Posts that I especially recommend today: Saturday, October 3, 2020

• Giorgio Agamben and the Biopolitics of COVID-19 by Simon Elmer from Architects for Social Housing, a British website. (Note: Although this post is past my informal rule of limiting posts to one month, I will post it anyway because of its startling clarity about the dangers of the "new normal" which is being promoted by all authorities of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. (Note: This article is about the writings of an Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben, but applies to the political scene in Britain. It is a rather lengthy article, but one that should be read to understand the nature of the "Great Reset" project, a bio-politics that the Empire is promoting with the covid-19 pandemic. It is a best post. 
  

• Big Business Is Swallowing the World, Thanks to Lockdowns and Bailouts by Austan Goolsbee and posted on Anti-Empire. (Note: the original source was NY Times, but in this post I have detoured a bit from my usual practice of posting only from original source. I have my personal limits, and in this example I will not post to a source that has been engaging in disinformation almost continuously. But like a broken clock, they sometimes give the time accurately--twice a day.)

• Response To Trump Covid Diagnosis Shows His ‘Opposition’ Always Saw Him As Part Of The Club by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. (Note: She offers another take  on Democratic Party's switch from hostility to sympathy for Trump because he tested positive for one of their covid-19 tests.)

• Capitalism – not ‘humanity’ – is killing the world’s wildlife by Anna Pigott from Climate & Capitalism.
  

• The Powerful and Obnoxious Odor of Mendacity by Edward Curtin from his weblog Behind the Curtain.

• Daniel Korski: The Intelligence-Linked Mastermind Behind the UK’s Orwellian Healthtech Advisory Board by Johnny Vedmore from "Unlimited Hangout". (My reaction: If you like investigative journalism, this is an example of the finest.)

• ‘You are Dust, You Are Dead, We’re Coming To Get You’- Julian Assange Is Hearing Voices by Arjun Walia from Collective Evolution. (My reaction: Another failure of the anemic British left to come to the aid of people, who are vital to their agendas, before the British authorities captured him.)

I did not get through all of my credible websites to pursue articles that may be of your special interest before I ran out of time and energy.

NATO summit dominated by growing inter-state conflicts

Click here to access article by Alex Lantier from World Socialist Web Site.

Lantier summarizes what I believe are the signs to the collapse of the capitalist US/Anglo/Zionist Empire which rose from the ashes of the German Nazi version of this capitalist Empire. WWII was not fought to end fascism as the Empire's propagandists want you to believe, but the ultimate contest between a German-capitalist led and a British-capitalist led fascist capitalism. The Nazi Empire was originally funded and supported by Western capitalists of all countries, but as soon as they saw Nazis stalled at the gates of Moscow, the capital of a first socialist experiment, they immediately allied themselves with the preservation of the British Empire. The current fascist Empire (in "democratic" clothes) has been the final result of the devastating conflict of WWII. 

But this Empire is seeing its end days. To revise a weather folklore, I believe that the Empire will not go out like a lamb, but like a wounded lion which thrashes around to impress his fellow lions (capitalists) that he is still dominant among the creatures of the earth--think Bolivia and Venezuela after the Syrian debacle. The Fed is stuffing our failing banks with their "printed" money to stave of the massive debts that the Empire has created to impose its dominance on the rest of world. The signs are everywhere.

But let me not assure you that we residents of the Empire will not suffer "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune". The ensuing series of catastrophes will soon engulf us and end in the extinction of humans. In contrast to this inspiring video we are doomed as a species. We might have changed things back in 2012, but we surely can't while approaching 2020. The artillery of our oceans and skies are so locked and loaded with capitalist-produced carbon that our fate is already decided. 

We are entering a new "brave world" in which our capitalist masters may still be brought to justice--hopefully! For us, this can only be a bitter-sweet reward to see that this class of sociopathic people, who have destroyed ours and so many other species, and whose exploitation of the Earth and all of its working people has brought them so much temporary wealth and power, will finally share in our fate--extinction.

Recommended articles for Friday, August 16, 2019 (updated as of 1:42 PM CT)

• We Need to Talk About Search by James Corbett (a Canadian living in Japan) from his weblog The Corbett Report.

