In a searing article in Harper’s Magazine in September 2004, Naomi Klein laid out a theory of the Iraq War that shreds even today’s conventional wisdom about the motivations for our invasion. Her theory was that the neocons saw Iraq as a potential test tube for their ideological utopia, and pursued a strategy of shock therapy, where the devastation of war would force Iraqis to rebuild their nation from scratch. Out of desperation (not to mention shock and awe), they would be receptive to U.S. economic policy unimaginable in any other country.
Continue reading The Greening of the Peace Movementeli_beckerman
{ Installment 3 of Ivan Illich’s Energy and Equity series }
Speed-stunned imagination
Past a certain threshold of energy consumption, the transportation industry dictates the configuration of social space. Motorways expand, driving wedges between neighbors and removing fields beyond the distance a farmer can walk. Ambulances take clinics beyond the few miles a sick child can be carried. The doctor will no longer come to the house, because vehicles have made the hospital into the right place to be sick. Once heavy trucks reach a village high in the Andes, part of the local market disappears. Later, when the high school arrives at the plaza along with the paved highway, more and more of the young people move to the city, until not one family is left which does not long for a reunion with someone hundreds of miles away, down on the coast.
Equal speeds have equally distorting effects on the perception of space, time, and personal potency in rich and in poor countries, however different the surface appearances might be. Everywhere, the transportation industry shapes a new kind of man to fit the new geography and the new schedules of its making. The major difference between Guatemala and Kansas is that in Central America some provinces are still exempt from all contact with vehicles and are, therefore, still not degraded by their dependence on them.
Continue reading Energy and Equity: Speed-stunned imagination
Graphic by Jeff Walsh, Boston Herald
As Green-Rainbow Party candidate Jill Stein called out the backroom deals with a monopoly utility at last week’s Cape Wind debate by MassINC, her demands for transparency, accountability and fair competition by municipal energy providers surprised many observers. David Bernstein of the Boston Phoenix didn’t even know how to categorize her criticism, incorrectly pigeon-holing Stein’s critique as opposition to the Cape Wind project, end of story.
The Boston Globe reported on Martha Coakley rushing in to show that they weren’t hiding anything. Nothing to see here! So it was interesting when the Boston Herald reported that Coakley’s 85-page report to the Department of Public Utilities was heavily redacted. According to the Herald:
Continue reading Backroom dealing toward our green energy futureThe report, which was Coakley’s official justification of her rate settlement with Cape Wind and National Grid, includes “redacted” words, numbers, sentences, paragraphs and charts. It even blanked out a question asked of an energy expert hired by Coakley’s office – and the expert’s response was also crossed out.
WASHINGTON, DC — The Green Party of the United States congratulates Australian Greens (http://greens.org.au) on their ‘greenslide’ in Australia’s parliamentary elections on Saturday, August 21. Preliminary results show the Greens will take ten seats in the Australian House of Representatives and Senate.
“The Australian Greens’ impressive totals follow on the election of Caroline Lucas, the first Green to Parliament in the UK, in May,” said Julia Willebrand, candidate for New York State Comptroller (http://www.juliaforcomptroller.com) and member of the Green Party’s International Committee (http://www.gp.org/committees/intl). “It’s only a matter of time before the first Green is elected to the US Congress. We need a shock to the two-party status quo in America, the kind of shock we’re seeing now in Australia.”
“When we get some Greens in Congress in the US, we’ll see an enormous change in the direction of America — a change for the better, since Democrats and Republicans will no longer take their exclusive control over US politics and government for granted. Like Australia and the UK, Americans will have legislators from a party dedicated to human needs, human rights, and the health of our planet,” Ms. Willebrand added.
Continue reading US Greens congratulate Australian Greens on election ‘greenslide’ in ParliamentWho should be running the shadow war?
“Who should be running the shadow war?” asks a recent New York Times article which simultaneously exposes and lends support to the recent shift towards secret, unaccountable, and unconstitutional military aggression by the United States government.
Continue reading Private Empire, Shadow Warfare. America slips towards fascism.The attack offered a glimpse of the Obama administration’s shadow war against Al Qaeda and its allies. In roughly a dozen countries – from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics crippled by ethnic and religious strife – the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists.
The White House has intensified the Central Intelligence Agency’s drone missile campaign in Pakistan, approved raids against Qaeda operatives in Somalia and launched clandestine operations from Kenya. The administration has worked with European allies to dismantle terrorist groups in North Africa, efforts that include a recent French strike in Algeria. And the Pentagon tapped a network of private contractors to gather intelligence about things like militant hide-outs in Pakistan and the location of an American soldier currently in Taliban hands.
