GST Original Articles
By R. Burke / 05 April 2016
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A review by R. Burke of Nick Srnicek & Alex Williams' Inventing the Future; Postcapitalism and a World Without Work.
A necessary ingredient for the success of the world-left is a cultural climate of modernism. We may debate exactly when the period of modernism begins, but referencing the history of Western Art can help us to define it. From its beginnings with the realism of Courbet in the mid-nineteenth century, to its’ golden age with surrealism in the mid-twentieth century, modernism... Read more
By Stan Cox / 27 March 2016
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A Review of Brian Tokar's book Toward Climate Justice: Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and Social Justice (Porsgrunn, Norway: New Compass Press, 2014).
This expanded edition of Brian Tokar's book is a concise, valuable summing-up of the most important issue facing humanity today: how to stop runaway climate chaos while at the same time achieving justice in the distribution of economic power, resources, and the hard work of ecological renewal, both within and among countries.
The first... Read more
By R. Burke / 16 March 2016
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A review by R. Burke of Douglas Murphy's Last Futures; Nature, Technology and the End of Architecture.
Those of us who lived during the ‘60’s and early ‘70’s can remember a time when it was taken for granted that technological progress would lead to some kind of utopian world. The 1964 World’s Fair in New York and Expo 67's “Man and His World” exhibition in Montreal played a big role in defining our images of the future. These expositions, in which the geodesic domes of Buckminster Fuller... Read more
By Kim Scipes / 14 February 2016
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“Where to Invade Next” by Michael Moore, reviewed by Kim Scipes
Michael Moore’s new movie, “Where to Invade Next” is not what you’d expect from Moore. It is not some jeremiad against US nefariousness somewhere around the world, nor is it an enraged assault on capitalism, our health care “system” or anything else.
What it is, in reality, is a call to our highest ideals. But it is sly, sly, sly—and subtle. Not what one associates with the name Michael Moore.
Moore takes on a tour of... Read more
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More Reading Recommended by GST
By Paul Koberstein / 30 April 2017
Synthetic biology, commonly defined as the science of manipulating or editing genomes to engineer new living organisms, is basically genetic engineering 2.0. This rapidly growing biotech field is expected to be worth $38.7 billion by 2020. And right now, gene drives are the most exciting – and most potentially dangerous – new tool in the bio-hacking toolkit.
By Gavin O'Toole / 28 April 2017
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It is easy to understand scholarly and progressive interest in this year’s centennial of the Russian revolution, but harder to explain why there is little apparent enthusiasm for an anniversary that is arguably more important – that of Mexico’s 1917 constitution, signed on February 5, 1917. In fact, Mexico’s constitution provided the model for the first Soviet constitution. Its failure to inspire... Read more
By Kim Scipes / 22 April 2017
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Review of three books on black subjugation, slavery and white supremacy, and argues these three things need to be placed at the center of the Americqn experience.
By Thom Hartmann / 20 April 2017
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Imagine if the U.S. Constitution barred the EPA and Department of Education from existing. All union protections are dead, there are no more federal workplace safety standards, and even child-labor laws are struck down, along with a national minimum wage.Imagine that the Constitution makes it illegal for the federal government to protect you from big polluters, big banks and even big food and... Read more
By Emily Achtenberg / 19 April 2017
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Last November, representatives of 17 indigenous communities held a vigil at the site of two megadams—El Chepete and El Bala—that President Evo Morales plans to build in Bolivia’s Amazonian region. The protesters blocked access to the site by Geodata, the Italian firm hired by the government to study the dams’ feasibility. Twelve days later, Geodata’s engineers withdrew their equipment, announcing... Read more
By Jeremy Brecher / 13 April 2017
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Is there anything people can do about climate change in the Trump era? The new American president has asserted that global warming is a fraud perpetrated by the Chinese to steal American jobs; threatened to ignore or even withdraw from the Paris climate agreement; and pledged unlimited burning of fossil fuels. Whatever the details, Trump’s agenda will escalate global warming far beyond its... Read more
By Gary Younge / 11 April 2017
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Shortly before leaving America for Britain, after 12 years as a correspondent, the relative of one of my son’s friends politely declined my invitation to visit us in London.
“I don’t think I could go to Europe,” she said. “It doesn’t seem safe.”
Try as I might I could not suppress a laugh. My wife and children are African American. I am British. We were living in Chicago.