“Colonialism has never ended. #Slavery has never ended. #Feudalism has never ended. The power elite just find more and more inventive ways to #exploit the majority.”
by Alnoor ladha
August, 2021
"When we think of colonialism, slavery, and feudalism, we perhaps envisage these subjects as elements of our history: abhorrent, destructive, and with lasting repercussions - but essentially something in our past which we must recognise, address and account. What we perhaps don’t think of is the food on our plates, the clothes we’re wearing, or even the phone in our hands.
"But what does this have to do with colonialism? When it comes to consumption and the material objects which occupy our daily lives, people are increasingly talking about the hidden cost, or the true cost of things. We often see that it is communities and peoples in the so-called #GlobalSouth who are bearing that true cost. It is not by coincidence that economic globalisation, the inevitable consequence of capitalism, leads to more destruction in nations which have historically been colonised, marginalised, and labelled as ‘developing’ countries. This is because the ostensible ‘success’ of both capitalism and colonialism hinges upon exploitation."
I think you already know that it isn't. But this article goes into some depth in answering the question...
You can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet. That should be a commonplace idea. And it inevitably means facing up to the necessity of putting an end to capitalism in favor of an economic system of rationality, sustainability, and equity for all the world’s peoples.
Capitalism is dependent on consumerism. Household consumption (all the things people buy for personal use, from toothbrushes to automobiles) constitutes 60-70% of a typical advanced capitalist economy’s gross domestic product; it is because of this dependency that so much money and effort is put into advertising and marketing, creating ‘needs’ we didn’t know we had, and the pervasiveness of planned obsolescence.
Two statistics provide perspective on the high cost of ‘new and improved’ — about 40% of U.S. landfill waste is discarded packaging, and the cost of packaging constitutes 10% to 40% of a product’s retail price. No rational system would propagate such waste, but capitalism is not rational; the endless pursuit of profit and indifference to environmental costs are its natural consequences.
That's just a brief excerpt. I hope you'll read the rest.
"Creating a throw-away culture: How companies ingrained plastics in modern life"
In 1956, the plastics industry learned about a new way to boost sales — and profits. At the industry’s annual conference in New York, Lloyd Stouffer, the editor of an influential trade magazine, urged executives to stop emphasizing plastics’ durability. Stouffer told the companies to focus instead on making a lot of inexpensive, expendable material. Their future, he said, was in the trash can.
Companies got the message. They realized they could sell more plastic if people threw more of it away.
In a 1963 report for another plastics conference in Chicago, Stouffer congratulated the industry for filling dumps and garbage cans with plastic bottles and bags.
“The happy day has arrived,” Stouffer wrote, “when nobody any longer considers the plastic package too good to throw away.”
I've reviewed 'China in Global Capitalism: Building International Solidarity Against Imperial Rivalry' by Kevin Lin, Rosa Liu, Eli Friedman, and Ashley Smith: https://niklas.reviews/china-in-global-capitalism
In the usual course of events, Earth’s climate fluctuates naturally. Driven by subtle shifts in solar energy and the slightly wobbling tilt of our planet in space, Earth will experience periodic glacial maximums (ice ages) followed by interglacials (warmer times when the ice retreats). These changes normally operate over thousands of years.
But now something else has happened. Something new.
In an insanely dangerous gambit, capitalist industrialists decided to extract and burn hundreds of billions of tons of coal, oil, and gas. They counted on this to make them rich and powerful, which it did. What they didn’t count on — or didn’t care about — was the destructive impact it would have on Earth’s climate and environment.
The last time the global temperature changed dramatically, when it heated up overall by about 3° Celsius, was at the end of the most recent ice age. Large amounts of CO₂ were released into the atmosphere and temperatures went up. This was a big shift and had a huge effect on the biosphere, driving many plant and animal species to extinction while allowing others to thrive. But that’s just how it goes. That’s what happens naturally.
The difference between then and now is that the previous CO₂ release and corresponding temperature rise took place over a span of about 7,000 years. In geological terms, that’s considered fast.
Today, however, thanks to greedy murdering capitalists, we are in the midst of a rapid heating event unlike anything ever seen in the whole history of Earth. The planet is heating up so fast that species have no chance to respond or adjust. It’s so fast that scientists have no way of knowing how soon it will end or what all the consequences could be.
So far f'ing Nestle is the only other producer people seem aware of for microground "premium" instant. Which makes Starbucks look saintly, especially given fair trade beans. Please tell me there's other less evil options than slavers and union busters for it.
Today in Writing History June 4, 1917: Laura E. Richards, Maude H. Elliott, and Florence Hall won the first Pulitzer prize for biography. They wrote about their mother Julia Ward Howe, the feminist, abolitionist, pacifist author and poet. You can read the biography here.
