Avnery v. the State of Israel

URI AVNERY

This week I won a dubious distinction: a groundbreaking Supreme Court judgment has been named after me.

It is an honor I would have gladly dispensed with.

My name appeared at the head of a list of applicants, associations and individuals, which asked the court to cancel a law enacted by the Knesset.

Israel has no written constitution. This unusual situation arose right from the beginning of the state because David Ben-Gurion, a fierce secularist, could not achieve a compromise with the orthodox parties, which insisted that the Torah already is a constitution.

So, instead of a constitution, we have a number of Basic Laws which cover only a part of the ground, and a mass of Supreme Court precedents. This court slowly arrogated to itself the right to abolish Laws enacted by the Knesset which contradict the nonexistent constitution.

Starting from the last Knesset, extreme right-wing Likud Members have been competing with each other in their efforts to castrate the Supreme Court one way or another. Some would stuff the court with right-wing judges, others would radically limit its jurisdiction.

Things came to a head when a group of far-right Likud members launched a veritable avalanche of bills which were clearly unconstitutional. One of them, and the most dangerous one, was a law that forbade people to call for a boycott of the State of Israel and, in a sinister way, added the words “and of territories held by it”.

This revealed the real aim of the operation. Some years before, our Gush Shalom peace organization had called on the public to boycott the products of the settlements in the occupied territories. We also published on our website a list of these products. Several other peace organizations joined the campaign.

Simultaneously, we tried to convince the European Union to do something similar. Israel’s agreement with the EU, which exempts Israeli wares from customs, does not include the settlements. But the EU was used to closing its eyes. It took us a lot of time and effort to open them again. In recent years, the EU has excluded these goods. They have demanded that on all merchandise “made in Israel”, the actual place of origin be stated. This week, 16 European foreign ministers called upon the EU foreign affairs chief to demand that all products from the settlements be clearly marked.

The law passed by the Knesset not only has criminal aspects, but also civil ones. Persons calling for a boycott could not only be sent to prison. They could also be ordered to pay huge damages without the plaintiff having to prove that any actual damage had been caused to him or her by the call.

Also, associations which receive government subsidies or other governmental assistance under existing laws would be deprived of them from then on, making their work for peace and social justice even more difficult.

Within minutes after the enactment of this law, Gush Shalom and I personally submitted our applications to the Supreme Court. They had been prepared well in advance by advocate Gaby Lasky, a talented young lawyer and dedicated peace activist. My name was the first in the list of petitioners, and so the case is called: “Avnery v. the State of Israel”.

The case laid out by Lasky was logical and sound. The right of free speech is not guaranteed in Israel by any specific law, but is derived from several Basic Laws. A boycott is a legitimate democratic action. Any individual can decide to buy or not to buy something. Indeed, Israel is full of boycotts. Shops selling non-kosher food, for example, are routinely boycotted by the religious, and posters calling for such boycotts of a specific shop are widely distributed in religious neighborhoods.

The new law does not prohibit boycotts in general. It singles out political boycotts of a certain kind. Yet political boycotts are commonplace in any democracy. They are part of the exercise of freedom of speech.

Indeed, the most famous modern boycott was launched by the Jewish community in the United States in 1933, after the Nazis came to power in Germany. In response, the Nazis called for a boycott of all Jewish enterprises in Germany. I remember the date, April 1, because my father did not allow me to go to school on that day (I was 9 years old and the only Jew in my school.)

Later, all progressive countries joined in a boycott of the racist regime in South Africa. That boycott played a large (though not decisive) role in bringing it down.

A law cannot generally compel a person to buy a normal commodity, nor can it generally forbid them to buy it. Even the framers of this new Israeli law understood this. Therefore, their law does not punish anybody for buying or not buying. It punishes those who call on others to abstain from buying.

Thus the law is clearly an attack on the freedom of speech and on non-violent democratic action. In short, it is a basically flawed anti-democratic law.

The court which judged our case consisted of nine judges, almost the entire Supreme Court. Such a composition is very rare, and only summoned when a fateful decision has to be made.

The court was headed by its president, Judge Asher Gronis. That in itself was significant, since Gronis already left the court and went into compulsory retirement in January, when he reached the age of 70. When the seat became vacant, Gronis was already too old to become the court president. Under the then existing Israeli law, a Supreme Court judge cannot become the court’s president when the time for his final retirement is too close. But the Likud was so eager to have him that a special enabling law was passed to allow him to become the president.

Moreover, a judge who has been on a case but did not finish his judgment in time before retiring, is given an extra three months to finish the job. It seems that even Gronis, the Likud’s protégé, had qualms about this specific decision. He signed it literally at the very last moment – at 17.30 hours of the last day, just before Israel went into mourning at the start of Holocaust Day.

His signature was decisive. The court was split – 4 to 4 – between those who wanted to annul the law and those who wanted to uphold it. Gronis joined the pro-law section and the law was approved. It is now the Law of the Land.

One section of the original law was, unanimously, stricken from the text. The original text said that any person – i.e. settler – who claims that they have been harmed by the boycott, can claim unlimited indemnities from anyone who has called for this boycott, without having to prove that they were actually hurt. From now on, a claimant has to prove the damage.

At the public hearing of our case, we were asked by the judges if we would be satisfied if they strike out the words “territories held by Israel”, thus leaving the boycott of the settlements intact. We answered that in principle we insist on annulling the entire law, but would welcome the striking out of these words. But in the final judgment, even this was not done.

This, by the way, creates an absurd situation. If a professor in Ariel University, deep in the occupied territories, claims that I have called to boycott him, he can sue me. Then my lawyer will try to prove that my call went quite unheeded and therefore caused no damage, while the professor will have to prove that my voice was so influential that multitudes were induced to boycott him.

Years ago, when I was still Editor-in-Chief of Haolam Hazeh, the news-magazine, I decided to choose Aharon Barak as our Man of the Year.

When I interviewed him, he told me how his life was saved during the Holocaust. He was a child in the Kovno ghetto, when a Lithuanian farmer decided to smuggle him out. This simple man risked his own life and the lives of his family when he hid him under a load of potatoes to save his life.

In Israel, Barak rose to eminence as a jurist, and eventually became the president of the Supreme Court. He led a revolution called “Juristic Activism”, asserting, among other things, that the Supreme Court is entitled to strike out any law that negates the (unwritten) Israeli constitution.

It is impossible to overrate the importance of this doctrine. Barak did for Israeli democracy perhaps more than any other person. His immediate successors – two women – abided by this rule. That’s why the Likud was so eager to put Gronis in his place. Gronis’ doctrine can be called “Juristic Passivism”.

