NATO, Past and Future

EMPIRE’S INSTRUMENTS

Wolfgang Streeck

New Left Review | December 16, 2020

President Biden is not yet in office, but the sighs of relief in Europe’s polite political society are ear-splitting – anyone but Trump! In Germany, where people always have a firm view on whom other people must and must not elect, 95 percent rejoice that Trump is gone. Note, however, that while he may be gone as POTUS, there is a good chance, unless he goes to jail, but perhaps even then, that he will continue to be a powerful presence as leader of a powerful United States’ disloyal opposition.

In any case, hoping for the good old days of hyperglobalization to return, and ‘populism’ to vanish into the dark, European politicians are revelling in happy narratives of rule-bound multilateral global governance in the good old liberal international order (LIO), when an incoming American president could be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as a thank you just for taking office – conjuring up a past that never was, in a desperate effort to turn it into a future that never will be. In the lead are the Germans, in Berlin and Brussels (where Frau von der Leyen is working overtime to express transatlantic enthusiasm). Included in their love letters to Washington is a mysterious morning gift: a promise that ‘the Europeans’ will from now on carry a ‘larger share’ of the ‘common burden’ and accept more ‘responsibility’ for themselves and the ‘West’.

If Humanity is to Have Any Future At All

INTERVIEW 

John Bellamy Foster Interviewed by Ömur Şahin Keyif for BirGün (Istanbul)

MR Online | September 05, 2020

ÖŞK: The U.S. government is escalating the tension with China with the sanctions, consulate closures, harsher and more reckless rhetoric after the pandemic… According to a Pew Research Center poll, 73 percent of U.S. people say they have an unfavorable view of the country. Anti-China rhetoric is an election strategy for Republicans. Republicans are not alone in this. Democrats are racing with Republicans with their anti-China sentiment, blaming Trump for not being hard enough on China. Considering China’s success on innovation and improvement of the new technologies like 5G and its acceptance by West, what will be the future results of anti-China policies both inside and outside of the U.S.? There are reports suggesting that U.S. officials try to push the relations towards a point of ‘no return’. Would that be an outcome?

Venezuela: Maduro Wins Presidential Election, Despite Imperialist Meddling – What Next?

by Jorge Martin

In Defence of Marxism | May 21, 2018

Nicolas Maduro was re-elected for another term of office in the Venezuelan presidential election on Sunday 20 May. The majority of the reactionary opposition, with full support from Washington and Brussels, had called for a boycott, which led to a very low turnout in the middle-and-upper-class areas of the main cities. Their demand that the elections be cancelled was echoed by right-wing governments in the region. This meant that many in the working-class and poor areas turned out to vote as a way of rejecting brazen imperialist meddling. However, even here turnout was visibly lower than in previous elections. The deep economic crisis is the major issue in people’s minds and many are sceptical about the government’s ability to deal with it.

To Avoid Water Shortage for 5 Billion by 2050, UN Report Urges Nature-Based Solutions

by Julia Conley, staff writer

Common Dreams | March 19, 2018

A new report finds that about five billion people could be impacted by water shortages by 2050—around half the world’s population by that time. (Photo: Oscar F. Hevia/Flickr/cc)

A new United Nations report calls for a shift away from human-made water infrastructure and towards nature-based irrigation solutions in order to avoid widespread water shortages around the world by 2050.

The UN’s annual report on the state of the world’s water found that five billion people could be affected by a lack of potable water within the next three decades—about half of the expected world population by that time—due to climate crisis, polluted supplies, and increased demand brought on by a rise in population.

Foreword to Creating an Ecological Society

by John Bellamy Foster

MR Online | October 19, 2017

As Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams point out in their new book, Creating an Ecological Society, the word “ecology” (originally œcology) was first coined in 1866 by Ernst Haeckel, Darwin’s leading German follower, based on the Greek word oikos, or household. Ironically, the word “economy,” to which ecology is often nowadays counterposed, was derived much earlier from the same Greek root—in this instance oikonomia, or household management. The close family relationship between these two concepts was fully intended by Haeckel, who defined ecology as the study of Darwin’s “economy of nature.”¹

The radicalization process yesterday, today, and tomorrow

by Paul Le Blanc

MR Online | August 19, 2017

On July 21st Paul Le Blanc sat down at his Pittsburgh home with Vaios Triantafyllou for an interview on issues related to a radicalization process that he sees unfolding in the United States today, and possible revolutionary strategies for the future. Le Blanc is uniquely qualified to address these themes, with more than half a century of activist experience in social movements, and as internationally recognized scholar of working class history and revolutionary politics. The wide-ranging conversation was animated by extensive reflections on the nature of capitalism, democracy, socialism, the working class, and human nature. It also touched on current U.S. and global developments, the history of the Russian Revolution, relationships between Marxism and Leninism and Stalinism, and more.

Dangerous Urbanization in Countries: World’s 10 biggest cities in 2030

A Journal of People report

Source: MORPHOCODE

Where shall the urban population growth reach? What shall be its impact? What is happening in urban life? Is this life-pattern sustainable? What is the root of the urban population-reality? These questions and similar questions are haunting all around the world.

The human population is growing at an alarming rate. By 2050, there will be almost 10 billion people on the planet.

With Trump Out of Paris, the Road Ahead is Up to Us

350.ORG | June 01, 2017

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump announced from the White House Rose Garden that the U.S would exit the Paris Climate Agreement for the alleged “well being of the United States and its people.”

In response, 350.org Executive Director May Boeve issued the following statement:

“Trump has made his decision and we’re making ours – the rest of the world and the majority of Americans who support the Paris Climate Agreement will stand by it. We won’t be dragged back by a shortsighted and destructive fossil fuel puppet in the White House. While the Trump Administration has spent its first months rolling back hard-won protections for our communities and climate, we have spent it developing a shared vision of the transition away from fossil fuels towards a 100% clean energy economy that works for all.

Stop EU from hijacking Africa’s clean energy future

by Mohamed Adow

Pambazuka News | May 18, 2017

The Africa Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI) was one of the greatest achievements to emerge from the COP 21 climate summit in Paris in 2015 and, as an African and climate activist, my proudest moment. It made headlines around the world. Attracting pledges totalling $10 billion of public support from the G7, EU, Netherlands and Sweden, the scheme has ushered an exciting dawn of African leadership on climate change to see the continent harness it’s huge clean energy potential.

However, that vision is now in tatters after attempts by the EC to control and divert Africa’s renewable energy initiative to its own ends. It is imposing itself on the AREI Board and the initiative’s Independent Delivery Unit (IDU) and, together with France, forced through undue approval of a host of 19 energy projects, bypassing the AREI’s transparent procedures. 

Artificial intelligence: Socioeconomic, political and ethical dimensions

by Jon V. Kofas

Pambazuka News| May 04, 2017

Ars Technica

Introduction: Humanity’s future in AI-biosynthetic world

In a few centuries or perhaps a few decades, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and biosynthetic engineering will be perfected to the degree that androids will closely resemble humans and biosynthetically engineered humans will resemble androids. Despite the nightmares of such a prospect for some scientists, humanist scholars and theologians, AI will be a dream becoming reality for those espousing Max More’s philosophy of “transhumanism”, a movement whose goal is to enhance the human condition physically and intellectually through the application of scientific and technological means. (Carvalko, Joseph, The Techno-human Shell-A Jump in the Evolutionary Gap. Sunbury Press, 2012)