Dear Reader,
We start off this issue of Green Politics with Don Fitz’s ‘You want to
ration my what?’ This interview with Stan Cox about his latest book on
rationing explores rationing as a means to stop an environmental
collapse.
Another original piece on secret trade agreements through the
Transpacific Partnership with Monsanto sitting at the table, but with no
input from Congress.
Also in this issue there is an interesting analysis of the coup in Egypt
by a respected Oxford scholar who is also the grandson of the founder of
the Muslim Brotherhood.
Along with these articles you will find ones on Syria and spying on
activists in Pennsylvania.
You can reach us at http://www.
greenparty.org/newsletter/contact_us.php.
In solidarity
The Print Collective
Phil Ardery, Jr
Barbara Chicherio
Devin Ceartas
Elizabeth Fattah
Wes Wagar
Crystal Washington
Hot and bothered about all that stuff
You Want to Ration My What?
by Don Fitz
When Stan Cox’s Losing Our Cool questioned America’s fetish
on air conditioning in 2010, some very nasty comments reached his inbox.
An agricultural researcher at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, Cox
is not one to back down from saying what needs to be said. He pokes a
cow most sacred with the May 2013 release of his book, Any Way You Slice
It: The Past, Present and Future of Rationing.
Growth fanatics could sizzle out of their skillets when they hear that
environmental sanity might require something even more dreadful than
limiting consumption. The mother of all horrors — are you ready
for it? — is that a sustainable world just might be one where
humans get equal shares of what they need.
I talked with Cox the day after Slice It was released.
Q. Why do you think that rationing is necessary to stop environmental collapse?
A. Avoiding collapse will mean cutting back deeply on our exploitation
of fossil fuels and other resources. There’s climate disruption,
but there’s much more as well. At least one-quarter of all plant
growth and freshwater flow on Earth is captured and used every year by
our species. In a high-profile 2009 paper, a group of 29 scientists from
seven countries defined nine “planetary boundaries” within
which humanity could “operate safely.” Their conclusions
were pretty grim. Levels of carbon dioxide, ozone, nitrogen,
sea-organism loss, freshwater resources, soil erosion, species
extinction, and industrial chemicals show that we have either already
breached, or are on the way to breaching, all of the Earth’s
critical boundaries.
I always stress that rationing cannot just be plugged into the economy
and reverse that destruction. Rather, it is something that we will find
necessary if we actually succeed in controlling and reversing the growth
of resource consumption and ecosystem destruction. Once we achieve
that, it will set in motion the need for rationing. We will have made a
lot of things more scarce. Scarcity will bring inflation and a need to
control prices. After that, there will be a need for explicit
rationing, which people would find far preferable to lining up outside
of shops and squabbling over scarce goods.
Continue reading interview with Stan Cox
Trans-Pacific Partnership and Monsanto
by Barbara Chicherio
Something is looming in the shadows that could help erode our basic
rights and contaminate our food. The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)
has the potential to become the biggest regional Free Trade Agreement in
history, both in economic size and the ability to quietly add more
countries in addition to those originally included. As of 2011 its 11
countries accounted for 30% of the world’s agricultural exports. Those
countries are the US, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Canada, Malaysia,
Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Viet Nam. Recently, Japan has
joined the negotiations.
Six hundred US corporate advisors have had input into the TPP. The
draft text has not been made available to the public, press or policy
makers. The level of secrecy around this agreement is unparalleled.
The majority of Congress is being kept in the dark while representatives
of US corporations are being consulted and privy to the details.
The chief agricultural negotiator for the US is the former Monsanto
lobbyist, Islam Siddique. If ratified the TPP would impose punishing
regulations that give multinational corporations unprecedented right to
demand taxpayer compensation for policies that corporations deem a
barrier to their profits.
Continue reading about TPP
Dissent or Terror: New Report Details How Counter Terrorism Apparatus Was Used to Monitor
Occupy Movement Nationwide
by PRWatch staff
MADISON, WI -- DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy today released the results of a year-long investigation: "Dissent or Terror: How the Nation's Counter Terrorism Apparatus, In Partnership With Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street."
The report, a distillation of thousands of pages of records obtained from counter terrorism/law enforcement agencies, details how state/regional "fusion center" personnel monitored the Occupy Wall Street movement over the course of 2011 and 2012. Personnel engaged in this activity at fusion centers include employees of municipal, county and federal counter terrorism/homeland security entities. Such entities include local police departments, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (including U.S. DHS components such as the Transportation Security Administration).
Continue reading at PRWatch.com
10 Problems with the Latest Excuse for War
by David Swanson in WarIsACrime.org
If you own a television or read a newspaper you've probably heard that we need another war because the Syrian government used chemical weapons.
If you own a computer and know where to look you've probably heard that there isn't actually any evidence for that claim.
Below are 10 reasons why this latest excuse for war is no good EVEN IF TRUE.
1. War is not made legal by such an excuse. It can't be found in the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the United Nations Charter, or the U.S. Constitution. It can, however, be found in U.S. war propaganda of the 2002 vintage. (Who says our government doesn't promote recycling?)
Continue reading at WarIsACrimeorg
Green Social Thought: A magazine of synthesis and regeneration (the new name for
Synthesis/Regeneration) is produced in St. Louis and sent to members of the
Greens/Green Party USA. GST-S/R
No. 61 is titled “Alternative to More.”.
Rates for GST-S/R are:
1-4 copies, $3.95 each;
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Please make checks to “Synthesis Regeneration” and mail to
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No postage charges if in US.
Non-US add 25% Canada, 80% other.
Subscriptions to GST-S/R (4 issues) are $15 (US).
Non-US subscriptions are $20 Canada, $30 other.
Did you know that membership in The Greens/Green Party USA brings with
it a free subscription to Green Social Thought: A magazine of synthesis and regeneration? You can join by
clicking here.
EGYPT: COUP D’ÉTAT, ACT II
by Tariq Ramadan at
his website
The Egyptian army has not returned to politics for the simple reason that it has never left. The fall of Hosni Mubarak was a military coup d’État that allowed a new generation of officers to enter the political scene in a new way, from behind the curtain of a civilian government. In an article published on June 29 2012 I noted an Army high command declaration that the presidential election was temporary, for a six-month to one-year period (its title made the premonition explicit: “An election for nothing?”). The American administration had monitored the entire process: its objective ally in Egypt over the past fifty years has been the army, not the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). The latest revelations (see the International Herald Tribune , July 5, and Le Monde, July 6) confirm what was already clear: the decision to overthrow President Mohamed Morsi had been made well before June 30. A conversation between President Morsi and General al-Sisi indicated that the head of the country’s military had planned the overthrow and imprisonment of the president weeks before the popular upheaval that would justify the military coup “in the name of the people’s will.” A clever strategy! Orchestrate demonstrations involving millions of people in order to make believe that the army truly cares about the people! Coup d’État, second act.
Read the full article by Tariq Ramadan on his website.
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