OMNI RUSSIA NEWSLETTER #10, JANUARY 28, 2022

 

OMNI

RUSSIA NEWSLETTER #10,
January 28, 2022

Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology.

(#1 March 21, 2014; #2 April 10, 2014; #3 May 16, 2014; #4 July 22, 2014; #5 March 10, 2015; #6 Sept. 1, 2016; #7, October 3, 2017; #8, Nov. 10, 2021; #9, January 20, 2022)

http://omnicenter.org/donate/

 

CONTENTS RUSSIA NEWSLETTER  #10

This anthology begins with indignation by Tomlinson, WBW, and Butterfield, moves to analysis and action by Lowendorf, Taibbi, Franklin, and Prashad, to an appeal for peace by WBW, and to the extensive scholarship of Prof.  Zunes .

Abel Tomlinson. “The US Wants War, Not Russia.”

World Beyond War.   “No War in Ukraine!”

Greg Butterfield.  “Ukraine, U.S. drum up war threats against Donbass and Russia.”  April 8,  2021.

Henry Lowendorf reports the ”terribly destructive U.S. foreign policy” that has “has no moral, or legal, or logical authority.”

Matt Taibbi via George Paulson. “Let’s Not Have a War.” 

H. Bruce Franklin.  “Another Game of Russian Roulette,” on the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Vijay Prashad.  “Why Ukraine’s borders are back at the center of geopolitics.”
WBW, Appeal for Negotiation, a mini-anthology within a mini-anthology.

TEXTS

A note on Ukraine

From Abel Tomlinson 1-22-22

A note I wrote this morning on the escalating Ukraine crisis, along with a tweet image about the US arms shipments.

"Despite the ocean of lies being fed to American masses, the truth is: it’s U.S.A. that wants war, not Russia. It’s the U.S.A. that is pushing nuclear-armed NATO military bases to Russia’s doorstep; it’s USA that sponsored a neo-Nazi Ukraine coup; it’s USA practicing massive war games on Russian borders; it’s USA surrounding Russia & many others with over 800 foreign military bases; it’s USA that has invaded & overthrown over 50 nations & killed millions after WWII.  The USA created the Ukraine crisis & is hoping to overthrow the Russian & Chinese governments, which would cause unimaginable death & destruction, especially if it escalates into nuclear war. Do Not Consent to this Evil Warmonger Agenda!"

No War in Ukraine! From World Beyond War
We are alarmed by the increasing tensions between the nuclear-armed governments of the U.S. (and its NATO allies) and Russia and are extremely concerned about what seems to be the increasing likelihood of war.
We must raise our voices. Add your name and comments to this petition. Share it with others to sign. Then help us forward it to your elected officials.

To: The Governments of NATO Nations

No War in Ukraine! Nothing is worth risking war, much less nuclear war. No side wants war in Ukraine, and certainly not the people of Ukraine. Someone must find the courage to push back against the momentum toward war, and lead the way toward cooperation and disarmament.

Add your name and your comments!

Share far and wide!  World BEYOND War is a global network of volunteers, chapters, and affiliated organizations advocating for the abolition of the institution of war.

Ukraine, U.S. drum up war threats against Donbass and Russia.  April 8, 2021 | Newswire.  Mronline.org (4-9-21).  Originally published: Struggle La Lucha by Greg Butterfield (April 2, 2021 ) .

“U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a phone call with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Wednesday, affirmed Washington’s support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity ‘in the face of Russia’s ongoing aggression,’ the State Department said in a statement,” Reuters reported March 31.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported March 30 that U.S. European Command (EUCOM) had changed Ukraine’s status on an internal watch list from “possible crisis” to “potential imminent crisis.”

Completely missing from these reports, however, is the fact that Ukraine has been building up its troops and military hardware on the “line of contact,” the front line of the conflict, since mid-January.

At the same time, Ukrainian military forces have stepped up unprovoked attacks on frontline settlements in Donetsk and Lugansk, killing and injuring residents and targeting homes, schools and other civilian targets.” 
“The USA has the unique condition of being a flagrant violator of human rights within its own borders and in practically every region of the world. No other nation has such a systematic record. Its massive control of media and communications hides this truth from its own people.”

 

Henry Lowendorf on Connecticul’s Warmongering  Senators.

