capitalism

By Burkely Herrman - Interesting Blogger, November 3, 2013

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Already, I am mad as hell, and can’t take it anymore. Then, the President of my home country goes before the UN, and tells them that we are an imperialist country. In this speech, part of what outlined the new Obama Doctrine, noted the following American policy for the rest of his 3 years in office:

“…let me take this opportunity to outline what has been U.S. policy toward the Middle East and North Africa and what will be my policy during the remainder of my presiden[cy]…The United States of America is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force, to secure our core interests in the region…We will ensure the free flow of energy from the region to the world. Although America is steadily reducing our own dependence on imported oil, the world still depends on the region’s energy supply and a severe disruption could destabilize the entire global economy. We will dismantle terrorist networks that threaten our people….when it’s necessary, defend the United States against terrorist attack, we will take direct action. And finally, we will not tolerate the development or use of weapons of mass destruction…we’ll continue to promote democracy and human rights and open markets because we believe these practices achieve peace and prosperity…these objectives are best achieved when we partner with the international community and with the countries and peoples of the region…Now, the notion of American empire may be useful propaganda, but it isn’t borne out by America’s current policy or by public opinion.”(1)

By Jérôme Roos - Notes toward an International Libertarian Eco-Socialism, November 12, 2013

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Author's Introduction: In light of the recent death of Nelson Mandela, the “father” of post-Apartheid South Africa, I am reposting this excellent reflection by Jérôme E. Roos on a recent trip to the country.  The essay was originally published in Reflections on a Revolution (ROAR) on 12 November 2013.

Twenty years after apartheid, the old freedom fighters of the ANC have come to reproduce the same structures of oppression against which they once arose.

We were driving down the N3 highway on our way back home from the Eastern port city of Durban, passing by the endless lines of improvised shacks that constitute the Katlehong township just outside Johannesburg, when we saw the flashing blue lights of a police car in the distance. As we approached, a horrific scene revealed itself. A local slumdweller, probably somewhere in his thirties, lay dead on the side of the road, his body awkwardly twisted into an impossible position, his eyes still wide open. Some two hundred meters ahead, a car had pulled over on the curb, its driver casually leaning on the vehicle while talking to a policeman. No one had even bothered to cover up the body. This man just lay there like a dead animal — another road kill in endless wave of needlessly extinguished lives.

Every year, more than 14.000 people are killed on the road in South Africa, an average of 38 per day — nearly half of whom are pedestrians. Of the other half, many die as overloaded buses, micro-vans or so-called bakkies crash during the daily commute from the townships to the city to work as waiters, clerks or house maids. Just today, a bus full of commuters slammed into a truck on a narrow and potholed road to Pretoria, killing 29. But in the aggregate, tragedies like these are only numbers in a cold statistical series. The front pages of the country’s newspapers remain splattered with horror stories and graphic photos of brutal killings, as fifty people are murdered daily. Another 770 people die from AIDS every day. A total of 5.7 million, or 18% of South Africans, is HIV/AID infected, the highest infection rate in the world. Needless to say, one of the bloody red lines that runs through the broken social fabric of this heartbreakingly beautiful country is that human life is accorded shockingly little value.

By staff - A World to Win, November 2013

The message has gone out to corporations everywhere: Britain is open for fracking. In response, campaign groups now exist the length and breadth of Britain in opposition to the plans to industrialise the countryside with tens of thousands of drilling sites. They are taking legal action, lobbying their representatives and protesting and occupying sites at considerable risk of police brutality.

But this grass roots movement is up against formidable adversaries. Corporations have the backing of the state and a public relations campaign led by the government is promoting the lie that fracking is safe and will lead to cheaper energy.

Yet public support for shale gas extraction continues to fall while backing for renewables grows. Government claims about jobs and lower gas prices are exposed for the grand deceptions they are. None of this will deter the Cameron government, however, which has thrown the weight of the state behind the frackers.

Read the report (Link).

By Sharon Wilson - Originally published on Earthblog, October 16, 2013

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

We already know that EagleRidge is a terrible neighbor!

• An EagleRidge Operating worker was indicted in June 2012 on a felony charge of illegally dumping. City employees visiting the company’s well site in the 3100 block of Airport Road found a pump forcing contaminated water into a tributary of Hickory Creek. LINK
• EagleRidge was operating wells in Denton without a permit. LINK
• EagleRidge had a blowout in Denton that got "sanitized." LINK But it didn't stay "sanitized." LINK
• EagleRidge is drilling in a Denton neighborhood less than 200 feet from homes.
• EagleRidge is drilling in Mansfield and polluting air, violating sound ordinances and dividing neighbors. LINK

So it's no surprise to learn that EagleRidge is an awful employer that lacks regard for worker safety. Yesterday I stopped to take photos and video when I passed the EagleRidge drill site directly across from the University of North Texas athletic facility. (Yes, I know: polluting the air our young people are gulping in while practicing sports is reckless.) The video shows workers walking amidst swirling clouds of silica sand aka frack sand. In May 2012, OSHA and NIOSH issued a HAZARD ALERT regarding exposure to silica during hydraulic fracturing. The OSHA info sheet details steps industry needs to take to limit the amount of silica exposure. While they recommend breathing protection, they caution that respirators alone are not sufficient at the levels of exposure seen during fracking. Media reported that workers in Texas were exposed to over 10 times the safe limit.

