Permaculture Visionary: "We Don't Need to Wait for Permission" to Transform Our Societies

Saturday, 12 May 2012 00:00  
By Brianne Goodspeed, Truthout | Interview

Four years ago, a British educator and permaculturist named Rob Hopkins initiated what has since become one of the most rapidly evolving and far-reaching social experiments of our time. The Transition movement - which encourages people in cities and towns across the world to devise their own unique, local solutions to peak oil and climate change in the absence of meaningful government action - has developed a spirited and devoted following and garnered praise from the likes of Bill McKibben and Richard Heinberg. Rob's latest book, "The Transition Companion," looks at how the movement has evolved from its beginnings in tiny Totnes, England, to hundreds of communities all over the world. "The Transition Companion" is available now from Chelsea Green Publishing. Rob recently spoke with Chelsea Green Associate Editor Brianne Goodspeed.

How the Ayn Rand-Loving Right Is Like a Bunch of Teen Boys Gone Crazy

By Sara Robinson, AlterNet
Posted on May 11, 2012, Printed on May 12, 2012


If, as George Lakoff says, we view politics through the metaphor of family, then Mother's Day is a good time to ask the question: Where's Mom in this picture? What are all those dirty socks and pizza boxes doing in the living room? (Seriously: it looks like a frat house in here.) Who's been drinking the beer I hid in the basement fridge?

And, sweet mother of God: how did we end up letting the 16-year-old boys take over the entire household?

Make no mistake: all this Ayn Rand libertarian me-first-and-the-rest-of-you-go-to-hell stuff -- the there's-no-government-like-no-government theology that's now being piously intoned as Holy Received Truth by everybody, male and female, in the GOP -- is, very precisely, the kind of politics you'd come up with if you were a 16-year-old boy trying to explain away his dependence on Mom.

Parents? I don't have any parents. I raised myself, on roots and berries and small vermin I dug up in vacant lots. That lady hanging around, feeding me and nagging me and picking up my socks and driving me to practice? She's just the nanny state. That bitch. I hate her.

Game Over for the Climate

The science of the situation is clear — it’s time for the politics to follow

by James Hansen

Global warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”

If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.

This Deficit Story Can't Be Repeated Often Enough!

By Dave Johnson

Created 05/08/2012 - 7:56pm

Atrios says it: Eschaton: Planning For 10 Years From Now [1]:

The last time the an administration did the supposedly responsible thing, the fiscal "hawks" suddenly decided that the worst possible thing was no longer a deficit, but a surplus, and that therefore it was necessary to have massive tax cuts for rich people.

And they will, of course, do it again.

The great Verizon FiOS ripoff

COMMENTARY | May 02, 2012

Verizon's decision to stop expanding FiOS, in favor of wireless, shafts millions of customers who paid billions for a network upgrade and didn't get it.

By Bruce Kushnick
bruce@newnetworks.com

(Third in a series. See part one: Please, sir, may I have another? and part two: How wireless hype is hurting America.)

After decades of demanding and getting rate hikes and tax breaks in return for promising to deliver broadband internet access to schools, libraries, hospitals and every home and business in their territories, Verizon is now making it clear that it is no longer expanding FiOS, its fiber optic cable service.

So what did they accomplish? What did they build? And how much did it cost? Verizon claims that the company spent $23 billion dollars in rolling out FiOS since 2004. (See, for instance, this message from Tim McCallion, President of Verizon’s West Region.) That's a lot of money.

The Bankruptcy “Reforms” of 2005: Creation of a New Debtor’s Prison?

An article by law professor Linda Coco, “Debtor’s Prison in the Neoliberal State: ‘Debtfare’ and the Cultural Logics of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005,” (hat tip Michael Hudson) is a an informative, if disheartening, overview of the significance of the bankruptcy law reforms implemented in 2005.

Austerity Can't Be Just For Regular People

by Matt Taibbi

 

It didn’t take long to crank up the backlash against European voters. This is inevitable whenever a socialist wins a major election, but particularly now, when new French president François Hollande rode to victory shouting, "Austerity can no longer be inevitable!"

This sounds like the beginning of what will be a very heated debate over who has to pay for the excesses of the financial crisis. It was previously assumed that everybody but the actual financial services sector would have to pay, but voters in Europe now are refusing to go along, sparking a wave of eye-rolling editorials in the financial press. Even David Brooks got into the act today, penning a lugubrious editorial about the errant political instincts of the populist masses here and abroad.

EPA scientist who warned of caustic dust from Ground Zero wins job back

Cate Jenkins was fired from job as chemist after accusing EPA of deliberately covering up dangers of 9/11 wreckage dust

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 May 2012 13.03 EDT

A government scientist sacked for exposing the dangers to firefighters from the caustic air at Ground Zero in the days after 9/11 got her job back on Monday.