• Lies, Damned Lies, and Sustainable Development by Bill Willers from Dissident Voice.

• La Danse Mossad: Robert Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein by Jennifer Matsui from CounterPunch.

• As climate crisis grows, temperatures set global records from Climate & Capitalism.

• Time is running out by David Ruccio from Real-World Economics Review Blog.

• Fighting For Freedom In The Heart Of The Global Capitalist Empire by John Laurits from his weblog Revolution Dispatch.

Ecosocialist debates

Click here to access article by Louis Proyect from his blog. (The author has an annoying habit of listing abbreviations without, or delayed, references to their sources. Thus FB stands for Facebook and NLR stands for New Left Review.) 

One of the merits of this piece is that it cite references to academics who are debating the Green New Deal and related issues confronting academics who express some concern about the destabilization of our climate and the destruction of human habitat. But I think it also illustrates a lack of seriousness among people who have been inundated for most of their academic lives by capitalist indoctrination and thus exhibit some inhibitions about cutting back of the extraordinary materialist lifestyles that they have enjoyed in the Empire's academic institutions. Even Proyect exhibits some of this brainwashing when he sees Europe free of the domination by transnational capitalists in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. Also, his views about Swedish-style social democracy is at least 50 years old and out-of-date.

Even if the Western European GND standards were adopted by a majority of politicians in the USA, there would be overwhelming forces opposed to their adoption by energy, transportation, petrochemical, and banking interests. In fact, the same array of reactionary forces would block the evolution of the USA into a Swedish-style social democracy. Unlike Western Europe, the USA is an imperialist hegemon that would resist all attempts at a New Deal of any sort, either Green or FDR-redux.

Those are the realities we are dealing with and the naïve hopes of the DSA/Jacobin left will crash up against them on day one of a Bernie Sanders presidency. And those who hope in neo-Kautskyist fashion that this will precipitate a general strike and other revolutionary measures are just kidding themselves.

Proyect finishes his essay with this statement:

Let me conclude with a few words about the possible outcome of this debate in the future as economic reality will bring things to a head. In my view, there is an element of truth in Huber’s claim that workers will resist a ceiling on consumption. After all, with television ads 20 times an hour urging you to buy a car or a trip on Norwegian Cruise ship, it becomes a form of brainwashing.

I suspect that a combination of ecological ruin, war, and deepening alienation of the kind that has produced an opioid crisis will eventually turn quantity into quality. Human beings are susceptible to baser temptations that an advanced capitalist economy can produce but the promise of a more peaceful life that offers leisure time and spiritual fulfillment will convince workers that giving up 5,000 square foot homes, SUV’s and meat every night of the week is worth it. A Peaceable Kingdom, so to speak. 

 It appears to me that most people cited in this debate regard the subject as only an "academic debate"--much like a fashionable topic to entertain themselves over dinner in some fancy restaurant.

“The X Agenda”: what does XR actually stand for?

Click here to access article from Winter Oak (Britain). 

The people at Winter Oak, which appears from its logo to be an anarchist website, see some obvious contradictions in the sudden appearance of  Extinction Rebellion (XR), Britain's counterpart of the Green New Deal which has also suddenly appeared in the USA. Coincidence?

Meanwhile, "back at the capitalist ranch" (def.) in Britain excited business supporters and leaders of XR see exponential profits to be made in this new sustainability market. I think "XR" is code in British business circles that means "extraordinary revenue".

Evolutionary Dead-Ends

Click here to access article by "xraymike79" from Collapse of Industrial Civilization. (Once again, I thank Christopher, an engaged activist in northwestern Oregon, for alerting me to this article.)

While the Earth is literally burning up, while the oceans increase their acidification, while numbers of wildlife are disappearing, etc, the thoroughly addicted (to profits and power) capitalist ruling classes and their dumbed-down supporters continue to play showing little concern about the future. The author points to these contradictions among a number of others.

