Sunday 12 July 2020

What I've Been Reading, May and June 2020

Links

Above the Fold

  • How Many are Going to Die Because Trump Surrendered to Coronavirus? by Umair Haque, Medium--Eudaimonia
  • Calling overpopulation concern ‘ecofascist’ is absurd and harmful, by Olivia, Empathy Conservation
    "There’s a disturbing new trend of associating concern about human population growth with fascism and racism. Here’s why this is hugely damaging to people and planet."
  • 32 Pictures That Show What White Privilege Looks Like, by Dave Stopera and Matt Stopera, Buzzfeed
  • The Plan Is to Save Capital and Let the People Die, by Hamilton Nolan, Common Dreams
    "Whether Americans know it or not, their government is not working for them. Their government is working on behalf of capital. Humans are now a mere second-order, instrumental factor to be considered based on how it affects capital."
  • How Much Do We Need The Police?, by Leah Donnella, NPR Code Sw!tch
    Almost everything we use the police for could be better dealt with in other ways, ways that would address the underlying problems and solve them.
  • The Surplus Energy Economy—an introduction, by Tim Morgan, Surplus Energy Economics
    How the economy really works.
  • Green economic growth is an article of ‘faith’ devoid of scientific evidence, by Nafeez Ahmed, Medium—Insurge Intelligence
    "Crack team that advised UN Global Sustainable Development Report settle a longstanding debate with hard empirical data"
    "Decoupling is therefore not a truly scientific concept. It is, instead, merely an “abstract possibility that no empirical evidence can disprove but that in the absence of robust empirical evidence or detailed and concrete plans rests, in part, on faith. "Instead of focusing on the mythology that we can continue business-as-usual, we need to find ways to mobilise both technology and fundamental restructuring of our economies and production relations to transition to new forms of prosperity. As Jason Hickel of the London School of Economics has shown: “Over and over again, empirical data shows that it is possible to achieve high levels of human welfare without high levels of GDP with significantly less pressure on the planet. How? By sharing income more fairly and investing in universal health care, education, and other public goods. The evidence is clear: When it comes to delivering long, healthy, flourishing lives for all, this is what counts — this is what progress looks like."
  • Resources for a Better Future—Decoupling, by Timothée Parrique, Un Even Earth
    But the title should have been decoupling debunked. And a good job done of it, too.

Miscellaneous

Black Lives Matter

  • Black Lives Matter
  • Violence Never Works? Really? by Tim Wise, Medium—Equality
  • Opinion: Maybe That Police Station Shouldn’t Have Broken the Law, by Kevin Tit, The Hard Times
  • Letter from a Region in My Mind, by James Baldwin, The New Yorker
    "From 1962: 'Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.' "
  • When Gandhi Was Wrong, by Rafia Zakaria, The Baffler
    "There is no universal resistance strategy"
    Much in this that I don't agree with. It is important to realize the MLK eventually came around to the idea that violent protest may be the only way. Throughout history, much has been achieved through violence, and very little through peaceful protest. And I say this as a man who has no great love for violence.
  • Antifa, explained, by Zack Beauchamp, Vox
    "But it’s one thing to say some members are doing this stuff — a “faction of a faction,” as Bray puts it — and another to argue, as O’Brien does, that antifa is behind the overall tumult. The former is a reasonable suspicion based on antifa’s track record, the latter a political move designed exclusively to provide moral justification for a police crackdown on peaceful protesters."
  • This ‘Equity’ picture is actually White Supremacy at work, by Sippin the EquiTEA, Medium—Race
  • Structural Violence, Wikipedia
    A new term that I have just recently become familiar with and which neatly describes much of the oppression going on today.
  • Life and times at the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, by Shane Burley, Roar Magazine
    "Following a long tradition of left revolutionary praxis, protesters in Seattle have declared a cop-free autonomous zone in the heart of the city."

Defund the Police

Coronavirus

Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

The New Fascism, and Antifa

I hear a lot of well educated people saying that the people some of us are calling fascists don't meet all the criteria for being "real" fascists. Others have even accused us of calling anyone we disagree with a fascist. I predict that a few decades from now those same people will be saying they wish they hadn't been quite so fussy with their definitions, and had acted sooner to oppose these "new fascists", even if they weren't identical to the fascists of the twentieth century.

Resource Depletion, formerly (and still including) Peak Oil

The change in title stems from the fact that it's not just oil that is peaking.

Climate Change

Agriculture

Before jumping to the erroneous conclusion that this section was paid for by Monsanto, stop for a moment and understand that organic agriculture/food is a multi-billion dollar per year industry that relies on fear to get people to buy its product. Millions of dollars are being spent to convince you that non-organic food is dangerous. In fact both conventionally grown and organic foods are equally safe. Sadly neither method of agriculture is even remotely substainable.

Recipes and Cooking

Genetic Engineering

Before jumping to the erroneous conclusion that this section was paid for by Monsanto, stop for a moment and understand that organic agriculture/food is a multi-billion dollar per year industry that relies on fear to get people to buy its product. Millions of dollars are spent to convince you that non-organic food is dangerous. In fact both conventionally grown and organic foods are equally safe. Sadly neither method of agriculture is even remotely substainable.

  • Panic-free GMOs, A Grist Special Series by Nathanael Johnson
    "It’s easy to get information about genetically modified food. There are the dubious anti-GM horror stories that recirculate through social networks. On the other side, there’s the dismissive sighing, eye-rolling, and hand patting of pro-GM partisans. But if you just want a level-headed assessment of the evidence in plain English, that’s in pretty short supply. Fortunately, you’ve found the trove."
    A series of articles that does a pretty good job of presenting the facts about GMOs. I plan to include one article from this series here each month.
  • Genetically modified seed research: What’s locked and what isn’t, by Nathanael Johnson , Grist—Panic Free GMOs
    "Monsanto gets a lot of pain in the public press, but they are the company that interacts the best with public scientists — they have always been on the forefront of pushing public research forward."

American Politics

Debunking Resources

These are of such importance that I've decide to leave them here on an ongoing basis.

Lacking an Owner's Manual

The human body/mind/spirit doesn't come with an owner's manual, and we continually struggle to figure out how best to operate them.

Poverty, Homeless People, Minimum Wage, UBI, Health Care, Affordable Housing

Humour

These are great times for political satire.

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