By Burkely Herrman - September 27, 2013, (used by permission)

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The black gooey substance, oil, that comes out of the ground always seems to have broad geopolitical implications. The U.S. attack on Syria was partly about oil and natural gas, but also about Syria’s relationship to Iran and its oil and gas.[1][2] How does this play into South Sudan?

An article published in Chron on August 28th begins to tell this story: “President Barack Obama says he’s selected his outgoing ambassador to Ethiopia to be the U.S. special envoy to Sudan and South Sudan. Obama says Donald Booth will lead U.S. efforts to implement security agreements the two countries agreed to last year, including disputes over borders and oil. South Sudan peacefully broke away from Sudan in 2011, but tensions between the countries remain high, especially over their intertwined oil industries.”[3] This openness surprised me, so I continued to do a bit more digging, finding that both America and China had imperial aims in South Sudan.

Starting on the White House website I found a number of results. One said that Ambassador Booth will “advance U.S. interests…including ensuring the uninterrupted flow of oil.”[4] As I continued to search, the results just kept coming. A statement issued by the White House Press Secretary on an agreement between South Sudan and Sudan said the following: “I welcome the announcement by the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel of an agreement between Sudan and South Sudan on oil revenue. This agreement opens the door to a future of greater prosperity for the people of both countries.”[5] Around the same time, this development was noted in a readout of a call to the austerity-friendly President of Spain.[6] It seemed like the posts connecting oil to South Sudan kept coming: a post in September 2012 described then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s trip to South Sudan to discuss “security, oil and economic opportunity,”[7] another was a readout of a call with the President of South Sudan in which Obama “emphasized the importance of South Sudan and Sudan reaching an agreement on oil,”[8] how the spokesperson of the National Security Council urges that both Sudans make an agreement on oil[9] and a statement from the White House Press Secretary saying that the peace agreement between the two countries has provisions to share “significant portions of Sudan’s oil wealth between north and south.”[10] Then there’s a fact sheet supporting South Sudan highlighting that “agencies across the United States government have examined the tools they can bring to bear to propel development and investment in South Sudan…to ongoing support to assist the government of South Sudan to manage its oil sector transparently and take steps towards joining the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.”[11] One of the most revealing is a joint statement by the US and South Sudanese governments in December 2011, noting that:

“The conference focused on several important themes central to this goal: responsible management of oil revenue and natural resources…In addition, participants discussed specific investment opportunities in sectors such as oil and renewable energy, information technology, agriculture, transportation infrastructure, clean water and sanitation, capacity building services, and financial services. South Sudan proposed and participants agreed that investments, international support and development assistance will be linked to national priorities.”[12]

One must ask, what all of this talk about oil is really about anyway and its what I looked into next. The Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) writes on a page about Sudan and South Sudan noting the background of the problems over oil, noting that most of the oil producing areas are “near or extend across the de facto border between Sudan and South Sudan” but that after South Sudan became independent over two years ago in July 2013, South Sudan “gained control over most of the oil production but…remain[ed] dependent on Sudan because it must use Sudan’s export pipelines and processing facilities.”[13] The EIA continues, noting that after 15 months of on and off negotiations, “South Sudan restarted oil production in April 2013” but that “several unresolved issues remain and production may be curtailed again in the future,” problems which were confirmed by the New York Times, All Africa, AP and BBC.[14] Oil is so important to the governments of South Sudan and Sudan: “oil represented around 57 percent of Sudan’s total government revenue and around 78 percent of export earnings in 2011, while it represented around 98 percent of total government revenues for South Sudan in 2011.” That’s pretty important, considering both countries have over 5 billion in proven crude oil reserves with 70% of them residing in South Sudan. That’s not all, but there are also “natural gas…proven reserves of 3 trillion cubic feet” in the two countries as well. The EIA also lists the major oil companies that have a stake in the two countries: “International oil companies…primarily from Asia, dominate the oil sectors in both countries. They are led by CNPC, India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Malaysia’s Petronas.” As a result, its no surprise that “China is the leading export destination for crude oil from Sudan and South Sudan.” There also supposedly a pipeline that “would reduce South Sudan’s reliance on Sudan, but the pipeline’s construction could take at least two years.”