Date: Thu, Jan 20, 2022 at 7:49 PM (from Sonny San Juan)
Subject: "Ready for another game of Russian roulette?"
The article below, recounting some history that many do not remember if they ever knew, reminds us how stupid, counterproductive and terribly destructive U.S. foreign policy is.   

 Once again the US is stoking nuclear fire. Once again it shills blame on an enemy it has consciously created to be an enemy. Moving missiles, all sorts of weaponry and nuclear armed Naval fleets up to the borders of Russia while mocking Russia’s defense measures and demands to reverse course and reduce tensions, the imperial US is wagering the future of civilization and perhaps life on the planet on odds that Russia will lie down and agree to be marched over. Those who lead us in this direction are truly insane.  

 Both Connecticut Senators just returned from a junket to Ukraine to trade toasts with the ultra corrupt leaders of that country. They have returned to urge President Biden to ignore Russia’s actual security interests - it having been invaded 3 times through Ukraine and Poland within just over 2 decades with over 27 million human lives lost and untold physical destruction . Read that again.  

 And what does Ukraine mean to the US? Are we protecting democracy? Having overthrown the Ukrainian constitutional government in 2014 - not to mention those of so many other countries - the US has no moral, or legal, or logical authority to claim it is defending Ukrainian democracy, which under a subservient government can’t even be called democratic. Indeed the US government is currently unable, unwilling, to defend its own democracy.  

 

Contact Senators Blumenthal and Murphy. Here’s what I wrote: "I'm ashamed that you go to Ukraine, fully aware that its government leaders were hand chosen by the US State Department, in order to provoke a winless war with Russia based on lies. I'm ashamed that you traffic with neoNazis and a government that celebrates them."  

 

Dick Blumenthal: 860-258-6940 https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/contact/write-to-senator-blumenthal 

Chris Murphy: 860-549-8463 https://www.murphy.senate.gov/contact 

Peace /\ Justice 

Henry Lowendorf 

Greater New Haven Peace Council 

 

George Paulson  1-27-22

This article by Matt Taibbi came out a day ago.  Taibbi spent years in Russia, speaks Russian.   

This may be the best short summary I’ve seen of the current standoff in Ukraine.  Taibbi points out that Obama, relatively speaking, displayed wisdom when it came to the idea of getting into a shooting war with Russia over Ukraine.  He also points out that war means, in the case of Russia, real war, with a country that has a real military and can really fight back.  No “good” options left for an Uncle Sam who is used to calling all the shots.    Peace,

Matt Taibbi. “Let’s Not Have a War” The American foreign policy establishment, chasing decades of failures, appears to be seriously considering the unthinkable in Ukraine. 

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/lets-not-have-a-war?r=lofz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web  

 

 H. BRUCE FRANKLIN.   “Ready for Another Game of Russian Roulette?”  JANUARY 19, 2022.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/19/ready-for-another-game-of-russian-roulette/

  [At this moment of possible nuclear war, everyone who wishes to avert war should compare this crisis with that of the Cuban Missile crisis.    –Dick]

As the U.S. moves nuclear forces closer and closer to the border of Russia, and as our corporate media bang their war drums louder and louder, does anyone remember the Cuban missile crisis?

In June of 1961, just three months after the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba was defeated,  the United States began the deployment of fifteen Jupiter nuclear missiles to Turkey, which shared a border with the Soviet Union. Each missile, armed with a W49 1.4 megaton thermonuclear warhead, was equivalent to 175 Hiroshima bombs. With their fifteen-hundred-mile range, the missiles were capable of annihilating Moscow, Leningrad, and every major city and base in the Russian heartland. Each missile could incinerate Moscow in just sixteen minutes from launch, thus wildly raising the possibility of thermonuclear war caused by technological accident, human error, miscommunication, or preemptive attack.

