.” He said, “Kimura, you are right,” but it was made clear that the issue of a big tsunami was taboo. A few years later I quit the company because of its culture of cover-ups…

…When officials from the nuclear safety agency or the ministry came to the plant for inspections, they were entertained with drinks the night before. Then they would inspect the plant and give it a hundred per cent pass mark. Then on the way home the inspectors were given beer and snacks and taxi vouchers.

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Run by the Utility Gangs

Entire communities have been bought off by corporate interests to become ruled by what is known as the “nuclear village” in Japan:

Tokyo has been able to essentially buy the support, or at least the silent acquiescence, of communities by showering them with generous subsidies, payouts and jobs. In 2009 alone, Tokyo gave $1.15 billion for public works projects to communities that have electric plants, according to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Experts say the majority of that money goes to communities near nuclear plants.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg, experts say, as the communities also receive a host of subsidies, property and income tax revenues, compensation to individuals and even “anonymous” donations to local treasuries that are widely believed to come from plant operators.

Unquestionably, the aid has enriched rural communities that were rapidly losing jobs and people to the cities. With no substantial reserves of oil or coal, Japan relies on nuclear power for the energy needed to drive its economic machine. But critics contend that the largess has also made communities dependent on central government spending — and thus unwilling to rock the boat by pushing for robust safety measures.

In a process that critics have likened to drug addiction, the flow of easy money and higher-paying jobs quickly replaces the communities’ original economic basis, usually farming or fishing.

The Japanese news media, just as in the U.S., has also been corrupted and taken over by monied-interests:

The mainstream media has long been part of the press-club system, which funnels information from official Japan to the public. Critics say the system locks the country’s most influential journalists into a symbiotic relationship with their sources, and discourages them from investigation or independent lines of analysis…

…Japan’s power-supply industry, collectively, is Japan’s biggest advertiser, spending ¥88 billion (more than $1 billion) a year, according to the Nikkei Advertising Research Institute. Tepco’s ¥24.4 billion alone is roughly half what a global firm as large as Toyota spends in a year.

And just like in the U.S., corporations have used “donations” to capture Japan’s political system:

Members of the Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled Japan since 1955 except for a year in the 1990s and for a three-year period ending in 2012, have been rewarded for their pro-nuclear stance with campaign donations from the ten giant electrical utilities that control around 96 percent of the nation’s power supply.

The largest of these, the Tokyo Electric Power Company or Tepco, formally ended its direct corporate donations in 1974. But it systematically encouraged “voluntary” donations by company executives and managers to a fund-raising entity created by the ruling party, according to a 2011 investigation by Asahi. At least 448 Tepco executives donated roughly $777,000 in total to the entity between 1995 and 2009, according to documents obtained by Asahi and shared with the Center.

Roughly 60 percent of Tepco’s executives participated, a rate similar to that at other utilities. Together, they funded $2.5 million of the party’s expenses, based on today’s exchange rates. A Tepco spokesman told Asahi that the donations were “based on the judgment of the individual and the company is not involved. We do not encourage such donations.”

The culture of complicity between the Japanese nuclear industry and the government is firmly entrenched with generations of high level bureaucrats having landed jobs at Japan’s large utility companies. This revolving door between corporations and the Japanese government mirrors that of the U.S.:

Tepco’s influence has also been enhanced by its enthusiastic participation in revolving door-employment practices similar to those involving bureaucrats and companies in Washington, D.C.

A METI report in 2011, prepared at the insistence of nuclear opponents in Japan’s tiny Communist Party, said for example that between 1960 and 2011, Tepco hired 68 high-level government officials. From 1980 to late 2011, the report said, four former top-level bureaucrats from METI’s own Agency for Natural Resources and Energy became vice presidents at other electric utilities. The practice is known here by the amusing term, amakudari, for appointees who “descended from heaven.”

Tepco officials also regularly move into key regulatory positions, part of a migration known as ama-agari, or “ascent to heaven” that has involved dozens of top utility officials. More than 100 such utility executives between 2001 and 2011 were able to keep drawing an industry paycheck while also working part-time for the government, a practice that is legal here, according to a former member of the Japanese Diet Lower House Economy and Industry Committee, who spoke on background. An official working in the Nuclear Regulation Authority’s research division, in an interview, said on condition of anonymity that the ama-agari system is “like having cops and thieves working in the same police station.”

Perhaps the most significant instance of ama-agari was the Liberal Democratic Party’s appointment in 1998 of Tokio Kano, a longtime Tepco executive, as chairman of the parliamentary committee that oversees METI and as the parliamentary secretary of science and technology. Both are posts crucial to the nuclear energy industry, and Kano used them to advance legislation enabling plutonium-based fuel to be burned in some standard reactors — not just breeders. He also pushed through a law requiring that all spent nuclear fuel be sent to Rokkasho or similar Japanese plants.

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Corporate Fascism in Japan

Embarrassed by the constant revelations of regulatory and governmental capture by industry, the Japanese government recently passed a state secrets law meant to intimidate and jail those who cast a prying eye into Japan’s corrupt corporatocracy. After the Japanese government restarted its idled nuclear plants last year, those antagonistic towards the nuclear industry were secretly put on a watch list. The ominous experiences of independent investigative reporter Mako Oshidori with Japan’s nuclear industrial complex are reminiscent of the movie Silkwood. She discovered that she was on the government’s watch list and has now noticed an individual closely tracking her every move:

…The list included people with power in the opposition parties, such as the former prime minister Naoto Kan and the politician Ishiro Ozawa, and I was told that my name, Mako Oshidori, was listed alongside these names. A researcher who was given the list and told not to approach anybody on it was friendly with me and told me the list included my name. Soon after that a mysterious man began to follow me. This man appeared to be a member of Public Security Intelligence Agency in the Cabinet Office, which investigates various things. One of my hobbies is taking a candid shot, and I will show you the successful candid shot of this man. 

_

Just as you see here, there was a time period when someone would always be near me, trying to eavesdrop on my conversation with people. As I am a professional entertainer, whoever I am talking to would ask me if the person was my manager. I would say that the person must be one of my groupies, as I have never met the person. Sometimes I would go to Fukushima Prefecture to interview different mothers. We would have meals together and talk somewhere, and when the mothers are leaving the premise to go home, an agent from the Public Security Intelligence Agency would take a photo of each mother and make a note of the license plate number of each car. Afraid of having their photos taken or the license plate numbers recorded, some Fukushima mothers would refused to be interviewed, or they would even refuse to have their stories published. An ex-agent who is knowledgeable about the work of the Public Security Intelligence Agency said that when you are visibly followed, that was meant to intimidate you. If there was one person visible, then there would be ten more. I think that is analogous to cockroaches. So, when you do a little serious investigation about the nuclear accident, you are under various pressure and it makes it more difficult to interview people. There are actually other journalists from major newspapers and television stations, other than me, who have done a lot of investigation about the nuclear accident, but the information doesn’t readily come out. That’s because the pressure is placed on them not to release the information. What I am going to tell you now might surprise you, but the Japanese people are just as surprised when I tell them the same information as it’s something they have never heard of, read in the newspaper, or seen on TV…

Despite the great tragedies with nuclear weaponry and technology that Japan has experienced with Hiroshima and Nagasaki and now Fukushima, these instruments of mayhem and death are ironically becoming a key centerpiece in the Japanese economy with the current right-wing government banking on it as an export cash cow:

Exports of nuclear components and technology, as well as conventional arms, are potentially key elements of “Abenomics” and much is riding on the outcome. In 2013, Abe concluded Japan’s first nuclear reactor export agreement with Turkey for $22 billion and others are pending with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, while the prime minister has also lobbied governments in Central Europe, Vietnam and Indonesia. This is a remarkable turnaround from 2011 when the prospects for post-Fukushima Japan relying on nuclear energy, let alone exporting it, looked unlikely.

The seeds for Japan’s nuclear hara-kiri were planted back in the early 1950’s when the American government hatched a propaganda campaign of developing an “atoms for peace” mission in Japan to foster pro-nuclear sentiment and help rebuild their economy using such technology. 

The Center for Public Integrity reports that Japan is leading the charge for a new nuclear industry of plutonium-based nuclear fuel with grave implications for spreading this technology and material all over the world. By October of this year, Japan will have finished a $22-billion plutonium factory in Rokkasho which will be able to produce enough plutonium per year to make 2,600 bombs. It appears Japan is lurching towards militarism in an age of end-stage capitalism:

The US-Japan Security Treaty of 1960 stipulates that an attack on Japan will be regarded as an attack on the United States. Prime Minister Abe is seeking to transform Japan’s constitution to permit engagement of the Japanese armed forces in aggressive wars. But it is difficult to imagine a resurgent military posture by Japan without tacit encouragement from Washington.

The highest stage of monopoly capitalism is fascism. The 2008 global economic crisis of capitalism, still unresolved, is forcing ill-advised and counterproductive “austerity measures” on decaying capitalist societies throughout Europe and in Japan, where Prime Minister Abe is restructuring the economy into the very pro-market system which is producing riots throughout Western Europe, as living standards deteriorate drastically, and the income inequality gap becomes an abyss.

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A Nuclear Bomb Explosion Versus A Nuclear Meltdown

Some ask why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were rebuilt and repopulated so soon after a nuclear bomb blast, yet Fukushima and Chernobyl remain unsafe to inhabit into the indefinite future. The answer lies in the vast difference of irradiating potential between a nuclear bomb and a nuclear reactor.

Nuclear bombs are designed to cause maximum concussive damage within the shortest amount of time by creating as much energy as possible from a runaway nuclear fission reaction. Nuclear reactors on the other hand are designed to create a low-level of energy from a very controlled and sustained nuclear fission reaction. The radioactive isotopes from the fission product mixture of a nuclear bomb are relatively short-lived (<50 years) whereas those from the meltdown of a nuclear reactor are long-lived and must be stored away safely for tens of thousands of years (essentially forever). Approximate half-lives of some of the isotopes in the spent nuclear fuel are:

Snap 2014-06-14 at 18.59.27

The nuclear bombs used in World War II were detonated roughly 2,000 feet above ground and their radioisotopes were carried by the wind and dispersed over a very large area. The nuclear bomb called “Little Boy” used over Hiroshima contained only 140 pounds of fissionable material (Uranium-235) and “Fat Man” used over Nagasaki contained just 14 pounds of Plutonium-239. These are minute amounts of radioisotopes when compared to the 180 tons of nuclear fuel at Chernobyl and the staggering 1,600 tons at Fukushima. Explosions and meltdowns at nuclear reactors occur at ground level, creating more radioactive isotopes due to neutron activation with the soils while spreading their radiation across the planet, year after year after year. Today the background radiation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is said to be the same as the global average anywhere on Earth. Ground zero at Chernobyl and Fukushima won’t be habitable for 20,000 years or longer. Nuclear bombs kill hundreds of thousands of people instantly while a nuclear reactor meltdown kills people over years, decades, and generations.

