Links of the Month: March 2022

message I recently received from FB; I hadn’t realized they were so powerful ;-)  

“The modern sense of being a hero is shining a bright light on things that need to be seen.” — Ali Smith

Thank you to Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and other journalists, whistleblowers and writers who dare to suggest an alternative truth to that of the rich and powerful, and present the evidence for it. We need you, more than ever.

Please be forewarned — the links are heavy going this month.

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COLLAPSE WATCH

photo of pumpjack by Jeff McIntosh for CP/AP/CBC; methane emissions from the oil & gas sector are rising by at least 5%/year, but most of the leaks and emissions are unmonitored

Future’s so bright I gotta wear green shades: Tim Watkins explains the absurdity of “net-zero”, carbon capture, renewable energy, Green New Deal, carbon offsets and other shovel-this-under-the-rug schemes. “One final imperialist blowout before global industrial civilisation is done”. Thanks to Paul Heft for the link.

And that’s an understatement: Methane emissions are at least 70% higher than “official” data, according to a recent study focused on the huge methane leakage from all forms of hydrocarbon extraction.

So what “we” need to do…: The token environmentalist in Trudeau’s cabinet says “we” need to prepare for catastrophic climate change. And while “we” need to reduce emissions, his government is merrily doing the opposite. I guess they’re not “we”.

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LIVING BETTER

“sorry mom, I just can’t get used to the heels”; photo by David Irving of Kagus in New Caledonia, from the Macaulay Library collection

Just don’t be white: Indi Samarajiva says it’s time to quit apologizing for being a member of White Empire and its excesses, and instead, reject it. The battery of global industrial capitalism needs to be called out, named and shamed.

De-task the police: Former Toronto Mayor John Sewell (yes, that city once had some good ones) says the only way to reform the police is to take away most of the work of police forces and give it to social service workers who are far more competent to deal with 90% of the issues police now are called to attend to. And much cheaper.

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POLITICS AND ECONOMICS AS USUAL

Countries sanctioning Russia so far (green). Countries in grey have imposed no sanctions, and many have said they will not do so. Up to date per Reuters. Map from wikipedia; thanks to Indi Samarajiva for the link.

Everywhere but in the mirror: In a gut-wrenching new piece, Indi suggests that maybe we’re the bad guys, the global bullies, the committers of endless atrocities. Maybe fascists actually won WWII and, thanks to the endless propaganda, we’ve been in denial ever since. He writes:

And so [we have] Umair Haque, saying that America shouldn’t leave [Afghanistan], that the Taliban, who could barely pay their soldiers, wanted to take over the world… It’s a fucking joke, like everything is a Bond movie and every villain is always trying to take over the world. It’s a killing joke because millions of Afghan people are being starved right now… The idea that the Taliban is imperial, as Umair calls it, is just a lie. We live in a unipolar world and there’s only one Empire, with over 800 military bases and financial sieges encircling the world. And it’s not the fucking Taliban. We have a bunch of local terrors, but keep an eye on the Empire stitching its terror into one, global [forever] war. Let’s be honest. Saddam, Bin Laden, the amorphous Taliban, these are all knock-off Hitlers. White Empire requires the idea of someone worse than them so they can continue doing [the horrible things they do]. After fucking decades of this, however, the crowds are getting bored. They’ve seen it before… They long for the good old days, fighting the good old Red Empire. And so White Empire kept expanding NATO long after the USSR fell, despite many strategists saying this was madness. Who was NATO fighting, after the Warsaw Pact fell?… What they were really doing was looking for a fight. And so after many warnings in 2008 and 2014—after so many strategists saying parking missiles next to Russia was as bad as the Cuban Missile Crisis—they finally got a real fucking war. Happening to real (honorary) Europeans…White Empire could barely contain its glee. A villain, a real villain, something to stop all the fingers pointing at [us].”

The horrors of starvation and of suffering: It’s easy when you live thousands of miles and sometimes decades away from them, to not think about the costs, the misery, the terror and the fury of war, oppression, and destitution. Two essays offer that missing perspective. Tad Patzek describes the hardest moments in his life as an emigré from Poland and Ukraine and how he understandably came to hate Russia and everything it stands for. And Indi describes the ghastly horror of hunger and starvation, especially of one’s children, and the outrage that we continue to allow and enable it to happen so often. Thanks to Joe Clarkson for the first link.

