Marx on Praxis

"The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-worldliness of his thinking, in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question."

- Karl Marx, Theses On Feuerbach (1845)

A Summary of Bruno Latour's 'Politics of Nature'

From Bruno Latour's website on his book Politics of Nature (2004):

Summary of the Argument (For Readers in a Hurry . . .)

INTRODUCTION: This book is a work of political philosophy of nature, or political epistemology. It asks what we can do with political ecology. To answer this question, it is not enough to talk about nature and politics; we also have to talk about science. But here is where the shoe pinches: ecologism cannot be simply the introduction of nature into politics, since not only the idea of nature but also the idea of politics, by contrast, both depend on a certain conception of science. Thus we have to reconsider three concepts at once: polis, logos, and phusis.

CHAPTER 1: Why must political ecology let go of nature? Because nature is not a particular sphere of reality but the result of a political division, of a Constitution* that separates what is objective and indisputable from what is subjective and disputable. To do political ecology, then, we must first of all come out of the Cave*, by distinguishing Science* from the practical work of the sciences*. This distinction allows us to make another one, between the official philosophy of ecologism on the one hand and its burgeoning practice on the other. Whereas ecology is assimilated to questions concerning nature, in practice it focuses on imbroglios involving sciences, moralities, law, and politics. As a result, ecologism bears not on crises of nature but on crises of objectivity. If nature* is a particular way of totalizing the members who share the same common world instead of and in place of politics, we understand easily why ecologism marks the end of nature in politics and why we cannot accept the traditional term “nature,” which was invented in order to reduce public life to a rump parliament. To be sure, the idea that the Western notion of nature is a historically situated social representation* has become a commonplace. But we cannot settle for it without maintaining the politics of the Cave, since doing so would amount to distancing ourselves still further from the reality of things themselves left intact in the hands of Science.

To give political ecology its place, we must then avoid the shoals of representations of nature and accept the risk of metaphysics. Fortunately, for this task we can profit from the fragile aid of comparative anthropology. Indeed, no culture except that of the West has used nature to organize its political life. Traditional societies do not live in harmony with nature; they are unacquainted with it. Thanks to the sociology of the sciences, to the practice of ecologism, to anthropology, we can thus understand that nature is only one of the two houses of a collective* instituted to paralyze democracy. The key question of political ecology can now be formulated: can we find a successor to the collective with two houses: nature and society*?

CHAPTER 2: Once nature has been set aside, another question arises—how to bring together the collective—that is heir to the old nature and the old society. We cannot simply bring objects* and subjects* together, since the division between nature and society is not made in such a way that we can get beyond it. In order to get ourselves out of these difficulties in composing the collective, we have to consider that the collective is made up of humans and nonhumans capable of being seated as citizens, provided that we proceed to apportion capacities. The first of these consists in redistributing speech between humans and nonhumans while learning to be skeptical of all spokespersons—those who represent humans as well as those who represent nonhumans. The second apportionment consists in redistributing the capacity to act as a social actor while considering only associations of humans and nonhumans. It is on these associations and not on nature that ecology must focus. This does not mean that the citizens of the collective belong to language or to the social realm since, by a third apportionment, the sctors are also defined by reality and recalcitrance. The set of three apportionments allows us to define the collective as composed of propositions*. To convene the collective, we shall thus no longer be interested in nature and society, but only in knowing whether the propositions that compose it are more or less well articulated. The collective finally convened allows a return to civil peace, by redefining politics as the progressive composition of a good common world*.

CHAPTER 3: Do we not find again the same confusion with the collective as with the abandoned notion of nature, namely, premature unification? In order to avoid this risk, we are going to seek a new separation of powers that makes it possible to redifferentiate the collective. It is impossible, of course, to go back to the old separation between facts and values, for that separation has only disadvantages, even though it seems indispensable to public order. To speak about “facts” amounts to mixing a morality that is impotent in the face of established facts with a hierarchy of priorities that no longer has the right to eliminate any fact. It paralyzes both sciences and morality.

We restore order to these assemblies if we distinguish two other powers: the power to take into account, and the power to put in order. The first power is going to retain from facts the requirement of perplexity*, and from values the requirement of consultation*. The second is going to recuperate from values the requirement of hierarchy*, and from facts the requirement of institution*. In place of the impossible distinction between facts and values, we are thus going to have two powers of representation of the collective that are at once distinct and complementary. While the fact/value distinction appeared reassuring, it did not allow us to maintain the essential guarantees that the new Constitution requires by inventing a State of law for propositions. The collective no longer construes itself as a society in a single nature, for it creates a new exteriority defined as the totality of what it has excluded by the power of putting in order and which obliges the power of taking into account to go back to work. The dynamics of the progressive composition of the common world thus differ as much from the politics of humans as from that of nature under the old Constitution.

CHAPTER 4: It now becomes possible to define the competencies of the collective, provided that we first avoid the quarrel of the two ecopolitics, which would confuse political ecology with political economics. If economics presents itself as the summing-up of the collective, it usurps the functions of political ecology and paralyzes science, morality, and politics simultaneously, by imposing a third form of naturalization. But once it has been emptied of its political pretensions, it becomes a profession indispensable to the functions of the new Constitution, and each of its members brings, through the intermediary of individual skill, an individual contribution to the furnishing of the houses. The contribution of the sciences is going to be much more important than that of Science* since it will bear on all the functions at once: perplexity*, consultation*, hierarchy*, and institution*, to which we must add the maintenance of the separation of powers* and the scenarization of the whole*. The big difference is that the politicians’ contribution is going to bear on the same six tasks, thus permitting a synergy that was impossible earlier when Science was concerned with nature and politics with interests. These functions are going to become all the more realizable in that the contribution of the economists and then that of the moralists will be added, defining a common construction site that takes the place of the impossible political body of the past.