Have things improved since I wrote my last essay a year ago for this blog? Have we miraculously transformed our entire energy system into one that does not poison and degrade the natural world? Have we slowed the onslaught of plastic pollution choking the planet’s rivers, lakes, and oceans? Have we done anything meaningful to halt the deterioration of the planet’s biodiversity toward mass extinction? Has this global, hi-tech civilization done anything significant to avert its own demise?

Despite a constant flow of warnings from the scientific community and even a letter signed by more than 20,000 scientists, the simple answer is no.  [my formatting]

Are We Moving Away From Fossil Fuels? Separating Facts from Fantasies

Click here to access a first part of an article with a PDF link to the entire article by Sean Sweeney of Trade Unions for Energy Democracy. Here are some concluding remarks:

The  challenge  facing  human  civilization  is  sobering.  But  the  challenge  appears  more  manageable when it is connected to a narrative that is  prepared  to  confront  existing  ownership  relations.  The  struggle  for  democratic  control of  energy  (and  other  key  sectors)  is  today  crucial  for  many  reasons. Achieving  such  control  over  energy  production,  distribution,  and use is a means (but not the only means) to confront the expansionist dynamics of the political economy while at the same time reconfiguring our approach to defining and meeting human needs on the basis of a more equitable distribution of wealth and a qualitative extension of democratic control over major economic decisions.

Energy  systems  controlled by ordinary people in partnership with well-run and accountable public  agencies have the potential to manage and reduce energy demand for certain economic activities while providing electrical power to everyone for basic needs  and truly sustainable forms and levels of human and social development.

I recommend that you view the following 5:26m video by them (via YouTube) entitled "This Is What Energy Democracy Looks Like":

Extinction is the End Game

Click here to access article by "xraymike79" from his website Collapse of Industrial Civilization.

The bottom line is that a swing towards authoritarianism happens when resources become scarce. Climate change is simply a symptom of humans overshooting the planet’s carrying capacity. Free market ideologues are nearly always climate ‘skeptics’ because acknowledging the reality of human-induced climate change would be an admission that industry must be curtailed or controlled. Left-leaning people nearly always accept the science because it goes along with their criticisms of capitalism which externalizes social and environmental costs for the benefit of just a few at the top of the economic hierarchy. Thus we see parasitic Trump surrounding himself with right-wing, climate denying, fossil fuel corporatists and insiders who will be doing everything in their power to dismantle health and environmental regulations including privatizing social services which are barriers to capitalist expansion.

To be blunt, our chance of developing a sustainable culture passed us by a long time ago.

The crises of neoliberalism won’t be solved by more neoliberalism

Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from Systemic Disorder.

Dolack once again exposes the latest capitalist thinking to the light of reality to reveal all the disasters that lie ahead not only for the self-serving masters of this system but all of us as well. Much like addicted alcoholics our masters continue to make all kinds of promises to avert these disasters (think Paris Agreement 2015 and the followup session now convening in Marrakech, Morocco), but continue the obsession with growth by clearing forests, constructing oil pipelines (Standing Rock), tearing up the earth to secure more materials for this growth, etc, all to secure their drugs of profit and power.

The only statement I don't like about this essay is contained in the opening sentence which declares that an abstract "we" simply don't know how to design another economic system so that we can live sustainably on our planet-home.

We’re in a world of trouble if we are unable to conceive of alternative economic models. We need not linger on the details of rising inequality, political instability, tightening corporate control of governments, looming environmental crisis, increasingly precarious employment (if even available) and the inability to meet the basic needs of billions of people around the world to see that capitalism is failing humanity.

Thus he completely ignores the reality of a tiny group of people who have imposed an economic system on the mass of humanity through their control of every means of coercion and indoctrination in order to satisfy their addictions to profits and power. It is not that "we" don't know any better,  it is because "we" are forced ultimately at gun-point to continue this deadly business-as-usual. What we don't know so far is how to overthrow the rule of these megalomaniac capitalist addicts. This is the stark political reality that is likely to cause humans and many other species to disappear from the Earth.

The demise of the great apes. Growth, GDP, capitalism, causes

Click here to access article by Will Denayer from Flassbeck-Economics (based in Germany).

