Activism

Ready, Aim…

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Barbara Ehrenreich has a wonderful essay on the way we’re turning on ourselves in response to the financial crisis – and how we should be turning our anger outwards. She’s right – and it isn’t just suicide. Depression, domestic violence, child abuse – all of these are on the rise, and in large part due to the fact that people are poorer, scared and frustrated. Ehrenreich writes of the move to respond to the financial bad news by destroying yourself that we’re aiming in the wrong direction:

Peak toil

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Peak toil: A fable of the future?

It’s happening in Belgium, Scotland, and Spain, in India, South Korea, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Italy, Portugal, Greece, France…

What might we expect from the average working-class American, as economics in this country continue to worsen? Will they organize in labor unions or protest as isolated individuals expressing their individual sense of hopelessness and despair? Will it be sparked by some “organized” movement, or from some shift in their internal emotional reality? Frank Lee gives his future fantasy version of what he sees could be coming, and folks, it isn’t pretty…Kathy McMahon

Free speech and the fate of humanity

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We all know that even in the United States the guarantee of free speech has limits. The Supreme Court long ago said that no one has the right to endanger his or her fellow citizens by, for instance, falsely yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. Such acts of speech are said to pose “a clear and present danger.” James Hansen, perhaps the most respected climate scientist on the planet, thinks that the fossil fuel lobby and its disinformation campaign about global warming may pose a similar threat.