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Today's
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October
30, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Paul
Krugman: Part of the Problem
October
29, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Thieves
Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton
Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans
Rick Giombetti
Let
Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy
The Intelligence
Squad
Dark
Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks
Elaine
Cassel
Prosecutors
as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists
Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement
Gary Leupp
Every
Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures
October
28, 2003
Rich Gibson
The
Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003
Uri Avnery
Incident
in Gaza
Diane
Christian
Wishing
Death
Robert
Fisk
Eyewitness
in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"
Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte
Jason
Leopold
Halliburton in Iran
Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten
Chris
White
9/11
in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective
October 27, 2003
William
A. Cook
Ministers
of War: Criminals of the Cloth
David
Lindorff
The
Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer
Elaine
Cassel
Antonin
Scalia's Contemptus Mundi
Robert
Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia
John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls
Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us
Bill Kauffman
George
Bush, the Anti-Family President
October
25 / 26, 2003
Robert
Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James
Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher
Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane
Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin
Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn
Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey
Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets'
Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
October
24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David
Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
Harry
Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
October
23, 2003
Diane
Christian
Ruthlessness
Kurt Nimmo
Criticizing Zionism
David Lindorff
A General Theory of Theology
Alan Maass
The Future of the Anti-War Movement
William
Blum
Imperial
Indifference
Stew Albert
A Memo
October
22, 2003
Wayne
Madsen
Religious
Insanity Runs Rampant
Ray McGovern
Holding
Leaders Accountable for Lies
Christopher
Brauchli
There's
No Civilizing the Death Penalty
Elaine
Cassel
Legislators
and Women's Bodies
Bill Glahn
RIAA
Watch: the New Morality of Capitalism
Anthony Arnove
An Interview with Tariq Ali
October 21, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Beilin Agreement
Robert Jensen
The Fundamentalist General
David
Lindorff
War Dispatch from the NYT: God is on Our Side!
William S. Lind
Bremer is Deaf to History
Bridget
Gibson
Fatal Vision
Alan Haber
A Human Chain for Peace in Ann Arbor
Peter
Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Hanging of Thomas Russell
October
20, 2003
Standard
Schaefer
Chile's
Failed Economy: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Chris
Floyd
Circus Maximus: Arnie, Enron and Bush Maul California
Mark Hand
Democrats Seek to Disappear Chomsky
& Nader
John &
Elaine Mellencamp
Peaceful
World
Elaine
Cassel
God's
General Unmuzzled
October
18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War
Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer
Bruce Anderson
The California Recall
John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes
Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"
Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario
Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa
Brian
Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War
Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers
Denise
Low
The Cancer of Sprawl
Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom
John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?
George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy
Alison
Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley
Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart
Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan
Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir
Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder
October
17, 2003
Stan Goff
Piss
On My Leg: Perception Control and the Stage Management of War
Newton
Garver
Bolivia
in Turmoil
Standard
Schaefer
Grocery Unions Under Attack
Ben Terrall
The Ordeal of the Lockheed 52
Ron Jacobs
First Syria, Then Iran
David
Lindorff
Michael
Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty
October
16, 2003
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush
Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba
Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse
Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time
Lenni
Brenner
I
Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me
Website of the Day
Time Tested Books
October
15, 2003
Sunil
Sharma / Josh Frank
The
General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation
Forrest
Hylton
Dispatch
from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"
Brian
Cloughley
Those
Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq
Ahmad
Faruqui
Lessons
of the October War
Uri Avnery
Three
Days as a Living Shield
Website
of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
October 14, 2003
Eric Ridenour
Qibya
& Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre
Elaine
Cassel
The
Disgrace That is Guantanamo
Robert
Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People
David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq
Patrick
Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops
VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference
Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews
Peter
Linebaugh
"Remember
Orr!"
Website
of the Day
BRIDGES
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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October
30, 2003
Can Big Houses and
Global Justice Coexist?
A
Moral Level of Consumption?
By ROBERT JENSEN
[A version of this talk was delivered
at Elon University, Elon, NC, on October 27, 2003.]
Whatever arguments one might want to have about
the pace of global warming and toxic waste accumulation, about
the rate at which humans are degrading the earth's capacity to
sustain life, about how long before our current way of living
destroys the planet -- one thing is beyond contention:
If all the people of the world consumed
at the level of the typical middle-class American, the game would
be over tomorrow. The earth cannot sustain 6 billion people living
as we live in this country. Over the long term, our society is
unsustainable, and in the short term our society can continue
only if people in other parts of the world are consuming far
less.