Yes, this rather lengthy article does cover all the topics in the title. It starts off with the rapid decline of the apes and other species, but expands to cover capitalism's insatiable need for growth and how the capitalist ruling classes fool themselves and us with their "green" policies and promises.

Toward Democratic Eco-socialism as the Next World System

Click here to access article by Hans A. Baer from The New System Project.

In this somewhat lengthy essay, Baer, an anthropologist, argues for the necessity of an eco-socialist future. As such I believe it mixes a lot of reformist ideas, organizations, and personalities with more historical socialist writers to produce an academic and luke-warm version of a call for revolution. It is light on revolutionary strategies and rather heavy on future ideas about how we should live sustainably in a new system. 

For me the essay is more typical of an academic's call for revolution in that such calls are in the abstract while being very light on the immediate political strategies and tactics necessary to overthrow the existing system of capitalism. I think this is because of the upper-middle class nature of an academic. He/she is well rewarded within the capitalist supervised academic subsystem while requiring some ideological compromises to survive. As long as they confine themselves to abstract criticisms of capitalism while promoting idealistic ideas, they tend to be safe and secure in their careers. 

Perhaps I'm being a little unfair. You, as an independent thinking person, will have to decide for yourself.

Development banks threaten to unleash an infrastructure tsunami on the environment

Click here to access article by Bill Laurance from The Conversation.

Some of the key players in this worldwide infrastructure boom are huge investors such as the World Bank. The past few years and decades have seen the rise of major new investment banks, such as the recently founded Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and the dramatic growth of funds such as the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES).

The new banks, along with traditional big lenders such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Asian, African, and Inter-American Development Banks, are very fond of funding big infrastructure such as roads, dams, gas lines, mining projects, and so on.

Some people had hoped that these banks would promote sustainable and socially equitable development, but it now seems that they could end up doing precisely the opposite.

Capitalism is, overwhelmingly, the main driver of planetary ecological collapse.

Click here to access article by Richard Smith from Real-World Economics Review Blog.

This appears to be a teaser post to whet people's appetite for more, and to encourage them to read his now published booklet entitled Green Capitalism: The God that Failed which I strongly endorse.

Corporations aren’t necessarily evil, though plenty are diabolically evil, but they can’t help themselves. They’re just doing what they’re supposed to do for the benefit of their shareholders.

The Devil Capitalism

Click here to access article by Gary Engler from CounterPunch. 

Okay, here’s the proposition — you can have a good job, decent pay, lots of overtime, but only if you give me your grandchildren or maybe your great-grandchildren.

Would you make this deal with the devil?

Obviously what is referred to here is the fatal consequence of continuing with the devil's system of capitalism that scientists have been warning us about since at least 1972: climate destabilization because of extensive carbon pollution driven by capitalism's insatiable drive for profits. Unfortunately because people find it difficult to imagine any other economic system and/or don't want to incur the risks to their lifestyle to challenge the present one, they usually go for easier answers provided by the capitalist devil to satisfy their more immediate interests. So far the record seems to show that humans have in effect chosen to accept this bargain with the devil, or that most humans have believed the assurances of this devil that they don't need to worry about it because our masters have it under control.

Because it is likely that the amount carbon pollution in our environment may have already occurred in sufficient amounts to threaten the eventual extinction of humans, these human characteristics (lack of imagination, immediate gratification, and gullibility) may be regarded as fatal psychological flaws that will cause humans to disappear from the Earth.

Homo Economicus: Cold, Calculating & Callous

Click here to access article by Asad Zaman from World Economics Association Blog.

The author points out the ever widening gap of human nature as seen in classical capitalist economics with that seen in business schools known as "behavioral economics". 

I think that this divergence can be explained mostly by the tendency of capitalists to overproduce. This occurs because of the obsession of capitalists for profits which usually transfers into a viscous cycle of seeking power to acquire more profits and power which inevitably results in a capitalist ruling class that is in control of every institution in society. This has now become an historical fact. 

All this gradually occurred after capitalists were able to satisfy the basic needs of most people, and as a result profits suffered. Capitalists then sought the help of marketing specialists to create the need for ever increasing frivolous products and services, and eventually the provision of credit was added to promote more purchases of these frivolous products and services along with basic needs. 

