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02 September 2010
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Critical Comment
Digital Nation? No Thanks!
by Peter Crabb   
08 June 2010
One of the brilliant insights in Daniel Quinn’s 1992 novel Ishmael is that modern industrialized people do not know how to live. Humans have long been cut off from the contingencies of nature, first as a consequence of discovering the wholly unnatural skill of growing reliable food supplies in one place, and later as a side effect of learning how to manufacture wholly unnatural objects and environments. The resulting alienation from nature and from our ancestors’ nature-adapted ways of life left us clueless and susceptible to being sold ideas about how people should live, usually by the most audacious psychopath in the group.
 
Diversity dead-end: Inclusiveness without accountability
by Robert Jensen   
19 April 2010

After a recent talk on racism and other illegitimate hierarchies at a diversity conference in Dallas, I received a letter from one of the people who had attended that asked "why you feel it necessary to perpetuate and even exacerbate the divisiveness of language when addressing a group of people assembled to learn how to live better together and be more accepting of differences?" He suggested that by being so sharply critical, I was part of the problem not the solution

 
Sierra Club Slammed for "Clean Car" Opportunism
by Jan Lundberg   
13 April 2010

Editor's note:
A testimony to the failure of the environmental movement to offer an alternative to ecocide is the continued, widespread support of the automobile industry for "clean cars." This pseudo-environmental stance is almost identical to the Obama administration's myopia about continuing industrial pollution at full tilt for the sake of "jobs" and stability for its friends on Wall Street. However, the state of affairs -- driving off the ecological cliff for maximum petrocollapse -- is also the failure of grassroots activism and the pro-bicycle/pro walking movements.

 
The Dominant Critique: Empty Politics of Many Progressives
by Jan Lundberg   
13 February 2010
In "How to Get Our Democracy Back" Lawrence Lessig wrote in The Nation, Feb. 3 (and soon after in the San Francisco Chronicle), a somewhat scathing indictment of Congress and the President.

In my soon to be released book, Petrocollapse: The Basis of Crash and Culture Change, part of it discusses the political and socioeconomic system we live under. A section of that part goes into what I call the Dominant Critique. Those commentators or leaders participating in it constitute what has come to mean the "Left."

 
"Climate Deal Likely to Bear Big Price Tag" - Critical Comment
by Jan Lundberg   
11 December 2009
For decades the nations of the southern hemisphere have asked for -- or have been portrayed by social justice activists as needing -- a piece of the industrial pie. A related theme has been the drive to not have to pay for the overconsumption of the North. "Development" often meant World Bank projects to facilitate power consumption for spreading the use of appliances and cars. In the run-up to Copenhagen the idea of funding poor countries for climate mitigation has gained popularity, but it may really be about corporate business. How feasible this is with the global economy's imploding -- from the end of cheap energy and peaking of funny money -- is forgotten as plans count on just more growth.
 
"Global starvation imminent as US faces crop failure" - comment by Jan Lundberg
by Marc Davis   
23 August 2009
Editor's commentary: The above headline and first sentences of a recent report from CommodityOnline.com grab one's attention: "The world faces 'mass starvation' following North America's next major crop failure. And it could even happen before year's end."

World leaders and the corporate media don't appreciate the role of petroleum in food production and distribution. On top of that typical error in the report, several other contradictions make for a jaw-dropping reading experience.

 
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