#eco-socialist federalism | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

swordoforion · 3 years

Text

Orion Digest №31 - The Importance of a State

The question has been asked before - do we need a state, and for that matter, organized society? Humans lived nomadic existences as hunters long before we settled down and formed civilization, and in the eyes of some, the events that resulted are evidence we should abandon modern systems of gathering, all the way from the first civilizations to the long-lasting negative effects of the Industrial Revolution. However, while it is undeniable that the world today is in disarray and disaster, it does not mean we should abandon everything we have learned, and declare organized society a lost cause. We have become closer as a species than ever before, and now, as we near the height of our knowledge, we are becoming well equipped to deal with the problems we have created.

First, let us specify exactly what a state is, and the argument against it. Any citizen, as an individual, has certain needs for survival, and beyond that, for mental health and self-actualization. The world is filled with resources, and people can work to turn those resources into usable forms that we can use to fulfill our survival needs, but the time cost usually means that we have to put our mental health and attainment on hold. The more effective the resource development process is, the less input we need from the average individual, and thus the more time they can spend fulfilling their higher needs.

The system by which resource development is made more effective is economy, which in some forms of societal organization, is separate from the state, but within an ESF system, is incorporated into the state's natural functions. Within economy, instead of everyone working through the complete process to fulfill their needs, they take on a specific task, and receive the same reward, which when divided among a larger population, can be used to decrease the amount of input required from each individual.

To ensure that economy functions as it needs to, and to provide guidelines for the resultant organization of individuals, government, or the state, is formed. ESF government is made up of the people, and thus assumes ownership of the resources, for equal distribution out to the people in exchange for input. It also sets rules to prevent offenses by citizens against others, maintaining order and stability. Within this framework, an individual can live safely and provide minimal input to have their needs fulfilled, and will have time to focus on the task of self-actualization, so long as they remain within the rules of the state.

Many argue against the existence of a state, viewing the requirement to pay taxes, remain within set rules, and provide input to an economy as forceful and coercive. Logically, if they wanted to, they could go and live without owing to anyone, simply providing for themselves and self-governing. Popular among leftist theory is the idea of a 'stateless, classless' society, in which people live freely and self-govern, but peacefully cooperate on matters of public importance, and only use violence in self-defense of their own freedom. Government would cease to exist, with only economy remaining, as people would simply act respectful without legal coercion.

Much of the grounds for this theory comes from rampant corruption in government throughout history - discrimination and greed make their way into the public sector, and those in power use it for their own personal gain. Without government, people are unable to seek power. Admittedly, there are numerous advantages to this approach, as many as there are potential dangers in the foundation of government. However, the same could be said for a stateless society - the absence of a vehicle to seek power and spread discrimination does not mean the abolition of those ideas and drives.

A state of anarchy relies on constant cooperation without legal incentive, as well as allowing the people enough strength to fend off would be attackers and conquerors. In this kind of community, the responsibility of public facilities, such as infrastructure and health care, requires continuous volunteer work from the members of a community. This makes sense, as it benefits most of the community to pitch in. Just the same, everyone would have to agree to keep the peace and not take more than what they need, while having tools for self defense should the need arise.

Both of these conditions, however, rely on the assumption that those members of society who seek greater power and advantage over others are few enough in number to not directly impact society. Throughout history, we have seen that people can be swayed by just a handful of individuals, and result in sweeping them into power. Even in a state of anarchy, a new state could easily rise, since it does not matter the ability of a single individual to fight in self defense - it just requires a majority. With no incentive to follow set rules, the greedy could take power once again, this time on their own terms. The true test of any stateless society is whether the values of peace and harmony are yet universal, because if people are not willing to cooperate, you could fall once more into ruin.

It is in this manner that a state holds superiority, as although it uses forceful coercion to enforce the rules, those rules and the order of society becomes more concrete and stable, and over time, a moral society can instill those standards upon its citizens and future generations. If anarchy were possible, it would be after a period of moral state rule, in which the population is conditioned to the ideas of cooperation and harmony required to maintain a stateless society. Of course, the state itself needs to be moral, which means that careful safeguards need to be put in place to prevent the rise of an elite class or the presence of discrimination within political power. In other words, if we ever want to live without a government, we need one that is democratic and fair to teach us how to do so.

In our current context, the environmental collapse and unequal wealth distribution of Earth also pose problems not solvable without a larger and more coercive body of law, as it will require actions not in our immediate self interest (namely, getting rid of wealth and putting ourselves at economic disadvantage for the sake of others and long term growth). Even current governments cannot put forth the necessary effort out of fear of risk - it will take a state created from the outset for that express goal with more jurisdiction to accomplish it. Even taking into consideration the concerns of those who wish for a stateless society, we can't live a simple life if the planet is destroyed, but we can save the planet first and then get down to the business of the state later.

Beyond the climate crisis, though, a world federal government gives us an increased level of connection and coordination across the world, should another crisis arise, or in case aid should be needed by any area of the world. With a much bigger population and worldview, the genie is out of the bottle on simplistic societies, and with a simple touch of a button, we can talk with people all over the world, which has more benefits than downsides. We can understand each other better, see places across the globe, and with global democracy, do our part to make the entire world a better place.

Should we develop to a point where we have staved off global crisis and maintain communication and coordination, a stateless society could be possible, but the continuation of a democratically malleable state would prevent the collapse of society should a dictator ever rise too powerful for the common populace to defeat. In either case, there are set rules that are agreed to, whether by law or by social convention, but only a state has the power to effectively enforce them, and even if we never have to, it's good to be prepared for the risk.

The only true detriment to a state is the ability of the government to become corrupt, as it is far more dangerous when the state itself is an enemy, compared to a simple warlord arising amidst a stateless society. This is why the creation of such a government must be done with careful consideration to future interpretation of the law and democratic structure - today, we deal with corrupt governments sometimes caused by looser legislation and little vigilance to prevent the powerful from bending the rules to bring about oppression. A world federal constitution must be thorough in its description of the law, and democracy must be kept in mind at every stage of the process.

- DKTC FL

#the state #anarchism #anarchy #politics #political #political essay #world federalism #eco-socialist federalism #socialism #state socialism #orion #orion digest #sword of orion #importance of the state #government #corrupt government #environmentalism

9 notes · View notes

allthecanadianpolitics · 4 years

Link

Green Party members have picked Toronto lawyer Annamie Paul as their next leader, bringing to a close the year-long race to replace Elizabeth May.

Paul, who is Black and Jewish, was the perceived frontrunner heading into the final vote because she had raised the most money — $206,000 — and racked up a number of endorsements from former Green Party candidates.

Paul, who is the first permanent Black leader of a major federal political party in Canada, assumes the leadership of a party that has been closely tied to May for the better part of the last 14 years.

Before handing the job to Paul, May delivered an impassioned plea to Canadians to do more to address the climate "crisis," saying the ongoing fight against COVID-19 can't distract from pressing environmental concerns.

Paul, who was born in Canada to Caribbean immigrants, claimed victory with 12,090 votes against her closest competitor, Dimitri Lascaris, another lawyer and a self-described radical and "eco-socialist," who had 10,081 votes after eight rounds of voting.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

#Green party of Canada #Annamie Paul #cdnpoli #canada #canadian politics #canadian news #canadian

159 notes · View notes

howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 4 years

Text

Sun Myung Moon’s lost Paraguay Eco-Utopia

▲ Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han visited their Puerto Leda mansion only once.

Outside magazine by Monte Reel February 20, 2013

Full story: https://www.outsideonline.com/1913791/sun-myung-moons-lost-eco-utopia

Extracts:

A decade before his death, Sun Myung Moon—multimillionaire founder of the controversial Unification Church / FFWPU—sent a band of followers deep into the wilds of Paraguay, with orders to build the ultimate utopian community and eco-resort. So how’s that working out? Monte Reel machetes his way toward heaven on Earth.

... In addition to overseeing the church, which he said aimed to fulfill Jesus’ unfinished mission by establishing a new “kingdom of heaven on Earth,” Moon managed vast commercial interests and called himself a messiah. He was frequently accused of cult practices, in part because some of his hundreds of thousands of followers turned over very personal decisions—including the choice of marriage partner—to him. More than a decade ago, Moon told some members of his church that he wanted them to lay the foundation for a new Garden of Eden in one of the least hospitable landscapes on the planet—northern Paraguay.

Moon was notorious for attention-grabbing gestures: conducting mass weddings in Madison Square Garden, taking out full-page ads in major American newspapers to support Richard Nixon during Watergate, spending 13 months in federal prison for tax fraud and conspiracy in the early ’80s. But during the final years of his life, his Eden-building project kept chugging along well out of the public eye, germinating largely unseen in this remote wilderness of mud.

In 2000, Moon paid an undisclosed amount for roughly 1.5 million acres of land fronting the Paraguay River. Most of that property was in a town called Puerto Casado, about 100 miles downriver from Puerto Leda. Moon’s subsidiaries wanted the land to open commercial enterprises ranging from logging to fish farming. But a group of Puerto Casado residents launched a bitter legal battle to nullify the deal. While that controversy continued to divide Paraguayans, the Puerto Leda project proceeded under the radar. Moon turned the land over to 14 Japanese men—“national messiahs,” according to church documents, who were instructed to build an “ideal city” where people could live in harmony with nature, as God intended it. Moon declared that the territory represented “the least developed place on earth, and, hence, closest to original creation.”

... The [twentieth] century brought utopian colonies of Australian socialists, Finnish vegetarians, English pacifists, and German Nazis. They all failed.

So how are Moon’s followers—or Moonies, as they don’t like to be called—holding up? Hard to say. I’m aware of two other journalists who’ve seen Puerto Leda. One, a British Catholic missionary, visited after the first colonists arrived and was unable to fathom their motives. Maybe they were smuggling drugs, she insinuated in a church magazine [The Tablet December 16, 2000].

... By the time I boarded the Aquidaban, I’d begun to suspect that the National Messiahs in Puerto Leda might have no clue we were coming.

[It was a three-day journey] aboard this muggy cargo boat [in 2012].

... one man, a portly Paraguayan navy guard in military fatigues, awaits [Toni Greaves and myself] at the end of the gangplank.

“Do you have repellent?” he asks.

My skin is lacquered in a stiff coat of stale sweat and deet. “Lots.”

“Good,” he says. “You’ll see at night. We can’t even talk to each other because of the mosquitoes that fly into our mouths.”

... The building in front of us has a peaked terra-cotta roof, brick-and-stucco walls, expansive glass windows, and no fewer than five remote-controlled Carrier air-conditioning units. At the front door, a dozen pairs of leather slippers wait for us. “Very Japanese,” Greaves observes. We remove our dirty shoes and take our first steps into Reverend Moon’s Victorious Holy Place.

All is silent. Wilson flips a switch, throwing light on what appears to be a dining hall. The large wooden tables, each covered with a plastic tablecloth, could accommodate about 100 people. They are vacant.

... A few hundred yards from the guard station, I spot a sportfishing boat docked at the riverside. It’s big—about 30 feet long, fiberglass, with a prominent cockpit. I ask Mister Date about it.

“Ah yes,” he says. “Reverend Moon designed that boat himself. It was brought here from New Jersey.”

... Apparently, the True Father’s fishing jones was a deciding factor in the placement of Puerto Leda. Moon first visited the Paraguay River on fishing trips in the 1990s, and by decade’s end he was cruising down it and ordering church members to wade along the muddy banks to plant 63 signposts demarcating the land he had decided to buy.

▲ Japanese “National Messiahs” with Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han (The Heavenly True Parents 天地父母님 ) on September 23, 1999.

In 1999, Moon called his most devoted Japanese followers to join him on a 40-day spiritual retreat outside Fuerte Olimpo, about 25 miles south of Puerto Leda. I’d read a brief description of those days on a church website. One Messiah had written: “It was very hot and we wanted to bathe in the water. But we could not because piranhas would come. It’s a big problem! Also there are problems with ants. One National Messiah became very sick from an ant bite. It’s a dangerous place. There are all these problems, but Father just says, ‘Ah, the purity of nature!’”

... In addition to calling for a return to Original Creation here, he told his devotees, in 2000, that “we need to build the best underwater palace in the world.”

... Near the end of their [40-days] together, Moon instructed them to build an ecologically sustainable city that could serve as a model for the whole world. The plan, such as it was, lacked specifics; not all of the founders agreed on what the city should look like. Yet they forged ahead, determined to create something extraordinary in a place where wilderness reigned.

Now, as I glance at the scene, I see huge dormitory buildings, guesthouses, and sheds for mechanical repairs. I count seven freshwater fish farms, fully stocked with pacu, a toothy species that looks like an overgrown piranha. I see no other people.

“Normally, there are about 10 of us who live here,” Mister Date tells me. “But this week six are away in Asunción. So there are just four now.”

We walk through early-morning light on smooth sidewalks, past manicured gardens of hibiscus and bougainvillea, beside an Olympic-size swimming pool. A young man hired from a nearby village slowly sweeps a filtering net through the deep end. Nothing—not a single foreign particle—seems to mar the clean blue rectangle of water. We enter a two-story communal building that resembles an office complex. I see Wilson in a small room, tapping away at a computer. We climb a stone staircase to the second floor, following Mister Date into what appears to be a rec room. There’s a television hooked up to a satellite system, and Mister Date pops a disc into a DVD player. The DVD, Mister Date tells us, explains everything.

The footage that flashes across the screen dates from 1999. We see the founding Messiahs walk across untamed wastes—the grounds where we now sit. They lay bricks in wet mud. They sand metal frames. They wash dishes in the river. They wear heavy clothing, light fires to keep the mosquitoes away, and sweat in the wavy heat. They stagger through gale-force winds.