More than a fifth of the world's people
live in abject poverty (under $1 a day), and about half live
below the barely more generous standard of $2 a day. That means
that at least half the world cannot meet basic expenditures for
food, clothing, shelter, health, and education. The sources of
poverty, like the causes of most social/political phenomena,
are complex. But at the heart of worldwide inequality today is
the continued economic domination of the underdeveloped world
by the developed world -- with U.S. trade, foreign, and military
policy square in the center of that system of domination. It
is that system which allows us to consume as we do, and it is
that system which helps keep the poor of the world poor.
This kind of realization is not confined
to "radical environmentalists" or "leftist revolutionaries."
Consider the recent judgment of World Bank President James Wolfensohn:
"It is time to take a cold, hard look at the future. Our
planet is not balanced. Too few control too much, and many have
too little to hope for. Too much turmoil, too many wars, too
much suffering."
So, anyone serious about our ecological
future and global justice have to face this question: What is
a morally defensible level of consumption?
Many people avoid the question by arguing
that the key to overcoming those threats and disparities is political
change, not lifestyle changes by individuals. That's certainly
true; large-scale economic and political changes to overcome
the problems inherent in capitalism and nation-states are required.
But that doesn't obscure the need for people to address the question
at the personal level, for two reasons.
First, precisely because the ecological
problems require large-scale, global solutions, people in the
United States have to reduce their consumption. Why should anyone
in the developing world take serious any claims about the need
for environmental regulation made by people in the industrial
world? If we in the developed world show so little interest in
curbing our own ravenously destructive habits, what standing
do we have to preach to others? How can meaningful international
solutions be reached when the industrial world shows so little
interest in such change?
Second, if we are serious about meaningful
change, political movements and personal choices cannot be separated.
Our willingness and ability to work on the big-picture politics
flow in part from our personal connection to the question. On
any issue, we become more effective in political organizing as
our commitment and understanding deepen. On environmental questions,
that deepening comes in part with honest self-assessment about
our own life choices and willingness to act.
An analogy to the struggle for racial
justice is helpful: In the 1950s in United States it certainly
was true that no serious progress on the problem of racism was
possible without abolishing Jim Crow laws and providing meaningful
guarantees of voting rights for non-white people. But did that
mean that anti-racist white people should have ignored the ways
in which they engaged in racist behavior, perhaps unconscious
and subtle, in their personal lives, until those political changes
were in place? Would we have accepted from politically active
white people the claim that until the Voting Rights and Civil
Rights acts were passed, personal behavior didn't matter? Or
that once those laws were passed, that's all that white people
need worry about? Of course not. We would point out that a real
commitment to racial justice means that white people have to
be accountable, engage in self-criticism, and commit to changing
their attitudes and behavior -- along with the pursuit of political
change at the societal level. In such arenas, no one suggests
it is acceptable to ignore accountability for personal behavior
while pursuing political goals.
So, we return to the question: What is
a morally defensible level of consumption?
The answer can't be that, until there
is justice and equity, we should all consume at the level of
the poorest on the planet. The poorest in the world live in misery
and starve, and no one can be expected to adopt a lifestyle that
leads to death. Neither is it feasible to ask people to live
at a subsistence level, the bare minimum needed to survive. Even
if people were willing to do it, we couldn't be effective politically
living at such a level. Perhaps if we all knew that we would
face such a life unless economic and political change happened
immediately, it would be a powerful motivator. But that is not
the world in which we live.
In a complex world, there can be no easy,
bright-line answer to this question. But that doesn't mean we
have nothing to say about the search for answers. Instead, we
can look to common ethical principles for guidance. One of those
principles is the assertion that we should treat others as we
would like to be treated, a claim that shows up often in human
thought, both in religious teachings: --None of you truly believes
until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself (Islam).
--Do unto others as you would have them do unto you (Christianity).
and secular philosophy: --Act only on that maxim that you can
will a universal law (Kant).
Such a "golden rule" does not
dispose of all ethical questions, of course, but it provides
a starting point for working through questions involving our
use of resources: Consume at a level that could be generalized
to all people. That is, the morally appropriate level of consumption
is one that, if all people in the world lived at that level,
would allow for sustainable life on the planet. In this context,
sustainable means a system that would not exhaust the finite
resources of the planet necessary for the survival of human and
non-human life, and would not generate pollution and contamination
at levels that make the planet unlivable.
Obviously, the sustainable level of consumption
depends on the size of the human population. The current population
of more than 6 billion will rise in the near future, perhaps
as high as 10 billion by 2100, before leveling off. Also relevant
is the future of technological developments that might make more
efficient and less polluting use of resources. But for purposes
of this discussion, precision is not required on either issue.
