On August 22, 2007, I wrote about the death of Eleazar Torres-Gomez.

Eleazar Torres-Gomez was pronounced dead on the scene after apparently being dragged by a conveyor into an industrial dryer.  Torres-Gomez was trapped in the dryer-which can reportedly reach temperatures of 300 degrees-for at least 20 minutes.

Did Eleazar Torres-Gomez Lose his Life for Company Profits?

Today, from the Wall Street Journal:

New details about the case — from internal company memos, Cintas surveillance videotapes and people close to the federal investigation — indicate that the dangerous practices that led to Mr. Torres-Gomez’s death occurred frequently in Tulsa and at other plants operated by Cintas, the biggest uniform supplier in North America.

There was a hearing of the Workforce Protections Subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee today on Cintas and safety.  That, and more, after the fold.

Also in orange earlier today: http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

Last summer, OSHA levied its largest fine ever for a safety violation at a service company by fining Cintas $2.78M

“Federal safety officials have called for a $2.78 million penalty against the Cintas Corporation, the nation’s largest supplier of uniforms, for violations at its Tulsa plant, where a worker died when he was pulled into a large dryer.”

The penalty that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced Thursday evening is more than four times any previous safety penalty leveled against a service-sector company.

snip

OSHA found 46 violations at the plant, among them failing to protect employees from being pinned by the conveyer belt, failing to have a proper procedure to shut down equipment when clearing jammed clothing and failing to train workers on how to clear jams.

Did Eleazar Torres-Gomez Lose his Life for Company Profits?

Emmanuel Torres spoke last year about his father’s death:  

Emmanuel Torres spoke at a press conference in support of the Protecting America’s Workers Act — legislation introduced by Senator Edward Kennedy that would protect more workers, require companies to provide necessary safety equipment for workers, and increase penalties for companies that break the law.

On March 6, 2007, my father was killed while working at a Cintas laundry in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was reportedly dragged into an industrial dryer by a conveyor belt. This has been devastating for us. In 2005, the Occupational Safety and Health  Administration fined Cintas for not putting guards on a dryer at a laundry in New York. The equipment that was unguarded in that case was similar to the  equipment involved in my father’s death. If the company had added the guards, which it knew was required by OSHA, my father would be alive today…

My father’s death was preventable.

Son of Tulsa Cintas Worker: My Father’s Death Was Preventable

In its investigation, OSHA found that employees weren’t trained in how to shut off equipment properly. A surveillance videotape at the Tulsa plant showed workers engaging in activities similar to what led to Mr. Torres-Gomez’s death over several weeks prior to the accident, say people familiar with OSHA’s investigation.  A government memo, sent by Richard E. Fairfax, director of enforcement for OSHA, states that over the previous two weeks, other employees had used the same method of dislodging jams some 34 times.

“Employees climbed on and walked up the moving shuttle conveyer, and kicked at, jumped on, and tried to knee the jammed clothing into the dryer opening,” Mr. Fairfax wrote. “The recording also showed two employees inserting one of their legs into the chutes of the operating washing machines and jumping up and down to clear jams of laundry in the chute.”

Company surveillance video showed Mr. Torres-Gomez trying to clear the jam from the ground level. When that didn’t work, he got on the conveyor shuttle and began jumping up and down to push a clump of jeans through. He fell into the dryer. The automatic door shut, and a pilot light ignited. More than 20 minutes later a co-worker, hearing a loud thudding noise, found Mr. Torres-Gomez dead, lying on a pile of jeans, according to a police report.

WSJ

The Workforce Protections Subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee held a hearing on the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s lack of adequate enforcement and oversight of workplace safety and health conditions within large, multiple-facility corporations.

Witnesses explored events at the Cintas Corporation, the largest uniform supplier in North America. In 2007, a worker died at the company’s Tulsa facility despite previous evidence, known to both OSHA and Cintas, of similar hazards at other Cintas facilities and industrial laundries. The death resulted in the largest service sector fine in OSHA’s history and was followed by additional citations of similar problems at other Cintas facilities.

Hearing of the Workforce Protections Subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee

Subcommitte Chair Lynne Woolsey, in her opening statement:

Many of us on this subcommitte were outraged that Cintas originally sought to blame Mr. Torres-Gomez for his own death. Especially when Cintas had its own history of unsafe working conditions.

snip

We have documents showing that Cintas experienced three “close calls” involving almost the same exact accident scenario as killed Mr. Torres-Gomez.  Yet the company failed to effectively adddress the problems.

Lynne Woolsey  

The son of Mr. Torres-Gomez asked the subcommittee to adopt strong measures for workplace safety, including increased random investigations by OSHA so that “more lives are not lost.”  

Emmanuel Torres Testimony

We need a real OSHA that prevents workers deaths in this nation.  Please thank Lynne Woolsey for this hearing and her hard work for worker safety.

Lynne Woolsey for Congress website

You also can help.

YOU CAN HELP WIN UNIFORM JUSTICE.

Even though millions of people come into contact with Cintas’ services every day, few people know about the poverty wages, back-breaking workloads and unsafe conditions that Cintas employees endure.