Then, in a clip from 2000, we see Moon himself, touring the partially cleared grounds, wiping sweat from his brow, eating lunch, leaving in a private plane. The footage segues into scenes of the men working feverishly to build a luxury house for Moon and his wife, Hak Ja Han, who visited for a second and final time in late 2001.

▲ Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han visited Puerto Leda twice, but only once after the mansion they ordered built for themselves was completed. They inaugurated the mansion on November 30, 2000 (above). Takeru Kamiyama is standing close to Moon, wearing a pale blue shirt.

▲ The view from the mansion.

The rest of the DVD covers more recent developments, and the highlights—set to swelling orchestral music—unfold like a training montage from Rocky. Messiahs erect the water tower. Man-made fishponds materialize on the grounds. A landing strip is planed flat by tractors. The Messiahs unload saplings from the Aquidaban, then plant them in sprawling groves. A group of about a dozen visiting Japanese students—the children of Unification Church members—help the Messiahs build a school in a nearby village. When the DVD ends and the lights come up, I’m exhausted just from watching all that drudgery. I look at Mister Date’s corded forearms, his gaunt face, his waspy waist. Every aspect of his being seems molded by toil. Even with the help of the local hires, the Messiahs labor all day, usually outside.

“It’s a lot of work just to maintain,” he admits.

The fact that only 10 men live here comes rushing back to me. The colony has actually lost population since its inception, despite all the construction. Four of the original Messiahs have returned to Japan. Only the hardest of the hardcore have stuck it out.

And this raises a couple of questions: Who are these guys? And why have they put themselves through this?

Mister Auki walks across the dining hall carrying a basket filled with whole fish freshly yanked from the river. He’s a short, balding Messiah whose task this morning, as on most days, is to catch something for the grill.

“I caught lots of piranha today,” he tells the men, his face splitting into a smile. “And also a five-kilogram pacu.”

The pacu is now part of the lunch buffet, which the four Messiahs plus Wilson, Greaves, and I spoon onto plates.

... In the beginning, the colonists hoped they would be joined by their wives (as well as many, many more followers). Every August, they invite children of Japanese church members to visit for a couple of weeks, but so far none have chosen to stay on. “My wife thinks that it is not realistic for her to move here yet,” Mister Owada says, “because we still have to raise the standard of living more.”

When I press him on how tough and lonely this must get, Mister Owada says it doesn’t bother him. Moon sanctified his personal sacrifices, promising the men that spiritual rewards would make up for their suffering. “Even if you die, what regret will you leave behind?” Moon asked the founders in 1999.

“We’re risking our lives for this cause,” Mister Owada says, his left eye twitching convulsively. “I like to risk my life,” he continues. “That is doing something worthwhile. We have continued to stick with this.”

Months later, after Moon’s death from complications from pneumonia, I will once again reach out to Mister Date to see if the True Father’s passing affects the Messiahs’ dedication. It doesn’t. They have the blessing of his widow, Mister Date says, and the ongoing feuds among the Moon children won’t affect them. They plan to work on Puerto Leda for at least another decade.

“Of course there is ecotourism potential here,” says Mister Date. We’re standing outside an unfinished three-story brick building near a shed that protects three car-size generators. Mister Date refers to the brick building as “the hotel,” but for the moment its only occupant is a stick-legged baby goat nosing around the food pellets being stored on the ground floor.

... “Why did you stop work on the hotel?” I ask.

He pauses and smiles politely. “In a small place, you can have disagreements easily,” he says. “They’re expecting us to be financially independent, but that’s not easy here.” The Messiahs, it seems, don’t always see eye-to-eye on the best way to reduce their dependence on member donations. Some want to concentrate on agribusiness and scrap the ecotourism idea. The hotel is unfinished because they aren’t sure whether opening the place to outsiders is a good idea.

▲ Puerto Leda from the air.

We walk on, past planted fields of lemongrass, oranges, mangoes, grapefruit, asparagus, sugarcane. The crops are struggling. If agriculture alone is expected to support the colony, there are some kinks to work out. The men have planted thousands of jatropha trees, which can be used to make biodiesel fuel, but hundreds of parrots zeroed in on them and ate all the fruit. During the most recent wet season, rising waters flooded many of the thousands of neem trees.

“It’s been a hard year,” Mister Date admits. “A lot of things have died because they were three months underwater.”

It’s clear that these guys have faith in miracles, and that’s exactly what’s needed here in Puerto Leda. Without one, the Victorious Holy Place seems destined to be another curious monument to human ambition and folly. But watching how hard the Messiahs work, I can’t help but admire their tenacity. The fanaticism that underlies their devotion to this cause must burn hot, but they hide it well. They’re not evangelical. They’re friendly and welcoming to those who don’t share their beliefs. They’re reflexively humble and generous and—whatever I might think of their motives—admirably tough. They’re underdogs. The kind of guys you root for.

During the last hours of my visit, Mister Date shows me something that might actually work out. “Japanese yams,” he announces, staring down at a plot of tilled soil. “They grow very large underground, up to 10 kilograms. They do well here.”

My immediate impulse is to celebrate this victory with hearty congratulations. I’m thrilled for his indefatigable yams. Maybe all the sweat that Mister Date has sunk into this plot will bear a little fruit. Maybe little victories like this can help other people in the Pantanal live richer lives. Maybe that��s enough.

Mister Date stares down at the dirt. “Unfortunately,” he says, “they taste very bad.”

... I head out toward the pool.

▲ The swimming pool at Puerto Leda.

He’s still there, the man with the net, sweeping as if he hasn’t let up since dawn. A shame: I didn’t bring any trunks. But I do have a pair of heavy cotton cargo shorts in my backpack. I walk to the dormitory and return wearing them. I ask the sweeper, “Does anyone ever use this pool?”

“Only the tourists,” he says.

The tourists? Based on a guest book I flipped through earlier, he must be referring to those Japanese students who visit every August, the occasional Paraguayan government official, and Greaves and me. ...

________________________________

Outside magazine https://www.outsideonline.com/

________________________________

Monte Reel’s Between Man and Beast: A Tale of Exploration and Evolution was published in March 2013 by Doubleday.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/between-man-and-beast-monte-reel/1113244445#/

________________________________

Sun Myung Moon organization activities in Central and South America

Actividades de la Secta Moon en países de habla hispana

FFWPU President of IAPP Prosecuted for Money Laundering and Drug Smuggling in US Court; may be connected to UC / FFWPU Leadership

#Paraguay #Puerto Leda #Moonies #Sun Myung Moon #FFWPU #Family Federation for World Peace and Unification #Unification Church #天地父母님

3 notes · View notes

iignatz · 5 years

Text

political orientation tests frustrate me so badly because they assume you want the same kind of state in every single country or that you think acknowledging material realities (like really huge nations cant have completely centralized governments and need to rely on union power) is a nuance free endorsement. oh you recognize a level of federalism is necessary in the usa/canada, clearly *takes a hit off crack pipe of Pure Ideology* you are a socialist anarcho eco libertarian mutualist

4 notes · View notes

gen-z-culture-actually-is · 5 years

Note

Republic of Guyana, Republic of India, North Korea, Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, Portuguese Republic, Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, and the United Republic of Tanzania. Plus I’m pretty sure Denmark. Yknow the place that for a few years was the ‘happiest country’

Alright, I’ll go through these one by one. I’ll start off with Guyana: lowest literacy rate in south america, was ranked the suicide capital of the world in 2012, its not legal to perform acts of homosexuality, economy seems to be alright, though wealth inequality (as with basically every south american country) is AIDS. Next, India! Now I know this off the top of my head: India is ranked the, if not one of the worst countries for women, india also has the largest amount of people living below the poverty line in the world, thirty percent of the children in India are underweight, 1.4% of the population lives in slavery. North Korea. A 2013 study reported that communicable diseases and malnutrition are responsible for 29% of the total deaths in North Korea, a very low per capita value of $1,800, and extremely advanced infrastructure.

Just look at that, so eco frenziedly! they also have 2.6 million “modern day” slaves. and two in five are staving! I’m not even going to get started on the labor camps and dictatorship. Next. Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal. Actually Nepal ain’t too bad, I’ll give you that one Next, Portuguese Republic. “1991 legislative election, in which the right-wing party Social Democratic Party, won a majority the constitution was amended yet again.“ “ Importantly, through these changes the government could initiate the privatisation of state-owned enterprises nationalised after the revolution. “ Not even socialist you moron. Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, tiny island off the coast of the third largest economy in the world, not really applicable elsewhere in the world. United Republic of Tanzania, first thing, homosexuality is not legal, you can be sentenced to life in prison for that. “Tanzania has the highest occurrence of this human rights violation among 27 African countries “ 16% of children are underweight, a survey carried out within the country in 2017 finding 84% of people in rural areas suffering food shortages over a 3-month period compared to 64% of residents in cities. And denmark! "I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy,”- Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the PM of the fucking state of Denmark. I would love to know what kind of “socialist” economy and society you would like to see.

3 notes · View notes

helshades · 5 years

Note

Hello, I've been reading you on Mélenchon these days and would be interested in your opinion on his treatment of the bonnets rouges movement. I find some appeal in his political views but am detered by his unequal interpretation of social movements. I credit it to his somewhat jacobin/nationalist upbringing, and would like to have your thoughts on what his legitimate or not to him. Thank you, have a good day.

Hi! Quite a good question, as I don’t think too many journalists have taken the time to scrutinise the similarities and differences between the ‘Red Caps’ of yesteryear and the current ‘Yellow Vests’, even after Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, during a ‘Questions to the Government’ panel at the Assembly, drew that parallel to promise that his government would not be intimidated by the protests—at that time, the movement was only three days old:

‘Let us remember the Red Caps. Confronted with social difficulty that collided directly with their engagements [during the presidential campaign], the previous government [P.M. Jean-Marc Ayrault’s] chose to step back. Our goal is entirely different: we would keep the line that we proposed during the presidential and legislative elections.’

—20 November 2018.

Here, I have to make a long-ish pause to explain to whomever is reading this outside of us both and doesn’t know who the ‘Red Caps’ were, well, who the ‘Red Caps’ were, precisely.

So, back to 2013, in the north-west of France, in the Brittany region. On 18th June, a collective of thirty local company leaders call Bretons and the French for action against a special tax that is scheduled to be applied to all heavy goods vehicles circulating on some state-financed and locally financed roads in the country starting from 1st October, colloquially known as ‘HVG eco-tax’.

The thirty company leaders, who are gathered at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry at Pontivy, are asking for the eco-tax to be suppressed, for (employers’) taxes in general to diminish, and for ‘administrative constraints’ (for employers) to be reduced. Amongst them are notably: Jakez Bernard, president of certification label ‘Produced in Britanny’, Alain Glon, former food-processing industry honcho, now president of a regionalist think-tank, Olivier Bordais, who manages a local supermarket, Jean-Pierre Le Mat, president of a big employers union (C.G.P.M.E., aimed at small & smallish business owners), Jacques Jaouen, president of the Brittany Chamber of Agriculture.

Soon they are joined by two big union federations: the National Federation of Farmers Unions, Finistère (one of Britanny’s départements) branch (the F.D.S.E.A. is pretty right-oriented) and the Force Ouvrière (‘Workers Force’, a big Trotskyist union) union branches for the big slaughterhouses Doux (chicken) and Gad (pork). This changes everything, as it allows for a massive, noisy joint demonstration on 2nd August—during which the protesters infamously destroy a drive-through unit meant to detect eco-tax-ready lorries installed in Guiclan.

It doesn’t change much. Months pass. And then, in early October, the Rennes Commercial Court declares that the Gad Inc. slaughterhouse in Lampaul, in Finistère, which works pork meat, must be shut down, whereas others in the same group may remain active; Gad employs 900 people in Lampaul, but their branch has been hit hard by European concurrence. As a matter of fact, while production is being transferred from Lampaul to Josselin, a hundred of interim employees arrive from Romania, paid less than 600€ per month; fixed-term contracts at Josselin are no longer being renewed as a new European directive is about to pass on posted workers. On 21st October, 350 ex-employees from Lampaul invades the Josselin abattoir: according to police reports, 400 Josselin employees exit the factory to fight them.

This all happens during a three-week movement organised by agricultural syndicates on 14th, 21st and 28th October, the protesters aiming at another eco-tax drive-through unit in Pont-de-Buis. They are farmer unionists and the ‘Committee for Convergence of Breton Interests’ (C.C.I.B.), which was created in Pontivy on 18th June as an interprofessional organisation uniting business representatives and academics, aiming to make propositions concerning economy and employment in the region.

On Saturday 28th October, several hundreds of protesters destroy the unit at the Pont-de-Buis motorway toll. The rather heated crowd wear red caps inspired by the 1675 ‘révolte des bonnets rouges’, which under Louis XIV’s reign protested an increase in taxes, and which took place in the west of France but was fiercest in Lower Brittany. That same day the Pont-de-Buis unit is destroyed, F.D.S.E.A. Finistère president Thierry Merret calls the protesters to gather at a regional meet-up on 2nd November in Quimper, capital of the Finistère département.

There were two big demonstrations in November: the one in Quimper, and the one that took place on 30th November in Carhaix-Plouguer (former county town of Breton Cornwall). The latter was organised by left-wing collective ‘Live, Decide & Work in Brittany’, created by Carhaix mayor Christian Troadec, Thierry Merret, worker & union representative for Force Ouvrière at Gad, and Corinne Nicole, union representative for the General Confederation of Labour at big chicken abattoir Tilly-Sabco in Guerlesquin (a family business which provided lot of work in town but got hit hard by international concurrence). In Quimper, the demonstration gathered up to 15,000–30,000; in Carhaix, around 17,000–40,000 (numbers vary because unions and the police have had trouble agreeing on them, traditionally). The collective comes up with a ‘charter’ for the good bonnet rouge, in reaction to the worrisome, extreme-right additions to the Quimper crowd.

