Quote of the day: Graham Hancock.

Graham Hancock on the War on Drugs:

"When we look at the history of the "war on drugs" over approximately the last forty years it must be asked whether the criminalisation of the use of any of the prohibited substances has in any way been effective in terms of the stated goals that this "war" was supposedly mounted to achieve? Specifically, has there been a marked reduction in the use of illegal drugs over the past forty years - as one would expect with billions of dollars of taxpayers' money having been spent over such a long period on their suppression - and has there been a reduction in the harms that these drugs supposedly cause to the individual and to society?

It is unnecessary here to set down screeds of statistics, facts and figures readily available from published sources to assert that in terms of its own stated objectives the "war on drugs" has been an abject failure and a shameful and scandalous waste of public money. Indeed it is well known, and not disputed, that the very societies that attempt most vigorously to suppress illegal drugs, and in which users are subject to the most stringent penalties, have seen a vast and continuous increase in the per capita consumption of these drugs. This is tacitly admitted by the vast armed bureaucracies set up to persecute drug users in our societies which every year demand more and more public money to fund their suppressive activities; if the suppression were working one would expect their budgets to go down, not up."

Glenn Greenwald: Supporters of Bradley Manning Risk Jail for Refusing to Testify in WikiLeaks Probe

Oceans on the brink of catastrophe.

The Independent today:

"The world's oceans are faced with an unprecedented loss of species comparable to the great mass extinctions of prehistory, a major report suggests today. The seas are degenerating far faster than anyone has predicted, the report says, because of the cumulative impact of a number of severe individual stresses, ranging from climate warming and sea-water acidification, to widespread chemical pollution and gross overfishing.

The coming together of these factors is now threatening the marine environment with a catastrophe "unprecedented in human history", according to the report, from a panel of leading marine scientists brought together in Oxford earlier this year by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The stark suggestion made by the panel is that the potential extinction of species, from large fish at one end of the scale to tiny corals at the other, is directly comparable to the five great mass extinctions in the geological record, during each of which much of the world's life died out. They range from the Ordovician-Silurian "event" of 450 million years ago, to the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction of 65 million years ago, which is believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs. The worst of them, the event at the end of the Permian period, 251 million years ago, is thought to have eliminated 70 per cent of species on land and 96 per cent of all species in the sea."

Police Brutality in India.

Iraq demands return of oil money 'stolen by U.S. institutions

The Daily Mail today:

Iraq is demanding the return of $17billion (£10.5billion) in oil money it says was stolen by U.S. institutions in the wake of the 2003 invasion. In a letter sent to the UN last month the Iraqi parliament asked for help finding and recovering the money, which disappeared from the Development Fund of Iraq.The parliament's Integrity Committee called the disappearance of the money a 'financial crime' but said UN Security Council resolutions prevent Iraq from making a claim against the United States.

'All the indications are that the institutions of the United States of America committed financial corruption by stealing the money of the Iraqi people, which was allocated to develop Iraq, (and) that it was about $17 billion,' said the letter. 'Our committee decided to send this issue to you ... to look into it and restore the stolen money.'

Er de borgerlige overhovedet demokrater?

Blandt medlemmerne af befolkningen er de fleste tilsyneladende enige om, at demokrati er en god ting, hvilket sandsynligvis hænger sammen med, at muligheden for at påvirke dagsordenen ved at gøre sin stemme gældende, vel i de flestes bevidstheder er at foretrække frem for at befinde sig i en situation hvor alle væsentlige beslutninger bliver truffet henover hovedet på een.

I langt de fleste af de institutioner hvori vi tilbringer størstedelen af vores tilværelse, er muligheden for medbestemmelse og for at påvirke dagsordenen imidlertid iøjnefaldende lav. Pyramideformede organisationsstrukturer med en stærk topstyring er overalt at finde, mens fladstrukturelle demokratiske organisationer er fraværende så langt øjet rækker. Såvel på arbejdspladserne, som i gymnasierne og på universiteterne er mulighederne for at påvirke de væsentligste beslutningsprocesser således stærkt begrænsede. Læren man kan udlede: demokrati hører til i det politiske rum og kun i det politiske rum.

jeg kan ikke huske hvornår jeg sidst har hørt en fra den borgerlige fløj beklage, at der ikke eksisterer nogen højere grad af medbestemmelse i erhvervslivet og har man det in mente, at de fleste blandt de borgerlige politikere på Borgen er svorne kapitalister kan man da også med rimelig grund antage, at det faktisk slet ikke er noget man er interesseret i. Det forholder sig jo sådan, at den globale kapitalistiske orden er karakteristisk ved at være fuldstændig domineret af gigantiske transnationale selskaber som organisatorisk er kendetegnet ved, at være langt tættere på at være totalitære end på at være demokratiske, idet beslutningstagningen kun foregår en vej, nemlig oppe fra og ned. Er man tilhænger af denne orden er man næppe tilhænger af folkelig styring.

