Fatuous Blogging

The 2009 Mill U award for fatuousness in blogging goes to the White House, the official blog of the office of President of the United States of America.

New Kinds of Leadership

Adapting to a rapidly-changing ecosystem requires new kinds of leadership. State-centric, market-oriented institutions have failed, and indeed are an ongoing impediment to our survival. If humankind has any chance of evolving organizationally to deal with the climate change crisis, it will be the relational understandings of tribal peoples and their network of civil society friends who lead the way; not the US, EU, or UN.

If you look at what the UN does, as opposed to what it says, it isn’t much different from its member states. This isn’t to say we don’t have to deal with its agencies; it only means we have to be as vigilant in holding it accountable as we do the US and EU. Indeed, my associates and I have done just that.

I have written elsewhere  about the UN process on climate change protocols, and its betrayal of the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change, while at the same time paying lip service to their rights under international law. Something many would expect from the governments of Canada and the United States, but oddly not the United Nations.

AFN Informs Prime Minister

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo expresses dismay at Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s remark that Canada has no history of colonialism.

Batasuna

Spain continues persecution of Basques by arresting political leadership.

Give Me a Home

Mother Jones examines the foreclosure relief fiasco.

Stars and Stripes

GRIT TV talks with Jeff Sharlet about the evangelical invasion of US military bases, and the rising stars of the Christian Right.

Diversity or Death

As showcased on the Survival International website, the diversity of humanity is intimately tied to the diversity of nature. Given the contribution to climate change of predatory practices like deforestation for biofuel and open pit mining for luxury goods like oil and diamonds, this loss of diversity has become a death sentence not only for indigenous peoples, but for all humanity.

Becoming Russia

I like to think of the ACORN scandal as another indicator of how corroded our society has become in the wake of thirty years of bi-partisan privatization. When our common wealth is looted at the top, what’s left at the bottom is a culture of crude criminal enterprise. I saw this when my alma mater folded a couple years back as the result of white trust funder trustees in cahoots with Black con artists who made their bones in HUD scams of an earlier era.

As our social fabric unravels further, criminality will continue to infect all classes as a matter of survival. We are in essence, becoming Russia.

Saami Reindeer Threatened

A Vancouver mining company plans to destroy reindeer calving grounds used by Saami herders in northeastern Sweden.

Maintaining the Deception

In 1973, Walter Karp wrote Indispensable Enemies, the definitive book on American politics. In that book, Karp argues that the political theatre of feined conflict between the Republican and Democratic parties is necessary to conceal the fact they are both owned by the American aristocracy.

One of the essential facets of this charade playing out in the American media, academia and public square, are supporting actors who help limit the scope of debate and imagination of the American public. Sometimes these actors are aspiring talking heads, ideologues or politicians, but more often than not, they are crass opportunists echoing messages developed by the respective parties or industries they actually represent. Pious progressive poseurs cautioning pragmatism, religious fundamentalists warning of Armageddon, and business-minded authority figures chastising radicals for suggesting fraud is anti-democratic, all play their part in keeping democracy down.

As neoliberals busy themselves with helping neoconservatives rob us blind on behalf of their mutual masters, it takes a lot of extras — perhaps a cast of thousands — to keep up the appearance of democracy. Meanwhile, “futurists” and other noble heroes allegedly guarding us from notorious villains, have to work overtime to maintain the deception.