Thanks to this new organization, the dynamics of the collective is becoming clear. It rests on the work of the two houses, of which one, the upper house, represents the power to take into account* and the other, the lower house, represents the power to arrange in rank order*. Reception by the upper house has nothing to do with the old triage between nature and society: it is based on two investigations, the first undertaken to satisfy the requirement of perplexity and the other to satisfy the requirement of consultation. If this first assembly has done a good job, it makes reception by the lower house much more difficult because each proposition has become incommensurable with the common world already collected. And yet it is here that the investigation into the hierarchies* that are compatible among themselves must begin, along with the investigation into the common designation of the enemy* whose exclusion will be instituted by the lower house during an explicit procedure. This succession of stages makes it possible to define a common house, a State of law in the reception of propositions, which finally makes the sciences compatible with democracy.

CHAPTER 5: A collective whose dynamics has just been thus redefined no longer finds itself facing the alternative between a single nature and multiple cultures. It is thus going to have to reopen the question of the number of collectives by exploring the common worlds. But it can only begin this exploration if it abandons the definition of progress. There are in fact not one but two arrows of time; the first one, modernist*, goes toward an ever-increasing separation between objectivity and subjectivity, and the other, nonmodern, goes toward ever more intricate attachments. Only the second makes it possible to define the collective by its learning curve. Provided that we add to the two preceding powers a third power, the power to follow up, which brings up anew the question of the state. The State of political ecology remains to be invented, since it is no longer based on any transcendence but on the quality of follow-up in the collective experimentation. It is on this quality, the art of governing without mastery, that civilization* capable of putting an end to the state of war depends. But to make peace possible, we still need to benefit from the exercise of diplomacy. The diplomat renews contact with the others, but without making further use of the division between mononaturalism* and multiculturalism*. The success of diplomacy will determine whether the sciences are at war or at peace.

CONCLUSION:

a) Since politics has always been conducted under the auspices of nature, we have never left the state of nature behind, and the Leviathan remains to be constructed.

b) A first style of political ecology believed it was innovating by inserting nature into politics, whereas in fact it was only exacerbating the paralysis of politics caused by the old nature.

c) To give new meaning to political ecology, we need to abandon Science in favor of the sciences conceived as ways of socializing nonhumans, and we have to abandon the politics of the Cave for politics defined by the progressive composition of the good common world*.

d) All the institutions that allow for this new political ecology already exist in tentative form in contemporary reality, even if we shall have to redefine the positions of left and right.

e) To the famous question “What Is to Be Done?” there is only one answer: “Political ecology!” —provided that we modify the meaning of the word by giving it the experimental metaphysics* that is in keeping with its ambitions.

My impressions on Latour's ideas will come in an update to this post very soon.

The Charter for Compassion

Love is my Religion - Compassion is my Faith



Join the movement of Compassion: Here

Survival Of The Kindest?

New research is being published that suggests just how much we may have evolved to be 'social animals'. It is easy to believe that revolutionary processes might have also helped shape our most social and empathetic capacities. Our species has evolved too long in intimate groupings and families to not have adaptations for highly social behavior.

Below is an article presenting work done by Berkeley researchers supporting the notion that humans are becoming more kind and empathetic as time goes by. This should be very interesting for those people who subscribe to theories of evolution that argue for an inherently "progressive" trend in human affairs. Perhaps, some might argue, by virtue of our deeply social existence our species is drifting towards becoming quite simply... kinder?

Survival Of The Kindest

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are challenging long-held beliefs that human beings are wired to be selfish. In a wide range of studies, social scientists are amassing a growing body of evidence to show we are evolving to become more compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive.

In contrast to "every man for himself" interpretations of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, Dacher Keltner, a UC Berkeley psychologist and author of "Born to be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life," and his fellow social scientists are building the case that humans are successful as a species precisely because of our nurturing, altruistic and compassionate traits.

They call it "survival of the kindest."’

"Because of our very vulnerable offspring, the fundamental task for human survival and gene replication is to take care of others," said Keltner, co-director of UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. "Human beings have survived as a species because we have evolved the capacities to care for those in need and to cooperate. As Darwin long ago surmised, sympathy is our strongest instinct."

Read More: Here

Ecofascism and the Death of Leadership

The Copenhagen climate conference was a complete and utter failure. World leaders and corporate sponsored politicians failed to deliver a legal framework in Copenhagen that will help our species reduce the world's greenhouse gas emissions causing devastating climate change. Despite U.S president Obama's announcement Friday that the ‘accord’ signed in Copenhagen was a "meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough", prominent politicians everywhere continue fail in their efforts to provide the world-changing leadership we so desperately need.

Either Obama is so caught up in his own doctrine of hope to understand the urgency of his task or he thinks he can sell failure as "modest success" to a public that waits each and every day for any sign of real systemic change?