Selvom man kunne forledes til at tro, at de politiske partier i en påstået demokratisk orden ville være de mest demokratiske organisationer, er ovennævnte topstyringstendens skam også at finde i det politiske rum. Der har således lydt kritik fra flere af de borgerlige partiers baglande desangående. Dette kan måske ikke alene bedømmes som et udslag af manglende demokratisk sindelag, men det er da også langt fra hele historien. I teorien er hele befolkningen repræsenteret via de folkevalgte repræsentanter i folketinget, men ser vi på den vej udviklingen har taget gennem det seneste borgerligt dominerede tiår, kan der næppe herske tvivl om, at der er ganske langt fra teori til praksis. Der er nemlig blevet ført en så høj grad af blokpolitik på den borgerlige fløj, at næsten halvdelen af den stemmeberettigede befolkning reelt ikke har været repræsenteret under den borgerlige styring af lovgivningsprocessen her i Danmark.

Det er imidlertid kun omtrent halvdelen af den her i landet gældende lovgivning, som overhovedet vedtages af de danske folkevalgte repræsentanter, idet en ganske væsentlig andel af gældende lov slet ikke vedtages her, men derimod i EU-regi. I EU er det kun ministerrådet som må lave udkast til nye lovforslag og ministrene er ikke direkte folkevalgte men udpeges af EU-landenes regeringer.

Den europæiske forfatningstraktat, der blev nedstemt af flere EU-lande, genopstod som Nice-traktaten med få kosmetiske ændringer. For at undgå at befolkningerne også nedstemte den blev den i de fleste tilfælde simpelthen vedtaget af magthaverne henover hovederne på befolkningerne. Dette var også tilfældet i Danmark, selvom Anders Fogh Rasmussen gentagent havde givet befolkningen løfter om, at der ville blive tale om en folkeafstemning i forbindelse med traktaten. I modsætning til den ret korte og let overskuelige grundlov er Nice-traktaten noget nær ulæselig for almindelige mennesker uden den fornødne juridiske ekspertise og selv for eksperterne kan det være vanskeligt at danne sig et grundigt overblik, idet traktaten består af mange tusinde sider med henvisninger til atter mange tusinde sider i de andre traktater. I modsætning til grundloven har befolkningen derfor meget vanskeligt ved at stifte bekendtskab med det juridiske grundlag for den politiske orden de er underlagt, hvorfor det er vanskeligt at tale om en europæisk politisk orden grundlagt på befolkningernes samtykke - en helt grundlæggende forudsætning for at kunne tale om demokrati - idet man vel næppe kan samtykke om noget man ikke har forudsætningerne for at forstå. Havde Anders Fogh Rasmussen selv sat sig grundigt ind i traktaten inden han og regeringen ratificerede den henover hovedet på befolkningen? Sandsynligvis ikke!

I en demokratisk orden der er sit navn værdigt værnes der om befolkningens retssikkerhed. Dette kan imidertid næppe siges at være tilfældet under den borgerlige styring af Danmark hvor vi i disse år er vidner til en omfattende eskalering af potentielt og/eller praktiske repressive tiltag, såsom mangedoblinger af hemmelige ransagninger, kollektiv afstraffelse (lømmelpakken), visitationszoner, overvågning, langvarige varetægtsfængslinger og administrativ uigennemsigtighed både i den udøvende og den dømmende magt. Som flere juridiske eksperter har gjort opmærksom på er retstaten under hastig afvikling. Desværre sover befolkningen.

I stedet for at være kollektivt medbestemmende og ansvarligt selvforvaltende, har vi i stedet lagt administrationen af vores liv og fælles fremtid i hænderne på karrierepolitikere, der lader til at bekymre sig mere om enten at komme til magten, eller om at beholde den, end om at varetage befolkningens kollektive interesser. Befolkningen er i praksis medbestemmende i så lille en grad i vores samfunds forskellige rum og institutioner, at begrebet 'folkestyre' i dag klinger ganske hult. Al tale om, at den borgerlige fløj er tilhængere af egentligt demokrati er derfor vanskelig at tage alvorlig. Desværre er der ikke meget der tyder på en ændring i positivere retning efter et eventuelt valgnederlag, idet Socialdemokraterne kun marginalt adskiller sig fra de øvrige borgerlige partier hvad alt ovenstående angår.

Iceland harnesses volcanic power for export

The Resource Curse: Uganda's Oil Will Probably Not Mean Prosperity for Its Impoverished Population.

"The discovery of oil in Africa has rarely brought about positive socio-economic outcomes. Indeed, quite the opposite is true: regions with an abundance of non-renewable sub-surface resources nearly always experience declining development and less economic growth than countries with fewer such resources.

Nigeria offers a disturbing example of this trend. Since production began in the mid 1960s, Nigeria has seen an oil bonanza worth more than $340 billion. But the economy remains in absolute tatters: more than 70% of Nigerians live in conditions of intractable poverty – earning less than a dollar a day – and the infant mortality rate is among the highest in the world. Indeed, Nigerians are significantly poorer today than they were at the start of the oil boom. Average incomes are less than one third what they were in 1980, and despite ballooning petroleum revenues per capita GDP remains at about 1965 levels. Similar problems plague Africa’s other major petroleum producers, like Chad, Angola, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea."

Excerpted from the Foreign Policy in Focus article "Saving Uganda from Its Oil."

Quote of the day: Ha-Joon Chang.

The Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang in his new book "23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism":

"Contrary to what is commonly believed, the performance of developing countries in the period of state-led development was superior to what they have achieved during the subsequent period of market-oriented reform. There were some spectacular failures of state intervention, but most of these countries grew much faster, with more equitable income distribution and far fewer financial crises, during the ‘bad old days’ than they have done in the period of marketoriented reforms. Moreover, it is also not true that almost all rich countries have become rich through free-market policies. The truth is more or less the opposite. With only a few exceptions, all of today’s rich countries, including Britaiand the US – the supposed homes of free trade and free market – have become rich through the combinations of protectionism, subsidies and other policies that today they advise the developing countries not to adopt. Free-market policies have made few countries rich so far and will make few rich in the future."

Occupation 101

Neoliberalismen og illusionen om det frie marked.

Neoliberalismen består af et sæt af økonomiske og politiske tanker som antager, at menneskelig velfærd bedst fordres ved at frigøre den individuelle iværksætterånd indenfor et institutionelt rammeværk kendetegnet ved en stærk ejendomsret og et frit marked. De neoliberale agitatorer for det frie marked fortæller os, at markedet bør frigøres fra alle former for statslig eller interstatslig kontrol, da det sagtens kan regulere sig selv og det vil således frisat fungere bedst muligt og derfor skabe størst mulig rigdom for alle. Staternes primære rolle i den globaliserede kapitalistiske orden er at sikre pengenes integritet og kvalitet og at værne om den private ejendomsret og politivirksomhed og militær infrastruktur er derfor nødvendige.

Disse neoliberale tanker har vundet indpas i store dele af den vestlige verdens politiske og økonomiske eliter, hvilket har udmøntet sig i at kollektiv (dvs. statslig) ejendom mange steder er blevet liberaliseret, mens statslige kontrolfunktioner ift. markedet i stor stil er blevet afskaffet. Problemet er bare, at der gennem det meste af industrialiseringens historie ikke har eksisteret noget egentligt frit marked fuldstændig upåvirket af statslig eller interstatslig indblanding, hvorfor tanken om, at markedet fungerer bedst når det er fuldstændig frit altså ikke kan siges at være historisk begrundet eller empirisk funderet og derfor kan neoliberalismen altså ikke siges at være grundlagt på saglighed, men må snarere betegnes som rendyrket ideologisk.

Tager vi den neoliberale logik ud i dens yderste konsekvens bliver det da også hurtigt klart, at den snarere end at sikre menneskelig velfærd faktisk i stor stil undergraver den. Hvis der ikke må eksister nogen som helst former for statslig eller interstatslig kontrol af markedet, ja så betyder det vel, at enhver skal have lov til at benytte sig af børnearbejde, til at bedrive handel med menneskelige organer og at ingen skal kunne forhindres af stater i eksempelvis at producere kemiske eller biologiske våben og i at sælge dem til hvem man måtte ønske. Det ville jo være ensbetydende med statslig indblanding i det frie markeds virke og dette er iflg. neoliberalisterne ikke til nogens fordel. Jeg indrømmer gerne, at der næppe er mange påståede neoliberale der ønsker dette, hvorfor man da også fristes til at hævde, at de nok ikke har tænkt deres nærmest fundamentalistiske tro på det frigjorte markeds godhed til ende.

Opgør med vækstparadigmet.

Vi lever på en endelig planet og derfor er de ressourcer vi kan tage i anvendelse selvfølgelig også begrænsede af denne endelighed. Alligevel synes idealet om en konstant fortsættelse af den økonomiske vækst at have karakter af et ganske fasttømret dogme som kun alt for sjældent spørges ind til og problematiseres. Hvad er eksempelvis målet med konstant økonomisk vækst? Hvorfor har vores samfund brug for at blive rigere i material forstand? Hvori består det bæredygtige i dette vækstideal i lys af den konstante forøgelse af belastning på biosfæren og dens begrænsede bæreevne?

Det er derfor opmuntrende at Information igår publicerede en kronik af Enhedslistens parlamentarikere Frank Aaen og Per Clausen hvori det herskende vækstparadigme indenfor mainstream-økonomien problematiseres. De skriver:

"Forestillingen om vækst som samfundets højeste værdi og et ubetinget gode er nok den mest udbredte borgerlige ‘sandhed’, som en ny regering må gøre op med.

Alle vismændene betragter vækst som så essentielt, at det end ikke er til diskussion. Det må vi gøre op med, og det kan bl.a. ske ved at inkludere økologiske og socialistiske økonomer blandt vismændene.

Vores vismandsreform skal altså ikke ses som et opgør med borgerlige smagsdommere, sådan som det er blevet udlagt i pressen. Det skal ses i sammenhæng med vores forslag om en bæredygtighedskommission.

Baggrunden for begge forslag er, at vi ønsker at gå fra et fokus på økonomi og vækst til et fokus på demokrati og bæredygtighed."

Jimmy Carter: Call Off the Drug War.

In an Op-Ed in the New York Times the former American president Jimmy Carter urges the US leadership to "Call Off the Global Drug War."

Excerpt:

"In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts.

I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: "Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself."

These ideas were widely accepted at the time. But in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan and Congress began to shift from balanced drug policies, including the treatment and rehabilitation of addicts, toward futile efforts to control drug imports from foreign countries.