Cintas workers are standing with UNITE HERE and the Teamsters to gain respect, better pay and safer jobs

Learn More: Uniform Justice

“We think OSHA can do better and that corporate America can do better.”

Lynne Woolsey

Leaving work alive is a BASIC HUMAN RIGHT!

Please ask your Senator and Congressperson to support the Protecting America’s Workers Act that was introduced by Senators Kennedy and Murray, and Representative Woolsey.

Kennedy, Murray, Woolsey Relaunch the Protecting America’s Workers Act

That is what Justice for Eleazar Torres-Gomez is.  No more preventable deaths on the job.  That is simple human decency.  

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

Following a pivotal article by Jeff Stein at Congressional Quarterly a few weeks back, today’s Washington Post published an important article today, “Detainees Allege Being Drugged, Questioned.” The story, by Post staff writer Joby Warrick, notes U.S. denials in using drug injections for coercive purposes during interrogations.

Adel al-Nusairi, a Saudi national imprisoned for years at Guanatanmo, and now released without charges, has a different memory:

“I’d fall asleep” after the shot, Nusairi, a former Saudi policeman captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2002, recalled in an interview with his attorney at the military prison in Cuba, according to notes. After being roused, Nusairi eventually did talk, giving U.S. officials what he later described as a made-up confession to buy some peace.

“I was completely gone,” he remembered. “I said, ‘Let me go. I want to go to sleep. If it takes saying I’m a member of al-Qaeda, I will.'”

U.S. authorities at the Department of Defense and the CIA say the stories of prisoners being forced to take drugs and make confessions are lies, or perhaps mistaken interpretations of various medical procedures. The Post article, which mentions the March 2003 John Yoo memo to the Department of Defense that gave legal cover to abusive interrogation methods, including the use of drugs on detainees, fails to mention that the CIA and military studied the use of drugs in interrogations for decades. Still, the Post article makes clear that drugs have been alleged to have been used on U.S.-held detainees for purposes of forcing confessions, as chemical restraint, and to forcibly psychologically condition detainees for interrogation.

Medical ethicists and experts in international law say such accounts raise serious questions. While the Geneva Conventions do not specifically refer to drugs, they ban any use of force or coercion in interrogating prisoners of war, said Barbara Olshansky, a law professor at Stanford University and the author of a book on military tribunals. “If you’re talking about interrogations, you’re talking about very specific prohibitions that mean you cannot use any force, at all, to interrogate someone,” Olshansky said. “The law is beyond clear.”

Physicians for Human Rights has called for both Congressional and Department of Justice investigations on the forcible drugging of detainees. This may be a good time, too, to support the ACLU’s call for the release of a Justice Department Office of Inspector General report on a long-running investigation of the FBI’s role in the unlawful interrogations of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. It’s believed that “FBI agents stationed at Guantánamo Bay expressed concern after witnessing military interrogators’ use of brutal interrogation techniques.” Did these techniques include the forcible drugging of detainees?

Investigations Needed, Though Much Information in Public Domain

Investigations are urgently needed to get the full picture of what exactly the government has been up to, as the full extent of the manifold use of torture by the United States government has not been fully documented. Such investigations are also sorely needed to change the political dialogue in this country, and to hold accountable government officials who have broken domestic and international law on torture and the treatment of prisoners.

If the press would do their job and report the known research and give the proper context on this subject, then the work of the investigators would be much easier. (Jeff Klein’s work, noted at the beginning of this article, is a notable exception. Other exceptions are Katherine Eban at Vanity Fair, Jane Meyer at The New Yorker, Scott Horton at Harper’s, and Mark Benjamin at Salon.com.) The use of drugs in interrogations is not a new subject by any means. The government has researched this, including mixing drugs with other forms of coercive interrogation practice, such as sensory deprivation.

A Course in Narcosis, Part I

Online, I suggest the interested reader — or Congressional or DOJ investigator — begin with the CIA’s own discussion of the matter in the declassified KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual. Here’s some relevant quotes from the CIA on “narcosis” (if this website link is having problems, as it did when I went to reference it, use this cached link instead, or this alternate site, or the photocopy online of the manual itself). Bold emphasis in the following is mine. Remember, this “course” in narcosis was researched with U.S. taxpayer dollars. The CIA drew upon the work of the infamous MKULTRA program of the CIA.

Just as the threat of pain may more effectively induce compliance than its infliction, so an interrogatee’s mistaken belief that he has been drugged may make him a more useful interrogation subject than he would be under narcosis….

In the interrogation situation, moreover, the effectiveness of a placebo may be enhanced because of its ability to placate the conscience. The subject’s primary source of resistance to confession or divulgence may be pride, patriotism, personal loyalty to superiors, or fear of retribution if he is returned to their hands. Under such circumstances his natural desire to escape from stress by complying with the interrogator’s wishes may become decisive if he is provided an acceptable rationalization for compliance. “I was drugged” is one of the best excuses.

Drugs are no more the answer to the interrogator’s prayer than the polygraph, hypnosis, or other aids. Studies and reports “dealing with the validity of material extracted from reluctant informants… indicate that there is no drug which can force every informant to report all the information he has. Not only may the inveterate criminal psychopath lie under the influence of drugs which have been tested, but the relatively normal and well-adjusted individual may also successfully disguise factual data”….

