G'day all,
Indignant sermon alert.
Why, oh why, does every list with a couple of lefties on it have to talk about
Stalin?
We have a US, illicitly ruled by oil interests, building ever larger consumer
vehicles, opposing even modest 'greenhouse' amelioration policies, opposing
any argument that at least some things in this world need more rational
treatment than 'market forces' can deliver, strategically tenable only as an
all-powerful military machine, on the brink of losing its
world-system-sustaining capacity to import products from a plethora of
economies that would collapse should the giant maw ever close - on the brink,
indeed, of an accumulation crisis that could spark a rolling global credit crunch.
We have scientifically proven global warming dynamics that are already
manifesting in unprecedented melts and a concatenation of disastrous weather
phenomena. We have overwhelming and widely remarked expert calls for the
urgent introduction of new energy regimes, and a serious debate as to the
capacity of 'markets' to bring that about. We have a global mood of
questioning received truths and reappraising ends and means and the very
structure of power that has so long had the world in thrall.
We have crises in protein production - no fish in the sea and tainted ones in
the fish-farms - and perhaps an agriculture system no longer capable of
guaranteeing good protein to hungry mouths, but fully capable of keeping
farmers in poor countries in poverty. We have a crisis in the extension of
artificial monopoly rights to the field of medicine production - where private
interests concerning often publicly developed medicines are trumping the lives
and livelihoods of hundreds of millions.
Oh, and enormous countries like Indonesia, Turkey and Argentina look on the
precipice of civil trauma and famine-inducing economic crises ... China's
pulling back from the brink of full capitalist integration ... and just wait
until Japan's flash new PM gets in and opens the Pandora's Box of its finance
sector ...
And we've got to sit and listen to arguments about stuff that was history
before most of us were born, concerning individuals and ideologies that have
nothing to contribute, either to our environmental problems or to the need to
give democratic voice to the billions who are so much more productive and
flexible than the creaking old institutions which got us here.
Stuff's happening out there, comrades! We're living in interesting times!
And I humbly (nah, stridently) submit we'd be better employed trying to work
out what the constraints and opportunities are in this cataclysmic becoming
than we are looking to comparisons between a dead mad tyrant and a dissolved
and hopeless old organisation. Even the debate on relatively recent, and just
possibly relevant, stuff to do with Milo and NATO is carefully designed to
sustain heat at the expense of light.
I mean, this stuff just ain't useless, it's BORING.
Best to all,
Rob.
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