Not Enough Thumbs to Plug the Nuclear Dyke

The too-big-to-fail TEPCO is now building the Great Ice Wall of Japan to stem the flow of tons of contaminated water that they have been hastily storing in hundreds of haphazardly constructed containers.

“I must say our tank assembly was slipshod work.” ~ TEPCO worker

The “experts” estimate that it will take 40 years to clean up the Fukushima mess. That would put us at the year 2054, a date that many estimate humans may well be extinct or nearly extinct. By then, ocean acidification will have doubled and the global average temperature will have risen by at least 4 to 6.5°C. The world’s oceans will have swelled 2 feet higher. I’m glad to know that the “experts” are taking into account our radically changing planet:

Nuclear plants were originally given a license to operate for 40 years, and in the late 1990s, the NRC began accepting applications to extend those licenses for an additional 20 years. While it’s not clear how many current plants will still be operating in 2100, most facilities store their nuclear waste on-site, where it can continue to emit radiation for thousands of years. There is currently no long-term national storage site for spent nuclear fuel in the U.S., as Congress cut the funding to build such a facility at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain in 2011. While there are no near-term plans to remove nuclear waste from the coastal plants threatened by rising seas, “the expectation is that [waste] won’t remain on-site,” said NRC Senior Public Affairs Officer Roger Hannah.

Despite the increased risk of flooding due to rising sea levels, some plant operators have not factored this into their long-term plans. In 2010, when Florida Power and Light Company applied for a license to build two additional reactors at the Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station in Homestead, Florida, the NRC asked the plant’s owners to explain “how potential sea-level rise due to potential future climate change is accounted for” in their plans, NRC documents show. The company declined to discuss climate change in its analysis, and used a projection that assumed a constant sea level rise of just 1 foot per century, which is 5.6 feet lower than NOAA’s worst-case projection for 2100.

 Boy, I hope that ice wall works…

The risks to the ocean, in particular, are unprecedented because there is good reason to believe that melted fuel residing in, or below, the reactor basements is in direct contact with an underground river running through the site (Nagata, 2013).

A German study modelling the effects of an uncontained core meltdown suggests the Pacific Ocean is imperiled. The “German Risk Study, Phase B” found that a core meltdown accident could result in complete failures of all structural containment, causing melted fuel to exit the reactor foundation within five days (cited in Bayer, Tromm, & Al-Omari 1989). Moreover, the study found that even in the event of an intact building foundation, passing groundwater would be in direct contact with fuel, causing leaching of fission products. Strontium leaches slower than cesium. A follow-up German study, “Dispersion of Radionuclides and Radiation Exposure after Leaching by Groundwater of a Solidified Core-Concrete Melt,” predicted that strontium contamination levels would rise exponentially years after a full melt-through located adjacent to a river (Bayer, Tromm, & Al-Omari, 1989).

The study predicted concentrations of Strontium-90 in river water would spike relatively suddenly, but maintain extraordinarily high levels of contamination for years. Strontium bio-accumulates in the human body, including the brain, and is a known genotoxin. The study’s experimental conditions are roughly similar to Daiichi’s site conditions and strontium levels have been spiking there since the summer of 2013. TEPCO just reported that strontium levels in reactor basement water ranged from 40 million to 500 million becquerels per liter (“TEPCO to Improve,” 2014).

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Global Corporatocracy: Privatized Profits and Socialized Losses

08 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Corporate State, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Pollution, Wall Street Fraud

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"David Cay Johnston: The Perils Of Our Growing Inequality", Capitalism, Corporate State, Corporatocracy, David Cay Johnston, ExxonMobile, Financial Elite, Free Trade Agreements, Governmental Capture, Gross Inequality, Inverted Totalitarianism, Maldistribution of Wealth, Reaganism, Regulatory Capture, Steve Coll's 'Private Empire', The Elite 1%, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Wall Street Fraud

David Cay Johnston is, as he states, not a socialist, but a capitalist who believes in fair and competitive markets and integrity. My blog concentrates quite a bit on environmental issues and David only passingly mentions the deregulation and rolling back of environmental laws in the interview below, but he has been writing about inequality since the 1960’s and does a great job of describing the “governmental capture” by multinational corporations. An overwhelming proportion of environmental destruction is being caused by these mammoth corporations that are literally a state within a state, so it’s important to make the connection between inequality/political disenfranchisement and the destruction of the environment driven by a “business aristocracy” which has usurped the institutions of society. There can be no social, environmental, and climate justice if there is no government to serve the people. Of particular interest is the interview with Steve Coll and the power that ExxonMobile wields. Three notable examples of government acting as an insurance agency for corporations while leaving a mess for the common people to deal with are the BP oil spill, TEPCO’s Fukushima disaster, and the mortgage crisis created by the Too-Big-To-Fail Banks.

Government rules and policies have been put in place to create the huge wealth gap in America:

– political economy, an amplifying feedback loop where wealth begets access to the rules in politics which begets changes in the rules which reinforce wealth.

– 45 years ago the media was staffed by blue-collar intellectuals. TV news media is now filled with people from wealthy households whose life experience tells them that things are just fine in the world. We’re not hearing about those exploiting the system for their benefit. Very little coverage of poverty as well. The U.S. has the highest % of children who go to bed hungry of any modern country.

– The most important period of determining your lifetime health and well-being is from conception to the first 6 months of life. Little to nonexistent programs and support for mothers and newborn babies in America. Just as the U.S. is neglecting its infrastructure by not maintaining and investing in it, we are also stealing from the future by not nurturing and providing proper care for small children. There will be a price and it will be very high.

– U.S. has been living under Reaganism since 1981 in which we worship money and our measure of the country is money. The purposes of our country were written down for us in the preamble of the Constitution: justice, the general Welfare, common defense, domestic tranquility, liberties. Nothing in the preamble talks about getting rich. That’s a byproduct of these other things, but we have gotten a distorted view of what’s happening and now have 33 years of evidence that Reaganism has made the rich richer at the expense of the 90%. We are mining the 90% to benefit the super-rich rather than creating an economy that benefits everyone.

– The number one driver of this crooked system is campaign finance. There are over 100,000 people in this country whose job it is to mine the public treasury or the rules for their benefit. This corrupt system has to be changed.

– The way we think about this country and its society needs to change. The founders actually wrote a great deal about their concerns over inequality. John Adams, the second President, wrote that his fear was that a business aristocracy would arise to destroy the country, making workers mere wage earners instead of craftsmen owning their own tools. These wage earners, not being truly independent, would be manipulated into voting for policies that would benefit the business aristocracy and we would lose both our liberties and democracy. Adam Smith, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, talks about inequality being corrosive to the very fabric of society and says that “the greatest corruption of our moral sentiments is the tendency to almost worship the rich and to hold in bad regard people who are poor.” Our politicians reflect this even though many of them will tell you at any moment how religious they are. They obviously have not studied their religious text because if they did they would know that, in the case of the Christians for example, you were required to “give all that thou hast to the poor.”

– Reaganism has led to an enormous concentration of wealth amongst a small minority who cannot possibly consume that wealth and instead are investing it in financial instruments to extract more wealth rather than investing it in the economy. We don’t have to burn more fossil fuels to grow the economy; there are other ways to do that.

– We pay big corporations to not pay their taxes. The way this happens is that corporations are limited in the amount of money they can hold in the U.S., so the corporations get around this by offshoring their money in foreign bank accounts and then turn around and buy U.S. treasuries. The interest they earn from these treasuries will eventually exceed the value of the tax on that money, when and if these corporations decide to bring the money back into the U.S.. This scheme has literally become a profit center for the corporations.

– When this country was founded, there had been only seven corporations in the old british colonial United States at the time of the Declaration of Independence. Six of them were what today we would either call a charity or a utility. The Boston Water Works is a good example; it was the very first one and was essentially a utility. One corporation created in the colony of New Haven was set up solely to make profit. It was such a scandal they had to shut it down within a year and it took ten years to clean up the mess. The founders disliked and distrusted corporations, but they believed in collective bargaining because in 1792, Congress passed the first significant labor law and subsidy law based on a study conducted by Thomas Jefferson. It was to revive and protect the cod fishing industry ravaged by the British Navy. The class of fisherman known as “sharesmen” were able to negotiate with the wealthy ship owners in order to share in the profits. Those ships who participated in sharing their profits with the fishermen were given the subsidy and those who did not were exempt from the subsidy.

– Violent, explosive rise in executive pay which diverts CEOs from the welfare of the company. All large pools of capital that are owned collectively (charitable endowments, pension funds, etc) are systematically being predated. The assets of utility companies are being worn down and stripped.

– We now have a government that does not go after people who are engaged in criminal frauds because they are considered so powerful that if they were prosecuted it would “damage the economy”. The government has become an insurance agency for the rich and powerful and the common people pay the premiums.

– We have gotten the results that Mr. Reagan said, if you listen to him carefully in 1980, that we would get which is that those people who are wealth holders would realize the income from that wealth, and they have. The actual tax rates of the people at the very top are 60% lower than what they paid in the 1980’s, but at the same time by getting rid of unions, by having these “free trade deals” which are really deals to drive down the cost of labor, we have driven down the wages and salaries of the vast majority of Americans as well as the environmental conditions (laws to protect the environment). A whole mechanism has been put in place that favors profit over labor and when you look at the data you can see it. The returns to labor in the Fed reserve data show a marked decline and returns to capital have been rising and since 2009 it has skyrocketed. Because labor returns have gone down, there is not enough aggregate demand in the economy for people to buy goods and services. The next thought would be that capitalists would change because people have to be able to buy their goods and services. No, if you are a global capitalist it does not matter. As long as there are no riots in the streets, you can sell your goods in other countries. We have lots of corporations now that are bigger than governments. Steve Coll’s book on ExxonMobile basically describes a private foreign service and a private military:

The scope of the market has become larger than the domain of the sovereignty of nation-states.

– The ultimate solution is very simple: the 90% of Americans who are worse off, who are back to the income level of 1966, can vote in a new government and start with the state legislatures because they are the ones that set the boundaries for the congressional districts but it will take many decades to get to a better path. The fundamental question about this division between the super-rich and everyone else is, “Are we going to revise the rules?” Right now you are seeing the rise of oligarchical thinking such as Tom Perkins saying the number of votes you should have should be based on the amount of money you have. The founders explicitly rejected that kind of thinking.

