February 20, 2024
The Return of Nature is a genealogy of ecological thinking. The word ‘ecology’ was not in common usage until the twentieth century, leading many to consider ecological thinking a fairly recent development. However, in this impressive volume, John Bellamy Foster convincingly identifies a materialist ecological sensibility within works dating back a century prior to ecology’s popularization..."
February 20, 2024
How and why the U.S. left has tailed the ruling class on such a bedrock matter as conceptualizing white supremacy soars far beyond the confines of this brief response.....What does this mean for today? It means rejecting the new Cold War against Russians and Chinese and, instead, forging alliances with both. It means linking demands for reparations nationally with likeminded struggles in the Caribbean and Africa. It means realizing that the uncanny ability of some on the U.S. left to hand rhetorical weapons to the right to bash the oppressed – from “political correctness” to “cancel culture” – is hardly a coincidence or accident but simply another expression of a “cross-class alliance” that has propped up settler colonialism from its inception.....
February 20, 2024
One main thread runs through every aspect of every story: Stories of Black rebellion and resistance. When Horne tells of Texas' efforts to secede and the impact of the arsons of 1860, allegedly set by slaves, he comments, "Our enemies are the ones who put out the rumor that we're docile, because they want us to be docile today." That's fallacious, he says. "Arsons were one of our favorite tools. Arson, poisonings, insurrections, murders." And in fact, during the Madison administration, Africans actually joined the British in torching the White House in 1814, sending James and Dolly fleeing.
February 20, 2024
"...In 2018, Venezuela was only able to import $11.7 billion in goods, according to Torino Capital. The impact on medicine imports was especially destructive. According to U.S. economist Mark Weisbrot, while its economy was still growing in 2013, Venezuela was importing about $2 billion per year in medicine. By 2018, that amount had fallen to an astonishing low of $140 million—an especially horrifying development because medicines are much more difficult to substitute with local production than food. It is impossible to deny that a collapse in medicine imports has killed thousands of people between 2017 and 2018, as Mark Weisbrot and U.S. economist Jeffrey Sachs argued in a paper published in April 2019. Weisbrot and Sachs cite a 31 percent increase in general mortality in the 2017–2018 period, according to a survey by anti-Maduro Venezuelan academics. That increase works out to an extra forty thousand deaths...."
February 20, 2024
"He is currently working on another book focusing on the underlying drivers that cause human society to conflict with nature and create rifts in the metabolic cycles of the planet."
February 20, 2024
"This is a complex array of themes to pursue, particularly given that the scientific and social dimensions of sexual politics in the lives of many of these figures is highly relevant as well. Bellamy Foster rightly emphasises the importance of such issues within the overall picture, as a genuinely dialectical understanding of society and nature could hardly avoid confronting the alienated character of gender relations in class societies...."
February 20, 2024
"The federal courts should be a sanctuary in the jungle,” said Clarence Darrow, the famous lawyer in the "Scopes" Monkey Trial. Legendary lawyer Michael Tigar took those words to heart. He hunted the jungle's predators — the likes of Pinochet. He defended its prey — the likes of Lynne Stewart and Julian Assange. He gave counsel to Panthers like Angela Davis, and, as you just learned, briefly shared a cell with the likes of Bobby Seale.
February 20, 2024
Angus recounts the history of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). First developed in the late 1920s, by 1970 more than 750,000 tons of CFCs had been pumped into the earth’s atmosphere. In the mid-1970s, scientists began to discover the link between CFCs and ozone depletion, and the chemical industry went into full denial mode, arguing that scientists’ arguments were 'just theories'....As it turns out, the British Antarctic Survey had been measuring ozone levels since 1957....
February 20, 2024
In this moment of what a philologist or scholar of poetry might call correctio, Michael performs the self-reflexive, intertextual move of being in conversation with his own text as a form of revision....
February 20, 2024
Recall "The Hanoi Hilton,” where captured U.S. soldiers were held during the war in Vietnam? If you do recall, no doubt, you're recalling the Official Story. So what really happened? Watch!