We didn’t hear about the Jupiter missiles and of course we didn’t hear anything about Operation Mongoose, the top-secret plan launched on November 1, 1961, to overthrow the government of Cuba through a systematic campaign of sabotage, coastal raids, assassinations, subversion leading to CIA-sponsored guerrilla warfare, and an eventual invasion by the U.S. military. The armed raids and sabotage succeeded in killing many Cubans and damaging the economy, which was hit much harder by the economic embargo announced in February. However, the assassination plots were foiled, and all attempts to develop an internal opposition failed. Many of the CIA agents and Cuban exiles who infiltrated the island by sea and air were captured, and quite a few of them talked, even on Cuban radio, about the plans for a new U.S. invasion, which was planned for October. Cuba requested military help from the Soviet Union, which by July was sending troops, air defense missiles, battlefield nuclear weapons, and medium-range ballistic missiles equivalent to the U.S. Jupiter missiles in Turkey.

At 7 p.m. eastern time on Monday, October 22, 1962, John F. Kennedy delivered the most terrifying presidential message of my lifetime. Declaring that the Soviet Union had created a “clear and present danger” by placing in Cuba “large, long-range, and clearly offensive weapons of sudden mass destruction” “capable of striking Washington, D.C.,” he announced that U.S. ships would immediatEly impose a “strict quarantine,” a transparent euphemism for a blockade, on the island. Knowing that the American people knew nothing about the recent and ongoing U.S. deployment of the Jupiter ballistic missiles capable of striking all the cities of the Russian heartland, he stated, “Nuclear weapons are so destructive and ballistic missiles are so swift that any . . . change in their deployment may well be regarded as a definite threat to peace.” And knowing the American people knew nothing about Operation Mongoose and its previously planned invasion of Cuba in October, the president stated over and over again that these Soviet missiles were “offensive threats” with no defensive purpose. Here was his most frightening sentence: “We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth—but neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced.”    MORE  https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/19/ready-for-another-game-of-russian-roulette/

What may have looked to the public like a Soviet capitulation turned out to be a successful, desperate, and potentially fatal gamble by the Soviet Union. They won a tit-for-tat removal of the land-based missiles within sixteen minutes of incinerating either Moscow or Washington, with a bonus of stopping the imminent invasion of Cuba and possibly future invasions as well, all without having to commit to the future defense of Cuba.

Behind the scenes, Kennedy now had to deal with the shrieking hawks, furious at the president both for missing the golden opportunity to annihilate the Soviet Union and for an ignominious surrender of America’s exceptional right to invade Cuba and to station nuclear weapons wherever it pleased.

Alarmed by how close we had come to nuclear apocalypse, Kennedy and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev set up a telephone hot line to enable direct communication, developed a personal relationship to ease tensions, and succeeded in August 1963 in banning nuclear testing in the atmosphere, under water, or in space. The president inspired many of us with an eloquent June 1963 American University commencement address about the world’s crucial need for an enduring peace. He even urged “every thoughtful citizen” who desired peace to “begin by looking inward—by examining his own attitude toward peace, toward the Soviet Union,” which he extolled for its heroic World War II sacrifices. But then of course he went on to claim: “The Communist drive to impose their political and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today.”  Since today Russia is as capitalist as Saudi Arabia, Australia, and United States, what is “the primary cause of world tension today?”

President Kennedy’s final remarks began with this statement: “The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war.”  So it must have been Vietnam that started a war with the United States.

“Ready for Another Game of Russian Roulette?” BY H. BRUCE FRANKLIN, adapted from Crash Course: From the Good War to the Forever War.

APPEAL FOR NEGOTIATION FROM WORLD BEYOND WAR 1-24-22

 

War is not inevitable. War is a choice. It is always a bad one. Read WBW's debunking of the myth that war is inevitable.   Read Peter van den Dungen's critique of Why War by Christopher Coker.   Read David Swanson's "Munich Is Not in Ukraine."   Read "Global Civil Society Urges to Stop Saber-Rattling over Ukraine and Negotiate Sustainable Peace" by Yurii Sheliazhenko.   Watch "Ukraine on Fire" by Oliver Stone.   Sign and share WBW's petition for peace in Ukraine!   MORE ON RUSSIA/UKRAINE FROM WBW   Open Letter – Let All Children Play in Ukraine and the Rest of the World, a Call for Peace Canadian National Coalition Calls on Trudeau Government to Stop Arming Ukraine, End Operation UNIFIER and Demilitarize Ukraine Crisis VIDEO: CrossTalk | Russia-NATO Impasse AUDIO: David Swanson on Russia, Ukraine, and War Madness

 

 

Vijay Prashad.  “Why Ukraine’s borders are back at the center of geopolitics.”  As tensions heat up on the Ukraine-Russia border, Vijay Prashad takes a look at the factors and interests behind what is happening.   April 8, 2021 | Commentary.  mronline.org (4 -9-21) An excerpt: On February 9, 1990, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker told the last leader of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move “one inch to the east” from the Oder-Neisse line that divides Germany from Poland. “NATO expansion is unacceptable,” Gorbachev told Baker. Baker agreed: “Not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” The Western powers broke their commitment immediately.

