From Stephen Zunes

In light of Hamas’ seizure of the Gaza Strip, it is worthwhile to understand how this radical Islamist organization came to play such a major role in Palestinian political life and how Israel and the United States contributed to making that possible. FULL

From Vandana Shiva

Today, the world is on the brink of a biological diversity crisis. The constantly diminishing store of biodiversity on our planet poses an enormous environmental threat - of which far too few people are aware.We here in India, are working towards increasing awareness to the importance of conserving our valuable genetic heritage, while challenging and opposing the forces responsible for its rapid erosion and usurpation. Join us in the struggle and research for sustainability and justice in these turbulent and uncertain times. FULL

Posted by stan as Analysis at 6:15 AM PDT

We are pleased to feature, with the authors’ permission, front-page links to two very important books: Susan Bordo’s Unbearable Weight and Sandor Katz’ The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved. IA’s core beliefs that (1) the politics of food maps onto virtually every other issue, and that (2) no politics can be serious that does ignores gender analysis, are the reason we are featuring these tomes. Sandor Katz’ overview of a broadly emerging and ever more revolutionary underground food movement is not only a remarkable bit of research and analysis, it has multiple and extremely useful bibliographies for the people who are writing, thinking, and ding these things. Susan Bordo’s book is absolutely essential to understanding the contradictory relationship that many American women have with food… and for beginning any serious conversation about feminism and-or food-politics. A public shout-out to both authors… thank you, to two insurgent Americans.

Posted by stan as News at 8:25 PM PDT

The Permaculture Gathering
Celo Community, North Carolina
August 3rd-5th, 2007

The Permaculture Gathering every year is a reunion of friends-family & welcoming new friends - a time of retreat & rejuvenation, of fun, joy, magic & learning.

Ceremonial village - Self-organizing “open space” agenda - Permaculture and Sustainable Culture - Fantastic Organic food - Plant walks - Drum circles – Cool temperatures – Cold mountain swims -Seed and Plant Exchange – Healing Tent, Saturday night fun…. & MORE!

Go to our website www.sepermaculture.org For the printable registration page, information, & schedule. You will also find some links, comments from participants and more!

Early Bird Discount! Register by June 25th!

Number of Participants limited!

Yahoo group: groups.yahoo.com/group/SoutheasternPermaculture (to subscribe, simply hit the “Join this Group” button on the group homepage)

Posted by BrianR as News at 8:36 AM PDT

What is that about? Why is Putin proposing Azerbaijan as the place to site a joint US-Russian nuclear missile defense system? Since we never figure out what these things mean by listening to/reading commodity journalists, what can we do? I have found that one place that presents unusually-good, in-depth journalism on the regions where most of the planet’s inhabitants live… is Asia Times. I try to check it at least once a week to mine for gold. Oddly enough, the one radio program, aside from The People’s Pharmacy, that I enjoy is NPR’s Marketplace because it occasionally gives a remarkably unvarnished look inside capitalism.

Anyway… here is Nikolas K Gvosdev, writing about Putin’s Azerbaijan proposal.

Putin’s smart Gabala gambit
By Nikolas K Gvosdev

By proposing to base an anti-ballistic-missile system in Azerbaijan - and to have it be a joint operation between Russia and the West - Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to have caught the White House off guard. And the Russian leader, whose penchant for judo is well known, now appears ready to flip some of Washington’s own arguments and statements to strengthen the case against the deployment of any such system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The Gabala radar installation in Azerbaijan that Russia leases covers precisely the areas of the world where the threat from rogue states (or accidental launches) is most acute - the Middle East and the Indian Ocean basin. It is a bit more difficult to argue that a system based in the Czech Republic and Poland is somehow more effective at covering Iran than FULL Analysis

Posted by stan as Analysis at 5:31 PM PDT

I disagree with you philosophically. We will not agree on many issues. But we (leftists and libertarians) find ourselves in a peculiar conjuncture in history where we might coordinate our actions toward a commonly agreed upon end. Here are some key points on which we might agree.

(1) We oppose the war; and we oppose using the military for anything except the direct self-defense of the territory of the US.

(2) We oppose setting up and maintaining military bases abroad.

(3) We oppose the huge subsidies that are routinely provided by tax revenues to corporations. Leftists consider this the essence of capitalism, and libertarians consider it a betrayal of capitalistic “free market” principles… who cares… we oppose the subsidies to nuclear power plants, to transportation infrastructure — like interstate highways and airports, and in particular to Agribusiness, Pharmaceuticals, and Big Energy.

(4) We oppose the Security State apparatus that spies on its residents; and the outrageous “Drug War” that has resulted in phenomenal incarceration rates in this country.

(5) We oppose the enforced and continued monopoly on political power exercised by the two dominant parties (one party with two names).

The aforementioned conjuncture is the 2008 General Election. We are seeing crises emerge in the bellies of both parties — Republicans on immigration and reproductive choice, and Democrats on both “free trade” and the war.

Senators Obama and Clinton recently engaged in the cynical maneuver of voting against war funding after the vote count confirmed that the measure would pass. This was a clear indication that the antiwar movement’s threats to withhold votes for those who refuse to withhold war funding has made them very anxious. At the same time, the Republicans, who would have people believe they are the “free marketeers,” provide billions in subsidies (open and hidden); and their primary process has led, once again, to the hegemony within the party of its most theocratic and intolerant faction.

