Change is Not Only Possible, It's Inevitable

Extending the idea of what's possible -

 a rebuttal to Margaret Thatcher's  "There is no alternative".

As the tag line on this blog of nearly two and a half years and 170 posts later maintains, There Are Alternatives to the dominant paradigm. Our political, economic, education, and social systems are human designed and can be altered by us. History gives us plenty of evidence to back that up. Sometimes, we're forced out of necessity to change, sometimes it's by choice. Often it's a combination of some of both.

This blog has tried to share "possibilities". I am not of the belief that income inequality has to be at the extreme level it has risen to. I am not of the belief that we can't slow our destruction of  the ecological systems that provide us life. I am not of the belief that we have to have war and killing forever. If the abolitionists, suffragists, environmentalists, civil right and gay and lesbian activists had bought into Maggie Thatcher's dictum we'd be living in a different and worse world.

Having played in the sandbox of sustainability for two decades I've come to realize that the dominant paradigm and Bill Clinton have it all backwards - It's not the economy stupid. Rather the economy is the wholly-owned subsidiary of the environment and is further a subset of society, not the other way around. Yet our dominant paradigm focuses on the economy (through the narrowest monetary lens) as if everything else will just fall in line if we fix the economy via free-market nostrums. How many times today might you heard or read of the stock market's inching up or down? 

From Achieving Sustainability: Visions, Principles and Practices. (Gale/Cengage, 2013)

Two recent releases help us see "possibilities" of a different way to think of and to restructure the economy, understanding that it is a human designed system embedded in larger social and environmental systems.The New Economics Foundation, a UK think tank just released a visionary possibility based upon a different paradigm, but grounded in a deep understanding of economics.

 

Towards a New Social Settlement was just released last month. While focusing most closely with the UK the authors think the principles and direction can be applied to any community, state or nation.  This 64 page report lays out the following possibilities (taken from summary).

The new social settlement has three goals: social justice, environmental sustainability, and a more equal distribution of power. All three are intertwined and must be pursued together. They tackle severe contemporary problems: widening social inequalities, accelerating threats to the natural environment, and accumulations of power by wealthy elites.

These goals lead to a set of objectives, which highlight crucial issues too often ignored in mainstream debate. Like the goals, they too are linked together and can be mutually reinforcing:

• Plan for prosperity without depending on economic growth.
• Shift investment and action upstream to prevent harm instead of just coping with the consequences.
• Value and strengthen the core economy of unpaid work, everyday wisdom and social connections on which all our lives depend.
• Foster solidarity, understanding just how much we depend on each other to achieve our goals.  

 

We challenge the dominant view that the key to progress is to deregulate markets, promote choice and competition, and boost consumption. We offer a different set of ideas that promotes well being for all within the limits of the natural environment, as well more inclusive and collaborative ways of making decisions and working together. We aim to meet today’s needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

The proposals are focused around four key areas:

• Rebalance work and time 
• Release human resources 
• Strengthen social security 
• Plan for a sustainable future

There is obviously a lot more meat to the bones in the summary and in the full report. The wholeness of the report is its greatest strength.

Paralleling this, almost as if it had read the report, is the new People's Budget, released this week by the 70 member Progressive Caucus of the U.S. Congress. You likely will not hear about the proposals in this budget. Much more media time and space will be given to President Obama's budget or the House Republican's budget. While there is much I admire and much that aligns well with the report from New Economics Foundation report noted above, it  has a long way to go to get seriously considered without a lot of pressure from citizens on their elected leaders.


For a review of this budget check out the Center for Effective Government brief summary and analysis. They promise to do a side-by side comparison of the various budget proposals in the coming weeks.

 
You can see the National Priorities Project analysis of the various budget proposals here.

You can see the Economic Policy Institute's analysis of the budget here.

To read Senator Bernie Sanders critique of the House Republican Budget see here. 

There are possibilities, but one has to nourish them if you expect them to survive and thrive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

What War Leaves Behind

Notwithstanding the tragedy of September 11, 2001, the continental U.S. has been spared war on our shores for 150 years. Thus no one born here and still alive has experienced the devastation that lingers after war here, although many a soldier has seen too much of it. This week marks the 50^th anniversary of our marines landing in South Vietnam, and a cover story in this week’s The Nation, follows a former Vietnam veteran who has returned to Vietnam to work with the legacy of the war we left behind.  It is a moving piece of journalism

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More recently we can see the affects of our wars; 2.0 million Iraqi refugees and another 1.7 million internally displaced; 2.6 million Afghani’s and additional 680,000 internally displaced; This doesn’t even include the homes and businesses and infrastructure destroyed or poisoned; the tons of unexploded weapons lingering, or the environmental destruction.

It should awaken us to the follies of war and those who rattle sabers as if military might will bring a just and lasting piece. –note the thunderous Congressional approval last week of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s criticism of diplomacy with Iran.

 

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Vice-President, George Perkovich, forcefully contradicted Netanyahu’s speech to Congress that criticized the President’s stance on Iran, “There is no better alternative to this approach. Period.” 50,000 Israeli citizens we out clamoring for the end to the madness just this weekend, and even Israeli military and intelligence leaders were calling Netanyahu’s belligerence, madness.