 

CONTENTS, RUSSIA NEWSLETTER #9, 2018-2020
 https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/01/omni-russia-newsletter-9-1-20-22.html    

WAYS US WARRIORS GO TO  WAR

Bruce Gagnon.   What is the US Agenda? NATO Expansion and Regime Change

George Paulson.  Russophobia

Biden. Putin a Killer
John Pilger. “In Ukraine, the US is dragging us towards war with Russia.”

Matt Taibbi.  “10 Ways to Call Something Russian Disinformation Without Evidence.”

Alan MacLeod.  False Bounty Claim.
McGovern, Russiagate
Boyd-Barrett, Russiagate as “puerile narrative.”
Galloway.  Macron: the Problem is USA
Russia’s 100,000 Troops
Grossman.  NATO Maneuvers.
WAYS TO PEACE
All of the Above
Hobson. Reverse NATO Expansion and US Withdrawal from  NATO
Dick.  Critical Thinking Through Exposure of Fallacies

END RUSSIA NEWSLETTER #10

Climate Memo Mondays #59

 

59.  Climate Memo Mondays, January 24, 2022

McCoy, To Govern the Globe national sovereignty must be ended
Hunziker, “Warnings from the Far North”: warming breaking the food chain
Miller, “Defund the Global Climate Wall”: divert border money to climate action.

Alfred McCoy, To Govern the Globe: World Orders & Catastrophic Change.  Chapter 7, “Climate Change in the Twenty-First Century.” Excellent summary of main events.  See CMM # 55 and #56.

“Warnings from the Far North”  [the economic system’s warming oceans bring mass death of sea creatures, breaking the food chain]
Originally published: Dissident Voice by Robert Hunziker (December 27, 2021 )  |  - Posted Dec 29, 2021. 
Forces profound and alarming are reshaping the upper reaches of the North Pacific and Arctic oceans, breaking the food chain that supports billions of creatures and one of the world’s most important fisheries. ¹

“Breaking the food chain that supports billions of creatures” is horrific to contemplate. It sends a powerful signal of trouble dead ahead. In that regard, scientists agree that what happens up North signals what’s in store to the South, and what’s happening up North is a gut-wrenching reality of life on a knife’s edge of catastrophe.

It’s never been more urgent and timely for the world to change its ways and abandon the current economic maelstrom that haunts all life on the planet. The pros and cons of capitalism’s experiment with neoliberal tendencies that enrich the few and bury the many should be debated in the context of strained resources throughout the biosphere, including all life forms. The GDP-to-infinity paradigm is barreling towards a wall of impending extinction. It’s already on a fast track. . . . https://mronline.org/2021/12/29/warnings-from-the-far-north/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=warnings-from-the-far-north&mc_cid=c1e29bca0c&mc_eid=ab2f7bf95e

 

TODD MILLER.  “Why We Must Defund the Global Climate Wall.”

To create a safer, more sustainable world, the United States needs to divert border money toward climate mitigation.

November 1, 2021 by The Border Chronicles
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/11/01/why-we-must-defund-global-climate-wall

At a National Security Council meeting in September, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that the consequences of climate change "are falling disproportionately on vulnerable and low-income populations." He continued, "And they're worsening conditions and human suffering in places already afflicted by conflict, high levels of violence, instability." He assured his colleagues that the climate crisis is a "core element of U.S. foreign policy" and that "every bilateral and multilateral engagement we have—every policy decision we make—will impact our goal of putting the world on a safer, more sustainable path."

Blinken's sentiment was echoed by a report on the impact of climate change and migration from the White House earlier this month, one of a slew of reports as the U.S. prepared for the United Nations summit on climate change that begins in Glasgow on October 31. According to the report, "The current migration situation extending from the U.S.-Mexico border into Central America presents an opportunity for the United States to model good practice and discuss openly managing migration humanely, [and] highlight the role of climate change in migration."

