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	Can Civilization Survive Capitalism? by Noam Chomsky In These Times & agencies USA   There is “capitalism” and then there is “really existing capitalism.”   The term “capitalism” is commonly used to refer to the U.S. economic system, with substantial state intervention ranging from subsidies for creative innovation to the “too-big-to-fail” government insurance policy for banks.   The system is highly monopolized, further limiting reliance on the market, and increasingly so: In the past 20 years the share of profits of the 200 largest enterprises has risen sharply, reports scholar Robert W. McChesney in his new book Digital Disconnect.   “Capitalism” is a term now commonly used to describe systems in which there are no capitalists: for example, the worker-owned Mondragon conglomerate in the Basque region of Spain, or the worker-owned enterprises expanding in northern Ohio, often with conservative support—both are discussed in important work by the scholar Gar Alperovitz.   Some might even use the term “capitalism” to refer to the industrial democracy advocated by John Dewey, America"s leading social philosopher, in the late 19th century and early 20th century.   Dewey called for workers to be “masters of their own industrial fate” and for all institutions to be brought under public control, including the means of production, exchange, publicity, transportation and communication. Short of this, Dewey argued, politics will remain “the shadow cast on society by big business.”   The truncated democracy that Dewey condemned has been left in tatters in recent years. Now control of government is narrowly concentrated at the peak of the income scale, while the large majority “down below” has been virtually disenfranchised. The current political-economic system is a form of plutocracy, diverging sharply from democracy, if by that concept we mean political arrangements in which policy is significantly influenced by the public will.   There have been serious debates over the years about whether capitalism is compatible with democracy. If we keep to really existing capitalist democracy—RECD for short—the question is effectively answered: They are radically incompatible.   It seems to me unlikely that civilization can survive RECD and the sharply attenuated democracy that goes along with it. But could functioning democracy make a difference?   Let"s keep to the most critical immediate problem that civilization faces: environmental catastrophe. Policies and public attitudes diverge sharply, as is often the case under RECD. The nature of the gap is examined in several articles in the current issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.   Researcher Kelly Sims Gallagher finds that “One hundred and nine countries have enacted some form of policy regarding renewable power, and 118 countries have set targets for renewable energy. In contrast, the United States has not adopted any consistent and stable set of policies at the national level to foster the use of renewable energy.”   It is not public opinion that drives American policy off the international spectrum. Quite the opposite. Opinion is much closer to the global norm than the U.S. government"s policies reflect, and much more supportive of actions needed to confront the likely environmental disaster predicted by an overwhelming scientific consensus—and one that"s not too far off; affecting the lives of our grandchildren, very likely.   As Jon A. Krosnick and Bo MacInnis report in Daedalus: “Huge majorities have favored steps by the federal government to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated when utilities produce electricity. In 2006, 86 percent of respondents favored requiring utilities, or encouraging them with tax breaks, to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit. Also in that year, 87 percent favored tax breaks for utilities that produce more electricity from water, wind or sunlight. These majorities were maintained between 2006 and 2010 and shrank somewhat after that.”   The fact that the public is influenced by science is deeply troubling to those who dominate the economy and state policy.   One current illustration of their concern is the “Environmental Literacy Improvement Act” proposed to state legislatures by ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded lobby that designs legislation to serve the needs of the corporate sector and extreme wealth.   The ALEC Act mandates “balanced teaching” of climate science in K-12 classrooms. “Balanced teaching” is a code phrase that refers to teaching climate-change denial, to “balance” mainstream climate science. It is analogous to the “balanced teaching” advocated by creationists to enable the teaching of “creation science” in public schools. Legislation based on ALEC models has already been introduced in several states.   Of course, all of this is dressed up in rhetoric about teaching critical thinking—a fine idea, no doubt, but it"s easy to think up far better examples than an issue that threatens our survival and has been selected because of its importance in terms of corporate profits.   Media reports commonly present a controversy between two sides on climate change.   One side consists of the overwhelming majority of scientists, the world"s major national academies of science, the professional science journals and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.   