A federal court ordered that Cate Jenkins, a chemist at the Environmental Protection Agency, be reinstated to her job with back pay.

Her lawyer said the decision, although based on matters of legal process, amounted to vindication for Jenkins's claims that the EPA had covered up the danger posed to first responders and others in lower Manhattan from the asbestos and highly corrosive dust that rose from the wreckage of the World Trade Center.

The Intensifying Debate Over Food Security

One of the troubling ideas that seems to have gained traction is that nations should not care overmuch about the needs of their citizens and should accept market outcomes. This position is ultimately contradictory, since its proponents argue for the Reaganite “get government out of the way” position, when commerce depends on rights defined by and enforced by the state (thought experiment: would US companies have built factories in China, a Communist country which could expropriate assets, if the US were not a military superpower?)

This advocacy of “free trade” (when we in fact live in world of managed trade) runs two parallel arguments: the “free trade increases wealth and therefore we should all go along” and and the “more open trade is inevitable, you better be on this bus or you will be under the bus.”

Special Rights for ALEC: Three States Exempt Stealth Corporate Lobbying Group From Lobbying Rules

By Josh Israel on May 8, 2012 at 10:41 am

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a tax-exempt coalition of conservative state legislators and corporations that “acts as a stealth business lobbyist,” has been subject to a steady stream of bad press and criticism in recent months. Critics have highlighted the group’s support for voter suppression, union busting efforts, environmental irresponsibility, harassment of immigrants, and “Shoot First” laws.

Activists Want DNC Convention Moved Out of Charlotte After Amendment One Passage

by David Dayen

Yesterday North Carolina passed Amendment One, a constitutional amendment initiative that not only puts the existing ban on same-sex marriage in the state constitution, but will also ban civil unions and domestic partnerships and could actually make things difficult for heterosexual couples that co-habitate. Despite – or perhaps because of – confusion about the consequences of the measure, 61% of voters supported the amendment yesterday.

Column in Greene County, VA GOP newsletter calls for coup d'etat if Obama wins in November

by Christian Dem in NC


The Republican Party of Greene County, Virginia--north of Charlottesville--went off the deep end in its March newsletter.  It contains a column by editor Ponch McPhee which calls for getting Obama out of office as soon as possible if he's reelected in November.  Nope, not by finding a reason to impeach him.  McPhee wants Obama overthrown by a coup d'etat.

How Conservative Religion Makes the Right Politically Stronger

By Sara Robinson, AlterNet
Posted on May 8, 2012, Printed on May 10, 2012

Progressives often marvel at how focused, coordinated and aggressive our conservative opposition is. They seem to fall into lockstep and march, building large organizations and executing complex strategies with an astonishing rate of success. We may be smarter, better educated and more reality-based -- but they seem to have a cohesion and a discipline that eludes us. What's going on here?

There are a lot of answers to that question. But I'd suggest that some intriguing answers might come from a close study of conservative religious paradigms, which play an essential role in giving conservatives a unique kind of emotional and social durability.

Paul Krugman: How to End This Depression

The depression we’re in is essentially gratuitous: we don’t need to be suffering so much pain and destroying so many lives. We could end it both more easily and more quickly than anyone imagines—anyone, that is, except those who have actually studied the economics of depressed economies and the historical evidence on how policies work in such economies.

The truth is that recovery would be almost ridiculously easy to achieve: all we need is to reverse the austerity policies of the past couple of years and temporarily boost spending. Never mind all the talk of how we have a long-run problem that can’t have a short-run solution—this may sound sophisticated, but it isn’t. With a boost in spending, we could be back to more or less full employment faster than anyone imagines.

New York Times Reporters Need to Read Krugman's Columns

Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives.

To know the Washington Consensus as a regular citizen is to hate the Consensus. The Washington Consensus, as the name implies, was an “inside the beltway” series of neo-liberal policies embraced by the IMF, the World Bank, and the U.S. government. It called for a minimal State and an all-powerful private sector. The private sector and de facto private central banks would discipline the State by insisting on balanced budgets – perpetual austerity. Democracy was unreliable, indeed dangerous, so the central banks had to be “independent” of the democratic process (and wholly dependent on the largest banks). Only the private sector had the proper incentives that could be relied upon to create vibrant growth and a self-correcting economy. The Consensus was developed in the context of the policies that should be imposed on Latin America and Latin Americans were the guinea pigs of Consensus. (This metaphor was particularly troubling for Latin Americans who knew that their ancestors raised guinea pigs as a reliable source of meat.)