This approach entailed an enormous expenditure of resources and the dependence on police and military forces to reduce the foreign cultivation of marijuana, coca and opium poppy and the production of cocaine and heroin. One result has been a terrible escalation in drug-related violence, corruption and gross violations of human rights in a growing number of Latin American countries."

Greek Turmoil Raises Fears of Instability Around Europe.

"The instability rocking Greece this week is the latest manifestation of a troubling new phase in the global financial crisis: political turmoil is sweeping through Europe, toppling governments and threatening to undermine efforts to rescue the financial system and, ultimately, the euro zone itself."

Source: NYTimes.

Anti-intellectualism: Bush White House Wanted to Discredit Dissenting Professor.

Former CIA officer Glenn Carle has told the New York Times that he was ordered to dig up compromising information about the American professor of Middle Eastern history and informed dissident blogger, Juan Cole, in order to discredit him, presumably in the hope of silencing his criticism. Understandably Cole finds this information disturbing and he therefore asks for the Senate and House Intelligence Committees to launch an investigation into the matter. Yesterday Cole wrote on his blog:

"Carle’s revelations come as a visceral shock. You had thought that with all the shennanigans of the CIA against anti-Vietnam war protesters and then Nixon’s use of the agency against critics like Daniel Ellsberg, that the Company and successive White Houses would have learned that the agency had no business spying on American citizens.

I believe Carle’s insider account and discount the glib denials of people like Low. Carle is taking a substantial risk in making all this public. I hope that the Senate and House Intelligence Committees will immediately launch an investigation of this clear violation of the law by the Bush White House and by the CIA officials concerned. Like Mr. Carle, I am dismayed at how easy it seems to have been for corrupt WH officials to suborn CIA personnel into activities that had nothing to do with national security abroad and everything to do with silencing domestic critics. This effort was yet another attempt to gut the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, in this case as part of an effort to gut the First Amendment of the US Constitution."

This first response was followed by another posted today on juancole.com:

"Very unfortunately, President Obama just signed a four-year extension of the so-called PATRIOT Act, with three central provisions that permit warrantless spying by government agencies on US residents. This extension was rushed through the Congress with parliamentary maneuvers and opponents of it who wanted a public debate were shut down by Reid and Boehner.

If the Bush White House blithely picked up the phone and asked the Central Intelligence Agency to gather information on my private life for the purpose of destroying me politically– a set of actions that was illegal every which way from Sunday– then imagine how powerful government officials are using the legal authorization they receive from the PATRIOT Act to spy on and marginalize perceived opponents.

The act is clearly unconstitutional and guts key Bill of Right protections. Among its disturbing aspects is the access it gives government agencies to individuals’ library records, business records and other personal effects without requiring probable cause of a crime being committed. And while the wiretap provisions target non-US citizens, they extend to any conversations the latter have with US citizens. The framers of the constitution in any case believed that the liberties they proclaimed extended to “all men,” not just citizens.

Worse, Sen. Ron Wyden has said that there is a “secret PATRIOT Act” in the sense that there is a government interpretation of the act that allows surveillance and intrusiveness far beyond what the letter of the statute seems to permit.

The scale of the electronic surveillance of Americans’ private correspondence by the National Security Agency is barely imaginable, and we have no idea how much of our communications are being stored on NSA servers and sifted through by computer programs.

The Congress should revisit the PATRIOT Act in the light of the revelation of what was attempted in my regard, and should repeal the damn thing. Failing that, the federal judiciary should find it unconstitutional, which it is. But one of the things that worries me is that some of the key political and judicial personnel who might want to move against it may themselves already have been victims of surveillance, entrapment and blackmailing. Just how corrupt has our whole governmental apparatus become, that clear violations of our Constitution are blithely accepted?"

A collecting of articles regarding the war on Iraq authored by Cole in 2005 and 2006 can be read on Salon.com.

And, Interestingly, Wikipedia has the following to say about anti-intellectualism as a prominent feature of authoritarian societies:

"Dictators, and their dictatorship supporters, use anti-intellectualism to gain popular support, by accusing intellectuals of being a socially detached, politically-dangerous class who question the extant social norms, who dissent from established opinion, and who reject nationalism, hence they are unpatriotic, and thus subversive of the nation."

Frihedskæmper dømt for terrorstøtte

Nu skal en af de gamle frihedskæmpere fra anden verdenskrig to måneder i spjældet fordi han har valgt at støtte PFLPs humanitære arbejde. Organisationen er nemlig en terrororganisation iflg. EU. Europa er samtidig med dette hovedimportør af frugt og grønt, dyrket i de ulovligt besatte palæstinensiske områder, af det delvist statsejede israelske firma Agrexco.

Ha-Joon Chang: 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism.

Tariq Ali on Obama.

Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood [Full Film]

House Passes Authority for Worldwide War.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union "The House just passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), including a provision to authorize worldwide war, which has no expiration date and will allow this president — and any future president — to go to war anywhere in the world, at any time, without further congressional authorization. The new authorization wouldn’t even require the president to show any threat to the national security of the United States. The American military could become the world’s cop, and could be sent into harm’s way almost anywhere and everywhere around the globe."