Nevertheless, drugs can be effective in overcoming resistance not dissolved by other techniques. As has already been noted, the so-called silent drug (a pharmacologically potent substance given to a person unaware of its administration) can make possible the induction of hypnotic trance in a previously unwilling subject….

Particularly important is the reference to matching the drug to the personality of the interrogatee. The effect of most drugs depends more upon the personality of the subject than upon the physical characteristics of the drugs themselves. If the approval of Headquarters has been obtained and if a doctor is at hand for administration, one of the most important of the interrogator’s functions is providing the doctor with a full and accurate description of the psychological make-up of the interrogatee, to facilitate the best possible choice of a drug.

Persons burdened with feelings of shame or guilt are likely to unburden themselves when drugged, especially if these feelings have been reinforced by the interrogator. And like the placebo, the drug provides an excellent rationalization of helplessness for the interrogatee who wants to yield but has hitherto been unable to violate his own values or loyalties.

Like other coercive media, drugs may affect the content of what an interrogatee divulges. Gottschalk notes that certain drugs “may give rise to psychotic manifestations such as hallucinations, illusions, delusions, or disorientation”, so that “the verbal material obtained cannot always be considered valid.” (7) For this reason drugs (and the other aids discussed in this section) should not be used persistently to facilitate the interrogative debriefing that follows capitulation. Their function is to cause capitulation, to aid in the shift from resistance to cooperation. Once this shift has been accomplished, coercive techniques should be abandoned both for moral reasons and because they are unnecessary and even counter-productive.

This discussion does not include a list of drugs that have been employed for interrogation purposes or a discussion of their properties because these are medical considerations within the province of a doctor rather than an interogator [sic].

A Course in Narcosis, Part II

If we go back and look at the Washington Post article printed today, we see that the reaction of the detainees who were (allegedly) drugged is replete with traumatic feelings. One wonders if the giving of injections rather than pills was psychologically designed to create greater fear in the prisoners.

The CIA’s reference to Gottschalk is to Louis A. Gottschalk. At the time (early 60s), Gottschalk was Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Research Coordinator in the Department of Psychiatry at Cincinnati General Hospital. His essay, “The Use of Drugs in Interrogation” was published in the 1961 book, The Manipulation of Human Behavior. (Online via Questia, for some time this book could be read for free over the net at 4shared.com, but that link is gone now. The Questia read will cost you about $8.00 — worth it in my opinion, though enterprising web surfers may find it elsewhere for less or free, for all I know.)

In Gottschalk’s piece, he looks at such aspects of drug use in interrogation as the use of placebo administration; the effects of individual differences in personality and cerebral functions on drug reaction; the effects of physiological conditions, secondary to manipulation of biological rhythms, nutritional states, isolation and fatigue; and the efficacy of drugs in “uncovering information.” Regarding the latter, Gottschalk wrote:

For certain personality types, some drugs lower conscious ego control, thereby facilitating recall of repressed material and increasing the difficulty of withholding available information….

… clinical experience and experimental studies indicate that, although a person’s resistance to communicating consciously withheld information can be broken down with drugs, and particularly sodium amytal, the interrogator can have no easy assurance as to the accuracy and validity of the information he obtains…. An interrogator would have to evaluate many other factors… to decide how to interpret the outcome of an interview with a drugged informant.

Besides sodium amytal, Gottschalk and other government researchers (from the military, CIA, contracted or unwittingly funded) studied numerous pharmacological agents, including barbiturate sedatives and calmatives (amobarbital, secobarbital), non-barbiturate sedatives (Placidyl, Quiactin), stimulants (ritalin, benzadrine, and methamphetamine, the latter said to be “useful in the interrogation of the psychopath”), autonomic reactors and beta blockers, antimalarial drugs, heavy metals, hormones (ACTH, cortisone, thyroid), and classic hallucinogens like mescaline, LSD and PCP. Marijuana was also an early target of drug experiments on truth telling. Psychoactive medications have (or are?) been studied as well (thorazine, compazine, etc.).

Thorazine was also used heavily by Dr. Ewen Cameron, the famous Montreal psychiatrist, whose attempt to totally control the human mind via a technique called “psychic driving” destroyed many people’s lives in the 1950s and 1960s. Cameron used drug-induced coma, multiple electroshock, and drugs like thorazine and LSD in an effort to totally control human beings, from their memory (which he sought to wipe out) and their behavior. The research was funded, in part, by the CIA. The story has been told in all its horrendous detail a number of times, most recently by Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine, and by researcher Gordon Thomas in his new book, Secrets and Lies.

Summary

While the Washington Post article demonstrates some movement among the official elite who run this country to address the latest revelations on torture, perhaps even to promote some kind of reform inside the Pentagon and CIA, it’s also possible that official denials are all we are going to hear.

It’s important that the calls from organizations like Physicians for Human Rights for hearings and investigations be supported by phone calls, letters, emails, and donations. The Yoo memo and other issues related to torture are supposed to be examined at a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee on May 9. Why not bring up the issue of involuntary drugging as part of that hearing? In any case, a full investigation is needed of U.S. torture. In my opinion, the government cannot be trusted to run this investigation. But, lacking any other authoritative forum, a Congressional investigation may be the best we can hope for at this point.