The question of a sustainable level of consumption cannot be
answered with great clarity. Instead, the goal is to assess where
we stand today and understand the direction in which me must
move, with some sense of the urgency of the task. We can assume
the population will continue to grow in the short term, and that
whatever advances in technology lie before us they won't solve
all our problems.
So, what we can say with confidence is
that all the people of the world cannot live at the level of
Donald Trump. A world of 6 billion Donald Trumps is not sustainable.
Those of us who aren't Donald Trump may
at first find that reassuring; it's easy to focus on the most
outrageous consumers as the problem. But it's equally true that
the middle-class American lifestyle also is not generalizable
to the whole world. Take the simple issue of automobiles. Klaus
Toepfer, head of the U.N. Environment Program, recently made
the point that China's aim of quadrupling its economy by 2020
can only occur if developed nations radically change their consumption
habits to free up scarce resources for the world's poor. If China
had the same density of private cars as a developed country such
as Germany, Toepfer said, it would have to produce 650 million
vehicles, which the world's supply of metal and oil would be
unable to sustain.
So, if we were to apply a golden rule
of consumption (consume at a level that, if applied throughout
the world, would allow all people a decent life consistent with
long-term sustainability), it seems we have to get rid of some
of our cars. Actually, lots of our cars, and not just the SUVs.
Again, it's easy to point a judgmental finger at the most wasteful
of the vehicles on the road, but the real problem is the number
of individually owned and operated vehicles out there. The owner
of a fuel-efficient small car is as implicated in this as the
driver of the gas-hog.
So, should everyone who owns a car stop
driving? That certainly would improve the health of the planet,
but it's not feasible immediately in a culture designed around
individual car travel. Many people live in circumstances that
make it impossible to maintain family, work, and social commitments
without a car.
That means that large-scale change is
necessary -- most obviously the development of mass transit and
the redesign of cities to make them less auto-dependent. But
that doesn't mean that as we work for those changes, there is
nothing individuals can do. Here's a short list: --Do not buy
an auto if it is feasible. --If one has to use an auto, create
a car cooperative with others to share a vehicle. --In a family
unit, maintain the least number of vehicles possible. --Buy the
smallest and most fuel-efficient car possible. --Use a car only
when necessary, walking/biking and taking public transportation
whenever possible.
To be clear: My argument is not that
all people are morally compelled to spend all their time pondering
and taking action to lower consumption. We do not live under
conditions of our own making, and if we want to participate in
the culture in a way that allows us to be politically effective,
then no one can claim a position of purity. The question we should
ask is not, "Have you met THE standard?" set down by
some arbitrary authority, but instead "Are you willing to
confront the problem and make good-faith attempts to move in
the right direction?"
If anyone doubts that direction must
be toward far less consumption, visit the website http://www.myfootprint.org/
and run through the quick survey. Using the concept of the "ecological
footprint" -- assessing how much of the world it takes to
support one's lifestyle -- the quiz graphically illustrates just
how far most of us are from a just and sustainable level. (For
more detail on the concept of the footprint, go to http://www.rprogress.org/programs/sustainability/ef/.)
The reality is that, even in progressive
circles where people are generally aware of the severity of the
problem, many people have not taken these questions seriously.
As "sacrifices" go, that simple list of actions concerning
cars is trivial, yet I know many people who think of themselves
as politically progressive but have not considered any of them
(perhaps beyond looking at the gas mileage figures when they
buy a car).
Left/radical/progressive politics is
always a process of destruction and creation. We are arguing
that certain systems (capitalism, imperialism) have to be destroyed,
while at the same time we struggle to articulate and, where possible,
create the alternatives. In that process, each of us will have
different contributions to make, depending on background, temperament,
circumstance, and constantly changing contingencies. Some people
try to create change by creating viable alternatives to a high-energy,
high-consumption life. Others who are engaged in traditional
political organizing may see these kinds of day-to-day choices
as less important. But we all need to confront the choices. Humans
have well-developed rationalization skills; we are gifted at
finding ways of convincing ourselves of the irrefutable truth
of what we want to believe. Those of us actively engaged with
movements for social justice have a responsibility to resist
that.
No matter how many times I emphasize
that I am not arguing that there is a magic formula we can use
to set an appropriate level of consumption, some will assert
that is really my goal. Often people tell me, "Oh, you just
think everyone should live like you do." That is not my
contention (if for no other reason that I have not yet reached
a level of consumption that meets this golden-rule standard).
