Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage.
Do Not Pity the Democrats
Chris Hedges, Truthdig
There are no longer any major institutions in American society, including the press, the educational system, the financial sector, labor unions, the arts, religious institutions and our dysfunctional political parties, which can be considered democratic. The intent, design and function of these institutions, controlled by corporate money, are to bolster the hierarchical and anti-democratic power of the corporate state. These institutions, often mouthing liberal values, abet and perpetuate mounting inequality. They operate increasingly in secrecy. They ignore suffering or sacrifice human lives for profit. They control and manipulate all levers of power and mass communication. They have muzzled the voices and concerns of citizens. They use entertainment, celebrity gossip and emotionally laden public-relations lies to seduce us into believing in a Disneyworld fantasy of democracy.
The menace we face does not come from the insane wing of the Republican Party, which may make huge inroads in the coming elections, but the institutions tasked with protecting democratic participation. Do not fear Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. Do not fear the tea party movement, the birthers, the legions of conspiracy theorists or the militias. Fear the underlying corporate power structure, which no one, from Barack Obama to the right-wing nut cases who pollute the airwaves, can alter. If the hegemony of the corporate state is not soon broken we will descend into a technologically enhanced age of barbarism.
Investing emotional and intellectual energy in electoral politics is a waste of time. Resistance means a radical break with the formal structures of American society. We must cut as many ties with consumer society and corporations as possible. We must build a new political and economic consciousness centered on the tangible issues of sustainable agriculture, self-sufficiency and radical environmental reform. The democratic system, and the liberal institutions that once made piecemeal reform possible, is dead. It exists only in name. It is no longer a viable mechanism for change. And the longer we play our scripted and absurd role in this charade the worse it will get. Do not pity Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.
(13 September 2010)
The Transition Movement, libertarian/communitarians, Greens and similar groups are saying the same thing, though in less inflammatory language. -BA
Are dying languages worth saving?
BBC News
Language experts are gathering at a university in the UK to discuss saving the world’s endangered languages. But is it worth keeping alive dialects that are sometimes only spoken by a handful of people, asks Tom de Castella?
“Language is the dress of thought,” Samuel Johnson once said.
About 6,000 different languages are spoken around the world. But the Foundation for Endangered Languages estimates that between 500 and 1,000 of those are spoken by only a handful of people. And every year the world loses around 25 mother tongues. That equates to losing 250 languages over a decade – a sad prospect for some.
This week a conference in Carmarthen, west Wales, organised by the foundation, is being attended by about 100 academics. They are discussing indigenous languages in Ireland, China, Australia and Spain.
“Different languages will have their quirks which tell us something about being human,” says Nicholas Ostler, the foundation’s chairman.
“And when languages are lost most of the knowledge that went with them gets lost. People do care about identity as they want to be different. Nowadays we want access to everything but we don’t want to be thought of as no more than people on the other side of the world.”
Apart from English, the United Kingdom has a number of other languages. Mr Ostler estimates that half a million people speak Welsh, a few thousand Scots are fluent in Gaelic, about 400 people speak Cornish, while the number of Manx speakers – the language of the Isle of Man – is perhaps as small as 100. But is there any point in learning the really minor languages?
…Wicked words
The veteran word-watcher and Times columnist Philip Howard agrees that languages are in the hands of people, not politicians. “Language is the only absolutely true democracy. It’s not what professors of linguistics or academics or journalists say, but what people do. If children in the playground start using ‘wicked’ to mean terrific then that has a big effect.”
The former Spanish dictator Franco spent decades trying to stamp out the nation’s regional languages but today Catalan is stronger than ever and Basque is also popular.
And Mr Howard says politicians make a “category mistake” when they try to interfere with language, citing an experiment in Glasgow schools that he says is doomed to fail. “Offering Gaelic to children of people who don’t speak it seems like a conservation of lost glories. It’s very romantic to try and save a language but nonsense.”
But neither is he saying that everyone should speak English. “Some people take a destructivist view and argue that everyone will soon be speaking English. But Mandarin is the most populous language in the world and Spanish the fastest growing.”…
(15 September 2010)
The environmentalist’s paradox: we do better while the earth does worse
David Roberts, Grist
Brad Plumer has a great post on why humanity seems to be doing relatively well even though the environment is falling apart. The same subject’s been on my mind since I read a piece by Foreign Policy editor Charles Kenny a few days ago called “Best. Decade. Ever.”
His argument is pretty simple: More people have more money, better health, more mobility, more food, and more security than ever before in human history. That chart on the right is from the Human Development Index, which tracks life expectancy, literacy, and other indicators of human well-being. The lines are heading up almost everywhere. Humanity doesn’t seem to be suffering unduly for its environmental sins.
The natural world, however, is going to sh*t. Species are dying off, the oceans are acidifying, forests are getting eaten by pine beetles, ice is melting, and plains are becoming deserts. Remember the study in Nature about “planetary boundaries” and how we’ve crossed a bunch of them?…
(3 September 2010)
