The Digger

FaunaAndFlora linked to this over at http://newlevellers.blogspot.com/2019/01/naked-capitalism-topic-why-green-new.html and I thought it well-deserved its own topic, so here it is. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editor’s  note:  This article originated as a controversial speech given at the Black Hills International Survival Gathering on the Pine Ridge Reservation in July 1980. A member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, Russell Means was perhaps the most outsized personality in the American Indian Movement, beginning with the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee. He also had an acting career beginning with his role as Chingachgook in  Last of the Mohicans . He died Monday morning at age 72. The only possible opening for  a statement like this is that I detest writing. The process itself epitomizes the European concept of “legitimate thinking”: what is written has an importance that is denied the spoken. My culture, the Lakota culture, has an oral trad...

This first chapter is going to seem trite.  And it probably is.  But I thought storytelling might be a fun thing to do on Digger.  And I need to set things up.  Please be gentle! ------------------------------------------------ Downfall Chapter 1 Drums in the distance. Could this be salvation? With a dull thud of unwanted reality, Sonya spasmed into wakefulness.   “Come on honey, we have to move”.   She poked Marco in the ribs.   “Wh-where are we?” Marcos bolted awake.   He looked at Sonya with those eyes, those wide, terrible brown eyes of fear, where there had only been confidence and love a year before. “I don’t know,” she said.   “Somewhere in Montana, maybe.   There’s mountains.   And it stinks in here.” She groaned out of the car.   The shantytown spread around her, the smoke of fires of the tents mingling with her breath.   There wouldn’t be any coffee, or bagels, or Starbuck...

Excerpt: By Isabel Roy and Johannes Stern  17 January 2019 The protests by “yellow vests” in France have exposed the anti-working class character of the Left Party in Germany. The Left Party leadership and its affiliated media reacted with hostility to the first mass demonstrations which took place in late November in Paris and other French cities. “Language of Violence” was the title of the Left Party daily  Neues Deutschland (ND) on November 26. The paper was not referring to the brutal actions of the French police and security forces, but rather to the mostly peaceful demonstrators who took to the streets to protest against higher fuel taxes and for higher wages and more social justice. “The ‘Yellow vest’ demonstrations which were not approved by the police have” degenerated into violence “and it took hours for the police ‘to restore calm,’” the paper complained. For the Left Party leadership the biggest social protests in France since the general strike of 1968,...

Excerpt: Meanwhile, the neocon metamorphosis is nearly complete as many of the neocons, who started out as Democrats, have returned home, where they are being welcomed for their hardline foreign policy viewpoint. Glenn Greenwald  reports that , based on polling of party supporters, the Democrats have gone full-Hillary and are now by far more hawkish than the Republicans, unwilling to leave either Syria or Afghanistan. The neocon survival and rejuvenation is particularly astonishing in that they have been wrong about virtually everything, most notably the catastrophic Iraq War. They have never been held accountable for anything, though one should note that accountability is not a prominent American trait, at least since Vietnam. What is important is that neocon views have been perceived by the media and punditry as being part of the Establishment consensus, which provides them with access to programming all across the political spectrum. That is why neocon standard-bearers lik...

Excerpt: SEPTEMBER 03, 2018,   BY  MICHAEL HOWARD Earlier this year  Diana Johnstone , author of “Fool’s Crusade” and other books, wrote  an article  for  Consortiumnews.com  critical of the left’s most self-regarding media outlet,  CounterPunch . In it she analyzed the website’s creeping embrace of establishment narratives vis-à-vis Russia and Syria; she also touched on its efforts to legitimize “Antifa” shenanigans. (To its credit,  CounterPunch  ran a number of counterarguments, a few from Johnstone, attempting to save the “Antifa” enthusiasts’ souls. Alas, these were mostly drowned out by a deluge of screeds from “Antifa” pamphleteers, who seem to comprise a tiny yet ferocious army.) Implicitly, Johnstone announced a split from her erstwhile political ally—she does not appear to have published in CounterPunch since. Nor could I help noticing that articles written by Mike Whitney, once one of the website’s most prolific c...

This case has been followed at wsws.org under the header of "The Fight Against Postmodernism." Three writers, Peter Boghossian, James A. Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose, wrote "hoax" articles and sent them out to prestigious academic peer review journals in fields they together dub "grievance studies," including "culture studies" and "identity studies." Seven were accepted. The latest wsws article on this situation is here: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/01/17/hoax-j17.html This Areo article is written by the perpetrators of the hoax themselves. It includes abstracts of the articles sent out, whether they were accepted, and reviews. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Part I: Introduction Something has gone wrong in the university—especially in certain fields within the humanities. Scholarship based less upon finding truth and more upon attending to social grievances has become firmly established, if not full...

