Synthesiser

Brendan Cooney: Marxian Economics and Philosophy

2009-08-19T11:37:00.008+02:00

Video: Capitalist Equilibrium?

Part 2

For quite some time I have been following the clear and rich explanations of Marxian concepts and ideas by Brendan Cooney. He is well versed in classical economics and Marxian value theory and very adapt in communicating these in such a way that most people can understand it. On top of that, he takes his time every few weeks to make a professional and engaging video using his own scripts to deal with another major perspective or concept using classic cartoons. The scripts and more can be found at http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/. Brendan describes his motivation for making his video's in these words:

"In times of crisis the law of value asserts itself with violence. My videos deal with the nature of value in a capitalist society, how this value is expressed, and what contradictions grow from it."

I seriously recommend anyone who seeks a more profound understanding of the present economic systems to check out the resource Brendan is building up.

Documentary on Pierre Bourdieu - Sociology is a Martial Art

2009-08-08T22:02:00.007+02:00

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Pierre's Bourdieu's forty books and countless articles represent probably some of the the most influential renovations and applications of social science in the twentieth century. The highly influential and controversial intellectual - a longtime Professor of Sociology at the College de France - passed away in January 2002.
A "committed" thinker in the vein of Foucault, his work is concerned with elucidating the processes of symbolic violence and cultural domination in various areas of social life. His most well known book, Distinction (1979), addressed these themes in an effort to overcome the opposition of objectivist (Marxist) and subjectivist (Weberian) theories of class. Click here for more books by Bourdieu.
In the late nineties he became something of a celebrity scholar, one of the world's most important academics actively associated with the anti-globalization movement. Bourdieu himself argued that scholars and writers could and should bring their specialized knowledge to bear on social and political issues. His powerful critiques of the neoliberal revolution were the natural outgrowth of a lifetime of research into economic, social and cultural class domination among peoples as disparate as Algerian peasants and French professors, and as expressed in everything from amateur photography to posture.
SOCIOLOGY IS A MARTIAL ART, a new documentary about Bourdieu's life, became an unexpected hit in France just prior to his death. Filmed over three years, director Pierre Carles' camera follows Bourdieu as he lectures, attends political rallies, travels, meets with his students, staff, and research team in Paris, and includes Bourdieu having a conversation with Günter Grass.
The film's very title stresses the degree of Bourdieu's political engagement. He took on the mantle of Emile Zola and Jean-Paul Sartre in French public life, slugging it out with politicians because he considered those lucky enough to have spent their lives studying the social world could not be indifferent to the struggle for justice.

Blackwater Mercenary Captain Erik Prince Charged with Murder?

2009-08-06T11:58:00.012+02:00

There was a news item all over the Indymedia (2.0) landscape and on MSNBC the last days that is too good to miss. In sworn statements of his own employee at Blackwater (currently renamed as Xe), the sole owner of the high-end mercenary company Erik Prince has been accused of murdering, or assisting in the murder of US state officials involved in the pending investigations into Blackwater. Erik Prince now faces the possibility of criminal prosecution for murder. Jeremy Scahill writes in The Nation that "The former employee also alleges that Prince 'views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe', and that Prince's companies 'encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.'"
In his 2007 book 'Blackwater, The rise of the world's most powerful mercenary army', Scahill describes the vast amount of crimes committed by this new privatised form of military forces. As just a few examples, in the aftermath of Katrina, Prince sent out his private army forces into Louisiana 24 hours before getting an official contract from the US government, and before the imposition of martial law in the state of Louisiana. Blackwater forces in Iraq have long been above either US or Iraqi law, making the mercenaries effectively free from any kind of criminal prosecution. US contracts with Blackwater in Afghanistan have only increased since Obama's presidency. Hopefully, this story will serve to renew public interest into this terrifying phenomenon.

Honduran Coup and US Ambiguity

2009-08-06T10:47:00.016+02:00

This Real News broadcast features an illuminating report from Forrest Hylton on the attitude of the US towards the coup in Honduras. "The silence from Washington over the past month of human rights abuses from the de facto Honduran government becomes deafening when one considers that the US government holds both the ability to bring that regime down as well as a recent history of criticizing similar abuses in Iran. Groups inside the US have taken up the call to pressure the government into taking the action required by US law in addressing a military coup. Forrest Hylton is the author of Evil Hour in Colombia (Verso, 2006), and with Sinclair Thomson, co-author of Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in Bolivian Politics (Verso, 2007). He is a regular contributor to New Left Review and NACLA Report on the Americas."

With the Hondoran coup reminiscent of the dark days of the 70's and 80's in Latin America now over five weeks old, tensions are high inside the country itself and finally rising in international politics. The legitimate president Zelaya is trying all avenues to restore democracy, from the International Criminal Court to mobilising his people. While most countries have officially denounced the coup, apparently including president Obama who said he would follow the lead of the Organisation of American States (OAS) in opposing the coup regime. However, US foreign secretary Hillary Clinton has no use for the word coup. Using this word carries legal implications under US law to stop all aid to Honduras and recall the US Ambassador. Since the coup regime hired Lanny Davis, who served as White House counsel for President Bill Clinton, and Bennet Ratcliff, a public relations specialist with ties to former President Bill Clinton, Hillary has started to denounce president Zelaya as 'reckless' for trying to return to his country. According to Clinton, Zelaya would do better to simply keep negotiating with the 'current government'.

As news on Honduras is somewhat harder to come by than on Iran, I thought I'd post some links to good starting points for further research into what is happening in Honduras right now. I found some overviews of news on Honduras from the Real News and Democracy Now, who did several exclusive interviews with Zelaya and his wife. The archives of The Nation Magazine and venezuelanalysis.com also proved interesting sources of information.

Interactivity on Synthesiser

2009-08-06T10:41:00.005+02:00

After having posted for several months now on Synthesiser, I suspect returning readers have got a taste of what this blog is about: taking a few steps back from the news to really understand the important underlying predicaments of our time to focus, inform and enable grass roots activism. Obviously you can't do that successfully on your own, so I've been looking around for documentaries, interviews, online lectures, articles and important news items that portend something bigger, and writing articles whenever I have the time or feel I have something good to say.

But I would also love this page to be an interactive community of people with common interests. If you are a returning visitor who feels this blog has some value or could use some other perspectives, please get into contact with me about tips, links, book reviews, short articles or important news items. You can also help spread the word by using the email button below all posts to share posts you felt were particularly interesting. If you think you'll stay motivated and can write proper English, there is a possibility of co-editorship.

So send an email or comment below this topic if you think it's a good idea to make this blog a little more interactive.

Thanks for visiting!

Freek

Minqi Li: Marxism and Limits to Growth, Capitalism with Zero Profit Rate?

2009-08-03T23:50:00.007+02:00

In this short presentation, University of Utah economist Minqi Li ties together Marxian economics, in particular the theory of capitalist crisis and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and the perspective of the limits to growth. As regular visitors of this blog might have guessed, this seemed to me quite interesting. I tried to improve the sound of the original video so people might hear better.

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Minqi Li's abstract of the paper presented in November 2006, at the Social Structure of Accumulation Conference in Ireland:

"Capitalism is a socio-economic system that rests upon the endless pursuit of profit and capital accumulation. However, after centuries of relentless capitalist accumulation, resource depletion and environmental crisis have reached the advanced stage. The paper discusses the depletion of fossil fuels, the likely effects of various renewable energies and nuclear energy on future energy supply, the limits to improvement in energy efficiency, and the depletion of other resources. It relates the limits to growth to Marx’s hypothesis on the “law of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall.” It can be established that if the growth rate falls towards zero, then either the profit rate or the net investment has to fall towards zero. The coming crisis may be seen as the expression of the conflict between the “productive forces” and the “existing relations of production”. The historical constraints and possibilities for the post-capitalist society are discussed."

Minqi Li was born in January 1969 in Beijing, China. He studied at Beijing University between 1987 and 1990 and participated in the 1989 student movement. Between 1990 and 1992 he was a political prisoner. After 1989, he rejected the bourgeois liberal ideology and moved towards revolutionary marxism. He came to the United States in 1994 and received Ph.D. in economics from University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2002. He taught political science in York University, Canada from 2003 to 2006 and since July 2006 he has been teaching economics at the University of Utah. Minqi Li is the author of The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy.

Recent publicly available articles:
Capitalism with Zero Profit Rate?: Limits to Growth and the Law of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall (University of Utah Department of Economics Working Paper Series, May 2007)
The United States, China, Peak Oil, and the Demise of Neoliberalism (Monthly Review, April 2008)
Climate Change, Limits to Growth, and the Imperative for Socialism (Monthly Review, July-August 2008)

Nate Hagens: Umbrella View of Resource Depletion & Human Behaviour

2009-08-01T00:17:00.007+02:00

Talk by Nate Hagens of University of Vermont on Resource Depletion, Energy Supply, peakoil, Energy Demand, Human Behaviour and Finance held at the Alcatraz 'Peak' Summit from 26 to 28 June in Italy hosted by The Oil Drum, ASPO Netherlands and ASPO Italy. Nate's presentation I witnessed this June at the informal meeting organised by theoildrum.com and ASPO near Perugia, Italy, , is extremely interesting, if more than a little speedy. I highly recommend this presentation as it served to summarise in an hour what we had been talking about at Alcatraz for three days straight.

Umbrella View of Resource Depletion & Human Behaviour from Rembrandt Koppelaar on Vimeo.

Nate Hagens on Century of the Self(less)

2009-07-31T23:58:00.009+02:00

Nate Hagens, the ex-vice president of Lehman Brothers turned generalist Limits to Growth scholar, wrote and article that introduced me to the wonderful documentary 'The Century of the Self', about how psychoanalysis was used in pubic relations and advertisement to bring consumerism and stable, western style democracy to a whole new level. Here is the link to the article for theoildrum.com on the BBC documentary 'Century of the Self'. I seriously recommend both the article and the documentary.

"I've recently rewatched The Century of the Self (COTS), a four part BBC special on the birth and explosion of public relations/advertising, and it's impact on American culture. The series documents how the Freudian theory of subconscious irrational behavior was seized on and manipulated by governments and businesses in the 21st century, initially spearheaded by Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, and consultant to several administrations (Coolidge, Roosevelt, Wilson per COTS). While watching, I had to agree that the 20th century WAS the century of the self, and in no small part from the cultural push/pull of advertising/media. The films creator, Adam Curtis, seemed to suggest that studying the behaviors of individuals is interesting, but that the real power to move societies lies in the ability to impact the psychology of crowds, via appealing to subconscious desires (for freedom, status, etc.)"

Documentary 'The Century of the Self, by Adam Curtis and the BBC

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Leo Panitch: Still a Marxist after All

2009-07-24T11:42:00.006+02:00

In this lecture, Leo Panitch explains his positive but critical relation to Marx and how to understand current events, like the crisis, in Marxist terms. He does this not by just labelling current events with Marxist language, but is interested in how different capitalisms came to pass and how to transcend them in today's world. This is what makes Panitch very stimulating to read and listen to.

He has been a Professor of Political Science at York University since 1984. He was the Chair of the Department of Political Science at York from 1988-1994. He was the General Co-editor of State and Economic Life series, U. of T. Press, from 1979 to 1995 and is the Co-founder and a Board Member of Studies in Political Economy. He is also the author of numerous articles and books dealing with political science including The End of Parliamentary Socialism (1997). He was a member of the Movement for an Independent and Socialist Canada, 1973-1975, the Ottawa Committee for Labour Action, 1975-1984, the Canadian Political Science Association, the Committee of Socialist Studies, the Marxist Institute and the Royal Society of Canada. He is currently a supporter of the Socialist Project.

He is a prominent exponent of Marxism who sees his own work as theoretically innovative within that tradition, because he maintains that the dominance of the United States in the early years of the twenty-first century can't be understood using theories of imperialism that are themselves a century old.

He has argued, for example, that the concept of imperialism developed for the Victorian era over-emphasized the matter of the export of capital. Yet if one uses that as a yardstick today (he reasons) Great Britain is more a victim of U.S. imperialism than Kenya -- since American investors have much more at stake in the former than in the latter. The advanced industrial nations, in other words, are interpenetrating -- exporting capital to one another, not to the 'South,' and this requires a great deal of revision in Marxist-Leninist models.

A vast amount of his publications can be found here.

Panitch has also argued that Marx was wrong to contend that the rise of trade unions would develop a socialistic class-consciousness in the working class. The association of workers for the purpose of collective bargaining has proven quite compatible with capitalism -- since such bargaining concerns the terms of wage labor, not the legitimacy of wage labor. He argues that Marxist political parties must abandon the assumption that there is anything inherently revolutionary about any class, so that they can get to work creating a self-conscious revolutionary class of wage earners, "articulating the articulation."

Timeline: Historical overview of Afghanistan

2009-07-24T11:40:00.002+02:00

Stop the War officer John Rees provides a short history of imperialist intervention and local resistance in Afghanistan. Timeline is a series of programmes on political history presented by John Rees and produced by the Islam Channel [ http://www.islamchannel.tv ].