I think the motivation behind such a
seemingly deliberate misreading often is fear. As members of
an affluent culture, the vast majority of us have become used
to living with the creature comforts of that affluence, at whatever
level we live, and we typically like it. In many cases, we have
become lazy (I certainly can see that in my own life). And knowing
that the affluence is based on the unsustainable exploitation
of natural resources and the unjust exploitation of vulnerable
people in other parts of the world (as well as less privileged
classes at home) can be difficult to live with. One coping mechanism
is to ignore it. For the political reasons already outlined,
I think that is a bad choice.
But there also is a personal cost to
ignoring these difficult issues. It is my experience that when
I have wrestled with these kinds of questions (such as becoming
vegetarian, for both moral and ecological reasons; or giving
up a car; or in general reducing my participation in the mall-based
culture of consumption), I have benefited immensely, both from
the process of coming to the decision and the ramifications of
the decision. I like life as a vegetarian better than as a meat-eater.
I am a happier and healthier person because I routinely ride
a bicycle to work. I feel liberated in not buying things that
people all around me clamor to buy.
But those decisions don't get me off
the hook. Although I don't eat meat, I still eat dairy products,
and I struggle daily with that decision. The honorable example
set by a friend who is vegan reminds me of the question. Although
I don't own a car, I ride in one more often than I need to. I
often rent or borrow a car from a friend to travel for political
events, but I also sometimes use those vehicles for personal
trips that are purely a matter of convenience. A friend who walks
virtually everywhere reminds me of how I fall short in this area.
Although I stay away from the mall, I still eat out (a wasteful
way to eat, given the way in which food is prepared and discarded
in contemporary restaurants) more than I need to. A friend who
grows and cooks much of his own food reminds me of that failure
of mine.
I could produce a long list of my own
choices that create such conflict in me every day, and with that
a list of people I know who do better than me in the struggle
to consume less. Their examples force me to face my own shortcomings.
But I am grateful for them and what they freely offer -- the
gift of making me uncomfortable, for it is that sense of being
uncomfortable with my choices that pushes me to struggle with
these issues.
At some point, the entire culture is
going to have to face these questions. For politically progressive
people, it is crucial that we not shy away from those questions
now. There need be no imposition of right answers, but there
needs to be an honest conversation, with a willingness to engage
in self-criticism and be accountable to others. Such conversations
will often be difficult and sometimes quite painful -- as are
conversations about how well white people are living true to
anti-racist principles, or how well men are living true to feminist
principles. Their difficulty does not give us the right to ignore
the issues.
After reading an article of mine about
the American empire, a woman wrote to me recently and said that
she could see the importance of the underlying question about
our consumption. She asked me a simple question: If I want to
be part of a movement for global justice, do I have to give up
my house?
By the tone and content of her email,
I assumed she was a middle-class person with a comfortable house
that was bigger than she needed, a house that wouldn't meet the
golden-rule test. To be part of the movement against U.S. imperialism
and for global justice, do folks have to give up these houses?
In the short term, the answer is no.
There is much political work to be done, and running out today
to sell off the bigger-than-needed house likely isn't the answer.
But one has to acknowledge that if there is to be global justice,
we can't live in these big houses indefinitely.
Some might say: That's easy for you to
say -- you probably don't live in a house. That's true; I live
in a one-bedroom apartment and don't have to worry about giving
up my house. But if I am to be honest, I have to worry about
giving up my apartment. If I am serious about striving to live
at a level that could be applied to all the people of the world
and be sustainable, my one-bedroom apartment -- though admittedly
rather dumpy -- is a luxury. I have my own refrigerator, which
sits there gobbling up electricity all day. I take a hot shower
every morning. When the Texas heat becomes uncomfortable, I can
switch on the air conditioning. Most of the people of the world
do not have those things, and it's not at all clear we could
live sustainably if everyone in the world had a separate apartment
with those luxuries.
We all are implicated. We all have to
struggle. It won't be easy for any of us. It can be hard even
to imagine how we as a species are going to find our way out
of this mess.
But the only thing worse than struggling
with it is to abandon the struggle. Then not only will we have
failed in our moral obligation to the rest of life on the planet,
but we will have failed ourselves.
Robert Jensen,
a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin,
was born and raised in North Dakota. He is the author of "Citizens
of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights,
2004) and "Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the
Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2001). He can be reached
at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
Weekend
Edition Features for Oct. 25 / 26, 2003
Robert
Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James
Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher
Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane
Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin
Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn
Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey
Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets'
Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
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