new far green political buttons

Ludd was right
Malthus was a schmuck but  right about some things
wildlife corridors around and through cities
march civilization back to abundance
You CAN stop and yes reverse progress, Tokugawa did it
Wealth through shrinkage

Luddite and proud
As Macolm redefined black and white, we need to redefine shrinkage and growth
The Club of Rome was right
Schumacher was right, just wrong on the timing
Live like pirates, in the homes left empty and decaying by the population crash
Let's all do it the easy way- population crash now.
Skip the famines and wars - the easy way is to stop consuming and breeding now
Let the forest and grassland reclaim the burbs
May the maternity wards close for lack of business
7 generation moratorium on most childbirth - the easy way

Why Obama falters

If you just think about health care it doesn't make sense. Nice succinct article about the broader picture that explains it quite well. I would add, how do you expect the many to embrace the moral principle of the stronger helping the weaker when every day they ignore and drive by homeless veterans and others, who die from lack of care every week or two in major population centres, even San Francisco which is so liberal? It also explains how it becomes acceptable for Republican congress reps to use the phrase "those who have earned their health care" referring to those who have coverage in speeches. I presume they are devout Calvinists who feel babies born into covered families are among God's deserving elect.

It is like developing countries with a gated elite that has a strong sense of privilege, but in some ways far more reprehensible, in that the poor minority is so small and the excess wealth to correct it completely is clearly present.

I hope I am wrong this time - a new presidential hopeful for the bitter and hateful

In the mid-nineties, after sending many fruitless faxes, emails and phone calls to Governor George W. Bush about death penalty cases, I concluded he could be the next president. He was negative enough and deaf enough to real concerns and rational objections to unite the angry white people around the country. He would approach the problems of the world the way he dealt with crime in Texas. Kill people. My liberal friends scoffed: "He is a buffoon and a local phenomenon peculiar to Texas." Now I feel the same way about Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona. He is taking advantage of changes in immigration enforcement in the Obama administration to defy the federal government and highlight and publicize his unrelenting persecution of immigrants. If the dice of US and world events roll the wrong way...

I hope they don't. I hope I'm wrong.

Evil Funds- a joke that is 6 years behind reality

I thought of the following announcement as a joke last night. When I started to get a few links for it I found my joke had been preceded by reality 6 years earlier: the Vice Fund.
see also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_Fund

Fortunately, the latest performance numbers show that at least one hypothesis, that such "vice" investments as defense and tobacco are recession proof, seems to hold little water - it is down just like most other investments.

Here is my unoriginal spoof - I have not yet researched the second more radical "Ultimate Evil" hypothetical fund . I hope nobody has made it a reality, though I fear a real version exists, even if it is not public knowledge. (Fifty years ago, I met a couple of Canadian billionaires who closed two highly profitable businesses just to punish workers for embracing unions, and bragged about it. )

As an evil twin image of ethical investment funds, these funds tap highly active information sources like Corpwatch to identify potential investments:

1) The Evil Fund maximises profit regardless of the ethical consequences, going boldly where others would hang back out of mundane ethical concerns.

2) the Ultimate Evil fund is for those investors with a triple evil bottom line - even if an investment is less profitable, it may be worthwhile if it generates enough mayhem and suffering.

He's back for the health debate - the scary socialist

On Halloween night in 2008, I was exploring an old warehouse in Oakland California, when I heard an eerie voice singing:
"We shall not , we shall not be moved .."and, suddenly an strange undead apparition emerged from the shadows carrying pamphlets about anarchists and other radicals; a SCARY SOCIALIST. "Brother, I said, shaking, who are you and how did you come to be here?"

"I am as bewildered as you. One minute I was peacefully demonstrating with my fellow Wobblies for the release of Red Emma when shots rang out and the next, a terrifying cabal of the most frightening looking guys I have ever seen were reciting incantations and digging me up in the centre of a circle of black candles in the cemetery near this warehouse. They would not say who they were but I heard the words Skull and Bones and Republican National Committee. They said they had an important job for me for one week, well 4 and one half days, Until Nov. 4th. Well, I says, that sounds swell and I ain't worked in a while , but what do you fellas want me to do? You don't want me to be a scab or nothin, do you? So they says, no no no! just be yourself, hand out your pamphlets, make a speech or 2 - do what you do!"

Then he said" Can you help me find a crowd to agitate?"

So, with some trepidation, I took the scary socialist to a Halloween party I was invited to and it turned out my worries were unfounded: he fit right in. He wasn't the only political type there. Not at all. there was a guy dressed as the Statue of Liberty carrying a sign about same sex marriage and someone dressed as a nurse with signs about health care reform. And everybody was talking about Nov. 4th the next week.

Well, I did not see him in person after the party, but over that weekend, the Scary Socialist seemed to be all that people on the TV news and talk shows were talking about, so I guess the people who dug him up made a valiant effort to scare everybody with him. I thought I might write about him in these pages at the time.

But you all know by now that election day came and they did not scare everybody enough. I was walking by the same part of town the night of the election, and amidst the cheers and horns blowing and I thought I saw him clamber over the fence into the cemetery and disappear into the shadows. I thought that was the last I would hear of him for at least another 90 years. I just forgot about writing about him, thinking he was irrelevant now.

Boy was I wrong. The health care debate heated up and he was dragged back out, scarier than ever, boys and girls. So I thought I would post these photographs and talk about him after all.

Scathing review of British Education reform

A scathing review of British version of "no child left behind", but really reflects trends around the world. To some extent Japanese and Indian education systems supposed successes In math and science were used to lengthen school years, load young kids with homework and rob them of play time, creativity, humanities and childhood, In particular, top business, info and other technology grads around the world are ignorant even of the spirit of the glorious revolution of Cromwell in Britain, the French and American revolutions, the rights struggles of Ghandi in South Africa and India, and the dialogue and struggle on class, race and human rights in the US, the economic, moral and political questions of Adam Smith, Marx, Engels Weber in the 19th century and the continuing development of thought on human rights in the 20th century. More controversially, I would argue, while acutely aware of some recent film, music and other pop culture, they lack depth in the history of classical and popular culture in at least one or 2 regions essential to understanding the richness of language and history.

This trend, which is older than the recent initiatives, really goes a long way explaining the acquiescence of populations of all developed nations to measures and political parties which compromise the Magna Carta, etc. (note that the Google spell checker highlights Magna Carta as an error). The continued development of ideas of equality, rights and environmental justice may rely on the thin ranks of a few progressives in North and South America and the rest of the world such as the Ghandiists.

Smithsonian should acquire Scott Adams' old cubicle

If it still exists. i know people who worked for Pac Bell in Contra Costa and who were given a tour that included Scott Adams' cubicle that inspired Dilbert.