Stop the war coalition: http://www.stopwar.org.uk

http://www.counterfire.org

Marxism 2009: some highlights

2009-07-15T13:40:00.005+02:00

Unfortunately, finishing my bachelors this summer turned out to mean I could not attend Marxism festival 2009 in London. However, some of the most prominent speakers have had their speeches filmed and posted on Youtube.

Slavoj Žižek on reinventing socialism and what it means to be a revolutionary today.

Tariq Ali on recent international politics: Obama, Pakistan and the US empire.

More can be found here, including speeches by David Harvey, Chris Harman, and Alex Callinicos (the diehard leninist).

Charles Hall in New Scientist -Revisiting the Limits to Growth After Peak Oil

2009-07-02T12:46:00.004+02:00

One of my favourite academics who address the importance of natural sciences to economic issues is the loud-voiced Charles Hall. He managed to get the undiluted message of the limits to growth published right there in the New Scientist. His article is really worth a good look.

"The world today faces enormous problems related to population and resources. These ideas were discussed intelligently and, for the most part, accurately in many papers from the middle of the last century, but then they largely disappeared from scientific and public discussion, in part because of an inaccurate understanding of both what those earlier papers said and the validity of many of their predictions. Most environmental science textbooks focus far more on the adverse impacts of fossil fuels than on the implications
of our overwhelming economic and even nutritional dependence on them. The failure today to bring the potential reality and implications of peak oil, indeed of peak everything, into scientific discourse and teaching is a grave threat to industrial society.

(...)

No substitutes for oil have been developed on anything like the scale required, and most are very poor net energy performers. Despite considerable potential, renewable sources (other than hydropower or traditional wood) currently provide less than 1 percent of the energy used in both the U.S. and the world, and the annual increase in the use of most fossil fuels is generally much greater than the total production (let alone increase) in electricity from wind turbines and photovoltaics. Our new sources of “green” energy are simply increasing along with (rather than displacing) all of the traditional ones. If we are to resolve these issues, including the important one of climate change, in any meaningful way, we need to make them again central to education at all levels of our universities, and to debate and even stand up to those who negate their importance, for we have few great intellectual leaders on these issues today. We must teach economics from a biophysical as well as a social perspective. Only then do we have any chance of understanding or solving these problems."

Charles Hall Speaking at ASPO VII in Barcelona, October 2008

Tariq Ali at the Parkland Conference

2009-06-24T13:14:00.006+02:00

Tariq Ali speaks at the Parkland Conference in Edmonton, Canada, on November 16, 2008. Amazing speech on The Dictatorship of Capital: Its Impact on Politics and Culture. With the fall of the Berlin Wall what happened to diversity and freedom of expression? How did market-realism establish its ascendancy in Western culture? He also quotes from and addresses the admirable culture of resistance that is an integral part of Arab poetry.

June 24th: Presentation on Peak Oil and Geopolitics in Amsterdam (Dutch)

2009-06-18T19:13:00.005+02:00

Rembrandt Koppelaar, chairman of peakoil.nl (or the Dutch branch of ASPO) and I, Freek Blauwhof, will hold a joint presentation on peak oil and the effects of increasing resource scarcity on international politics coming wednesday evening. I invite everyone in the neighbourhood at least able of understanding Dutch with some Power Point visual support to come an join the discussion!

Election Fraud in Iran?

2009-06-16T12:16:00.010+02:00

The Real News and Asia times reporter Pepe Escobar gave an in-depth analysis of the power structures in Iranian politics, and the events surrounding the recent elections. While most other media outlets are content with reporting the obvious fact of disagreement between the Ahmedinejad and Moussawi camps about the fairness of the elections, The Real News addresses the actual issues in great detail. Very informative.

Michael Parenti: US War on Yugoslavia

2009-06-11T13:41:00.020+02:00

Simple and clear introduction into marxian critique of imperialism by Michael Parenti on "The U.S. War on Yugoslavia" given May 16, 1999 in Seattle. The rising confidence of the left in America at the time can be felt throughout this great talk, and much of the issues Parenti raises have a relevance now he could not have foreseen at the time.

The war on Yugoslavia and the subsequent war crime trials in the Hague have been universally distorted and quickly forgotten. During the war, Michael Parenti exposed the elaborate plan started in 1989 to split up Yugoslavia into right wing ethnically divided separate states; a country that was built on the pan-Slaves coming together into a viable socialist nation. This is not to say that politics in Yugoslavia was perfect, but the progress all the Slavic nations have lost is without a doubt astounding. The plan Parenti described seems to work out very well today. Funny how, unlike the plan for Iraq becoming a blossoming flower of democracy in the Middle East, this one worked out quite well.

Interestingly enough, the US still have large bases in Kosovo. One strategic reason is the competition with Russia over control of the energy infrastructure network in Europe and central Asia. Several thousands of US soldiers protect the pipelines through the Balkans that are necessary to link pipeline networks connecting the oil and gas from central Asia to the export ports and the European pipeline networks. Pipelines in the Balkans Pipelines in the Kaukasus

Michael Parenti is author of many books, including:

Contrary Notions, City Lights, 2007
The Culture Struggle, Seven Stories Press, 2006
Superpatriotism, City Lights, 2004
The Assassination of Julius Caesar, The New Press, 2003 (A great talk about Rome, Ceasar, history as a science and class bias of historians can be viewed here.)
To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia, Verso, 2000
History as Mystery, City Lights, 1999

Documentary: The Take

2009-06-10T14:42:00.006+02:00

In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats, and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines. With The Take, director Avi Lewis, one of Canada's most outspoken journalists, and writer Naomi Klein, author of the international bestsellers No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, champion a radical economic manifesto for the 21st century. But what shines through in the film is the simple drama of workers' lives and their struggle: the demand for dignity and the searing injustice of dignity denied.

Interestingly enough, it seems that the current depression is making more and more places take a path similar to Argentina. And indeed Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein are now at the forefront of a growing progressive movement to call for nationalisation and cooperatisation of the American auto industry for example, to put the industry to work for the public good. http://thetake.org/

Documentary: A Place Called Chiapas

2009-06-09T12:43:00.008+02:00

'A Place Called Chiapas' is a breathtaking Canadian documentary of first-hand accounts of the EZLN, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, and the lives of its soldiers and the people for whom they fight. Director Nettie Wild takes the viewer to rebel territory in the south west Mexican state of Chiapas, where the EZLN live and evade the Mexican Army.

Paper on Heidegger and Social Philosophy

2009-06-09T12:15:00.006+02:00

Even though it's quite academic and metaphysical, I thought this paper on Heidegger on historicality and social phenomenology might provoke some thought. It deals with a small piece of the question of what distinguishes real existential or social philosophy from Dr. Phil psychology on societal scale. In other words, how can you be sure your philosophical social or cultural analysis really strikes the core of the lifeforms you describe.

For the real philosophy fans I found the 1947 letter exchange between Marcuse and Heiddegger on the internet. These letters shed a great light on the pain thinkers like Marcuse, Arendt, and Sartre must have felt to see their philosophical mentor embrace Nazism.

Annie Machon: How to Counter the Spies

2009-06-06T14:24:00.005+02:00

Annie Machon is a former MI5 (British Security Service) Intelligence Officer and whistleblower. She left the Service at the same time as her (now ex-)partner, David Shayler, due to Shayler's disclosures about crimes committed by the intelligence agencies. Annie is a prominent member of 9/11 Truth Movement, and in 2005 she wrote a book called "Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers: MI5 and the David Shayler Affair". This is a presentation she gave about the role of intelligence agencies in the current era of the unending “war on terror”, how they monitor citizens and left-wing activists in particular, the implications for our democracies, and what we can do to fight back.

Helen Scott on Rosa Luxemburg

2009-05-31T23:55:00.003+02:00

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A wonderful introduction into the life and times of Rosa Luxemburg, the early 20th century German revolutionary. Helen Scott is editor of "The essential Rosa Luxemburg : Reform or revolution & The mass strike".

Shell on Trial and Antonia Juhasz on “The True Cost of Chevron"

2009-05-28T10:23:00.009+02:00

These two in depth Democracy Now reports on Shell's and Chevron's practices of 'externalising costs' proved to provide a great deal of the history of these companies' shady dealings in the third world.

A landmark trial against oil giant Royal Dutch Shell’s alleged involvement in human rights violations in the Niger Delta begins this Wednesday in a federal court in New York. Fourteen years after the widely condemned execution of the acclaimed Nigerian writer and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, the court will hear allegations that Shell was complicit in his torture and execution.

Now Chevron’s annual report reports that 2008 was the company’s most profitable year in history. Just ahead of Chevron’s shareholder meeting, a new report released today tells shareholders more about the hidden and underreported costs of these profits. The alternative annual report is called “The True Cost of Chevron.” It brings together stories from communities across the world—Angola, Burma, Canada, Chad, Cameroon, Ecuador, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, the Philippines and the United States—all directly affected by and in struggle against Chevron’s operations. We speak to the report’s author and James Craig, media adviser for Latin America for Chevron.

Presentation: Ecological Critique of Market Society

2009-05-27T13:20:00.016+02:00

I thought I'd post this presentation text I've written for a philosophy department course called 'Concerns of the Market'. It is aimed to be a short introduction into the ecological critique of, as the course called it, 'market societies'.

It refers to a power point presentation that can be downloaded here or viewed here.

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1 Introduction

In this presentation, my aim is to give a short summary of the critique of market society and neoliberalism from the perspective of environmentalists and ecologists like Dennis and Donella Meadows, the authors of ‘The Limits to Growth’. This presentation will require some scientific discussion that is instrumental for a philosophical perspective. I believe that any fruitful philosophical inquiry into the moral problems of sustainability will have to rely on recent scientific discourse in order to ask the right moral questions. For example, questions like future generations’ rights to oil resources are outdated when it seems unlikely that there will be much left for these future generations, even when there is a consistent political-economic move to sustainable consumption. Rights to energy resources more generally might be more appropriate in this case.

I will break down this critique in two parts; the first dealing with the use of ‘sources’, the other with disposal of waste and pollutants in ‘sinks’. [figure 1, 2, 3] By sources is meant all natural resources that are used in an economy, from fishing stock and arable land to water supply and fossil fuels. By sinks are meant the capacities of ecosystems to absorb pollution and waste, from bacteria in rivers that break down sewage to the adaptivity of atmosphere to greenhouse gas emissions.

Obviously central to this critique is the notion of sustainability. I use the word here as meaning natural-economic conditions of necessity for the realisation of any reasonable interpretation of human flourishing for most people over time. Sustainability is often mistaken as some kind of moral value by itself. But, as long as we can agree that human flourishing in the future should also be an aim of political morality, so I can skip a lengthy discussion of Derek Parfit, what other value should political action ultimately have in mind, if not sustained human flourishing for all? Sustainability, then, concerns the natural boundraries for the sustained possibility of this moral end.

The question is whether societies in which markets are the dominant mechanism of allocation of goods and services are, or can be made capable of dealing fairly and effectively with the problems of increasing scarcity of resources and pollution. In other words: is there a morally acceptable capitalist road to sustainability? As I am approaching this question through looking at natural resources and sinks, Herman Daly’s widely used criteria for sustainable use of resources and pollution I think hits the nail on the head [figure 4]. If there are no questions about this definition of sustainability, I would like to proceed with the overview of the ecological critique of market society.

2.1 Sources

In countries where the price of non-renewable resources and unsustainably used renewable resources are set by the market (or are even subsidised), there is a gap between the use value of that resource and its exchange value, the price. As any normal commodity, natural resources are traded in the market, where supply and demand determine price. According to a central justificatory thesis in neoclassical economics, which treats natural resources like any other commodity, the market mechanism ensures efficient allocation of goods; but, of course, in this case we are dealing with depleting natural resources. Once used, they are gone, and somewhere along the way of depletion, (where maximum supply exceeds demand) price is set no longer by supply, demand and marginal production cost, but by natural scarcity and shortage.

So in so far as there are good reasons to assume that the exchange value, as set by the market at times of relative abundance, is much lower than the real use value of the resource, the market mechanisms of supply and demand cannot be relied upon to allocate non-renewable resources and depleting renewable resources efficiently. It follows that a society that allocates non-renewable resources in this market-based way is, from this perspective, wasting the ‘bank account’ of elementary resources considerably.

But the critique can go more fundamental. Market-based societies are also ill-prepared to adapt to depletion and scarcity of vital resources like energy or food that its economy is reliant on. A political-economic tradition of leaving allocation of non-renewables to the market produces a dependent economic infrastructure with the high consumption patterns that result from market underpricing. These infrastructures are the aggregates of long term investment; it takes several decades to replenish without extra costs the stock of cars, ships, factory equipment, electricity plants and so on. A market-based society that finds one of its essential resources depleting can maybe change allocation systems quickly, but it is stuck with the economic infrastructure and capital stock that is accumulated over time. This kind of exposure to resource shocks combined with the highly discussed increase in worldwide inequality can have morally unacceptable consequences- think of stagflation after the oil shocks of the 70s, food or water shortages and even the collapse of civilisation like on the Easter Islands. These are results of what the authors of LtG call overshoot- when a (socio-economic) system passes its external limits.