By Truls Gulowsen - Originally published at OpenDemocracy.net, September 29, 2013

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Last Friday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change went public with their Fifth Assessment report in Stockholm. The report supplied us with more reasons to dread the coming effects of global warming, and even more reasons to urge politicians to act.

One of the key new features in the IPCC report is the global accumulative “carbon budget”. The IPCC confirms earlier findings that there is an allowence for less than 1000 gigatons of CO2 in the atmosphere for the rest of the century, if we are to avoid dangerous climate change above two degrees warming. This is less than a third of proven fossil reserves, and will be consumed in less than 30 years at current emission levels.

In neighbouring Norway, often described as a “world-leader in the combat against climate change”, a population of just over 5 million reap the profits in being the world's second largest gas exporter and the sixth largest oil exporter. The investments in the sector are growing year by year.


Along with the rest of the world, we are debating how to manage a limited resource and how to achieve the necessary emission cuts to avoid disastrous global warming. 



Along with the rest of the world, we live in a carbon bubble, in which, despite increasingly urgent warnings from scientists and environmentalists, we keep pumping up fossil fuels at record speed, pushing greener industry aside as we do so. In Norway the fossil fuels industry is by far the country's largest, and our reliance on this industry is not just a threat to the green industry, but to our entire economy, as has lately been pointed out by various individuals and organizations, including the IMF.


Our goal is not to get rid of the oil industry tomorrow. Nor is it to set a date for when the last oil worker will be out of a job. On the contrary, we want to keep the industry going for generations, but at a significantly lower level than we see today. To achieve this in a way that does not lead to mass unemployment (an estimated 250,000 people - or one in twenty Norwegians - are involved in the fossil fuel industry) we need a plan that combines both environmental policy and the oil workers' interests. That was the starting point when labour unions and environmental NGOs sat down to draft a plan on how we might realistically deflate Norway's inflated oil industry in a way that also retains the interests of the industry's employees.

By Michael Roberts - Originally published at The Next Recession, September 28, 2013

The 5th report by the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) was released this weekend. The IPCC brings together hundreds of scientists in the field of climate change to cooperate in drawing up a comprehensive analysis of the state of the earth’s climate and forecasts about its future.  The IPCC report raised its estimate of the probability that human activities, led by the burning of fossil fuels, are the main cause of global warming since the mid-20th century to “extremely likely”, or at least 95 percent, from “very likely” (90 percent) in its previous report in 2007 and “likely” (66 percent) in 2001.

The IPCC said that short periods are influenced by natural variability and do not, in general, reflect long-term climate trends.  So the argument of those whom deny global warming is man-made or is not getting worse cannot rely on the recent slowing of the rise in average atmospheric temperatures in the last 15 years.  The IPCC went on to say that temperatures were likely to rise by between 0.3 and 4.8 degrees Celsius (0.5 to 8.6 Fahrenheit) by the late 21st century.  Sea levels are likely to rise by between 26 and 82 cm (10 to 32 inches) by the late 21st century, after a 19 cm rise in the 19th century.   In the worst case, seas could be 98 cm higher in the year 2100.

The IPCC estimates that a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere would lead to a warming of between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 and 8.1F), lowering the bottom of the range from 2.0 degrees (3.6F) estimated in 2007 report. The new range, however, is the same as in other IPCC reports before 2007.  It said the earth was set for more heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising sea levels from melting ice sheets that could swamp coasts and low-lying islands as greenhouse gases built up in the atmosphere.

The IPCC admitted that it was still unclear about the causes for the slowdown in climate change in the past 15 years, but insisted that the long-term trends were beyond doubt and that a decade and a half was far too short a period in which to draw any firm conclusions. The temperature rise has slowed from 0.12C per decade since 1951 to 0.05C per decade in the past 15 years – a point seized upon by climate skeptics to discredit climate science.  Professor Stocker said:

“People always pick 1998 but that was a very special year, because a strong El Niño made it unusually hot, and since then there have been a series of medium-sized volcanic eruptions that have cooled the climate.”

Explaining a recent slower pace of warming, the report said the past 15-year period was skewed by the fact that 1998 was an extremely warm year with an El Nino event – a warming of the ocean surface – in the Pacific.  It said warming had slowed “in roughly equal measure” because of random variations in the climate and the impact of factors such as volcanic eruptions when ash dims sunshine, and a cyclical decline in the sun’s output.

But the deniers of climate change and manmade global warming remain unconvinced. Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta responded by saying that “Well, IPCC has thrown down the gauntlet – if the pause continues beyond 15 years (well it already has), they are toast.” But Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, retorted that the reduction in warming would have to last far longer - “three or four decades” – to be a sign of a new trend.  And the IPCC report predicted that the reduction in warming would not last, saying temperatures from 2016-35 were likely to be 0.3-0.7 degree Celsius (0.5 to 1.3 Fahrenheit) warmer than in 1986-2005.