Perkovich went on, “Indeed, it is peculiar how much deference is being given in the U.S. Congress to a prime minister who does not have a great track record in resolving conflicts. He has not resolved fundamental differences with any of Israel’s neighbors, or even within his own country.”

The President’s new budget calls for yet more money for military solutions to address our global challenges as if we just buy and sell more weapons, teach more people how to be effective killers, we’ll all somehow live in peace. What a colossal waste of resources – human, financial, environmental. The Military-Industrial-Complex counts on American citizens apathy or sense of futility to continue this madness. Our attention is easily diverted via March madness, Academy Awards,  television, and the pursuit of more technologically enchanting devices.

Meanwhile the pundits and chicken-hawks call for more weapons for our favored side as of the moment.

They might consider, for example, reflecting on International Crisis Group senior analyst for Libya, Claudia Gazzini’s recent piece on why more weapons are not the answer in Libya.

What are we leaving our children? 

Will we step out of our apathy and self-satisfying amusements long enough to come together to create alternatives to violence. I think it’s possible.

 

Apathy is consent.

Ending Hide and Seek

Who’s Afraid of Information?

It has been said that sunshine is the best disinfectant. Why is it then that so many who seek wealth and/or power want to hide the process by which they acquire and use it? If there is a cry to hide information from those who can use it to make decisions that affect their lives, can it be that the powerful are afraid of sharing information?

The ongoing battle against transparency is getting more volatile. The Citizens’ United ruling allows wealthy donors to hide their efforts to affect election outcomes. Monsanto and other big food corporations don’t want consumers to know which foods are genetically modified. The government doesn’t want us to read about atrocities (torture,drone killings, etc.) done in our name.

Joseph Stiglitz won his Nobel award in economics based upon the basic notion that without full information even the miracle of markets do not work and that transparency and access to information are essential for consumers to make informed decisions.

                

          “Transparency is about information, the obligation to provide it, and the right to      access it. As such, it is an important concept in the effort to achieve sustainability in politics, economics, environmental well-being, and numerous other fields. In any field, information is needed for decisions, and informed decisions are likely to be better than decisions made in the absence of good information. Strong transparency policies enhance the availability of information and thus provide the informational framework for good decisions and good practices in both the public and private sectors.”  (William B. T. Black, Professor of Law “Transparency” in Achieving Sustainability: Visions,Principles and Practices (Gale/Cengage, 2014) p. 742.

The stakes of the game are being raised.  Note the recent announcement by Charles Koch that he and his brother David hope to raise and spend nearly $1 billion on the run-up to the 2016 election campaign and most of it will be untraceable. I’m pretty confident that thanks to Citizen’s United the Koch Brothers will not be alone among the wealthiest trying to use their exorbitant wealth to affect the outcome of our supposedly democratic election. At a time when we need to rely on skilled and dedicated journalists and news organizations to do the muckraking that can inform us who is pulling the strings in our society, the daily news organization is decimated.

During the recent fight over a new farm bill, the handful of global corporate giants who control a majority of the food system successfully lobbied to kill stronger requirements even for country of origin labeling on some foods. Senator Barbara Boxer with 13 co-sponsors just introduced legislation (S.511) that would require food that has been genetically modified to be so labeled. If the marketplace is supposed to work, consumers ought to know what they are buying.  It would also be nice if we knew who’s getting rich off who when we make a purchase. Could we post the pay ratio of a business on it’s website or on its door, or perhaps the minimum and median wage of the employees. It would help me make an informed decision when selecting retail establishments. 

Regardless of one's personal views on Ralph Nader, we can thank him for pushing the idea of Freedom of Information, which is now not only a legally transcribed avenue here in the U.S. but in numerous other countries as well.  If we don't know what our government is up to, how can we hold them accountable. In Michigan we have someone like Rich Robinson

 

who has the led the Michigan Campaign Finance Network which has helped provide access for citizens to the money affecting election campaigns in this state. 

We have a right to be skeptical when the powerful want to hide information from us. Hiding information from consumers and citizens releases the odor of corruption. As the powerful gather more and more wealth and more and more power, we should demand more transparency, not less. Even glorified markets can't work without sunshine. Let's open the curtains!!!

Pathway to Prosperity

One of my favorite thinkers/doers in the world today is British science writer and now activist, Colin Tudge.
 
In a recent blog post on Groundhogs' Day, Tudge comes out to show us there is a sane way out of the madness of  what he calls Neoliberal-Industrial (NI) agriculture "The Keys Ideas of Enlightened Agriculture". In his straight forward way Tudge pulls it all together showing how making the right changes in our food system will bring us closer to the society well-being we yearn for.Tudge thinks big and connected, but also observes the little points in between. And he does it with a verve that is compelling in its own way.

He offers three key 'nuts and bolts' principles of Enlightened Agriculture:

• Agroecology
• Food Sovereignty
• Economic Democracy

 But he offers so much more in this approximately ten page essay. What resonates with me most is the wholeness of both his analysis and his solution. And he's not sitting on the sidelines waiting for someone else to lead the way. He has started in his native British home what he calls:



How soon we see our own Colleges of Agriculture become enlightened is a good question, not that there aren't many in those colleges that are doing their part to bring us back down to earth. MSU's Student Organic Farm being just one example.