My own literature research into the depletion of different non-renewable and depleting renewable resources has convinced me there is cause for concern in many cases; oil and natural gas production are in dangerous stages of decline considering the level of dependency of most societies on these resources. [figure 5 and 6] Potable water, fish stocks and soil fertility are, albeit in different ways, at more or less maximum sustainable levels of extraction or beyond these levels. Contrary to a still dominant academic consensus, I found that the models of the Club of Rome have been quite right so far.

The fundamental question for this course is whether sustainable use of these resources can be reached with ‘market based solutions’. My position here is a negative one. Sustainable use of resources seems to be contradictory to a central thesis in neoclassical economics and market-based politics: that supply and demand allocate resources through setting prices. This conclusion I see supported in historical economic and energy policy in capitalist countries. The countries that have made the most considerable steps towards resource sustainability, Sweden, Iceland and Cuba, have done this through direct government involvement and investment. But rather than expanding on my own political opinion now, I invite discussion on this topic after this presentation.

2.2 Sinks

The question of pollution and waste shares many characteristics with the one concerning (renewable and non-renewable) resource depletion. There are sustainable levels of pollution that can be absorbed by ecosystem sinks, but exceeding these levels for a longer time results in problems of overshoot.

The most global and well-known example of overshoot by polluting sinks is global warming. There are lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions that increase temperature, but will be corrected by the world ecosystems correction mechanisms. After a certain point, however, the ‘positive feedback loops’, or the ecosystem mechanisms that reinforce global warming, become stronger than the balancing correction mechanisms. The current scientific debate concerns when exactly this point is most likely reached. The debate ranges from 350 ppm, which was reached around 1985, to 450 ppm, which would be reached in 35 years at current rates of emission. [figure 7 and 8] This is a very serious issue: if greenhouse gas levels stay above this critical point for a longer time, the genie will be out of the bottle. Humans will have lost their grip on this potential global catastrophe.

Again, the question for this course is whether there is a credible market based road to sustainability on the pollution side of the ecology-economy system. There is one especially prominent market based scheme for reducing emissions, cap and trade. This is the system in place in the EU at the moment, and it is the one that is being proposed by the Obama administration as well. At first sight and with some generous reading of the institutional argument, it seems it could work. All that governments need to do is to set the amount of emission rights, and these can then be allocated by the market in these rights. That would mean that there is a limit for emission, while the market can efficiently decide how exactly these emission targets will be met.

But if one looks a little further into the range of institutions that are involved in these schemes, there are a lot of practical problems with such a solution that I would argue are not just accidental, but institutional and necessary. Emissions can be reduced by all kinds of administrative mechanisms (fe offsetting emissions in seperate projects abroad). Furthermore, markets in emissions rights create a secondary derivative market with its speculative bubbles, and corporations always have an interest in expanding the amount of rights that are actually issued. When the system was just introduced in the EU, for example, the market and lobbying power of big corporations like the German automobile industry was so strong it even accomplished to create rights for more emissions than are produced to begin with. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, emitting corporations universally denied global warming, in a fashion rather like the tobacco industry that denied smoking caused cancer. The history does make one suspect there is a logic in this so called 'partnership of the state and the private sector'. Most environmentalists, and myself included, would argue this is because corporations always have an interest in externalising costs and internalising profits, and will use their resources to obtain their end. This market power of corporations is an institutional fact that directly contradicts any credible move towards sustainability. As long as the market is at the centre stage of environmental policy, this policy will be the result of a tug of war between even the most well-meaning governments and international governmental bodies on the one side, and corporations that externalise the cost of battling against their pollution on the other.

3 Conclusion

If one tries to imagine a credible integrated road to sustainability on all the vital topics adressed and more there seems very little room for market dominance. The most market-based ideas that aim to address these issues in cohesion all emphasise a need for stable and unjeopardised move on the different fronts, requiring price stability for long term investment. A good introduction into these arguments is supplied by Richard Heinberg in 'The Oil Depletion Protocol'. This necessity implies a government setting prices and pushing the market in a sustainable direction. But such a scheme will have to fight the same battle with contradicting economic institutions and mechanisms, like corporate lobbying and externalising of costs. Therefore, considering the actual scientific debates and economic-political practice, I am led to the more philosophical conclusion that capitalism is inherently unsustainable. Real solutions for the problems of an overshooting ecologic-economic system necessarily lie outside market thinking and market practice. Whether this should be a reformist taming of the forces of the market or a radical overcoming of its logic I leave up for discussion. In any case, it seems only a fool could expect that forces from within capitalism itself will save it from its own overshoot.

Ralph Schoenman: The Deeper Politics of 9 11

2009-05-19T22:02:00.021+02:00

In this lecture Ralph Schoenman gives I think one of the best possible arguments for why 9/11 is not just a distraction from the present and future, but, to the contrary, provides another overwhelming insight into the shadow sides of state and class.

Ralph Schoenman was a comrade of Betrand Russells in the '60s, and apparently even got tortured in Bolivia for trying to submit evidence to acquit french Marxist Regis Dubray from execution. Schoenman must have been quite a powerful character; in this memo, Bertrand Russell describes him as a quick minded and energetic young optimist who is convinced of "his unshakable belief in the penetration and breadth of his understanding". In 1969, Russell tragically distanced himself from Schoenman, since he had a tendency to exploit his proximity to Russell. As Sartre put it in a letter to Schoenman: "You can't both hide behind Russell and put him in your pocket." But much can be said for Schoenman, since he did not sell out like so many people of his generation. To the contrary, he now perplexes online biography writers by adhering to the language of marxists in the '60: "He reads a long, tedious tract, filled with phrases like 'the workers council were the proletarian power in embryo, but these were smashed by the Stalinist reaction.'"

This lecture makes me suspect however, that he is not just a relic from days when radical groups split over discussions on Trotsky and Stalin. It looks like his confidence and radicalism allows him a great amount of insight into the darkest political facts and structures.

His books include 'P.R.' (1967), 'Bertrand Russell: Philosopher of the Century' (1967), and 'The Hidden History of Zionism' (1988).

Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land

2009-05-18T11:54:00.007+02:00

From The Real News: "'Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land' was broadcast on the French CBC on October 23, 2008, provoking a flood of complaints to the Canadian network. These complaints overwhelmingly took the network to task for running what they deemed to be a "pro-Palestinian" film, largely sidestepping the critically acclaimed 2004 documentary's explicit focus on how pro-Israeli pressure groups methodically influence American media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

CBC management asked the network's Ombudsman to launch a full-scale investigation into the substance of the complaints and the central charge that the film was unduly biased.

On December 8, 2008, the Ombudsman released her findings. She issued a report concluding that Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land should not have been shown on French CBC at all."

The funny thing is that this film addresses the propaganda war in favour of the Israeli state, that uses strategies like creating an atmosphere of fear to keep journalists from stepping out of the official narrative that justifies the occupation. It is an analysis of the very practice this Ombudsman's report is an example of.

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This pivotal documentary exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites--oil, and a need to have a secure military base in the region, among others--work in combination with Israeli public relations strategies to exercise a powerful influence over how news from the region is reported.

Nate Hagens on Energy, Resources and Human Demand on a Full Planet

2009-05-14T09:58:00.007+02:00

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

Nate Hagens is an ex vice president of Lehman Brothers who voluntarily left his business career some years ago out of concerns about 'negative externalities'. Now he is doing his PhD at the University of Vermont Gund Institute for ecological economics, establishing connections in his research between the limits to growth and different possible responses, both in terms of alternative energy sources and change in consumption behaviour. I don't always like his reductionist take on questions of behaviour and ideology, explaining patterns of behaviour in terms of biochemical brain functions, but he has a lot to say about the predicament of the limits to growth.

His university page introduces Nate Hagens in these terms:

Nate is studying the impacts that a decline in liquid fuels will have on planetary ecosystems and society. On the supply side, he is exploring net-energy comparisons of the primary alternate fuel sources to oil: coal, wind, nuclear and biomass. While many new energy schemes will produce profits from a bottoms-up perspective, an EROI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) analysis from a top-down perspective limits the scope of energetically and ecologically sound replacements for fossil fuels.

Because of this, real progress on the human and planetary scale issue will likely come from a reduction in consumption. On the demand level, Nate is studying the evolutionary mechanisms that cause humans to seek novelty, act impulsively, and value the present over the future (steep discount rates). Specifically, our neural plasticity combined with a culture promoting growth and consumption results in biochemical positive feedback loops akin to addiction. We can however, be happier, healthier and more sustainable by consuming less, if we are provided with a different cultural carrot. Nate’s thesis lies in modeling sustainable scale solutions to the future decline in EROI by researching ways to reduce the steepness of our discount rates, thus giving more weight to the planet’s future.

Meet Mumia Abu Jamal

2009-05-14T09:22:00.006+02:00

Part 2 Part 3

Mumia Abu-Jamal is an American who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. Before his arrest he was a Black Panther Party activist, cab driver, and journalist. Since his conviction, his case has received international attention and he has become a controversial cultural icon. During his imprisonment he has published several books and other commentaries, most notably 'Live from Death Row'. On April 6, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled that his original conviction of 28 years ago would stand.
Despite all the setbacks and defeats in the struggle for his own life, Mumia is still regularly broadcasting broadcasting his insightful and eloquent columns trough Prison Radio.

Every Cook Can Govern

2009-05-12T21:07:00.008+02:00

C. L. R. James 1956
Every Cook Can Govern
A Study of Democracy in Ancient Greece
Its Meaning for Today

I've come across a gem of an article by C.L.R. James, whom I suspect to be one of the 20th century's most inspiring historians. Apparently, he wrote a large number of important scholarly works in the 50s and 60s that explored entirely new terrain; and he had a knack for reading history for what it can tell us today.

Perhaps the most striking thing about Greek Democracy was that the administration (and there were immense administrative problems) was organized upon the basis of what is known as sortition, or, more easily, selection by lot. The vast majority of Greek officials were chosen by a method which amounted to putting names into a hat and appointing the ones whose names came out.

Now the average CIO bureaucrat or Labor Member of Parliament in Britain would fall in a fit if it was suggested to him that any worker selected at random could do the work that he is doing, but that was precisely the guiding principle of Greek Democracy. And this form of government is the government under which flourished the greatest civilization the world has ever known.

(...)

For the Greek, the word isonomia, which meant equality, was used interchangeably for democracy. For the Greek, the two meant the same thing. For the Greek, a man who did not take part in politics was an idiotes, an idiot, from which we get our modern word idiot, whose meaning, however, we have limited. Not only did the Greeks choose all officials by lot, they limited their time of service. When a man had served once, as a general rule, he was excluded from serving again because the Greeks believed in rotation, everybody taking his turn to administer the state.

Books by C.L.R. James

Report: The Interplay between Climate Change and Peak Oil

2009-05-07T01:22:00.006+02:00

This week, my friend Rembrandt Koppelaar nicely summarised a recent study by ASPO Netherlands on the interplay between climate change and peak oil. Read the whole article on theoildrum.com.

Changes in the oil market and climate change are generally seen as separate phenomena. Although it is common knowledge that fossil fuels are the predominant source of CO2 emissions, the interplay between these emissions and fossil fuel scarcity is a topic that has scarcely been researched.

A new report from ASPO Netherlands provides a focused view of the interplay between these two themes. The report indicates that while the peaking of oil production would by itself have a favorable impact on carbon dioxide emission, this beneficial effect may be mostly offset by increased emissions from unconventional oil production. The report can be downloaded here (PDF, 2.4 MB, 56 pp) and a summary can be found below the fold.

Two Strategies to Change the World

2009-05-05T18:32:00.007+02:00

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

In light of my last article and the discussion following it, I found the latest discussion from last years' Marxism festival in London very interesting. Almost a year ago, John Holloway and Alex Callinicos debate strategies for changing the world at Marxism festival in London.

John Holloway is a lawyer, Marxist-oriented sociologist and philosopher, whose work is closely associated with the Zapatista movement in Mexico, his home since 1991. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, and has a Ph.D in Political Science from the University of Edinburgh. He is currently a teacher at the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Autonomous University of Puebla.

Alex Callinicos has played a leading role in the European and World Social Forums, speaking at events and workshops across the world. His books include The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx, Against Postmodernism and The New Mandarins of American Power.
He is currently director of the European Studies Program at King’s College London.

Slavoj Žižek in Roda Viva

2009-05-02T20:37:00.017+02:00

In this excellent interview with Slavoj Žižek, the thinking of this fascinating philosopher is nicely introduced as Žižek is confronted with questions from different sides; he explains why he is a marxist in political economy and Freudian, Lacanian and Hegelian in matters of ideology.

Books by Slavoj Žižek

The Anarchist FAQ

2009-05-01T16:52:00.017+02:00

As i was watching one of mr. 1001 Nights' video discussions on the labour theory of value, by the same guy who made the documentary "The Evilness of Power", I saw he reffered to an FAQ page on anarchism. It turned out to be quite a nice and above all, orderly overview of answers to a broad range of philosophical and scientific subjects that come up in debates on capitalism, ideology, and authority. It spans the board across ecology, authority and statism, neoclassical economics, history of the russian revolution, dissemination of the different kinds of anarchism, human nature arguments; you name it, it's there. So click on the link above if it piqued your curiosity as well.