On this topic, with a special emphasis on the possible role of psychologists and other health professionals in these interrogation abuses, see Stephen Soldz’s article, “Involuntary drugging of US detainees, a crisis for the health professions”.

Crossposted at Invictus

^{roblisameehan (flickr creative commons)}

^{Ametxa (flickr creative commons)}

^{Nashville, TN (wikimedia)}

Optical Tricks of the Parthenon (NOVA: PBS)

~ Don’t Recommend the Pony Party.  This is an open thread. ~

1. What’s wrong with this scenario? The Guardian reports the Senate wants Pentagon to investigate courting of TV analysts. “The US Senate armed services committee today asked the Pentagon to investigate its practice of courting military analysts on popular TV programmes in order to push positive spin on the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism policy.”

   Carl Levin, the Democratic senator who chairs the armed services committee, asked for an internal probe of the Pentagon’s relationship with TV networks in a terse letter to defence secretary Robert Gates.

   Levin chastised the defence department for “giving both special treatment and valuable access” to military analysts who agreed with its decisions “while cutting off access to others who didn’t deliver as expected”.

   “While the media clearly have their own shortfalls for paying people to provide ‘independent’ analysis when they have such real and apparent conflicts, that doesn’t excuse the department’s behaviour,” Levin wrote to Gates.

   Bzzt. Levin cannot honestly expect the Pentagon to investigate itself. Levin needs to hold hearings and put network and Pentagon officials before the kleig lights answering questions. This go and investigate yourself nonsense is bunk. The Pentagon’s motive to lie and hide the evidence is too great. Put it this way Carl, what you propose is like trusting the Iranians to monitor their own nuclear program.

Four at Four continues below the fold with Iran’s alleged nuclear program, the march to war with Syria, an Israeli spy in the U.S., the “war on terror” backfiring, and the struggles of Iraqi women with dead or missing husbands since Bush brought his war to Iraq.

2. Those darn Iranians are at it again. The Los Angeles Times reports Iran agrees to discuss alleged nuclear weapons program. Curses! “International arms inspectors have brokered an agreement with Tehran to discuss alleged evidence of nuclear weapons experiments discovered on a laptop computer purportedly smuggled out of Iran and given to U.S. officials, according to news reports. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) official Olli Heinonen received the commitment after two days of talks with officials in Tehran, Iranian news agencies reported. The agreement signals a mild breakthrough… Iran insists that its nuclear program is meant only to produce electrical power for its growing population of 70 million. U.S., Israeli and European officials suspect that Iran is trying to master the tricky process of enriching uranium in order to at least have the option to begin building nuclear weapons.

   Okay America, so you claim to not want a war with Iran, but can I interest you in a lovely war with Syria? The Los Angeles Times reports CIA to describe North Korea-Syria nuclear ties. Ooo… scary stuff America — “Axis of Evil” member helping the Syrians. “CIA officials will tell Congress on Thursday that North Korea had been helping Syria build a plutonium-based nuclear reactor, a U.S. official said, a disclosure that could touch off new resistance to the administration’s plan to ease sanctions on Pyongyang. The CIA officials will tell lawmakers that they believe the reactor would have been capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons but was destroyed before it could do so, the U.S. official said, apparently referring to a suspicious installation in Syria that was bombed last year by Israeli warplanes… U.S. officials provided little explanation of why they want to brief lawmakers on the North Korean-Syrian links after declining to do so for months.” Hrmm… I wonder what the Bush administration’s motivation could be? Hrmm… it certainly isn’t going after al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden.

   Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports 84-year-old man is charged with spying for Israel in 1980s. “For more than two decades after he allegedly furnished an Israeli operative with secrets about U.S. nuclear initiatives and sensitive weapons programs, Ben-Ami Kadish lived unnoticed by law enforcement authorities in suburban New Jersey… He routinely checked classified documents out of a library there and passed them to an unnamed Israeli official who had provided a list of what he wanted… The official photographed pages related to nuclear weaponry, the F-15 fighter jet program and the U.S. Patriot missile defense system”. Spies like us?

3. Surprise America! Republican administrations make the world a more dangerious place. The Guardian reports US ‘war on terror’ backfiring, says thinktank.

   The US “war on terror” has backfired, strengthening extremists in Afghanistan and Somalia and turning them into legitimate political actors in the eyes of their local populations, a thinktank said today.

   The Senlis Council, which has strongly criticised US policy in Afghanistan in the past, is particularly scathing of the Bush administration’s “abject policy failures” in Somalia.

   It said air strikes, support for Ethiopian troops that attacked Somalia last year and the ill-timed designation of a radical Islamist group, al-Shabab, as a terrorist group had been successfully exploited by the insurgency to boost recruitment.

   “The lack of strategic acumen present in the ‘war on terror’ in Somalia and Afghanistan is in fact enabling the spread of the insurgencies present throughout both countries,” said Norine MacDonald QC, the council president.

   “The US is the common denominator in both countries – instead of containing the extremist elements in Somalia and Afghanistan, US policies have facilitated the expansion of territory that al-Shabab and the Taliban have psychological control over.”

