Welcome to Swans Commentary http://www.swans.com/ November 15, 2010
*** FUNDRAISING DRIVE: If rants appeal to you, dear readers, then turn your attention to MSNBC, Fox News, Antiwar.com, other news aggregators, and the myriad noisy outputs that emphasize either the status quo or some reactionary future. If not, and you wish to keep thinking about real matters like, say, working to change the socioeconomic system, and you consider that culture is an intrisic component of society, then Swans is directed to you. If a few original thoughts (and original work not found anywhere else) are your call, then Swans is for you. Understand the difference. Whether a donation of $5, $75, or $100, they all are welcome, but again -- if our approach is worthy of your interest -- you need to up the ante. $180 in the past cycle were much appreciated. Still it won't be enough to keep Swans going in its current form. Please, friends and comrades, help us. We need another $1,700+ to keep providing you with real content. Do Donate now! http://www.swans.com/about/donate.html Many thanks to Brandon Haleamau, Dimitri Oram, and Philip Fornaci for their generous contributions. *** # # # # # Note from the Editors: Much has been written about last week's G20 summit and its failure to take steps to address currency devaluation and ward off potential trade wars, with economic relations apparently falling apart in this global recession. Yet, little has been written about the Tenth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, Japan, in which Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program, asserted that "This meeting is part of the world's efforts to address a very simple fact -- we are destroying life on Earth." What do these two seemingly disparate conferences have in common? Gilles d'Aymery answers that question in Part III of his excellent series, The Economy Is Not Coming Back: The Reasons it Shouldn't -- a detailed yet easily digestible assessment of the link between the socioeconomic paradigm built on capital accumulation, perpetual material growth, and financial profits and the absolute destruction of the ecosystem. This powerful essay addresses the shocking statistics ignored by politicians and the mainstream media on fossil fuels, carbon dioxide emissions, climate change and global warming, plastic in the oceans, and the demise of fishes, concluding that the economy should not come back if the ecosystems are to survive. Fran Shor addresses one aspect of the problem in his piece on hydraulic fracturing drilling for natural gas, which will have an increasingly devastating impact on the environment as the power of the energy industry expands this practice, along with its reach into the federal government. Just as the environmental movement has been sidelined by politics, so too was the civil rights movement. Michael Barker divulges the US government's co-option of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, where Robert Kennedy assured activists that if they redirected their energies towards voter registration, "financial support for such projects would be made available by private foundations." The demise of SNCC was inevitable...Turning to contemporary politics, Jan Baughman looks at the 2010 midterm elections and asks if progressives will learn from the outcome and the success of the Tea Party, and finally vote on their principles and not continue to support the two-party system that repeatedly fails them. Jim Travis notes that despairing of conventional politics, militant peace activists are turning to radical tactics; he presents a conversation with author William T. Hathaway, a Special Forces combat veteran turned peace activist. And Maxwell Clark attended a talk at Yale University by philosopher, writer, and feminist Avital Ronell, noting contradictions in her discourse and her fundamental class allegiance. In the spirit of the financial "settlements" that well-heeled executives are given to pay their way out of prosecution, Charles Marowitz proposes a new branch of the Justice Department to apply this opportunity to all criminals, and help reduce the national debt at the same time! Meanwhile, Michael Doliner wonders whether China "expert" David Shambaugh's saber rattling against China is because he's a con man or an idiot. Concluding our political discourse in Africa, Femi Akomolafe has some advice for Ghanaian chief justice Georgina Wood, who remains oblivious to judicial integrity and the unethicality of her purchase of low-priced government land. On the culture front, Peter Byrne parodies Ernest Hemmingway by imagining a trip he might have made to the island of Corfu with all his clichés, tics, and confabulations in tow. Through the lament of a prisoner, Guido Monte and Claudine Giovannoni search for where dreams begin and the magic of life ends. Fabio de Propris offers a poetic consideration of Michelangelo's Moses and Geppetto's Pinocchio, in Italian with English translation by Peter Byrne. As always, we close with your letters, this time on Graham Lea's French Literature And Jean Giono, Jan Baughman's review of The Tillman Story and more resources on the cover-up from David Parish, and Philip Fornaci's rebuttal to the systemic despair in Michael Doliner's After The Fall, reassuring us that the aftermath should be better for the masses. Let's hope Fornaci is the one that has it right... # # # # # All the articles and the Letters to the Editor can be freely accessed from Swans front page. 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