Hypothetically, these words might reassure the more than 1.3 million Hondurans and Guatemalans displaced in 2020 by climate-induced catastrophes such as droughts, hurricanes, and floods. But the lofty rhetoric is contradicted by another story, one told by the U.S. government's budgets.

In a report titled The Global Climate Wall, which I coauthored for the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute, we crunched the budget numbers for seven of the countries most responsible for the climate crisis. These countries collectively account for almost half the world's greenhouse gas emissions going back to the mid-19th century. They include Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, and the United States (which led the charge at 30.1 percent of emissions). All together, these rich, high-polluting countries spend more than double on border and immigration enforcement budgets than on "climate finance"—that is, helping vulnerable countries adapt to climate change and transition to clean energy.

While the White House report does emphasize foreign aid (to note, advocates refer to the report as "disappointing"), it does not mention that the United States has dedicated 11 times more money to militarizing its borders and building up a draconian immigration enforcement system than to climate finance. And while the United States has the world's largest border budget (an average $19 billion from 2013 to 2018, and an almost 11-to-1 ratio of border to climate financing), Canada (15:1) and Australia (13.5:1) have even higher ratios. In no way is the United States, or most other countries, "managing" immigration "humanely." Precisely the opposite.

All together, the world's largest polluters are compounding one human-made disaster with another one. They are constructing a world of more than 63 border walls, with tens of thousands of border guards, and spending billions on technologies that blockade and criminalize people in desperate situations rather than assist them. More than 44,000 people (a vast undercount, according to researchers of the International Organization on Migration) have died crossing borders from 2014 to 2020, in both the world's deserts or seas. And tens of thousands of others are incarcerated in a global network of more than 2,000 detention centers, while companies in the border industry anticipate more contracts in a roiling, intensifying climate crisis. The company G4S, for example, told the Climate Disclosure Project in 2014 that the UN "projected that we [the planet] will have 50 million environmental refugees," which could offer investment opportunities.

As G4S surmised, climate-induced displacement and migration are already underway and are expected to increase. Not only are there more frequent and intensifying storms and floods that come quickly and recede, but there are also slower-onset disasters, such as desertification and sea level rise, that leave irrevocable damage and render places uninhabitable. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center estimates that nearly 25 million have been displaced yearly since 2008. These numbers will only get larger in a "business as usual" scenario in which 19 percent of the earth's surface—inhabited by nearly one-third of the planet—will become a "barely liveable hot zone" by 2070. A decade ago, another report, titled In Search of Shelter, one of the first empirical studies linking climate change and displacement, warned that in the status quo "the mass of people on the move will likely be staggering and surpass any historical antecedent." A decade later, this warning appears to have gone unheeded.

To respond to this with increased border fortification is to create a dystopian catastrophe. As with greenhouse gas emissions, we have to reduce barriers, surveillance drones, and high-tech cameras. One way to do so is to move money from border and immigration enforcement into climate financing.

The seven countries profiled in The Global Climate Wall were among the world's richest countries that committed to collectively contribute $100 billion by 2020 to climate financing at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009. But since then the money has fallen short. In any case, many, including the Group of 77, argue that the $100 billion goal is inadequate to confront the scope of the crisis. Moreover, climate financing is most often dedicated to building stationary resilience, such as sea walls, new resilient crops to withstand drought, and infrastructure to deal with flooding.

But climate financing needs to be extended to assist people who are displaced and forced to move in this intensifying ecological catastrophe. In other words, precisely the opposite of building more border walls. Finance could be directed to assist in moving costs or to helping build up infrastructure in places where people are moving,       MORE  https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/11/01/why-we-must-defund-global-climate-wall

OMNI: COMMONS, PUBLIC PROPERTY FOR THE PEOPLE

 

 

OMNI

COMMONS, PUBLIC PROPERTY  FOR THE PEOPLE, #1

1-23-2022

Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology

Omnicenter.org/donate/

 

Contents Commons Newsletter #1, 1-23-22

Ian Angus
  Robbing the Soil, 1, “Commons and Classes before Capitalism.”

  Robbing the Soil, 2, “Systematic Theft of Communal Property.”