Howe not only wrote the lyrics to The Battle Hymn of the Republic; she also wrote the pacifist 1870 Mother’s Day Proclamation. Also known as the Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World, the proclamation called on women to unite worldwide for peace. In 1872, Howe called for a Mother’s Day for Peace to be celebrated each year on June 2. Yet today, women throughout the U.S. and Europe (along with the men) are calling for ever more heavy weaponry and NATO troops to be sent to the Ukrainian killing fields, where over 200,000 Ukrainians have already lost their lives, and where this now direct NATO involvement risks precipitating WWIII between nuclear-armed powers, neither of which show any indication that they are willing to back down or negotiate an end to the slaughter. Where is the peace movement today? Or, is some slaughter justified in the name of capitalism (er, I mean against despotism)? And, if that is true, where are all the people screaming for war against India? Philippines? Italy? Saudi Arabia? El Salvador? Egypt? Sudan? And Israel?
In order to make themselves look good so they'll be allowed to continue with Business As Usual, huge corporations try to project a public image of being "climate aware" and "green" and on track for "net zero" — but it's just a phony pose.
Some of the world’s most profitable – and most polluting corporations – have invested in carbon offset projects that have fundamental failings and are “probably junk”, suggesting industry claims about greenhouse gas reductions were likely overblown, according to new analysis.
Delta, ExxonMobil, Disney, and Nestlé are among the major corporations to have purchased millions of carbon credits from climate friendly projects that are “likely junk” or worthless when it comes to offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions, according to a classification system developed by Corporate Accountability, a non-profit, transnational corporate watchdog.
The fossil fuel industry is by far the largest investor in the world’s most popular CO₂ offsetting schemes. At least 43% of the CO₂ credits purchased by the oil and gas majors are for projects that have at least one fundamental flaw and are “probably junk,” according to the analysis.
The transport industry, which accounts for about a fifth of all global planet-warming emissions, has also relied heavily on carbon offsetting projects to meet climate goals. Just over 42% of the total credits purchased by airlines and 38% purchased by automakers are likely worthless at reducing emissions, the analysis found.
“These findings add to the mounting evidence that peels back the greenwashed facade of the voluntary carbon market and lays bare the ways it dangerously distracts from the real, lasting action the world’s largest corporations and polluters need to be taking,” said Rachel Rose Jackson, Corporate Accountability’s director of research.
Dear Bill, totalitarian government is not the only alternative to capitalism.
We in #Australia had a democratic government running a command economy during the early phase of this Covid pandemic.
For the main it went well.
Unlike say USA where it was only dumb luck that had a hundred million mass deaths avoided, and even with dumb luck that bastion of capitalism had the highest death rate in the developed world?
Today in Labor History June 1 is the day that U.S. labor law officially allows children under the age of 16 to work up to 8 hours per day between the hours of 7:00 am and 9:00 pm. Time is ticking away, Bosses. Have you signed up sufficient numbers of low-wage tykes to maintain production rates with your downsized adult staffs?
The reality is that child labor laws have always been violated regularly by employers and these violations have been on the rise recently. Additionally, many lawmakers are seeking to weaken existing, poorly enforced laws to make it even easier to exploit children. Over the past year, the number of children employed in violation of labor laws rose by 37%, while lawmakers in at least 10 states passed, or introduced, new laws to roll back the existing rules. Violations include hiring kids to work overnight shifts in meatpacking factories, cleaning razor-sharp blades and using dangerous chemical cleaners on the kills floors for companies like Tyson and Cargill. Particularly vulnerable are migrant youth who have crossed the southern U.S. border from Central America, unaccompanied by parents. https://www.epi.org/publication/child-labor-laws-under-attack/
Of course, what is happening in the U.S. is small potatoes compared with many other countries, where exploitation of child labor is routine, and often legal. At least 20% of all children in low-income countries are engaged in labor, mostly in agriculture. In sub-Saharan Africa it is 25%. Kids are almost always paid far less than adults, increasing the bosses’ profits. They are often more compliant than adults and less likely to form unions and resist workplace abuses and safety violations. Bosses can get them to do dangerous tasks that adults can’t, or won’t, do, like unclogging the gears and belts of machinery. This was also the norm in the U.S., well into the 20th century. In my novel, “Anywhere But Schuylkill,” the protagonist, Mike Doyle, works as a coal cleaner in the breaker (coal crushing facility) of a coal mine at the age or 13. Many kids began work in the collieries before they were 10. They often were missing limbs and died young from lung disease. However, when the breaker bosses abused them, they would sometimes collectively chuck rocks and coal at them, or walk out, en masse, in wildcat strikes. And when their fathers, who worked in the pits, as laborers and miners, went on strike, they would almost always walk out with them, in solidarity.