   I expect this to get zero coverage from the American corporate media.

4. The Washington Post reports Iraqi women take on roles uf dead or missing husbands.

   Nearly 1 million women in Iraq are widows or divorcees, or their husbands are missing, according to Samira al-Mosawi, a Shiite member of parliament who heads the women’s affairs committee. She said the number, an estimate reached by several government agencies, includes women who became widows during Iraq’s war with Iran in the 1980s.

   Mosawi said approximately 86,000 widows are receiving about $40 a month from the government. Aid organizations and government agencies are unable to help more widows because of a lack of funds and the challenges of doing social work in volatile neighborhoods.

   “Frankly speaking, there’s not much attention paid to the social issues in the country,” Mosawi said in an interview. “Attention goes to security and defense.”

The Democrats are either very naive and  nearsighted or they are willing participants in their own party’s destruction. Perhaps they are a mixture of both. If the Democrats win the election this fall, (personally I think Obama is the odds on favorite), then they are going to be saddled with a plethora of problems. As we reach the breaking point for serious global issues. By not fixing accountability for these long ignored problems on this runaway neocon fascist train, the fallout for ignoring those problems will fall squarely on the leader in charge. You would think that the Democrats would understand this: by not pursuing impeachment and fixing accountability where it belongs, the media will vilify and blame them for all the problems that they will be handed.  

Extremely bad times are on the horizon. We are completely addicted to fossil fuels and the time to research and implement alternative solutions has past. We continue to act as though we can and will sustain our current way of life indefinitely, while in truth, we are spending our cache of solar energy collected over a billion or so years in just a few hundred years.

Let’s look at the current situation.

Like it or not, we find ourselves immersed in a resource war for oil. Peak oil occurred in 2005, but only a couple of people are saying it. We are building America’s new military as fast as we can, replacing our old Force XXI army, retrofitted from the cold war, with a new concept: Future Combat Systems. And since we are wrecking the old army faster then expected, we have accelerated the time line for delivery by four years. (Cutting out 4 systems in the process). Gas prices are starting to surge and there are historical indicators that we are headed towards a depression. And finally, defying all normal logic (Illogical that is unless you fail to see the broader picture), in the midst of one of the largest food production years in the history of mankind, a food crisis is already underway.

So what lies ahead?

Do we have a model that will show us what happens when a population outstrips it critical resources. Strangely enough, even though our behavior indicates otherwise, we do have a modern day example. The fate of Easter Island is a sobering reminder of the enormity of the task at hand.

The population grew slowly at first, then more quickly, reaching a peak around the middle of the second millennium A.D. of anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 people. By this time, the Rapanui, as the islanders are known, had developed a complex society of chiefdoms and elaborate stone architecture epitomized by the moai. Beginning around 1600, however, Rapanui civilization began to fall apart, and by the mid-19th century, it had all but disappeared.

…Rapanui culture and society rose and fell with the fortunes of the island’s trees. Studies of pollen and charcoal from extinct plants have shown that, before people first arrived and well into the early centuries after settlement, a subtropical forest blanketed the island. … the Rapanui used trees and their products for almost everything. They ate the fruits of the trees as well as the birds that lived among them. They thatched their houses, which looked like upended boats, with palm fronds. They fashioned bark-cloth clothing. They burned firewood for cooking and for keeping warm on winter nights, which on Easter Island can drop as low as 50°F. They built oceangoing canoes and crafted harpoons to spear dolphins and pelagic fish such as tuna. And they used some combination of log rollers, sleds, and/or levers, along with rope made from tree fibers, to transport and erect the hundreds of moai that once stood around the edges of the island, their brooding faces gazing inland. …

When Captain James Cook visited Easter in 1774, he saw no trees taller than about 10 feet. … By 1872, the number of Rapanui had plummeted to just 111 individuals.

You don’t have to look to far for other examples: The Mayans, the Ancient Egyptians, and the Inca. How bad the chaos gets will totally depend on how we, as a global community, act to mitigate the situation. This is where America needs to take charge and lead the debate on solving these looming issues. But our politicians continue to march like lemmings towards the cliff. It’s as if they are detached from reality. Do the Democrats know they are being setup to be the fall guy for what’s about to come? Americans woke them up to the crimes of Bush and the neocons, but they did not get the full message. We need to wake up America to the full reality of the situation and this is one time where the Democrats are failing to deliver help.

Mitigation and solutions

A) Impeachment is the single best tool available in mitigating this global disaster. The benefits of impeachment could be an entire diary in and of itself, but for my purposes, I will enumerate just a few. First it will fix accountability for the pending economic collapse where it belongs: squarely upon the neocon fascists’ shoulders. Secondly, it will highlight and push into mainstream the serious consequences of the choices we are making and underline the need to debate and resolve these issues before its too late. Lastly, it will permanently remove the current set of usurpers and prevent them from their continual setting up of roadblocks.

B) Finding and implementing alternative energy solutions yesterday. Energy Autonomy is a clear solution that can go forward without political support or intervention.

C) For What It’s Worth, I have compiled a list of what I feel are mandatory milestones.