Michael Ruppert's Come Back

2009-04-29T15:15:00.016+02:00

Just when most followers of Fromthewilderness.com thought Michael Ruppert was never going to get active again, here he is with a new book, called 'A Presidential Energy Policy'now available on Amazon, and a new documentary, Collapse.

I'm intruiged by this former detective who followed and spoke out about CIA drugs dealing for decades. He wrote an 700-page optimally court admissible case for prosecuting Cheney on 9/11, and during his investigations took up the issue of peak oil as it played a part in the motives for 9/11 and what followed. He predicted the burst of the housing bubble as early as 2005 and told all his listeners in the US to get out of debt. Now, he wrote a book about the radical essentials of energy policy. We should be paying attention. Obviously, I haven't read the book yet, but Colin Campbell and Cynthia McKinney, to name a few, have already had a peek:
________________________________________

Michael Ruppert does not mince his words writing a stirring and uncompromising book on a vital issue. He addresses some simple but widely ignored concepts relating to the critical role of oil and gas in the modern world. First, they are finite resources, formed in the geological past, being therefore subject to depletion. Second, they have to be found before they can be produced, such that the peak of discovery, which is long past, must deliver a corresponding peak of production.(..)

It is a perceptive, stimulating and very readable book covering a subject of critical importance. It deserves a place on the bookshelves of everyone from the school teacher to the chief executive; from the bishop to the politician and world leader.

Colin Campbell, Ph.D.
Former Oil Exploration Geologist (Texaco, British Petroleum)
Former Exploration Manager, Total
Former Consultant to Shell, Statoil, Mobil and Amerada
Former Executive V.P. Petrofina
Author, many books and publications on Oil and Gas depletion
________________________________________

All I can say about A Presidential Energy Policy is, "Yikes!"

This is a book everyone should read.

Mike Ruppert is my friend. And, sometimes I remind him, in a way that only a friend can, that my perspective is colored by my own distinct experiences as an informed woman of color in the United States. And frankly, that means that some of what is between these covers makes me cringe; but it is exactly this substance, actively suppressed in proposed national and international gatherings, that we human beings must debate and resolve, or else, we will find Dr. King's admonition, once again, to be true: "We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."

We know Mike Ruppert because he became a whistleblower and told us some inconvenient truths. About crack cocaine, 9/11/01, and now this -- how to step back from the brink of human disaster.

It is clear that Mike and I are headed toward the same destination, despite our differences. A Presidential Energy Policy lands Mike exactly where I am -- outside of the box of political orthodoxy, but well within the space of policy advocacy that is representative of critical thinking, rational analysis, and authentic leadership. Mike Ruppert dares to go where our elected leaders seem afraid to take us. In the end, however, if we are to salvage our own human dignity, either our "leadership" must catch up with us or we must become and nurture a new generation of leaders.

Cynthia McKinney
6-term Member, U.S. House of Representatives
Green Party Presidential Candidate, 2008

2009-04-28T18:07:00.009+02:00

In light of the article I've just written and posted below, I think it'd be informative to link to a speech made by first Iraq war veteran and UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter in 2007 on the anti-war movement and strategy. In it, he promotes his book Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Anti-War Movement. Enjoy the drill.

Funnily enough, there's also a British based organisation with the identical name: Waging Peace

People Power Politics

2009-04-28T16:22:00.044+02:00

Compared to the last American government of course, the Obama administration is quite responsive to public opinion. But, to be frank, it should be clear by now that Obama’s policies are miles away from taking measures to dismantle the empire, take care of the poor in your country, set up single payer health care, or implement a crucial emergency rescue plan for energy and climate, for instance. The crucial question therefore, I think, is not what the current administration is proposing and doing, but rather what American activists will be able to achieve in the present historic window of opportunity. As Christopher Hayes expressed a similar optimism: "history is pointing in our direction". So in this article I would like to address the strategy of the American left, the vital actors who put pressure on the only state that can on its own seriously change the course of world politics.

I am of course not alone in calling for the active citizens of the US to think about the most effective way to act in the longer term. For example, former UN weapons inspector and anti-war drill sergeant Scott Ritter stated that the anti-war movement needs to reinvent itself:

“It is high time for the anti-war movement to take a collective look in the mirror, and be honest about what they see. A poorly organized, chaotic, and indeed often anarchic conglomeration of egos, pet projects and idealism that barely constitutes a "movement," let alone a winning cause.” ('The Art of War for the Anti-War Movement')

Ritter is often a little harsh and rigid to my taste, and understandably suffered from some culture shock after siding with anti-authoritarian activists, he does have an important point. I think it can help all of us to be shouted at by people like him from time to time. Not because activist groups need to organize in a military manner per se, but to become better at strategic forward thinking; setting objectives, and consequently figuring out concrete ways to achieve them. There is, however, one crucial issue he does not address: the need to formulate an independent radical vision of and for society. Strategic action is always a means to an end, it by definition only makes sense if it is instrumental to a larger goal. The task for the left is to formulate this alternative vision for society.

So the left does not only need to reinvent itself organizationally, but also ideologically. Theory is a necessary first step to opening up political possibility. These times of proliferation of crises should be used first and foremost to return to the fundamental questions and critiques of capitalist social relations, the state and its relation to capital, democracy in the economic sphere, the relation between the economy and the natural environment, alienation and consumer society and so on. The ongoing search for forms of collective action that transcend the now all too apparent shortcomings of liberal democratic capitalism is what needs to give the left a lasting sense of direction.

But in the mean time, reforms are urgently necessary to open space for radical ideas. Electoral reform and environmental reform are two illustrations of this necessity. Electoral reform is needed to break open the two party system, to show that the Democrats or the Republicans are not the only political options. And whatever society one would like to see take form, it will have to live with natural constraints like climate change, depletion of natural resources; in short the limits to growth. Our current transgression of the limits to growth is one fundamental difference between the situation in the 1930s and today. As a consequence of these new concerns, I would argue, the American left will have to seriously press for reform while engaging in a fundamental debate of self-reinvention. The issue is therefore not whether you should take a step back and think or act immediately out of a sense of urgency, but rather how to combine the two activities.

To determine a way to start realizing those long-term visions, it is helpful to think in terms of social processes. Quite understandably, the last eight years of the Bush administration evoked a serious amount of popular disenfranchisement; resulting in passive apathy but also active resistance. The depression and the bailouts have also motivated people to protest in the streets of New York, London and Strasbourg. People power has been on the rise lately. If the process of disenfranchisement continues during the Obama administration, it could very well become the foundation for a commonplace independent activist citizenry on the longer term, in which citizens organize, self-educate and determine their own course rather than limiting themselves to passively endorsing the Democrats, the Republicans, or being apathetic. The two essential missing ingredients are active organization and critical theory.

For some time, the campaign and election of Barack Obama took away a lot of energy from the movements. Especially in the weeks following the election the Obamania was absolutely intolerable. But lately, popular discussion and pressure increased by mainstream media is forcing him into a dilemma. If I understand the significance of the torture memoranda debate correctly, there are two possible outcomes. In the most likely case, Obama will keep to his line of only 'looking forward' and stop short of prosecuting those responsible for the torture under Bush (and during his own presidency! Democracy Now reported that since the closing of Guantanamo was announced, the treatment of prisoners there worsened significantly), which means he will bend and twist to keep the torture conspirators above the law. Such preferential treatment would be another sign that real change can only be the result of pressure from below, as was shown by the conservative staff appointments, the intensification of the war in Afghanistan, the silence during the Gaza siege, the Geithner plan, etcetera. Pressure would have to increase for the Obama government to make the changes that are necessary, pressure that will only come from your actions and patience.

The other possibility is that Obama shows himself willing to give in to pressure from below on issues that can draw on widespread coverage and popular support, and really allow prosecution. Just imagine Dick Cheney, Condi Rice and Donald Rumsfeld as defendants in court! That would be an amazing victory, again not for the Obama government, but for the American people; earned especially by those who have made the case for justice and fought for years to get to the truth of the matter.

If anything, this debate shows there is a chance to realize successes. The Obama administration is predictably wriggling around and torturing logic in avoidance of making powerful enemies, so do not be fooled into passivity if he will not go through with prosecution of those who allowed and committed torture. But there will be new chances. Anyone who has read books by Chomsky will know that there is no short supply of issues on which the policy elite, Republican or Democrat, opposes the views of a wide majority of the American population. Herein lies possibility of reform not only for the sake of reform itself, but also to show that another world is possible.

So what I would like to convey to you is this: for your own countries’ sake and for people around the world, self-educate and become effective. While engaging in the necessary ideological debates on the bigger picture, join an activist group if you haven’t already. Get into touch with other groups on a national level, coordinate and pick a topic to campaign on, have patience and try to use the mainstream media as your own platform. I am not saying that this will be easy, but when the chance is there, you have to be able to take it and use it well. Because, as we see in the recent debate on torture, it actually is possible to get even Fox News hosts to unequivocally denounce torture and call for prosecution of those responsible. You may not agree with how Shephard Smith puts his argument -“If we are to be Reagan’s shining city on the hill..”- but he was able to suddenly disrupt the indoctrination of millions of your countrymen. His broadcast outrage was as politically valuable a service as countless hours’ worth of organizing, licking envelopes, sending emails, having meetings and staging rallies. The trouble so often is, you need to latter to have the former; the very fact that Obama released the memoranda or that Shephard Smith felt the need to denounce torture to such a degree, are the sweet fruits of effective activism. Never forget that you, the active citizens of the US, are the real superpower.

Freek Blauwhof is a philosophy student and member of the Dutch Green Party, as well as the International Socialists.

The Evilness of Power - A Documentary on Authority

2009-04-27T12:21:00.006+02:00

Few, if any documentaries I have come across go as deep into what motivates people to commit acts that our conscience normally would never allow. Montageing commentary from a host of intellectuals and shards of history, recent politics and popular culture to back them up, this film makes a powerful case that the evil people do to each other is not inherent in human nature: it requires authority and hierarchy to come about.

On www.anarchy.net, the creator of the film had this to say about his montage documentary:
"My motivations for creating The Evilness of Power are varied. I wanted to clarify the ideas and channel the strong emotions I'd been internalizing since I became an activist in 2004 and which I had been sketchily trying to articulate in my youtube channel since late 2006. I also realized that there weren't that many documentaries dealing exclusively with the concept of hierarchy--perhaps none at all--. I noticed how relatively easy and effective it would be to weave together some of my youtube videos with parts of programs, films, documentaries etc to offer a more comprehensive examination of hierarchy and hopefully contribute to revolutionary change."

Will Obama Be Forced To Prosecute?

2009-04-26T18:26:00.010+02:00

Good news, for a change! The pressure on Obama to prosecute those responsible for authorising torture seems to be mounting. This is happening not just in the marginal grass roots outlets, but in the mainstream media as well. Even Fox news commentator Shepherd Smith had to speak out against torture, saying "We are America, we do not Fucking torture!". I'm wondering, will Obama really be forced to either pardon the torture or prosecute Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld? In any case, this debate just goes to show that real change comes from below.

More at The Real News

Interview with Eva Golinger

2009-04-23T23:26:00.010+02:00

I've found an excellent twenty-minute interview with Eva Golinger, the American-Venezuelan lawyer and journalist who obtained documents proving USAID and CIA's involvement in the 2002 coup attempt in Caracas. She tells about the coup, the direction and deepening of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, and US policy towards the country.

Books by Eva Golinger

Announcing Dutch and British Marxism Festivals

2009-04-23T22:12:00.018+02:00

As spring comes into full swing in Europe, the traditional 1st of May is followed by a series of Marxism festivals. In Holland, the International Socialists organised a two day event, hosting a myriad of discussions, film screenings, meetings and musical performances. The language will occasionally be Dutch, but the list of speakers is international so there will also be plenty of opportunities for those who don't speak Dutch.
During the course of weekend of the 9th and 10th of May, the following speakers will shed their light and engage in discussion on the depression, its causes and opportunities, climate change, NATO and Afghanistan, Obama and what he means for imperialism, 10 years of Chavez, the food crisis, the state of the unions, and much, much more:

Arnold Heertje (economist)
Ronald van Raak (Socialist Party MP)
Linda IJmker (Milieudefensie; Environmental Defence)
Mohamed Rabbae (Een Land Een Samenleving; One Country, One Society)
Lindsey German (Stop the War, UK)
Cees Ladestein (OR Nemef / FNV)
Maina van der Zwan (International Socialists)
Hajo Meyer (Een Ander Joods Geluid; A Different Jewish Voice)
Sotiris Kontogiannis (SEK, Greek Socialist Worker Party)
Nora el-Jebli (Moslima Polder Brigade)
Henk Overbeek (University of Amsterdam)
Mike Gonzalez (socialist from Venezuela)
Rebecca Gomperts (Women on Waves Foundation)
Peyman Jafari (author of 'The Other Iran')
Marjolein ’t Hart (University of Amsterdam)
Erhan Can (organizer with Dutch labour Union, the FNV)
Sara Farris (Sinistra Critica, Italy)
Marienella Yanes (filmmaker Red Oil)
Erkan Dogan (socialist from Turkey)
Miriyam Aouragh (Oxford University)
Antonio Carmona Baez (IIRE)
Volkhard Mosler (Die Linke, Germany)
Sjaak van der Velden (IISG)
Bart Griffioen (head editor 'De Socialist')
Mani Tanoh (socialist from Ghana)
Kees Kalkman (VD Amok)

So for those of you who live in Holland, I very warmly invite you to join the festival.