– This idea that if you make a lot of money, you should pay more in taxes is the most conservative idea in western civilization if your standard is something that’s been tested through time and works which is the classic meaning of conservative. Progressive taxation was invented 2,500 years ago in Athens when they invented democracy. The people of the city-state of Athens concluded that the only way one could become wealthy is by following the rules and laws set down to protect everyone. The infrastructure of Athens, its military, and government services that were provided to benefit everyone meant that those who did become wealthy were expected to bear a greater burden for those costs of society to ensure that Athens would endure. Society made their fortunes possible. This idea has been embraced by every classic worldly philosopher. 

– The game doesn’t just comfortably and stably go on if people don’t become active and we keep driving towards deeper and deeper hollowing out and inequality. Isn’t there a dark scenario here also?  Yes, we’re giving up on democracy and our descendents will read history books that begin with these words: “The United States of America was… ” It became a failed experiment where cynicism is used to mock anyone who is idealistic, a foolish romantic…

– We have governmental capture. We literally have a federal government that responds to the political donor class, which is a narrow group of very wealthy people, in how it taxes, how it doesn’t regulate, how it doesn’t enforce laws, how it makes trade agreements with other countries, and that imbalance should worry us a great deal. What did Plutarch tell us 2,000 years ago? “An imbalance between rich and poor is the most frequent and fatal ailment of all republics.”

PawelKuczynski_27

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Who really pulls the strings?:

The megawealthy and Washington have become so symbiotic as to be a single entity. The bought-and-paid politicians sitting in Washington are simply the marionettes of the corporations and financial elite who are dictating public policy and regulations.

Preserving the Status Quo

There is no right wing or left wing, only the aristocracy and the serfs (a vertical paradigm). To know this is to be like a fish who has broken the surface of the water, realizing he was in water the whole time.

A Kabuki Play

"What we have, in what passes for US democracy in 2012, is a kabuki play that Cicero put to papyrus 1948 years earlier. All historical empires and war aggressors have used propaganda to claim their looting and police states were necessary and helpful to the 99%. Instead, a sorrowful history tells us they were almost always for the sole benefit of the 1%." - Albert Bates

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  • Voting and the ‘rule by law’ September 12, 2020
  • Wendy Brown on neoliberalism and democracy September 7, 2020

RSS Alternative Radio

  • [John Mearsheimer] Great Power Politics in the 21st Century January 26, 2023

RSS AlterNet

  • Profanity-filled tirades and threats about grassroots dominated RNC meeting January 28, 2023
  • Trump calls for wild education overhaul by 'certifying' patriotic teachers and allowing parents to elect school principals January 28, 2023
  • How concentrated wealth and corporate power nurture the greed of thieves January 28, 2023
  • 'It's a mistake' to believe murder case against cops who beat Tyre Nichols to death 'will be easy': legal expert January 28, 2023

RSS Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

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RSS Anarchist News

  • New Series: Audio Versions of CrimethInc. Articles January 28, 2023
  • Update about the health condition of Alfredo Cospito January 28, 2023
  • S1E57 - Nadia on Harm Reduction January 27, 2023
  • Ego Death Podcast - Episode Two January 26, 2023
  • Portland: Attack on UPS Shipping Center January 26, 2023

RSS Antony Loewenstein

  • Why Israel sells spyware to repressive Bangladesh January 16, 2023
  • TRT World interview on new far-right Israeli government January 4, 2023
  • The merging of Israeli far-right power January 4, 2023

RSS Apocadocs

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RSS Arctic Emergency Institute

  • Declining Summer Sea Ice Threatens More than Arctic Wildlife August 25, 2012

RSS Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG)

  • AMEG Strategic Plan December 8, 2012
  • Breaking the Chain November 27, 2012
  • AMEG Policy Brief September 23, 2012
  • The biggest story of all time September 1, 2012

RSS Arctic News

  • A huge temperature rise threatens to unfold soon January 3, 2023
  • Wild Winter Weather December 23, 2022
  • The short lifespan of technological civilizations and the future of Homo sapiens December 17, 2022

RSS Arctic Sea Ice

  • PIOMAS December 2019 December 17, 2019
  • PIOMAS November 2019 November 13, 2019
  • PIOMAS October 2019 October 14, 2019
  • PIOMAS September 2019 September 16, 2019
  • PIOMAS August 2019 August 7, 2019

RSS Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis

  • December lows January 5, 2023
  • Lingering open water areas December 5, 2022
  • Iced November 3, 2022

RSS Around the Coast Mountains

  • The name’s Mark… Mark BC March 18, 2014
  • Packrafting / Fatbiking Buntzen Lake March 3, 2014
  • My New Surly Pugsley Fatbike Build February 11, 2014

RSS Arthur Silber

  • Moving Interruptus, and Why Hospitals Suck July 1, 2019
  • Crisis May 16, 2019
  • How Many Damn Fucking Times Do I Have to Explain This? May 15, 2019
  • So Close, Yet So Far April 7, 2019

RSS Arundhati Roy

  • This is no ordinary spying. Our most intimate selves are now exposed | Arundhati Roy July 26, 2021
  • ‘We are witnessing a crime against humanity’: Arundhati Roy on India’s Covid catastrophe – podcast May 7, 2021

RSS Arundhati Roy Says

  • A perfect day for democracy February 9, 2013
  • Arundhati Roy speaks about the issue of rape in India December 22, 2012
  • We Call This Progress December 17, 2012

RSS ASPO – USA

  • On hiatus December 8, 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 23 October 2022 October 26, 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 17 October 2022 October 17, 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 10 October 2022 October 10, 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 3 October 2022 October 3, 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 26 September 2022 September 26, 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 19 September 2022 September 19, 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 12 September 2022 September 12, 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 5 September 2022 September 6, 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 29 August 2022 August 29, 2022

RSS Avedon’s Sideshow

  • You can not do that, it breaks all the rules January 28, 2023
  • Twelfthnight January 6, 2023
  • You just gotta call on me December 15, 2022

RSS Bad Astronomy

  • Echidnas Blow Snot Bubbles to Cool Down. Could We?
  • What It Was Like to Be a Target of Political Violence in New Mexico
  • Advertisers Wanted to Spend Money at Twitter, but “Our Emails Have Been Falling Into the Abyss”

RSS Barbara Ehrenreich

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RSS BBC: Science & Environment

  • Government green heating scheme off to slow start January 26, 2023
  • True wild camping on Dartmoor not threatened say landowners January 26, 2023
  • Asteroid 2023 BU: Space rock passes closer than some satellites January 27, 2023

RSS Big Picture Agriculture

  • BIG PICTURE AGRICULTURE'S LATEST NEWS February 26, 2022
  • How to Stay Informed About Agriculture, Food, and Farming Issues October 15, 2019
  • Dr. Walter Falcon's 2019 Iowa Farm Report September 11, 2019
  • Agriculture Reading Picks October 31, 2018
  • The Merits of Amaranth October 30, 2018

RSS Bill Moyers

  • PODCAST: Dr. Bandy Lee Saw It Coming – The Violence Foretold in Donald Trump’s Election August 18, 2022
  • Trump-Russia-Ukraine Timeline April 12, 2022
  • Insurrection Timeline March 13, 2022

RSS Bit Tooth Energy

  • Waterjetting 37e - Using Cavitation to disintegrate rock November 18, 2015
  • Waterjetting 37d - Underground Drilling with Waterjets November 16, 2015
  • Waterjetting 37c - A Drilling Diversion October 14, 2015

RSS Bizarro Blog

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RSS Brane Space

  • Can We Prevent Another Holocaust From Happening? January 27, 2023
  • "Near Miss" 2023 BU Asteroid To Graze Planet Earth This Evening January 26, 2023

RSS Brave New World

  • Islam: The Overlooked Aspect of Rumi’s Poetry March 9, 2021
  • Remembering Nur ad-Din Zengi: The Light of Faith March 6, 2021
  • Francophobia Among Muslims: Just Another Myth? February 25, 2021
  • A Year in Kazakhstan: Some General Observations October 25, 2020

RSS Breaking the Set

  • Abby Martin Breaks the Set One Last Time February 28, 2015
  • Never Stop Breaking the Set! February 28, 2015
  • Cuba Part III: The Evolution of Revolution February 27, 2015
  • Cuba Part II: Ebola Solidarity & Castro’s Daughter on Gay Rights February 26, 2015
  • Why Are Americans Getting Their Medical Degrees in Cuba? February 26, 2015

RSS Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

  • Mink on a Spanish farm caught bird flu. Is the virus adapting to mammals? January 26, 2023
  • Reuters: Kremlin expresses alarm over ‘Doomsday Clock’ January 26, 2023
  • Mail & Guardian: Only bold, collective action can turn back the hands of the Doomsday Clock January 25, 2023

RSS Business Insider

  • Tyre Nichols live updates: Memphis and other cities enter 2nd night of protest after violent body cam videos were released January 28, 2023
  • AOC could potentially become the second-highest ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee: report January 28, 2023
  • 3 men arrested after attempting to kidnap an Iranian-American journalist and activist who is critical of the country's human rights abuses, feds say January 28, 2023
  • A teacher who quit and took a job at Costco says life is much better now — she has a life, can pay her bills and finally sleeps at night January 28, 2023
  • Former VP Mike Pence says he takes 'full responsibility' for classified documents found at his Indiana residence: 'Mistakes were made' January 28, 2023
  • 'It's a failure for us': Migrants at the Southern US border are reportedly frustrated with the mobile app that's supposed to speed up asylum appointments January 28, 2023
  • Department of Justice calls to bar Sam Bankman-Fried from contacting FTX employees after allegations of witness tampering January 28, 2023
  • SBF's lawyer asked the judge to let the disgraced FTX founder access the company's assets and crypto January 28, 2023
  • 10 things about ancient Egypt that movies and TV got wrong, according to an expert January 28, 2023
  • The timeline of Tyre Nichols' death, from being stopped by Memphis cops to officers being charged with his murder January 28, 2023

RSS C-Realm

  • Automation and SJWs: A Conversation with James Howard Kunstler February 12, 2016
  • It's official. The Age of Limits gathering is on hiatus January 22, 2015
  • Three Conferences in Three Weeks June 13, 2014

RSS Cagle: Premium Cartoon News

  • To win the battle of ideas, you have to show up January 28, 2023
  • If you thought Donald Trump was the worst, check out Mike Pompeo January 27, 2023
  • Biden’s lost docs and losing war January 27, 2023
  • KEVIN MCCARTHY’S GAVEL January 27, 2023
  • BIDEN SICKNESS January 27, 2023
  • CONSTITUTIONAL GRIEVING January 26, 2023

RSS Cassandra’s Legacy

  • Cassandra is Dead. Long Live Cassandra! April 15, 2021
  • Ugo Bardi's Latest Post on "The Seneca Effect": The Collapse of Saudi Arabia's Water Supply April 12, 2021
  • Ugo Bardi's Latest Post on "The Seneca Effect" April 5, 2021
  • Ugo Bardi's Latest post on "The Seneca Effect" April 1, 2021
  • Ugo Bardi's latest post on "The Seneca Effect" March 29, 2021