The eco-tax was imagined in 2007 during a ‘Grenelle’ for environment, and unanimously voted in 2009, which had already ired many business owners in Brittany, over a thousand of whom had manifested on motorways; united in a ‘Collective of Breton Actors of Economy’, representatives for the National Federation of Agricultural Holders’ Union(F.N.S.E.A.), the National Federation of Road Transport (F.N.T.R.), the Chamber of Commerce and Industry… as well as ‘le Médef’, the largest employer federation in France, to which adheres the richest business leaders in the country, very powerful, and not very friendly to labour rights in general. The collective obtained a 50% tax allowance on the eco-tax from the government.

By taxing 800,000 heavy goods vehicles that circulate on the free portion of French motorways, the government aims to collect public transport and railway freight, amongst other things—since they won’t tax the rich. Except since 2012, too many businesses have gone bankrupt in Brittany. Liquidations follow ‘restructuring plans’ and hundreds are getting fired. The eco-tax would mean a drastic rise in the prices of goods.

By spring 2013, all has been made ready for the system to start on the first day of 2014: 200 units equipped with cameras have been installed, a lucrative contract has been concluded with Ecomouv’, a private company charged with the task to collect the tax, which it is already doing on Italian and Austrian motorways. The French government hopes to collect one billion euros per year with the eco-tax.

On 16th October, after two days of heated protests, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault launches meetings to ‘dialogue’ with the population for a ‘Pact on the Future of Brittany’, announces financial measures and a special aide for the food-processing business. All along November, the revolt is reaching the rest of the country, where dozens of road blocks are organised, speed cameras are destroyed, as well as a few other eco-tax drive-through frames. The Prime Minister arrives in Brittany on 13th December to sign his Pact for Brittany—two billion euros.

There still are 140 units left almost intact in French tolls, since, as the Minister for Transports remarked, once the electronic equipment removed, regular check-ups to make sure they won’t crumble cost much less than actually taking them to pieces. This is what is left of the ‘eco-tax’. As for the Red Caps, well, they evolved into a bunch of collectives, some of which still exist to this day to promote various operations, including demonstrations, that concern Brittany. They never forget the gwenn-ha-du, the ‘Black & White’, the flag of Brittany… Yes, Brittany has a flag. Brittany has a language. Brittany thinks it’s Wales, which is a little silly considering Breton is a Brittonic language like Cornish, not a Gaelic one, like Welsh. Anyhow, Breizh dreams of independence. One day, it will throw bombs at the government, when it has discovered how to make them from cow dung. (I actually, genuinely love Bretons. They’re utterly fruitcake, but they protest like nobody’s business.)

All of this to provide some cultural context to what I am about to translate. So, this is Jean-Luc Mélenchon fulminating back in 2013, before his current La France Insoumise movement was created, when he was co-president of its predecessor the Front de Gauche, a coalition of radical left parties: socialists, and communists who shared anti-capitalistic, anti-liberal, Euro-sceptic views. The FdG was created in 2009 as alliance between the French Communist Party and Parti de Gauche, which Jean-Luc Mélenchon co-founded with people who, like him, quit François Mitterrand’s Parti Socialiste which was veering more and more towards (neo-)liberalism. The alliance aimed to ‘constitute a left-wing front engaged for another Europe, social and democratic, against the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty and other current European treaties.’

Yes, it wasone tasteless farce, that bonnet rouge affair. For sure, the eco-tax reallywasn’t the panacea of any good ecological politics! It’s actually, mostly, alure, as it’s not really targeting the motives behind massive livestock transportationvia road transport. It will always be more profitable to transport 45,000 pigsa year on European roads in appalling conditions rather than kill them here,for as long as Europe will allow for dumping social to take place, which forinstance permits to take advantage of profit with German abattoirs. Thegovernment doesn’t give a damn about this. Anyhow, it doesn’t care for anythingthat can be planned ahead, because of ideology and of self-delusion both. See.The eco-tax was supposed to encourage road transport to convert to fluvialtransport and railway freight. Yes, except no plan for freight development wasset in motion to regulate the ever-increasing flow of lorries on the roads.Quite the opposite, I’d say. The government is at the disposal of the EuropeanCommission, very slavishly indeed, and the Commission was very demanding onthat point. In exchange for two years delay at best, so as to reach theobjectives of deficit reduction, the Commission demanded that the liberalisationof the network increase. The liberal reform, consequently, was presented duringthe Ministers’ Council on 16th October. As for fluvial transport,one of the very first measures of the Ayrault government was to abandon the Seine-Nordcanal project. In other words, it was half-assed, as always with thisgovernment.

This takesnothing from the fact that the government’s climb-down on this point is a giftto the bosses. Under the guise of defending employment, it is in fact the freedomto go on producing further and further away from wherever the goods are to beconsumed that is being protected. Bruno Gentil, president of federation FranceNature Environnement, said something very right about this: ‘This isdeplorable, there’s no political courage here. A measure that was voted by theleft as well as the right is called into question as soon as a bunch of peoplebreak some public equipment. Unfortunately, I don’t think this will solve breeders’problems… Environment has become the scapegoat for economic issues. We are gettingthe financing of the energy turnaround very wrong’.Indeed, afew hundreds of bosses and militants from the FNSEA farmers’ union manifestingsome violence were enough for the Ayrault government to back down. Those whoordinarily have no complacency for a worker’s teensiest egg throw weren’tremotely scandalised to see FNSEA and MEDEF throw stones at the CRS. We’restill awaiting the ground-shattering swagger of the immense Manuel Valls, kingof the braggarts! Sure, even when he’s from the right, a Breton boss is atougher customer than a Roma kid on a school bus! The anti-poor warfare isill-equipped to force those who are used to be obeyed to respect public order.

The wholeaffair was a farce through and through. All the while they’re firing workers indroves in Brittany, the bosses have found a dream opportunity to pose as defendersof employment. That might have impressed a couple answering machines inmainstream media. But over there, it’s a whole other story! Employees’ unions wereno dupes. CGT, Sud and FSU in Brittany released a joint statement to distance themselvesfrom the event. In it they denounce ‘the hijacking of the authentic discontentof a large part of the population to political ends, which questions theingenuousness and the independence of the employees who get enlisted in a fightthat isn’t theirs.’ For these unions, ‘the torturers are leading the manoeuvreand they are using their victims as shield and battering ram at once. They wouldemployees to forget that they have always supported the neoliberal politicsthat caused the current crisis, and that their ‘Breton agricultural model’today is an economic, social and environmental failure. The manipulations rundeep, as the old lords are now wearing the red cap against the people.’ It can’tbe said better.

The statementaims right. Particularly where the denunciation of productivism is concerned.It calls employees for refusing to participate in the demonstration organisedin Quimper on 2nd November around the bosses, productivist farmers and someBreton regionalists from the extreme right. The employees will demonstrate withtheir own demands!What arelief! That call to a separate protest sheds some light on a really confusesituation. The alliance of some farmers with the same large-scale foodretailing that chokes them continuously, for example, never ceases to surprise.Politically, it’s even worse. The right, which had proposed the eco-tax in thefirst place, is now demanding that it be suppressed. The PS, which also votedits implementation, now decides to suspend it… As for Le Pen, she’s calling todemonstrate with the red caps! Maybe she didn’t see the colour?

— 1st November 2013.

I don’t particularly want to be known on Tumblr as the Mélenchon defence committee but… well, he had a point. A couple, actually.

The chief particularity of the Yellow Vests movement is that even if it was started as a protest against a significant rise in gas prices and one could draw a parallel in theory between this and the anti-eco-tax movement, its basis was always popular, and focused not on production and profit, but standard living conditions for poor and impoverished people.

I don’t like the term ‘legitimate’ very much, me. Every protest is legitimate, inasmuch as demonstrating is (yet) a constitutional right. The legality of things is not what should concern us, and evidently, not what concerned Jean-Luc Mélenchon back in 2013. If there is one illegitimate element here, it would be the current government: elected with only 10% of the electorate, the most hated president in the history of the Fifth Republic is ending armed forces every week to mutilate tens of thousands who are still supported, according to the least favourable estimates, by over 60% of the population—and who still show up for the next protest, week after week.

Speaking of things I’m not too comfy with, there’s also the terms ‘jacobin’ and ‘nationalist’. I suspect you are Canadian, as you seem to conflate the two (?) and the nationalist-versus-federalist opposition is, I believe, uniquely Canadian. Over here, when talking about jacobin things, one is usually referring to a radical approach to politics, unless one would be referring to the historic opposition between the Jacobins, who ended up supporting deeper financial and political reforms, and the Girondins, mostly wealthy bourgeois, who were more moderate, and remained so throughout the revolutionary period—they won, in the end. The People didn’t—although both branches initially were a part of the Jacobin Club and in favour of constitutional monarchy.

Where nationalism goes… Well, Marine Le Pen is a nationalist. Us leftists are souverainistes, my dear. Quite frankly, I don’t get how you can support democracy without defending a nation’s right to govern itself. Only, if we can call this nationalism in the case of colonised countries aiming to free themselves from imperialism, and in the case of certain regions that promote autonomy within a given State, this is not what is at stake here. More often than not, ‘nationalism’ refers to an ideology, and it is synonymous to chauvinism, with considerably less amusing undertones. Again: it is not nationalist to favour, for instance, local employment, when displacing foreign populations leads to systematic exploitation of their work force. Environmentally, it is also much more responsible to prevent goods from being carried across great distances. And, last but not least… supranational institutions are designed to remove as much power as possible from the populations that could unite and reject locally what was decided globally. Getting democracy, literally, on a smaller scale is about gaining back control; it can’t be decided remotely. If we call this ‘nationalism’, not only do we lose our way to denounce actual xenophobia, but we lose sight of other types of opposition as well. Europe is not a country, and the way the European Union is designed, it is essentially a bank, and it aims to make entire countries its debtors… So, yes, yay for souverainism!

#pavé césar !#answers #nonnies #jean-luc mélenchon #bonnets rouges #gilets jaunes #france #french politics

2 notes · View notes

dailynewswebsite · 3 years

Text

What Will the World Look Like in 30 Years? Sci-fi Author Kim Stanley Robinson Takes Us There

Who knew that on this darkish hour of the local weather disaster hope would arrive within the type of a 563-page novel by a sci-fi author greatest identified for a trilogy about establishing a human civilization on Mars? However alas, that’s what Kim Stanley Robinson – the creator of 20 books and one of the crucial revered science fiction writers working in the present day — has given us with The Ministry for the Future. It’s a visit by way of the carbon-fueled chaos of the approaching many years, with engineers working desperately to cease melting glaciers from sliding into the ocean, avenging eco-terrorists downing so many airliners that individuals are afraid to fly, and bankers re-inventing the economic system in actual time in a determined try to avert extinction.

Robinson has a geeky, exuberant creativeness and likes to select up items of the world and study them like a geologist examines rocks. Within the novel’s 106 chapters, he riffs on blockchain know-how, Jevon’s Paradox, carbon taxes, ice sheet dynamics, quantitative easing, amongst different issues. He pays a whole lot of consideration to how cash strikes round in a carbon-based economic system, and should perceive the monetary underpinnings of the local weather disaster higher than any author I’ve encountered. However he’s not afraid to get bizarre: He writes brief chapters from the standpoint of a carbon molecule, a photon, and a caribou.

Extra from Rolling Stone

He additionally has a compelling heroine in Mary Murphy, an Irish ex-diplomat who runs a Zurich-based UN company known as the Ministry for the Future (thus the title of the e book), who’s up towards corrupt politicians and petro-state billionaires. Within the aftermath of a horrific warmth wave that kills 20 million individuals in India – Robinson describes 1000’s being “poached” in a lake the place they fled to flee the warmth — the Ministry sponsors varied technological tips to attempt to sluggish the warming, together with dyeing the Arctic Ocean yellow so it stops absorbing daylight. However the true drama is Murphy’s confrontations with a handful of central bankers all over the world who assist break the petro-billionaires and shift the economic system away from fossil fuels. In the meantime, debt strikes by college students and uprisings by migratory staff ship tens of millions of individuals marching within the streets. All of it feels believable, in a holographic, sci-fi kinda method. In the long run, Robinson achieves one thing sudden: He transforms the existential disaster we face into a contemporary fairy story of resilience and redemption.

Story continues

Rolling Stone talked to Robinson concerning the function of science in a sci-fi novel, violence as a political device, and why he thinks it’s time to purchase out the oil firms.

This interview has been edited for size and readability.

What was in your head if you sat down to put in writing The Ministry for the Future? I had written about local weather earlier than, nevertheless it was all the time offset right into a future that was distant sufficient that there was a niche between at times. I didn’t need the hole this time. I wished it to begin from now, exit about 30 years, create a believable future historical past that was, to my mind-set, a best-case state of affairs. But in addition one you possibly can consider in. In order that was the objective getting in. And I did need to recommend that regardless of the intense hazard that we’re going through, world response may dodge the mass extinction occasion. My complete notion of utopia has come down to only survival of the numerous species which are in peril. If we dodge the mass extinction occasion, we will deal with every little thing else which may occur later.

This e book opens with a brutal warmth wave in India that kills tens of millions of individuals. What impressed you to begin with that? Nicely, I’m terrified that it’ll occur. And so it struck me {that a} slap to the face, a warning shot, is perhaps a great way to start. As a result of it’s only a studying expertise, and I’m a novelist. However as a citizen, wanting on the information about wet-bulb temperatures [a measure of heat plus humidity], I started to understand that the gang that advocates for adaptation and says, “Oh, nicely if we get a 3-degree Celsius rise, we’ll simply adapt to that. We are able to adapt to something,” they have been fallacious on that. We truly may shortly hit temperatures that can cook dinner individuals. Once I understood what a wet-bulb temperature may do and the way restricted our capacity is to adapt, and the way energy grids will fail, after which there can be mass loss of life, nicely, it struck me the hazard that we’re in wanted to be emphasised.