During my interview with him, Barak told me: “Look, the Supreme Court has no legions to enforce its decisions. It is entirely dependent on the attitude of the people. It can go no further than the people are ready to accept!”

I constantly remember this injunction. Therefore I was not too surprised by the judgment of the Supreme Court in the boycott case.

The Court was afraid. It’s as simple as that. And as understandable.

The fight between the Supreme Court and the Likud’s far-right is nearing a climax. The Likud has just won a decisive election victory. Its leaders are not hiding their intention to finally implement their sinister designs on the independence of the Court.

They want to allow politicians to dominate the appointment committee for Supreme Court judges and to abolish altogether the right of the court to annul unconstitutional laws enacted by the Knesset.

Menachem Begin used to quote the miller of Potsdam who, when involved with the King in a private dispute, exclaimed: “There are still judges in Berlin!”

Begin said: “There are still judges in Jerusalem!”

For how long?

Low Wages Don’t Come Cheap

Pete Dolack 

When we think of the externalization of costs by capitalist enterprises, we think of environmental damage or infrastructure. But low wages are another burden foisted onto society, costing the public more than $150 billion annually in the United States.

So widespread have low wages become that a majority of federal and state money going toward public-assistance programs are paid to people who are part of a working family. This amounts to one more subsidy for U.S. business, already the recipients of massive largesse.

When it is impossible to live on meager wages — a position tens of millions of U.S. families find themselves in — there is no alternative to turning to public-assistance programs. The scale of this was calculated by researchers at the University of California Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, and released this month in their paper, “The High Public Cost of Low Wages.”

The authors of the report, Ken Jacobs, Ian Perry and Jenifer MacGillvary, examined the cost to the federal government and the 50 state governments for four programs — the Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program, Temporary Aid to Needy Families, the Earned Income Tax Credit and the food stamps program (known formally as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP). Almost three-quarters of those enrolling in at least one of these programs is a member of a working family, defined as a family with at least one member who works at least 10 hours a week for at least 27 weeks in a year.

Overall, $153 billion from these four programs goes to working families, representing 56 percent of total public-assistance spending by the federal and state governments.

This massive amount of public money represents a subsidy of corporations. The less they spend on wages and benefits, the more goes to profits, which are ultimately stuffed into the bloated bank accounts of corporate executives and financiers.

Fast-food workers, child care workers and home care workers are heavily represented among those who depend on public assistance to supplement their subpar wages — about half of all the employees in these three industries. That is no surprise. What might be surprising is the increasing prevalence of this in “white-collar” fields. Twenty-five percent of adjunct college professors receive public assistance! So much for “lack of education” as the cause of stagnant or falling wages, as right-wing apologists for growing inequality like to claim.

The Berkeley Center report broke down the public-assistance money by state, which reveals some interesting statistics. The state with the highest share of public-assistance money going to members of working families is none other than Texas. A full two-thirds of federal and state public-assistance money in that state goes to working families. Something to keep in mind next time you hear former Texas Governor Rick Perry, a past and possibly future presidential candidate, drone on about Texas creating more jobs than any other state. The official web site of the current Texas governor, tea party extremist Greg Abbott, brags about the state’s alleged plentiful “good jobs for hard-working Texans,” declaring that “It’s not bragging if it’s true.”

In reality, if so many Texans rely on food stamps and other government programs to survive, not too many of those jobs pay well. The tax system there is also regressive — Texas has no state income tax, but it has high sales and property taxes structured to disproportionately place the burden of taxes on the poor and middle class. The top 1 percent of Texans pay an effective tax rate of 3.2 percent, while a middle-income Texan has a higher tax rate than a middle-income Californian, according to a Washington Monthly analysis.

It’s not only Texas, however, even if it is done on a larger scale there. Higher-paying jobs have been disappearing in the U.S., with the most growth since 2010 in low-wage jobs paying less than $13.33 an hour. At the same time, the number of people enduring long-term unemployment because of the weak economy has sharply risen in the U.S., Canada, European Union, Australia and New Zealand.

Given the increased harshness of employment practices, more families may be needing public assistance. A particularly brutal practice, “on-time scheduling,” has become so pervasive that New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has launched an investigation into 13 retailers. This is a practice in which workers are told what shift to work with less than one day’s notice, making it impossible for them to make arrangements for personal and family needs.

The scale of how far backwards we have traveled is that the Obama administration is offering U.S. minimum-wage workers two-thirds of what was demanded 50 years ago. One of the demands of the March on Washington in 1963 was a minimum wage of $2 an hour. Adjusted for inflation, $2 an hour in 1963 would be worth $15.34 today. Yet the federal minimum wage in the United States is $7.25 an hour. So the $15 an hour campaign that has rapidly grown over the past year is agitating for nothing outlandish. Nor will $15 an hour for someone who supports a family lead to a life in luxury.

Raises most certainly can be afforded. U.S. corporations were sitting on about $5 trillion of cash as of 2011, a figure that undoubtedly has since grown. The massive hoards of cash, bloated salaries and bonuses for executives and financiers, and the starvation wages endured by so many all come with a cost — a cost borne by working people. There are not only no free lunches for working people, you are paying for the lunches and dinners of the wealthy besides your own lunch.

Islamophobia on Wheels

Lawrence Davidson

On 1 April 2015 an anti-Muslim advertisement started appearing on 84 municipal buses in the Philadelphia regional area. The ad space was purchased for a four-week period by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), which paid $30,000 to run its message: a picture from the early 1940s of Adolf Hitler speaking to Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti (chief Muslim religious authority) of Jerusalem, with an accompanying text, “Islamic Jew Hatred: It’s in the Quran” and a call to “end all aid to Islamic countries.” Philadelphia is just the latest city to experience this sort of offensive Islamophobia. Indeed, running Islamophobic attack ads on transit systems across the nation seems to be AFDI’s specialty.

The AFDI is part of an extremist organization called Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), which is led by the a hyperactive Islamophobe and strident rightwing Zionist Pamela Geller. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has long tracked right-wing extremist organizations, has labeled the SOIA a “hate group.”

Philadelphia’s regional transit authority (SEPTA) tried to refuse the advertisement because it so blatantly did what it incorrectly alleged the Quran does – promote hatred. But the AFDI took SEPTA to court and won with a freedom of speech argument.

Analyzing the AFDI Advertisement

The ad now appearing in the Philadelphia area is actually a piece of propaganda. There is no accurate context given for the photo it displays, and the reference to the Quran lacks a citation. So let’s fill in what is missing with some analysis.

