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Corporate Military Complex

ALTERNATIVES

War on Earth: US military is a bigger polluter than as many as 140 countries

3rd October 2019

From The Intercept: Industrialized militaries are a bigger part of the climate emergency than we know. If the US-military were a country, its fuel usage alone would make it the world’s 47th largest greenhouse gas emitter, says a new study. Another study found that America has spent an astonishing $5.9 trillion on wars since 2001….

Daniel Ellsberg talks to media after the release of the Pentagon Papers

NBC News

Conflict/Dispossession

Daniel Ellsberg: The military-industrial complex is an existential threat to humanity

8th May 2019

The growth of the military-industrial complex poses an existential threat to humanity. Daniel Ellsberg, peace activist and whistleblower best known for his expose dubbed the ‘Pentagon Papers’, discusses with Allen White the precise nature of the threat posed by the military-industrial complex— and what needs to be done about it. [Courtesy the Great Transition Initiative]…

Bookshelf

Why technology favors tyranny: Yuval Noah Harari

14th March 2019

Artificial intelligence could erase many practical advantages of democracy, and erode the ideals of liberty and equality. It will further concentrate power among a small elite if we don’t take steps to stop it. “We’re facing not just a technological crisis but a philosophical crisis,” says the author of ’21 Lessons for the 21st Century’….

Bookshelf

Giants: The Global Power Elite

12th January 2019

From Global Research: Fundamentally, this book is a call to action. Author Robert J. Burrowes uncovers the critical role played by the global power elite in creating our present predicament. If we cannot persuade the global power elite to respond sensibly to that predicament, or nonviolently compel it to do so, humanity’s time on Earth is indeed limited….

Consumerism/Lifestyle

Jacques Ellul: The Karl Marx of the 20th century

5th December 2018

From The Tyee: Ellul predicted the chaotic tyranny we pretend is the good life in technological society. Just as Marx deftly outlined how capitalism threw up new social classes, political institutions and economic powers in the 19th century, Ellul charted the ascent of technology and its impact on politics, society and economics in the 20th….

Conflict/Dispossession

Modi’s other dubious French deal: The world’s largest nuclear plant at Jaitapur

30th October 2018

Building the world’s largest nuclear power project in an ecologically fragile region like Konkan, along with attendant concerns of the safety, an unsteady French nuclear industry, will pose serious challenges to the environment, biodiversity, health and livelihoods of lakhs of people in the region. Is the Modi government courting a nuclear Bhopal, asks Sonali Huria….

Illustration by Cathryn Virginia

Culture/Cognition

Engineered for Dystopia

18th September 2018

David A. Banks writes in The Baffler: Engineering has not strayed far from its military origins… Engineers are trained to “plug into chain-of-command decision making structures… In times like these it is important to remember that border walls, nuclear missiles, and surveillance systems do not work, and won’t even exist, without the cooperation of engineers….

Appuppen

Conserve/Resist

How Andhra Pradesh built India’s first police state using Aadhaar and a Census

30th July 2018

Gopal Sathe writes: The AP government now has access the intimate personal details of 43 million of the state’s 50 million residents: GPS coordinates of their homes, medicines they use, the food rations they eat, real-time feeds of thousands of security cameras, their castes and sub-castes, their religion, and of course — their Aadhaar numbers….

Bookshelf

Franklin Foer on the existential threat of big tech

20th June 2018

“These machines shape the way we view reality. We’re not just merging with machines, but with the companies that run these machines—who run these machines for profit. And here’s the existential threat… these technologies will change what it means to be human. Once we take this leap, it will be very hard to reverse course.”…

Conflict/Dispossession

Slaughterbots: How autonomous weapons endanger our future

18th February 2018

From CNet/Future of Life Institute: Autonomous weapons use Artificial Intelligence to select and engage targets without human intervention. Now, a think tank backed by scientist Stephen Hawking and entrepreneur Elon Musk, among others, offers a graphic warning against machines that decide whom to kill. This fictional video underscores how seriously these experts view the issue….