We on the left do not want to vote for Democrats who refuse to stop a hideous war or who run like frightened children away from simple common-sense ideas like marijuana decriminalization. You among the libertarians are surely weary of alliances with theocrats and with the autocrats of the neocon Security State.

The issues where we will find major agreement are not minor. Surely there is a way for us to agree upon a limited program of mutuality, roughly outlined above, and set aside our differences, long enough to break the Republicrat duopoly. Support for Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich in the primary season is a beginning; but after the existing apparatus spits them out, where do we go from here? Can we convince these two to stand together to talk about a basic five-point program? Can we threaten the parties with mass abstentions? Can we combine resources at the local level (I am in the relocalization wing of the left; and oppose Big Government every bit as much as you in many respects) to run fusion tickets on everything from medical marijuana to challenging eminent domain abuses (taking private property on behalf of WalMart, for example)?

There is no need for us to love each other, nor to hate each other. We can continue our debates on philosophy, epistemology, and so forth. But at this particular time, precisely because there are deep fissures emerging in both parties, we might be looking into a window of opportunity to begin the process of putting new debates on the table, and breaking the power of the political establishment.

Stan Goff

Discussion at Feral Scholar.

Posted by stan as Analysis at 6:42 AM PDT

by James M. Craven/Omahkohkiaayo i’poyi

The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated…

This piece has been updated by the author and moved to this page.

Posted by BrianR as Analysis at 5:01 AM PDT

By Greg Wilpert

The thought of the Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci is fundamental, according to Chavez, for making sense of what is happening in Venezuela today. “I want to refer to the thought of Gramsci, to use his ideas, using the light of his thought, every day we understand better what is happening here today in Venezuela.”

Thus Chavez launched into one his longest and most detailed talks on the thought of Gramsci, explaining Gamsci’s concept of “historical blocs,” in which a particular class manages to acquire hegemony that is expressed in structures and super-structures. The super-structure, explained Chavez, consists of two levels, of the institutions of the state and of the civil society. The civil society, according to Chavez’s explanation of Gramsci, consists of economic and private institutions, through which the dominant class spreads its ideology.

The conflict in Venezuela can thus be understood as one between the institutions of the state, which used to be controlled by this civil society, but no longer is, and the old civil society. To this old civil society, according to Gramsci, belong the Catholic Church hierarchy, the mass media, and the education system as the principal institutions. The dominant classes use these institutions to disseminate their ideologies, explained Chavez.

This ideology of the dominant classes is disseminated in a variety of levels of abstraction, with philosophy being the most abstract. Below this FULL ANALYSIS

Posted by stan as Analysis at 4:59 AM PDT

By Judith Matloff, Columbia Journalism Review

The photographer was a seasoned operator in South Asia. So when she set forth on an assignment in India, she knew how to guard against gropers: dress modestly in jeans secured with a thick belt and take along a male companion. All those preparations failed, however, when an unruly crowd surged and swept away her colleague. She was pushed into a ditch, where several men set upon her, tearing at her clothes and baying for sex. They ripped the buttons off her shirt and set to work on her trousers.

“My first thought was my cameras,” recalls the photographer, who asked to remain anonymous. “Then it was, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to be raped.’ ” With her face FULL ARTICLE

Posted by stan as News at 4:56 AM PDT

By YIFAT SUSSKIND

Indigenous activists are putting up a fight ­ against violence. At the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, activists are focused on passing a declaration that recognizes the right of Indigenous Peoples to their lands, territories, and resources. This organizing drive is seeking international legal protection from the violence done to Indigenous Peoples, which over the centuries has threatened their very survival. Indigenous women, meanwhile, are organizing against gender-based violence. This violence has derived not just from gender discrimination and subordination but also from the violation of the collective rights of Indigenous communities.

At the international level, 2,500 Indigenous activists and NGO representatives from around the world have gathered in New York this month to debate the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which FULL

Posted by stan as News at 5:19 AM PDT

Tell Congress to Repeal Provision Removing Local Rights to Regulate Food and Crops

Since 1988 the biotech industry and industrial food corporations have unsuccessfully tried to take away local and states’ rights to ban or regulate genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and other controversial foods and crops. For example, OCA and other public interest groups successfully generated a mass outcry in 2006 that blocked the passage of the National Uniformity for Food Act. This highly unpopular bill would have nullified 200 food safety and food labeling laws across the U.S.

Failing to suppress grassroots control over food safety laws and labels in the last session of Congress, industry has now called on their friends in the House Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry to slip a similar poison pill into an obscure section of the voluminous 2007-2012 Farm Bill. The provision would give the White House appointed Secretary of Agriculture the power to eliminate local or state food and farming laws, such as those in four California counties banning genetically engineered crops, and set an an ominous precedent undermining states’ rights.

Take action by sending a letter to the entire subcommittee by scrolling to the bottom of this page, and if any of the following subcommittee members are from your state, please call or fax them directly: FULL ACTION ALERT WITH CONGRESSIONAL LINKS

Posted by stan as Analysis at 5:09 AM PDT