The Photograph of the Grand Mufti Speaking to Hitler

Amin al-Husseini (1895 – 1974) was a member of a leading family in Jerusalem. Early in the British occupation of Palestine he was appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, making him one of the most influential Muslim leaders in the colony. The British assumed they could control Husseini, who was only 26 years old at the time, and hoped that his appointment would placate Arab nationalist feelings. However, they had seriously underestimated him. Husseini’s goal was to achieve independence for Arab Palestine, and that made him a staunch opponent of the Zionist colonial project.

When a major anti-colonial Arab revolt broke out in 1936, the British mistakenly believed that Husseini was one of its major organizers and sought to arrest him. If they had managed to do so he probably would have been deported to one of Britain’s African colonies. To avoid this fate, Husseini fled to Iraq, which at this time was also a British colony in open revolt. When the British suppressed the Iraqi rebellion, Husseini fled to Fascist Italy from where he was eventually moved to Germany.

The advertisement that now appears on Philadelphia area buses shows Husseini speaking with Adolf Hitler. The implication, which is false, is that Palestine’s Muslim religious leader was himself a Nazi. If one does the research, one can find other pictures and documents that show Husseini recruiting Muslim soldiers in the Balkans to fight in the German army. He also did propaganda broadcasts in Arabic for the Germans urging resistance to British imperialism. Thus, it cannot be denied that he collaborated with Nazi Germany during the war years. However, none of this activity was undertaken because he was a Nazi. It was done because he was opposed to British imperial rule in Palestine and other Arab territories. If the British had been at war with Sweden instead of Germany, Husseini would have sought refuge among the Swedes and broadcast propaganda for them.

The same can be said for Husseini’s attitude toward a Jewish Palestine. He was adamantly against it. When he proclaimed, as part of his pro-German propaganda, that he wished to see Jews driven from the Arab lands, the most logical interpretation of this statement is that it was Zionist Jews he sought expelled, for in other statements to German leaders of the time he said the best solution for Palestine was for the Jews to go back to their countries of origin. Thus, Husseini’s statement seems to have no relevance for Palestine’s indigenous Sephardic Jews. There is no convincing evidence that he supported the Holocaust (though he was aware of it) despite an on-going Zionist effort to make it appear that he did.

Whatever one might think of the Mufti’s activities in wartime Germany, he was driven to them not by any belief in Nazi doctrines, but by the ongoing oppression of his native land by British policies in support of Zionist ambitions. Much like the British and American wartime alliance with Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union or, for that matter, the U.S. alliance with Osama Bin Laden and the Mujahedin in Afghanistan, Husseini’s alliance with Hitler’s Germany was a function of the enemy of my enemy is, at least for the moment, my friend.

“Jew Hatred” and the Quran

The AFDI bus ad goes on to declare that “Jew Hatred” can be found in the Quran. It is hard to take such a charge seriously, because the Quran, like the Old and New Testaments, is a book of scripture in which one can find, and then misinterpret, almost anything one wants. Thus, through selective and out-of-context quoting, or by simple innuendo, one can make outrageous accusations. Of course, the present bus ad forgoes quotation or citation and just makes an unsupported declaration.

One has to keep in mind that the Quran is approximately 1,500 years old, and so framing the attitude of all modern Muslims in terms of a few statements critical of early 7th-century Jews (while ignoring statements that are positive) is like saying that all educated English people dislike Jews because they revere the same Shakespeare who, in the late 16th century, wrote the Merchant of Venice.

Actually, if you compare the Quran and the Old Testament on the violent treatment of “the other,” the Old Testament is much worse. It is a very bloody affair (for instance, see book 1 of Samuel), featuring a wrathful deity who arranges cruel fates for any group that gets in the way of ancient Hebrews. My personal opinion is that such a God deserves to be avoided rather than worshipped. On the other hand, the Quran’s portrayal of hell is pretty awful, but then its pains and tortures are attributed to that same wrathful deity found in the Old Testament.

Just to be even-handed on this topic, the New Testament’s Book of Revalations seems to inspire many Christian fundamentalists to earnestly yearn for global annihilation.

Stop the Aid!

Finally, the ad calls for a halt to aid going to Islamic countries. Actually, this might not be a bad idea, considering that a lot of this aid is made up of loan gurantees to dictatorships for the purchase of U.S. weapons. If we could balance this out by halting the yearly $3 billion-plus in aid to Israel, we would have a win-win situation. However, on both counts the U.S. munitions manufactures would scream bloody murder (pun intended) because they are the ones profiting from such “aid.”

Conclusion

When a bigoted extremist like Pamela Geller places misleading and hate-promoting propaganda on buses, the Zionist establishment has nothing critical to say. They treat it as if it is all very proper and upheld by “free speech.” However, when supporters of the Palestinian cause put up billboards picturing a series of maps that show the absorption of Arab Palestine by Zionist settlers between1948 and today, pious rabbis and Zionist lobbysts protest and call it anti-Semitic. Hypocrisy is the name of the game.

This is all about the ongoing battle to control the message: that is the history and reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the early 1970s, when I started supporting the Palestinian cause, the Zionists had a near monopoly on that message. There were almost no venues that would allow someone who was pro-Palestinian to speak or publish, and on the rare occasion that one found a platform, one was subjected to heckling and threats.

The situation has really changed. At least outside of the Washington Beltway, those who support Palestinian rights are on the offensive, and the Zionists on the defensive. However, the Zionists certainly have not given up, and the most egregious of them, such as those at the AFDI, still lash out with hate-filled messages. So, the fight goes on.

Modi in Canada

Dionne Bunsha

When Stephen Harper hosts Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his visit to Canada this week, they will be greeted with both adoring fans and with protests. Modi, an extremist Hindu nationalist, has a strong support base within a section of the Indian community. But his past comes back to haunt him. A human rights organization called Sikhs for Justice has appealed to the Canadian government to prosecute Modi for the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat.

Until a year ago, Modi was denied a visa to visit the US because of “severe violations of religious freedom”. While Modi was chief minister of the western state of Gujarat, he was accused of ‘criminal conspiracy’ in a pogrom against Muslims in 2002 in which more than 1,000 were killed, and over 100,000 were made refugees. Modi rose from the ranks of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an extremist nationalist organization that was briefly banned in India after one of its members, Nathuram Godse, assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. Extremist Hindu nationalist groups affiliated to Modi’s party, collectively called the Sangh Parivar, allegedly played a key role in the planned attacks. Several Sangh members and police officials have provided evidence of Modi’s role in the genocide. “The chief minister (Modi) gave us a free hand to do whatever we wanted for three days. After that, he asked us to stop,” said Haresh Bhatt, a leader of the militant Bajrang Dal, in a video interview to Tehelka magazine.