Conflict/Dispossession

Koodankulam: The world’s most expensive pieces of useless machinery

7th January 2018

Nityanand Jayaraman writes in Dianuke.org: We do not need four more nuclear plants in Koodankulam. The need of the hour is to shut down the existing two risky units and to prosecute the ministers, technocrats and bureaucrats who led the nation up the garden path and wasted more than Rs. 35,000 crores of our money….

ALTERNATIVES

Announcing Presscoin/Insurge: The blockchain for people and the planet

22nd November 2017

A coalition of investigative journalists, privacy activists and alternative economy enthusiasts including Nafeez Ahmed, John Pilger and Barkha Dutt, have announced Presscoin/Insurge, a fascinating new hybrid platform that seeks to meld cutting-edge journalism with activism and alternative currencies. “Dedicated to people and the planet, it represents a fundamental break with the old paradigm,” Nafeez says….

Development/Growth

Former regulatory chief: India must freeze all plans for nuclear expansion

14th November 2017

In a significant article in The Citizen, Dr A.Gopalakrishnan, the former Chairman of the India’s Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, writes: An overall evaluation of the status of the Indian civilian nuclear power sector, and the government’s uncertain future plans, do cause a great deal of concern for the welfare of the country and the safety…

CLIMATE CRISIS

Climate change and nuclear power: the denials, delusions and deceptions of Modi

21st September 2017

Kumar Sundaram writes in The Ecologist: Dubbing nuclear energy as a solution to climate change has been a key strategy of the Indian government for selling nuclear projects to the public as well as justifying the spree of nuclear agreements with other countries. Here are three reasons why this is not feasible, desirable and cost-effective….

Development/Growth

Anandi Sharan: There are no pros; only cons to nuclear energy

9th August 2017

From Patna Daily: A nuclear power plant can be imported lock stock and barrel and all local people need to do is watch the plant and the fence around it get erected, charge their mobile phones to watch videos all day, stay out of trouble. They have no work in the creation of the asset….

ENERGY

Nuclear power: Expensive, hazardous and inequitable

12th July 2017

From The Hindu: The government’s recent decision to approve the construction of ten 700 MW Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors deserves to be scrutinised carefully. The government claims that this displays “India’s commitment to sustainable development”. But does the path to sustainable development run through a source of electricity that’s expensive, hazardous and antithetical to equity?…

Digests/Specials

Six years later: A closer look at Fukushima

12th March 2017

This day six years ago, tsunami waves crashed into Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, leading to a meltdown, which by one estimate continues to leak an astounding 300 tons of radioactive waste into the Pacific daily. A selection of reports and a lead article by M.V. Ramana, on what some have called history’s worst environmental disaster….

ENERGY

Nuclear power is not “green energy”: It is a fount of atomic waste

21st November 2016

Former nuclear reactor operator Arnie Gundersen writes: Building nuclear reactors in a trade-off for CO2 reduction creates a toxic legacy of atomic waste. Nuclear power’s proponents claim that we’re smart enough to store nuclear waste for a quarter of a million years, but are too ignorant to figure out how to store solar electricity overnight….

Digests/Specials

Was Fukushima the worst environmental disaster in human history?

9th October 2016

Whitney Webb reports: Fukushima continues to leak an astounding 300 tons of radioactive waste into the Pacific every day. It will continue do so indefinitely as the leak’s source is inaccessible to both humans and robots due to extremely high temperatures. In other words, Fukushima has contaminated the entire Pacific Ocean in just five years….

Representational pic

ENERGY

The cost of Modi’s US Visit: Rs. 2.8 lakh cr for a “dying” technology and “obsolete” reactors

17th June 2016

Prabir Purkayastha writes: The US, after a brief flirtation with nuclear energy, has pretty much decided not to invest any further in this technology. India is helping to revive a patient – the US nuclear industry – which has one foot already in the grave, at a cost of a whopping Rs. 2.8 lakh crore!…