Der er noget galt i DK: Det første offer

Branko Milanovic - Global Income Inequality

New Report: Captured by Cotton.

Exploited Dalit girls produce garments in India for European and US markets.

"This report highlights several labour rights violations faced by girls and young women employed under the Sumangali Scheme in the Tamil Nadu garment industry. The Sumangali Scheme equals bonded labour, on the basis of the fact that employers are unilaterally holding back part of the workers’ wages until three or more years of work have been completed. In addition, workers are severely restricted in their freedom of movement and privacy. Workers work in unsafe and unhealthy circumstances. Local and international NGOs have reported extensively on the Sumangali Scheme. Inevitably, brands and retailers sourcing from Tamil Nadu have Sumangali workers in their supply chain. ICN and SOMO denounce the Sumangali Scheme as outright unacceptable and are of the opinion that sourcing companies have a responsibility to ensure that workers’ rights are respected throughout their supply chain."

Center for Research on Multional Corporations: Captured By Cotton (pdf).

Quote of the day: Rudolf Rocker.

“Only freedom can inspire men to great things and bring about social and political transformations. The art of ruling men has never been the art of educating men and inspiring them to a new shaping of their lives.”

Interview w. Jonh Perkins - Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

Russia Today Interview - Peter Joseph (April 2011)

25 Ways To Suppress Truth - The Rules of Disinformation.

Quote of the day: Robert O. Paxton on Fascism

Fascism, according to Paxton, is "A form of political behaviour marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

Robert O. Paxton: "The Anatomy of Fascism" 2004.

BIG BANG BIG BOOM - the new wall-painted animation by BLU.

BIG BANG BIG BOOM - the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Body Slammed and Choked by the Police for Dancing at Jefferson Memorial.

VANDANA SHIVA: Traditional Knowledge, Biodiversity and Sustainable Living

Land-grab in India: Medha Patkar, David Harvey

Round table "Meaning of Maghreb?" - Zizek, Habashi, Amin, Harvey, Bauman, 18th May 2011

"The meaning of Maghreb?" Round Table discussion featuring Slavoj Žižek, Mamdouh Habashi, Samir Amin, David Harvey, Zygmunt Bauman. Pt. 1 of 8.

Saudi troops sent to crush Bahrain protests 'had British training'

The Guardian 28 May 2011:

"...In response to questions made under the Freedom of Information Act, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed that British personnel regularly run courses for the national guard in "weapons, fieldcraft and general military skills training, as well as incident handling, bomb disposal, search, public order and sniper training". The courses are organised through the British Military Mission to the Saudi Arabian National Guard, an obscure unit that consists of 11 British army personnel under the command of a brigadier...."

The Telegraph May 25. 2011:

"...The Ministry of Defence has now admitted that members of the Saudi Arabian National Guard sent into Bahrain may have received military training from the British Armed Forces in Saudi Arabia.

The revelation is likely to renew allegations that the Coalition is sending mixed messages on democracy in the Middle East.

Despite British criticism of the Bahrainis' actions, David Cameron last week welcomed the Crown Prince of Bahrain to Downing Street, drawing criticism from human rights groups.

Britain keeps a large and secretive military training team in Saudi Arabia. British military personnel advise and teach the kingdom's forces in areas including crowd control

In a written parliamentary answer, Nick Harvey, the Armed Forces Minister, said the Government could not rule out the possibility that British-trained Saudis took part in the Bahraini operation.

He said: "The Ministry of Defence has extensive and wide-ranging bilateral engagement with Saudi Arabia in support of the Government's wider foreign policy goals. The Ministry of Defence's engagement with Saudi Arabia includes training provided to the Saudi Arabian National Guard, delivered through the British mission."

"It is possible that some members of the Saudi Arabian National Guard which were deployed in Bahrain may have undertaken some training provided by the British military mission." ..."

General Wesley Clark explains Libyan invasion planned years in advance.

Chomsky: The U.S. is desperate to stop middle east democracy movements.

Sæt dem på gaden!

VKO-regimet, med Dansk Folkeparti i spidsen, ønsker nu at straffe kontantshjælpsmodtagere hårdt for udeblivelse fra de såkaldte “aktiveringstilbud.” Hvis man udebliver i blot en enkelt dag, uden at kunne begrunde det fyldestgørende, vil man fremover blive frataget halvdelen af sin kontanthjælp i et halvt år, hvilket svarer til at chefen konfiskerer en fjerdedel af ens årsløn hvis man tager en pjækkedag fra jobbet.

Begrundelsen fra Dansk Folkepartis Peter Skaarup er at ”det vil have en opdragende effekt” og Skaarup siger uddybende at ”vi er nødt til at skærpe sanktionerne for flere tusinde ledige på kontanthjælp og starthjælp afslår hvert år tilbud uden grund”. Beskæftigelsesminister Inger Støjberg mener også det er en god idé for som hun formulerer det:

”Som systemet er i dag kan kontanthjælpsmodtagere shoppe ind og ud af aktivering. Hvis der er noget, man ikke vil deltage i, mister man kun ydelsen i de f.eks. tre dage, man vælger at blive væk. Det gør det svært at skabe sammenhængende forløb, der kan bringe de ledige tilbage i job.”

