Welcome Back Prof. M'Gonigle!

I am overjoyed to see Prof. M'Gonigle's essays in the Tyee. Like so many progressive authors, most British Columbians are unaware of M'Gonigle's pedigree. From his early legal work with Greenpeace co-founders, to his inspirational teachings at U.Vic, to his stunning book Planet U. All demonstrate courage and intelligence.

Like Prof. Gutstein (Not A Conspiracy Theory), Prof. Chris Shaw (2010 Olympics: 5 Ring Circus), UBC Prof. Joel Bakan (The Corporation), Andrew Nikiforuk (Tarsands), the good old MSM, led by "fearless" CanWestGlobal and David Black, systematically boycotted these scholars for years.

Such is how a once great democracy is converted into a monopoly capitalist gulag, good only for resource extraction, condo building, oil and gas drilling, with beads and trinkets doled out to the likes of Gordon Campbell and his LIberal ilk as a reward for delivering the goods.

Just when we thought the corporate takeover was a fait accompli, enter David Beers and the Tyee. And Public Eye. And Rafe Mair. And Rabble.ca.

Democracy is now bubbling up everywhere. And citizens are finally getting to read these great scholars.

It can't happen soon enough, as time is indeed running out.

Great coverage!

Total economic collapse our only hope

Almost all democratic countries worldwide have been replaced with plutocracies and very few people have even noticed or care. Our only hope for change is massive resistance and that will only take place with organized, worldwide revolt in the face of our extinction. As the scientists point out, the longer we wait, the less likely we will be able to stop it. The inevitable total economic collapse is the only hope I see to wake the masses from their slumber and provide an opportunity to build a viable global solution. All who care should be doing everything within their power to bring the collapse on as soon as possible. It is a matter of our survival.

CO2 as poison

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128650169

Fools

We are future thieves: robbing from the Earth, society, and the economy to feed an epidemic of narcissism and obesity which breeds anti-social behavior and will eventually bankrupt us all.

So is it ridiculous to ask: will there be a future for our children? And, do we have the right to take away that future?

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Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
W.B. Yeats

Human beings have so much knowledge it renders them fools.

Ignorance and Want have drowned Reason and bullied Hope.

more C words

“The main sticking points are, of course, the economic burdens that such an agreement would impose, and who should pay for them.”

Any constraint or curtailment of capitalist coercion would certainly produce chaos. But the containment of capitalist casualties would not be consensual. The conspicuously wealthy are unwilling to confront and curtail the canons that control entitlement. That’s the conundrum.

“The voices of Cochabamba and the South [that] need to be heard and articulated here, in B.C. and D.C.” will need more than courage. They will need to convince crusaders that the reformation will amount to more than a retooling of economic and political concerns and a shift of wealth.

A “green’ approach to business as usual may reduce carbon’s impact on climate change, but that’s little consolation for the ongoing and conspicuous loss of social prosperity that occurs when too many try to share too little.

capitalism

I am not certain there is anything wrong with capitalism per se; it is its perversion into Corporatism that is the largest flaw.

Likewise with democracy: without some form of proportional representation, democracy is a farce.

But yes, we are too far along the Corporatist track to fix it within the "system". That means... well... revolution.

Unfortunately, the revolution will not come from within the "first world", where we have subjugated our comfortable lives to the Corporatist paradigm. The revolution must initially come from the "developing world" or the "third world", where suffering is greatest and the people have less to lose.

It will therefor be spun by the Corporti and their political minions as a North v. South, or Communists v. Captalists battle, instead of the People v Corp's that it actually is.

What are the odds that the sheeple in the West will come to their senses before the killing starts? With politicians like Campbell and Harper eviscerating education, keeping children in poverty, and governing virtually by fiat, pretty long odds, I'd say.

sunnyokanagan

Capitalism didn't morph into corporatism.

That's like claiming a chair turned into a table. In both cases the human component is the agent of perversion.

Revolution? No doubt.

Sask resident your are wrong.

http://chinaelectionsblog.net/?p=7362

I was thinking maybe British Columbians need to start burning coal rather than causing all the further harm to the planet by shipping it to China so Chinese can do the harm when it is all going to work out the same for the environment no matter where your burning the coal.

I agree with Boondoggle and Blake

"Total economic collapse our only hope"

and

"Human beings have so much knowledge it renders them fools.

Ignorance and Want have drowned Reason and bullied Hope."

info relevant to d-making

Looks like hot times ahead, more dilly dallying and growth economics as usual. Consider this chart and price of various energy options and make your own mind up on pathways ahead.

http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/egy3181-fig-3-color.jpg

What we are doing and not doing in BC and Canada is shameful given what is coming around the corner - and Harpo's control of the Senate killed Canada's CC legislation and the obligation of the Feds to regulate. Its BA

not BA but -BAU= Business as Usual

Business as Usual -Politics as Usual-

The Fine Tuning...

Well, the total economic collapse may just be coming... though I really wouldn't wish that on anyone.

(I've been having too much fun watching the writhing indignation of Amerika all day, exposed in its crimes in Yemen and even the UN, and elsewhere around the world, as the "enemy of the people" it is, by the Wikileaks. Delightful! As it has long been claimed to be... confirmed.)

