Friday, June 11th
"Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property. The corporation is the legal fiction that property is a person."
Chris on 06.11.04 @ 02:32 PM PST [link]
Art becomes the next suspect in America's 9/11 paranoia
Art has always reflected policies of lawmakers. As an artist myself, I often fear physical retaliation for the ideas I express.
London Guardian | June 11 2004
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On May 10 Steven Kurtz went to bed a married art professor. On May 11 he woke up a widower. By the afternoon he was under federal investigation for bioterrorism.
What began as a personal tragedy for Mr Kurtz has turned into what many believe is, at best, an overreaction prompted by 9/11 paranoia and, at worst, a politically motivated attempt to silence a radical artist.
Several of Mr Kurtz's colleagues and artistic collaborators have been subpoenaed and a date for a federal grand jury hearing set for Tuesday. Both artist and his art are set to go on trial for their alleged links with terrorism.
Chris on 06.11.04 @ 02:13 PM PST [link]
THE REAL ISSUES
This article by By Richard Steiner is located here in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. PLEASE READ THE WHOLE THING. It's a horrifying look at our "progress" and should be a guilty verdict for the materialistic lifestyle. Many of these facts have been well known for decades. Yet, capitalists hide their irresponsibility and look for new ways to make a buck off of those who live simply. To the corporate machine, human lives and the diversity of nature is nothing more than a product to be exploited until there is nothing more to sell. Enough of me, lets stick to the facts.
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...While we remain virtually hypnotized by terrorism, humanity is quietly destroying the biosphere in which we live, ourselves and our future along with it. Just since 9/11, 25 million children died from preventable causes, the world's population grew by 200 million people and thousands of species went extinct. Also, 250,000 square miles of forest were lost, 50,000 square miles of arable land turned to desert, 8 billion tons of carbon were added to the atmosphere and air pollution claimed more than 4 million lives....
...Studies estimate that, if the developing world were to consume at our rate, another five or six planets would be needed to sustain this level of consumption. The United Nations says that a 10-fold reduction in resource consumption (or a 10-fold increase in energy/material efficiency) in industrialized countries will be needed for adequate resources to be available for developing countries....
...The world's 350 billionaires have a combined net worth exceeding that of the poorest 2,500,000,000 (billion) people. Those poor live on less than $2 a day and lack basic sanitation, health care, clean water and adequate food....
...Some estimate that we have lost perhaps 600,000 species since the "biotic holocaust" began around 1950; if present trends continue, half of all species on Earth would be extinct in the next 50 years....
...Half of Earth's original forest cover is gone, and an additional 30 percent is degraded or fragmented...
...It's projected that in 20 years, the demand for water will increase by 50 percent and two-thirds of the world population will be water-stressed...
...Air pollution exceeds health limits daily in many cities in the world. Some 5,000 people a day die from air pollution, and kids in some cities inhale the equivalent of two packs of cigarettes every day just by breathing the air....
...Carbon emissions from burning fossil fuel now stand at 6.5 billion tons a year (four times 1950 levels), resulting in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations 33 percent greater than pre-industrial levels....
Chris on 06.11.04 @ 01:25 PM PST [link]
Thursday, June 10th
War, Oil and religion
Below is a segment from an article by Conn Hallinan (an analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus and a provost at the University of California at Santa Cruz). It's full look at the unfolding chess match to win the world's oil supply is posted by Guerrilla News Network. It makes me want to convert to bio-diesel, today.
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Oil production in the U.S., Mexico, and the North Sea is declining, and a recent study by the University of Uppsala in Sweden suggests reserves may be far smaller than the 18 trillion barrels the industry presently projects. If the new figure of 3.5 trillion barrels is correct, sometime between 2010 and 2020, worldwide production will begin to decline.
Given that most oil geologists think there are few, if any, undiscovered resources left, that decline is likely to be permanent.
So the price of oil—now $41.65 a barrel, a jump of $32 since 1997—may not be a temporary spike. World pumping capacity is going full throttle, but a combination of economic growth, coupled with cash shortages for investment, have kept supplies tight. Only during the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq War did oil cost more.
With U.S. consumption projected to increase 1/3 over the next 20 years—two-thirds of which will be imported by 2020—the name of the game is reserves. The bulk of those reserves lie in the Middle East. Between Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, the Gulf States control 65 percent of the world’s reserves, or close to 600 billion barrels. In comparison, the U.S. reserves are a little under 23 billion.
Whoever controls these reserves essentially controls the world’s economy.
Chris on 06.10.04 @ 12:35 PM PST [link]
Tuesday, June 1st
Losing Your Rights
Our recent corporate aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq have given the neocons the tools to stop the American protest. The kinds of protests that ended segregation, allowed women to vote, gave us the 40 hour work week, ended child labor and ended the Vietnam War. The following is a brief article about fear as a political tool.
Indy Media
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Activists in Georgia, Boston and New York are facing unparalled obstacles to organizing against the G-8, the DNC and the RNC. In the same week that U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that "al-Qaida plans to attempt an attack on the United States in the next few months," we have witnessed:
* Permits denied in New York City [ 1 | 2 ] for public assembly and protest at the Republican National Convention;
* Restriction of public assembly and movement through the closure of up to 40 miles of roads in and around Boston during the Democratic Convention;
* The declaration by Georgia Governor Purdue of a State of Emergency, effectively legalizing all efforts used to suppress protests against the G8 Summit.
The GA state of emergency went into affect on Monday, May 24 and runs through June 20, 2004. Though a few permits were recently issued for G-8 demonstrations they could be revoked under the state of emergency, thus creating a situation where all assemblies are declared unlawful. In addition, the state of emergency could allow for:
* Martial rule to be declared
* Curfews to be imposed
* Military units to "guard" the streets
* Detention and arrest of demonstrators until the "emergency" is over
* Escalation of use of force with limited accountability
Chris on 06.01.04 @ 05:10 PM PST [link]
Adbusters as Historyjammers
Hope and Memory describes 163 accounts of military intervention from 1801 to 2004 by the USA.
Chris on 06.01.04 @ 02:08 PM PST [link]