In honor of the diary queue which is going on now on Orange, I’ve decided to put this diary together, perhaps too quickly.  Its thesis is this: if we are to find an effective solution for the climate change situation, we will have to end the division of humanity into social classes.  This won’t take overnight; but its main impediment at present is a lack of unity across social classes, and that can be resolved.

(Crossposted at Orange)

This is a book review of John Geyman’s book Do Not Resuscitate: Why the Health Insurance Industry Is Dying, and How We Must Replace It.  Here I argue that the rereading of this book is especially timely as Congress nears the last stages of preparation for a vote upon “health insurance reform” nears.  We need to remember, now of all times, that the fight for health care for all is nowhere near over.

(Crossposted at Orange)

Here I briefly wish to examine the idea of “utopia” for its contribution to progressive ideals, specifically w/ reference to Thomas More’s Utopia.  Conceptually, “utopia” is composed of “utopian ideals.”  Utopian ideals are ideals which appear to us to be impossible to achieve in full, and which for us represent the difference between what our society is and what it could be.  They thus prompt the activity of utopian dreaming, which is the engagement with these ideals.  This forms a starting point for the proper critique of our world and for action to create a better world.

(also available on CD and tape at Orange)

This is an oh-so-preliminary explanation of the problem of money-giving in light of the concept of the “Veal Pen” as elaborated most recently over at firedoglake.  It examines, through a recent piece of Bill Domhoff’s, the role of nonprofits in the sustaining of hegemonic neoliberalism.  This discussion will further sharpen what I advocated in my previous diary: stop giving your money to organizations which acquiesce before injustice, and start giving your money to organizations which push back.  There will, then, be an exploration of how such giving can be consistently accomplished.

(Crossposted at Orange)

In my previous diary I asked progressive readers whether or not they really wanted power, since they seem to be willing to trust the actual handling of political power to the neoliberals.  This phenomenon was obvious in earlier election cycles: progressives supported Kerry for President, while Nader was labeled as a pariah.  Here I will try to identify the flaw in progressive ideology, which integrates it into the catastrophic path staked out by global capitalism.

(Crossposted at Orange)

The point of this diary is to alert the Orange-reading public to the “McKibben-Hedges debate,” from a recent piece in Alternet.  Yeah, I know, it’s not really a debate.  The Alternet piece makes some important connections and I think you should all read it carefully.  What this core contention between the two writers is really about, I argue, is power.  

The history of power is a record of how various forms of power consolidated themselves into the current global state of domination.  The outcome which the history of power has been preparing up until now will be a sort of massive humanity-wide global murder-suicide.  The fundamental leap which will make the drama of human self-extinction possible, I argue, was capitalism.  Capitalism made capitalist discipline possible as a form of power, and capitalist discipline will bring power to a point of confrontation between the global complex of control and the simplification of the biosphere which will signal our failure as a species at the art of taking care of nature.  Thus it’s time to end capitalist discipline.  Capitalism will take care of itself.

(Crossposted at Big Orange)

This is a commentary about Scheer’s piece in today’s Alternet, amidst the ongoing talk about “health insurance reform.”  Generally, this diary re-asks the question inspired by Scheer’s piece: what’s the deal with cost issues?  Or, more specifically, we ought to be asking: why doesn’t the government just put this one on the credit card, like it does with banking and defense?

(Crossposted at Big Orange)

Front page headline, Los Angeles Times, Friday, October 9th: “DA prepares to crack down on pot outlets.”  Summary, analysis, in context.

(Crossposted at Big Orange)