The Russia/NATO proxy war in Ukraine: You can get one side of this story, written by the CIA/DOD “intelligence reporters” and dutifully published without question or evidence by the stenographers at the NYT, WaPo (“Democracy dies in darkness.”), Guardian, Atlantic, New Yorker, or indeed Fox News or any of the other mainstream media. You know, the same gang that brought you the Iraq War you almost all bought into. Following, for anyone interested, is a short library of articles explaining a different perspective on this war. It fully acknowledges and doesn’t condone the extreme cruelty and stupidity of Putin’s invasion, but otherwise it’s a very different story. Better read it now, before the censors take away your right to do so. Thanks to John Whiting and Paul and Ben Heft for many of these links:

• • Negotiating a ceasefire is the only way: From Caitlin Johnstone: “Pouring more weapons into Ukraine is not how you save lives; you save lives by negotiating a ceasefire. Pouring more weapons into Ukraine is how you create a long and expensive military quagmire for Russia at the cost of many thousands of lives to advance US strategic interests. While making a vast fortune for the arms industry”. Also from Caitlin: The US intelligence community’s long history of lying to foment support for other wars. And how the US/NATO deliberately drew Russia into a destabilizing war in Ukraine, lied to Zelenskyy, and does not want a peaceful resolution to the invasion. And she points out that “74 percent of Americans now say they support a US/NATO no-fly zone in Ukraine because the press and the pollsters (and politicians) aren’t doing their fucking job and telling people what those words mean“. And that the pro-war spin-doctors have been furiously and repeatedly screaming that “the war isn’t about NATO”, because they think if people hear that often enough they’ll believe it’s true. (Hmm, wonder where they got that idea?)
  • US Professor John Mearsheimer on the history of the conflict and NATO’s bad faith. Interview with Kings College. Outstanding.
  • How NATO expansion was encouraged: From Democracy Now: Former US Ambassador Jack Matlock explains the motivation to expand NATO and the similarities to the Cuban missile crisis.
  • John Pilger on the 2014 coup and the rise and legalization of neofascist anti-Russian “Pure Ukraine” militias. From Information Clearing House. Also: a pre-CoVid-19 interview with John Pilger, predicting and explaining what’s happened.
  • The US/NATO attempt to sabotage the Russia/Germany Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project. Also from Information Clearing House.
  • John Kerry’s very different message to Putin in 2015. Back from when diplomacy was given a chance, before the war-mongers took over. From the Nation (archive; article has been taken down).
  • Who the Azov Battalion (now promoted to Regiment and made a legal part of Ukraine’s army) really are. From wikipedia. Just because your president is Jewish doesn’t mean your army isn’t full of brutal, hate-mongering fascists. Facebook has just made it legal again to praise this group, and to call for the murder of Russians.
  • What Putin says he wants: Per the Consortium News, and his four stated conditions for ceasefire, per the CBC: (“Ukraine drop its bid to join NATO and adopt a neutral status. Acknowledge the Russian sovereignty over Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Recognize the independence of separatist regions in the country’s east. Agree to demilitarize Ukraine.”) Of course he may be lying, but what’s the harm of calling his bluff and trying détente? It might actually end a brutal and un-winnable war.
  • Journalist Tariq Ali on the false dichotomies of the war, and the anti-war movement in Russia. And the need for immediate de-escalation. From Democracy Now.
  • US Professor Tom Preston describes why Putin feels trapped as NATO military bases move ever closer. From the Foley Institute.
  • One lone voice at the Guardian says the war was predictable and avoidable (thanks to Dr Scanlon for this link).
  • A writer in Counterpunch, before the invasion, wonders why NATO even still exists, if its purpose isn’t simply to threaten and conquer Russia.
  • The Massachusetts Peace Action coalition says there are no good guys in this, that ending the war should be the only and immediate priority, and that Putin’s “demands” don’t seem unreasonable as a basis for negotiation.
  • A reporter for Portside/Truthout suggests we should acknowledge just how much the arms industry stands to gain if this is another long and intractable war.
  • Al Jazeera points out the chasm between the west’s response to war in, and refugees from, “white” Ukraine, and its response to similar wars and crises in non-European countries.
  • Indi Samarajiva laments that child soldiers are being permitted and even encouraged to go into battle in this war, noting that non-professional fighters always die disproportionately in wars against skilled and experienced armies.
  • And Jonathan Cook sums it all up: This is a proxy war, a war of attrition like the decades-long proxy wars the US and its NATO “allies” have waged in so many other countries. It can serve no purpose but to destabilize, create decades of anger and resentment, kill and maim thousands or millions, and provide massive profits to the “arms industry”, and a distraction for the incompetence, inaction and misdeeds of its proxies’ governments.

The “War On Of Terror”: Nafeez Ahmed, based on a recent commission, has concluded that about six million people have died so far as a result of the “war on terror” since 2001. And 38 million others have been displaced.

The growing shadow of censorship: Many writers, concerned about being censored or demonetized by the silicon valley social media mafia, are starting to censor themselves. “People shying away from speech they could be punished for does a lot more to restrict speech than the punishments themselves.” And a US State Dept rep has already called for the censorship of Caitlin Johnstone. Wonder who will be next? And what happens when they take over Wikipedia?

CoVid-19 is more like smoking than the ‘flu: “Hundreds of thousands of deaths, from either tobacco or the pandemic, could be prevented with a single behavioral change.” Yep, and millions of deaths from unhealthy diets could likewise be prevented. But, alas, only in theory. That would require restricting people’s “freedoms”.