As a nonfiction author who writes about local weather change, I’m fascinated about how you concentrate on scientific accuracy in writing your novels. I imply, it’s a unique normal than if you’re writing about terraforming Mars, proper? With local weather, you’re writing about the true future that we’re inventing for ourselves right here. Yeah. I come at it as a novelist. I need, first, to put in writing novel. And so what my aesthetic says to me is {that a} good novel could be very engaged with the fact principal. I don’t consider in fantasy novels. The truth principal is that if you’re studying a novel and also you come to one thing you say, “Yeah, that’s proper. That’s the way in which life is.” That is what you learn novels for, is that vibe, that feeling. And I need that.

So I attempt to follow the sciences as carefully as I can, even in my Mars novels. I don’t break the legal guidelines of physics. I don’t like fantasy. And I do stay with a scientist. My spouse [Lisa Nowell, a chemist with the U.S. Geological Survey] is actually fairly robust on my manuscripts by way of accuracy and tone. And likewise, due to her I spend a life with scientists. I watch how they work. I watch how they assume. I’m entertained by them. They strike me as humorous individuals. And that’s good. I imply, fortunate for me, proper?

Within the e book, the warmth wave in India is what galvanizes political motion. It jogged my memory of a dialogue I had years in the past. I used to be out within the North Atlantic with some scientists and we have been speaking about what was going to wake individuals as much as the local weather disaster. And one stated, “Nicely, when a giant hurricane comes alongside and wipes out a serious American metropolis, then individuals are going to get up.” And that was proper earlier than Katrina. After which we had Sandy, and Harvey. And nothing actually modified. There was no nice political awakening. Nicely, in my novel, I make it very clear that these occasions occur, it galvanizes motion, after which no one modifications and no one does something. And I’m very on this cognitive error within the human mind that folks don’t consider it will possibly ever occur to them till they’re truly getting hammered personally. And even then, you examine these individuals dying of Covid who’re claiming it to be inconceivable as they die. Michael Lewis was writing concerning the federal authorities in his e book The Fifth Component, speaking a couple of city in Ohio that acquired worn out by a twister, and we went to the city 10 miles to the north and so they have been saying, “Nicely, it will possibly’t occur to us. They’re within the twister observe and we’re not.” As if there’s such a factor as a twister observe. It’s superb.

So I’d agree together with your remark that there’s nobody occasion. That’s one of many the explanation why I went to wet-bulb, the temperature deaths, the mass deaths which may occur. [That] may radicalize that one nation lengthy sufficient to wake individuals up. What I wished to point out was some locations would get higher, different locations wouldn’t care, and that it actually would take a full 30 years of concerted motion. And so I saved coming again to the worldwide businesses the place we coordinate worldwide diplomacy, and likewise the central banks. The concept if funding capital will solely go to the very best fee of return, then we’re really cooked. We’re doomed.

One of many putting issues about your work on local weather is that it’s so deeply meshed within the monetary system. There’s a notion amongst many individuals on the left that fixing the local weather disaster is incompatible with capitalism as we all know it in the present day. Do you share that concept? Nicely, I’m a leftist, an American leftist, and I’m saying simply as a practicality that overthrowing capitalism is simply too messy, an excessive amount of blowback, and too prolonged of a course of. We’ve acquired a nation-state system and a monetary order, and we’ve acquired a disaster that must be handled within the subsequent 10 to 20 years. So I’m wanting on the instruments at hand. Tax buildings, positive. And primarily, I’m speaking a couple of stepwise reform that after sufficient steps have been taken, you get to one thing that’s really post-capitalist which may take enormous parts from the usual socialist methods.

I imply, I’m a member of the DSA [Democratic Socialists of America]. I like the entire injection of progressive left into the Democratic Occasion. I cherished Bernie. I like Biden. I like something that appears to me prefer it’ll be quick and efficient. So quantitative easing. The quantitative easing of 2008 is actually suggestive. If that cash have been focused, not given to the banks to do their standard silly playing of going to the very best fee of return. None of those mitigation tasks are going to be the very best fee of return. They aren’t worthwhile as such. It’s simply that they save the world. So I’m arguing [for] the form of hyper-reformist platform. I take the instruments that we now have in hand, attempt to wield them from a leftist and an environmentalist perspective.

There’s a whole lot of eco-terrorism and eco-sabotage in Ministry. Because the urgency of the local weather disaster grows, this appears more likely to happen in the true world, too. What are your ideas about violence as a political device? As a middle-class American, a privileged white, American man, advocating violence is an irresponsibility, as a result of it’s different individuals which are going to get harm by that. And likewise, my feeling is that even the violence would solely be to attempt to jumpstart higher laws. With out higher legal guidelines, the violence would simply be pointless violence. And so once I wrote the e book, I used to be making an attempt to stroll a superb line and say to individuals, “This sort of step is more likely to occur.” As a result of there’s going to be individuals far angrier, who’re on the sharp finish of the stick, who’ve seen individuals die, who get radicalized and are going to do violent issues that is perhaps silly violent issues, or they is perhaps fairly good violent issues, relying on who’s doing it and what for.

And so to my thoughts, I believe sabotage, which might be destruction of property fairly than human beings, positive. However violence towards people? No. I’d fairly see the legal guidelines change quick, and do it by the use of logic and purpose. However we’re not very logical, individually or socially.

Is there a disconnect between the state of affairs that you just put ahead hopefully within the e book and the one in your coronary heart of hearts you assume goes to play out in the true world? Sure. However this [book] is a deliberate political act to proceed to insist that if the best-case state of affairs got here to cross, it wouldn’t be so unhealthy. We may truly create a affluent world of advocacy for everyone and hold all of the animals alive. It’s technically attainable, which is to say bodily attainable. So it’s a narrative that must be instructed.

After which my very own private opinions, they’re all around the map. They aren’t all the time very hopeful like that e book is. However they’re additionally irrelevant. I’m only a bourgeoisie suburban home husband. What I believe may occur is irrelevant to my political positions and my novels, as a result of you possibly can’t predict the longer term. I imply, I wrote a novel during which the Soviet Union was lasting for, I don’t know, it was set possibly a century or a half-century sooner or later. I printed that novel in 1988. And so my sense of what can actually be predicted could be very — I don’t even assume that’s what science-fiction novels try to do. We’re not making an attempt to foretell the longer term. We’re operating situations for his or her present political classes, if there are any.

The 2 facets of your e book that I discover directly inspiring and possibly slightly implausible are, first, the concept that the UN turns into a pressure for change. And second, you will have a line within the e book that claims, “Laws does it in the long run.” In different phrases, that we’ll cross legal guidelines and laws that can grapple with the local weather disaster in a significant method. Nicely, sure. However I’ll say this. Rule of legislation, as weak a reed as it’s, is all we acquired. If we don’t have rule of legislation, when you have been to say some virtuous eco-warriors have been one way or the other to grab energy and implement a virtuous motion. Nicely, no. That state of affairs doesn’t play. It received’t occur that method. So it’s rule of legislation or nothing.

the ministry for the longer term

You write loads about geoengineering in Ministry – pumping water onto glaciers to sluggish the soften, spraying particles within the sky to chill down the ambiance. A number of years in the past I wrote a e book about geoengineering known as Cool the Planet. I realized that the majority scientists talked about geoengineering the way in which they might speak about intercourse – it was not one thing they wished to debate publicly. That’s altering, slowly. It appears to me that, for higher or worse, it’s inevitable that we’re going to attempt a few of these massive technological interventions. And the extra open we’re about it, the higher we will perceive the dangers and science. Proper. I’m with you on that. I really feel like the extraordinary prejudice towards the concept of geoengineering coming principally from the progressive environmentalist left, the place I’m, is a class error and isn’t being attentive to the realities of the hazard that we’re in. And generally they’re false. This notion that no matter we will we’re going to get Snowpiercer or no matter, or it’s simply an excuse for wealthy individuals to proceed doing what they’re doing. Nicely a few of that’s fallacious, and you understand this. You place mud within the ambiance and 5 years later it’s gone. It’s an experiment that received’t go awry and kill the world. After which a few of it’s simply outdated. The scenario that we’re in now, niceties about defending the sentiments of the wealthy are going to be utterly irrelevant if we’re in determined want. So all of it must be on the desk, such as you stated. Overtly mentioned.

However it’s additionally true that geoengineering is fairly incompatible with Inexperienced New Deal-thinking. I really feel like my job as a science-fiction author is to press the purpose that making one thing politically incorrect if you’re in an emergency is a silly transfer and isn’t being attentive to actuality itself. And there’s a lot conformity, there’s a lot ideological conformity, but additionally conceptual ignorance. I like the Inexperienced New Deal. I like HR109 [the Green New Deal resolution introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]. That’s actually a wise doc. It’s not naïve. It’s not primitive. It’s a totally articulated plan that takes in a whole lot of social parts which are very well completed. So this isn’t a naïve crowd. There’s one thing hubristic concerning the phrase geoengineering, and it seems like a Silicon Valley techno silver-bullet repair that’s towards the grain of the overall program that the left is insisting on, which I completely agree with.

However alternatively, I’m in a pleasant place. Being a science-fiction author, I can say, “Wait. Let’s put every little thing again on the desk.” I’m keen to say, “Look, no one’s completed a correct evaluation of nuclear energy. Perhaps it’s a bridge know-how and possibly we want the U.S. Navy to construct our total electrical grid.” I imply, I put that in Ministry. “And go together with nuclear for an additional 100 years till we get the clear power laid out.” Now which may be fallacious. It could be that we bypass that second, and that clear power is so good, so low cost and so quantitative that there’s no have to mess with one thing as harmful as nuclear. However it all must be on the desk. There needs to be no pieties, no political truisms at this level.

With Biden about to change into president, the darkish days of the local weather motion in America could also be ending. How hopeful are you proper now concerning the path issues are going? Nicely, rather more than I’d’ve been if Biden hadn’t received. I’m hoping that there can be pressures and forces larger than Biden and his crew that can shove them in the suitable instructions. I met John Kerry in McMurdo Station in Antarctica. He was Secretary of State. He had a month to go. It was December of 2016. And he was nice. He gave an hour discuss improvised after staying awake about 24 hours. I used to be actually impressed at his grasp of the scenario and his capacity to synthesize and go to crucial factors. However once more, it’s not going to be a person sport, and the fossil gas industries and the opposite huge fossil gas nations, the petro states, they’re all essential too.

For this reason I hold coming again to quantitative easing. You’re going to must repay the oil firms. You’re going to must repay the petro states. They’ll want compensation, as a result of their fiduciary duties and their nationwide priorities for the ability of their very own nation states are intensely tied up with these fossil fuels. And so we’re going to must pay to maintain it within the floor. And so you possibly can regard that as blackmail or you possibly can regard that as simply enterprise as standard, as a stranded asset that also has a price to us by not being burned. I imply, it’s an actual monetary worth. Saving the world has a monetary worth that must be paid, and so we name it quantitative easing. So I’m hoping that the unusual mechanisms of the Democratic Occasion and the American authorities will mesh with the Paris Settlement.

You’ve religion that the Paris Settlement will reassert itself? Sure. That is one other leftist truism that isn’t true, that the Paris Settlement is irrelevant or meaningless or not adequate or no matter. It’s the framework by which we’re going to make all this occur. It’s a serious occasion in world historical past. It’s clearly toothless and it doesn’t name for sufficient and the voluntary commitments by the person nation states are solely about half of what’s vital. However it’s what we’ve acquired. And to dismiss it out of hand, after which what’s the substitute? Instantaneous world revolution? I imply, give me a break. It’s so crazily idealistic the place the right is being the enemy of the nice.

The toughest factor to know concerning the local weather disaster, and one thing that your e book does so nicely, is imagining the totality of the transformation that should occur right here. Typically I’m skeptical that we’ll ever be capable of bend our minds round it. Nicely, sure. However that is the place I’ve a whole lot of religion within the novel as a creative kind. It’s very capacious, it takes in a whole lot of junk, it’s not a slim or environment friendly artwork kind. It’s a saggy monster. And my novel is a saggy monster. However the novel is concerning the social totality. And what’s cool about being a science fiction author is the planet is a part of the social totality. It’s a citizen, it’s an actor within the actor community, it’s a part of our physique.

That is what I like concerning the responses to The Ministry to this point, is individuals desire a sense of their totality, which is clearly an imaginary act as a result of the totality’s too huge to be comprehended. However it may be imagined in novels. The novel is a 19th-century, quaint kind that’s been outdated by the flicks. Typically it seems like possibly its run its course like epic poetry, or performs in verse. However it’s probably not true. Individuals nonetheless learn novels. And in order a novelist, I like that. And if it helps the political scenario, then all the higher.

See the place your favourite artists and songs rank on the Rolling Stone Charts.

Join Rolling Stone’s Publication. For the newest information, comply with us on Fb, Twitter, and Instagram.

from Growth News https://growthnews.in/what-will-the-world-look-like-in-30-years-sci-fi-author-kim-stanley-robinson-takes-us-there/ via https://growthnews.in

#Growth News

0 notes

pkstudiosindia · 4 years

Text

Have not closed the option for another stimulus: Nirmala Sitharaman – The Indian Express

By: ENS Economic Bureau | New Delhi | Updated: October 20, 2020 12:34:59 am

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman (PTI/file)

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday mentioned the authorities has not closed the option of another stimulus to help the financial system. The Finance Ministry has began its evaluation of the probably financial development for the present 12 months and can launch the estimates when they’re prepared.

