With Respect To World/European Social Forum

With Respect To World/European Social Forum

Regarding the planned European Social Forum of 2010:


Good to see World Organizing manifesting itself in a regional context.


To whatever extent we can get people together to introduce, discuss, inculcate, and progress the ecosocialist agenda and that of world unity and cooperation, the forums will hopefully continue to serve a purpose.


One problem that I have is the "jet set" modality of the participants. I could be and hope to be and probably am very wrong about that statement.


We need to move beyond the world round organizing and communicating and bring such to local and regional levels. A good conceptual initiative is The Peoples' Agenda for Alternative Regionalisms www.alternative-regionalisms.org/?page_id2 . They have an excellent agenda. Not surprisingly those of us within the belly of the Leviathan (The USA Economic/Military hegemony) have no representation in the organization.


It is very frustrating trying to organize within the local community and region in the Eugene, OR, USA. People here are either brain-dead, complacent with their current competitive advantage, drugged, tobaccoed, and alcoholic, cowardly, and/or otherwise non-committal. To many, the concept of peace means withdrawal and the absence of hassle. The monster is too damn big in the USA.


Hugo Chavez has been relatively successful in organizing the ALBA coalition, the Latin American/African Alliance (ASA), cooperative ties with Iran and Russia and China. The USA and his European allies are still too uncooperative and hell-bent on their premier role in a world hierarchy to join such an alliance of world unity, equity, and cooperation.


They (the USA and their Fascist complicit media) will continue to obfuscate and pathetically beat the war drum while continuing a self-interested ecocidal, suicidal and attempted genocidal linear trajectory Capitalism. They will fail, but how much damage will they do in the mean time?


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,


Mike Morin


Peoples Equity Union

Eugene, OR, USA

Green Jobs, Equity, and Carbon

Green Jobs, Equity, and Carbon


Friends of the Earth (FOE?) of which I am one, I am also a Friend of the People (FOP?)

??
no, no.

I am equally Friend, equally Socialist (that's why I go by the names Mohandos Mao and Mohandos Lenino).


These Friends have it half correct. Cap and trade is a sham, a racket, an invention of Wall Street types.

We should implement carbon taxes and maybe caps, but we need to consider a workable transition so that we do not have power outages and freezing and starving people.

Wind and PVs are an illusion. Neither supplies the voltage and amperage needed to do the great amount of work that our society has grown accustomed to.

The key to a bountiful green (building) economy is the reversal of the thirty, fifty, one hundred year trend of sprawl development, particularly in the United States (that's what I know).

By rebuilding neighborhoods and reallocating goods and services to those renovated neighborhoods (made walkable, meaning that the great majority of people will be able to get what they need and reasonably want within walking distance to their homes).

Such a tremendous commitment and dedication of resources will be a boom for the building trades and will create the effect of reducing automobile usage by 80% in the next 20 to 40 years. Neighborhood, commercial, community and work/telecommute centers will be centrally placed in what are now alienating, automobile dependent, strictly residential areas, alleviating the problems associated with post-peak oil and climate change and bringing with it the neighborly qualities of life associated with communities and neighborhoods, that most individuals and families currently lack.

If we do this, we can take the opportunity to retrofit for weatherization, passive solar design (heating and cooling), electronic environmental controls, solar assisted hot water and drying systems, limited wind and PVs.

Also if done correctly, we can make changes in ownership arrangements that are much more fair and just, and work towards an equitable distribution of wealth among neighborhoods/villages.

Concerning FOEs suggestion of a publicly financed economy, we would optimally transition the "private sector" to a quasi-public one working in cooperation with public funding programs. The ideal would really be to phase out the government programs as much as possible.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR, USA

Resource and Regional Planning, The Great Grandfather of Regional Planning

True enough, BUT the Capitalist cabals DO plan, and they plan poorly, look at the National (and State) and Municipal Highway and Road systems and their concomitant water, fuel pipeline, sewer and electrical systems, etc.

In other words, all the ugly, irrational, ecocidal, leading to genocidal and suicidal sprawl was PLANNED!!!
By Capitalists who had only economic interests of themselves and their bourgeois minions in mind, and based on totally mindless assumptions of unending fossil fuel supplies and the endless automobile age.

You all should go back and read, "The New Exploration" by Benton MacKaye, written in 1928. If the "powers that were be" had heeded Mr. Mackaye's lessons and had we implemented a socialist system, we all would be in much, much, much, much, much, much, much... better place relative to resource planning and allocation and the USA's impact on the future of the world/planet.

It is a concise book, and not PHDish at all as Mr. Foster's books appear to be...

I highly recommend it as essential. Astute folks refer to MacKaye as "the Father of Regional Planning" for good reason.

In Peace, Friendship, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
(aka PaChe)