Not only does the so-called ‘Copenhagen Accord’ not include overall emissions targets or deadlines, but also fails to include legally binding protocols or measures. The 'agreement' these industrial-state politicians reached merely suggests limiting global warming to a maximum of 2C above pre-industrial times. But the agreement fails to say how to actualize this vague goal. Without binding legal mechanisms or emissions cut targets there is no way to actually achieve this espoused goal of limiting an increase in global temperature.

i can envision the wealthy 'elite' now gathering in their $2000 suits to discuss corporate salaries and their next public relations attack against scientific data. But there is terrible storm of events coming – and even corporate managers, technocrats and bankers won’t be able to spend or talk their way out it. These ecofascists will continue to increase their influence on institutions and resource transfer systems, but their investments and opinions will be come irrelevant.

The Copenhagen meetings were good for at least one thing: a wide range of resistance and NGO groups came together to support the issue of climate change – forming previously non-exiting links and alliances. Thousands of human rights groups, environmentalists and anti-poverty campaigners have now rallied and reorganized in order to bring climate change within their direct sphere of concern. Politicians’ continued failures are now galvanizing a worldwide movement that will continue put immense pressure on world leaders in the coming months.

If the Copenhagen debacle can teach us anything it is that now, more than even, we must continue to fight and struggle against all those systems of domination and appropriation that seek to silence and brutalize us. The time for talk over people. Either join the coming battles or get the fuck out of the way.

Breakdown, A Degree of Difference

As world leaders leave Copenhagen this weekend after the COP 13 international climate conference they must now prepare for the onslaught of attention and lobbying by corporate advocacy and anti-government organizations awaiting them upon their return home.

While heads of state and elite bureaucrats spent the last 14 days debating environmental policy and promoting national economic agendas - private interest groups and organizations were gearing up massively funded public relations campaigns in order to sway public opinion and force politicians to roll back their environmental rhetoric and get back to business as usual. Prominent financial elites and corporations will inevitable reinforce their economic interests, conventions and related power formations by reminding bureaucrats and elected officials who pays for the now requisite multi-million dollar political campaigns at the core of current democratic processes.

These facts have also remained at the fore throughout the historic international conference. Despite large public expressions of concern about the role corporate profit and predatory financial institutions have in driving the economic and industrial practices responsible for accelerated climate change, both the US and Chinese governments - the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases on the planet - have announced only minor "concessions.”

The only remotely interesting “concession” came when U.S Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reported her administration was prepared to help establish funding of $100 billon a year for developing countries if a deal emerged that met U.S requirements. With such conditionalities governmental, corporate and banking elites have decided that spended their way out of potential catastrophic changes in the Earth’s climate is the only prefered choice.

Only a few leaders from European nations were willing to put forth an effort to move toward an agreement. Denmark's Lars Lokke Rasmussen called late-night talks with a group of 26 influential world leaders about how to unblock negotiations. However, disagreement between all nations about funding projects that actually attempt to decrease, mitigate or adapt to climate change continued. Advisors and aides continued working on a political agreement throughout the night and morning after leaders walked away from the meetings with little resolved. Referring to his staff as “Sherpas”, Rasmussen indicated to the press that politicians have tried to advance their main issues and then let the technocrats provide the language and terms of any final agreements.

Those close to the late night talks between national politicians and “sherpas” indicate that the current draft declaration is reportedly set to suggest attempts to prevent the earth's temperature from increasing 2C. Yet, a document simultaneously prepared by the UN climate convention secretariat, leaked earlier this week, confirms that current pledges on cutting greenhouse gas emissions by major industrial nations during the talks are almost certainly not enough to keep the rise in the global average temperature within this proposed 2C level.

The analysis - based on several recent studies, notably the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook - reports that limiting temperature increase to 2C would require global emissions to be below 44 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in 2020. Current maximum pledges from developed countries would leave emissions 1.9Gt above that figure, but minimum pledges would mean missing the target by more then 4.2Gt - with a related temperature rise around 3C (5.4F).

The Earth's average temperature has increased about 1 degree Fahrenheit during the 20th century. One degree may sound like a small amount, but it's an unusual event in our planet's recent history. Earth's climate record - preserved in tree rings, ice cores, and coral reefs - shows that the global average temperature has been stable over long periods of time. Furthermore, data suggests, small changes in temperature correspond to enormous changes in planetary ecosystems. For example, at the end of the last ice age, when the Northeast United States was covered by more than 3,000 feet of ice, average temperatures were only 5 to 9 degrees cooler than today.

Therefore a rise in temperature of 3 degrees Celsius is projected to generate intense changes in all of earth's ecosystems and severely test the capacity of many cities, towns and regions to adapt and adjust. Such changes are likely to include increased frequency, intensity and duration of heat waves, deforestation, drought in some places and massive flooding in others, global fresh water shortages, overwhelming mass migrations of people leaving affected areas, and catastrophic biodiversity loss.

With nations pledging to do the absolute minimum in order to maintain conventional economic systems, and preserve the interests of multi-national corporations and financial elites, the climate is expected to reach several degrees above a global average temperature necessary to sustain requisite ecological stability. While national elites and corporate argue over differences in opinion with regard to minor concessions the scientific community continues to indicate that much more serious regulations and actions will be required if we are to prevent devastating changes in the Earth’s climate.

It now seems that while our differences may divide us as a species, the significant ecological and political challenges we are creating for future generations with will most certainly unite us.

The Politics of Climate Change

In the film Hot Politics the PBS news program Frontline and the Center for Investigative Reporting investigate how U.S bi-partisan political and economic forces prevented the U.S. government from confronting what is one of the most serious problems facing humanity today.

The documentary examines some of the key moments that have shaped the politics of global warming, and how local and state governments and the private sector are now taking bold steps in the absence of federal leadership.