Speaking at a web-based convention to launch the autobiography of fifteenth Finance Commission Chairman NK Singh — Portraits of Power: Half a Century of Being at Ringside — Sitharaman hoped for enchancment in the training sector and additional opening up of the financial system to the personal sector.

“I have not closed the option for another stimulus. Every time we have announced one, it is after a lot of consultations with various sections of society and then we work with ministries, the PMO (Prime Minister’s Office) and then take a final call. Yes, I have not closed the option to come out with one more stimulus,” Sitharaman mentioned to responding to a question. Amid the authorities planning to return out with a public sector enterprise coverage to open up all sectors for the personal sector, she mentioned India wants to maneuver away from “the socialistic baggage”.

Stressing the want for a strong federal construction in the nation, she mentioned: “Federalism is needed to make our country stronger. We need greater robustness in federal engagement as even if one state is left behind, it can slowdown India’s growth potential.”

Singh, who has had an extended profession as a high bureaucrat and a former MP, mentioned his e-book tries to take a look at the brighter aspect of society and financial system by way of what is feasible to be performed inside the given constraints. Quoting Plutarch, Singh mentioned: “To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult”. The e-book additionally tries to handle whether or not the Covid-19 pandemic is sort of a “1991 moment in our history” the place we’re compelled to push the reset button, Singh mentioned.

Reliance Industries CMD Mukesh Ambani, who participated in the dialogue, mentioned a few of the most second technology reforms have been taken in final six months in agriculture, labour and training sectors. He mentioned there may be must help small and medium enterprises and order to create an eco system entrepreneurship grows. Some of that’s taking place already in the batteries and photo voltaic manufacturing areas.

To a question on what he wished to be remembered for, Ambani mentioned it “should not be about him but his contribution to the society” and he wished to work on three issues — transformation of India right into a digital society; transformation in training sector to strengthen the ability base in India via linkages amongst training, ability coaching and employment; and lastly a motion away from fossil fuels in direction of fully renewable power over the subsequent three a long time.

Ambani mentioned his first impression of Singh was that “the IAS guys have style” and he was struck by his endless curiosity and talent to ship on financial reforms.

Speaking at the occasion, Singapore’s Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for Social Policies Tharman Shanmugaratnam mentioned India’s challenges exceed these of most societies going through Covid-19 however the pandemic additionally represents a “huge opportunity” for the nation as the world provide chain is altering. This presents a possibility to turn out to be a serious producer of products and providers for the world.

The manufacturing-linked incentive (PLI) scheme has been an excellent begin, however there needs to be additional momentum and implementation, he careworn.

📣 The Indian Express is now on Telegram. Click right here to hitch our channel (@indianexpress) and keep up to date with the newest headlines

For all the newest Business News, obtain Indian Express App.

The post Have not closed the option for another stimulus: Nirmala Sitharaman – The Indian Express appeared first on Pet Food India.

from WordPress https://petfoodindia.com/have-not-closed-the-option-for-another-stimulus-nirmala-sitharaman-the-indian-express/

#Pet Food India Latest News #aquaculture #Aquarium #aquarium india #aquatic animals #Aquatic Food #be

0 notes

faithfulnews · 4 years

Text

How a small third world country became the top economy in Latin America

South America Map

So, I’ve been watching the Democrat debates, and I’ve noticed that all of their candidates are proposing economic policies that they say will improve the lives of Americans. But have the candidates ever been able to try out these policies, and proven that they work? One way to evaluate policies is to look at other countries that have tried them, to see if those policies are proven to work.

I’ve been reading a book called “Money, Greed and God” with my friend Carla, which talks about what does and does not work to alleviate poverty. The author basically outlined two approaches. In the first approach, the government 1) confiscates the wealth of the most productive workers, 2) nationalizes (takes control of) the businesses of the most successful entrepreneurs, 3) restricts trading between citizens and with other countries, with minimum wage, price controls and tariffs. In the second approach, the government does the opposite: 1) lowers taxes on the most productive workers, and 2) lets entrepreneurs compete to provide goods and services to consumers, and 3) lowers restrictions on internal trading and trading with other countries, e.g. – eliminating minimum wage, tariffs and price controls.

Let’s take a look at two Latin American countries that went in opposite directions. Venezuela and Chile. Then we can finally find out which policies actually achieve results for the people.

Here is how Chile started out in 1973.

PROBLEM: Price controls and tariffs:

Prices for the majority of basic goods were fixed by the government in 1973. Even though Chile was and still is a small economy, the level of protectionism was high. By the end of 1973, the nominal average tariff for imports was 105 percent, with a maximum of 750 percent. Non-tariff barriers also impeded the import of more than 3,000 out of 5,125 registered goods. Just as economic theory predicts, large queues in front of stores were usual in Santiago and other cities in Chile as a result of the scarcity caused by price controls.

PROBLEM: Government taking over private businesses:

The decline in GDP during 1973 reflected a shrinking productive sector in which the main assets were gradually falling under government control or ownership through expropriations and other government interventions in the economy.

PROBLEM: Deficit spending and government printing money:

The fiscal situation was chaotic. The deficit reached 55 percent of expenditures and 20 percent of GDP and was the main cause of inflation because the Central Bank was issuing money to finance the government deficit.

SOLUTION: lower or eliminate restrictions on trade:

The most important economic reform in Chile was to open trade, primarily through a flat, low tariff on imports. Much of the credit for Chilean economic reforms in the following 30 years should be given to the decision to open our economy to the rest of the world. The strength of Chilean firms, productive sectors, and institutions grew up thanks to that fundamental change.

SOLUTION: let competing entrepreneurs in the private sector provide goods and services to consumers:

A second fundamental reform was to allow the private sector to recover, adding dynamism to the economy. In fact, important sectors such as electricity generation and distribution and telecommunications were still managed by state companies. After we implemented a massive privatization plan that included more than 50,000 new direct shareholders and several million indirect (through pension funds) shareholders, these companies were managed by private entrepreneurs that carried out important expansion plans.

SOLUTION: let people take responsibility for their own lives instead of depending on government:

The 1981 reform of the Chilean pension fund system deserves special mention. Under the leadership of Minister José Piñera, an individual capitalization account program was designed with specific contributions, administered by private institutions selected by the workers. The Chilean Administradoras de Fondos de Pension (Pension Fund Administrators or AFP) has been replicated in more than 20 countries, and more than 100 million workers in different parts of the world use these accounts to save for retirement.

SOLUTION: allow parents to choose the school that fits their needs from competing education providers, and push school administration down from the federal government to the municipal level, where it would be more responsive to voter’s needs:

In 1981, Chile introduced a universal educational voucher system for students in both its elementary and secondary schools. At the same time, the central government transferred the administration of public schools to municipal governments… The financial value of the voucher did not depend on family income.

RESULTS: And I was able to find a nice short, description of how all that worked out for them on the far-left Wikipedia, of all places:

The economy of Chile is a high-income economy as ranked by the World Bank, and is considered one of South America’s most stable and prosperous nations, leading Latin American nations in competitiveness, income per capita, globalization, economic freedom, and low perception of corruption.

In 2006, Chile became the country with the highest nominal GDP per capita in Latin America. In May 2010 Chile became the first South American country to join the OECD. Tax revenues, all together 20.2% of GDP in 2013, were the second lowest among the 34 OECD countries, and the lowest in 2010. In 2017, only 0.7% of the population lived on less than US$1.90 a day.

According to the Heritage Foundation, Chile is ranked as the 18th freest economy in the world. The World Bank ranked Chile as the 50th highest GDP per capita for 2018, just below Hungary and above Poland.

Now, you can contrast those results with Venezuela. I have been blogging about Venezuela for years on this blog, and documenting how they raised taxes, banned guns, nationalized private sector companies, raised tariffs, and increased regulations. They are now ranked JUST ABOVE NORTH KOREA for economic freedom – #179 out of 180 countries measured. Basically, they did the opposite of everything that Chile did – transferring power away from parents, workers, business owners, churches and municipal governments to the powerful centralized federal government.

Wikipedia explains how Hugo Chavez took over in 1999 and enacted a communist revolution.

Since the Bolivarian Revolution half-dismantled its PDVSA oil giant corporation in 2002 by firing most of its 20,000-strong dissident professional human capital and imposed stringent currency controls in 2003 in an attempt to prevent capital flight, there has been a steady decline in oil production and exports. Further yet, price controls, expropriation of numerous farmlands and various industries, among other government authoritarian policies… have resulted in severe shortages in Venezuela and steep price rises of all common goods, including food, water, household products, spare parts, tools and medical supplies; forcing many manufacturers to either cut production or close down, with many ultimately abandoning the country as has been the case with several technological firms and most automobile makers.

They confiscated private property, took over private sector businesses, implemented tariffs and price controls, redistributed wealth via massive welfare programs, and pushed all decision-making out of families and municipal governments up to the federal government. By depriving the producers of their earnings, the country caused massive shortages of goods and services, to the point where people are fleeing the country, consuming zoo animals, and selling their bodies as prostitutes in order to get food and water.

Application

In the next election, we are not picking a tribe because of how they make us feel about ourselves. We are not choosing in order to see ourselves as “nice” and “not nice”. We need to look at specific policies being proposed, and see what works and what doesn’t work. The examples of Chile (rags-to-riches) and Venezuela (riches-to-rags) are helpful for voters who want to get RESULTS instead of FEELINGS.

I’ll leave you with a list of links from previous posts so you can see how communism worked out for Venezuela.

Before socialists in Venezuela could run over protesters, they had to ban gun ownership

Venezuela solves hunger by banning bread lines, and solves crime by banning self-defense

And now slavery: Venezuela’s socialist policies lead to forced labor camps

Do young Americans know how well socialism is working in Venezuela?

How well are Democrat Party economic policies working out in Venezuela?

How well does socialism work in countries and cities that adopt it?

How well are Democrat economic policies working in Venezuela and Argentina?

Marco Rubio’s speech exposing the horrors of socialism in Cuba and Venezuela

Obama silent as Venezuelan government violently represses democratic opposition

How well is government-run health care working out in socialist Venezuela?

Venezuela orders soldiers armed with assault rifles to impose price controls

An honest look at the many contributions of Hugo Chavez to Venezuela

What causes Colombia’s economy to grow? What causes Venezuela’s economy to shrink?

Socialist government of Venezuela announces devaluation of their currency

Obama’s buddy Chavez nationalizes an American company

Venezuela legislature votes to nationalize 11 US-owned oil rigs

80,000 tons of food rotting in Venezuela government warehouse

Hugo Chavez confiscates private property as Venezuelan economy declines

Owner of the last anti-Chavez TV station arrested in communist Venezuela

OAS report details violence and lost freedoms in communist Venezuela

Photos from the revolution against communism in Venezuela

Venezuelans riot as communist Hugo Chavez seizes control of TV channel

Hugo Chavez says that Haiti earthquake was caused by secret US weapon

Chavez marches Venezuela down the road to serfdom at gunpoint

Communist Venezuela introduces energy rationing in 2010

Hugo Chavez shuts down 34 radio and TV stations in Venezuela

Venezuela nationalizes Spanish-owned bank

Go to the article

0 notes

axvoter · 1 year

Text

Blatantly Partisan Party Review XIX (Victoria 2022): Socialist Alliance

Prior reviews: federal 2016, NSW 2019, federal 2019, federal 2022

What I said before: “Do I really need to tell you much about this party’s platform? They’re proper eco-socialists whose policies cohere around a belief in workers’ solidarity, hostility to capitalism, and radical action on climate change.” (federal 2019)

What I think this time: Socialist Alliance left the Victorian Socialists electoral alliance two years ago and are standing candidates separately, but they have not yet regained party registration with the VEC. This means that their candidates appear as independents on the ballot.

There are four Socialist Alliance-endorsed independents, all of them in lower house seats: Arie Huybregts (Broadmeadows), Angela Carr (Geelong), Sarah Hathway (Lara), and Sue Bolton (Pascoe Vale). Bolton is already an elected representative at the level of local government: she has won multiple terms as a councillor in the City of Merri-bek (formerly Moreland). In two seats, Socialist Alliance-endorsed independents are going up against Victorian Socialist candidates: one of Huybregts’ opponents in Broadmeadows is VS’s Omar Hassan, while in Pascoe Vale, Bolton’s rivals include VS’s Madaleine Hah.

Socialist Alliance’s state platform covers the same ground to their recent federal platforms, so I’ve not much to add to my 2019 and 2022 entries about the bigger picture. What sticks out to me is that they have made an effort to include policies specifically relevant to where their four candidates are standing. For the Geelong and Lara candidates, there is a commitment to a new public hospital in Geelong’s northern suburbs. For the Pascoe Vale and Broadmeadows candidates, there is a policy to duplicate the Upfield line that passes through these electorates—the lack of double track between Gowrie and the terminus is why it has such appalling frequencies.

Another big state-specific positive is that Socialist Alliance want investment in accessible public transport to match the level crossing removal programme in quantity and speed of delivery. A large proportion of Melbourne's public transport network does not meet basic accessibility standards, particularly trams and buses. The network is required to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act, but the timeframe for compliance has been extended to 2032, and who knows if that won’t be pushed back even further. Other parties could really take a hint from Socialist Alliance and make this a priority too.

My recommendation: Give Socialist Alliance-endorsed independents a good preference.

