The Useless Manifesto: The Folly of the Fake Left

“Beware of conservatives bearing gifts.” This should be the lesson that every leftist and progressive of whatever stripe had learned over the many decades and even centuries of political struggle. When the right attempts to oppose the policies of the left, this is what one would expect, and obstructionist and backward as it may be at times, it at least expresses real interests in a straightforward manner. When on the other hand they start pretending to help the left, whether under the guise of ‘shared values’ or by attempting to draw them into a politics of liberal talking and reactionary doing, things get seriously dangerous. However, most of the 19th as well as the 20th century has had a left wing strong enough to constantly be on the offensive against such attempts, to learn to identify them and to combat them effectively by showing time and again how the liberalism of the right doesn’t really mean what it pretends to mean. Unfortunately, these days the serious left has been diminished so much that they are weak and easily caught unawares, and many of the supporters of the new generation are not rooted enough in history to recognize them. This gives ample opportunity for the worst kind of false flag operations undertaken under the banner of the ‘modern left’ and similar phrases.

No, this is not some conspiratorial rant. Continue reading “The Useless Manifesto: The Folly of the Fake Left”

Oil and Gold

There has not been such a dramatic demonstration in a long time of the consequences of the global obsession with the “black gold” as the recent oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. When just last month a methane explosion destroyed the “Deepwater Horizon” offshore oil rig, eleven oil workers were killed and 5.000 barrels of oil have leaked out every day since. The Deepwater Horizon incident is shaping up to be the largest oil spill disaster of all time in terms of environmental impact and cleanup costs, surpassing even the dramatic Exxon Valdez oil tanker disaster in 1989. In that case, at least 250.000 barrels of crude oil were spilled over the course of time, causing environmental damage to seabirds, otters, ducks, salmon, herring and so forth that even now the region has not fully recovered from. The northern rim of the Gulf of Mexico also has many wildlife and bird reserves, particularly in southern Louisiana, which may be similarly affected this time. The consequences for the ecosystem are difficult to assess but are likely to be extremely negative for at least several decades. The coming hurricane season, which threatens to blow the oil spill (already the size of Delaware) further inland, may worsen this effect. The world’s already highly threatened edible fish stocks are under serious danger of significant further depletion, given how the northern Gulf of Mexico is a major source of seafood, well known as part of Louisiana cuisine. Continue reading “Oil and Gold”