Carrol wrote: I think OPEN BORDERS is one of those rallying points. A four-day week is another. Stop all Foreign Aid a third. All troops within the 50 states another. Eliminate the Prison system. And so forth. Keep conversation going on such topics within both local organizations and national forums.
ehrbar wrote: Carrol, I don't think the slogan "Stop all foreign aid" is defensible. Since the US has historically emitted a huge amount of CO2 into the atmosphere, the US owes the developing nations a lot of aid to compensate them for the cost of climate change and to help them pursue a development path based on renewable energy. Almost nobody is talking about this, this is not part of common consciousness. If the Left promotes the slogan "Stop all foreign aid" they co-operate with this conspiracy of silence and put themselves in opposition to the necessities dictated by the present climate emergency. See The Greenhouse Development Rights Framework: The Right to Development in a Climate Constrained World (executive summary) at http://www.ecoequity.org/GDRs/GDRs_ExecSummary.pdf This is the third time I have enountered this argument though the occasion was different each time. I can't remember the details of the first time, but it involved and exchange between me and an ISU professor of political science who had been in Nicaraguar shortly before the Sandinistas took power. He thought we should urge the U.S. to provide aid to Nicaragua; I suggested that the best thing the U.S. could do for Nicaragua was leave it alone. He argued vigorously that the country was so poor, the earthquake had done so much damage, that they could not possibly survive without u.s. aid. Well we know that the U.S. sent aid in the form of the Contras. The second debate on this issue I remember. Shortly aftert the U.S. invasion of Iraq there was a discussion on another list over the proper position of the anti-war movement. Several writers urged that the left pressure the u.s. government to repair the damage it had done before leaving. Part of the evidence for this position was a poll in Iraq which showed that a large majority of Iraqi citizens held this position, while only 14% were for immediate withdrawal. But of course the longer the U.S. stays, the greater will be the damage that must be repaired, the more likely will be a savage civil wqr after the u.s. departs. The U.S. nevere repairs the damage it has done but simply increases the damage. Really, it has to be understood that U.S. foereign aid always has been, is now, and always will be destructive to the people of the nation receiving the aid. That aid will not be supervised by leftists, it will be implemented by those who believe that Africa is insufficiently polluted. U.S. aid under the slogan of renewable clean energy will in practice simply increase the pollution in the nations aided. When anything like a coherent left comes into existence in the U.S. it will show its solidarity with u.s. victims by a campaign anagainst the u.s having anything at all to do with those victims. Carrol _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