WATCH the Entire Program: Here
READ several of the original documents discussed: Here

The Story of Cap & Trade

Do check out the new video from Annie Leonard (creator of The Story of Stuff) on "Cap and Trade" here:

From the Website:

The Story of Cap & Trade is a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the leading climate solution being discussed at Copenhagen and on Capitol Hill. Host Annie Leonard introduces the energy traders and Wall Street financiers at the heart of this scheme and reveals the "devils in the details" in current cap and trade proposals: free permits to big polluters, fake offsets and distraction from what’s really required to tackle the climate crisis. If you’ve heard about cap and trade, but aren’t sure how it works (or who benefits), this is the film is for you.

Most Important Global Summit Ever

For the next two weeks I will be covering the historic Copenhagen Climate Summit. I hope to keep the polemics to a minimum, but I can't promise anything. The following coverage and analysis is from Democracy Now, the only independent news radio program given inside access to the general proceedings of the conference:

Politicians Talk, Leaders Act

Canada's International Reputation in Ruins

“The tar barons have held the nation to ransom. This thuggish petro-state is today the greatest obstacle to a deal in Copenhagen.” -- George Monbiot

It used to be that when people not from Canada thought about the country they did so with some sense of fondness. People used to think of Canada as a peacekeeper, a friendly nation with social standards that made its neighbor to the south seem like a cold-hearted corporate machine. Canadians could travel anywhere and expect to be greeted warmly. All that is now gone.

Europeans, who are much more politically and socially aware than most of us in North America, among others now view Canada as a backward, selfish petro-state only interested in raising its economic status in the international and industrial cash-grab economy. So amazingly destructive has Canada become in its pursuit of tar sand oil that people and institutions around the world are speaking out and tearing asunder a national reputation that took a hundred years to build.

Reports from the global climate change summit in Copenhagen are already coming in that show how Canada is trying every tactic and means possible to derail the talks and prevent any binding international agreements.

Yet as award-winning journalist George Monbiot puts it,

Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalization of the country…

In 2006 the Conservative Party government announced it was abandoning its obligations and targets to cut greenhouse gases under the Kyoto protocol. No other country that had ratified the treaty has done this. Canada was meant to have cut emissions by 6% between 1990 and 2012. Instead they have already risen by 26%.

This is in contrast to Holland, which has far exceeded their Kyoto targets and still managed to grow their economy at more than double its projected rate.

After walking away from the Kyoto Accord, Canada then set out to prevent the other nations striking a successor agreement. At the end of 2007, it singlehandedly blocked a Commonwealth resolution to support binding targets for carbon emissions in industrialized nations. After the climate talks in Poland in December 2008, it won the Fossil of the Year award, presented by environmental groups to the country that had done most to disrupt the talks.

During the meeting in Bangkok in October 2009, almost the entire developing world bloc walked out when the Canadian delegate was speaking, as they were so revolted by his bullying. Last week the Commonwealth heads of government battled for hours (and eventually won) against Canada's obstructions.

A concerted campaign has now begun by member nations to expel Canada from the Commonwealth!!! Canada is a now an international disgrace!


And what for? The simple answer: OIL. Canada is developing the world's second largest reserve of oil. Actually it’s not even oil – but a filthy mixture of bitumen, sand, heavy metals and toxic organic chemicals. The tar sands, most of which occur in Alberta, are being extracted by the biggest opencast mining operation on earth. An area the size of England is being dug up and sold to transnational corporations.

To extract oil from this mess, it needs to be heated and washed. Three barrels of water are used to process one barrel of oil. The contaminated water is held in vast tailings ponds, some so toxic that the tar companies employ people to scoop dead birds off the surface. Most are unlined. They leak organic poisons, arsenic and mercury into the rivers.

The First Nations people living downstream have developed a range of exotic cancers and auto-immune diseases.

Refining tar sands requires two to three times as much energy as refining crude oil. The companies exploiting them burn enough natural gas to heat six million homes. Alberta's tar sands operation is the world's biggest single industrial source of carbon emissions. By 2020, if the current growth continues, it will produce more greenhouse gases than Ireland or Denmark. Already, thanks in part to the tar mining, Canadians have almost the highest per capita emissions on earth.

And who is Canada selling its future to?

The biggest leaseholder in the tar sands is Shell, a company that has spent millions persuading the public that it respects the environment. Syncrude is another major player. The other great greenwasher, BP, initially decided to stay out of tar. Now it has invested in plants built to process it. The British bank RBS has lent or underwritten £8bn for mining the tar sands.

The purpose of Canada's assault on the international talks is to protect this industry. This is not a poor nation. It does not depend for its economic survival on exploiting this resource. But the tar barons of Alberta have been able to hold the whole country to ransom. They have captured Canada's politics and are turning this country into a cruel and thuggish place.

It should seem very odd to Canadians that Canada is quickly becoming the most immediate threat to the sustainability and peace of our global civilization. But people all over the world are now waking up to this horrible fact.

The National Press is Also Following This Tragedy:

• 'Canada must reclaim its reputation by reducing greenhouse gas emissions' – Edmonton Journal

• 'How Canada can restore its reputation on climate change' – Globe & Mail

• 'Canada's Reputation Tarnished by Tar Sands' - Pembina Institute.

Conspiracy Theorists Caught Cherry Picking Again

Climate deniers have been making a lot of noise about a set of stolen emails from one of the world's leading climate centers, The Universtiy of East Anglia.

The spin they're putting out is that the emails reveal what they always suspected, an evil global conspiracy. In the short video below a climate scientist debunks the so-called debunkers. But i'm sure the denialists and conspiracy will cherry-pick this as well.



