Letters to the Editor
ELYDOG
Published Letters: 487 Editor's Choice: 43
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Doomsday, part II
[Read the article: Turn down that thermostat, permanently]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think we have this same discussion every day!
Sometimes the person crying 'wolf' is right. Sometimes the guy on the bridge of the Titanic crying "iceberg" is right. Sometimes the guy that just ran back from Thermopolae is right. There is no intellectual barrior to 'certain' doomsday's actually being true.
I think peak oil is already here, unlike what Klare says (he's using government figures, I think). The effects of global warming in the global 'south' are certainly already here - desertification, deforestation, disease through bad water, and increased starvation. Food prices are going up because we have an oil-based agriculture system, the so-called "green revolution," that is non-sustainable. Not to mention the effects ethanol and meat-eating are taking on food supply.
For example, the ocean Coho Salmon season has been canceled yesterday due to lack of ... fish, caused by ocean warming.
What I think the U.S. Right is banking on is that they hope this all 'happens' to someone else. Your country may go underwater, we'll build a dike. You may starve, we won't. You may run out of water, we won't. You may bicycle, we won't.
Well, as Iraq shows, 4,6000 soliders and contractors dead, tens of thousands injured, billions spent, our international reputation in shambles, enemies multiplying, it will come back to haunt us. Georgia and the southern U.S. have been in a drought for years now. The Ogalla aquifer below much of the western U.S. is being rapidly depleted, and not renewed. Drought and rural decimation in Mexico brought by NAFTA have lead to an immigration wave into the U.S. And on and on, i.e. all the Republicans and conservative Democrats who think they can live in some walled compound are kidding themselves.
What to do? Become real 'conservatives' - of the whole planet, including us humans. This is the 'moral' equivalent of war, (conservatives like THAT phrase!) and the whole country will have to get prepared. But without a government and economic system that can respond, odds are not good. Individuals, organization and comunities can only do so much alone ... they are light years ahead of our government, yet without a national and internation focus, they cannot respond in the degree necessary.
I turned down my thermostat all winter. 53 degrees at night, 63 degrees when I was there. And it is ... a bit chilly.
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Vietnam
[Read the article: The Washington food crisis consensus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Electro Robot comes to the rescue of the IMF. Never suprising. Do you have proof these countries are 'mainuplating' the market, or is this just finger pointing?
Vietnamese workers, with permission from their union, recently went on strike against foreign companies for low pay, due to the increase in rice and other food prices IN Vietnam. This is not even an export issue. To use your analogy, did the Saudi's drive up the price of pump oil within their own country when they shut down production to the U.S. in 1973?
This one strike shows the theory of 'market manipulation' is not correct.
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Blue & White Collar
[Read the article: The fight for fair pay]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I used to work in many blue-collar factory jobs. Everyone knew everyone's else's wages. In the union shops, they were in the contract. Sometimes a company suck-up would get extra money 'under the table' and, well, we didn't stop that, and that was the only exception to knowing how much peoople made. Everything was clear, aboveboard, and not about 'you.'
Switch to white-collar workers, who have very little collectivity. It is all about them, as individuals. Everyone's pay is a secret, because, of course, pay is a 'favor' you get from management, based on how much they like you. So if you make more than someone, you don't want to embarass them by telling them. And if you make less, and you are overly sensitive, you don't want to say anything either. The 'class' factor is extremely active.
I remember asking people in part of the brokerage that I work in what raise they got. We had heard they got an extraordinary raise of something like $10,000.00+. I was reported to management for asking around by several overly- private whiners.
Upshot? Without the collectivity of a union, white-collar workers are at a huge disadvantage in just learning the basic facts of employment. Blue-collar workers without a union generally do not have the same cultural 'private life' mentality, and also feel more oppressed, so they don't mind saying what they make in comparison.
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Gilded Lives
[Read the article: The Gilded Age, past and present]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]After all of Salon.com's swarmy praise of religious para-intellectuals and crapulous Democratic Party leaders, we get an article that actually speaks to what is happening behind the scenes of the Wizard's castle. An actual class-conscious article. 'God forbid.'
The historical long view. What? Can't be! The point that the blue-collar working classes have for a time been mostly replaced by desk-bound paper shufflers is worth today's price of admission. And if you've ever worked in the private, paper-cut world of white collar work, you know how cowed and frightened the denizens are.
Even the hallowed teacher and professor is now vulnerable to internet schools, with questions answered by e-mail, perhaps in India, with content owned by Cliff's Notes. Didn't give a shit about NAFTA? The international economy has come for you!
American capital's main strength now is it's international roots - witness the Sovereign Wealth Funds bailing out our name-brand banks, and the profit figures from Wall Street, based on growth overseas. The U.S. started becoming an after-thought in the capitalists' eyes in the 80s. It is only going to become more so.
Welcome to the 2nd or 3rd world.