For those of you who live in Britain, this kind of festival is organised in an even more grandiose style in London, spanning five days with several events simultaneously. The list of internationally renowned speakers is just extraordinary. I plan on going there as well to see in real life some of the people who have been real sources of inspiration to me: Tariq Ali, Tony Benn and Slavoj Žižek in particular. So if you are in Britain, mark the 2nd to the 6th of July in your diary and make sure you do not miss this opportunity!

Jeremy Scahill on the Obama Age

2009-04-20T22:35:00.008+02:00

One of America's newly risen stars in investigative journalism, Jeremy Scahill discusses American military power and economic imperialism in the coming years, related to Obama policies. Scahill has reported from post-invasion Iraq; the former Yugoslavia, where he covered the 1999 NATO bombing; and from post-Katrina Louisiana. He is is a correspondent for Democracy Now, and is a frequent contributor to The Nation. Scahill documented the use of private military contractors in his award-winning book "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army."

'Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army' and other books by Jeremy Scahill

No Volveran -The 21st Century Socialism of Venezuela

2009-04-19T20:36:00.004+02:00

Documentary No Volveran: Behind the bold policies of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez is a revolutionary mass movement that is saying NO to capitalism, and attempting to change the course of Latin American history. Journey deep into the barrios, out to the factories and into the heart of the revolution to find out why there is a movement to transform society. Meet the people who are fighting for power in their communities, and taking control of their work places. Follow the factory workers of Sanitarios Maracay in their struggle against sabotage and corruption, as they pave the way forward with their unprecedented campaign for full nationalisation under workers' control. In this feature length documentary, meet many of the key revolutionary figures to find out how they are trying build socialism of the 21st century, and how it is changing peoples lives. www.handsoffvenezuela.org www.alteredstatefilms.com www.marxist.com

Proposal to Visitors

2009-04-16T12:28:00.008+02:00

After having posted for six weeks now on Synthesiser, I suspect returning readers have got a taste of what this blog is about. Taking a few steps back from the news to really understand the important underlying causes. Obviously you can't do that on your own, so I've been looking around for good documentaries, interviews, online lectures, important news items that portend something bigger, and writing articles whenever I feel I have something good to say.

But I would also love this page to be an interactive community of people with common interests. If you are a returning visitor who finds this page has some value or could use some other perspectives, please get into contact with me about tips, links, book reviews, short articles or important news items. If you think you'll stay motivated and can write proper English, there is a possibility of co-editorship.

So send an email or comment below this topic if you think it's a good idea to make this blog a little more interactive.

Thanks for visiting!

Freek

Richard Heinberg on Peak Oil and Energy Policy

2009-04-16T12:16:00.006+02:00

Ecologist Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute presents at the Conference on Michigan's Future: Energy, Economy and Environment in November 2008. Heinberg is one of the world's formost peak oil educators, having authored four unique and compelling books on the subject. In this presentation, Heinberg discusses the history of human's control of energy and what can be done to prepare for the energy challenges of the future. Heinberg reviews peak oil depletion and takes an overall view on what we need to do to find the path to sustainability.

'Peak Everything', 'The Oil Depletion Protocol', and other books by Richard Heinberg

Documentary: Secrets of the CIA

2009-04-16T12:00:00.008+02:00

In this amazingly accessible documentary, the secret history of the CIA since its founding is covered case by case. It explains how the CIA pioneered, developed, manipulated prisoner abuse, sold drugs, changed regimes and killed millions of people worldwide to further 'security interests'. Very helpful as a first tip for people who are just doubting the stylised story that hides so much of political history after the Second World War.

2009-04-15T18:41:00.004+02:00

For all of you who are interested in following the oil situation and the peak oil debate, the Dutch branch of ASPO publish a monthly review of basic oil data.
Since the April edition of Oilwatch Monthly is just out, I thought it might be a good time to announce this easily accessible resource for anyone who needs this data for their own purposes.

Edward Said on 'The Clash of Civilizations' and Cultural Imperialism

2009-04-15T13:49:00.011+02:00

In 1993 Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington wrote an essay titled "The Clash of Civilizations?" and later he expanded into a book with the same title, but without the question mark. Edward Said, late Columbia professor rips Huntington's thesis to shreds, and with it, the kind of reductionist, 'realist' world view that 'The Clash of Civilizations' is an expression and symbol of. Literary theorist and activist Edward Said has provided indispensable insight into the cultural side of contemporary imperialism.

Orientalism and other books by Edward Said

2009-04-08T11:21:00.007+02:00

Journalist and author Paul Roberts talks about the commercial food industry and the need for a broader systemic approach for confronting the global food challenges facing the world today. He had before been a regular contributor to Harper's Magazine and writes primarily about "the complex interplay of economics, technology, and the natural world".

'The End of Oil', 'The End of Food', and other books by Paul Roberts

2009-04-07T10:16:00.017+02:00

In this lecture given by Michel Chossudovsky in 2003, in the early years of the neoconservative Bush administration and the war on terror, he blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on the US by "Islamic terrorists". As this speech is a few years old, we should of course add to it what we know happened afterwards. Through meticulous research, he has uncovered both a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and a cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration. According to Chossudovsky, the "war on terrorism" is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. But Chossudovsky does not fit the stereotype of 'truthers' who do nothing else then meticulously going over the details of the events of 9/11. In stead, he puts 9/11 in a wider context of geopolitics, one that allows insight in the shadow side of actual states. In this lecture, he argues that the "war on terrorism" is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to a "New World Order", dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex. September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington's agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.

Michel Chossudovsky is currently professor of economics at the Universtiy of Ottawa. He has taught as visiting professor at academic institutions in Western Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia, has acted as economic adviser to governments of developing countries and has worked as a consultant for international organizations including the United Nations Development Programme, the African Development Bank, the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning, the United Nations Population Fund, the International Labour Organization, the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. In 1999, Chossudovsky joined the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research as an adviser. Chossudovsky is the past president of the Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He is a member of research organisations that include the Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform, the Geopolitical Drug Watch and the International People's Health Council. He is an active member of the anti-war movement in Canada, and has written extensively on the war in Yugoslavia. After the September 11 terrorist attacks he has also been involved in highlighting the historical relationship between the US government, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. He is a frequent contributor to Le Monde diplomatique, Third World Resurgence and Covert Action Quarterly. His publications have been translated into more than twenty languages. His latest book is titled America's "War on Terrorism".

War and Globalisation and other books by Michel Chossudovsky

Report from Strasbourg

2009-04-06T18:08:00.046+02:00

RTL 4 News Report on the Dutch International Socialist Demonstration

Below this report is a transcript in English.

Last weekend I joined the Dutch International Socialists to try and peacefully protest NATO and the occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine in the French border city of Strasbourg. While no demonstrations were allowed inside the city, we agreed to try to get into the city as early as 4 am on Saturday, where we were met with extraordinary police repression. The gendarmerie immediately fired tear gas grenades at our manifestation the moment we were first spotted in the Strasburg suburbs. This encounter would set the tone for the entire day. Nonetheless we tried to reach the city centre, but had to back off when the riot police threatened to hopelessly split open our already decimated group of, at that moment, around 300 protesters. This is where Sanne, interviewed in the news clip, got hit directly in the face by an exploding tear gas grenade. She, some other comrades and I locked arms and got away as quickly as possible while we were trying to reach the retreating group, resisting the gas and grenade impacts. Many fellow protesters, me included, got hit by explosive grenades directly aimed at our bodies. In several cases this resulted in injuries. Inside the protected 'orange zone', we got trapped by lines of armed and armoured riot police, who refused to let us out to join the major demonstration. We were locked in at an intersection for several hours, Over time other split off groups of demonstrators joined our blockade, and so we slowly regained morale.

It took determination and a lot of pressure before the riot police let us cross the bridge to join the planned major demonstrations. The battle for the bridge started when a bigger group of several hundred people joined our group cheering. The police felt threatened and moved in to ram us away from the bridge. We stayed our ground, lifting our hands in the air, chanting: "We are peaceful, what are you?". The pressure mounted and we were forced to retreat, but the police apparently feared retaliation and returned to the bridge. It was at this time that the 'Black Block' started rioting. The Black Block are a radical group of anarchists who want to beat the system with violence. They got increasingly worked up, reacting with stones, clubs and eventually a few Molotov-cocktails to the police blockade and their continuous volleys of direct tear gas and CS grenade fire from launchers aimed with laser guidance. They also lobbed deafening and dangerous sonic grenades. An especially grim detail we witnessed was that a medic in uniform got hit frontally in the crotch by another directly aimed exploding gas grenade. As he was dragged to the side of the road by his colleagues, they got hit as well while treating their colleague's wounds. The police definitely seemed to single out the medics.

It started to look like we might be surrounded for real, when, at precisely the right moment, a thousand strong group of fresh Englishmen, Greeks, Italians, Turks, Frenchmen and others gloriously tipped the scales in our favour. When we finally broke through the bridge blockade the riot police moved to the side of the road and let us through to the main stage; the starting point for the official demonstration outside the city centre. But a few hundred Black Blockers turned right one street later than we did, where hundreds of riot police let them set fire to a hotel and a bank office before they felt the need to quell the riot. We suspect the fires were allowed to happen because, from our stage site, we saw smoke coming from the other side of a wall at least half an hour before we heard any serious grenade and rifle fire. When it hit, though, nobody knew what would happen to the planned demonstration - tension was definitely in the air.

The manifestation was quiet, while the widely spread frustration with the Black Block got confirmed one more time. Another bridge was occupied by at least two hundred fully equipped riot police now blocking a route to the city centre, but this time we could just have passed them by. In stead of ignoring the gendarmerie and following the normal route for the demonstration, the black mob chose to pick a fight anyway. This incident resulted in intense fire with rubber bullets, water cannons, and a suffocating amount of CS and tear gas. Disappointed with these irrational rioters, we decided it was time to go home to the Anti-NATO village and called it a day.

As Strasbourg was my first demonstration at an international summit, I never expected this amount of violence. But neither did the more experienced members of the Dutch IS. We agreed to have a peaceful blockade before the main demonstration, something that is to my mind an act of perfectly legitimate civil disobedience to a refusal of right to free speech. However, it seemed that the police would not let a peaceful blockade happen. The police response combined with a Black Block that is immune to arguments of non-violence leaves little room for an honest and widely supported demonstration against NATO and the occupations in the Middle East. Still, we managed to win the sympathy of the local population in the city centre at least. We crossed a good part of the 'orange zone', and even got our message of peace and solidarity across two Dutch national television broadcasters. Reporting teams from the public news programme Netwerk (transmission Monday the 6th, 20:25) and RTL Nieuws (Saturday the 4th, 19:30) followed us in our attempt to cross the city.

I think our movement has two major problems that prevent it from spreading in the hundreds of thousands. The Black Block were in my view just as much a threat to our message as the riot police was to our right to convey it. Despite serious difficulties for peaceful protesters at this summit, we have reached more than a million of our countrymen who might see through the general picture of violent rioters as a result. I want to thank all the comrades who made our efforts a success in spite of everything with their courage, caring, solidarity, and clarity! THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!

Transcript:

(0m;0s) Suzanne Rosman: Compliments back and forth, Bastiaan, eh, outside people are apparently less happy."

Bastiaan Hetebrij: "You can say that again. There have been demonstrations in both Germany and France today, as was the case yesterday and the day before. Some fifty protesters got wounded in the process today, and colleague Jeroen Akkermans got up very early this morning to report from the demonstrations."

Jeroen Akkermans: "Columns of smoke over the NATO summit. Strasbourg is the scene of riots and fires despite the enormous security operation. A group of around 100 Dutch socialists is on it's way early in the morning, but time and time again they find the police in their way."

Maina: "Emm, look, this is also not what we are looking for, but we want to make our voices heard against the war and escalation here today. It's hard, but we do it nonetheless."

Jeroen Akkermans: "De police fears spontaneous action and ar present on every corner of the street."

Pepijn: "If it were up to us, then all those security measures, that whole 110 million would not be necessary, because we are not out to kill those world leaders at all, our intention is to forcefully make our voices heard."

Bart and the IS: "A! Anti! Anticapitalista! A! Anti! Anticapitalista!"

Jeroen Akkermans: "Next to Bart, disguised protesters are singing along."

Jeroen Akkermans: "That protesters disguise themselves. Is that okay?"