The end result, as we have seen throughout capitalist history, was economic booms and busts which created social chaos: wars over resources and markets, extreme unemployment, poverty, etc. Lately their excessive activity has become associated with the destabilization of the climate. In spite of the dysfunctional nature for a healthy, sustainable development of societies, capitalists, probably because of all the power they have accumulated, have thus far been successful in maintaining their system in spite of all the chaos and instability they are creating. The practice of their system now threatens humans with extinction caused by an increased likelihood of a nuclear war conflagration and/or extreme climate destabilization.

Violence On The Factory Farm: How Not To Feed The World

Click here to access article by Colin Todhunter from his blog East by Northwest (Britain).

Todhunter introduces us to a rather painful film which reveals the hidden truth behind our consumption of meat that is overwhelmingly produced by factory farms. He then goes on to examine the many ramifications of these factory farms, the corporate imperatives of profit behind industrial agriculture, and the threat they pose to human survivability.

...we should not lose sight of two points that are key to this discussion.

First, neoliberal capitalism is sowing the seeds of humanity’s destruction. It is stripping the environment bare through unsustainable levels of consumption and institutionalised economic plunder, the latter of which involves the programmed eradication of indigenous, productive agriculture. In doing so, the world’s ability to feed itself is being destroyed.

And the destruction of rural livelihoods and communities is for what? Agriculture and food poisoned with chemicals and the mass incarceration of animals whose suffering is hidden from public view; an urban-centric model of ‘development’ defined by greed and narcissism on the one hand and austerity and poverty on the other; all to be played out in polluted, congested mega-cities shaped by powerful private corporations which seek to colonise and mould the very essence of existence, from cradle to grave, from field to plate.

Second, there are deep-seated questions to be asked about how we as individuals personally regard our mass slaughter and wholesale exploitation of animals on factory farms. Should we be treating animals more humanely in agriculture, or should we even be producing animal products for eating at all? Even if our consciences can continue to live with this, in the long run it will be not only impractical to expand factory farming and increase meat consumption but, based on the evidence presented here, catastrophic to do so.

Poisoned, Marginalised, Bankrupt And Dead: The Role Of Agroecology In Resisting The Corporate Stranglehold On Food And Agriculture

Click here to access article by Colin Todhunter from East by Northwest (Britain).

Todhunter is one of my heroes in an age in which our ruling capitalist masters are promoting their own versions of "heroes". In the latter version people who are designated as good guys use violence to subdue evil-doers who wish to harm us. One of the many problems with this formulation is that these fairy tales are used to extol the use of violence to ward off those who theoretically wish to harm us; but they also hide the reality that we ordinary people must rely on a few "heroes" to save us, and those heroes are carefully selected by our masters to serve their interests of profit and power. And worse, our masters want our consent for them to use violence against their enemies. The main problem with this comic-book formulation is that their enemies are nearly always ordinary good guys like most of us, and not our enemies.

The engines that our masters use to obtain profit and power are corporations, and Todhunter exposes the role of agricultural corporations to poison and de-nourish our food and destroy farmers who practice sustainable agriculture, a practice that he identifies as agroecology.

The current global system of chemical-industrial agriculture, World Trade Organisation rules and bilateral trade agreements that agritech companies helped draw up for their benefit are a major cause of structural hunger, poverty, illness and environmental destruction. By its very design, the system is parasitical.

Across the world, we are seeing farmers and communities continuing to resist the corporate takeover of seeds, soils, water and food. And we are also witnessing inspiring stories about the successes of agroecology: a model of agriculture based on traditional knowledge and modern agricultural research utilising elements of contemporary ecology, soil biology and the biological control of pests.

He concludes this essay with a warning: our masters are pursuing a strategy to isolate and contain the practices of agroecology so that it doesn't interfere too much with the operation of their corporate engines.

While many argue in favour of agroecology and regard it as a strategy for radical social change, some are happier for it to bring certain benefits to farmers and local communities and see nothing wrong with it being integrated within a globalised system of capitalism that continues to centralise power and generally serve the interests of the global seed, food processing and retail players. And that is the danger: a model of agriculture with so much potential being incorporated into a corrupt system designed to suit the needs of these corporate interests.