The Most Powerful Company You've Never Heard of: Meet CME Group

Posted: 05/04/2012 3:11 pm
Elizabeth Parisian

Think of powerful, multi-billion dollar corporations, and many come readily to mind. Wal-Mart. General Electric. Exxon Mobil. Bank of America. McDonald's. Apple. We recognize their logos, know what they sell and how to buy it -- or how to not buy it if we choose.

But for all their riches and ubiquity, when it comes to sheer raw power, these high-profile behemoths are eclipsed by a company that most of us have never heard of.

Meet CME Group. Last fall, Forbes revealed "The Four Companies That Control the 147 Companies That Own Everything," in which contributor Brendan Coffey argues that "the real power to control the world" lies not with the likes of Wal-Mart and Bank of America, but with the select few companies that control the indexes that rank these corporations. CME Group, owner of the Dow Jones Indexes, is one of these four companies, which is why it is important for all of us to get to know this company, how it makes its billions, and how it impacts us all.

The New Wall Street Racket Looting Your City, One Block at a Time

New schemes hold the public hostage to private finance.

By Matt Reichel

May 7, 2012  |  When Mayor Rahm Emanuel  a “new and innovative” financing tool last month to help Chicago renovate failing infrastructure without precipitating another budget crisis, many in the city were understandably critical.

 

Chicagoans have already endured the notorious 75-year lease of their parking meters to a consortium headed by Morgan Stanley. That sale promulgated a system wherein the public is held hostage by private finance, due largely to the inclusion of arcane legal stipulations like “non-compete clauses” and “compensation events” in the language of the contract.

Paul Krugman: Those Revolting Europeans

The French are revolting. The Greeks, too. And it’s about time.

Both countries held elections Sunday that were in effect referendums on the current European economic strategy, and in both countries voters turned two thumbs down. It’s far from clear how soon the votes will lead to changes in actual policy, but time is clearly running out for the strategy of recovery through austerity — and that’s a good thing. 

What Everyone Should Know About The Secretive Group Trying To Swift Boat Barack Obama

by Judd Legum and Adam Peck on May 6, 2012 at 11:22 am

A secretive right-wing group, Veterans For A Strong America, is attempting to do to President Obama what the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth did to Sen. John Kerry in 2004. And they aren’t shy about it. The group’s leader and sole employee, Joel Arends, told Mother Jones, “Yes, it’s the swift boating of the president.”

Arends said his goal is to take “what’s perceived to be [Obama's] greatest strength” — the successful raid on Osama Bin Laden’s Pakistani compound — and make it “his greatest weakness.” The effort started this week with a web video attacking Obama for taking too much credit.

We're Number ... 2? Are Americans in Denial About the Country's Decline?

By Dean Baker, Nation of Change
Posted on May 1, 2012, Printed on May 7, 2012

Politicians in the United States must ritualistically assert that the United States is and always will be the world's leading economic, military and political power. This chant may help win elections in a country where respectable people deny global warming and evolution, but it has nothing to do with the real world.

Those familiar with the data know that China is rapidly gaining on the United States as the world’s leading economic power. According to data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), China’s economy is currently about 80 percent of the size of the U.S. economy. It is projected to pass the United States by 2016.

The Answer Isn’t Socialism; It’s Capitalism that Better Spreads the Benefits of the Productivity Revolution

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Francois Hollande’s victory doesn’t and shouldn’t mean a movement toward socialism in Europe or elsewhere. Socialism isn’t the answer to the basic problem haunting all rich nations. 

The answer is to reform capitalism. The world’s productivity revolution is outpacing the political will of rich societies to fairly distribute its benefits. The result is widening inequality coupled with slow growth and stubbornly high unemployment.

Noam Chomsky on America's Economic Suicide

By Laura Flanders and Noam Chomsky, GRITtv
Posted on May 4, 2012, Printed on May 7, 2012

Noam Chomsky has not just been watching the Occupy movement. A veteran of the civil rights, anti-war, and anti-intervention movements of the 1960s through the 1980s, he’s given lectures at Occupy Boston and talked with occupiers across the US.  His new book, Occupy, published in the Occupied Media Pamphlet Series by Zuccotti Park Press brings together several of those lectures, a speech on “occupying foreign policy” and a brief tribute to his friend and co-agitator Howard Zinn.

From his speeches, and in this conversation, it’s clear that the emeritus MIT professor and author is as impressed by the spontaneous, cooperative communities some Occupy encampments created, as he is by the movement’s political impact.

Social Security Is Not Going Broke

by David Cay Johnston

 

Which federal program took in more than it spent last year, added $95 billion to its surplus and lifted 20 million Americans of all ages out of poverty?

Why, Social Security, of course, which ended 2011 with a $2.7 trillion surplus.