Bart: "Yeah, I think it's okay, but erm, I don't understand the reason for it. Because protesting I think is something you do in complete openness, to plead for ewaul rights, human rights, democracy, I don't do that in disguise, and I would like to ask everyone to do it without disguise."

Jeroen Akkermans: "Because?"

Bart: "Because we don't have anything to hide, literally."

Jeroen Akkermans: "But this is not the place nor the time where protest is allowed. Also the police without uniform sees more and more protesters join in."

Maina: "So, firstly, this is a good feeling that we are with so many, by the way I have to take some measures now, but this is an excellent... development..."

Jeroen Akkermans: "Because?"

Maina: "Because, eh, there's a line of, er, riot police coming towards us, and we are a little surrounded."

Jeroen Akkermans: "The police fires with tear gas regularly. The protesters are not impressed. They retreat, only to advance later. Afterwards rocks are being thrown. The police beat with t heir batons, and people get injured."

Sanne: "All of a sudden there was this kind of BAM, and then this thing had exploded in my face."

Jeroen Akkermans: "But do you think this is worth it?"

Sanne: "I don't understand, why in a city like, you know, Strasbourg, we don't have the right to peacefully protest, in that sense I think it's really true: 'This is what democracy looks like.'"

Jeroen Akkermans: "Finally the demonstration is allowed to start, far away from the NATO leaders.(2m:46s)

More Reports: G20 Demonstrators Get Interviewed by OneWorldTV in London

Watch OneWorldTV - Interviews from the G20 protests in London in News | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

2009-04-02T15:33:00.008+02:00

I've found this two hour but very instructive lecture on how to read 'Das Kapital', by one of the world's foremost Marx interpreter professor David Harvey. After decades of experience with the text he has an unique ability to understand what exactly Marx was doing in its entirety.
He is the world's most cited academic geographer (according to Andrew Bodman, see Transactions of the IBG, 1991,1992), and the author of many books and essays that have been prominent in the development of modern geography as a discipline. His work has contributed greatly to broad social and political debate, most recently he has been credited with helping to bring back social class and Marxist methods as serious methodological tools in the critique of global capitalism, particularly in its neoliberal form.

Marx's Capital with David Harvey
An open course consisting of a close reading of the text of Volume I of Marx's Capital in 13 two-hour video lectures by Professor David Harvey.

He appeared today in an interview at Democracy Now to analyse the G20 summit and the state of the economy. See the interview here.

His latest books:

An Introduction to Capital (forthcoming 2009)
The Communist Manifesto- New Introduction Pluto Press (2008)
The Limits to Capital New Edition (2006)
Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development (2006)
A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005)
Paris, Capital of Modernity (2003)
The New Imperialism (2003)

2009-04-01T18:33:00.003+02:00

The Real News analyst Pepe Escobar on Obama's Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy: "There are many more strategic issues at play than meets the eye - and the President and his team's spin."

China Replacing Dollar in International Trade

2009-04-01T10:57:00.009+02:00

While trying to set up an SDT based world currency alternative for the dollar, China is laying the practical basis for such a system by replacing the dollar in large scale international trade. If succesful, this plan will allow China to increasingly opt out of the dollar system as bankroller of US debt. Forbes hinted to this development today in an article on the recent 10 billion dollar currency swap with Argentina.

"Facing a precipitous slide in exports and tens of millions of unemployed migrants, China is hoping to lubricate financing for emerging markets to buy its goods, in the process symbolically raising the yuan's profile on the global economic stage.

In the first such move involving a Latin American country, China struck a 70 billion yuan ($10.2 billion) currency swap agreement with Argentina that would allow the latter to put in yuan-denominated orders for Chinese imports and thereby avoid using the U.S. dollar in bilateral trade. Analysts expect China to pursue more bilateral currency swaps with emerging markets in order to give a boost to its ailing export sector.

The agreement with Argentina marked China's sixth bilateral currency swap. Beijing extended a 100 billion yuan ($14.6 billion) swap line to Indonesia last week and a 20 billion yuan ($2.9 billion) swap line to Belarus earlier this month. China has also reached swap arrangements with South Korea, Malaysia and Hong Kong. The swaps, totaling 650 billion yuan ($95.1 billion), will last for three years."

The Mondragon Cooperatives

2009-03-31T21:35:00.033+02:00

A lot of writers that I have cited or linked to here have deep criticisms of capitalism, which should raise questions about what might replace it. I think this is a topic that should be far more debated than it is today, because it deals with possible answers on how life might be better if organised in a different way.

The worker cooperative 'business model' is one promising practical example of how people might reclaim their democracy in the work place and become an empowered community; and Mondragon in Spain is one of the places which can show us how it's done.

So to approach economic democracy in a practical way, I thought I might link to a documentary and a speech on the Mondragon Cooperatives, which are one of the largest federations of cooperatives in the world. Learning about their integrative system is seriously inspiring because it works so beautifully. It is a group of democratically governed businesses helping each other to get ahead. They take care of the creation of new coops in the neighborhood through coop banks using refined development strategies. If they run a profit, the workers generally share 70% amongst themselves as dividend because the workers ARE the shareholders. 20% goes into reinvestment, necessary for productive capital, and 10% goes into community services, from a research university to medical care and cultural activities. Empowered by this well-designed system, these people are in a constant process of figuring out how to live democracy in their daily lives.
The coops coordinate to ensure no member worker goes unemployed for long. If some do, they are guaranteed 80% of their original wage under the coops' social security funds. The system has been so successful that from its quiet birth in 1955 under the Franco fascist regime, it has grown into a network providing more than 100.000 jobs and countless services in the Basque country. After seeing this, who can claim capitalism is the only possibility?

Mondragon Website in English

"The Mondragon Experiment" is a BBC documentary produced in the 70s, which documents the founding and rise of the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation. Tracing its birth back to the time of the Civil War in Spain and its remarkable success since then, combined with an analysis of the actual structure of the company, The Mondragon Experiment makes a strong case for industrial democracy as an alternative to the present economic order.

Praxis Peace Institute Founding Director, Georgia Kelly discusses the unique collaborative business model of the Mondragon Cooperatives located in the Basque country of Spain. This presentation will cover the ethics and vision of Mondragón as well as unique success stories that are an inspiration to those seeking alternatives to business-as-usual. The goal of the Mondragón Cooperatives is to create community through economic relationships and to transform society through conscious economic practices. (Video a little bad, sound is no problem though)

Books on the Mondragon Cooperatives

Peak Oil and Peak Capitalism

2009-03-30T12:01:00.004+02:00

Richard Wolff wrote a very interesting guest article on theoildrum.com, the world's foremost energy blog.

"Might we consider a mutually beneficial alliance between critics of abusing our energy resources and critics of abusing our productive capabilities? How about an alliance focused on a radical, democratic, and therefore anti-capitalist reorganization of production? The point would be to make citizens and workers – those who must live with the results of what enterprises do – conjoint decision-makers focused on meeting collective needs, both productive and environmental."

2009-03-28T19:22:00.005+01:00

A great article by George Monbiot on climate change fatalism

"If you think preventing climate change is politically difficult, look at the political problems of adapting to it.

Quietly in public, loudly in private, climate scientists everywhere are saying the same thing: it’s over. The years in which more than two degrees of global warming could have been prevented have passed, the opportunities squandered by denial and delay. On current trajectories we’ll be lucky to get away with four degrees. Mitigation (limiting greenhouse gas pollution) has failed; now we must adapt to what nature sends our way. If we can."

2009-03-27T09:40:00.005+01:00

Philosopher, historian and linguist Noam Chomsky spoke to Paul Jay yesterday on the Obama - Geithner plan. Chomsky says that "they're simply recycling the Bush-Paulson measures and changing them a little, but essentially the same idea: keep the institutional structure the same, try to kind of pass things up, bribe the banks and investors to help out, but avoid the measures that might get to the heart of the problem." The discussion ends in a conversation about what democratisation of the economy might look like.

2009-03-26T20:29:00.013+01:00

Philosopher Manuel DeLanda gives a presentation that challenges some commonly held beliefs in the realm of political theory. Challenging systems-thinking and the essentialising of institutions, he argues that the military during peacetime has had a large influence on the structure of modern industrial societies, for example, the ways in which factories, schools, and hospitals continually manage the activities of humans. He traces the developments of European military techniques to their use in micromanaging the movements of humans in various institutions.

Even if I wouldn't discard nearly as much of Marx' theory as DeLanda, I found this speech to be a healthy reminder of the pitfalls that Marxists and systems thinkers in general too easily fall for.

On Science, Philosophy, and Public Debate

2009-03-26T15:30:00.017+01:00

Philosophers are fond of saying that the way you conceive of a problem, theoretically or practically, already determines a range of solutions you might end up proposing. This is often considered the domain and 'practical use' of philosophy; not to answer questions but figuring out which questions to ask. Empirical science, then, deals in actual knowledge of the world around us, and is therefore able to answer questions that one formulates for some practical sake. Economists can tell us what happens when the Fed prints money to help banks, ecologists can tell us when a particular patch of sea is fished beyond its carrying capacity, and physicists can tell us how to produce energy in new ways.
So lets apply this distinction to what we are doing here; to figure out from which perspective(s) we can meaningfully analyse the moral problems posed by the economical, ecological, and political crises we read about all the time. It should be quite clear that figuring out which questions to ask is not just the job of the philosopher. In most cases you don't just need the analytical training of the philosopher to formulate the right questions and points-of-view, you also need to know something of the object-field you're talking about to find out whether the concepts you use apply well enough to the problems at hand. For example; depending on which economist you take seriously, the current worldwide recession could be a problem of failed regulation of the financial markets, it can also be a problem of greed, maybe the crisis stems from the inherent contradictions of capitalism itself, or according to others it's the free markets' self-cleansing process. Depending on your beliefs on technology and energy resources, whether these beliefs are considered and well-argued or complete faith, you will have a different idea of the possible futures for the real economy.
These scientific problems, or at least problems of applied philosophy of science, show that you need to have some sort of understanding of the matters of fact you are talking about to make a judgment about the ethical side of the topic at hand. And as it is my goal on this blog to find the right moral questions to ask, this kind of philosophy needs science just as science needs philosophy. Without a critical understanding of disputes within the sciences we cannot possibly decide which narrative to cast our moral discussions in. To put it in a simpler way; differences of opinion on the scientific level (do CO2 emissions lead to increased worldwide temperatures?) so often lead to disagreement on the moral level (Should we make a serious effort to reduce our CO2 emissions?).
This realisation is especially relevant for people who are, like me, convinced that main stream science cannot give us a satisfactory analysis of some deep crises that confront today's societies. If you are dealing with peak oil, the limits to growth more generally, trying to revive discussions about economic democracy, or understand the current economic collapse in terms like Richard Wolff's analysis (in systemic terms of unsustainability of lending workers' money in stead of increasing wages), you first need to convince people that your theoretical approach to the topic is legitimate. Only after that can you start an ethical discussion based on acceptance of a new analysis. So if we are going to understand, let alone raise awareness of the moral imperatives in this relatively new world of scarcity, climate change, and collapse of the debt bubble that allowed so much concentration of wealth, we have to fight on both these fronts.
But something is happening; the old free market narrative that was held up to disguise a system of state support for big corporations has now become so unbelievable that a lot of critical people are trying to reorient themselves. In these times there is an opportunity for ideas that are developed in the margins to enter the main stream. If we get this right, we might just be able to build the foundations to have public discussions about some real issues at last.

2009-03-22T15:08:00.009+01:00

Mathematician dr. Albert A. Barlett on exponential growth and society. Bartlett makes a powerful application of the exponential function on the topics of economy, energy, and population.

2009-03-22T14:27:00.006+01:00

Dr Robert Costanza, Director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics gave a talk at Wellington’s Victoria University on the best response to the ecological and financial crises that are unfolding.

Dollar being ditched worldwide

2009-03-20T16:02:00.011+01:00

I just received an email from a good friend containing three jawdropping news stories. These just go to show the unbelievable speed of what is all happening behind the scenes; highly informative in the light of the Fed printing trillions of dollars by buying up obligations the last weeks, the US financial overseers seem to fight an onslaught of capital destruction with their only weapon to do it -printing money. As a lot of people following the big markets have noticed, this is how the financial system, house prices and stock prices can implode, but not cause the deflation of the Great Depression. But the questions of who will finance the debt, what will happen to the dollar, and what will replace the wealth being pulled out of investment in third world countries remain unanswered.

Foreign debt purchases fall sharply in January

Offshore banking centers sell Treasurys; central banks sell agencies
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - A big jump in foreign sales of long-term U.S. securities raised concerns Monday that the U.S., in the midst of a massive debt issuance to fund its economic revival plans, may run into trouble getting other countries to finance its deficit.

U.N. panel says world should ditch dollar

LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - A U.N. panel will next week recommend that the world ditch the dollar as its reserve currency in favor of a shared basket of currencies, a member of the panel said on Wednesday, adding to pressure on the dollar.

Currency specialist Avinash Persaud, a member of the panel of experts, told a Reuters Funds Summit in Luxembourg that the proposal was to create something like the old Ecu, or European currency unit, that was a hard-traded, weighted basket.