In a petition to Peter McKay, the Minister of Justice, Sikhs for Justice have asked that Modi be charged for counselling genocide and inflicting torture under Canadian law, based on the evidence they provided in their letter. The letter points to relevant sections of the Canadian Criminal Code and the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act that allow for the prosecution of a foreign leader in Canada. In India, Zakia Jafri, the wife of Ehsan Jafri, a Member of Parliament who was brutally murdered during the Gujarat pogrom, filed a case of ‘criminal conspiracy’ against Modi and 58 other political and government figures. After the Gujarat High Court absolved Modi, Jafri is appealing the verdict in a higher court. Jafri’s family and the human rights groups supporting her case have faced intense harassment from the Modi government.

Modi’s spin doctors have worked hard to hush up his role in the Gujarat genocide. Since corporate India championed Modi, and funded his election campaign, his image in the West has undergone an extreme makeover. He is being wooed by world leaders eager to cash in on business in India, one of the world’s fastest growing economies. After his election victory, one of Modi’s first state visits was to the US. Soon after, Barack Obama visited India for its Republic Day celebrations and was able to get Modi to sign a nuclear deal in which the Indian government and public sector agreed to take on the liability for any accident in nuclear power plants operated by American companies in India. For this special occasion, Modi wore a pinstripe suit with his name embroidered into the stripes in gold thread, a ‘gift’ from a businessman.

Corporate India may try hard to dress him up and re-invent his image, but it’s difficult to cover up his true colours. With Modi in power, his emboldened brotherhood in the Sangh Parivar has intensified the targeting of minorities – Christians, Muslims, indigenous tribes and lower castes. Women are kidnapped for marrying Muslim or Christian men as part of Modi’s ‘love jihad’ campaign. Churches are being attacked and nuns raped. But Modi pretends like the everyday violence and intolerance doesn’t exist. He is busy travelling the world, signing business deals and meeting his diaspora supporters that have funded the hate campaigns. Just before visiting Canada, Modi signed a deal to buy 36 jet fighters during his visit to Paris, even as children die of starvation in India.

In many ways, Harper and Modi are natural allies, both conservatives with aggressive strong corporate backing. Just like Harper has been using Islamophobia to stir up fear and insecurity, Modi uses anti-Muslim rhetoric during his election campaigns too, but violent consequences often follow his words. Modi has diluted already weak environmental laws in India to favour business, just like Harper pushed through the omnibus Bill C-45 that weakened environmental regulations to make way for major development projects.

Both leaders have used strategies to subvert democratic processes. The Harper governmenthas been criticized for being an ‘elected dictatorship’ and over-riding the parliamentary process. Modi shares the same autocratic style. Recently, when Modi’s proposals to dilute land acquisition laws was held up in Parliament, he got the President of India to pass an ordinance to enact a law that strengthens the rights of government and companies to acquire land and impairs the rights of ordinary people. The Modi government has frozen the accounts of Greenpeace India, in an attempt to stop their efforts at environmental protection. Harper has used similar strategies to stifle dissent against his policies to expand Canada’s environmentally destructive tar sands.

Perhaps during another era of Canadian politics, Modi may have hesitated to enter Canada for fear of the law catching up with him. But today, it is a different Canada. Today, Modi is a state guest. It is business as usual.

The Politics of Repair

Michael Schwalbe

The politics of repair are often invisible, hidden by the idea that repair is no more than the mundane practice of putting what is broken or worn-out back in good working order. But against the background of an economy driven by compulsive consumption and heedless waste that enrich the capitalist class, repair is more than a matter of sensible thrift. It is a form of dissent.

Consumerist ideology, fueled by relentless advertising, tells us to seek relief from our pains and insecurities by buying more and more of what we don’t really need. To practice repair is to resist cooperating in this process. It is to oppose the throwaway mentality that drives capitalist societies toward environmental destruction. Repair is, in this way, a small rebellion against an ecologically suicidal form of economy.

Of course repair is not always the enemy of consumption. There are expensive consumer items—motor vehicles, large appliances—that we might not buy if repair were not possible. In these cases, manufacturers and retailers are happy to sell us repair services at a further profit. This presumes, however, that the items in question are designed to be reparable and built to last. The politics of repair include these matters of design and durability.

Things can be made to be reparable, or not. Things can be designed and built to be reparable by users or independent repairers, or not. Things can be designed and built so poorly as to make repair impractical. Things—computers are the paradigm example—can be made to be upgradable and kept in service, or to become obsolete and disposable in a short time. The politics of repair begin to play out long before the things we might wish to repair ever reach our hands.

Supposing that repair is possible and practical, the question arises,Reparable by whom?  Knowledge and skill are hoarded when repair can be effected by only an authorized few, whether for reasons of design and construction, or legality (“your warranty is void if you open this case”).  When competent repair by users or independent repairers is possible, knowledge and skill are distributed, democratized. The chances of populist innovation—inventions and improvements made by everyday tinkerers—are also increased.

Knowing how to repair something requires knowing how it works. Such knowledge can foster self-reliance and feelings of competence; it can be, in a word, empowering. These social goods—a grasp of how the world works and the ability to deal with it effectively—can be distributed equally or unequally, just like wealth. This distribution of technical prowess is in part a result of the politics of repair.

Repair can empower not just individuals but communities. This can be seen in the ad hoc repair workshops popping up in the U.S. and Europe in which people help each other fix bikes, small appliances, smart phones, and other easily portable items. Supporting local, independent repairers builds a similar kind of communal self-reliance. Whereas replacement and disposal reinforce our dependence on capitalist corporations, repair can foster interdependence with our neighbors.

Wendell Berry makes the point that a true materialist would be someone who takes responsibility for the proper care of material objects—land, tools, machinery, buildings. He argues that American industrial culture is not materialist in this sense. It is, rather, disdainful of matter, both natural and humanly made, as evident in the wasteful disregard with which we treat it.

Berry advocates what capitalism undermines: an ethic of care and responsibility. Being mindful of the value of repair and actually practicing it are expressions of this ethic. This can also be called an ethic of stewardship, proceeding from the idea that we have a moral obligation to protect and preserve the planet that gives us life and will give life to future generations. Keeping things in good repair is part of meeting this obligation. Capitalism would have us destroy it all if doing so created new opportunities for short-term profits.