They agree that global warming is taking place, that there is a substantial human component, that the situation is serious and perhaps dire, and that very soon, maybe within decades, the world might reach a tipping point where the process will escalate sharply and will be irreversible, with severe social and economic effects. It is rare to find such consensus on complex scientific issues.   The other side consists of skeptics, including a few respected scientists who caution that much is unknown—which means that things might not be as bad as thought, or they might be worse.   Omitted from the contrived debate is a much larger group of skeptics: highly regarded climate scientists who see the IPCC"s regular reports as much too conservative. And these scientists have repeatedly been proven correct, unfortunately.   The propaganda campaign has apparently had some effect on U.S. public opinion, which is more skeptical than the global norm. But the effect is not significant enough to satisfy the masters. That is presumably why sectors of the corporate world are launching their attack on the educational system, in an effort to counter the public"s dangerous tendency to pay attention to the conclusions of scientific research.   At the Republican National Committee"s Winter Meeting a few weeks ago, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal warned the leadership that “We must stop being the stupid party. We must stop insulting the intelligence of voters.”   Within the RECD system it is of extreme importance that we become the stupid nation, not misled by science and rationality, in the interests of the short-term gains of the masters of the economy and political system, and damn the consequences.   These commitments are deeply rooted in the fundamentalist market doctrines that are preached within RECD, though observed in a highly selective manner, so as to sustain a powerful state that serves wealth and power.   The official doctrines suffer from a number of familiar “market inefficiencies,” among them the failure to take into account the effects on others in market transactions. The consequences of these “externalities” can be substantial. The current financial crisis is an illustration. It is partly traceable to the major banks and investment firms ignoring “systemic risk”—the possibility that the whole system would collapse—when they undertook risky transactions.   Environmental catastrophe is far more serious: The externality that is being ignored is the fate of the species. And there is nowhere to run, cap in hand, for a bailout.   In future, historians (if there are any) will look back on this curious spectacle taking shape in the early 21st century. For the first time in human history, humans are facing the significant prospect of severe calamity as a result of their actions—actions that are battering our prospects of decent survival.   Those historians will observe that the richest and most powerful country in history, which enjoys incomparable advantages, is leading the effort to intensify the likely disaster. Leading the effort to preserve conditions in which our immediate descendants might have a decent life are the so-called “primitive” societies: First Nations, tribal, indigenous, aboriginal.   The countries with large and influential indigenous populations are well in the lead in seeking to preserve the planet. The countries that have driven indigenous populations to extinction or extreme marginalization are racing toward destruction.   Thus Ecuador, with its large indigenous population, is seeking aid from the rich countries to allow it to keep its substantial oil reserves underground, where they should be.   Meanwhile the U.S. and Canada are seeking to burn fossil fuels, including the extremely dangerous Canadian tar sands, and to do so as quickly and fully as possible, while they hail the wonders of a century of (largely meaningless) energy independence without a side glance at what the world might look like after this extravagant commitment to self-destruction.   This observation generalizes: Throughout the world, indigenous societies are struggling to protect what they sometimes call “the rights of nature,” while the civilized and sophisticated scoff at this silliness.   This is all exactly the opposite of what rationality would predict—unless it is the skewed form of reason that passes through the filter of RECD.   * Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author of dozens of books on U.S. foreign policy. He writes a monthly column for The New York Times News Service/Syndicate. His web site is www.chomsky.info.   June 2013   The Untold history of the United States. (Phillip Adams, RN)   In an exclusive radio interview, Academy award winning director Oliver Stone and historian Professor Peter Kuznick speak to Phillip about this latest TV documentary series, The Untold History of the United States. This ten-part series and book of the same name covers the neglected parts of US history from the first world war until the war on terror and the Obama Administration. ''We have,'' Stone says, ''been sold a fairytale masquerading as history, and it is so blinding it may ultimately undo us.'' http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/oliver-stone---untold-history-of-the-united-states/4763284 Visit the related web page