Beskæftigelsesministeren antager altså at de mange aktiveringstilbud kan bringe de ledige tilbage i job, men desværre har det i de fleste tilfælde ikke ret meget at gøre med virkeligheden, idet antallet af ledige jobs blot udgør en ganske lille procentdel ift. antallet af ledige og det er derfor ikke unormalt at mange hundrede arbejdsløse søger den samme stilling, som eksempelvis tankpasser eller kassedame.

Det der kaldes et ”aktiveringstilbud” er i virkeligheden en eufemisme for tvangsaktivering for i modsætning til et tilbud, kan man ikke sige nej til at blive aktiveret. Denne tvangsaktivering kan indeholde alt ligefra kostvejledning over gymnastikundervisning til kognitiv gruppeterapi og bliver også ”tilbudt” til folk som ikke er hverken overvægtige, i dårlig form eller har ondt i psyken. At dømme ud fra disse aktiveringsforløb handler arbejdsløshedsproblemet altså åbenbart mere om, at folk ikke spiser rigtigt, ikke løber lange nok ture og ikke går rundt og har det godt nok med sig selv, end det handler om finanskrisen, eller om, at der ikke er kommet ret mange arbejdspladser ud af, at man har givet skattelettelser til de rige, selvom dette ellers iflg. teorien ville få en ”trickle-down effect,” hvilket kort sagt vil sige, at giver man de rige flere penge mellem hænderne, så kommer det i teorien os alle sammen til gode.

En anden kendt variant indenfor tvangsaktivering er jobsøgningskurser hvor ledige bruger mange timer dagligt på at lære at skrive en ansøgning, for hvis man ikke kan finde sig et arbejde hænger det åbenbart mere sammen med, at man ikke er god nok til at sælge sig selv, end det handler om, at der simpelthen ikke er ret meget arbejde at få. Er man ikke blandt de heldige der er kommet ud på arbejdsmarkedet når kurset er slut, ja så bliver man selvfølgelig bare nødt til at tage kurset en gang til, for ens fortsatte ledighed må jo så åbenbart hænge sammen med, at man ikke har hørt godt nok efter på kurset.

Skulle man i blot en enkelt dag udeblive fra et af disse stærkt fornedrende, perspektivløse og stupide tvangsaktiveringsforløb er man iflg, mange borgerlige nok bare en forpulet nasserøv der i virkeligheden slet ikke ønsker at komme i arbejde. Det er derfor fuldstændig på sin plads, at udeblivelse nu skal straffes med en så voldsom indkomstforringelse, at det i praksis betyder, at de sandsynligvis mange bistandsmodtagere som dette kommer til at ramme, må vælge mellem enten at have tag over hovedet eller mad på bordet, for en indkomst på under 6000 kroner før skat rækker næppe for ret mange til begge dele.

Det er vanskeligt at være decideret chokeret over dette nye tiltag, for har man fulgt den politiske udvikling gennem de sidste mange år kommer det næppe som et chok, at man på den borgerlige fløj gladeligt svinger pisken og ydmyger ledige der i forvejen lever på trange kår, men jeg er alligevel lidt overrasket over graden af afsky for de ledige og den forstyrrende afstumpethed der ligger til grund for dette nye straftiltag. Man kan da håbe på at regningen falder ved det næste valg, for selv Dansk Folkepartis vælgere må da efterhånden kunne se, at al snakken fra DFs side om, at man kæmper den lille mands sag, ikke har ret meget med den førte politik og virkeligheden at gøre.

Police Brutality in Barcelona.

GMO Trilogy - Unnatural Selection.

Welcome to the Police State.

Taibbi: 'U.S. politics - reality show sponsored by Wall Street'

Chris Hedges: The World As It Is.

More GRITtv

Ken O'Keefe BBC Hardtalk Jan. 2003.

New Advances in Renewable Energy Technologies.

Splitting water to create renewable energy simpler than first thought?

(PhysOrg.com) -- An international team, of scientists, led by a team at Monash University has found the key to the hydrogen economy could come from a very simple mineral, commonly seen as a black stain on rocks.



New solar product captures up to 95 percent of light energy.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Efficiency is a problem with today's solar panels; they only collect about 20 percent of available light. Now, a University of Missouri engineer has developed a flexible solar sheet that captures more than 90 percent of available light, and he plans to make prototypes available to consumers within the next five years.

New omni-directional wind turbine can capture wind energy on building rooftops.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Katru Eco-Energy, headed by founder and inventor, Varan Sureshan, has developed a new kind of wind turbine meant to capture the winds that fly in all directions atop big buildings, and unlike conventional devices, the IMPLUX, as it’s called, can capture wind from any direction as it stands; meaning without having to be repositioned or pointed. The IMPLUX achieves this feat by means of horizontal turbine blades that sit atop a vertical axis and are turned by wind that is pushed up through what Sureshan calls a "fluid dynamic gate."

Chomsky: "There is Much More to Say."