China backs talks on dollar as reserve -Russian source

MOSCOW, March 19 (Reuters) - China and other emerging nations back Russia's call for a discussion on how to replace the dollar as the world's primary reserve currency, a senior Russian government source said on Thursday. Russia has proposed the creation of a new reserve currency, to be issued by international financial institutions, among other measures in the text of its proposals to the April G20 summit published last Monday.

Calls for a rethink of the dollar's status as world's sole benchmark currency come amid concerns about its long-term value as the U.S. Federal Reserve moved to pump more than a trillion dollars of new cash into the ailing economy late Wednesday.

2009-03-20T15:13:00.002+01:00

Bestselling author and UC Berkeley journalism professor Michael Pollan. He explores the ecology of eating to unveil why we consume what we consume in the twenty-first century. Michael Pollan is the author, most recently, of The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.

2009-03-18T20:09:00.003+01:00

Former LAPD detective, whistleblower, activist and publisher of 'From The Wilderniss' Michael Ruppert presents the method for and conclusions in his book 'Crossing the Rubicon; the Decline of American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil.'

On Connecting Dots

2009-03-18T11:40:00.036+01:00

When I picked up Naomi Klein's 'The Shock Doctrine' a few weeks ago in an local bookshop, I knew it would prove a very valuable source of information. And the book indeed surpassed my expectations as it documented a systematical and conscious fine-tuning of a kind of 'laissez faire on speed'. The book follows a wealth of historical examples that reveal again and again that behind the facade of supposedly 'objective economic truths', the free market model is actually an antidemocratic seizure of the public sphere for capital to commodify and marketise.

In normal English, Klein compares today's neoliberalism with the classic days of Adam Smith: "Under Chicago School economics, the state acts as the colonial frontier, which corporate conquistadors pillage with the same ruthlessness and energy as their predecessors showed when they hauled home the gold and silver of the Andes. Where Smith saw fertile green lands turned into profitable farmlands on the pampas and the prairies, Wall Street saw "green field opportunities" in Chile's phone system, Argentina's airline, Russia's oilfields, Bolivia's water system, the United States' public airwaves, Poland's factories - all built with public wealth, then sold for a trifle." Crucial to Kleins' argument is that this is all made politically possible by powerful people exploiting crises and shocks -whether it be military coups, mass torture, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, or hyperinflation. And to take the argument even further, the useful crises have often been artificially designed or manipulated with the express purpose of creating these new frontiers for lucrative investment. In short, 'The Shock Doctrine' reaffirms the classic picture of expansionist (crony) capitalism by documenting it in historical and political context.

This alone is already quite heavy stuff to digest, but the narrative is still acceptable for a broader audience. It's still common, at least in left wing or academic circles, to follow Klein in her connection between crises, repression and corporate expansion. This is considered respectable; connecting two themes that, in the main stream media seem "totally unrelated", may require arguments and justification to many, but is perfectly within the scope of debatable discourse. However, what happens if you start assembling a larger picture from combining Klein's account of the shock doctrine with other plausible but deviant investigations?

I can simply no longer keep this conclusion to myself. I need to share it with people at least once. The point to the shock doctrine, using moments of crisis to reduce the public into a regressive, childlike state, to create a window of political opportunity for 'free market reform' and resource grabs, seems to me exactly identical to the motivation for the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. At first hesitantly, I reviewed some of the literature on the attacks of September 11th; especially David Ray Griffin's 'The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions', 'War and Globalization' by Michel Chossudovsky, and Michael Ruppert's 'Crossing the Rubicon' helped me clear up my mind on the matter. It seems only reasonable and, frankly, unavoidable to conclude at the very least that the US intelligence and top officials knew of the attacks before hand. The evidence is just too overwhelming. For those readers who need this claim backed up, just pick your favourite story. The insider trading cannot possibly be statistically accounted for without assuming foreknowledge. Whistleblowers like Mike Vreeland who warned of attacks months before they happened were being ignored, in Mike's case he was kept tucked away in Canadian prisons. The head of Pakistani intelligence (ISI) Mahmood Ahmed wired 100,000 dollars to Mohammed Atta shortly before the attacks and then spent a full week before, during, and after the attacks in the United States, meeting with CIA director George Tenet. Various people like New York fire department chief Nick Visconti, George Bush, and Rudi Guiliani displayed knowledge of the second twin tower and building 7 collapsing before it happened. Larry Silverstein, the leaseholder to building 7, admitted in a jawdropping interview that he gave permission to blow up building 7 with explosives. All this is documented in the three books I mentioned, and the list of evidence goes on much further. Are we just to ignore this or can we conclude something from these verifiable basic facts?

At least so much has to be concluded that the Bush administration top officials like Dick Cheney welcomed the attack, had intensive ties with one of its main financiers Mahmood Ahmed, and did their best to make the attacks pass through the most standard of air defense procedures. We can also be sure the Twin Towers and building 7 could never have collapsed from just the plane crashes; never before 9/11 have steel beams collapsed from fire and never after. Knowing all this, who could doubt that 9/11 was one of the most ambitious attempts yet by a closely knit ideological clique, to whom the shock doctrine is the bread and butter of advancing their politics, to advance a plan they debated and planned years ahead in publicly available documents. Both foreign policy 'realist' Zbigniew Brzezinski in 'The Grand Chessboard' and the neoconservatives of the Project for A New American Century in 'Rebuilding America's Defences' were speaking of the necessity for a new enemy to galvanise the American people into supporting an endless 'War on Terror'. Reading the Shock Doctrine confirmed my suspicion that this was nothing new, it was just high time for a daring new phase in the expansion of capital. In 'The Last Oil Shock', David Strahan writes that Cheney, then CEO of Halliburton, had been arguing in 1998 that the Western oil industry will very quickly lose its productive capacity if the industry doesn't gain access to Middle Eastern oil. In dire need to open up the critical markets for pushing the envelope of collapse, a few shock doctors were willing to go a step further. (Again, all my factual claims are publicly reviewable. If in doubt, ask me for sources.)

Naomi Klein, however, would not agree (publicly at least) with this analysis; in interviews she repeatedly stated that the attacks were exploited immediately afterwards, but she won't say anything on guilty parties or intention behind the attacks. No need to look further into these obscure matters nobody can know anything about, the consequences of the attacks are all we need to build our case on, she says. Like many people on the left and in activist movements, this is where the scope of Klein's critique stops short of coming full circle. One has to ask, what event has been more of a watershed in the return to imperialism and realpolitik than 9/11? Surely one of these rare moments, on par with the Reichstag fire or the Gulf of Tonkin incident is worthy of the same investigative rigour as Klein applied to other shocking events?

Asking the same questions, many frustrated 9/11 skeptics developed notions like 'left gatekeeper'. Influential writers like like Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, and Naomi Klein are seen by these 'truthers' as serving the 'powers that be' by stopping the dominant critical discourse short of investigating 9/11. They keep the issues that would be too undermining to those in power marginalised, and are therefore must be somehow complicit. In return, Chomsky, Klein, and other public intellectuals claim the 9/11 issue takes away energy from more real and actual concerns. And so the stage is set for tensions between those who think a proper understanding of 9/11 is central to understanding the war on terror and those who think the subject is irrelevant. Sometimes the debate can be a quite juvenile case of left infighting over who is more subservient to power. A debate not worth getting dragged into, one that needs to be transcended. I prefer to take from people on both sides of the debate what knowledge I can.

The inability to officially come to terms with 9/11 can be best be explained in terms of ideology, as Zizek uses the word; for him ideology is made up of 'unknown knowns', the assumptions we do not explicitly make but that implicitly guide our actions. You can sort of feel it in your gut what is speakable and unspeakable, there is no need to communicate the rules explicitly. Connect too many dots that the mainstream media and so the general public do not relate, and you are seen as simply outside legitimate debate. The herd mindset kicks in and arguments don't matter. Connecting junta coups and laissez faire economic policies as inherently related is acceptable. Adding 9/11 as the new high score to beat for shock doctors makes you a strange conspiracy theorist. And adding peak oil to explain why 9/11 was so essential for business, that the motivation was not just simply profit but the need to stay in the game for American industry and the American empire as a force in the world, and probably to be the 'last man standing' in the coming resource scarcities, that is just another bridge too far.

At this risk of sounding crazy, I want to assimilate as much knowledge of what is really going on. Every thinker quoted or linked to on this blog I believe holds an important piece of a puzzle that is too large to ever complete. The point is to try and see how much of the puzzle we can assemble in an attempt to understand the world we live in. I realise that is difficult; the more relations you see and issues you integrate into one single narrative, the more assumptions seriously need to be justified and double checked. But I believe there is no topic that a priori precludes objective investigation. The real problem is not that careful research into all these issues is impossible, but only the fear of falling down the rabbit hole we should try to overcome.

2009-03-16T15:19:00.006+01:00

One of my favorite comedians, Mark Steel combines a sense of british humour, an amazing ability to make history come to life, and a healthy activist spirit in this lecture (or performance) on the French Revolution. First of two parts.

Why bother?

2009-03-16T10:41:00.039+01:00

In many ways, what this page is all about is a combination of a positive perspective of advancing the plight of common people with a negative acknowledgment of the limits to growth. This combination is a contradiction in terms to many people, and so, most of the time, political debates keep to one topic or the other. That's why, on the one side, 'Malthusianism' is a derogatory term for misanthropes who really want a 'cleansing' of our overpopulated planet. (Texas radio host and New World Order conspiracy theorist Alex Jones actually puts Henry Kissinger and the Club of Rome in one and the same category.) On the other side it explains why 'peakniks' often find Chavez' use of oil revenues to create a welfare state naive in the extreme.

Issues like peak oil, the current world wide economic collapse and climate change tell us about how life has become harder and will become much harder still in the future. Looking through all the literature and information it seems like the era following the second world war was a friendly time of rising prosperity and the consolidation of the middle class, accomplished by pushing problems into the future, with the future beginning just about now. From this perspective, many people discard the aspiration for a good life for all people on this planet as a tragic wild goose chase, reminiscent of Tantalus' eternal torment in Hades.

It is very understandable that the limits to growth have turned precisely those committed people with a social conscience into utter fatalists. How can humanity possibly improve its fate when at a peak of prosperity inequality has spiraled out of control, leaving half of the world population in dire poverty and lacking the most basic of necessities? In a desperate attempt for some kind of hope and meaning, these environmental (and/or Marxist) determinists retreat into a more soothing geological timescale. They hope that even if we are not able to stop the ongoing collapses of the economy and ecology and the societies that depend on them, wiser future generations will scavenge a sustainable economy out of the corpse of industry and the natural resources it left unscathed.

I have been, and in darker moods still am one of those fatalists who retreat in their impotent determinism. The scarce forces that point in the good direction are so often so lacking in coherence and determination. But even if our darkest fears will play out as predicted, it would be good to know that someone tried to do something. You probably heard that one before, so let me put the argument another way; I also know that there are more than one or two possible futures, even if there are increasing natural boundaries to what is possible. As anyone who traced back the contingencies of his birth knows, the present world is the result of an infinite number of causes, both natural and human. Like ripples in a pond, actions that seem insignificant might change the world incrementally in unexpected ways, and you never know what is possible unless you take the initiative to find out.

What I have become increasingly convinced of is that as scarcity, climate chaos and economic collapse become ever more frightfully real, we should least of all abandon our social ideals. To many of us in the West solidarity has a quite abstract meaning; it means softening the sharp edges of the market, or giving a coins to charity. We have quite forgotten to practice the moral convictions that now seem like intellectual allegiances. As life gets tougher, we might actually have to make some more concrete life choices; we might have to share our food even if that means that we have no desert ourselves. We might have to start really opposing the international trade regime that has so systematically kept the third world underdeveloped to stimulate overconsumption in the West, in stead of just bandaging the results of this scandal with our charity money. To take seriously the imperatives of ethics, to do something for the other will only gain in its already critical importance, in small scale daily life or in grand scale international politics.

Theodor Adorno, the Frankfurter theorist and co-writer of the profound 'Dialektik der Aufklärung' is famous for saying that ethics should not be about individuals solving dilemmas in concrete life situations, but about avoiding that individuals find themselves in those situations. In other words, it should be a philosophy of social systems, not of the actions of the morally autonomous individual. I believe we need both. If we just do systems ethics, the now disappears as a moment of action and ethics becomes an interesting but ultimately pointless battle of ideology, while actual politics is left to the usual players. On the other hand, if we just do dilemma ethics, we get things like the hypocritical and shallow practical ethics that Peter Singer has been trying to escape from.

In stead, we need an ethics that is visionary enough to imagine all kinds of ways to advance the plight of common people that are now still unthinkable or politically impossible. We need that kind of broad understanding and orientation now, and in the dire years to come, to shape better societies than the ones existing now. But a better society has always been a long way away. For the shorter term and more limited scope we also need to think seriously about the moral choices that we face while we are still living in the self-destructive and often cruel systems that are in place at the moment. And, to use a rhetorical trick again, even if everything goes wrong, I would still prefer to live in a broken society in which people share their scarcities than in one where people fight each other over them. The point is that only by taking seriously both of these dimensions of ethics, both Singer and Adorno, can we profoundly make sense of what we should do to curb and to mitigate the tide of the collapse of economies, ecosystems, and societies that we are very concretely facing.