But there is only so much that can be achieved at grass-root level by ordinary people, often facilitated by non-governmental agencies. As long as politicians at national and regional levels are co-opted by the US and its corporations, seeds will continue to be appropriated, lands taken, water diverted, legislation enacted, research institutes funded and policy devised to benefit global agribusiness.

And that's something that only a broad-based, global movement of peoples, spanning continents and nations, countryside and cities, farmers and consumers, can take on with assurance of ultimate victory.

My hero, Todhunter, has identified one major area of our lives that is being threatened by the system of capitalism. There are many others. But we as individuals can only do a little to fight for our survival, and Todhunter is doing so much. Todhunter, like many other ordinary heroes, barely survives economically. This is a major problem for all those who defy our masters and their interests. The only way the Todhunters of the world can do their work--which is for our benefit--is by each us doing what little we can to promote our real interests. (And think how we outnumber our real oppressors by the billions.) Todhunter provides a vital role in identify the real threats to our survival and what we need to do to survive. One thing we can do is send what little we can afford to help him survive so that he can help all of us to live in a sustainable, peaceful world.

China and Europe: Reconnecting Across a New Silk Road

Click here to access article by Xiangming Chen and Julia Mardeusz from The European Financial Review.

This article gives us a report on the accomplishments of the "new silk road", a major project that China, which to my surprise, has already begun. The young authors seem all a "gaga" over this development. I see it as more worrisome for two reasons. 

Ever since 1978 when Deng Xiaoping took control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), China has launched a broad policy in pursuit of economic development. To accomplish this they have opened China to the outside world, particularly to Western capitalist countries, under a "one country, two systems" policy. This combines capitalist development under the control of the CCP. Western capitalist development was obtained by offering China's cheap labor and other inducements to foreign corporations to build factories in China as a method to obtain high technology of the West while improving China's economy. Since then the CCP has pursued a peaceful strategy that attempts to use economic development as a method to deal with conflicts both internal to China and external in foreign relations. 

This general policy has succeeded beyond even the CCP's wildest dreams. However, the risk has always been that the capitalist pursuit of profit by any means would have a corrupting influence on China and the CCP. Although China is strongly supporting renewable energies and implementing changes to improve the environment, they appear to be promoting economic development that favors production for profit as a major priority over sustainability. This report does nothing to allay that concern. 

Another concern is that has come with China's success is a threat to the Empire's clear intention to impose their hegemony on the world. This has resulted in the Empire's "pivot to Asia [China]" foreign policy which seems to be posing another threat to world peace.

Emissions could make Earth uninhabitable

Click here to access article by Tim Radford from Climate News Network. 

Researchers predict that the hothouse effect of runaway greenhouse gases would ultimately boil our planet dry and make it incapable of sustaining life.

The Great Capitalist Climacteric

Click here to access article by John Bellamy Foster from the Monthly Review. 

I will use the term the Great Capitalist Climacteric here to refer to the necessary epochal social transition associated with the current planetary emergency. It refers both to the objective necessity of a shift to a sustainable society and to the threat to the existence of Homo sapiens (as well as numerous other species) if the logic of capital accumulation is allowed to continue dictating to society as a whole. 

Foster ends up with a challenge for humans to save themselves or else perish:

“The dream that man can make himself godlike by centering his energies solely on the conquest of the external world,” Mumford wrote in The Condition of Man, “has now become the emptiest of dreams: empty and sinister.” The result is a kind of economics of exterminism. Today making war on the planet is fought as a means to the end of capital accumulation, in which the limits of the earth itself have become invisible to the narrow value calculations of the system. Turning this economics of exterminism around, and creating a more just and sustainable world at peace with the planet is our task in the Great Capitalist Climacteric. If we cannot accomplish this humanity will surely die with capitalism. The prophesy of all defenders of the current order over the last century will then be fulfilled. Capitalism will mark the end of human history by bringing to an end human civilization—and even human existence.