RSS Censored News

  • Chili Yazzie -- Navajo's 'transitional energy' company is damaging the earth, encroaching on Hualapai land January 28, 2023
  • Chili Yazzie 'Relationship to Land Concepts: Who owns the land?' January 28, 2023
  • American Indian Airwaves: Listen to Nuclear Colonialism Series January 28, 2023

RSS Center For Biological Diversity

  • 50 Groups Urge N.M. Governor to End Oil, Gas Extraction by 2034 January 27, 2023
  • Federal Judge Finds BLM Imperiled Sage Grouse, Broke Environmental Laws in Approving Idaho Phosphate Mine January 26, 2023
  • Lawsuit Aims to Protect Imperiled Southern Hognose Snakes January 26, 2023

RSS Center for Investigative Journalism

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RSS Center for Economic & Policy Research

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RSS Charles Eisenstein’s Blog

  • Peace-building March 25, 2022
  • FASCHISMUS UND DAS ANTIFESTIVAL November 16, 2021

RSS Chomsky

  • The Kind of Anarchism I Believe in, and What's Wrong with Libertarians June 9, 2013
  • Upcoming speaking event in Boston with Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, and Jeremy Scahill April 19, 2013

RSS Chris Hedges

  • Biden Administration Unveils Proposed Renter Protection January 27, 2023

RSS Class Warfare Blog

  • Egregious Quote Mining Mistakes January 28, 2023
  • It’s a Miracle! January 26, 2023

RSS Cliff Schecter

  • Czech Republic secures pro-West direction as ex-NATO general wins January 29, 2023
  • Russia claims 14 killed in attack on hospital in eastern Ukraine January 28, 2023
  • World reacts to rising violence in Israel-Palestine conflict January 28, 2023
  • What’s next for Pakistan as its economic crisis worsens? January 28, 2023
  • Israel’s Netanyahu vows ‘swift response’ to Jerusalem attack January 28, 2023
  • Syria ‘totally rejects’ watchdog report on 2018 chemical attack January 28, 2023

RSS Climate and Capitalism

  • Top 1% grab twice as much new wealth as everyone else combined January 16, 2023
  • Ecosocialist Bookshelf, January 2023 January 15, 2023
  • 90% of world’s people to face combined extreme heat and drought January 9, 2023
  • Practical nuclear fusion is still just hype January 2, 2023
  • Ecosocialist Bookshelf: The Best of 2022 December 31, 2022
  • Degrowth and the end of capitalism December 17, 2022

RSS Climate Central

  • The looming threat for Maine’s iconic potato industry
  • Ellis Island, lighthouses among historic NJ sites flooding as seas rise
  • Still rare in Iowa, electric car powers Des Moines family’s home during blackouts
  • Storied Maine ski resort bets future on reining in high costs of warmer winters

RSS Climate Change: The Next Generation

  • Historic Greenland ice sheet rainfall unraveled May 30, 2022
  • Flip Flop: Why Variations in Earth's Magnetic Field Aren't Causing Today's Climate Change February 22, 2022
  • Let's call climate change deniers what they really are: CLIMATE LIARS! May 9, 2021

RSS Climate Citizen

  • Guest Post: Labor’s scheme to cut industrial emissions is worryingly flexible January 10, 2023
  • Ozone action on track, helping avoid 0.5C of global warming by 2100 says UNEP January 10, 2023
  • Chubb Review into the integrity of Australian Carbon Offsets sends mixed messages January 9, 2023

RSS Climate Code Red

  • Over half of all fossil fuels are extracted by just seven countries, as world heads to 3°C of warming November 28, 2022
  • Brace for impact. International aviation Net Zero 2050 flightpath crashes in Melbourne. November 19, 2022
  • Not on the same page: When science and politics collide in climate communication September 28, 2022

RSS Climate Connections

  • Climate Connections Update February 5, 2015
  • CIC’s environmental and social justice photography contest open for entries January 9, 2015
  • FBI Harassing Activists in Pacific Northwest January 7, 2015

RSS Climate Denial Crock of the Week

  • In Texas, Could Geothermal be an “Off Ramp” for Drillers? January 28, 2023
  • Could Geothermal Plan Edge Out Utah’s Mini Reactors? January 28, 2023
  • PBS: What are the Most Dangerous Areas for Climate Impacts? Where are the Climate Havens? January 28, 2023

RSS Climate Progress

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RSS Climate Snapshot

  • "Carbon tsunami" lead by Enbridge Northern Gateway takes aim at BC June 18, 2014
  • BC's tar sands? Thirteen proposed LNG projects equivalent to 13 times current BC emissions June 9, 2014
  • Car Carbon series: cool new animation, plus the jaw-dropping impact it left out May 13, 2014
  • Climate change fuels both California's record drought and "polar vortex" storms May 6, 2014

RSS ClimateSight

  • Let’s hear more from the women who leave academia (Part 2) March 23, 2021
  • Let’s hear more from the women who leave academia. March 11, 2021
  • Talking, typing, and the social model of disability July 22, 2020

RSS Club Orlov

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RSS ClusterFuck Nation

  • Pretend-O-Rama January 27, 2023
  • The End of Reality Consensus Disorder January 23, 2023

RSS Cocktailhag – FDL

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RSS Colin Tudge

  • Let's not bet the farm | Colin Tudge April 3, 2013
  • Why the world needs a renaissance of small farming | Colin Tudge September 18, 2012

RSS Common Dreams: News

  • GOP Utah Gov. Signs Ban on 'Lifesaving Medical Care' for Trans Youth January 28, 2023
  • Protests Erupt Across US After Memphis Releases Video of Ex-Cops Beating Tyre Nichols January 28, 2023
  • 'Sheer Brutality': Released Footage Shows Fired Memphis Cops Beating Tyre Nichols January 28, 2023
  • GOP House Puts Big Oil's Revolving Door Into High Gear January 28, 2023
  • At Least 7 Killed in Jerusalem Synagogue Attack After Israeli Troops Kill 10 Palestinians January 27, 2023

RSS Consortium News

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RSS Consumer Energy Report

  • Death of the Florescent Shop Light – Energy Efficiency September 21, 2022
  • Methanol VS Ethanol – Technical Merits and Political Favoritism September 21, 2022
  • Bill Nye the Science Guy – Social Primate and Nuclear Energy September 21, 2022
  • World’s Smallest Gasoline Engine – Technology Breakthrough September 21, 2022

RSS Corp Watch

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RSS CorrenteWire

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RSS CorrenteWire – Quick Hits

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RSS Counter Currents

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RSS CounterPunch

  • Less Freedom, More Money: Tony Blair’s Vaccine Passport June 14, 2021
  • The U.S. Dares to Criticize Israel October 3, 2014
  • Gaza – Betrayed In Thought and Deed August 5, 2014
  • Boeing Workers Take a Stand & Take the Heat December 31, 2013
  • Bank Corruption Down Under December 31, 2013
  • Europe’s Deadly Transition From Social Democracy to Oligarchy December 9, 2011
  • What We Can Not See December 29, 2007
  • The Sham of Homeland Security December 29, 2007
  • Beauty from the Heart of Texas December 29, 2007
  • Encountering Benazir Bhutto December 29, 2007

RSS Crooked Timber

  • Mitigated disaster January 24, 2023
  • Twigs and Branches January 22, 2023
  • Sunday photoblogging: Redcliffe flats January 22, 2023
  • On Constitutional Monetary Moments January 18, 2023

RSS Crooks and Liars

  • Students Will Sue DeSantis Over AP African American Studies January 29, 2023
  • Former LAPD Cop Doesn't Pull Punches On Tyre Nichols Video January 29, 2023
  • Eagles Christmas Album Has Raised $1.25M So Far January 28, 2023
  • Those Kitty Litter Liars Are Full Of You Know What January 28, 2023

RSS Cryptome

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RSS Culture Change

  • Low Cost Polluting: The Real American Dream?
  • We Did It: Sailing Cargo in the Aegean
  • Cure for Depending on 90K Oil Spewing Cargo Ships: Sail Power Makes Inroads, Now in Mediterranean

RSS Dahr Jamail

  • For a Worse Tomorrow November 18, 2021
  • Covid-19’s Not Through With Us Yet September 21, 2021

RSS Daily Kos Comics

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RSS Damn the Matrix

  • To peak or not to peak… January 18, 2023
  • We’re all being poisoned… January 10, 2023

RSS Dan Hagen

  • Duck and Cover, 2023 January 27, 2023
  • Tippy-toeing around Stupid People January 18, 2023

RSS Dangerous Intersection

  • About Hamilton 68 January 28, 2023
  • Project Veritas Undercover Pfizer Video Fails to Ignite News Media Interest January 27, 2023
  • We Have Ended the War on Obesity. We Are Declaring Ourselves Healthy Fat and Moving On January 27, 2023

RSS Dark Ages America

  • 7 million and going strong January 6, 2023
  • Karma City December 13, 2022
  • Muddy Waters November 12, 2022
  • The Midterms October 19, 2022

RSS David Bollier

  • John Thackara on Designing for Life January 1, 2023
  • Joe Brewer's Bold Quest to Help Restore a Bioregion December 1, 2022
  • David Sloan Wilson on Evolutionary Science and Prosocial Behavior November 1, 2022

RSS David Cay Johnston (Link – National Memo)

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RSS David Cay Johnston (Link – Tax Analysts)

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RSS David Harvey

  • A Companion to Marx’s Grundrisse: A letter from the editor January 21, 2023
  • Register for Reading Marx’s Grundrisse with David Harvey December 27, 2022
  • Interview: Creating a compassionate geography November 11, 2022

RSS David Hilfiker

  • Welcome August 4, 2011

RSS David McNally

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RSS David Roberts

  • Seattle’s unbelievable transportation megaproject fustercluck June 5, 2015
  • Please support Grist April 10, 2015
  • There’s an emerging right-wing divide on climate denial. Here’s what it means (and doesn’t) April 8, 2015

RSS Death by Car: Capitalism’s Drive to Carmageddon

  • Leading the way in preventing traffic accidents September 21, 2022
  • Truck safety rate system 3 years September 14, 2022
  • Traffic accident in the school zone August 31, 2022
  • cerebral hemorrhage in a traffic accident August 9, 2022
  • Uiseong-gun receives donations from children’s safety umbrella to prevent traffic accidents August 3, 2022