While the stealth war began in the Bush administration, it has expanded under President Obama, who rose to prominence in part for his early opposition to the invasion of Iraq. Virtually none of the newly aggressive steps undertaken by the United States government have been publicly acknowledged. In contrast with the troop buildup in Afghanistan, which came after months of robust debate, for example, the American military campaign in Yemen began without notice in December and has never been officially confirmed.
Obama administration officials point to the benefits of bringing the fight against Al Qaeda and other militants into the shadows. Afghanistan and Iraq, they said, have sobered American politicians and voters about the staggering costs of big wars that topple governments, require years of occupation and can be a catalyst for further radicalization throughout the Muslim world.
Gotta hand it to The Onion for saying it better than anyone else has.
PORT FOURCHON, LA-In what may be the greatest environmental disaster in the nation’s history, the supertanker TI Oceania docked without incident at the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port Monday and successfully unloaded 3.1 million barrels of dangerous crude oil into the United States.
According to witnesses, the catastrophe began shortly after the tanker, which sailed unimpeded across the Gulf of Mexico, stopped safely at the harbor and made contact with oil company workers on the shore. Soon after, vast amounts of the black, toxic petroleum in the ship’s hold were unloaded at an alarming rate into special storage containers on the mainland.
From there, experts confirmed, the oil will likely spread across the entire country’s infrastructure and commit unforetold damage to its lakes, streams, and air.
Continue reading Millions Of Barrels Of Oil Safely Reach Port In Major Environmental Catastrophe{Cross-posted at Blue Mass Group and Red Mass Group}
It’s Democracy Day today, and Massachusetts voters have a clear choice before them. They can support the one candidate who refuses to take corporate money to fuel her campaign, or the 3 candidates who swim through lobbyist-fueled campaign coffers like Scrooge McDuck. They can support the one candidate who unequivocally stands up for justice and sustainability, or the 3 candidates who treat ill-fated and harmful get-rich-quick schemes as though they were sensible, thoughtful, and helpful policy. They can support the one candidate who is standing up for real democracy — clean elections, open meeting and public records laws that apply to the legislature, and meaningful transparency and oversight of government spending — or the 3 candidates who laugh at real democracy as though it were a joke.
With the Green-Rainbow Party putting 3 candidates for statewide office on the ballot November 2nd — Jill Stein for Governor, Rick Purcell for Lt. Governor, and Nat Fortune for Auditor — Massachusetts voters have some real choices. These candidates will unwaveringly support, and fight for, government of, by, and for the people. They have great ideas to strengthen the Commonwealth and a compelling vision of our common future. While Bill McKibben laments the shameful collapse of the mainstream environmental movement’s ability to push climate legislation, the Green-Rainbow Party’s leadership never held out hope that our government — nearly entirely beholden to corporate interests — would have the answers.
Continue reading 4-way race for governor, and one clear choice for democracyI am increasingly disheartened by the Boston Globe’s apparent dismissal of Jill Stein’s gubernatorial campaign, in the opinion pages and news coverage alike. The Op-Eds ignoring her are mounting. Whether Adrian Walker’s glaring omission was mindful or mindless, and whether Joan Vennochi’s dismissal was ignorant or spiteful, these biased actions deserve to be countered. I submitted a letter to the editor in response to Walker’s column, but the Letters editor called me to ask whether I was a paid staffer for Jill’s campaign. I told him that I’ve been working on a grassroots fundraising campaign that is poised to turn into a paid job, but that it’s message is an important one for Globe readers to learn about.
The following is an Op-Ed I submitted as a counterweight to their bias, but I didn’t hear back from them and wanted to get this out before August 10th. I think I’ll create a section on Green Mass Group called “What the Globe won’t print” and just start collecting people’s Op-Eds and LTEs that don’t make the paper. What do you think?
Cross-posted at DemocracyDays.com.
Continue reading Democracy’s Dawn in Massachusetts?{ Installment 2 of Ivan Illich’s Energy and Equity series }
The industrialization of traffic
The discussion of how energy is used to move people requires a formal distinction between transport and transit as the two components of traffic. By traffic I mean any movement of people from one place to another when they are outside their homes. By transit I mean those movements that put human metabolic energy to use, and by transport, that mode of movement which relies on other sources of energy. These energy sources will henceforth be mostly motors, since animals compete fiercely with men for their food in an overpopulated world, unless they are thistle eaters like donkeys and camels.
Continue reading Energy and Equity: The industrialization of traffic