Anyway, suddenly here, from Michael M'Gonigle and Louise Takeda, I am starting to feel exceptionally late in life, to here having been pretty much a pariah everywhere I chose to light, with bridges burning behind me still glowing on the distant landscape, like maybe, just maybe, I may be about to come into some relevance in another time. :-D lol. Clearly, I am soon destined to die. (more laughing)

But seriously, it is interesting, if not gratifying, to suddenly discover that at least some "elements" of the radical environmental movement have come to conclude with me, a late bloomer coming out of the radical working class movement, that "Capitalism" is the issue and the fundamental problem. And that without addressing this fundamental problem, there is NO solution to either the class issues of society, which includes poverty, OR of the destruction of the natural world, without addressing and overcoming the capitalist socio-economic order of society.

What goes around, comes around, indeed. What gets off track and is not appropriately dealt with in one time and by one generation, if it is real and unavoidable, must be finally dealt with in and by another. Which is where we are... again.

There is no getting at and finally resolving anything, by way of the major issues of equality, democracy and the planet upon which we live and depend... without dealing finally and conclusively with this issue of Capitalism.

The fine tuning comes after.

People's Assemblies on Climate Justice

Great to see some coverage the kind of changes we need to make. If you want to do something more that read, check out the People's Assemblies on Climate Justice planned for across Canada during (and after) the Cancun talks:

Vancouver - Assembly Dec 7, Action Dec 11.
http://www.gatewaysucks.org/assembly-and-action

Rest of Canada (e.g. Dec 8 Victoria) - http://canadians.org/energy/issues/climatejustice/assembly.html

Who Will Be The Chosen? I...

"Unfortunately, the revolution will not come from within the "first world", where we have subjugated our comfortable lives to the Corporatist paradigm. The revolution must initially come from the "developing world" or the "third world", where suffering is greatest and the people have less to lose." sunnyokanagan

Not just because it was from out of any "great man's" brain, it is automatically irrefutably true, but it was Marx's view in fact, that "the revolution" to what he called "communism" but we can call anything we want, including just a "more advanced social order", would arise out of the first world. Though he called it the "advanced capitalist societies."

It was, I believe, during Lenin's time, when Russia was still itself a feudal/quasi third world state that this began to be questioned, gathering adherents thereafter on the revolutionary Left of the time, especially as this seemed to be confirmed by the later anti-colonial struggles against the old European/British Empires in India, the Middle East and Africa etc.

Indeed, all of us during my time in the Communist movement by then accepted it as a given, a proved fact, especially after the victory of the Communists in Vietnam over the then still rising US Empire.

But the reality has turned out to be quite different, now with the benefit of some historical hindsight. All these anti-feudal revolutions in Russia and China, and in the former colonial powers of SE Asia such as India, throughout the Middle East and Africa have, in fact, led to the next historical modernizing stage of development, in my view... capitalism. Without exception. They are all going through the same motions and essential lines of development that capitalism did in Industrial Revolution England, the French Revolution and across 18th Century Europe.

continued next post...

Who Will Be The Chosen ? II

from previous post...

I think, again in just my own view, yet to be proved by the real world, that in fact Marx is in the course of being finally demonstrated correct. "The Revolution", if there is to be one, to a new, more advanced form of "classless" and "democratic" society can only arise in the advanced capitalist countries, out of fully mature capitalisms that have finally come to the end of their "progress" potential. More, that it can only be realistically undertaken and led by a modern, if still yet to be entirely "organized" and "relatively" educated and modern economy familiar working class. Indeed, to expect it of still relatively backward and impoverished peasants, unfamiliar through work and living experience with modern economies and systems of organization and communication etc, is likely unrealistic itself. (Which is not to say these are "stupid" people, merely "ill-equipped" presently with the intellectual and technological skills and knowledge to pass over capitalism directly into "a more advanced socio-economic" stage of development even. The evidence "seems" to be... and we may yet see some exceptions to this rule, that all peoples and societies must first pass through capitalism. Which has likely been capitalism's great historic and most useful mission... preparing the organizational and technological way, and "the class" that will lead it, to its own ultimate elimination.

My view. Time and history continue to unfold, yet to reveal to what degree I (and others) may be right or entirely wrong. :-) lol

a walk through history

As we are waiting for Godot we see that the soles on our boots are starting to wear thin. And it’s little wonder; they’ve walked, run and stumbled along an endless path of Isms; from tribalism to feudalism to communism, all the way to capitalism.

And, each time we struggle to shed the old boots in preparation for our trip through the new Ism there’s a period, just as the boot is about to release it’s grip, when it seems the pain will never end. But nonetheless we’re bouyed by the fact we’re getting a new pair of boots. The anticipation of taking great strides and overcoming great challenges in our Brave New World is palpable.

Godot is coming. Down with capitalism.

But what a disappointment when we realize that, despite Godot’s arrival and our new boots, overcoming the obstacles we encounter along our journey is more painful than ever. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise: new boots, same old feet.