Website: https://socialist-alliance.org/elections/state/2022/election-campaign/community-need-not-corporate-greed-2022-victoria-state

#auspol #springst #vicvotes #vicvotes22 #vicvotes2022 #Victorian election #Victoria #Melbourne #Election 2022 #Socialist Alliance #socialism #socialists #eco-socialism #watermelons #good preference

3 notes · View notes

swordoforion · 3 years

Text

The Orion Manifest - a Declaration of the Tenets, Mission, and Formal Structure of Orion

Respice ad futurum, respice ad astra. This is the motto of Orion – look to the future and look to the stars. For millennia, humanity has looked up at the stars and wondered what lies beyond, what secrets could be contained beyond such unimaginable heights and distances. Though we have caught glimpses, the vast realm of the cosmos continues to be a mystery, with all of human history only scratching the surface. It stands to reason, then, that in our future, we should and will seek to venture outwards into the unknown, to know the unknowable, the reach the unreachable, to do the undoable.

But though we look to the future and to the stars, they act as only a goal, and our path ahead cannot distract too much from where we lie now. We live in an era of crisis – sea, land, and sky burn as people shed their blood fighting the wrong enemy. The world, wracked by constant war, races toward it once more, as those with power march forward unceasingly to grab more of it. We face threats of extinction from all around us, and though the power to save the world is well in the hands of the people, they do not know that they have it, they do not know how to wield it.

Our mission is one of necessity – to ensure the survival and prosperity of our charge, that being the whole of humanity, we must first ensure that they can survive long enough to make it off this planet and flourish. To do that, we need to ensure that the environmental habitat of Earth is sustainable and will preserve – thus the first Tenet of our mission is Environmentalism.

The damage to the environment has been spurred largely in part by our unceasing and unstable growth – the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century set our worldwide society on a course that has bred such a hunger of its drivers for power that everything – people, species, and eventually the precious few resources of our home planet – is only temporarily capable of sating such an appetite. Following principles that emerged alongside the genesis of capitalism, our second Tenet is Socialism, the transfer from greed-based industry to need-based democracy.

To get to the stars, we need to preserve the environment. To preserve the environment, we need to regulate our industry and secure the rights of the people. But to do this most truly and effectively, it cannot be done in merely one part of the world. To isolate this change would fail to make enough of a dent in our problems and would abandon the rest of humanity to the same fate we seek escape from. Thus, if we are to make a change, it must be universal, and the last Tenet, following suit, is World Federalism, the establishment of a representative world government.

The establishment of a world federation will allow the universal regulation necessary to implement socialist economic structures, allowing us to slow our growth to a sustainable level and put resources towards the revitalization of Earth. With these needs met, we can move forward as a species, at peace and not raising our weapons at each other’s throats but raising our eyes to our final destination – the cosmos. And so, it is with this document that Orion is established – an organization devoted to the establishment of eco-socialist federalism, and to the mission of prosperity and survival of all humankind.

Article I: The Tenets.

Section I: Environmentalism.

The interest of both protecting pre-existing natural resources and species as well as fostering new habitats and growth, to ensure the continued existence and flourishment of Earth’s ecology. Our numbers are growing as a species while our resources shrink, and while there are ways to preserve and help the environment recover, we are not employing them in the interest of economy. However, if we reach a point of environmental decay at which the ability of Earth to sustain human life is threatened, we face a universal and uncompromising threat – extinction. Preventing this climate crisis will take potentially centuries of action, which means that the sooner, the better to make a stand.

To accomplish this goal, we need to lower our output – decreasing emissions as much as possible and slowing production from what will grow the economy to what we need, which will slow the rate of human population, until a time comes at which the world population can sustainably increase at the exponential rate it has kept thus far. Not an end to modern comforts, not a retreat into the Dark Ages – but a matter of prioritizing what we need in our lives, on both personal levels and large-scale, economic levels.

While this is done primarily to ensure that the human population of Earth can survive the oncoming crisis, the preservation of other species and the beauty of nature is both an obligation and a reward. Despite the fragility of other species, continued biodiversity allows us to observe many different types of evolved life, and with that broad spectrum available for our observation, we can discover much more about life itself than if we were to isolate the ecological population of Earth to a selective pool of species.

Section II: Socialism.

While a broad term, socialism in reference to the interests of Orion is defined as a system of economic organization in which the resources used for production of goods and services are made publicly accessible, and businesses are ran democratically by the workers. Unregulated privatization of capitalist economies has resulted in a growing inequality of both power and wealth, which threatens both the ability of citizens to have their basic needs met through economy, as well as the balance of democracy, as the affluent gain more power and representation in elected democratic governments.

The goal of socialism is to focus more on equality than the ability to reach heights of power – instead of the few having exponentially greater than the many, all would be able to live comfortably and have minimal contribution to labor, and be granted freedom through unbiased democratic government. With the people producing goods and services motivated by their own need and not by a unceasing need for profit, not only would a market be more catering to the interest of the common citizen, but would not produce overwhelming surplus that contributes to environmental destruction through rapid resource usage.

Of note is that socialism is not just a matter of political and economic change – it also seeks a change in social order and views, as capitalism relies largely on self-interest and competitive pursuit, concepts which have become engrained in modern culture, at the expense of care for community, for the plights of others who are less successful. Those in power seek only more, and everyone else tries to take what they can, breeding mistrust and greed rather than camaraderie. To establish a more equal and just social order would require an end to the mechanisms, social and economic, that make most see the world as ‘eat or be eaten’.

Section III: World Federalism.

In the face of threats that care not of borders or political history, we must also realize the limits of dividing ourselves off from each other. International relations are long and storied, carrying much weight in the culture of respective nations, but to be bitter and mistrusting of our neighboring countries will only worsen the situation, as we try to keep a fragile peace while also fixing the world. Simply put, the resources needed to compete with other nations are wasted, when a single, cooperative nation could much more easily manage international crises as listed above.

Federalism implies a nation consisting of multiple smaller regional governments, which allows for a balance between sovereignty and uniquity and peaceful coordination. The integration of the nations of the world into a federal nation would mean that limiting systems such as military reconnaissance and deterrence, international trade strategy, and intense border security would lose relevance and importance, allowing far more necessary concerns to take center stage. The need to be the most powerful nation would subside when there is only one entity to be concerned with – economy will be focused on what is best for all people, military will protect every citizen of the world, and government services will be applicable to everyone.

One of the most important elements of such a federation is the vital inclusion of democracy – allowing every region to have a say in the affairs of world government, just as smaller federal governments include representation from their constituent states. A world government that simply commanded the people of Earth would simply create another elitist order on top of capitalist monopolization; the people and individual regions must have a say in what happens to them, and regional governments should keep a degree of authority to better manage their own affairs.

Section IV: Eco-socialist Federalism.

The combination of the above tenets into a single theory, eco-socialist federalism advocates for the creation of a federation of socialist states with expressly engrained policy to preserve and replenish the environment of Earth through universal economic regulation and investment in sustainability until a point at which technology and global ecosystems develop enough to allow for rapid growth in consumption and production.

The socialist federation could continue to manage past this threshold, and environmental policy would remain to ensure that we would not repeat our past mistakes, but the end goal would be to develop the capability for manned interplanetary travel, such that we could create sustainable colonies on other planets to increase our influx of natural resources and habitable space for human population.

Once sustainable human colonies are established on other planets, and the technology of reaching the colonies is efficiently produced, the problem of ensuring the survival of humanity will be dealt with; in that regard, Orion’s goal will transfer mainly to exploration and expansion; the never-ending goal of learning what is out there.

However, with the creation of a socialist federation, there must also be from its inceptions safeguards on fundamental human rights, which are listed below, and must be ensured to achieve the completion of the second goal – the prosperity of humanity. If only a ruling class is to benefit from this change, we have become little better than our forebearers.

Section V: Fundamental human rights.

Important among the principles of an eco-socialist federation is the universal and enforced protection of human rights – equality and freedom are two virtues that must be upheld in any moral society. The fundamental human rights are as follows:

- No matter the circumstance of one’s birth, the color of their skin, their physical ability, their sexual orientation, their gender identity, their religious affiliation, the culture they belong to, or the value of what they own, all human beings are deserving by birth of the same, unalienable rights, and shall not be discriminated against for any of the reasons above.

- Everyone has the right to life and liberty, and as such, either welfare or employment should provide for the basic essential needs (food, water, shelter), as well as proper medical care.

- All should have the right, when charged with a violation of federation or regional laws, to a fair and public trial to determine either guilt or innocence before a jury of peers. Here, they will be assumed innocent until their guilt is proven.

- All citizens shall have the freedom to move within both their own region and into any other region of the federation without persecution or inhibition.

- All citizens, granted they consent and are of legal age, shall have the right to engage in a relationship and be entitled to marriage, recognizable by the state.

- Everyone shall have the freedom of speech and expression, which includes the ability to assemble, speak, write, and/or practice as long as it is publicly safe to do so.

- Everyone shall have the ability to run for public office and participate in democratically elected, representative government, or work democratically in organizations in a market for the acquisition of resources, via the form of goods and services.

- Everyone who, in working, produces goods and services through their labor, earns and is deserving of the value of their labor.

- Every citizen shall have the right to free and equitable public education, with necessary skills and information instituted universally within the federation’s public education system.

- Everyone shall have the right to rest – labor is required only as long as is necessary for those able-bodied to provide it, and any time beyond necessity is up to the discretion of the citizen. Maximum working hours and days on shift shall be limited to humane numbers.

- No citizens will be subject to intrusion or arrest without just cause, and all citizens, regardless of the defined categories, are subject to equal protection and review under the law.

Article II: The Mission.

Section I: To establish the organization.

The establishment and growth of Orion and its branches is necessary first to ensure that Orion exists to seek and bring about this change in the first place. If by any means, Orion is destroyed or somehow disbanded, the next in line for the Operational Manual should use the instructions contained within to reorganized Orion, at least until the other steps of the Mission are completed.

Section II: To spread awareness.

Through both the Sword of Orion, data supplemented by Museion, and in-person movements by Liberius, the first goal once the organization is established is to bring progressive and eco-socialist federalist ideas to the attention of the public, as well as raise support for organizations and movements of interest.

Section III: To connect with allies.

One of the most essential functions of the Sword of Orion will be to find other organizations with cooperative goals, and to build a network to coordinate efforts towards large-scale change, using the resources and reach of allied groups to reach a common goal.

Section IV: To move founder nations towards federation.

The goal of social change is to move key nations towards a political position where their governments would be supportive of the formation of a world federation. While the ideal result would be to have all the nations of the world agree to such an idea upon first suggestion, a few powerful founding members could get the ball rolling, and would prove much easier a task to concentrate effort around.

Section V: To complete world federation.

Over time, once a world federal government is established, other nations could be approached and persuaded to join as members. Of note is that the current power system within a given nation is irrelevant – a government is not its people, and should the structure of a nation change, the decision to be a member could as well.

This Manifest is written to be of universal use so long as the Mission is incomplete, which means that the hierarchy and international organization at the time of writing are always subject to change. Given that Orion has a vested interest in ensuring environmental security and protection of human rights post haste, the pressure of democratic or even revolutionary change is not off limits, so long as the means by which change is acquired is moral, and in the interest of the citizens.

Section VI: To create environmental and economic regulation.

The requirement for states of an eco-socialist federation will abide by the principles of human rights stated in Article II, Section V, as well as to have a minimum level of regulation in their own economies to ensure that output of emissions and use of nonrenewable resources is kept at acceptable levels and that businesses within their markets are registered. A registered business will follow certain guidelines in terms of workers’ rights and representation and will not be allowed to monopolize privately.

Section VII: Develop means of interplanetary travel.

Government research into space travel and technological development will continue and be given adequate funding to pursue the goal of cost and production efficient manned space travel, in addition to sustainable and eco-friendly technologies for public use. The end goal is to be capable of carrying humans to other livable planets, as well as establishing further stations for observation and management in our solar system.

Section VIII: Reach sustainable growth.

The goal of any society is to grow – to grow the population, economic output, technological advancement, and knowledge. Currently, our global society has grown rapidly and will continue to grow on its current rate, but it has done so unsustainably, and puts us at risk. The goal of a stable and rational global society would then be to become coordinated and advanced enough that this pattern of growth can resume without burning our resources at a rate we cannot keep up. By this point in the Mission, society will be self-sufficient with no sign of long-term instability and will be moving to other planets to provide an extra layer of security. Once Section VIII is met, Orion’s function will be relegated to management and exploration.

Article III: The Structure of Orion.

Section I: Sword of Orion.

The Sword of Orion is the first, largest, and most essential branch of Orion – the public face and the means by which alliances are forged and information is spread. The functions of the Sword of Orion are writing, activism, and communication, which means publication of resources and operation of social media to provide news and information on why we need change, supporting action that makes positions clear to public representatives, and assisting and connecting different organizations already in the fight.

The Sword of Orion will be the only branch of Orion to have a multi-chapter structure – wherever available, local chapters composed of in-person or regional online members working to communicate with the people, politicians, and organizations in their area. While there are universal messages that can reach people from all over the world, the advantage of having additional, regional based campaigns is the familiarity and uniquity of regional culture and politics. The problems of one area may require special attention, attention that only people of that area know to give.

Above all chapters, however, is the Sword of Orion’s presence as an online organization. All chapter leaders and members can communicate with each other and coordinate more general writing projects, larger gatherings, and communications with national and international organizations. This online hub allows for an easier form of membership and participation, representation for members without a local chapter, and organization-wide coordination.

The Sword of Orion, in its communication to both the public and with other large-scale movements, is the main arm of diplomacy and democracy, as well as the central structure of Orion itself.

Section II: Liberius.