D) Finally, a little less obvious, but important factor in mitigating our cultural decent into a new millennia is that we must preserve and keep public all the knowledge and technology that we acquired during the petroleum age. History reveals that most often times the knowledge that a culture acquired during their reign, died when that culture died. It can be argued that we owe much of our advances through that of the knowledge acquired by the Ancient Greeks. The preservation and discovery of their study of mathematics and of the known visible universe, paved the way out of the medieval era for Europe. It has been said that knowledge is power. The fascist usurpers would like nothing better then to have a monopoly on the knowledge acquired over the last several centuries.

This is a rhetorical critique of the anthology Ecosocialism or Barbarism, edited by Jane Kelly and Sheila Malone, an introductory text in ecosocialist thought apparently meant for European audiences.  In it, I suggest that its main problem is that it skimps upon the presentation needed to anticipate objections to its main arguments, and so I suggest amendments here.

Eco-capitalism is the intellectual rage today.  Time magazine has a piece on its April 28, 2008 cover titled “How to Win The War On Global Warming,” which recommends “a national cap-and-trade system with teeth coupled with tougher energy-efficiency mandates and significant new public and private investment in green technology” (57) as the primary solution, in an article aimed largely at investor-class audiences.  Stuart L. Hart’s Capitalism at the Crossroads, published in second edition last year by Wharton School Publishing and with a foreword by Al Gore, promises in its subtitle to be “aligning business, earth, and humanity.”

To a certain extent this intellectual vogue is the byproduct of government inattention.  America comes off of seven-plus years of a Presidency basically in global warming denial, and its current crop of Presidential candidates appear to be somewhat easily manipulated by the coal industry, a financial entity which ought not to exist at this point, given the seriousness of the trajectory ahead.  For instance, all of the politicians are talking about “carbon caps,” meaning enforced conservation of fossil-fuel energy of some sort, and of “alternative energy,” as a “solution” to the problem of global warming.  However, practically nobody in the US is talking about capping the oil and natural gas wells, or even of abandoning the coal mines (though a daring soul such as Bill McKibben mentioned it in public when I asked him).  So eco-capitalism can be seen as the byproduct of the government’s withdrawal from its role as protector of the environment; people are looking to big business in its absence.

Now, there are alternatives to the “eco-capitalist” intellectual vogue, alternatives that seriously address the environmental situation facing us in 2008.  Evo Morales hints at these alternatives of recent: “Eliminate capitalism to save the planet,” he opines.  One of these calls itself “ecosocialism” – yet there really isn’t a whole lot in terms of an explicitly ecosocialist political movement.  Sure, there are plenty of ecosocialist writings, but what I can find of movement ecosocialism seems largely encapsulated in a group called “Socialist Resistance.”  (In this review I am NOT going to get involved in their actual political struggles — teach me about it in the comments section.)

They put out a volume, Ecosocialism or Barbarism, which is, largely, a collaborative text introducing the main ideas of ecosocialism, and this is my review of it.

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This anthology has as its purpose to “stimulate a social ecology that can unite and enrich both ‘reds’ and ‘greens'” (x).  This may be a valid goal for European politics; I don’t know.  I have my doubts about its efficacy in the American context.  Maybe an American introduction to ecosocialism (Joel Kovel’s The Enemy of Nature comes to mind, only not so academic or expensive) would address itself to a general audience.  Perhaps an ecosocialist movement would develop more readily from the ranks of the uncommitted public rather than by starting with those who have adopted a political position in the American context.  It would then be free of the stultifying “orthodox Marxism” of the far left in this country, as well as of the “green capitalism” of the Green Party’s orthodoxy.

A couple of the articles in this volume are reprints of journal pieces which offer basic understandings of what ecosocialism is about.  John Bellamy Foster’s “Organizing Ecological Revolution” is here, as well as Michael Lowy’s “What Is Ecosocialism?” and the Ecosocialist Manifesto.  Ecosocialism, to answer Lowy’s question, proposes socialism as an organizational prerequisite to working solutions to environmental crisis.  What is “socialism” for the ecosocialists?  Phil Ward has a piece called “Global warming, capitalism, and our future” in which a series of bullet-point demands are made (37-38).  These include things such as “curtailing of activities not essential to human well-being, such as the advertising, sales, arms, and many other industries.”  Essentially, ecosocialism is the provisioning of an economy so that essential needs for all come first, for the sake of more extensive reductions in fossil-fuel consumption than would otherwise be possible.  The most meaningful description I’ve found is in a book by Saral Sarkar titled “Eco-socialism or eco-capitalism?”  There is an essay at the end of Ecosocialism or Barbarism titled “Savage Capitalism – the Ecosocialist Alternative,” which lays out a summary of the degraded state of the capitalist system at present, and ends with a list of demands.

The articles are what we might expect for a politically-inclined ecosocialist agenda.  Here it is in a nutshell.  Capitalism is on a collision course with the Earth’s capacity to sustain life; the existing society cannot be reformed or regulated so that it will “behave”; thus socialist revolution will be necessary to bring society into conformance with ecosystem stability.  Much of the book, taking its cue from John Bellamy Foster’s writings for the Monthly Review, deals with global warming, which has attained the status of white-hot controversy in the UK.  Over there, global warming is well-accepted as a phenomenon and the mainstream controversy is over what to do about it.  It would be nice if we could discuss global warming here in the States like they do in the UK.