What Is Olym pia Assembly? Olympia Assembly, a political project based in the town of Olympia in Washington State, was founded in March of 2017 in the midst of ecological and political catastrophe. It was created as a communal assembly project, coalescing around points of unity such as direct democracy, non-hierarchy, ecology, mutual aid, and direct action. The goal of the organization is to build the new world in the shell of the old by creating the building blocks of a libertarian socialist dual power project. It seeks to meet people’s needs and decentralize power, leading to a crisis of legitimacy for the state where people powered institutions are posed against hierarchical structures. Olympia Assembly (OA) has launched a variety of collectives, mutual aid projects, direct actions, and educational projects in our city of 50,000 people. At our assemblies and general meetings, people deliberate and co-author decisions to be implemented by the group according to the principles of...

". . .Contrary to much of what one hears from liberals, Donald Trump’s “insane” border-wall gambit may be something of a winning play for him. Yes, the whole stunt is built on a fetid pile of falsehoods. The level of bullshit emanating from Trump’s mouth and Twitter feed on this matter is remarkable even by his standards. There is NO reasonable argument for constructing a 1000-mile steel (or concrete) wall along the U.S. border with Mexico – a boundary already possessing 654 miles of existing barrier. There is NO “national security” crisis at the U.S.-Mexican border. There is NOTHING remotely like an influx of terrorists across the border. The U.S. did NOT detain “nearly 4000 suspected terrorists” at the southern border in 2018.There is NO increase in attempted illegal entry, which is at a 20-year low. Building such a wall will do NOTHING to make the United States safer from terrorist attacks, dangerous drugs, and gang violence. The federal government is NOT currently “buil...

Now that I have your attention... Is there any interest or desire for a regular updating of climate change metrics such as the Keeling Curve (CO₂ levels), Arctic ice extent, PIOMAS, etc? This would be supplemented with current studies in journals rather than from mass media outlets and could serve as a forum for discussion - pro and con - about this issue.

The Russia collusion narrative is on its last legs. Brexit has vaguely shown up in the MSM while the ‘gilets jaunes’ movement has been unceremoniously buried. As expected, Theresa May has survived Corbyn’ no-confidence vote in her government by 19 votes. Of the 256 Labour MPs 81 (the neoliberal Blairite wing) support a fresh Brexit referendum. The Maastricht model rules their undemocratic World Order.   And two socialist strategists; “pragmatic” reformist Leo Panitch and revolutionary socialist Costas Lapavitsas’ diverging tactics indirectly butt heads on Labour’s socialist path to socialism in the Brexit context. The differences in their respective understanding of the fierce and indomitable power of the anti-democratic, liberal-illiberal, neoliberal EU technocracy confronting socialists seem to lie at the core of their irreconcilably divergent opinions. If socialism in its final democratic form is to have a chance socialists must come down from their lofty ac...

I'm posting Yves Smith's introduction to this piece. Use the link below it to read Stan Cox's argument. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Yves here. I’ve been disappointed by the cheerleading over the Green New Deal. Its claim is that if we mobilize enough resources, we can convert to a renewable-energy-based economy and arrest the rise in greenhouse gases soon enough to prevent the worst global warming outcomes. That might have worked if we had started 20 years ago. But as they say in Maine, “You can’t get there from here.” The fastest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is radical conservation. There is no doubt a lot of low-hanging fruit in terms of behavior change, particularly by businesses. But even if corporations embraced the notion that they need to Do Something, the easy stuff is not likely to make enough difference. The false promise of the Green New Deal is that we can keep our high-consumptoin lifestyles. A lot of oxen would need to be gored i...

Grandin's article is subtitled " A Timeline of Border Fortification," and Grandin traces it back to 1911, using the the wall to reveal Amerikan's changing attitudes toward our place in the world.   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The point was less to actually build “the wall” than to constantly announce the building of the wall. “We started building our wall. I’m so proud of it,” Donald Trump  tweeted . “What a thing of beauty.” In fact,  no wall , or certainly not the “ big, fat, beautiful ” one promised by Trump, is being built. True, miles of some kind of barrier -- barbed wire, chain-link and steel-slat fencing, corrugated panels, and, yes, even lengths of what can only be described as concrete wall -- have gone up along the U.S.-Mexico border, starting at least as far back as the administration of President William Taft, early in the last century. Trump has claimed repairs and expansions of these barriers as proof that he is fulfilling his...

Excerpt: " But, third, something larger than even anti-Trumpism plays a major role in condemnations of the president’s withdrawal decisions: imperial thinking about America’s rightful role in the world. Euphemisms abound, but, if not an entreaty to American empire, what else could the  New York Times ’ David  Sanger  mean when he writes of a  “world order that the United States has led for the 73 years since World War II,”  and complains that Trump is reducing  “the global footprint needed to keep that order together” ? Or when President Obama’s national-security adviser Susan Rice  bemoans  Trump’s failures in  “preserving American global leadership,”  which a  Times  lead editorial insists is an  “ imperative ” ? Or when General James Mattis in his  letter  of resignation   echoes President Bill Clinton’s secretary of state Madeline Albright—and Obama himself—in asserting that  “t...