RSS Decline of the Empire

  • Defending Reality
  • Fascism And The Uniparty

RSS Deep Green Resistence News Service

  • Forever Chemicals in Every River in the US January 27, 2023
  • Dumping Nuclear Waste in the Pacific January 23, 2023
  • Wisconsin Town Gets Sued for Regulating Factory Farms January 20, 2023
  • An Environmental Defender Is Killed Every Two Days January 17, 2023

RSS Deepak Tripathi’s Diary

  • Afghanistan Awaits Uncertain Future After US Withdrawal July 7, 2021
  • UK’s Brexit Maze October 29, 2019

RSS Democratic Underground

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RSS Democratic Underground – Breaking News

  • Trump Delivers Bitter Speech Filled With Falsehoods in New Hampshire January 28, 2023
  • Memphis police disband unit that beat Tyre Nichols January 28, 2023
  • Zelensky blasts Olympic committee move: 'Any neutral flag of Russian athletes is stained with blood' January 28, 2023
  • Gov. Cox [Utah] signs high-profile bill on transgender surgeries January 28, 2023
  • Beverly Crest fatal shooting: 3 dead 4 critical, police say no suspect information January 28, 2023
  • Pence: 'Mistakes were made' in classified records handling January 28, 2023
  • Tyre Nichols' brutal beating by police shown on video January 28, 2023
  • Trump's handpicked 'MAGA all the way' candidate for RNC co-chair drops out after finishing third January 28, 2023
  • DC AG declines to charge mother of Ashli Babbitt, Jan. 6 protester killed by police January 28, 2023
  • Florida Republican sends welcome grenades to fellow Congress members January 27, 2023

RSS Democratic Underground – Good Reads

  • Cops Can't Be Allowed to Just Make Up Reasons for Pulling People Over January 28, 2023
  • AP African American Studies: 'Academic legitimacy' or 'indoctrination'? January 28, 2023
  • Why (some) Republicans want a national sales tax January 28, 2023
  • Massachusetts Bill allowing Prisoners to trade Organs for Reduced Sentences January 28, 2023
  • Officer Accused in Fatal Tyre Nichols Beating was Previously Accused of Assault January 28, 2023
  • U.S. general warns troops that war with China is possible in two years January 28, 2023
  • New study finds 6 ways to slow memory decline and lower dementia risk January 28, 2023
  • Time for a Showdown With Big Pharma: Chairman Sanders vs. Sky-High Drug Prices (Opinion by Nader) January 28, 2023
  • Twitter's Trust and Safety Head Ditches Protocol for Musk Whims January 28, 2023
  • I'm a Florida teacher who's been forced to cover up the books in my classroom. Here's why I'm suing January 28, 2023

RSS Democracy Now

  • Tyre Nichols' Parents Remember Son as "Beautiful Soul" & Describe Video of Beating by Memphis Police January 27, 2023
  • Memphis BLM Activist: Tyre Nichols' Killing Is Part of Police Brutality Crisis Facing Black Residents January 27, 2023
  • Headlines for January 27, 2023 January 27, 2023
  • Biden Proposes Renters Bill of Rights as Landlords Make Record Profits; Housing Advocates Want More January 26, 2023
  • "20 Days in Mariupol": Meet the Ukrainian Filmmaker Who Risked His Life Documenting Russian Siege January 26, 2023
  • Headlines for January 26, 2023 January 26, 2023
  • "Lacks Educational Value"? Critics Slam Florida's Rejection of AP African American Studies Course January 25, 2023
  • Doomsday Clock Moves Closer to Midnight: Peace Activist Frida Berrigan Demands Nuclear Disarmament January 25, 2023
  • As Germany & U.S. Agree on Tanks for Ukraine, German MP Accuses U.S. of Pushing Berlin into Proxy War January 25, 2023
  • Headlines for January 25, 2023 January 25, 2023

RSS Derrick Jensen

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RSS Desdemona Despair

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RSS Desertification

  • Saudi’s Ministry of Economy and Planning joins forces with UpLink to address food insecurity in arid climates (Part 2) January 25, 2023
  • Saudi’s Ministry of Economy and Planning joins forces with UpLink to address food insecurity in arid climates (Part 1) January 25, 2023
  • National plan aims to push back desertification January 25, 2023
  • Reclaiming degraded land key for urban revival January 18, 2023
  • MEET THE TREE MAN OF INDIA’S THAR DESERT January 18, 2023

RSS deSmog Blog

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RSS Digbys Blog

  • Untitled January 12, 2020
  • They can save the world by @BloggersRUs January 12, 2020
  • Just drifting: R.I.P. Buck Henry By Dennis Hartley January 12, 2020
  • It looks like he wants to take Iraq's oil money January 12, 2020
  • Untitled January 11, 2020
  • Let's not forget who worked with Suleimani's IRGC January 11, 2020

RSS Disinfo – Ecology

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RSS Dispatches from the Underclass

  • Exclusive Interview w/ Hezbollah’s Second-In-Command Sheikh Naim Qassem January 15, 2023
  • UN Official Calls for Lifting ‘Illegal’ Syria Sanctions After Seeing Devastation First-Hand November 21, 2022
  • Europe Self-Destructing for U.S. Proxy War In Ukraine, w/ Prabhat Patnaik November 21, 2022
  • US Brings World to Brink of Nuclear Armageddon As Europe Self Destructs, w/ Ali Abunimah November 21, 2022
  • Reality vs Propaganda: Understanding Iran’s Protests, w/ Navid Zarrinnal October 16, 2022

RSS Dissent Magazine

  • Paul Goodman Replies January 27, 2023
  • Universities and Intellectuals January 27, 2023
  • My Kaduchas And Yours January 27, 2023
  • Herman Kahn: Ideologist of Military Strategy January 27, 2023

RSS Dissident Voice

  • Google Hides the Main Reason for America’s Arming of Ukraine January 28, 2023
  • Don’t Mention the War: Interview with Joan Roelofs January 28, 2023
  • “Trans” vs. Children January 28, 2023
  • The Righteous Outrage of Norman Finkelstein January 28, 2023
  • A Prescription January 28, 2023
  • If We Ever Needed George Carlin January 28, 2023
  • Drug Price Showdown Time for Chairman Bernie Sanders January 28, 2023
  • The Power of the Written Word January 28, 2023

RSS Do the Math

  • Keeping Up On Appearances January 6, 2023

RSS Dollars & Sense Blog

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RSS Doug Stanhope

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RSS Douglas Rushkoff

  • Escape plans of the rich and famous November 30, 2022
  • Cyber: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires November 30, 2022
  • Survival of the Richest November 30, 2022

RSS Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

  • PCR interviewed by Greg Hunter USAWatchdog.com January 28, 2023
  • US Army Faces Worst Recruiting Numbers Since End of Draft Era, Offers Medals & Promotions for Referrals, mRNA mandate and woke agenda prompts immense crisis. January 28, 2023

RSS Dredd Blog

  • The Citizen Journalist In America - 4 January 22, 2023
  • In Search Of Ocean Heat - 13 January 21, 2023
  • Western Pacific January 20, 2023
  • Weddell Sea January 20, 2023

RSS Ear to the Ground – Truth Dig

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RSS Early Warning

  • New York Not Close to Exiting Lockdown April 17, 2020
  • Is New York Containing Covid? April 8, 2020
  • New York vs Italy March 23, 2020

RSS Earth First

  • “UNC Dildo-Boy” accosts homophobic preacher, releases anti-technology declaration March 2, 2014
  • Subpoena caps bad week for fossil fuel March 2, 2014
  • Less Than 60 Hours Left to Support Indigenous Land Defenders! February 18, 2014

RSS Earth Observatory: Image of the Day, Natural Hazards, and News

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RSS Earth Observatory: Image of the Day

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RSS Earth Observatory: Natural Hazards

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RSS Earth Policy Institute Blog

  • Data Highlight - Wind Power Beats Nuclear Again in China
  • Data Highlight - Plastic Bag Bans or Fees Cover 49 Million Americans
  • Plan B Update - Fossil Fuel Development in the Arctic is a Bad Investment

RSS Ecocide Alert

  • SBOBET Review January 21, 2023

RSS Ecohuman World

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RSS Eco-Shock News

  • Radio Ecoshock: Polycrisis Angst: Denial or Gaia? January 25, 2023

RSS Ecological Headstand

  • Dilke, Chapman, and Dahlberg Pop-ups May 15, 2021
  • For the Abolition of the Wages System! June 18, 2015
  • The Incredible Shrinking Blog June 9, 2015
  • Keynes "hadn't got round to it" May 25, 2015

RSS Ecological Sociology

  • Commons Enabling Infrastucture August 31, 2013
  • A Short History of Progress: Book Review August 26, 2013
  • Foucault, Power, Truth and Ecology August 14, 2013

RSS Ecologise

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RSS Economic Hardship Reporting Project

  • The Myth of the Socially Conscious Corporation January 27, 2023
  • Salt Lake and Other Utah Cities Used Most of a $10 Million Homeless Services Fund to Hire Cops January 25, 2023
  • No Vacancy January 18, 2023
  • Why Did a Man Starve to Death in an Arkansas Jail? January 17, 2023
  • The Silent Epidemic Affecting Generation Z January 12, 2023
  • A Museum for the Working Class January 9, 2023

RSS Economic Undertow

  • Z Marks the Spot September 1, 2022
  • The Death of Economics June 9, 2021
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RSS Empire Burlesque

  • Generation of Vipers: The Original Sin and Continuous Crimes of America’s Involvement in Afghanistan August 17, 2021
  • Reich and Reality: Culture Wars of the Conquerors August 10, 2021

RSS Empirical Magazine

  • From the Empirical Archives: Genius or Folly? August 30, 2013
  • From the Empirical Archives: Nights Such as These August 29, 2013
  • From the Empirical Archives: Second Time Foster Child August 28, 2013

RSS EmptyWheel

  • Billy B and Johnny D Drank Whiskey before the Special Counsel Appointment
  • The Trump-Biden-Pence Documents Story Is Not (Yet) about Overclassification
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RSS Energy Balance

  • “The Oil Machine” and the Changing Climate. November 22, 2022
  • Architects of Our Future: Energy and the Changing Climate. October 23, 2022
  • The Energy War, and Climate Breakdown. August 17, 2022
  • “Reading Hydro” – Microhydropower on the River Thames at Caversham Weir (Reading, UK). May 17, 2022
  • “Four Meals From Anarchy” – We Must Grow More Food Locally. April 23, 2022
  • Russia-Ukraine War and the Changing Energy Landscape. March 16, 2022

RSS Environment & Food Justice

  • National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Statement on the Climate Crisis October 31, 2019
  • La Lucha por La Sierra | Scion of Texas Oil Barons Seeks to Overturn Historic Use Rights to the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant August 30, 2018
  • Biopiracy in Mexico | Foundation stealing wild beehives in Yucatán June 14, 2018

RSS Envisionation Blog

  • 2023 – The Dawning Era Of ‘Overshoot’ & ‘Intervention’ (Climate Engineering) December 30, 2022
  • Byronic Nomads – Francesco da Mosto discusses the fate of Venice December 28, 2022
  • But what is ‘Overshoot?’ – Rafe Pomerance December 5, 2022
  • Rabbi Yonatan Neril – Religion as a global force November 28, 2022

RSS Extraenvironmentalist Blog and Podcasts

  • [ Episode #95 // Economy of Things ] January 28, 2017
  • [ Episode #94 // Rocking the Google Bus ] October 25, 2016
  • [ Episode #93 // Climate Agreements ] September 5, 2016

RSS ExtraEnvironmentalist’s Videos

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RSS ExtraGeographic

  • An Unsuitable Job for a Woman film review
    On its release in 1982 An Unsuitable Job for a Woman was criticised for being under-powered and perfunctory. But 40 years on, what were seen as weaknesses are now strengths.
  • Covid-19 antibody test photo
    A lateral flow antibody test which involves pricking the tip of your finger to get a blood spot for testing.
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    Cartoon about mobile phones.
  • The Shard / London Bridge photo gallery
    A photo gallery of The Shard / London Bridge.
  • David Bowie
    Thank you, David.