From the director of the film below:

Now that the conspiracy theorists have blown off steam, it's time for a more sober analysis of those e-mails and what they mean. I can't go through all of them, there are far too many, and . So I've taken the two that seem to be getting conspiracy theorists most worked up -- Phil Jones's e-mail about "Mike's Nature trick" and Kevin Trenberth's e-mail about a "travesty." I'm glad to see that skeptic websites that cover the science understand what these e-mails actually mean. As you'll see, very few commentators who jumped on the conspiracy bandwagon even before reading the e-mails mandged to get it right.

An Open Letter to Climate Change Denialists

.
Dear Denialists,

For many years now you have loudly and openly argued for a 'real' debate on climate change. Yet, when questioned, it often seems the only debate you seek is one where opinion matters most and where we are asked to assume that opinion has the same legitimacy as expertise. Such 'debate' is then measured by climate change denialists according to an assumed right to reject any information they find personally disruptive (or inconvenient) - thus elevating opinion and personal ideology as the standard for establishing truth. We get it, everyone has a right to their opinion and you in particular just don't like being told what to do. We get it.

Be that as it may, what you don't realize is how productive debate actually works. Contrary to what your kindergarden teachers told you your opinions - that is to say, any potentially uninformed or vested opinions - are more than likely quite irrelevant, if not completely useless.

The 'real' debate about climate science should only take place among people who know how to understand the data and read the articles in which the science is presented. Scientific debate should not include the opinions of Fox News reporters, CEOs of major banks or any other non-scientists who glean their opinions from their favorite talk show hosts or magazines. As an analogy, would you ask your hairdresser to fix your car engine, or would you ask your mechanic to cut your hair? Probably not. So why would anyone ask a businessperson, or a butcher, or supermodel to contribute to any sort of productive and practical debate on climate science? It is inappropriate for the task at hand.

Now, in light of the recent scandal over leaked emails of climate scientists, many climate denialists have rallied and are claiming a victory over the global warming acknowledgers. Climate denialists claim that these emails between a small handful of people is "proof" that the scientific data supporting the notion of human-influenced global warming and dangerous climate change is wrong.

It is true that computer hackers obtained 160 megabytes of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England. And its true that a handful of researchers seem to have been caught manipulating data and trying to influence public opinion. But how on earth does this disprove global warming??? The Climate Research Unit was not the first group to suggest global warming was a problem, and they aren't even a large enough group to begin to impact the results on all the other studies done by thousands of researchers strongly indicating a crisis in global climate systems.

That being said, I would like to take this opportunity to invite all you fervent climate change denialists to prove me wrong, and now enter full force into the 'real' debate, by asking you a few questions. If you can't address the following questions you just haven't done the homework necessary to weigh in on this recent debate over leaked emails, let alone on the wider debate on climate change:

1. Which studies were compromised by the actions of the Climate Research Unit, and how? be specific. Cite papers and data sets.

2. This supposed scandal involves perhaps a half dozen people, how does it affect the work of the 3,000+ others who’s work make up the broader climate science?

3. How does the actions of these few people affect the scientific data collected before the alleged culprits even graduated from university? Or even the work done before they were born?

4. Of the 30,000+ studies that make up the consensus on global warming, which ones are now in question? Where is your evidence? be specific. Please run through a list of the studies you believe are affected?

If you can't answer these questions then you might what to rethink your role in championing this latest round of "debunking" claims. In fact, you might want to rethink the appropriateness of denying global warming in the first place...

Graham Harman on Manuel DeLanda

Below is a talk by philosopher Graham Harman on Manuel DeLanda's notion of assemblages. Anyone remotely familiar with the content of this blog will note the strong presence of DeLanda's work. Graham Harman is a theorist I have only recently discovered, thanks to the blogging efforts of Mike Johnduff. Harman is considered a leader in a recent philosophical movement called Speculative Realism. I will be posting much more on speculative realism as i continue to confront some of the main themes and discursive gestures involved in the work of its major proponents.

Much of this talk is rather irrelevant to practice - in the sense of getting along with, struggling or coping in the world - but is nonetheless intellectually stimulating. What interests me is that Harman says that he does not believe in the world as a continuum. Harman wants to hold firm to his ideas about the quasi-essential nature of objects. In contrast, DeLanda would argue for an assemblage theory of how objects (which are actually sub-parts or emergent from other properties) combine to create other objects, all operating on each other at different scales according to their intensive properties.

So where do we make the determination as to which 'objects' should be considered as enduring enough to have causal primacy? Which wholes (objects) do we privilege without reference to their parts (other objects)?

I think Harman wants his metaphysical understanding about how the world works, with its supposed object-permanency, to take precedence over philosophical discourses and arguments that privilege a kind of chaotic, fluctuating and creative ontology (theory of what exists). But I think we would do well to remember that at a different time scale, beyond the perveiw of human perception, the world is much more like a layered field of dynamic flux than a container of persistent objects in mechanical or vicarious conjunction.

Please give this a listen and decide for yourself. And then let me know what you think:

AUDIO: Graham Harman at the LSE - “Assemblages According to Manuel DeLanda”

This lecture was delivered at the London School of Economics. Download or listen to it here. A power point presentation of talking points is also available online.

Robert Anton Wilson on Alfred Korzybski

"There is nothing rationally desirable that cannot be achieved sooner if rationality itself increases. Work to achieve Intelligence Intensification is work to achieve all our sane and worthwhile goals." -Robert Anton Wilson

The Commons

In this innovative animation, filmmaker Laura Hanna, writer Gavin Browning and video artists/animators Dana Schechter and Molly Schwartz examine the concept of "The Commons" as a means to achieve a society of justice and equality.