That surplus is almost twice the $1.4 trillion collected in personal and corporate income taxes last year. And it is projected to go on growing until 2021, the year the youngest Baby Boomers turn 67 and qualify for full old-age benefits.

Joseph Stiglitz: The 99 Percent Wakes Up

May 2, 2012 5:15 PM EDT

Inequality isn’t only plaguing America—the Arab Spring flowered because international capitalism is broken. In From Cairo to Wall Street: Voices from the Global Spring, edited by Anya Schiffrin and Eamon Kircher-Allen, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz says the world is finally rising up and demanding a democracy where people, not dollars, matter—the best government that money can buy just isn’t good enough.

There are times in history when people all over the world seem to rise up, to say that something is wrong and to ask for change. This was true of the tumultuous years of 1848 and 1968. It was certainly true in 2011. In many countries there was anger and unhappiness about joblessness, income distribution, and inequality and a feeling that the system is unfair and even broken.

Both 1848 and 1968 came to signify the start of a new era. The year 2011 may also. The modern era of globalization also played a role. It helped the ferment and spread of ideas across borders. The youth uprising that began in Tunisia, a little country on the coast of North Africa, spread to nearby Egypt, then to other countries of the Middle East, to Spain and Greece, to the United Kingdom and to Wall Street, and to cities around the world. In some cases, the spark of protest seemed, at least temporarily, quenched. In others, though, small protests precipitated societal upheavals, taking down Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, and other governments and government officials.

 

How the Private Water Industry Is Teaming Up With ALEC

By Sarah Pavlus
ALEC has worked with the energy industry to create loophole-filled water protections and opposes federal oversight of fracking. 

May 4, 2012  |  An influential trade association representing companies that provide water services to one in four Americans says it will continue its membership with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group that has worked with the energy industry to create loophole-filled water protections and opposes federal oversight of fracking.

 

The National Association of Water Companies represents the far-reaching privatized water utility industry that serves “nearly 73 million people every day,” according to the association’s website. NAWC represents more than 150 private water companies, each of whom pay an annual fee to the association. Its board of directors is drawn from the leadership of some of the country’s largest water companies.

Paul Krugman: Plutocracy, Paralysis, Perplexity

Before the Great Recession, I would sometimes give public lectures in which I would talk about rising
inequality, making the point that the concentration of income at the top had reached levels not seen since
1929. Often, someone in the audience would ask whether this meant that another depression was
imminent.

Well, whaddya know?

Did the rise of the 1 percent (or, better yet, the 0.01 percent) cause the Lesser Depression we’re now living through? It probably contributed. But the more important point is that inequality is a major reason the
economy is still so depressed and unemployment so high. For we have responded to crisis with a mix of
paralysis and confusion — both of which have a lot to do with the distorting effects of great wealth on our
society.

Krugman Unloads On Paul Ryan

Sahil Kapur

May 3, 2012, 6:20 AM 32463

 

Paul Krugman fired back at Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) after the influential Republican laughed off the New York Times columnist’s criticisms by saying, “I’ve always figured I’ve got three certainties in my life: Death, taxes and attacks from Paul Krugman.”

In an exclusive interview following the release of his new book End This Depression Now!, Krugman told TPM, “That’s not a substantive remark. I’ve never attacked him just for nothing in particular. I’ve gone after his arithmetic and said it doesn’t add up at all. And he has never offered a response to that. All he does is make scary noises about the deficit, with mood music, with organ music in the background about how ominous it is, and then propose a plan that would in fact increase the deficit.”

What It's Like When the NYPD Raids Your Apartment At Dawn-- Because Your Roommate is in Occupy

By Sarah Seltzer

I chatted briefly with musician Justin Remer, whose Brooklyn apartment was raided by the NYPD on Monday morning in an incident that was first reported on Gawker and sure looks from all angles like a pre May Day intimidation tactic. I was curious about how the experience felt. 

 “At around six-fifteen I was woken up. I sleep in a lofted bed, and there's a police officer standing in my bedroom shining a flashlight in my face. He woke me up and said ‘get down in the living room," he said. Remer dressed, grabbed his ID as requested, and joined his housemates in the living room.

Kent State survivors seek new probe of 1970 shootings

KENT, Ohio (Reuters) - Survivors of the shooting of 13 students by the Ohio National Guard during an anti-war demonstration at Kent State University in 1970 called on Thursday for a new probe into the incident that came to define U.S. divisions over the Vietnam War.

Four students were killed and nine wounded in the shootings on May 4, 1970 that followed days of demonstrations on the campus after disclosures of a U.S.-led invasion of Cambodia that signaled a widening of the war in Southeast Asia.