 The arguments for ecosocialism made in this book are reasonable as it is made here.  However, I’m a bit uncomfortable with how well they are defended.  If we are to incite dialogues that go beyond “preaching to the choir,” we ought to start by anticipating objections to our proposals.  By skimping on this sort of argument, in favor of “what ecosocialism is and why we like it,” Ecosocialism or Barbarism is a less effective book than it otherwise could be.  One admires books such as Mike Cole’s Marxism and Educational Theory because they do attempt to anticipate objections.  In that book, Cole argues for a rather direct version of Marxist pedagogy (one which I can’t quite defend myself); his defense of Marxism as such, however, addressed standard objections.  So, in the spirit of constructive suggestion, here I’d like to suggest a short list of objections to ecosocialism, complete with responses:

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Objection #1: We will want to preserve capitalism because of its productive efficiency.  The problem with capitalist production is not efficiency, but rather ecology.  Capitalist production is “efficient” when you disregard the convenience it has made of planet Earth.  It gets the lion’s share of Earth’s “natural resources”; it gets to “externalize” its pollutants after a minor degree of scrubbing.  If capitalist production really had to be careful with what it uses of its Earthly endowment, we’d regard it as quite wasteful.

Objection #2: Capitalism is the best system for consumer demand.  The problem with this argument is that capitalist production addresses only “effective” demand, demand backed by money.  Production for “effective” demand will work well as long as the consumers have money; in an economy where most of the public is losing its place in the money system, which is what we have now, we run the risk of mass dispossession.  The capitalist system will then be producing large quantities of consumer items which nobody will be able to afford.  Such a situation would hardly qualify capitalism as the best system for consumer demand.

Objection #3: Socialism was discredited by the Soviet experiment.  The Soviet experiment was an experiment in the building of what Kees van der Pijl calls a “contender state” – a rival to capitalism in the competition for capitalist development.  In this regard, it would help to look at capitalism as bound together with what van der Pijl calls “capitalist discipline” – which is our work habits and everything we do in order to make ourselves into hirable workers.  “Capitalist discipline,” then, is the glue that keeps the capitalist machine together, that fits all of the parts into place.  It keeps the trucks on the road, it keeps the airplanes flying in the air, it keeps production going, it keeps the distribution networks running, and so on.  

The Soviet Union, then, tried to accomplish “Communism” using capitalist discipline.  Ecosocialism, on the other hand, will require ecological discipline – the discipline necessary to maintain ecosystem resilience, or ecosystem stability (in a greater sense).  We can see ecological discipline in what Joan Martinez-Alier calls “the environmentalism of the poor,” in a book which is praised in Michael Lowy’s essay at the beginning of Ecosocialism or Barbarism.

Objection #4: There is no existing ecosocialist movement.  But there are plenty of movements which could be ecosocialist, if they were only to take the next step and to recognize, more deeply, what it took to be ecosocialist.

Objection #5: The elites will destroy the world rather than give up their privileges.  Indeed, this is what the capitalist system which serves them so well is doing to the world right now.  Abrupt climate change will create a world in which billions of people (that’s right, billions) will have no place to go.  Florida will be under water with the rise of ocean levels as such.  After the icecaps of the Himalayas melt away, half of China will be without water.  That’s not going to look pretty.  The question at hand is one of whether the rest of the world will allow said elites to get away with total global eco-destruction.  From Paul Prew’s “The 21st Century World Ecosystem“:

The question to be asked, really, is whether we proceed with capitalism until we reach an ecological bifurcation point that leaves the habitability of the earth in question for the vast majority of the population, or we reach a social bifurcation point that leads us to a social system of production that is dissipative, nonetheless, but does not threaten the flowing balance of nature.

Objection #6: There will be no working class revolution.  According to this reasoning, the multitudes are too interested in class compromise (i.e. better hours, better wages) and will not attempt to overwhelm the system with demands for ecosocialism.  Or, according to another line of thought, the multitudes are too interested in patriotism, and will not provide the necessary global unity for a working class revolution.  The first objection will be answered when abrupt climate change really starts to kick in.  Will people just hide from the oncoming disaster, or will they take the proactive role that Ecosocialism or Barbarism says they need to have?  

The second objection is not a matter of patriotism, but of the role currently provided by the state.  In the past, warfare between states was a means of maintaining a class of people which benefitted from it.  The capitalist class benefitted from warfare, and from the total economic motivation that the warfare state brought.  Even before capitalism, under feudalism, a knightly class made its living off of warfare and off of the looting that accompanied it.  In the future, however, the state will have to change its character, to keep any future “warfare class” out of power.

Kees van der Pijl’s most recent book, Nomads, Empires, States, describes world-society as regressing into a sort of tribalism.  In an ecosocialist future, all “tribes” which develop as such will have autonomy within a decentralized, locally-controlled matrix which encompasses the entire globe.  Such a tribalist future will not be incompatible with global ecosocialism.



Objection #7: Revolution will only install a new, oppressive ruling class.