The second branch of Orion, Liberius is more of an ancillary corps within the greater structure of the Sword of Orion – instead of having it’s own chapters, Liberius members are specialized members of Sword chapters. Where the Sword of Orion focuses on writing and communication, Liberius is a branch of action – activism, volunteering, campaigning, aid drives, and protests are where they will work. Any in-person events that the Sword organizes or assists with, Liberius agents will help head and coordinate, and they will represent Orion at more general, impromptu events like marches and picketing.

As the nature of Liberius involves much more rigorous, hands-on work, Liberius agents will receive more training and preparation for events, consisting of skills like communication, first-aid, and self defense, to both aid and protect people in the case of violence or accident. Liberius Leadership will be responsible for this sort of training, as well as what type of events and work there will be a focus on.

Each branch of the Sword, at full capacity, will have one or more associated Liberius agents, ready for local work and chapter assistance. Liberius, while having separate channels for planning and training, will also communicate organization-wide through online hubs. To become an agent of Liberius first requires membership in the Sword; after which, one can volunteer and apply to do activist work.

Section III: Museion.

The third branch of Orion, Museion, as per its namesake institution of research and study, will be a primarily information and research-based sect of Orion focused on keeping track of environmental status, technological developments, and political trends. Separate from the overall combined structure of the Sword and Liberius, Museion will consist of a singular chapter/organization that functions as a think tank; doing studies of its own and working with other organizations and institutions to provide information to both the Sword and the general public on relevant matters.

The function of Museion is more evident in the later sections of the Mission – scientific research into eco-friendly technological developments for everyday life and economic growth as well as innovation of space travel to allow for interplanetary travel will rapidly become one of the top priorities once the political matters are out of the way. However, not only can Museion provide statistics and news to backup the publications of the Sword of Orion, but starting early on matters of innovation will prove an investment that pays off when the tech we need is started in advance.

Like Liberius, one must be a member of the Sword of Orion before volunteering for Museion, but the partnerships and communications of Museion can be separate from the Sword of Orion, due to being more scientific rather than political in nature. At full capacity, there will be in-person Museion facilities, but online research and organization is always an option.

11 notes · View notes

nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany · 5 years

Text

2:00PM Water Cooler 8/5/2019

Digital Elixir 2:00PM Water Cooler 8/5/2019

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Trade

“Trade Wars Escalate” [Tim Duy’s Fed Watch]. “The big news everyone will wake up to is the latest escalation in the trade wars between the U.S. and China. The situation is obviously a clear net negative for the economy that will keep the Fed biased toward easing again in September. The Fed will remain under pressure to help President Trump fight his trade wars with lower interest rates in the months ahead.” • If the Fed takes away the punchbowl, the worst might happen: A Sanders win.

Politics

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune

“2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination” [RealClearPolitics] (average of five polls). As of August 1: Biden fluctuates to 32.2% (32.0), Sanders up to 16.5% (16.4%), Warren down at 14.0% (14.8%), Buttigieg flat at 5.5% (5.6%), Harris down at 10.3% (11.0%), Beto separating himself from the bottom feeders, interestingly. others Brownian motion. If these trends continue in the next release, Sanders will the only winner of both debates.

* * *

2020

Buttigieg (D)(1): “Buttigieg’s New Hampshire Director Leaves Team: Campaign Update” [Yahoo News]. “The Pete Buttigieg campaign has parted ways with its New Hampshire state director Michael Ceraso. The move comes days after the second round of Democratic debates — in which Buttigieg had no breakout moments — and two weeks after the campaign brought on Jess O’Connell as a senior adviser. O’Connell was chief executive officer of the Democratic National Committee in 2017 and has served as executive director of EMILY’s List. Ceraso departs just as she was seeking changes to make the campaign more competitive in key states, and ahead of New Hampshire’s state convention in September, the campaign said, adding that it will soon announce several other staffing changes.” • Yes, “chief executive officer of the Democratic National Committee” is the line on the resumé I want to see…

Gabbard (D)(1): “Tulsi Gabbard Thinks We’re Doomed” [New York Times]. “‘Tracking metrics of Russian state propaganda on Twitter, she was by far the most favored candidate,’ said Clinton Watts, a former F.B.I. agent and senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. ‘She’s the Kremlin’s preferred Democrat. She is such a useful agent of influence for them. Whether she knows it’s happening or not, they love what she’s saying.’” • Presented without comment from the, er, reporter.

Harris (D)(1):

BREAKING:

In a major ethics violation, Kamala Harris’ iconic and memorable rainbow sequin coat she wore to San Francisco Pride was sewn together by truancy convicts in a California prison work camp, sources report. pic.twitter.com/MqliI2RD8D

— MSDNC (@MSDNCNews) August 4, 2019

Check source before recirculating…

Sanders (D)(1): “Mike Gravel to Formally Endorse Bernie Sanders’ Campaign” [The Daily Beast]. “[Gravel,] who was cajoled into running an almost exclusively online campaign by teenagers David Oks and Henry Williams, filmed an endorsement video for Sanders on Sunday. Gravel spoke with Sanders’ campaign manager Faiz Shakir before coming to the decision to make a formal endorsement and is planning to speak with Sanders himself in the coming days.”

Sanders (D)(2): “Bernie Sanders explains why it’s his time to win Nevada” [Las Vegas Review-Journal]. “‘We’ve got Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada and California,’ Sanders said. ‘And my guess is that any candidate who does particularly well in those five states is going to be the nominee and the next president of the United States.’… Sanders told the crowd that all of these issues — low pay, high-interest loans, medical bills — are intertwined in a web that keeps half of Americans living paycheck to paycheck.” • That last sentence is interesting, because it’s not Sanders’ language; the reporter was actually listening and thing.

Warren (D)(1):

.@SenWarren has been publicly critical of Wall Street in the past. Can she convince the finance industry that she’s the right candidate to lead the Democrat campaign in 2020? https://t.co/AOu1nwojaZ

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) August 4, 2019

Oh, I hope not!

Williamson (D)(1): “Marianne Williamson: Holy Fool” [The American Conservative]. “[L]et’s not fool ourselves: Trump, like Sharpton and his identity-politics-besotted enablers in the Democratic Party and the left-wing establishments, are trafficking in “dark psychic forces.” For years in this space, I have warned that leftist identity politics are summoning demons. So is Donald Trump…. Dark psychic force? You’d have to be a fool not to see it. And you’d have to be completely self-deceived to think that only one side has a monopoly on it…. I believe the capacity for this kind of hatred exists within every human heart. What we are losing is the sense that it is a destructive passion to be resisted.”

TX: Suburban Republicans:

People grossly oversold GOP vulnerability in TX pre-Trump and are grossly underselling it now. Texas is an overwhelmingly urban/suburban state, so GOP weakening in the suburbs is felt disproportionately in TX. It could go blue, quickly, under this current configuration

— Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) August 5, 2019

2019

“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, spokesman leave her office” [The Intercept]. • Looks to me like Nancy won. I hope AOC is taking care of her district.

The Debates

“Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders Stood Together on Radical Progressive Ideas in the Democratic Debate” [Teen Vogue]. “Despite being jointly labeled as the party’s progressive standard-bearers, Sanders and Warren appeal to very different supporters. As explained by Politico, polling indicates that Warren appeals more to women, to better-educated voters, and to older voters; Sanders, on the other hand, is favored by the less educated, by men, by younger voters, and by those with lower incomes. The fact that the two candidates are running on similar platforms but have such divergent bases of support speaks to the broad appeal of progressive policies. Which, in part, is why it’s confusing to see so many Democrats so eager to attack these progressives.” • What’s confusing about it?

Impeachment

“Should we impeach Donald Trump?” [Patheos]. “For those like me with a more conservative inclination, we are getting a reputation for blindly tying ourselves to one political party without regard to things we have said in the past about how political leaders ought to behave publicly. To use my own crowd as an example, in 1998 while the Clinton impeachment was going on the Southern Baptist Convention passed a ‘Resolution on the Moral Character of Public Officials,’ but you’ll have to work hard to hear that document being cited by certain prominent Southern Baptists these days. We ought to hold elected officials that we like to the same standard as those we don’t. That doesn’t mean we should automatically be in favor of impeachment, but it does mean that if we were charging at Bill Clinton for his moral failings, we should be at least as critical as Donald Trump without rationalizing it away ‘because the other side is worse.’”

RussiaGate

“DNI Nominee Intent on Getting to Bottom of Russiagate” [Ray McGovern, Consortium News]. “Shortly before President Donald Trump announced he had nominated Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) to replace Dan Coats as director of national intelligence, Ratcliffe made it clear he intends to hit the deck running on the ‘crimes’ behind Russiagate. ‘What I do know as a former federal prosecutor is it does appear that there were crimes committed during the Obama administration,’ Ratcliffe told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo. Mincing few words, he claimed the Democrats ‘accused Donald Trump of a crime and then tried to reverse engineer a process to justify that accusation.’ It’s an extravagant claim. But it is also true, and the proof is in the pudding of which we should have a steady diet in the months to come.” • This was written before Ratcliffe was unceremoniously heaved over the side, presumanbly after The Blob said “not on your Nellie.”

El Paso Shooting

Readers, I’ll have an El Paso Water Cooler Special tomorrow; I’m still gathering my thoughts.

“After the El Paso Massacre, the Choice Is Green Socialism or Eco-Fascism” [The Nation]. “Writing in New York magazine in March, Eric Levitz predicted that the climate emergency could easily spark two wildly divergent paths away from the current unsustainable model of economic growth: a Green New Deal vision of the future where socialist policies are used to remake the American and global economy to be more ecologically sustainable—or an extreme-right model based on immigration restriction and opposition to economic growth in the Global South.” • The mental health frame is not especially useful, I think.

“El Paso Terrorism Suspect’s Alleged Manifesto Highlights Eco-Fascism’s Revival” [HuffPo]. “Titled ‘The Inconvenient Truth,’ an allusion to Al Gore’s landmark climate change documentary, the ranting four-page document appeared on the extremist forum 8chan shortly before the shooting. Authorities have yet to confirm whether Patrick Crusius, the 21-year-old Dallas-area white man arrested in connection with the shooting that left at least 22 dead, is the author. ‘The environment is getting worse by the year,’ the manifesto reads. ‘Most of y’all are just too stubborn to change your lifestyle. So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.’ • Well, life expectancy is falling, and the birth rate is falling….

Obama Legacy

“The Democratic party’s quiet abandonment of Barack Obama” [Financial Times]. “As he surveys today’s wreckage, Mr Obama can draw on one other consolation: at least he merits the occasional mention. Bill Clinton, by contrast, has vanished. In the age of #Metoo, America’s 42nd president is persona non grata. Democrats are busy purging the past. Given the mood, it would be a surprise were Mr Biden to make it to the finishing line.” • The key word is “quiet.” The liberal Democrat hive mind operates rather like the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. Deprecated figures in photographs are retouched away — with no explanation and no accountability.

“Obama Reportedly Unfazed By Criticism From 2020 Candidates” [The Onion]. • A survey.

“How Barack Obama Failed Black Americans” [Sandy Darity, The Atlantic]. From 2016, still germane: “The “acting white” libel is symptomatic of a more general perspective—a perspective that argues that an important factor explaining racial economic disparities is self-defeating or dysfunctional behavior on the part of blacks themselves. And Barack Obama continuously has trafficked in this perspective. Of course, there are some black folk who engage in habits that undermine their potential accomplishments, but there are some white folk who engage in habits that undermine their potential accomplishments as well. And there is no evidence to demonstrate that are proportionately more blacks who behave in ways that undercut achievement, especially since it is clear that blacks do more with less. Nevertheless, Obama consistently has trafficked heavily in the tropes of black dysfunction. Either he is unfamiliar with or uninterested in the evidence that undercuts the black behavioral deficiency narrative. These tropes, in my view, do malicious work.”

Realignment and Legitimacy

“The Idiocy of Ballot Bouncing” [Harold Meyerson, TAP]. “The California statute [on Presidential candidates’ tax returns] may just prompt Republican-controlled states to require every presidential nominee to, say, support the ongoing criminalization of undocumented border crossings, or call for the repeal of Roe v. Wade, to get their name on the states’ ballots. If the Democratic nominee’s name were not put before voters in Alabama, it wouldn’t really matter, since Alabama is bound to go for Trump. Then again, California is just as bound to go for the Democrat, no matter who it be. But what about Republican-controlled swing states like Georgia and Florida—or, for that matter, Arizona and Texas? Should the courts rule that states have the legal right to engage in ballot-bouncing, the Democratic nominee may be bounced to far greater, and more disastrous effect, than Trump.” • My example was “No Presidential candidate shall have used a private email server for public business.” NOTE I was wrong to assert that Lincoln was on the ballot in the slave states. He was not. All the more reason for California not to emulate them.

Why there should never be a digital intermediary between marking the ballot and counting it:

1989: Brian Fox introduced code into Bash, later released as version 1.03, which included the first of the Shellshock vulnerabilities publicly reported 9,169 days later. That’s 25 years, 1 month, and 13 days of exploitability.

Takeaway? You’re always running exploitable code. pic.twitter.com/wqE3cTQFwZ

— Today In Infosec (@todayininfosec) August 5, 2019

“You are always running exploitable code.” And the author of Bash is a highly competent programmer, unlike the voting machine vendors.

Stats Watch

Purchasing Managers’ Services Index, July 2019: “‘Robust’ — both domestic and foreign — is Markit Economics’ description of US service sector demand in July which, however, is not confirmed by the no more than moderate-to-solid diffusion score” [Econoday]. However, “hiring was ‘only moderate’…, inflationary pressures ‘historically subdued’, [and] optimism in the outlook slipping for a sixth month in a row.”

Institute For Supply Management Non-Manufacturing Index, July 2019: “ISM non-manufacturing has consistently reported very solid rates of growth but it too is at a multi-year low” [Econoday]. “Yet rates of growth, though moderating, are still respectable…. Though it does fit in with the general slowing underway in global diffusion reports, this isn’t a bad report and is a reminder that domestic demand in the second-quarter… was very strong.”

