Capitalism

. . . For more than 40 years, Canada has been a wellhead of Koch’s burgeoning fortune in oil, refineries, pipelines, petroleum products and financial trading as well as an expanding list of diverse interests — producing an estimated $115 billion in revenues last year, according to Forbes.

Three decades of rapid economic development in China has left a troubling legacy – widespread soil pollution that has contaminated food crops and jeopardized public health. Although they once labeled soil data a “state secret,” Chinese officials are slowly beginning to acknowledge this grave problem.
The first in a series.

Karl Marx is on fire right now. More than a century after his death, the co-author of “The Communist Manifesto” still has the honor of being the first smear against ideas slightly to the left of Hillary Clinton. (See: Thomas Piketty.) Marx also graced the cover of the National Review as recently ast last month. Few other thinkers, and certainly few non-religious figures, can claim the honor of being so widely misappropriated by the political rearguard.

Sam Gindin's recent contributions to the The Bullet  and Jacobin explore the lost potential of the working class in revolutionary politics. On the economic and ecological fronts, he argues, working-class politics has been incapable of catalyzing widespread and consequential societal mobilization, or becoming vital sites of theoretical and practical struggle.

. . . After explaining the results of Ian Wood’s review, Baroness Kramer revealed that the government had accepted his recommendations in full. Then she dropped her bombshell. The government now plans

“to introduce measures in the Bill to put the principle of maximising economic recovery of petroleum in the UK into statute.”

Into statute. Maximising the production of crude oil will, if the bill is passed, become a legal requirement.

Continuously declaring that a decisive crisis is around the corner may generate attention, but as an organizing tactic it is counterproductive. An economic crisis may scare people and bring out their most conservative instincts. It may lower expectations and make people long for the pre-crisis period (no matter how much they had previously criticized it), desperately hoping to just fix, not transform or even significantly modify capitalism. We cannot depend on crises to do our political work for us.

Fifty years ago, great leaders raised the flags of the anticolonial struggle and decided to join with their peoples in a march along the path of sovereignty and independence.

The world superpowers and transnationals were competing for control of territories and natural resources in order to continue expanding at the cost of impoverishing the peoples of the South.

Imagine a world where the Northern Gateway pipeline doesn’t get built. With the federal government’s curiously tepid approval in hand, Enbridge Inc. sets to work trying to chip away at the dozens of conditions it must meet before it is allowed to fire up its trenching equipment. First Nations opposed to the project dig in for lengthy court battles and noisy demonstrations, arguing that an oil sands pipeline threatens long-held rights and title to their lands and that they were inadequately consulted.

By 2012, the U.S. was awash in light sweet crude from (fracked) shale oil deposits in Texas, North Dakota and elsewhere. With Midwest and Gulf Coast refineries configured to take heavy oil, that light crude has been looking for a refining home.

During his speech at West Point Military Academy earlier this week, President Barack Obama described climate change as a "creeping national security crisis" that will require the armed forces to "respond to refugee flows, natural disasters, and conflicts over water and food."

The speech emphasised that US foreign policy in the 21st century is increasingly being honed in recognition of heightened risks of social, political and economic upheaval around the world due the impacts of global warming.