Despite capitalism’s corrosion of an ethic of care and responsibility, virtue still attaches to the idea of repair. The spirit of Puritanism (or perhaps of Benjamin Franklin) lingers strongly enough in American culture to squelch the outright celebration of waste. The association of repair with manly self-reliance also gives it a positive cast. While this makes it easy to offer a principled argument on behalf of repair, it also enables the manipulative use of the rhetoric of repair.

In recent years we have heard state budgets, welfare programs, and government itself described as “broken.” This alleged brokenness was the pretext for Wisconsin’s governor, Scott Walker, to put forward a “budget repair bill” in the spring of 2011, after he and other Republicans took control of state government. Calling for repair appealed to the commonsense frugality of the same people who soon found themselves fixed right out of their collective bargaining rights. What was in fact being repaired, from the standpoint of Walker’s corporate backers, was a government that had malfunctioned by providing too much democracy.

But to wield the rhetoric of repair is not to perform an act of useful and ecologically wise repair. It can be, as the example above suggests, an attempt to exploit the impulse to restore a familiar and seemingly functional state of affairs. The lesson might thus be that all calls for repair must be assessed mindfully. What is it, we should consider, that constitutes repair in any given case? What is to be gained or lost, by whom, if repair is undertaken or forgone? Such questions inevitably touch on the politics of repair, if only at the household level.

Where both the politics of repair and capitalist myopia are most clearly on display is in the realm of public infrastructure. According to a 2013 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers, we need to spend $3.6 trillion to put our nation’s aging infrastructure into a state of good repair. If we don’t do this, the ASCE says, it will end up costing each American family over $3000 a year in disposable income. No doubt the costs will rise the longer we wait. So why isn’t this repair work a national priority? Why isn’t it being used as an opportunity to create a massive jobs program?

The answers reveal that the politics of repair are inseparable from politics more generally. Though profit-making depends on a reliable system of roads, schools, utilities, airports, seaports, fire and police departments, water and sewage treatment plants, and so on, repair is being deferred because profits have been boosted by other means: tax cuts and tax incentives for corporations, colossal military spending, trade policies that make it easier to exploit foreign workers, and new laws that weaken domestic labor and keep wages down.

Under these conditions, using infrastructural repair as a way to train and employ millions of Americans is unlikely to happen. To do so would tighten the labor market and drive wages up, thus pushing profits down. And right now, corporate capitalists feel no compelling need to accept a smaller slice of the economic pie for the sake of rebuilding the infrastructure on which we all depend. As long as profits are higher than ever and the masses quiet, let it crumble.

Perhaps this will change when the costs become too high. Perhaps at some point there will be one bridge collapse, one school closure, one levee break too many and popular pressure will force state action. Even so, we should expect a struggle to determine who will pay for the rebuilding. These are, or will be, the next generation’s politics of repair.

To confront the need for repair and to consider the feasibility of repair is to reflect on the practical and symbolic value of things—not just what they can do for us but what they mean to us. Capitalism disparages these values because replacement is more profitable than repair. In this context, to resist the throwaway mentality, to preserve the usable and meaningful, is an act of dissent. Repair won’t by itself create a sustainable world, but it is only through commitment to the ethic and practice of repair that such a world will be possible.

The Fight for $15 & a Union

Carl Finamore

The Fight for $15 minimum wage campaign came to San Francisco in the very early hours of April 15.

Around 100 protestors assembled at 6am and then marched very orderly through the doors, packed the dining area and shut down for one hour the McDonalds in the heart of the city’s Latino Mission district, an area which itself is a focal point of the city’s gentrification and displacement of working class residents.

Speakers spoke inside with bullhorns, something that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago when arrests would have been certain. The political climate has dramatically changed in a very short time.

A majority of Americans support the message that was heard loud and clear today, “workers need a raise, a big raise!”

Demonstrators came from unions and numerous local community groups and included two San Francisco Board of Supervisors and Mike Casey, president of the San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO.

Among them also was SEIU international president Mary Kay Henry who announced to the cheering crowd that “Fight for $15 and a Union” actions were occurring in “125 cities across the world in solidarity with protests held in 230 cities in the U.S.”

Organizers pointed out this was the largest mobilization of underpaid workers in history.

Yet, even though $15 an hour represents a doubling of the pitiful federal minimum wage, all the speakers recognized it was only the beginning.

The common thread of the newly emerging movements like “Black Lives Matter,” “OUR Walmart” and “Fight for $15,” UNITE-HERE Local 2 Food Service Director Anand Singh told me, is that all our particular social concerns “come together by fighting against economic inequality, which is the next step enabling working people to make some gains.”

On that point, San Francisco’s widening income gap stands as the most extensive in the country and, a startling disclosure for many, it is actually rated in the world alongside Rwanda when using the World Bank’s poverty gap index.

As a result, the city’s character and composition are rapidly changing.

Figures bear this out.

For example, the Black community is at a new low of only 3% of the population with the largest recorded migration out of any city since post-Katrina New Orleans.

Meanwhile, the city calculated in the last 10 years that 6000 new residents making more than $100,000 a year had replaced 8000 Latino residents who left the Mission neighborhood in that same period of time.

Anticipating the changing neighborhood, even the Mission district McDonalds being protested got a seven-figure upscale makeover a few years back. It now has low-hanging soft lights, cozy lounge cubicles, attractive brown wood paneling and a minimalist version of the gaudy, yellow corporate logo; thus begging the question – don’t the workers deserve better?

The answer from protestors was loud and clear: “Hold the Burgers. Hold the Fries. We want our wages Supersized!”

Protestors left after one hour for more actions being held throughout the Bay Area on an upbeat and enthusiastic note with a slogan that one would think would be very hard to rhythmically chant and it is probably for this reason that I had not heard it before.

But, it worked today, time and time again, capturing the energy and determination of protestors – “I Believe! – that We Will Win!”

Big Bang Moment Grows Into Big Movement

The social and economic justice movements of today can easily trace their origins to the Occupy Wall St. encampments that began on Sept. 17, 2011.

Their message of income inequality exploded unto the political scene like nothing seen before. After only three weeks, protests were happening in over 951 cities across 82 countries and in over 600 communities in the United States.

We owe a great debt to this movement. Its meteoric rise can truly be described as the century’s first political “Big Bang.” But Occupy Wall St. clearly also had some of the chaos and disorganization associated with that first cosmic explosion in nature.