Source: The Nation

"In a just world, the idea of wealth--be it money derived from the work of human hands, the resources and natural splendor of the planet itself--and the knowledge handed down through generations belongs to all of us. But in our decidedly unjust and imperfect world, our collective wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. There is be a better way--the notion of the commons--common land, resources, knowledge--is a common-sense way to share our natural, cultural, intellectual riches."

Taking on the Fed

It is not everyday the corporate-banking establishment gets what it deserves. In fact, for over two hundred years, hyper-rich elites have basically called the shots within the Western mainstream political and financial establishment. It could even be argued that so-called Western civil society – in its institutional, economic and governmental practices – has been so well “managed” in favor of the powerful capitalist minority that the very conditions of everyday life have come to necessitate a certain kind of perpetual corruption, inequality and political alienation.

Private interests have now so thoroughly co-opted and distorted effective democratic processes that contemporary citizenship has been reduced to 1) having the superficial leadership choice between a small handful corporate-sponsored pitch-men, and 2) a brand of freedom anchored in simple decidions as to which wasteful and ecologically insane commodities to consume, and build their equally insane and superficial identities.

But last Thursday (November 19, 2009) the United States congress - in a bipartisan vote - defied the banking industry, the Federal Reserve, the Democratic leadership, and dominant corporate establishment in order to pass an amendment, sponsored by Ron Paul and Alan Grayson, mandating a genuine and probing audit of the Federal Reserve Bank. That's right: the U.S Congress stood up to the mega-powerful elites.

As journalist Ryan Grim noted:

“In an unprecedented defeat for the Federal Reserve, an amendment to audit the multi-trillion dollar institution was approved by the House Finance Committee with an overwhelming and bipartisan 43-26 vote on Thursday afternoon despite harried last-minute lobbying from top Fed officials and the surprise opposition of Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who had previously been a supporter.”

Despite key committee Democrats attempts to suddenly introduced their own amendment – an amendment that would have essentially gutted the major transparency provisions - Democratic Rep. Grayson convinced 15 of his colleagues to join with Republicans to provide overwhelming support for a strict audit of the Federal Reserve.


Key Democratic support was gained only after a letter was posted early Thursday from labor leaders and progressive economists. The letter, organized by the liberal blog FireDogLake.com, called for strong and committed support for provisions brought forth by Ron Paul. The letter helped Paul and Grayson show their Democratic colleagues that the liberal base was indeed behind them.

Populist anger over Wall Street bailouts, the banking industry influence over Congress, and the impenetrable secrecy with which the Fed conducts itself has long been brewing on both the Right and Left (and in between), but neither political party can capitalize on it because they're both dependent upon and subservient to the same elite interests which benefit from those policies.

While most of the realities of U.S economic policy do not fit comfortably into the simplifying and distracting Right-Left paradigm, independent analysts are beginning to point out the long-standing pathologies inherent in current economic systems.

As former constitutional law and civil rights litigator Glenn Greenwald writes,

The pillaging of America's economic security by financial elites, with the eager assistance of the government officials who they own and who serve them, is the prime example of such a conflict. The political system as a whole -- both parties' leadership -- is owned and controlled by a handful of key industry interests, and anger over the fact is found across the political spectrum. Yesterday's vote is a very rare example where the true nature of political power was expressed and the petty distractions and artificial fault lines overcome.

Could it be that American citizens and pundits alike are beginning to see through corporate media sleight-of-hands and gimmicky distractions and seek out truly bipartisan and trans-ideological constraints of elite financial power?

A Glimpse

It’s been several years since i first opened up to the ineffable experience of my own shimmering nothingness. Yet even to this day i never fail to feel shocked and surprised when the veil of intellect momentarily lifts, offering a glimpse of eternity that bursts through my mortal shell. Often it is some seemingly mundane event that occasions such experiences.

Today it was the sun’s light reflecting off the ice and snow on the rooftops of adjacent buildings.

In an instant the regularly dreary urban backdrop seemed illuminated and so utterly soaked in significance that my inner Being seemed to open up to reveal an awesome vastness, then exploded.

How terribly lucky we are to be alive.

First Earth

Below is a documentary by David Sheen called First Earth:

"FIRST EARTH is a documentary about the movement towards a massive paradigm shift for shelter -- building healthy houses in the old ways, out of the very earth itself, and living together like in the old days, by recreating villages. An audiovisual manifesto filmed over the course of 4 years and 4 continents, FIRST EARTH makes the case that earthen homes are the healthiest housing in the world; and that since it still takes a village to raise a healthy child, it is incumbent upon us to transform our suburban sprawl into eco-villages, a new North American dream."

Chapter 1 - Prologue: What's Wrong With Architecture

Chapter 2 - African Earth
Chapter 3 - American Earth
Chapter 4 - Why Earth
Chapter 5 - Empowering Earth
Chapter 6 - Another Earth Is Possible
Chapter 7 - European Earth
Chapter 8 - Arabian Earth
Chapter 9 - Urban Earth
Chapter 10 - Inner City Earth
Chapter 11 - International Earth
Chapter 12 - Epilogue: Future Earth

Chalking up over 300,000 views on YouTube even before its official release, FIRST EARTH is not a how-to film; rather, it's a why-to film. It establishes the appropriateness of earthen building in every cultural context, under all socio-economic conditions, from third-world communities to first-world countrysides, from Arabian deserts to American urban jungles. In the age of environmental and economic collapse, peak oil and other converging emergencies, the solution to many of our ills might just be getting back to basics, focusing on food, clothes, and shelter. We need to think differently about house and home, for material and for spiritual reasons, both the personal and the political.