	Local community media vital for disaster-affected people by Astrid Zweynert Alertnet / Internews   Japan’s disaster preparedness is often cited as among the best in the world, and two years ago when its meteorological agency detected the first signs of tremors that resulted in the nation’s most powerful earthquake, its early warning system swung into action immediately.   Automated quake alerts interrupted programming on national television and radio; alerts flashed across mobile phones; schools and local disaster prevention offices were warned electronically seconds before the 9.0 magnitude quake struck. Within three minutes of the temblor, the first of three official tsunami warnings was issued through the same media and governmental channels.   This system prevented many casualties in the triple disaster that unfolded as 10-metre-high tsunami waves hit northeastern Japan and the earthquake damaged a nuclear plant, pushing Japan to the brink of a nuclear catastrophe.   However, as the tsunami hammered the coastal regions of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima - predominantly fishing and rural areas with an older-than-average population - this high-tech response had its limitations, while “hyper-local” community media played a pivotal role in providing life-saving information, according to a report published Wednesday by media development organisation Internews Europe.   “Early warning systems and disaster preparedness save lives, but no information is fail-safe in the worst-case complex disaster scenarios,” wrote Lois Appleby, author of “Connecting the Last Mile: The Role of communications in the Great East Japan Earthquake.”   “All media channels are important - from high-tech to the lowest tech. Local community-led media, in particular radio, contributes more effectively to the information needs of communities in disaster zones than national broadcast media, and have an important role to play in early warning and disaster management systems.”   HYPER-LOCAL IS EFFECTIVE   The disaster highlighted the extreme vulnerability of older people, who accounted for 65.8 percent of total deaths. Due to the quake’s magnitude and the short period of time before the tsunami hit, older people had physical and psychological difficulties with evacuation, the report said.   Local community-supported media disseminated reliable information and became lifesavers, especially for people outside evacuation centres where some survived without aid for almost a month and for those without access to digital media.   One such community-led effort was H@!FM radio station in Tome, Miyagi. A major earthquake had been expected for years, and founder director Keiichi Saito invested building an earthquake-resistant radio station with solid foundations for the antenna, spare equipment and a generator.   The earthquake wiped out electricity and the Internet in the city for more than a month, but from day one of the quake, H@!FM broadcast vital information about food, water and other lifeline supplies. Local people also joined broadcasts to share vital information.   Almost two years later, the station, run by a team of seven, still broadcasts recovery and reconstruction information for 24 hours every day and also caters to more than 3,000 residents from Minami-Sanriku who still live in temporary shelters.   “In a disaster the most effective information channels are lots of small dedicated radio stations with strong community links,” said Saito. “Mass media does not cover the local information needed.”   Another local radio broadcaster, Radio Ishinomaki in Miyagi prefecture, also broadcast life-saving information with petrol-powered generators collected from local people in Ishinomaki City, which became submerged under almost a metre of water after the tsunami.   The presenters took turns reading 5,000 to 6,000 names each day, from lists of dead and missing persons, saving people the effort of going to each evacuation centre to search for loved ones.   OLD MEDIA IN ACTION   A handwritten newspaper in the Ishinomaki area became crucial, and at times, the only way to communicate with the disaster-affected population.   After Hibi Shimbun newspaper’s offices were flooded, the paper’s six reporters immediately began to gather information from city hall, moving around on foot.   The day after the quake, reporters handwrote headlines on a giant piece of paper, which then was duplicated six times by hand and taped to walls in five evacuation centres and on a shop door.   For six days, these newspapers were written by hand daily, answering survivors’ most urgent questions about power, water and food supplies. They also dispelled rumours with an “Act on the Facts” feature. When 700 newspapers were printed eventually and distributed around the city, they became an instant hit.   “When we went to the evacuation centres with the newspapers, big crowds gathered,” Hiroyuki Takeuchi, editor of Hibi Shimbun, recalled in the report. “People were so hungry for information, we could barely stick the paper on the wall.”   MORE EDUCATION NEEDED   The report concluded that no matter how sophisticated early warning systems are, public education on the limitations of disaster management technology and continued work on risk awareness and preparedness are needed.   While Internet and social media platforms have a major contribution to make to disaster response and recovery, they are dependent on power and telecommunications infrastructure and do not currently reach key vulnerable groups, the report said.   Moreover, as new humanitarian information from non-traditional humanitarian responders such as the private sector and volunteer technical communities increase, these groups and their tools should be more integrated within formal disaster management, it said.
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