Much has changed since, in a good way.

For example, the movements mentioned previously, “Black Lives Matter,” “OUR Walmart,” and “Fight for $15,” are much better organized than during Occupy Wall St. days.

The new movements today have a recognized leadership, a national and even international coordinated organizing strategy and a clear and focused series of demands.

These are huge political conquests, lessons learned from the best days of the labor, anti-Vietnam War, civil rights, women’s rights and gay liberation movements, yet, none of these were present during the exuberant days of Occupy Wall St where leadership, organization and coordination were frowned upon.

The demand for $15 an hour minimum wage is a good example of this progress. It is simple, clear, specific, easily understood and, very important, achievable. Though quite bold and in stark contrast to the cowardly timid proposals coming out of Washington politicians from both major parties, the slogan is still quite reasonable.

It, therefore, appeals to millions of Americans, captures the spotlight and becomes in many ways the focus of a national discussion about poverty and income inequality in America.

“We are turning the conversation,” executive director Tim Paulson, San Francisco Labor Council, told me, “away from attacking workers’ wages and pensions into supporting a living wage for all. It’s something that resonates with millions across the political spectrum and across every region.”

Nationally and internationally coordinated actions are also a major achievement for all these newly emerging movements. Ferguson activists are truly not alone and neither are WalMart or fast-food employees.

Another suggestion is for the three movements specifically mentioned in this article to each consider national conferences that could feature prominent guests from around the globe that share their common concerns of economic and social justice.

Again, labor unions regularly do this as have other past social movements.

It would be a good bet that thousands of young college and community activists would flood to a gathering that would give them a chance to be heard and a chance to further plan coordinated actions that have been so instrumental in growing the movement.

In any case, street protests are already doing a great job of linking issues of social justice, mostly affecting minorities and women, with economic inequality that affects male and female working people of all colors, thus laying the basis for a majority coalition that can change our country.

Branding War

Binoy Kampmark

Melbourne, Australia.

“I found the Woolworths campaign to be vulgar, but to be honest I didn’t find it more distasteful and vulgar than a lot of other things which are going on in terms of commercialisation of Anzac and the use of the Anzac brand.” These are the chosen words of former policy advisor to Australia’s Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet Carolyn Holbrook on ABC’s 7.30 program. Anzac, the name associated with Australian soldiers who found themselves on Turkish beaches in April 1915 as part of Winston Churchill’s disastrous Dardanelles campaign, has become “Brandzac” over the years, a cavernous money pit of opportunity.

That pit is a means to capitalise on solemn occasions which insist on crass adventure and relaxation. For the supermarket giant Woolworths, the slogan “Fresh in our Memories” was found wanting, marketing sprightly food produce alongside memories of Australia’s dead. Purchase your regular round of fruit and veg, and keep the fallen at the forefront of your mind. You, dear customer, will remember them.

Woolworths is hardly more questionable in its tactics than companies who market war for profit, seeing humankind’s perennial love of massacre as a business opportunity. Brewing companies urge their customers to raise a toast to the soldiers. Shirts, handbags and hats can be bought with an assortment of logos. Purchasing poppies for the cause is encouraged. In Anzac’s Long Shadow: The Cost of Our National Obsession (2014), James Brown noted that, “a century after the war to end all wars, Anzac is being bottled, stamped and sold.”

It was ever thus. Blood translates into money with ease, and the “digger myth” was always a lucrative standard to aim for. Some months after the first Australians and New Zealanders fought at Gallipoli, food stuffs and other items found their way onto the market. This prompted the regulators to get busy, prohibiting the use of “Anzac” for “the purposes of any trade, business, calling, or profession”.

The entire basis of Anzac is both a sentimental and commercial industry, whether it is initiated through maudlin state-directed enterprise, or the private sector. The cultists of austerity, however, would wish to see it controlled by the long hands of government. They would prohibit such images as that of a well-endowed Anzac poster girl holding a weapon and kneeling in khaki latex. “I just thought that was basically Anzac porn, a new low in the commercialisation of Anzac,” fumed Holbrook.

All wars see instances of pornographic fancy, fashioning images to soften the home front while savaging the enemy. Tits, bums and ravished nuns have seen their place. The brandzac critics inadvertently tend towards a distinct brand themselves. Since states maintain sacred prerogatives of killing and sending citizens to be killed, it should hold a monopoly on sanguinary commemoration. They will be the judges.

In line with such views, Woolworths was ultimately told to abandon a campaign deemed “inappropriate”. The Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, Senator Michael Ronaldson, asserted that the company “did not have permission” to milk the Anzac milch cow. They might have done the good thing and asked.

Showing how the language police are in full swing, Senator Ronaldson reminded the company that, under the Protection of the Word Anzac Act, he “got to authorise the use of the word Anzac”, something that was not allowed for purely commercial benefit. This absurd pantomime has continued for decades – commercial benefit is dandy as long as it has ministerial blessing.

A range of penalties exist for misusing the name. For an individual, it comes to a hefty $10,200. For corporations, it’s five times that amount. And there is a peculiar yet brutal 12 months imprisonment in the bargain. While Anzac involves much disingenuous dribble on the issue of protecting some form of freedom, one earned by invading and killing the darker members of the human race, it is striking that liberty should be removed on the chance that the name was “misused”.

Other features of the regulatory mania over the word “Anzac” can be found in the guidelines of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. “Anzac biscuits” with the approved recipe receive the nod of approval. The same goes for the “Anzac Slice”. However, making reference “to these products as ‘Anzac Cookies’ is generally not approved, due to the non-Australian overtones.”

The Spartan defenders of the Anzac creed insist, instead, on a near incapacitating, high priest veneration. What this involves is not clear, but presumably standing before the eternal flame in misty-eyed adoration about feats of heroism in the slaughterhouse might count. We should all be Anzac subjects rather than cognisant citizens suspicious of warmongering.

The birth of the Anzac tradition did involve slaughter and defeat. But it was a defeat received in the context of invasion, an attack on Ottoman Turkey that was fought back at huge cost to human life. Few accounts ever bother about the obvious: that Australian soldiers performed what they have been doing decades before and since: invade a sovereign state in the name of some higher moral value, and clothe it in the fluffy reassurance of imperial virtue.

The Anzac legend, like all legends, is there to be vulgarised. In its true, original sense, the common meaning of it is that held by the common people. It is, as Brown has observed, a “military Halloween” equipped with absurd masks and retellings, pilgrimages and military tourism. Anzackery is merely the outcome of yet another zombie myth of Australian military history.