Worthy
I also finished this morning Randall Amster's Peace Ecology ( Paradigm Publishers, 2015).

Amster is professor and president of the United States Peace and Justice Studies Association. Like Tudge, but looking through a different lens, he shines the light on the connections between peace and our relationship with nature. Extending the importance of the human-human relationship to the human-nature relationship, he offers another path towards prosperity and away from the violence that seems to permeate the world we share.

In reviewing recently some old files from our local Peace Education Center (PEC), I was truck by the broad array of issues the PEC had been involved in since it's beginnings more than four decades ago.


I also noted that some of the same folks who were there at the beginning have not turned their backs on those idealistic efforts to build a better world to hand off to our children and grandchildren. My hats off to those to push on regardless.

As the late, great Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai said in her acceptance speech for the award.

 


“In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now. Those of us who have been privileged to receive education, skills, and experiences and even power must be role models for the next generation of leadership."

Put Down the Guns

If "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is a definition of insanity," it seems, to this observer, that nowhere is this more evident than in the use of violence to end violence.

I attended an impassioned and respectful discussion at a community meeting last night  over the best response to the violence perpetrated by the so called ISIL/ISIS  forces. President Obama is asking Congress for authorization to send troops to battle wherever Terror strikes and is deemed a threat to U.S. interests. Typically that would mean at  a minimum where we have troops stationed. Given that we have military bases with US personnel on them in all regions of the world, this essentially means anywhere.

 In terms of constraining the so-called ISIL/ISIS threat Middle East expert, Prof. Juan Cole (University of Michigan) wrote  about "Today's Top 7 Myths About Daesh/ISIL". Item No. 6 on his list is perhaps most pertinent here, but all are worth considering.

        Myth 6. Only US ground troops can defeat Daesh and the USA must commit to a third Iraq War. 
    The US had 150,000 troops or so in Iraq for 8 1/2 years! But they left the country a mess. Why in the world would anybody assume that another round of US military occupation of Iraq would work, given the disaster that was the last one? A whole civil war was fought between Sunnis and Shiites that displaced a million people and left 3000 civilians dead a month in 2006-2007, right under the noses of US commanders.

The U.S. is also a major provider of armaments in the world (US firms make up 7 of the top 10 manufacturers including the top 6) and Obama's new budget calls for even more money for a military that spends more than the next ten countries combined. Congress, under the influence of some Dark Age mentality, that more force is better, has contrived a game to elevate patriotism to a simple bidding game on who can pile more money on the military budget than the other side. Einstein, Eisenhower, and numerous others would tell us we're nuts.

Where is the new thinking that can lead us out of this ongoing, if not deepening morass? Certainly nothing portrayed in our mass media which seems to thrive on building fear in the population - it is more visually stimulating to watch buildings being blown up, than diplomats trying to find common ground. This feeds dreams of American exceptionalism and our military responses to violence anywhere, especially those with high tech wizardry. And of course there is ample funding for university research to develop more lethal forms of military hardware. Where is the research funding for other forms of disarmament that won't be profitable to corporations designing clever technological tools of destruction?

A Different Approach

From where I sit we need a major overall of consciousness and action. Some of the principles I would advocate in moving forward include the following:

1)    The U.S. is not the only nation state on earth - wouldn't each of the other 49 states balk at California deciding to take action in our state just because they are the biggest? It thus behooves us to build multi-nation efforts to end violence. If the structure of the UN prevents that effort from going forward, then  nation states that believe that wars cost too much, should either rework the rules of the UN to remove those barriers or create a new global intergovernmental entity. The entity should be designed with shared power (no veto power given to any single nation) and where consensus is the goal. But in its absence a vote of two-thirds or more of nation states could authorize international peacekeeper deployment to protect citizens, cultural and environmental landmarks. If the U.S. simply redirected funds the President is asking for "modernizing" our nuclear arsenal (a really counter-productive idea I'd suggest) towards this effort it would be highly more sustainable.

2)   Stricter arms control should be adopted and not just for nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, but for all military hardware. A global tax on production of weapons should be collected and deposited with funds being used to support global peacekeeping forces. Gun buyback programs should be monitored by an international intergovernmental entity, like the UN, and should be funded by states that export/profit from arms  sales beyond their border.

3)   The global community should be doing much more to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals they agreed to more than a decade ago.

 

  A good portion of what gets classified as terrorism by government and media arises from the seeds of inequality and injustice. The U.S. and any nation state would be more effective fighting terrorism if they addressed the underlying causes, not just the symptoms. Turn more of the defense budget towards development.

 4)   Employ nonviolent training using examples like the recent Nonviolent Peaceforce project in Syria and related projects with civil society organizations throughout the world. 

 
 
Support efforts of local residents resisting violence like that of Suad Nofel of Syria who has been leading resistance to ISIS since 2013.

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And perhaps most importantly start fostering the teaching of conflict resolution and dialogue processes in the schools, so that we graduate citizens who learn how to solve conflicts without weapons.