Harvesting animals for their organs — a new obscenity: The New Yorker celebrates the “medical miracle” of the first successful transplant of a heart from a pig to a human (update: the patient died), and envisions the days when pigs and other intelligent creatures can be used to grow all kinds of human organs, and then slaughtered to harvest them. Am I the only one that finds this grotesque, a reason for outrage not celebration? PBS discussed this a few years ago, but still it goes on.

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FUN AND INSPIRATION

cartoon by David Ostow and Dan Salomon

Funny headlines:

• • A spoof, from Andy Borowitz: “Republicans Support Democracy in Ukraine as Long as It Does Not Spread to U.S.”
  • And a real one, strange and macabrely funny, from the CBC: “B.C. reports 14 fewer people in hospital with COVID-19, 14 more deaths.”

You don’t want a gas stovetop: Hank Green explains why. (You need an induction cooktop, but don’t plan to use it with your copper, aluminum, or glass cookware.)

It’s your friends who break your heart: An interesting reflection from the Atlantic’s Jennifer Senior on the struggles to find and nurture and sustain friendships. And an equally fascinating rebuttal from Margaret Atwood.

Ask Bill what’s next: Veritasium’s Derek Muller asked Bill Gates about the successes and failures of the pandemic, and also what he thought might be the next crises: His answer? Climate collapse and bioterrorism.

Work is pointless: What happens when an online community gets hijacked by a group who want to take it in a very different direction from what the founders intended? It’s called sanewashing (“taking a movement that was originally extreme and attempting to rehabilitate its image by downplaying its origins.”) The antiwork subreddit began as a small group who philosophically wanted to overthrow capitalism and abolish work, but morphed into a huge gentrified neoliberal group who wanted more meaningful work, better working conditions and respectful bosses. So when the founder appeared on Fox News and was ridiculed, she was booted out of her own group. So if you think work really is pointless and the system needs to be overthrown, you’ll have to find another group. Thanks to Ben Collver for the link.

Did the universe “inflate”?: Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder takes on the scientific controversy over whether the universe exponentially inflated right after the supposed Big Bang. In her usual erudite, accessible and enjoyable style, she skewers the ideologues on both sides of the debate. She’s also a skeptic on “dark matter”, and is remarkably open-minded about the nature of reality and the origin and make-up of the universe, insisting “We just don’t know.”

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THOUGHTS OF THE MONTH

cartoon by the ever-astonishing Will McPhail

From Loren Eiseley in The Star Thrower:

We are rag dolls made out of many ages and skins, changelings who have slept in wood nests, and hissed in the uncouth guise of waddling amphibians. We have played such roles for infinitely longer ages than we have been human. Our identity is a dream. We are process, not reality.

Over the whole earth — this infinitely small globe that possesses all we know of sunshine and bird song — an unfamiliar blight is creeping: man. Man, who has become at last a planetary disease and who would, if his technology yet permitted, pass this infection to another star.

From Dennis Mitchell (comment to my blog):

I worked as an apprentice, painting. My teacher and friend told me,”Be careful of what you do, because you will end up doing it.” I wasted too many years working construction because I failed to follow his advice.

From Milk and Honey by Indian-Canadian poet Rupi Kaur:

people go
but how
they left
always stays

From Ali Smith‘s Spring:

Dear Dermot and Patrick, Thank you for your email. It was your mother who was the writer not me, so forgive the infelicities of expression there will no doubt be in this ‘story’ I am sending you to try to express what she meant to me. There are of course literally close to a million stories I could send you, to illustrate what she meant, both to me and in the world. But here is just one. When my marriage broke up 30 years ago and my wife and child left the country and to all intents and purposes left my life I was very depressed and for quite some time. One day your mother suggested that I ‘take’ my child to see some theatre shows or films, or take her on holiday, or to see an art exhibition – which basically meant of course anything your mother had made up her mind that I myself should make the effort to go and see. I said, ‘But how?’ She said, ‘Use your imagination. Take her to see things. Believe me your child will be imagining you too wherever she is in the world. So meet each other imaginatively.’ I laughed. ‘I’m serious,’ your mother said. ‘Take her to see things. And tell her to send me a postcard whenever you do go to see things or places. Just so I know you’ve taken me seriously.’ I thought your mother was being very kind, but that it was a rather silly idea. But to my surprise I found myself doing just that, ‘taking’ an imaginary daughter to things I’d never have gone to otherwise. Arcadia, Cats, all the big shows. I saw works by Leonardo at the Hayward, by Monet at the Royal Academy, modern art, Hockney, Moore, I saw too many Shakespeares, I visited the Dome show at the Millennium. I can’t begin to count the number of films and shows I saw at cinemas and theatres and galleries and museums all over the world, and strange as it may seem and still does seem to me, I did none of it alone, thanks to the gift of your mother’s imagination.

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