Water, Capitalism and Catastrophism

Louis Proyect

Two films concerned with water and environmental activism arrive in New York this week. “Groundswell Rising”, which premieres at the Maysles Theater in Harlem today, is about the struggle to safeguard lakes and rivers from fracking while “Revolution”, which opens at the Cinema Village next Wednesday, documents the impact of global warming on the oceans. Taking the holistic view, one can understand how some of the most basic conditions of life are threatened by a basic contradiction. Civilization, the quintessential expression of Enlightenment values that relies on ever-expanding energy, threatens to reduce humanity to barbarism if not extinction through exactly such energy production.

This challenge not only faces those of us now living under capitalism but our descendants who will be living under a more rational system. No matter the way in which goods and services are produced, for profit or on the basis of human need, humanity is faced with ecological constraints that must be overcome otherwise we will be subject to a Sixth Extinction. Under capitalism, Sixth Extinction is guaranteed. Under socialism, survival is possible but only as a result of a radical transformation of how society is organized, something that Marx alluded to in the Communist Manifesto when he called for a “gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.”

“Groundswell Rising” covers some of the same ground as Josh Fox’s “Gaslandia” but is more about the activism that has taken off ever since people became aware that fracking was a threat to their health and economic well-being. While most of us are probably aware that water that catches fire is probably not a good thing to drink, PBS veteran filmmakers and brothers Matt and Renard Cohen make the case that fracking’s economic benefits are dubious at best. For every farmer or rancher who has leased his land for drilling, there are many homeowners living nearby who get nothing but the shitty end of the stick: pollution, noise and a loss of property value.

One of these homeowners in rural Pennsylvania inherited his house and land from his father who taught Craig Stevens “conservative rightwing values” but it was exactly those values that turned him into an anti-fracking activist. Rooted in a space that has belonged to his family for 180 years, Stevens was shocked to discover that Chesapeake Gas owned the mineral rights underneath his land without ever having been given access to anything on the surface. His property has become collateral damage as mud spills poured across his land from nearby hills where Chesapeake cut trees in order to create a clearing for their equipment. The noise and fumes that emanate from the drilling have destroyed his way of life, so much so that Stevens is happy to speak at rallies alongside people whose views on private property are radically different than his own.

What gives the film its power is the attention paid to people like Stevens who organized petition drives and showed up at town council meetings to voice their opposition to fracking. They look like Tea Party activists or Walmart shoppers, mostly white and plain as a barn door, but they know that they do not want drilling in their townships and are willing to fight tooth and nail to prevent it. For all of the left’s dismay about its lack of power, the film’s closing credits reveal that there are 312 local anti-fracking groups in Pennsylvania made up of exactly such people who will likely be our allies as the environmental crisis deepens.

The film benefits from a number of experts on fracking who have become increasingly politicized as the White House and its friends in the Republican Party push for fracking everywhere as part of a strategy ostensibly to make American energy-independent but more likely to increase profits for a decisive sector of the capitalist economy. Chief among them is Tony Ingraffea, a Cornell professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department with a long career consulting for companies that would likely see eye to eye with the oil and gas industry. A Mother Jones profile pointed out:

Ingraffea isn’t the likeliest scientific foe of fracking. His past research has been funded by corporations and industry interests including Schlumberger, the Gas Research Institute, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman. His original doctoral work, in the 1970s, involved the study of “rock fracture mechanics”—in other words, how cracks in rock form and propagate, a body of knowledge that is crucial to extractive industries like oil and gas. “I spent 20, 25 years working with the oil and gas industry…helping them to figure out how best to get oil and gas out of rock,” Ingraffea explains.

But it was exactly such a background that prepared him to become a whistle-blower who now warns about the dangers of earthquakes and water contamination from fracking. Like Craig Stevens, Tony Ingraffea came to realize that there were some things more important than corporate profits, namely the right of citizens not to be poisoned by polluted water.

Besides causing earthquakes and making water undrinkable, fracking has another downside that runs counter to the claims made for it. As an alternative to the coal burning that is responsible for greenhouse gases that cause global warming, fracking also imposes a severe toll. According to Ingraffea, up to 8 percent of the methane gas that is created as part of the natural gas extraction process leaks into the environment where it hastens global warming. Because it is 80 to 90 times more potent than coal in creating the greenhouse effect, its unintended consequences negate its advertised benefits.

Global warming’s impact on the oceans is what led 36-year-old Canadian filmmaker to make “Revolution”, a film that is a follow-up to the 2007 “Sharkwater”. “Sharkwater” was made to protest their slaughter for shark fin soup, a delicacy in Chinese restaurants that has been reduced drastically partially as a result of the campaign the film helped to inspire.

“Revolution” emerged out of concerns that had been troubling Stewart ever since a question was posed to him during the Q&A of a screening of “Sharkwater”. If all marine life is facing extinction by the end of the 21^stcentury, what good does it do to protect sharks that cannot survive when fish beneath them on the food chain have disappeared?” The film shows Stewart scratching his head after hearing the question and failing to come up with an answer. It is the new film that now tries to provide one.

Before making films, Stewart was a photographer who worked for the Canadian Wildlife Federation’s magazines. His skills with underwater photography and an undergraduate science degree were the preparation he needed to make the two films.

The first 1/3^rd of “Revolution” consists of underwater footage of some of the world’s best-known coral reefs, including the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. These reefs consist of millennia of accreted organic material that serves as a hub for all sorts of fishes. Without them, marine life will certainly disappear. But to Stewart’s consternation, it is the coral reef that is disappearing. Without them, there will be no fish, including the shark that sits on the underwater empire’s throne.

This discovery led him on a search to understand what was causing the collapse of coral reefs. It turned out that a rise in ocean temperature is to blame. While most people are familiar with the threat that carbon emissions pose to the atmosphere, it is arguably more of a threat to life underneath the water. CO2 gas warms the water just as it does to the atmosphere. A rise in ocean temperature leads to the bleaching of coral reefs and hence their destruction.

Once this became apparent to Stewart, he embarked on a mission to hear what global warming activists were doing and to put himself at their disposal. The fruit of this is contained in the final 1/3^rd of the film as he shows up at the Climate Change Conference that took place in Cancun in 2010 where he was appalled to learn from activists that his native country was the world’s leading polluter. On their behalf, he accepted the Swiftian inspired “Fossil of the Day” award for Canada, a country that is host to the Alberta Tar Sands drilling sites. Activists have fought to close it for the same reasons that activists oppose fracking in the USA: it despoils the land and water while it increases global warming. It is the source of the natural gas that would have been transported by the Keystone XL pipeline, which was overruled by Obama but remains a threat to the environment as long as big oil and gas interests continue to buy politicians. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton said she was “inclined” to approve Keystone XL. Does anybody think that she will do anything differently as President?

