ALTERNET ARTICLE ABOUT BIOFUELS

A new article in Alternet reveals once again that coal, not biofuels, will be "the answer" in the eyes of the transnational capitalist class once the oil starts to run out.

In fact, I have no idea why the good folks who program the web page at hubbertpeak.com are so jazzed about the 1999 book "The Solar Economy" these days, given all the things said about it on the amazon.com page.

My point is this: when the oil really starts to run out, the corporate leadership will go with what gets a really huge energy return on energy investment, not with what makes the most sense ecologically. And that's coal. It's not "clean" biofuels, and it's not solar. It's coal. It might be uranium too, to a small extent, but a much wider-scale use of uranium would itself create a uranium shortage, so that's not likely. But coal will just create more carbon pollution.

When push comes to shove, the Kyoto Protocol will be scrapped, because the alternative will be scrapping capitalism. Unless, of course, we scrap capitalism first.

IF A VOTE FALLS, AND NO MEDIA ARE THERE TO HEAR IT...

Congress voted against permanent military bases. Did you read about it? I didn't.

STUDENTS WALK OUT ON CLASSES




EN MASSE: Hundreds of students from Montebello High, Garfield High and Roosevelt High walk along Whittier Boulevard to Soto Street.
(Carlos Chavez / LAT)


March 24, 2006

It's in the LA Times here... I suppose it's meaningful that student victims of racism protest measures designed to make "suspects" of those with a particular skin color or culture. Working people should defend the right to move from one nation to the next in search of work, while the national representatives of capital negotiate "free trade agreements" that allow capital to move from one nation to the next in search of profit without being asked for its "green card" or hiding from "la migra."

But the real issue here is one of why they aren't protesting any of the other things that need protesting, such as the enormous waste of time constituted by standardized tests, or the fact that high school graduates in America today have, almost all of them, learned to hate reading and writing. Maybe they ought to conduct "teach-ins" to dispel the myth that education will get you a better job. All the possession of a degree will do for you is move you up in the queue for a pool of jobs that remains the same whether you are educated or not. The race to acquire degrees is about the competition for jobs. The jobs will not get better if you get a PhD.

How about teach-ins to show how capitalism is dismantling global ecosystems? I suppose, at any rate, that walk-outs are better than sitting there in class, bored.

FRANCE ESCALATES; BRAZIL DEFORESTS

The Washington Post reports it as gang violence.

and a new report discusses deforestation in Brazil...

ANWR -- WHAT REALLY HAPPENED LAST WEEK

Here is a cogent article explaining what actually went on with the ANWR bill in the Senate -- long after the fact -- sorry, I should have seen this one coming...

STAN GOFF ON OPPOSING THE OCCUPATION OF IRAQ

A synopsis of his speech is given here -- Goff, a meaningful thinker with significant military experience, seems convinced that an antiwar movement would make an appropriate conduit for a large movement to transform society. "Goff encouraged activists to work to 'transform the whole system' and to understand that the Iraq War is part of an imperialist system under which a variety of struggles are inexorably linked." If only more of this were going on!

MONEY TRANSFER REPORT

The Fall of Humanity had a report on the UAE/ Saudi threat to move reserves out of the dollar. 10%? That's mild.

STRIKE REPORT

Let's see, you had Greece (but only for 24 hours) and then France (which will be picking up steam soon) and now Ecuador... when's it going to be the whole world?

A VISIT BY AN IDEALIST

A young woman from the California League of Conservation Voters came by...last night... I didn't get much information out of her (it was nighttime, and very cold outside) but I suppose most of the information is on their website. I suppose it makes a difference that the goons who run bourgeois democracy know we are watching them and that we don't appreciate their cult attitudes, not that it will change the nasty process that selected them or anything.

I did not donate money -- my mom gave her $20 -- but I read her brochure, and the thing that struck my eye was that of the abject failure of California's legislature to pass any meaningful bills requisitioning alternative energy for the people. No, alternative energy does not solve capitalism's environmental crisis, but at least it would have been a sweet gesture for those who will have to suffer through the future the capitalist system has planned out for us. Look, the CLCV's "environmental scorecard" is here, and their recommendation is to write letters to representatives. Am still trying to make sense of all of it...

NORMAN SOLOMON OPPOSES THE WAR WHEN IT COUNTS THE LEAST

in his recent column in Counterpunch, Norman Solomon asks:

On Saturday, during her national radio response to the president, Senator Dianne Feinstein accused the Bush administration of "incompetence" in the Iraq war.

What would be a competent way to pursue the war in Iraq? How would you drop huge bombs on urban neighborhoods in a competent way? How would you deploy cluster munitions that shred the bodies of children in a competent way? How would you take hundreds of thousands of people from their home land and send them to a country to kill and be killed -- based on lies -- in a competent way?

Say Norman, I've got a question for you. What would be a competent way of opposing the war in Iraq in an election year?

Would it be competent to "oppose the war" by voting for a pro-war candidate who wanted to put "two new divisions" in Iraq?

Would it be a competent way to oppose the war by slinging all kinds of mud at the only serious antiwar candidate in the race so you can get the foreign policy "greater of two evils" elected?

Please, Norman. Rethink your own politics before you go slinging mud at Feinstein. Ask yourself this: would you support Feinstein in '08 if she wins the Democratic Presidential nomination?

I will not be participating in Food Not Bombs (Pomona) on next Sunday the 26th. You may decide you want to serve, but if you do so you should pick up the free food from the Claremont/ Pomona farmer's markets, and find yourself a kitchen, as the house on 997 Bradford will be having their "sustainability seminar" & thus their kitchen will likely be too busy to have a FNB.

A properly-run Food Not Bombs local can serve as an example of how, with a little communal spirit, we can feed the homeless, anyone who wants to eat, or the world as a whole at a minimal cost in resources and time. Global society is privatized, instead, and so huge quantities of food go to waste while 800 millions starve. Too bad.

GAMES TO DRAMATIZE TODAY

Courtesy of The Fall of Humanity -- read here -- now what we need are games for global warming, dollar panic, War in Iraq, neoliberalism, Extinctathon (courtesy of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake), and so on... everyone loses, of course, but this is a good way of dramatizing the disintegration perpetrated upon civilization by capitalism...