RSS Facts for Working People

  • Sudden Opening to Win Mumia Abu-Jamal's Freedom. Please Act NOW! January 27, 2023
  • Microagrressions You Say January 25, 2023
  • Why Are We Bombarded With Advertisements? January 24, 2023

RSS Fair: Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

  • As Unions Gain 273,000 Members, Media Opt for Gloomy Headlines January 26, 2023
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  • How Does Climate Change Affect Your Health? July 18, 2022
  • Health Screening Tests Every Woman Should Have July 12, 2022
  • The Day 2 Antigen Test When Travelling From The UK  November 19, 2021

RSS Farooque Chowdhury’s Diary

  • Road rage faces student spirit August 4, 2018
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RSS Feasta

  • Update from the Wellbeing Economy Ireland Hub January 27, 2023
  • Another Teachable Moment from the Return of the Trillion Dollar Coin January 26, 2023
  • Mining, minerals and limits: grounding the green transition January 24, 2023

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RSS Foreign Confidential

  • Film History: the French New Wave July 2, 2021
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RSS FracTracker

  • Assessment of Rework Permits on Oil Production from Operational Wells Within the 3,200-Foot Public Health Protection Zone January 24, 2023
  • Environmental Health Fellowship Opening – Summer 2023 January 20, 2023
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RSS Get Real List: Chris Nelder

  • Moving on… July 9, 2021
  • My new gig December 5, 2015
  • Announcing the Energy Transition Show October 14, 2015

RSS Gil Smart

  • With Gil Smart on guns, the NRA January 19, 2015
  • Gil Smart right on development February 8, 2015
  • Gil Smart makes sense May 19, 2014
  • Right on, Gil Smart February 17, 2014

RSS Glen Ford – Black Agenda Report

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RSS Global Guerrillas

  • The Long Night is Coming January 4, 2019
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  • Farewell RSS Feeds May 18, 2022

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RSS Green is the New Red

  • Trump Supporter Promises Legislation to Label Protest as “Economic Terrorism” November 22, 2016
  • Violence against environmentalists is now at an all-time high July 8, 2016
  • “To Build a Fire”: New Split EP With “Old Lines” and Will Potter June 13, 2016
  • “It changes who you are—forever. What you do with that change is what defines who you are.” April 28, 2016
  • Exclusive: New Virtual Reality Investigation Goes Inside Factory Farms April 13, 2016
  • New Sticker — Animal Rights Activists Must “Join or Die” February 22, 2016
  • “Truth and Power” TV series features Will Potter on “eco-terrorism,” ag-gag laws, and investigative journalism February 15, 2016
  • This woman rowed straight into a hurricane. And you should too. February 11, 2016
  • 6 Lessons From How the FBI and Media Treat Militia Groups January 12, 2016
  • Here’s How One Activist Convinced the FBI to Leave Him Alone December 7, 2015

RSS Green on Huffington Post

  • Elusive Wildcat Found To Be Living On Mount Everest January 28, 2023
  • Taiwan Is Retreating From Nuclear Energy. At What Cost? January 27, 2023
  • Officials In Colorado Treated To 400 Bear 'Selfies' On Wildlife Camera January 27, 2023
  • Biden Administration Cements Mining Ban Near Minnesota's Boundary Waters January 26, 2023
  • Biden Reinstates Logging Ban In America’s Largest National Forest January 25, 2023
  • Tucker Carlson Says 'What Is That?' To Lenticular 'Vagina Cloud.' Twitter Erupts. January 24, 2023
  • New Pill Treats Diabetic Cats Without Daily Insulin Shots January 23, 2023
  • Dolphins Make A Splash In The Bronx River For First Time In 5 Years January 23, 2023

RSS Greenpeace Blogs

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RSS Greg Palast

  • The Words That Could Convict Trump January 25, 2023
  • Is Santos the “Manchurian Candidate” for Brazil’s Bolsonaro? January 10, 2023

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RSS Grist

  • Documents show how 19 ‘Cop City’ activists got charged with terrorism January 27, 2023
  • How Pittsburgh found a secret climate weapon in ‘the thrilling world of municipal budgeting’ January 27, 2023
  • Oil refineries are polluting US waterways. Too often, it’s legal. January 26, 2023
  • The best way to save forests? Legally recognize Indigenous lands. January 26, 2023

RSS Growth Busters

  • Now HERE’S What We Call an Eco-Superhero January 15, 2023
  • A Vasectomy Could Save Herschel Walker a Lot of Money December 28, 2022
  • Bleak Friday, 8 Billion Post-Mortem and Damage Done by Guilt December 1, 2022
  • 8 Billion is Too Many: Don’t be a Twit About Overpopulation November 9, 2022

RSS Guernica Mag

  • The Shape of Vodou in Diaspora January 23, 2023
  • I Am the Ghost Here January 16, 2023
  • Extraction January 9, 2023
  • Wajo December 15, 2022

RSS Guy McPherson’s Blog

  • Livestream: Ask an Ecologist Anything January 23, 2023
  • Science Snippets: On the Rate of Environmental Change January 23, 2023

RSS Health After Oil

  • Public Health’s Response to Decline: Loyalty to the 1% December 15, 2014

RSS Hot Topic: Global Warming and the Future of New Zealand

  • Postcards from La La Land #132: time warps and twaddle June 7, 2018
  • The final cut: crank paper on NZ temperature record gets its rebuttal – warming continues unabated May 2, 2018
  • Anthropogenic climate change is real: pithy post-punk anthem for the Trump generation December 9, 2017

RSS How to Save the World

  • Walking in the Dark January 26, 2023
  • Hope, on the Balance of Probabilities January 23, 2023
  • Making Sense of Scents January 21, 2023

RSS I am Not a Number

  • THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE? May 19, 2022
  • Alt-Right conspiracy theories are obviously true… except they are not. January 24, 2022
  • The civil war in the LP was NEVER about antisemitism. November 20, 2020

RSS I Cite

  • "Feudalism Lives on in the Delta" -- Ray Sprigle August 17, 2020
  • Critical Theory and Climate Change 2 April 2, 2020
  • Critical Theory and Climate Change 1 March 23, 2020
  • Untitled July 18, 2019
  • America's obsession with rooting out communism is making a comeback September 25, 2018

RSS Iamronen

  • Religiousness in Yoga Part 17: Nirodha October 4, 2022
  • Religiousness in Yoga Part 16: Jñāna, Bhakti, Mantra, Rāja, Kriyā, Karma, Laya, Tantra, Haṭha, Kuṇḍalinī October 1, 2022
  • Religiousness in Yoga Part 15: Antarāya, Iśvara-praṇidhāna September 24, 2022
  • Religiousness in Yoga Part 14: Bandha September 20, 2022
  • Religiousness in Yoga Part 13: Antaraṅga Sādhana, Saṃyama, Kaivalya September 16, 2022

RSS Ian Welsh

  • Open Thread January 28, 2023

RSS Idea Explorer

  • Upgrades October 8, 2022
  • Learning As We Go October 29, 2021
  • Values and Responsibilities March 11, 2021
  • Habitat Loss November 9, 2020
  • Marginal Hope August 24, 2020

RSS Idea Explorer – Big Pic Explorer

  • Consumption Drop November 25, 2020
  • Habitat Loss November 9, 2020
  • General Update February 24, 2020

RSS Idea Explorer: Land of Conscience

  • Doubt December 4, 2022
  • Remembrance September 22, 2021
  • Seeking Miracles July 15, 2021

RSS If You Love This Planet – Helen Caldicott

  • Steven Starr, Bruce Gagnon and William Hartung at the Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction symposium April 18, 2017
  • Dr. Helen Caldicott, Ted Postol, Max Tegmark and Alan Robock at The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction symposium June 23, 2016
  • Dr. Caldicott’s October 2014 speech: The Ukraine Crisis, Is Nuclear Conflict Likely? February 17, 2015
  • Dr. Helen Caldicott interviewed by Bob Herbert about her latest book, “Loving This Planet” December 28, 2012

RSS Indybay Features

  • Renewed Sense of Urgency Driving Reproductive Rights Actions
  • Time to Close Guantanamo Prison
  • Unholy Days and Nights in Bethlehem
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RSS Indybay Newswire

  • There is nothing to fear from China
  • Oil Industry Seeks Supreme Court Review of California Offshore Fracking Ban
  • Turn of the times and Negotiations instead of truce
  • Biden 2024 Decision Pits the Party’s Elites Against Most Democrats
  • Russia's war against Ukraine and What are the war aims?

