American Democracy on the rocks: Two Wings, Four Despotisms - by Paul Street

Democracy is trumped in the United States by multiple, overlapping, interrelated and mutually reinforcing forms of despotism. The Trump administration and the Trumpified Republican Party, backed by a cult-like base, embody a creepy, neofascistic variant of the disease.

The Republican White House and Senate are currently conducting a tasteless tutorial in tyranny, making a Monty Pythonesque mockery of the U.S. Constitution and “the rule of law.” The Great God Trump was caught red-handed setting the U.S. Founders’ wigs on fire by trying to trade military assistance and a White House visit to Ukraine’s newly elected president Volodomyr Zelensky in return for a Kiev press conference announcing an investigation based on a right-wing conspiracy theory meant to discredit Trump’s perceived U.S.-presidential rival, the conservative Democratic blowhard “Pool Chain” Joe Biden.

Confronted with this presidential misconduct by a “deep state” (likely CIA) whistleblower, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was compelled to overcome her reluctance to impeach the pestilential fiend who contaminates America and the world with his every vile emission.

The evidence of Trump’s criminal abuse of power is overwhelming. Equally convincing is the expert legal testimony contending that his offense is worthy of impeachment and removal.

UkraineGate is just one of the tangerine tyrant’s many mind-boggling misdeeds. It is far from his worst wrongdoing. Numerous other atrocities stand higher on the list of Trump’s most terrible transgressions: family separations at the border; kids in cages; the abrogation of asylum law; the pardoning of sociopathic war criminals and a fascist sheriff; the encouragement and sparking of lethal political violence; slashing Food Stamps and Medicaid for needy people deemed disposable; the proclamation of a fake national emergency; the failure to prepare for and respond adequately to deadly hurricanes; the continuation (over Congressional opposition) of U.S. participation in the crucifixion of Yemen; the diversion of taxpayer dollars to the construction of a hated nativist Wall; the message that Border Patrol agents should shoot asylum seekers and otherwise feel free to break the law; the sick campaign to remove tens of millions of people from health insurance; the cover provided for neo-Nazis and other white supremacists and for Saudi Arabia’s murderous vivisection of a dissident journalist; the reckless and monumentally criminal assassination of Iran’s top military commander; the malevolent acceleration of the carbon-capitalist war on livable ecology (for example); and…the list goes on.

Read the complete report: Two Wings, Four Despotisms - CounterPunch.org

France: 'Not climate-friendly? We won't work for your company' French students say in manifesto - by Koert Debeuf

I meet them in a coffee bar in Brussels. Five students from the so-called 'grandes écoles', the French elite institutions for higher education.

They have started a remarkable initiative to push companies to become more climate-friendly.

In September 2018 they wrote a manifesto for climate awakening in which they commit to use their power as future employees to change the companies that will want to hire them.

"We have two goals," Inès Malot, a student engineering at Mines ParisTech, says. "Changing the way our economy works and changing the courses at our schools."

"It is unacceptable to see how ecology and climate change are not part of our curriculum. This needs to change if we want to be prepared for the future," she continues.

More revolutionary, however, is how these students want to use their power as much wanted employees.

"We know that the big and small French companies need us", Benoît Galand, another student engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique explains.

"We ask them to answer our questions about their ecological footprint. If their answers are not convincing, I am not going to work for them."

Read more at: 'Not climate-friendly? We won't work for your company'

Ecology, Ethics, Anarchism seen through the eyes of Noam Chomsky - by Javier Sethness

There can be little doubt about the centrality and severity of the environmental crisis in the present day. Driven by the mindless "grow-or-die" imperative of capitalism, humanity's destruction of the biosphere has reached and even surpassed various critical thresholds, whether in terms of carbon emissions, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, freshwater depletion, or chemical pollution. Extreme weather events can be seen pummeling the globe, from the Philippines - devastated by Typhoon Haiyan in November of last year - to California, which is presently suffering from the worst drought in centuries.

As Nafeez Ahmed has shown, a recently published study funded in part by NASA warns of impending civilizational collapse without radical changes to address social inequality and overconsumption. Truthout's own Dahr Jamail has written a number of critical pieces lately that have documented the profundity of the current trajectory toward anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) and global ecocide: In a telling metaphor, he likens the increasingly mad weather patterns brought about by ACD to an electrocardiogram of a "heart in defibrillation."

Rather than conclude that such distressing trends follow intrinsically from an "aggressive" and "sociopathic" human nature, reasonable observers should likely associate the outgrowth of these tendencies with the dominance of the capitalist system, for, as Oxfam noted in a January 2014 report, the richest 85 individuals in the world possess as much wealth as a whole half of humanity - the 3.5 billion poorest people - while just 90 corporations have been responsible for a full two-thirds of the carbon emissions generated since the onset of industrialism.

As these staggering statistics show, then, the ecological and climatic crises correspond to the extreme concentration of power and wealth produced by capitalism and upheld by the world's governments. As a counter-move to these realities, the political philosophy of anarchism - which opposes the rule of both state and capital - may hold a great deal of promise for ameliorating and perhaps even overturning these trends toward destruction. Apropos, I had the great good fortune recently to interview Professor Noam Chomsky, renowned anarcho-syndicalist, to discuss the question of ecological crisis and anarchism as a remedy. Click on the link below for a transcript of our conversation.

Read more: Noam Chomsky: Ecology, Ethics, Anarchism

The Netherlands-Almere: Grass Mowers Replaced By Sheep

Sheep instead of lawn mowers?

Starting today a herd of some 300 sheep will take over from the gas guzzling and noisy grass mowers in Almere Harbor ( Almere Haven) to keep all public "green" areas trimmed and proper during a three year trial period.

The local city council says they believe this is an environmentally friendly way to keep public grass areas not only trimmed, but also to protect certain plant species, which sheep don't eat, from extinction.

The Council also expressed the hope that the grazing sheep will create additional interest among the local inhabitants as to the ecology and wildlife surrounding them.

Almere-Digest

Global Footprint Network: September 23 was Earth Overshoot Day

For the complete report from Global Footprint Network click on this link

September 23 was Earth Overshoot Day

September 23 this year marked an unfortunate milestone: the day humanity will have used all the resources nature will generate this year, according to Global Footprint Network data. Earth Overshoot Day marks the day when humanity begins living beyond its ecological means. Beyond that day, we move into the ecological equivalent of deficit spending, utilizing resources at a rate faster than what the planet can regenerate in a calendar year.

Globally, we now now require the equivalent of 1.4 planets to support our lifestyles. But of course, we only have one Earth. The result is that our supply of natural resources -- like trees and fish -- continues to shrink, while our waste, primarily carbon dioxide, accumulates.

Guardian Unlimited: Russia - Sochi Olympic site win is making Environmentalists and Ecologists see red

For the complete report from the Guardian Unlimited click on this link

Russia - Sochi Olympic site win is making Environmentalists and Ecologists see red

"Our feelings are complicated and mixed," Andrei Petrov, the World Heritage coordinator at Greenpeace in Russia, told reporters on Thursday. "On the one side for me and all Russian citizens this is great news but on the other hand there is the construction of the Olympic Games in the buffer zone of a World Heritage Park."

Environmentalists fear the bobsleigh track and the Olympic village will eat into a kilometre-wide buffer zone protecting mountains, forests, rivers and wildlife in the Western Caucasus World Nature Heritage Site beyond the resort.Facilities at the Olympic village will dissect the traditional feeding and migration grounds of the brown bear and red deer, he added, as well as ripping up rare flowers and plants.