  “Agricultural Enclosure: Commoners Fight Back.”

John Bellamy Foster.  “Capitalism and Ecological Theft.”

Peter Linebaugh.  Stop, Thief! The Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance.

Coulthard, Indigenous Resistance, Blockades.

Lolly, “Commons Actions.”

Tittle, “Community Development and the Commons.”

Linebaugh.  “The Commons as the Fulcrum for Social Regeneration.”

 

 

 

 

Robbing the soil, 1: Commons and classes before capitalism.   Ian Angus.  Mronline.org (8-10-21). “All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil.” (Karl Marx)

 

Robbing the Soil, 2: ‘Systematic theft of communal property’

Ian Angus.  Mronline.org (9-4-21).

“The expropriation of the mass of the people from the soil forms the basis of the capitalist mode of production.” (Karl Marx)

 

Against enclosure: The commoners fight back

Ian Angus.  Mronline.org (1-20-22).

Articles in this series: Commons and classes before capitalism ‘Systematic theft of communal property’ Against Enclosure: The Commonwealth Men Dispossessed: Origins of the Working Class Against Enclosure: The Commoners Fight Back  by Ian Angus In 1542, Henry VIII gave his friend and privy councilor Sir William Herbert a gift: the buildings and lands of a […]

 

“Capitalism and ecological theft.”  Mronline.org (2-23-20). 

Sociologist John Bellamy Foster on the modern divide between humanity and nature and his book The Robbery of Nature: Capitalism and the Ecological Rift from Monthly Review.  Source   

 

Stop, Thief! The Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance.   PM, 2014 by Peter Linebaugh.

Publisher’s Description 
In this majestic tour de force, celebrated historian Peter Linebaugh takes aim at the thieves of land, the polluters of the seas, the ravagers of the forests, the despoilers of rivers, and the removers of mountaintops. Scarcely a society has existed on the face of the earth that has not had commoning at its heart. "Neither the state nor the market," say the planetary commoners. These essays kindle the embers of memory to ignite our future commons.

From Thomas Paine to the Luddites, from Karl Marx—who concluded his great study of capitalism with the enclosure of commons—to the practical dreamer William Morris—who made communism into a verb and advocated communizing industry and agriculture—to the 20th-century communist historian E.P. Thompson, Linebaugh brings to life the vital commonist tradition. He traces the red thread from the great revolt of commoners in 1381 to the enclosures of Ireland, and the American commons, where European immigrants who had been expelled from their commons met the immense commons of the native peoples and the underground African-American urban commons. Illuminating these struggles in this indispensable collection, Linebaugh reignites the ancient cry, "STOP, THIEF!"

Praise:

"There is not a more important historian living today. Period."
—Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

"E.P. Thompson, you may rest now. Linebaugh restores the dignity of the despised luddites with a poetic grace worthy of the master… [A] commonist manifesto for the 21st century."
—Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums

"Peter Linebaugh's great act of historical imagination… takes the cliché of 'globalization' and makes it live. The local and the global are once again shown to be inseparable—as they are, at present, for the machine-breakers of the new world crisis."
—T.J. Clark, author of Farewell to an Idea

About Peter Linebaugh:

Peter Linebaugh is a child of empire, schooled in London, Cattaraugus (NY), Washington, D.C., Bonn, and Karachi. He went to Swarthmore College during the civil rights days. He has taught at Harvard University and Attica Penitentiary, at New York University and the Federal Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. He used to edit Zerowork and was a member of the Midnight Notes Collective. He coauthored Albion's Fatal Tree, and is the author of The London Hanged, The Many-Headed Hydra (with Marcus Rediker), The Magna Carta Manifesto, and introductions to Verso's selection of Thomas Paine's writings and PM's new edition of E.P. Thompson's William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary. He lives in the region of the Great Lakes and works at the University of Toledo in Ohio.

See and hear author interviews, book reviews, and other news on Peter Linebaugh’s page HERE

 

 

INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE: DECOLONIZE

For our Nations to live, capitalism must die

Editor. Mronline.org (10-1-21). 

What the recent actions of the Mi’kmaq land and water defenders at Elsipogtog demonstrate is that direct actions in the form of Indigenous blockades are both a negation and an affirmation.   
Originally “Unsettling America” by Glen Coulthard (November 5, 2013 ) - Posted Sep 30, 2021.