"The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or social humanity."

- Karl Marx, Theses On Feuerbach (1845)

Said on Orientalism

Edward Said discusses the themes of his classic work "Orientalism", its implications and its place in the modern world.

"Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it."

- Karl Marx, Theses On Feuerbach (1845)

Wallerstein on the Search For Knowledge

Renown sociologist and world-systems theorist IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN on THE STRUCTURES OF KNOWLEDGE

i remember

Deleuze and the Use of the Genetic Algorithm in Architecture

Manuel Delanda at Columbia University giving a talk called, "Deleuze and the Use of the Genetic Algorithm in Architecture":

The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere

Four of the world’s leading public intellectuals came together on Thursday, October 22 in the historic Great Hall at Cooper Union to discuss “Rethinking Secularism.” In an electrifying symposium convened by the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU, the Social Science Research Council and the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook University, Judith Butler, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Cornel West gave powerful accounts of religion in the public sphere.

You can listen to the full audio of each talk: HERE

• Jürgen Habermas: “‘The Political’ – The Rational Sense of a Questionable Inheritance of Political Theology"
• Charles Taylor: “Why We Need a Radical Redefinition of Secularism”
• Judith Butler: “Is Judaism Zionism? Religious Sources for the Critique of Violence”
• Cornel West: “Prophetic Religion and the Future of Capitalist Civilization

2 Rorty Videos

Rorty on His Life, Truth, Beauty and Goodness:



Rorty in Conversation with Davidson: Truth, Meanings and Reference:



Richard Rorty (1931-2007) was American philosopher and pragmatist. Rorty achieved considerable attention for his critical views on the western philosophical tradition, and his thoughts on human knowledge, language and culture.

Learn More Here:

• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009), Goodbye

OBITUARY, by Maurice Bloch

Becoming Human

Where did we come from? What makes us human? An explosion of recent discoveries sheds light on these questions, and NOVA's three-part T.V special, Becoming Human, examines what the latest scientific research reveals about our hominid relatives.

Becoming Human Part 1
First Steps: 6 million years ago, what set our ancestors on the path from ape to human? Tuesday, November 3 at 8 pm (Check local listings)

Becoming Human Part 2
Birth of Humanity: New discoveries reveal how early humans hunted and formed families. Tuesday, November 10 at 8 pm (Check local listings)

Becoming Human Part 3
Last Human Standing: Many human species once shared the globe. Why do we alone remain? Tuesday, November 17 at 8 pm (Check local listings)

Learn More: Here

"Some of my genes are 500 million years old, others 3 million, others 100,000 years, and my habits range in age from a few days to several thousand years. As Péguy's Clio said, and as Michel Serres repeats, "we are exchangers and brewers of time." It is this exchange that defines us, not the calendar or the flow that the moderns had constructed for us. Pile up the burgraves one behind the other, and you will still not have time. Go down sideways to grab hold of the event of Cherobino's death in its intensity, and time will be given to you.”

-Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, p.75

The Evolving World with David Mindell

In this informative talk distinguished zoologist and ecologist David Mindell talks about evolution, genomics, science theory, wolves and germs. Enjoy.

Toxic Alberta: Petro Politics and Tar Sands Impact

Below AlJazeera English speaks to native and environmental groups, as well as government and oil industry spokespeople about the impact Alberta's oil sands development is having on the environment.

And below journalist and Greenpeace International co-founder Rex Weyler discusses the geology and science of petroleum extraction and the ‘real costs’ of the Alberta tar sands.

Now for some “street logic” on the most destructive human-caused environmental disaster in history:

Arc of War, Map of Responsibility

The political dynamics of conflict in Africa’s most complex region must be understood if enduring solutions are to be found.

Arc of War, Map of Responsibility in the Congo

By Martin Shaw - October 14, 2009

The reports of an upsurge of violence in parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) may at a glance appear little more than a continuation of the persistent conflict in the country over much of the last two decades. Yet a closer look reveals not just the particularity of what is happening in one corner of Africa, but the ingredients of a wider arc of endemic conflict across a huge swathe of the continent.

Read More: Here

Martin Shaw is a historical sociologist of war and global politics, and professor of international relations and politics at the University of Sussex. His books include War and Genocide (2003) and What is Genocide? (2007). His website is here.

Being No One

Thomas Metzinger is the Director of the Philosophy Group at the Department of Philosophy at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz. His research focuses on philosophy of mind, especially on consciousness and the nature of the self. He is also the author of popular book The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self.

In the following 2005 lecture Metzinger develops a representationalist theory of phenomenal self-consciousness. Metzinger's basic premise is that there is ultimately no "subject," or as a Buddhist might understand it, no self.

the evolution of human nature

We are socially embedded beings, and we wouldn't have evolved into what we are without being such. Below, journalist Natasha Mitchell talks with Sarah Blaffer Hrdy - Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis - about the evolution of human relationships, sexuality and character. Hrdy argues it's our capacity to imagine that allows us to create our complicated social systems.