Largely as a result of the publication of books like Elizabeth Colbert’s “The Sixth Extinction” and Naomi Klein’s “This Changes Everything”, as well as a myriad of scientific reports warning about the collapse of human and animal life as the 21^st century stumbles forward on a path of environmental degradation, a debate has opened up on the left about what our response should be.

In the collection “Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth”, Eddie Yuen takes issue with an “apocalyptic” streak in exactly such articles since they lead to fear and paralysis. A good deal of his article appears to take issue with the sort of analysis developed by Naomi Klein, a bugbear to many convinced of the need to defend “classical” Marxism against fearmongering. Klein is a convenient target but the criticisms could easily apply as well to Mike Davis whose reputation is unimpeachable.

Klein’s latest book has served to focus the debate even more sharply as her critics accuse her of letting capitalism off the hook. This is not how Swedish scholar Andreas Malm views Klein’s work. In an article on “The Anthropocene Myth” that appeared in Jacobin, Malm credits Klein with laying bare “the myriad ways in which capital accumulation, in general, and its neoliberal variant, in particular, pour fuel on the fire now consuming the earth system.”

He sees Klein as an alternative to those who believe that “humankind is the new geological force transforming the planet beyond recognition, chiefly by burning prodigious amounts of coal, oil, and natural gas.” Some who share this belief, according to Malm, are Marxists.

Those who adhere to the Anthropocene myth tend to elevate the use of fire as a kind of original sin. Malm quotes Will Steffen, Paul J. Crutzen, and John R. McNeill: “The mastery of fire by our ancestors provided humankind with a powerful monopolistic tool unavailable to other species, that put us firmly on the long path towards the Anthropocene.”

This evokes the myth of Prometheus, the Greek god who was punished for bestowing fire to mankind and who was admired by Karl Marx for the words that Aeschylus attributed to him: “In simple words, I hate the pack of gods.”

While I am inclined to agree with Malm that it is the drive for profit that explains fracking and all the rest, and that the benefits of energy production are not shared equally among nations and social classes, there is still a need to examine “civilization”. If we can easily enough discard the notion of the “Anthropocene” as the cause of global warming, the task remains: how can the planet survive when the benefits of bestowing the benefits of “civilization” across the planet so that everyone can enjoy the lifestyle of a middle-class American (or German more recently) remains the goal of socialism?

Eddie Yuen was most likely alluding to this problematic by citing the 1970s Italian revolutionary graffitiL

Con la rivoluzione caviale per tutti.

(After the revolution, caviar for everyone.)

This is presented as an alternative to the call some theorists and activists for a “managed downsizing of the scale of industrial civilization.” Speaking in the name of the poor in the Global South, Yuen wonders why they should forsake automobiles, air conditioning and consumer goods in order to pay for the climate debt incurred by their former colonial masters.

Ironically, this was the same argument made in the NY Times on April 14^th by Eduardo Porter in an article titled “A Call to Look Past Sustainable Development”. He refers to the West’s environmental priorities blocking the access to energy in countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh and Cambodia now flocking to China’s new infrastructure investment bank that will most certainly not be bothered by deforestation, river blockage by megadams, air pollution and other impediments to progress.

Porter is encouraged by the findings of the Breakthrough Institute in California that has issued an “Eco-modernist Manifesto” that, among other things, proposes the adoption of nuclear energy to reduce greenhouse emissions. Not surprisingly, the Breakthrough people urge the rapid expansion of agricultural technology in the countryside and the resettlement of displaced farmers into the city since that would reduce the environmental impact on the land by backward rural folk.

For a useful response to the Breakthrough Institute, you might read Steve Breyman’s CounterPunch article titled “Climate Change Messaging: Avoid the Truth”. Breyman is appalled by their support for nuclear energy and fracking, even if muffled.

While Eddie Yuen would certainly (I hope) not identify with such charlatans, I am afraid that there is a strain of techno-optimism that is shared by both parties. Yuen’s article is filled with allusions to Malthusianism, a tendency I have seen over the years from those who simply deny the existence of ecological limits. While there is every reason to reject Malthus’s theories, there was always the false hope offered by the Green Revolution that supposedly rendered them obsolete. In 1960 SWP leader Joseph Hansen wrote a short book titled “Too Many Babies” that looked to the Green Revolution as a solution to Malthus’s theory but it failed to account for its destructive tendencies, a necessary consequence of using chemicals and monoculture.

The real answer to Malthusianism is the reunification of city and countryside as called for by Karl Marx so as to provide crops with the natural fertilizers that were common before urban life became necessary for industrial production based on profit—in other words, capitalism. In the midst of the industrial revolution, the river Thames gave off a stench of human excrement that was unbearable for those living too close while wars were fought off the coast of Latin America to gain control of the guano necessary for crops. This contradiction persists to this day, even if it takes different forms.

Finally, on Eddie Yuen’s glib reference to caviar, there’s a need to understand that even if Malthus was wrong about food production, nature is not like the goose that laid the golden eggs. Caviar comes from sturgeons. The International for the Conservation of Nature  warns that they are more endangered than any other marine life:

Twenty seven species of sturgeon are on the IUCN Red List with 63 percent listed as Critically Endangered, the Red List’s highest category of threat. Four species are now possibly extinct.

Beluga sturgeon in the Caspian Sea is listed as Critically Endangered for the first time along with all of the other commercially important Caspian Sea species, which are the main producers of wild caviar. Beluga sturgeon populations have been decimated in part due to unrelenting exploitation for black caviar – the sturgeon’s unfertilized eggs – considered the finest in the world. The other species, Russian, stellate, Persian and ship sturgeon have also suffered declines due to overfishing as well as habitat degradation in the Caspian Sea region.

How will a future society guarantee everyone a comfortable and secure life? This question is not exactly germane to the struggles we are engaged with today, but there will come a time when our grandchildren or great-grandchildren will be forced to contend with it. To think of a way in which homo sapiens and the rest of the animal and vegetable world can co-exist, however, will become more and more urgent as people begin to discover that the old way of doing things is impossible. Films such as those reviewed in this article and the debate opened by Naomi Klein’s book and the question of “catastrophism” make this discussion more immediate than they have ever been. I look forward to seeing how the debate unfolds.