RSS Information Clearing House

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RSS Inside Left – The OFFICIAL Anti-Olympics Blog™

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RSS Institute for Public Accuracy

  • War is a Racket: Fox Guarding Hen House; Stock Buybacks Rip Off Taxpayers January 26, 2023
  • Regulators Could Break Up Wells Fargo — If They Stay Strong January 25, 2023
  • Confronting the Corporate Exploitation of Tweens January 24, 2023
  • Peru: Protests, Oligarchy and Racism January 23, 2023
  • New Dem Leader Jeffries “Has Record of Defending Human Rights Violations” January 19, 2023
  • Patient-Nurse Ratios: Chronic Problem Made Worse by Pandemic January 18, 2023

RSS International Debt Observatory

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RSS Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer Blog

  • Five Things We Need to Know About the “Fiscal Cliff” December 10, 2012
  • Wasteful Pentagon Spending and Costly Wars Hurting Minnesota Communities November 6, 2012

RSS Jacobin

  • University of Chicago Graduate Workers Are Trying to Unionize January 28, 2023
  • As Democracy Fades in Port-au-Prince, Ottawa Is Backing Haiti’s Repressive Police January 28, 2023
  • Artist Romare Bearden’s Reckoning With the South January 28, 2023
  • For Workers, Hospitals Have Become the New Steel Mills — Minus the Strong Unions January 28, 2023
  • Ron DeSantis Prefers to Call His War on Workers a War on “Wokeness” January 28, 2023
  • The Hopeful Romanticism of John Keats January 27, 2023

RSS Jeremy Scahill

  • But What About Hamas’s Rockets? May 14, 2021

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RSS John Cook Video Uploads

  • The Science of Cranky Uncle Part 3: Fighting Misinformation with Critical Thinking December 29, 2021
  • The Science of Cranky Uncle Part 2: Inoculation Theory December 21, 2021
  • The Science of Cranky Uncle Part 1: Why We Can't Ignore Misinformation December 14, 2021
  • Climate misinformation: Will Happer on CO2 being plant food January 24, 2021

RSS John Hively

  • The War Over Global Warming is Class Warfare on Many Fronts July 24, 2021
  • How the Billionaires Corporate News Media Have Been Used to Brainwash Us May 1, 2021

RSS John Pilger

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RSS John Zerzan: Anarchy Radio

  • Anarchy Radio 01 24 2023 January 25, 2023
  • Anarchy Radio 01 17 2023 January 18, 2023
  • Anarchy Radio 01 10 2023 January 11, 2023

RSS Jonathan Turley

  • “I Water You, You Water Me”: High School Assistant Principal Under Fire for Raising Money to Pay Off Coyote January 28, 2023
  • The Pelosi Tapes: The Video of the October Attack Show New Details and Refute Sensational Theories January 28, 2023
  • Masterpiece Cakeshop Loses Appeal Over Gender Transition Cake January 27, 2023
  • And Then They Came For “The”: Associated Press Warns Use of the Article Can Be “Dehumanizing” January 27, 2023

RSS Karl Grossman

  • I've switched from this site to my website -- www.karlgrossman.com -- for my blog. November 29, 2015
  • The End of Police Raids -- at Long Last -- on Gays of Fire Island July 1, 2015
  • "Fire Island Was Paradise,Truly Paradise" June 21, 2015
  • My First Big Story June 1, 2015
  • Disaster Waiting to Happen at Indian Point May 12, 2015

RSS Karl North Eco-Intelligence

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RSS Kate Ausburn

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RSS Keith Farnish

  • Uprooting Civilization (Part 2) May 7, 2014
  • Uprooting Civilization (Part 1) February 21, 2014
  • The Problem With…Conspiracy Theories January 7, 2014

RSS Knight Science Journalism – MIT

  • The Tracker Now Lives Here … November 1, 2015
  • A farewell post: Three reasons why good science writing is worth defending. January 6, 2015
  • Globe story on non-invasive prenatal testing offers murky argument. December 31, 2014
  • (UPDATED/2*) What Ho? A 2014 List of Lists of best, worst, or otherwisest in 2014 December 30, 2014
  • Cancer & poverty: When a reporter’s journey becomes part of the story. December 23, 2014

RSS Kulture Critic

  • In the Folds of the Flesh: Philosophic Reflections on Touch November 6, 2021

RSS Kunstler Cast

  • John B. McLemore Email to JHK: Huffing gas fumes in shittown alabama June 1, 2017
  • Release: S-Town Podcast Prequel: KunstlerCast Ready for Binge Listening May 31, 2017
  • KunstlerCast: S-Town May 31, 2017
  • James Howard Kunstler on John B. McLemore of S-Town May 31, 2017
  • Transcript: KunstlerCast: S-Town May 31, 2017

RSS Kurt Kobb

  • Taking a short break - no post this week January 22, 2023

RSS Lack of Environment

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RSS Law and Disorder

  • Law and Disorder January 16, 2023 January 16, 2023
  • Law and Disorder January 9, 2023 January 9, 2023
  • Law and Disorder January 2, 2023 January 2, 2023

RSS Le Monde diplomatique – English edition

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RSS Le Monde diplomatique – Open Page

  • Is Venezuela back on its feet? January 20, 2023
  • Why Chinese thought matters January 18, 2023
  • Nepal-China relationship hinges on Tibetans January 18, 2023
  • January: the longer view January 11, 2023
  • Peru's permanent coup January 11, 2023

RSS Leaving Babylon

  • Even Iran is laughing at us November 9, 2020

RSS Lee Camp

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RSS Lee Fang

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RSS Leonardo Boff

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RSS Les Leopold

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RSS Life Itself

  • On Snowflakes, Blogs and Loneliness January 13, 2023
  • Why the Year 2022 Stood Out? January 6, 2023
  • Bad Karma April 9, 2022

RSS Limited, Inc.

  • In what language do we read faces? January 28, 2023
  • what is wrong with Von Mises (Ludwig, not Richard) January 27, 2023
  • ChatGPT, Perceptual absorbance and machine dreams January 24, 2023

RSS Link TV – Earth Focus

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RSS Low-Tech Magazine

  • What if We Replace Guns and Bullets with Bows and Arrows? November 23, 2022
  • When Lethal Weapons Grew on Trees November 23, 2022
  • How to Build a Practical Household Bike Generator March 7, 2022

RSS LRB Blog

  • The New Weather January 27, 2023
  • Diplomatic Immunity January 27, 2023
  • Low Resolution History January 24, 2023
  • Crying Shells January 24, 2023
  • Escape from Love Island January 20, 2023

RSS Luis J. Rodriguez

  • Updates from Luis J. Rodriguez (Mixcoatl Itztlacuiloh) August 2, 2022
  • Help Luis J. Rodriguez become California governor January 5, 2022
  • Stand Firm on Election Day November 3, 2020

RSS Mabinogogiblog

  • If you oppose climate change, join the 50/60 campaign January 3, 2023
  • Democracy, Dictatorship and Journalism January 2, 2023
  • After Putin's war, the UN should introduce an Index of Democracy and Human Rights January 1, 2023
  • Current climate change denial memes December 29, 2022

RSS Manicore – Accueil

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RSS Marginal Revolution

  • *Professor of Apocalypse: The Many Lives of Jacob Taubes* January 28, 2023
  • Saturday assorted links January 28, 2023
  • Text-to-4D dynamic scene generation January 28, 2023

RSS Mark Biskeborn – Underground Essays

  • Kafkaesque November 11, 2014
  • Larry Summers Still Living Large April 9, 2013
  • War and Corruption Deficits: Insects and Leviathans January 21, 2013
  • Breaking News: Lt. Col. Shaffer Accuses Former CIA Dir. Tenet December 29, 2012

RSS Mark Fiore

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RSS Mark Lynas

  • COP27 outcome begins to address ‘loss and damage’, but the 1.5 Paris goal is looking highly unlikely November 20, 2022
  • Misinformation in the media: global coverage of GMOs 2019-2021 November 17, 2022
  • Why I’m no longer lonely as a pro-science environmentalist October 3, 2022
  • 5 ways to face down Putin’s food blackmail tactics July 13, 2022
  • UKRAINE ENERGY SOLIDARITY PLAN: How we can stop funding Putin’s war machine May 13, 2022

RSS Martin Wolf

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RSS Matt Bruenig

  • Solar Panels Reduced My Electric Bill by $2,677 in 2022 January 1, 2023
  • The Contradictions of Deliberative Democracy December 30, 2022
  • Babies on Planes December 29, 2022

RSS Matt Taibbi

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RSS Matt Wuerker

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RSS Max Keiser

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RSS Media Lens

  • ‘End Stage Capitalism’: Collapsing Britain And The Climate Crisis January 26, 2023
  • Harry The ‘Traitor’ And Lynch ‘The Grinch’ – The Corporate Media’s Automatic Smear Machine January 19, 2023
  • ‘Nearly Every War Has Been The Result Of Media Lies’: Julian Assange, State-Corporate Media And Ukraine December 14, 2022

RSS Media Matters – Environment

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RSS Media Matters – Everything

  • Fox guest on possible troop withdrawal from Afghanistan: "The solution is more blood, sweat, and tears" 
  • Fox host defends Trump: "Just because you use harsh language doesn't mean your intent is to denigrate another race"
  • Fox News is talking more about abortion than the Democratic debates did

RSS Media Roots

  • Media Roots Radio: New Wave of Anti-LGBTQ Legislation, Manhattan Institute, CIA & Spooky Rufo’s Disney Leaks 2 of 2 August 6, 2022
  • Media Roots Radio: Coming Down from the Shock of Overturning Roe & J Peterson Unravels August 5, 2022
  • Empire Files: Abby Martin at RIMPAC War Games: The Inside Story [PREVIEW] July 22, 2022

RSS Methane Hydrates

  • Joint New Zealand - German 3D survey reveals massive seabed gas hydrate and methane system May 12, 2014
  • Noctilucent clouds: further confirmation of large methane releases December 10, 2013
  • Earthquake M6.7 hits Sea of Okhotsk October 2, 2013

RSS Michael Hudson

  • Introducing the Geopolitical Economy Hour January 18, 2023
  • Systemic Sponsors of Self-Interest January 17, 2023
  • China the Change Agent – Patreon Q&A #3 December 12, 2022

RSS Michael Miller – Viewpoint

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RSS Michael Parenti

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RSS Mike Philbin – Free Planet

  • STAR CITIZEN - HALF A BILLION DOLLARS - TEN YEARS AND COUNTING September 1, 2021
  • ELECTRO-BULLET: reinterpreting a classic... August 28, 2021
  • LAST OF THE CATHEDRA available in trade paperback from Amazon. October 24, 2020

RSS Mondoweiss

  • Brad Sherman models the perfect pro-Israel Democrat January 28, 2023
  • A day of protest and resistance across Palestine following ‘massacre’ in Jenin January 27, 2023

RSS Mons Angelorum: Deadly Serious 3

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RSS Mons Angelorum: Waiting for Good Weather

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RSS Mother Jones

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RSS MR Zine

  • Yoshie Furuhashi, "After MRZine" January 1, 2017
  • Louis Allday, "Controlling the Narrative on Syria" December 14, 2016
  • Marta Harnecker, "Fidel, Today and Forever" December 11, 2016
  • Prabhat Patnaik, "Developing 'Infrastructure'" December 9, 2016
  • Susie Day, "Forward Ever, Normal Never: Taking Down Donald Trump" December 6, 2016
  • Samir Amin, "The Election of Donald Trump" December 1, 2016