So to retreat into a deterministic analysis of capitalism, population growth, and environmental destruction I think is a mistake. Not because the analyses are wrong, but because it denies the present of its importance, being the only sliver of history over which we have any kind of influence. Capitalism may be inherently expansionist and self-reinforcing, poverty and population growth may be locked in the most cruel of positive feedback loops, and we may be too late to stop both serious climate change and the peak oil worst case scenario, but never will I give up on the only thing that can prove the predictions wrong; action by conscientious and strategically savvy people in the here and now. And I hope that anyone kind enough to read this article to the end won't, either.

2009-03-10T13:10:00.004+01:00

Media critic and historian Robert McChesney, talks about the essential role of journalism for meaningful democracy, and puts forward a radical proposal to address the challenges faced by news media in the current economic crisis, and into the future.

The Taliban riddle

2009-03-05T21:19:00.004+01:00

Pepe Escobar: Everybody is making a mess out of the Afghanistan-Pakistan theatre, including Washington.

NATO Conference on Afghanistan in Holland

2009-03-05T18:49:00.003+01:00

Today, Dutch newspaper 'de Volkskrant' announced a NATO Conference on Afghanistan will take place in Holland in late March or Early April. The Defense Secretaries of all NATO countries will be present, as well those of allied countries in the region. The exact time and location of the meeting are as of yet unknown. Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen judged that 'it's important that not just the NATO member countries, but also our partners like Australia or Singaport be present. At the conference there will be a centre role for the United Nations and the Afghans.'

This means that some two hundred million people in Holland, Belgium, France, Luxemburg, and Germany are all in travelling range to make their voices heard. For such an important event, during a time in which there is a window for debate, I will keep up to date on any activist group's plans for organising demonstrations. Let's see if Europe can muster some initiative!

2009-03-05T14:18:00.004+01:00

Playwright Harold Pinter's masterfully eloquent and flamingly critical Nobel Prize acceptance speech on anglo-american foreign policy since the second world war and it's surrounding 'tapestry of lies'.

2009-03-04T17:43:00.001+01:00

Historian Michael Parenti on the diversity and orthodoxy in the US media system. If you want to learn more about Parenti, click here for his website.

2009-03-04T17:37:00.003+01:00

MIT linguist, historian and philosopher Noam Chomsky explaining what the WTO is and does in under half an hour.

2009-03-04T17:34:00.003+01:00

Sociologist and Philosopher Slavoj Žižek on objective violence or violence inherent in systems. Double click on the video for the whole intruiging interview in which Žižek talks about ideology, psychoanalyses the (liberal) left, and necessity of radical thinking.

2009-03-04T17:30:00.003+01:00

Cambridge anthropologist and historian Alan MacFarlane on famine. The conclusions many people have drawn from the limits to growth debate imply that we ought to be concerned with this topic again. Many experts argue that the Green Revolution has made most people on this planet immune from famine, but only temporarily. Thomas Malthus might just be back with a vengeance when fossil fuels have passed peak production and climate change starts becoming more severe.

The Ethics of Climate Change and Peak Oil

2009-03-04T17:26:00.004+01:00

Download paper on climate change and peak oil

Download paper on climate change and peak oil

What can ethics say about the different limits to growth that we are beginning to experience? In beginning to explore this question, I presented this 6000 word paper at a conference on the ethics and politics of climate change this January. I am still busy expanding and reviewing it. All commentary welcome as usual.

Naomi Klein at the University of Chicago

2009-03-04T17:23:00.004+01:00

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Journalist and writer Naomi Klein addresses students at the University of Chicago on neoliberalism and the economic collapse.

2009-03-04T17:21:00.002+01:00

Economist Paul Grignon's 47-minute animated presentation of "Money as Debt" tells in very simple and effective graphic terms what money is and how it is being created.

Review: Limits to Growth, the 30-Year update

2009-03-04T17:18:00.007+01:00

'Limits to Growth' first appeared in the 1972, when students of Jay W. Forrester (the founder of system dynamics) unleashed a fundamentally important discussion on whether the planet could continue to sustain growing populations and ever growing levels of consumption and industrialisation. Unfortunately, this discussion has rarely been honest, serious or rational. All that most economists seem to know about the book is that its predictions have been proven wrong, mostly without being able to reproduce what exactly were those predictions.

The truth is that the authors of 'Limits to Growth' did not make any predictions at all. They describe what they call the fundamental problems of overshoot that result from our population-economy system's sustained growth and its reliance and impact on the world's ecology. To get some idea of what might happen in the 21st century, they set up different computer models that extrapolate different paths that humankind might take. And in stead of refuting the authors' intuitions, the experience of the 30 years after writing the first edition verified their concerns. Much more alarming information has become known on diverse issues as climate change, resource depletion, overfishing, top soil degradation, desertification, the limits and changes of the water cycle, and many more issues that are critical in ecology, economics, and society.

However careful the 'Limits to Growth' authors were with making exact predictions of the future, their view of the human predicament is quite clearly summarised in this paragraph:
"To reach sustainability, humanity must increase the consumption levels of the world's poor, while at the same time reducing humanity's total ecological footprint. There must be technological advance, and personal change, and longer planning horizons. There must be greater respect, caring, and sharing across political boundaries. This will take decades to achieve even under the best of circumstances. No modern political party has garnered broad support for such a program, certainly not among the rich and powerful, who could make room for growth among the poor by reducing their own footprints. Meanwhile, the global footprint grows larger day by day."

One of the major virtues of this book is that it views the economy as embedded in the world ecology. From the theoretical point of view of the 'Limits to Growth' authors one does not think in dichotomies like economy versus ecology, rather we see the two intimately related. The economy is ultimately restrained by the sources and sinks of our planet. If it outgrows the limits of the sources of energy and materials, or clogs natural sinks that process pollution, the result is problems of overshoot. There is much more to ecological concerns than just global warming and the disappearance of animal species, though they are part of the puzzle. The fundamental question of ecology posed in this book is whether humanity will clash disastrously with the natural boundaries it has already crossed, or whether it learns to minimise the damage and start living in accordance with the carrying capacity of our planet. 'Limits to Growth, The 30-year Update' is without question a book you simply have to know of if you want to be aware of the fundamental predicaments that humanity confronts in these times.

Tip: The website Book Finder automatically finds the cheapest copies including shipping to your country of residence.

Review: Contemporary Political Philosophy

2009-03-04T17:15:00.003+01:00

If you are interested in acquainting yourself with the field of political philosophy this is one of the best starting points to do so. For many students of political philosophy Will Kymlicka is a household name. One of the reasons is this clearly written book, which outlays many different schools of thought that are influential in today's political philosophy. It provided me a very interesting perspectives on what exactly sets a Rawlsian liberal apart from a socialist, or what is the domain of the political and how feminists, for example, have expanded that notion to make visible power relations within the 'private sphere'. Kymlicka also convinced me that market-libertarian Robert Nozick actually makes little sense at all.

The book illuminates how moral principles have to be informed with an analysis of what are society's essential problems and how society works to give a fully rounded political philosophical theory. The Rawlsian liberal, for example, is not philosophically wedded to capitalism, but normally thinks that it works. Therefore he allows inequality in his theory of distributive justice, if that inequality in the end allows for the biggest 'piece of pie' for the worst-off.

'Contemporary Political Philosophy' has a definite analytical style, which makes comparing different theories in the book easier. This also means that as an introduction to more continental (German and French) political philosophers, even Hannah Arendt, you need to read other books. But the advantage of this particular set-up is that it allows Kymlicka to figure out whether these different political philosophical theories all start from another point of view, another principle, or whether they can all be reduced to essentially coming from the principle of equality. If that were so, there would be a common ground on which philosophers could discuss which theory has made the best account or interpretation of this communal value. Has this been succesful? Is political difference of opinion really fundamentally just a difference in ideas of how to interpret the value of equality? If you would like to know the answer to this question, or if you would like to be armed with the basics in political philosophical theory, go read this book!

Tip: The website Book Finder automatically finds the cheapest copies including shipping to your country of residence.

2009-03-04T17:12:00.004+01:00

Documentary on Frankfurt School Critical Theorist Herbert Marcuse as a figure in the American student activist movements.

2009-03-04T17:09:00.003+01:00

New York University Sociologist Vivek Chibber on the Capitalist State. In this very important strucural analysis Chibber explains the mechanisms that drive the state to be biased towards the capitalist or investor class' interests.

2009-03-04T17:05:00.002+01:00

Oil, Smoke, and Mirrors: an outstanding documentary on peak oil and how exactly oil as a strategic resource was one of the motivations for 'the war on terror'. The American agreement to leave Iraq in 2011 and the election of Obama puts the end of this documentary on the road to dictatorship in a somewhat new light, but understanding the psychological mechanisms that lead to repressive states remains important today.

2009-03-04T17:02:00.002+01:00

Dr. Colin Campbell Introducing Peak Oil: One of the best known geologists speaking on peak oil as the founder of ASPO. The occasion was the 7th ASPO International conference. (I was there!)

2009-03-04T16:58:00.004+01:00

Economist Richard Wolff's Excellent Marxist Analysis of the Current Economic Collapse

2009-03-04T16:53:00.005+01:00

Writer and activist Tariq Ali presents an inspiring tour d'horizon of international politics since the fall of the Soviet Union. On the rise of neoliberalism, the hollowing out of democracy in the West, and humanitarian militarism.

Paper on Philosophical Anarchism

2009-03-04T16:43:00.007+01:00

Download Paper on Philosophical Anarchism

What if states cannot be legitimate? That is, what if we don't have a moral obligation to obey our states? Would that justify a 'war of all against all', as Hobbes would have it, or would states still be justified in their everyday coercion? This 3500 word paper of mine deals with the consequences of philosophical anarchism, and is followed up by a 2500 word discussion between me and my teacher dr. Mokrosinska.

The Story of Stuff: The Chains of Production, Consumption and Waste

2009-03-04T16:36:00.005+01:00

Trying to make sense of it all...

2009-03-04T16:33:00.001+01:00

This is the webpage of a student still finding his bearings in this globalised 21st century society. I am in a constant process of looking for and trying to formulate perspectives from which to identify the contradictions, injustices, pitfalls, hollow crevices and herd mentalities that abound today's societies. While everyone is aware by now that something is systemically wrong with the economy, few dare to find out more.

With resources dwindling, polupations growing, temperature rising, wealth concentrating, and politicians self-censoring, we certainly are not destined for a more pleasant future. The current process of crises coming together and accelerating each other is quite aptly described as 'clusterfuck'. We, the present generations, are clearly screwed in so many ways. But in order to do better ourselves, we need to find out what is going wrong, why, and what is possible in stead of the systems in place now. This is a very difficult task, because it requires the synthesis of so much knowledge of different kinds, philosophical flexibility of perspective, intellectual honesty and determination. And the more you find out, the harder it is to communicate your findings because you drift away from the dominant world view that is implicit in the main stream media, most universities, and public debate.

This website is an effort to bring as many pieces of the puzzle as possible together, to promote informed debate, and to encourage critical thinking. Many radical views will be allowed and proposed here, but all of them will be subjected to criticism. I will use different methods as I see fit; writing reviews for books that deserve attention, linking news, articles, documentaries and online lectures by insightful speakers. I hope that in time this collection will serve as a home base and a waypoint for people who, like me, want to make sense out of a system coming apart. As Slavoj Zizek turned Marx upside down:

'To change the world, we first need to interpret it!'

Welcome to my corner of the web,

Freek Blauwhof

A list of interests and topics to expect:

Relevant Disciplines:

philosophy; ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of social sciences, Frankfurter critical theory.
ecology; understanding the sources and sinks of the world's ecosystems
system dynamics; seeing the economy as (part of the global) ecosystem, streams of energy and matter in the economy
economics; from Smith, Ricardo, Malthus and Marx to present
sociology
history; especially the parts we Westeners keep omitting or forgetting

Subjects to explore:

recent events in politics and the economy
peak oil and gas; their consequences for the economy
energy conservation and renewable energy
climate change
limits to growth
population and growth
ever growing gap between rich and poor
how fiat money works
history of political thought
historical and actual popular movements
history of political systems
legitimacy of the state; (philosophical) anarchism?
capitalism and the state; systemic mechanisms that reinforce the power of capital
capitalism and culture; consumption society and alienation
capitalism and the media; the trade in audiences
community organised media
what is democracy (supposed to be)?
expanding the political; democracy in the work place?
the corporation
globalisation and the third world
ideology and ideologies
war and imperialism
terrorism
military-industrial complexes
suppression and rise of socialist states in Latin America
political use and abuse of language and definitions
possibility of and necessary conditions for rational, honest, and enlightened public debate (or could Habermas be right after all, and how can we prove him right?)
the search for reasonable and realisible political philosophies of a better lifeworld for all; social ideals within limits to growth.