'It takes a village': the evolution of human nature

Listen Now - 03102009 Download Audio - 03102009 [Play]

What most distinguishes us from other apes? Our naked flesh? Language? Our empathic ways? Acclaimed anthropologist and sociobiologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy has spent her long research career upending assumptions about sex, reproduction and the evolution of human nature. She joins Natasha Mitchell to discuss her new book Mothers and Others, and why it took a village to generate a big brained human child.

Show Transcript Hide Transcript

Transcripts are published Wednesdays. Audio is published directly after broadcast on Saturdays.

Guests

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
Professor Emerita
Department of Anthropology
University of California, Davis
http://www.citrona.com/hrdy/index.html

LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE PODCAST: HERE

Maps and Borders

Many people think the lines on the map no longer matter, but geopolitical researcher Parag Khanna says they do. Using maps of the past and present, he explains the root causes of border conflicts worldwide and proposes simple yet cunning solutions for each.



Political scientist Parag Khanna travels the world with his eyes open -- and has become a trenchant critic of the standard wisdom about the second and third worlds. Khanna's recent book, The Second World: How Emerging Powers Are Redefining Global Competition in the Twenty-first Century, looks at the epic political manipulations of nations struggling to end up at the top of the global heap. Esquire calls Khanna one of the 75 people who will influence the 21st century, precisely because it's these smaller countries that will shape the world's future.

Khanna argues that we're entering a time of apolarity -- when the traditional centers of gravity (US/Europe/Russia/China) will no longer hold. He sees a 21st century that has much in common with the feudal 16th century, where non-state actors have as much influence on the course of world events as countries do. His next book will explore this new medievalism and its effect on the diplomatic-industrial complex.

What Is This Our Life?

"My dear friend, what is this our life? A boat that swims in the sea, and all one knows for certain about it is that one day it will capsize. Here we are, two good old boats that have been faithful neighbors, and above all your hand has done its best to keep me from "capsizing"! Let us then continue our voyage—each for the other's sake, for a long time yet, a long time! We should miss each other so much! Tolerably calm seas and good winds and above all sun—what I wish for myself, I wish for you, too, and am sorry that my gratitude can find expression only in such a wish and has no influence at all on wind or weather!"

— November 14, 1881: Letter from Friedrich Nietzsche to Franz Overbeck.

Ontario Government Suing Corporate Tobacco for $50B

I was walking through the lobby at work today and I happened to catch glance at the T.V monitors reporting that Chris Bentley - Ontario's Attorney General and member of the provincial legislature – announced on Tuesday that the province has filed a $50 billion lawsuit against major tobacco companies.

The lawsuit seeks damages "for past and ongoing healthcare costs linked to tobacco-related illness," said a media release from the Ontario government.

Under the Tobacco Damages and Health Care Costs Recovery Act, which passed the provincial legislature this year, Ontario can file suits against companies seeking the recovery of tobacco-related damages. Although the new law allows government to move forward with the process, it is still required to prove its allegations in court. British Columbia, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador and Manitoba have also enacted tobacco-cost recovery laws.

What a novel idea! Holding corporations responsible for the social and health related problems their products cause! i can already hear the chorus of conservative and market-fundamentalists crying out against what they perceive to be the excesses of “socialist” or “communist” policy.

But in reality what we are seeing in this case is responsible government actualized. Isn’t it the government’s function to promote health in its communities? Isn’t it a government’s function to regulate private interests which seek to gain at the expense of a large number of people in a population? Indeed.

But, of course, conservatives and corporate zealots alike don’t really want a functioning government that works for public interest – they want a quasi-functioning façade government that acts as a proxy for elite power plays and private capital gains. For many elites, government is merely an arena in which to wage a series of strategic wars against institutions and policies that would limit their personal access to wealth and power.

Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal majority government should be widely praised for at least making the attempt to be a legitimate governing body.

Learn More: Here

Chomsky on Lenin, Trotsky, Socialism & the Soviet Union

Q&A session in 1989.

The Climate for International Solidarity?

The pace and scale of climate change may now be outstripping even the most sobering predictions of the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC). An analysis of the very latest, peer-reviewed science indicates that many predictions at the upper end of the IPCC's forecasts are becoming ever more likely. At the same time newly emerging suggests that some events thought likely to occur in longer-term time horizons are already happening, or are set to begin far sooner than had previously been thought.

A few examples: researchers have become increasingly concerned about ocean acidification linked with the absorption of carbon dioxide in seawater and the impact on shellfish and coral reefs. Water that can corrode a shell-making substance called aragonite is already welling up along the California coast decades earlier than existing models predict. Losses from glaciers, ice-sheets and the Polar Regions appear to be happening faster than anticipated, with the Greenland ice sheet, for example, recently seeing melting some 60 percent higher than the previous record of 1998.

Some scientists are now warning that sea levels could rise by up to two metres by 2100 and five to ten times that over following centuries. There is also growing concern among some scientists that thresholds or tipping points may now be reached in a matter of years or a few decades including dramatic changes to the Indian sub-continent's monsoon, the Sahara and West Africa monsoons, and climate systems affecting a critical ecosystem like the Amazon rainforest.

The report also underlines concern by scientists that the planet is now committed to some damaging and irreversible impacts as a result of the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere.

Read More: Here

Sex, War and Biology with Haden and Potts

distant children

The number of children dying before their 5th birthdays each year continues to decrease globally. From 12.5 million in 1990 to 8.8 million in 2008.

One of the largest drops in child mortality has occurred in Malawi, a country in southeastern Africa that is so poor that half the children who do make it are stunted by malnutrition. It is so bereft of doctors and nurses that workers with 10th-grade educations dispense medicines.

Blame Canada