Retail: “Inside the conflict at Walmart that’s threatening its high-stakes race with Amazon” [Vox]. “The company’s US online sales increased 40 percent last year, buoyed by a successful expansion of an online grocery business; the digital-first brands and digital-first talent it has acquired have breathed new life into its portfolio; and it has shed at least part of its reputation for being a digital dinosaur…. But it’s still far behind Amazon, and inside Walmart, tensions are rising. Multiple sources tell Recode that the company is projecting losses of more than $1 billion for its US e-commerce division this year, on revenue of between $21 billion and $22 billion. Walmart does not disclose these figures publicly and declined to comment. That size loss is an eye-popping figure for a company that is used to printing cash and that prides itself on its profitable operations; the overall Walmart business brought in nearly $7 billion in profits during the last fiscal year…. The problem is that building the online version of the Everything Store requires millions more products, and that means two things that Walmart’s current infrastructure does not support: dozens more e-commerce warehouses and a lot more merchants and brands selling through Walmart.com.” • Well worth a read. Almost makes you feel sorry for Walmart. • And then there’s this: “Walmart has not secured the same trust — and long leash — from Wall Street investors that Amazon has.” In other words, Amazon has and has had the privilege of running its operation at a loss for years.

Retail slash Internet of Shit:

As a tech critic, there is a lot of stuff that I think of as “Slavoj Zizek on easy mode”—labor-saving devices for the nihilist contrarian with a conference talk deadline. The Amazon dash buttons were in this rare category and I will be sad to see them go https://t.co/qF1WPGDczq

— Pinboard (@Pinboard) August 3, 2019

The Bezzle: “Autopilot failed to keep Tesla from sliding under semitruck at 68 mph, lawsuit claims” [Orlando Sun-Sentinel]. “About 10 seconds before the crash, Banner engaged the Autopilot system, according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board.” • So I’m not sure about the case, but at the end of the article there’s this: “The NTSB, in a 2017 report, wrote that design limitations of the Autopilot system played a major role in the fatality, the first known one in which a vehicle operated on a highway under semi-autonomous control systems. The agency said that Tesla told Model S owners that Autopilot should be used only on limited-access highways, primarily interstates. The report said that despite upgrades to the system, Tesla did not incorporate protections against use of the system on other types of roads.” • Because of course they didn’t. Could be that determining whether you’re on a limited-access highway is a hard problem for robot cars, just like turning left?

The Bezzle: “Finnish Tesla Model 3 Inspection Reveals Soft, Thin, Under-Spec Paint” [The Drive]. “A Finnish condition inspection of a Tesla Model 3’s paint has returned extremely poor readings for both thickness and hardness, validating growing owner concerns about easily-worn paint on the firm’s cars. These results come as Tesla negotiates the settlement of some 19 air quality violations at its Fremont, California factory paint shop, raising questions about the possibility of a connection between those compliance challenges and the thin, soft paint found on Tesla’s cars. Paint issues were one of several factors that contributed to the Model 3 losing its Consumer Reports recommendation this year.” • Oops.

The Bezzle: “Uber and Lyft Investors Are Looking for Signs of a Détente” [Bloomberg]. • Would a cartel between two firms whose business models doom them to unprofitability be unique in human history?

Tech: “AMD Ryzen 7 3700X is such a hit it almost outsold Intel’s entire CPU range” [TechRadar]. “In June, AMD’s overall market share was 68% at Mindfactory, so the increase to 79% represents a big jump, and the highest proportion of sales achieved by the company this year by a long way. To put this in a plainer fashion, for every single processor sold by Intel, AMD sold four.” • I’m used to the idea of Intel dominating everything. Oops.

Tech: “Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp went down (again)” [Engadget]. “Numerous reports have surfaced of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp being unavailable to various degrees on the morning of August 4th. The failure doesn’t appear to have been as dramatic as it was in July, when image services were out for several hours (we had at least some success visiting them ourselves). Still, it likely wasn’t what you were hoping for if you wanted to catch up on your social feeds on a lazy Sunday morning…. There has been a string of problems across the services in recent months, with roots in everything from server configurations to the previously mentioned media services. It’s not clear why they’ve picked up after a long period of relative stability.”

Intellectual Property: “Fact check: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier” [Office of Scholarly Communications, University of California]. “Elsevier’s offer to increase open access publishing “five-fold” would have resulted in only 30 percent of UC’s research, all of which is supported by public funding, being freely available to the public. Under the past Elsevier contract, which required UC authors to pay an additional charge for open access (after the libraries already paid Elsevier for subscriptions), only 6 percent of UC authors made that second payment — making the majority of UC research published in Elsevier journals inaccessible to the public who helped fund it.” • Elsevier, it is safe to say, is not greatly loved.

Intellectual Property: “Elsevier: “It’s illegal to Sci-Hub.” Also Elsevier: ‘We link to Sci-Hub all the time.’” [Boing Boing]. “Yesterday, I wrote about science publishing profiteer Elsevier’s legal threats against Citationsy, in which the company claimed that the mere act of linking to Sci-Hub (an illegal open-access portal) was itself illegal. You’ll never guess what happens next. Elsevier’s own journals turn out to be full of links to Sci-Hub. It’s also not hard to understand this. You see, the researchers who write the papers that Elsevier publishes are scientists, not private-equity-backed looter/profiteers, so they are more interested in science and scholarship than ensuring that Elsevier continues to rake in billions. And since Elsevier doesn’t pay for any of the work it publishes, it’s hard for them to exert pressure to end this practice.”

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 23 Fear (previous close: 36, Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 58 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 5 at 12:49pm. • Restored at reader request. Note that the index is not always updated daily, sadly.

Rapture Index: Closes up one on Crime Rate. “America’s 8th deadliest mass shooting occurred in El Paso.” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 184. Remember that bringing on the rapture is a good thing.

The Biosphere

“When Tree Planting Actually Damages Ecosystems” [The Wire]. “Tree planting has been widely promoted as a solution to climate change, because plants absorb the climate-warming gases from Earth’s atmosphere as they grow…. Many of those trees could be planted in tropical grassy biomes according to the report. These are the savannas and grasslands that cover large swathes of the globe and have a grassy ground layer and variable tree cover. Like forests, these ecosystems play a major role in the global carbon balance. Studies have estimated that grasslands store up to 30% of the world’s carbon that’s tied up in soil. Covering 20% of Earth’s land surface, they contain huge reserves of biodiversity, comparable in areas to tropical forest…. Savannas and grasslands are home to nearly one billion people, many of whom raise livestock and grow crops… Calls for global tree planting programmes to cool the climate need to think carefully about the real implications for all of Earth’s ecosystems. The right trees need to be planted in the right places. Otherwise, we risk a situation where we miss the savanna for the trees, and these ancient grassy ecosystems are lost forever.”

“‘This is the beginning’: new study warns climate crisis may have been pivotal in rise of drug-resistant superbug” [Monthly Review]. “A new analysis warns that ‘global warming may have played a pivotal role’ in the recent rise of a multidrug-resistant fungal superbug, sparking questions and concerns about the emerging public health threats of the human-caused climate crisis…. ‘The argument that we are making based on comparison to other close relative fungi is that as the climate has gotten warmer, some of these organisms, including Candida auris, have adapted to the higher temperature, and as they adapt, they break through human’s protective temperatures,” lead author Arturo Casadevall, chair of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in a statement.”

“By separating life stages, metamorphosis may circumvent harmful evolutionary tradeoffs” [PNAS]. • I’m only leaving this here in case there’s an evolutionary biologist in the house who can explain it.

Health Care

“What the Measles Epidemic Really Says About America” [The Atlantic]. “Bright-blue counties in Northern California, Washington State, and Oregon have some of the lowest vaccination rates in the country.” • There’s the lead, buried fourteen paragraphs down.

Games

“Fame and ‘Fortnite’ — inside the global gaming phenomenon” [Financial Times]. “Fortnite is technically a video game, and one with a simple premise. At the start, players drop on to an island and shoot each other until only one person is left standing. Each match lasts about 20 minutes and slowly, the numbers whittle down. A storm approaches, making the map smaller and smaller. If you jump off the island you die. Antoine Griezmann, the French football star, said playing Fortnite makes him more stressed than professional football.” • Truly a game for the neoliberal era….

Guillotine Watch

Class Warfare

But everywhere in chains (MA):

I am VERY RARELY able to access toilets while away from home in San Francisco. I am white, English-speaking, able-bodied and might be perceived as professional.

An experience last night really cemented the cruelty of San Francisco and the gig economy it has shaped. #thread

— Hans Lindahl (@hiHelloHans) August 2, 2019

(Similar case; different reaction.) So Uber has turned cab-driving into an Amazon warehouse. Here is one response to the thread above:

This is going to sound silly, but maybe this could work. There should be an app where you could summon a truck mounted port a potty to come wherever you are. Making it credit card based would keep out the messy customers. Like Uber, but for pooping.

— Jim Maruschak

(@JimMaruschak) August 3, 2019

“Make it credit-card based….” I wonder if the repellently infantile word “poop” has suddenly achieved ubiquity because our symbol manipulators are seeing more of it?

“Disaggregating data by race allows for more accurate research” [Nature]. “The term ‘women of colour’ was introduced as a symbol of political solidarity, but its evolution to a biological term encompassing all non-white women has resulted in aggregation of data from diverse ethnic groups. Breaking out statistics by race, ethnicity and gender is therefore crucial for researchers who are committed to inclusion.” • Nothing on income. Superb class erasure!

“How the Other Half Matriculates” [Inside Higher Ed]. “As a community college administrator, it was hard not to notice the sheer wealth of the university…. After the orientation, we spent a couple of days at Virginia Beach to make it feel like a vacation. At one point, the young woman behind the counter at the hotel asked me about the Brookdale Summer Shakespeare Festival t-shirt I was wearing. She mentioned that she had never seen a Shakespeare play. I suggested that the local community college might be a good place to look. She seemed satisfied with that answer. When I mentioned that outdoor community college summer productions are often free, she seemed especially happy with that. Economic reality has a way of creeping in, no matter how pretty the bubble. Back to reality…”

“The Appeal and Limits of Andrea Dworkin” [Jacobin]. “Not coincidentally, Dworkin’s influence grew as the backlash against feminism took hold in the eighties, when the utopian visions of the whirlwind period lost their persuasive power. Her dystopian vision of a women’s experience dominated at all times by male violence, or the fear of it, could feel like a bold stance against feel-good corporate feminism, especially in the absence of a dynamic left…. Particularly prescient, and often ignored in reconsiderations of her work, was Dworkin’s analysis of the Right and its appeal to women — perhaps including herself — in Right Wing Women, written in the early years of the Reagan administration. Dworkin showed how conservative women, far from denying, ignoring, or even embracing sexism, made what often looked like rational trade-offs: in exchange for the promise of what she termed ‘enforceable restraints on male aggression,’ women received relative degrees of safety, economic security, and respect. Dworkin also offered an indictment, highly relevant today, of liberal feminism and its unwillingness to view the women it failed to reach as anything other than dupes.”

News of the Wired

“The 11-step guide to running effective meetings” [Nature]. “1. Do you need a meeting?” • Excellent!

“Recursive language and modern imagination were acquired simultaneously 70,000 years ago” [Phys.org]. “Numerous archeological and genetic evidence have already convinced most paleoanthropologists that the speech apparatus has reached essentially modern configurations before the human line split from the Neanderthal line 600,000 years ago…. On the other hand, artifacts signifying modern imagination, such as composite figurative arts, elaborate burials, bone needles with an eye, and construction of dwellings arose not earlier than 70,000 years ago…. While studying acquisition of imagination in children, Dr. Vyshedskiy and his colleagues discovered a temporal limit for the development of a particular component of imagination. It became apparent that modern children who have not been exposed to full language in early childhood never acquire the type of active constructive imagination essential for juxtaposition of mental objects, known as Prefrontal Synthesis (PFS)…. Thus, the existence of a strong critical period for PFS acquisition creates a cultural evolutionary barrier for acquisition of recursive language…. The second predicted evolutionary barrier was a faster PFC maturation rate and, consequently, a shorter critical period…. An evolutionary mathematical model, developed by Dr. Vyshedskiy, predicts that humans had to jump both evolutionary barriers within several generations since the “PFC delay” mutation that is found in all modern humans, but not in Neanderthals, is deleterious and is expected to be lost in a population without an associated acquisition of PFS and recursive language. Thus, the model suggests that the ‘PFC delay’ mutation triggered simultaneous synergistic acquisition of PFS and recursive language…. Such an invention of a new recursive language has been observed in contemporary children, for example among deaf children in Nicaragua.” • Culture ignites! Fascinating stuff. I’ve quoted the set-up, but check the last few paragraphs for the summary.

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. Today’s plant (JN):

What a lovely wooded brook!

Bonus plantidote (Re Silc):

Re Silc writes: “My first mobile build.” We have our own Calder! This is more plant-adjacent than plant, but it looks like a really interesting project? I wonder if other readers have done similar things? If so, send in your pictures!

* * *

Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. So do feel free to make a contribution today or any day. Here is why: Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for five or ten days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:

Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated.

Readers, thank you very much. The mix of one-time contributions to smaller, monthly subscriptions is now more like what is was, and hence the total I budget for is back to normal as well. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! So if you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form…

If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!

2:00PM Water Cooler 8/5/2019

from WordPress https://ift.tt/33gZkfI via IFTTT

#Digital Marketing #SEO #Social Media Marketing #Nigeria Digital Marketing Company #Lead Generation

0 notes