“Someone has to be the bloodhound.” Social Democrat Gustav Noske uttered these words in 1919 before organizing the right-wing death squads that killed Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknicht, two revolutionary former leaders of the very same German Social Democratic Party…
Historically, the people of each land base have been an integral element of that place’s life. We need only examine the ecologically adaptive cultures of indigenous populations to witness this. In the dominant culture, we have lost our way. We have…
Forty-three years ago I got a Social Security Card and went to work on a cattle ranch a hundred miles the other side of Burns (Oregon). When I first cashed that first paycheck, I entered into a social contract with…
This is the first of a series of articles co-written by D.J. Mitchell and Susan Cain on how YouTube is used in politics. Susan has done most of the research. YouTube, the free video sharing site offers an incredible medium…
Some years ago I visited two villages near Gampaha, Sri Lanka. Both were small and poor. Both were inhabited by members of Rodhi caste, the Sinhalese version of untouchables. But there, all similarity ended. In the first, families of five…
Reminiscent of attacks on the Italian state during the 1970’s and 1980’s by leftist Red Brigades and Mafia, the drug cartels of Mexico are hobbled neither by antiquated Marxist ideology nor old-time, rustic, crime family traditions. They are adaptive, professional,…
Many of the Web 2.0 crowd are clearly smart, but what they do is far removed from the current focal point of global change. As a result, indulging in clever Web 2.0 thinking is akin to eating intellectual fast food,…
John McCain strikes a blow for free speech. No, hang on. Sorry, that should be “strikes a blow against free speech”.
John Robb on how small terrorist attacks can disrupt an entire system. The networks of our global superinfrastructure are tightly “coupled”—so tightly interconnected, that is, that any change in one has a nearly instantaneous effect on the others. Attacking one…
From Bruce Sterling, commenting on the recent deluge of rain in Texas. In other and even weirder Texan news, Texan state officials ignore the incompetent feds and rely on big-box commercial retail outfits to respond to weather emergencies. Can secession…