 

 

COMMONS concept for action from  LOLLY,   3-14-15

SIDEWALKS

The possibilities of Commons as a coherent, unifying concept for action is expanding in my imagination.   Do you take the Democrat-Gazette?  Yesterday's 3-13 guest editorial, "Jaywalking's early days," is about commercialization of public space," especially the diminishing of public places by intruding cars.  I wrote an essay once about what still seems to me the enormous loss of sidewalks as public fora (gained in 1943 by SCOTUS vote) by the encroachment of private malls where you can walk but not with a sign.

OMNI

I include COMMONS as one area of potential action for OMNI in my comprehensive glass-half full account of OMNI's work, sent out yesterday. You had received a draft of it earlier.  

I hope you will stay with COMMONS and list-- help us here get our minds in and around-- all the places that I. are and II. should be the people's.  And then let's ask our Book Forum to sponsor a public rally with the mayor and county judge.  Our goal will be to open their eyes and gain their active commitment to the COMMONS.

Yeah, I want to see it as it grows; Resilience is put out by Post Carbon Institute, R. Heinberg who did the Big Energy Book that I reviewed two years ago. Resilience has a lot of articles on the commons in its many variations.

 

Community Development and the Commons

By Chris Tittle on Mar 09, 2016 05:06 am
The commons offers a framework and a process for effectively and equitably stewarding the resources communities need to live in dignity. If we have a collective right to a resource, we should be able to democratically participate in decisions about that resource’s use.

 

The commons as the fulcrum for social regeneration.  Karl Marx’s 1875 critique of the German Social Democratic Party provides a withering examination of capitalism’s ‘wicked ways’ and a guide to what the commons is and how to bring it about.  | more…

Originally published: New Frame by Peter Linebaugh (November 12, 2020 )  |  - Posted Nov 20, 2020.

Historian Peter Linebaugh has written an afterword to the new edition and translation of Karl Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program,  PM Press. 
https://mronline.org/2020/11/20/the-commons-as-the-fulcrum-for-social-regeneration/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-commons-as-the-fulcrum-for-social-regeneration&utm_source=MR+Email+List&utm_campaign=c9ce418992-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_MRONLINE_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4f879628ac-c9ce418992-295821469&mc_cid=c9ce418992&mc_eid=[ab2f7bf95e]

 

 

STRUGGLE AHEAD:  ROBBERS COMMODIFYING AND  PRIVATIZING THE COMMONS IN OUTER SPACE

LYNDA WILLIAMS.  “FATEFUL GOLD RUSH IN SPACE GIVEN ‘GO-AHEAD.’”  SPACE ALERT! (Winter/Spring 2016).

     This magazine edited by Bruce Gagnon, the founder of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space (Global Network) is one of the best sources of this most important under-reported information.  This article is an outstanding example.   The US has been arming, that is taking, the commons once called the heavens, for decades, and now the US government has made it legal for corporations and wealthy individuals to join the gold rush in flagrant violation of international law/i.e. treaty.

     Williams discloses that Pres. Obama last November 25 signed into law the U.S. Space Act of 2015, “granting property rights to materials that U.S. companies mine from asteroids, the moon, and other celestial bodies. . . .the act unilaterally promotes and empowers the private U.S. space industry. . .for exploration and extraction of space resources with tax payer economic incentives and little regulatory oversight.”

     The legality of the act is being debated, but Williams argues:  The 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST) “does not allow any nation to claim territorial sovereignty in space and establishes space as a global commons to be shared by all humankind.”  “…the industry celebrated the passing of the Space Act as a green light to start staking claims in space with the backing and protection of the U.S. government and military which is expanding its pace war fighting capabilities through the U.S. Space Command.”  The head of an asteroid mining startup declared: “’This is the single greatest recognition of property rights in history.’” 

     I have been reading and discussing the US “arming the heavens,” the expansion of our empire and its global bases into space.   So I am glad to see the COMMONS concept by which to understand and resist this enormously dangerous potential for future nuclear conflict on earth and in space.   Think global, act local, act global for the human future through international law, between terrestrial and celestial war or peace.  SHUN ELON MUSK.   --Dick

 

 

END COMMONS NEWSLETTER #1