Category: Uncategorized
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Doughnut Economics Boots Capitalism Out!
The rapid rise of Covid-19 has spawned a renaissance in socio-economic thinking about the best way to face the future, as mayors of cities throughout the world search for answers in the face of declining revenues while society demands more urgent help. Eureka! Amsterdam, the Venice of the North, discovers doughnut economics. With a click…
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“America is Back” – Joe Biden’s US Foreign Policy
US President Biden bellicosely proclaimed, “American is back,” in his major foreign policy priorities speech at the Munich Security Conference on February 19. Repeated twice for effect, Biden signaled the end of the Trump interregnum. No more assuring words could have been uttered for George W. Bush’s former Defense Secretary Colin Powell and the 70…
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25 Years of GMOs, and Some New Insights from Argentina
In the winter of 1996, Monsanto and a few other companies first began to sell genetically engineered seeds to commercial growers, and also mounted a massive public relations effort to convince people of their supposed benefits. They hyped their new GMOs as the answer to world hunger, a way to help troubled farmers stay on…
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Menacing Methane: An Analysis
“The story of methane really is a story of a very serious definitive threat to our future existence on this planet.” (Peter Wadhams) Legendary Arctic explorers Sir James Clark Ross, who located the northern magnetic pole in 1831, and Sir William Edward Parry, who set a record in 1827 for the Farthest North exploration serve…
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Is This Revolution Truly Rinky-Dink?
During the late 60s, when the US war on Viet Nam was going strong and people were questioning capitalism, I drove from Eugene to Berkeley where my sister was living. I ran into folks who invited me to a discussion about starting a commune. There, everyone talked about dropping out of consumer society and buying…
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An Exhausted Planet Limps into 2021
Early this new year, the Alliance of World Scientists (13,700 strong) delivered a biting report, not mincing words: “Scientists now find that catastrophic climate change could render a significant portion of the Earth uninhabitable consequent to continued high emissions, self-reinforcing climate feedback loops and looming tipping points.” (Source: William J. Ripple, et al, The Climate…
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Do You Remember Cuba’s Dedication to Angola?
Anti-apartheid protests in South Africa in the 1980s. Paul Weinberg/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0 Cuban blood left its stamp on the conscience of the world after the Angolan Wars of 1975-1988. Corporate politicians are united in their desire for us to ignore this reality. * * * Fed up with foreign wars, Portuguese officers overthrew…
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Two Principles of Racial Equity that Outrage Liberals
From left: Toussaint L’Ouverture, Gabriel Prosser and Denmark Vesey The May 25, 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked a civil rights explosion. It ignited pushes to demilitarize the police, reallocate police over-funding to necessary social services, end economic and power divides,…
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Should NYC’s Wall Street Be Renamed “Eric Garner St.?”
Scenes of sorrow spread across the US. Football teams apologize. Cops march with demonstrators. Democratic Party politicians call for “structural change” in police departments. Delmar Blvd. at Sgt. Mike King Dr. Image by David Doonan. Some of these are sincere. Others are crocodile tears shed in hopes that people will be pacified with assurances…
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How Che Guevara Taught Cuba to Confront COVID-19
La Colonia de San Pablo, Peru Beginning in December 1951, Ernesto “Che” Guevara took a nine-month break from medical school to travel by motorcycle through Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela. One of his goals was gaining practical experience with leprosy. On the night of his twenty-fourth birthday, Che was at La Colonia de San…