RSS Musings on Iraq

  • This Day In Iraqi History - Jan 28 UK claimed Mosul province which it took after WWI ended January 28, 2023
  • This Day In Iraqi History - Jan 27 300-400 killed by police protesting against Anglo-Iraq Treaty January 27, 2023
  • This Day In Iraqi History - Jan 26 Saddam ordered most of Iraqi Air Force to fly to Iran to save it from Gulf War Never got planes back January 26, 2023

RSS Nafeez Ahmed

  • IDF's Gaza assault is to control Palestinian gas, avert Israeli energy crisis | Nafeez Ahmed July 9, 2014
  • World Bank and UN carbon offset scheme 'complicit' in genocidal land grabs - NGOs | Nafeez Ahmed July 3, 2014
  • The open source revolution is coming and it will conquer the 1% - ex CIA spy | Nafeez Ahmed June 19, 2014
  • Iraq blowback: Isis rise manufactured by insatiable oil addiction June 16, 2014

RSS Naked Capitalism

  • Links 1/28/2023 January 28, 2023
  • California’s Plan to Disappear the Homeless January 28, 2023
  • Rural Americans Aren’t Included in Inflation Figures – and for Them, the Cost of Living May Be Rising Faster January 28, 2023
  • Contesting The Ultimate Lockdown: Non-Vax Covid Prophylactic Home Remedies (Plus Bharat’s Nasal Vaccine) January 27, 2023
  • 2:00PM Water Cooler 1/27/2023 January 27, 2023

RSS Naomi Klein

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RSS Naomi Klein – Guardian.UK

  • Greenwashing a police state: the truth behind Egypt’s Cop27 masquerade – podcast November 4, 2022
  • Greenwashing a police state: the truth behind Egypt’s Cop27 masquerade | Naomi Klein October 18, 2022

RSS Nature Protects, As She is Protected

  • No Name Calling Please, Give Us Evidence Which Proves GM Crops Are Safe March 30, 2017
  • Let’s Be Honest About Genetically Modified Crops March 9, 2017

RSS Navdanya’s Diary

  • Food for health: the right to health is to live healthy lives June 3, 2020
  • Making peace with the Earth. 600 organisations urge a sustainable new start April 24, 2020
  • The Seed War March 20, 2020

RSS New Internationalist

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RSS New Left Project

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RSS New World Notes

  • Observations on Work June 20, 2021
  • The GOP and the Dems: Hypocrisy and Betrayal June 13, 2021
  • Can Technology Save Us? June 8, 2021

RSS News Junkie Post

  • Qu’est donc la memoire? July 31, 2022
  • The Stench of Extinction July 20, 2022
  • Forget Wars on Covid and Terror: War on Climate Collapse Is the Only War of Necessity for Human Survival August 22, 2021
  • Covid Fear Management Policies: Distractions from and Tests for Looming Climate Collapse August 4, 2021
  • France Neoliberal Macron: Vanguard of a Covid Global Corporate Dictatorship? July 24, 2021
  • Magic Woman of Haiti’s Mountains July 18, 2021

RSS NOAA: Monthly State of the Climate Report

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RSS Notes from the Aboveground

  • On Inequality July 27, 2015
  • Shameless is as shameless does July 21, 2015

RSS NYT Examiner

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RSS Occupy.com

  • The National Debt Doesn't Matter, and It Can Go Unpaid Forever January 27, 2023
  • The GOP Speaker Battle May Have Been a Dry Run for the Next January 6th January 16, 2023
  • Who's to Blame for the New GOP House Majority, Part III: The Supreme Court December 9, 2022
  • Who's to Blame for the New GOP House Majority, Part II: Racial Gerrymandering November 23, 2022
  • Who's to Blame for the New GOP House Majority, Part I: Andrew Cuomo November 19, 2022
  • Occupy the Cinema: The First Attack Ads: Hollywood vs. Upton Sinclair November 11, 2022
  • The Threat of Republican Fascism, Part V: Preparing for a Wave of Mass Political Violence November 4, 2022
  • Green New Deal XX: A Just Green Future Needs Universal Basic Income November 4, 2022

RSS Occupy las Vegas

  • Cardano Blockchain Bridges Digital Divide with World Mobile-IOG Partnership January 27, 2023
  • Bitget Launches Zero-Fee EUR & GBP Deposits, Enhancing Crypto Mass Adoption January 20, 2023
  • Play-to-Earn in Meta Masters Guild! Get Your $MEMAG Tokens Now! January 13, 2023

RSS Occupy Wall Street

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RSS Oddity Central

  • Tech Entrepreneur Spends $2 Million a Year to Regain His Youth January 27, 2023
  • Russian IT Specialist Has Been Hiding in Freezing Forest to Avoid Army Conscription January 27, 2023
  • Man Gets Wrongfully Arrested 3 Times for Having the Same Name as Notorious Criminal January 26, 2023
  • Man Fakes His Own Death to See Who Would Attend His Funeral January 26, 2023
  • Argentinian Farmers Plant Lionel Messi’s Face in Their Corn Fields January 25, 2023
  • High-School Lights Have Been On 24/7 for Almost Two Years And No One Can Turn Them Off January 25, 2023

RSS Of Two Minds

  • Heretical Thoughts on Orthodoxies January 27, 2023
  • The Race to the Bottom Accelerates January 26, 2023
  • You Want Truly "Sound Money"? A Thought Experiment January 24, 2023

RSS One Penny Sheet

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RSS One Struggle – South Florida

  • Organize – Or Else! November 4, 2022
  • They Snatch Our Rights – We Bite Back! June 26, 2022
  • DeSantis and the Florida Fasc June 6, 2022
  • We Scream for Change and They Respond by Supporting the Status Quo March 29, 2022

RSS Orion Magazine

  • Jessica Lee Answers the Orion Questionnaire January 24, 2023
  • Merloyd Ludington Lawrence: A Tribute July 22, 2022
  • Five Questions for Megan Mayhew Bergman, author of How Strange a Season March 29, 2022

RSS Our Finite World

  • 2023: Expect a financial crash followed by major energy-related changes January 9, 2023
  • The economy is moving from a tailwind pushing it along to a headwind holding it back December 16, 2022
  • Today’s Energy Crisis Is Very Different from the Energy Crisis of 2005 November 17, 2022

RSS Pando Daily

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RSS Paul Haeder

  • If We Ever Needed George Carlin January 28, 2023
  • The Power of the Written Word January 28, 2023
  • Mental Health Outcomes Tied to “Other Outcomes” January 24, 2023

RSS Paul Kingsnorth – Elswhere

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RSS Paul L. Street

  • Capitalism, Race, and the Tragic Decline of US-Black Baseball: It’s the Capitalism-Imperialism, Stupid December 16, 2022
  • Dear Liberals: Stop Your Smug Celebration of the Midterms December 16, 2022
  • Eight More Takes on the Mid-Terms Further Reflections on a Hot Mess December 16, 2022
  • Purple Haze: Seventeen Takes on the Mid-Terms December 16, 2022

RSS PBD – Progressive Blog Digest

  • 46 January 21, 2021
  • HIS LEGACY January 20, 2021
  • THE END GAME January 19, 2021

RSS PeakOil.com News

  • Visualizing U.S. Consumption of Fuel and Materials per Capita January 28, 2023
  • No, the World Is Not Heading Toward ‘Mass Extinction’ January 28, 2023
  • Gasoline Price More Expensive Than Year Ago January 28, 2023

RSS Peak Prosperity Blog

  • More Vaccine Shots Equals More Covid-19 January 26, 2023
  • The News Continues to Disappear January 24, 2023
  • It’s Either Capitalism or Failure  January 24, 2023

RSS Peak Prosperity: Daily Digest

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RSS Peak Prosperity: Featured Voices

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RSS People Before Profit Blog

  • "Blacklisted Again" Michael Berkowitz on "Trumbo" by Norman Markowitz December 10, 2015
  • A Corrected and Updated Version of The "Madness" of Donald Trump by Norman Markowitz December 9, 2015
  • The "Madness" of Donald Trump by Norman Markowitz December 8, 2015

RSS Phlegm

  • "we fight each other while it devours us" Belgium June 2017 December 1, 2017
  • West Didsbury Manchester. May 2017 December 1, 2017
  • Dulwich picture gallery. April 25th 2017 December 1, 2017

RSS Phyllis Bennis

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RSS Physicist-Retired Newsvine

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RSS Pink Tank

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RSS PlanetSave – Climate

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RSS Political Violence @ a Glance

  • The Colombian Government and the ELN Rebels Are Negotiating Again. Women Need A Seat at the Table January 26, 2023
  • Popular Mobilization Makes Democracy More Likely After a Coup January 17, 2023
  • Best Books of 2022: Fiction and Graphic Novel Edition January 11, 2023

RSS Popular Resistance

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RSS PRN with Danny Schechter

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RSS Progressive Radio Network

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RSS ProPublica

  • Judge Orders Washington State Private Special Education School to Turn Over Records January 27, 2023
  • Nearly Half of All Sheriffs in Louisiana Are Violating Public Records Laws January 27, 2023
  • The Museum Built on Native American Burial Mounds January 27, 2023
  • What to Know About TurboTax Before You File Your Taxes This Year January 26, 2023
  • Nevada’s New Governor Vilified Lobbyist’s Influence in COVID Lab Scandal, Then Asked Him to Help With Budget January 25, 2023

RSS Project Censored

  • The Professional Managerial Class Strikes Back! January 28, 2023
  • “Forever Chemicals” in Rainwater a Global Threat to Human Health January 24, 2023
  • Deadly Decade for Environmental Activists January 24, 2023

RSS Public Intelligence

  • DHS-FBI-NCTC Bulletin: Wide-Ranging Domestic Violent Extremist Threat to Persist
  • (U//FOUO) DHS Bulletin: Online Foreign Influence Snapshot August 2022
  • National Intelligence Council Map: Russian Filtration Operations
  • (U//FOUO) DHS Bulletin: Russia Cyber Threat Overview Substantive Revision
  • (U//FOUO) DHS-FBI-NCTC Bulletin: Dissemination of Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures Used by Buffalo Attacker Likely To Enhance Capabilities of Future Lone Offenders
  • DHS-FBI-NCTC U.S. Violent Extremist Mobilization Indicators 2021 Edition
  • (U//FOUO) DHS Reference Aid: Post-Title 42 Encounter Projections at the US Southwest Border
  • (U//FOUO) DHS Bulletin: Domestic Violent Extremist Activity Likely in Response to US Supreme Court Decision on Abortion
  • 2022 Bilderberg Meeting Participant List
  • (U//FOUO) DHS Reference Aid: 3-D Printed Plastic Weapons, Equipment, and Materials

RSS Pulse

  • A Protest for Ukraine free of Dogma and Cynicism March 2, 2022
  • Dismantling Hindutva with Islamophobia? February 19, 2022