Noam Chomsky expands upon his earlier comments regarding the assasination of Osama Bin Laden in Abottabad, Pakistan. Here is an excerpt:

"...It might be instructive to ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic (after proper burial rites, of course). Uncontroversially, he is not a “suspect” but the “decider” who gave the orders to invade Iraq -- that is, to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: in Iraq, the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country and the national heritage, and the murderous sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region. Equally uncontroversially, these crimes vastly exceed anything attributed to bin Laden.

To say that all of this is uncontroversial, as it is, is not to imply that it is not denied. The existence of flat earthers does not change the fact that, uncontroversially, the earth is not flat. Similarly, it is uncontroversial that Stalin and Hitler were responsible for horrendous crimes, though loyalists deny it. All of this should, again, be too obvious for comment, and would be, except in an atmosphere of hysteria so extreme that it blocks rational thought.

Similarly, it is uncontroversial that Bush and associates did commit the “supreme international crime,” the crime of aggression, at least if we take the Nuremberg Tribunal seriously. The crime of aggression was defined clearly enough by Justice Robert Jackson, Chief of Counsel for the United States at Nuremberg, reiterated in an authoritative General Assembly resolution. An “aggressor,” Jackson proposed to the Tribunal in his opening statement, is a state that is the first to commit such actions as “Invasion of its armed forces, with or without a declaration of war, of the territory of another State….” No one, even the most extreme supporter of the aggression, denies that Bush and associates did just that.

We might also do well to recall Jackson’s eloquent words at Nuremberg on the principle of universality: “If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.” And elsewhere: “We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well.”...."

Read the rest here.

On Human Networks & Living Biosystems.

On Human Networks & Living Biosystems.

By Chris Arkenberg.

Increasingly, we live in a world defined by flat networks. Folks like Clay Shirky, Ben Hammersley, and others have observed in great detail how the design patterns of the internet are challenging and changing the landscape of human civilization. So many of our institutions have been built as hierarchical pyramids designed to exert the maximum degree of control over their domains. These top-down management structures have come to define business, government, the military, medicine, education, the family, and knowledge itself. Leaders rise to the top as centralized governors dictating down the chain how things should be, while workers march in step towards execution of their appointed tasks. Such structures were modeled after the clockworks & steam engines of classical mechanics, designed to be precise, rigid, and durable, capable of lasting hundreds of years. These structures informed the defining metaphors of our entire industrialized society.

Computer architecture recapitulated the mechanical metaphor by designating a central processor that assigned & managed tasks bussed out to sub-processors and specialized functional components. In this way the computer became more of a powerful extension of the industrial age rather than a stake in the ground of a new paradigm. While the mechanical metaphor gradually evolved into the computational metaphor which has defined the last two decades, it wasn’t until computers began to follow the model of telecom and began connecting with each other across flat networks that the seed of a biological metaphor began to take hold.

Nature, it seems, does not create very many rigid, top-down control systems. Those are too stiff and inflexible for the dynamics of life. Rather, nature evolves vast horizontal networks that assemble into specialized functions within their environment. For example, the messiest, most distributed organizational structure known - the human brain - does not have a top-tier manager or CPU. There is no executive function within the brain or its mind, though we typically like to think there is. Instead, the brain is a vast & mostly flat hierarchy that is bundled into loosely vertical functional bodies. These functional bodies are themselves existing across a mostly flat horizontal network of interactions. The thalamus receives all inputs and routes them up to higher cortical processing and lower hindbrain autonomic structures, into the amygdala for emotional content and across the hippocampus for memory, then down throughout the body. The processing chain is massively parallel, interconnected, and marked by complex feedback pathways. Mind arises off of these processes in a very ad hoc manner, always shifting, always flexible, and always derived from a mass summation across the network.

Mycelial networks offer another example. When we see mushrooms scattered across a forest floor we're not seeing individuals. Each mushroom growing from the soil is a fruiting body rising from the underground web-work of mycelia - the skeletal framework of the colony. Some mycelial colonies have been found to have areas extending over 2000 acres making them some of the largest superorganisms on the planet. The pattern suggests mushrooms as terminal nodes and mycelia as the network backbone.

In ecosystems, large predators constitute a form of top-down management but they themselves are part of the predator-prey relationship - a dynamic that must always seek relative equilibrium with the broader network in which it is embedded. Predators do not have a choice to over-consume prey or stockpile & re-sell it to others. Large ocean gyres also suggest a high degree of top-down control by seasonally establishing the engines of hemispheric weather. The North Pacific gyre becomes more active in the Winter of the northern hemisphere, driving the scale & frequency of storms hitting the pacific northwest of the United States. But the North Pacific gyre is an emergent structure that is itself built upon the properties of a nearly-infinite set of factors. It is not a regulatory structure or a governor by intent or design and there is no top-level group of components that determine its next move. It is a super-system derived from innumerable sub-systems.

Most importantly, all biological systems are guided not by top-down governors or control mechanisms but by feedback from the networks in which they are embedded. This is how nature regulates, preserves, and evolves itself towards greater adaptability. There is no fallible ruler driven to resource over-reach and myopic certainty. There is only the ongoing trial & error of embedded growth tempered by continuous communication between & within organisms.