Ecosocialism will attempt to circumvent the problem of new, oppressive ruling classes through economic democracy – decentralizing power, and putting power over economic systems into the hands of people within a democratic framework.  This will probably mean democratic control over the money system, so that capital can be redirected to ecosystemically meaningful ends.  There will be no abolition of personal property – but the means of production, as capitalism has shown, are too dangerous to leave in the hands of acquisitive oligarchies.

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Finally, I think that two major tactical improvements to the standard “socialist” and “green” agenda are in order:

Tactic #1: Examine economic decisions as political decisions.

Our capitalist “democracy” does not serve us because most of the real decisions have been taken out of its hands and placed in the hands of a very few powerful economic actors.  In light of the “private” (i.e. oligarchic) control of the economy as such, “democratic” government has been reduced to the role of economic guarantor, to make sure that the economic oligarchy functions “efficiently” at whatever role it chooses to function at, which (for the most part) means keeping the rich swaddled in profits.

We can deconstruct capitalist “democracy” as such if we look at economic decisions as political decisions.  If the main political actors are viewed not as Clinton, Obama, and McCain, but rather Exxon, Monsanto, and Halliburton (and the rest of the Fortune 500), then we will be on the way to a clearer picture of what is going on.

Tactic #2: Go after producers, not consumers.

Heather Rogers makes this argument very effectively in her history of trash titled Gone Tomorrow.  Why regulate individual littering, Rogers argued, when the real culprits are the product manufacturers who are creating the disposable cartons, bottles, newspapers etc. that become trash.  Go after the producers of trash, she argued, rather than pick on the multitudes of litterers.

I would suggest, here, that we attack the problem of abrupt climate change in much the same fashion.  Rather than blame the individual consumers for burning fossil fuels, go after the producers of the fossil fuels; shut down their oil wells and natural gas wells and coal mines.  That will, in turn, force society to adapt to the post-carbon future.

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That’s how I’d argue ecosocialism, at any rate.

(noon – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Protests have already started in Australia before tomorrow’s Olympic torch relay. So far they have been peaceful, and protest leaders are renewing calls to use nonviolence in the waning hours before the torch takes its course through the streets of Canberra.

Australia Tibet Council chairman George Farley addressed protesters at a candlelight vigil in front of the Chinese embassy:

“The world believes the cause of Tibet is moral,” Mr Farley said.

But he warned world opinion could change if tomorrow’s protests turned ugly.

Mr Farley said the non-violent approach endorsed by the Dalai Lama was the only approach to take.

“If they (pro-China activists) spit on you, just wear it.

“If they attack you, run away. Do not approach the Chinese, do not interact with them.”

link: http://www.smh.com.au/news/bei…

This YouTube is from one of a small group of protesters walking 43 miles while on a hunger strike to join the wider protest in Canberra:

This interview with Simon Bradshaw of the Australia Tibet Council is shot against the backdrop last night’s protest, in which a laser sign reading “Don’t Torch Tibet” was beamed onto the Sydney Harbor Bridge:

Live News in Australia covers a “cheeky” but effective protest involving the Coca-Cola sign at King’s Cross (click on the link for video of the protest):

The neon advertisement that for so long has been synonymous with Sydney’s redlight and entertainment district is now the subject of global political action with demostrators rolling a huge banner over the it.

Protestors incoorporated Coke’s trademark ‘dynamic ribbon’ graphic into their banner, which read: Enjoy compassion, Always Tibet. China, talk to the Dalai Lama.

snip

The silent demonstration was praised by passers-by as an effective alternative to violent protests that have followed the Olympic Torch Relay around the globe.

“It’s a good idea to do a silent protest like that, instead of going about and trying to hi-jack the actual Olympic torch, which I presume that’s what it’s in line with.

“Good on ’em for doing it. I hope they don’t get in too much trouble.”

link: http://livenews.com.au/Article…

Reuters is reporting that relay organizers are planning a “dynamic” torch relay (images of the Where’s Waldo torch relay in San Francisco spring to mind):

CANBERRA, April 23 (Reuters) – Australian police promised on Wednesday a “dynamic” torch relay to dodge protesters when the Olympic flame travels the Australian leg of its troubled journey around the world.

snip

Canberra police commander Mike Phelan said the torch route, expected to start with a lake-crossing, would have contingencies in place if expected protests turned violent.

“The route as published is something that will be dynamic on the day,” he said.

Phelan stressed Australian police alone would handle security after Beijing Olympic Committee Spokesman Qu Yingpu hinted Chinese attendants could step in, prompting hurried denials from city officials.

link: http://www.reuters.com/article…

Separately, the Dalai Lama is now scheduled to speak before a British committee of parliament:

THE Dalai Lama is to give evidence on human rights issues to a parliamentary oversight committee on foreign affairs during his visit to Britain next month.

“Given the particular interest in China’s human rights record in 2008, the committee has requested to take oral evidence from His Holiness the Dalai Lama on a range of human rights issues when he visits the United Kingdom in May, and His Holiness has agreed to this request,” the committee said.

The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader is due at parliament in London on May 22.

link: http://www.news.com.au/story/0…

Please keep all sides of this conflict in your thoughts, prayers and meditations as the torch relay starts tomorrow. Please also keep Jamyang Kyi, believed to be detained by Chinese authorities, in the front of your minds, as there is still no news about her status or whereabouts.