As computers began to connect across the ARPANET, and with the dawning of the visual internet, the CPU evolved away from being specifically a central control system to become a node within a distributed network. This initial shift quickly challenged the established domains of publishing, content creation, intellectual property, and knowledge management while inviting the crowd into a shared virtual space of increasingly global identity & transaction. The advent of social networks established an organizational structure for connecting the human capital of virtuality, making it easier for like-minded people to connect & share & collaborate non-locally, subtly undermining the very notions of borders, statehood, family, and allegiance. Soon after, the mobile revolution has tipped everything on its side and bundled it into a portable device bringing instantaneous global communication & information access to most people on the planet.

The framework was laid for new forms of emergent, non-hierarchical, distributed collaboration & innovation, to both productive & destructive ends. Groups could now form and coordinate around affiliations, interest, and goals in ways that directly challenged the institutional structures monetizing our production & consumption and regulating our behaviors. It has become vastly easier for small organizations to take on multinational interests, whether in business & innovation or in power & politics. The conflicts we see across the world today are, in large part, a symptom of the younger generations leveraging flat network technologies to rise up against the older generations who long ago settled into their legacy hierarchical power structures. To paraphrase Ben Hammersley, the people who are running the world, who are entrusted with our future, are not able to understand the present. They lack the cognitive tools that are a basic part of the Generation C toolkit - the digital natives who grew up with a mobile in their hands and the internet at their fingertips, embedded in specialized networks that span borders and extend identity into the virtual.

The global disruptions that seem to characterize modernity constitute a civilizational correction driven by natural law. The DotCom bubble went through a correction, shedding excess value and pruning the garden of exuberant innovation to favor only the most fit. It was a good thing, if not painful. We witnessed the correction in the housing bubble and will likely see similar corrections in credit & commodities, as well as a painfully positive correction in energy, subsidized and under-valued for so long. The impacts of climate change are a correction imposed upon the legacy model of industrialization & growth by nature itself - the super-system in which all human endeavor is embedded and to which we are ultimately accountable.

The civilization correction is an emergent regulatory mechanism embedded within natural systems forcing our legacy human systems to progressively modify the unsustainable design patterns of our past. The mechanical metaphor & the computational metaphor are necessarily opening to include the biological metaphor. We can see this in every aspect of technology and it is equally emergent across human behavior & social systems. Nanosystems emulate biosystems. Computation & robotics are integrating with neurology & physiology. Individuals are finding agency & empowerment in leaderless multi-cellular collaborations. The built environment is becoming sensory-aware, communicating with itself through discrete feedback mechanisms. It can be argued that the emergence of the internet and of ubiquitous mobile communication & computation is an expression of our natural instincts to move into closer alignment with our environment; to follow the adaptive design patterns of nature in order to find a more sustainable & equitable posture for our species; a thermodynamic need to seek maximum efficiency in energy expenses. And to express a direct intervention programmed by nature itself to nudge the Anthropocene back towards equilibrium.

Such lofty ponderings aside, our world is undoubtedly approaching an inflection point. Everything appears to be upending and it’s all spread out in glorious detail for everyone to see. The feedback loop between humanity and it’s creations - the biological & cybernetic communication among individuals & groups & cultures & organisms & ecosystems - is tightening and getting more & more dense every day, feeding on itself and forcing exceptional degrees of novelty into becoming. It’s frightening & awesome and the Old Guard can barely see it happening right in front of their eyes. The shift may be apocalyptic, a sudden phase change, or an accelerated-but-managed transition... Probably it will be all of these things in differing degrees & locales. However it happens, the emerging paradigm is much more about networks, messaging, feedback, and biology rather than hierarchy, control, power, and mechanization. Nature is the super-system, the ultimate controller enforcing the laws of physics and prescribing the design templates for fitness & adaptation. If we are, as Kevin Kelley suggests, the sex organs of technology, then our technology is born from the natural imperatives coded deeply into our DNA.

Via spacecollective.org

Dagens Citat: Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. on the purpose of education:

"It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life.

Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one's self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals."

From the speech "The Purpose of Education" by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

David Korten: "Living Buildings, Living Economies, and a Living Future."

In another excellent piece by Dr. David Korten, former professor of economy at Harvard Business School, he states that:

We humans, in a fit of adolescent hubris, have sought to liberate ourselves from the responsibilities of life in community. We are in denial of our fundamental nature as living beings—forgetting that because of the way life manages energy, living beings exist only in active relationships to other living beings.

We have so confused individual autonomy with personal liberty that we have created economies that reduce caring human relationships to soulless financial exchange and structured our physical space around buildings and auto-dependent transportation systems that wall us off from one another and nature. In isolation from nature we have sought to dominate and control rather than work with nature’s natural generative processes. We have paid a terrible price.

As we restructure our physical and economic relationships to achieve true economic efficiency and reduce the human burden on the biosphere, we will see even more clearly our interdependence with one another and the place we live. We will know where our food, water, and energy come from. We will know where our wastes go. And most of all we will be constantly reminded of the extent to which our happiness and well-being depend on our active engagement with the generative living community of which we are a part.

The challenges we face in making the transition are enormous. But so too is the opportunity to create and secure a living future for ourselves and our children for generations to come.

Read all of it here.

Dokumentar: The End of Poverty?

We're Not Broke, Just Twisted: Extreme Wealth Inequality in America.