Published on Jun 5, 2012
Noam Chomsky, world renowned linguist and dissident author, delivers the keynote address at the ECONVERGENCE CONFERENCE in Portland, Oregon, on October 2nd, 2009.
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120
Media
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Published on May 31, 2012
1989
La Prensa is a Nicaraguan newspaper, with offices in the capital Managua. Its current daily circulation is placed at 42,000.
After the fall of the government, Chamorro’s widow, Violeta served on the five member Junta of National Reconstruction. However, Chamorro and the middle-class supporters of the revolution had a different vision for the country than the Sandinistas. When it became apparent that these differences could not be resolved, Violeta Chamorro resigned from the junta in 1980 and began to oppose the Sandinistas.
At this point there was a split in La Prensa. The editor Xavier Chamorro Cardenal, together with 80% of the staff, left the paper to form El Nuevo Diario. This was a more pro-Sandinista paper.
Soon after the passing of new laws, freedom of the press once again became answerable to many political criteria. On July 22, 1979 the Law of National Emergency would allow all media in Nicaragua to be placed under government control. On September 10, 1980, decrees 511 and 512 established prior censorship for matters of national security.
In this period the US also started its campaign against the Sandinista government with support to the Contras. In this struggle under the Sandinistas, La Prensa was also often accused of being puppets of the CIA. They were accused of being Contra sympathizers and thus, “venda-patrias” or traitors to the motherland. The paper admitted to receiving funds from the National Endowment for Democracy, a bipartisan, Congressionally financed agency created to take over financing of groups that in the past might have received covert aid from the C.I.A. However, it said that this funding was publicly declared and legal.
On March 15, 1982, the government declared a State of Emergency which closed down all independent broadcast new programs. Sandinista censorship began clamping down on political dissent and criticism. That same year La Prensa was occupied three times by Sandinista forces, and were constantly surrounded by Sandinista mobs. Under the FSLN this pattern of hostility continued throughout the years of Sandinista rule.
La Prensa’s strident criticism of Sandinista policies, particularly its socialist economic policies, and its attacks on FSLN leader Daniel Ortega led the Sandinistas to adopt various restrictions on press freedom. La Prensa editors were harassed by state security, and the paper was sometimes censored or closed, although have a significantly higher circulation, than Sandinista “Barricade” (70 thousand copies against 45 in 1986). The restrictions were lifted in a deal between Ortega and his opponents in the run-up to the 1990 election.
The Republic of Nicaragua v. The United States of America was a 1984 case of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in which the ICJ ruled in favor of Nicaragua and against the United States and awarded reparations to Nicaragua. The ICJ held that the U.S. had violated international law by supporting the Contras in their rebellion against the Nicaraguan government and by mining Nicaragua’s harbors. The United States refused to participate in the proceedings after the Court rejected its argument that the ICJ lacked jurisdiction to hear the case. The U.S. later blocked enforcement of the judgment by the United Nations Security Council and thereby prevented Nicaragua from obtaining any actual compensation. The Nicaraguan government finally withdrew the complaint from the court in September 1992 (under the later, post-FSLN, government of Violeta Chamorro), following a repeal of the law requiring the country to seek compensation.
The Court found in its verdict that the United States was “in breach of its obligations under customary international law not to use force against another State”, “not to intervene in its affairs”, “not to violate its sovereignty”, “not to interrupt peaceful maritime commerce”, and “in breach of its obligations under Article XIX of the Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation between the Parties signed at Managua on 21 January 1956.”
The Court had 16 final decisions upon which it voted. In Statement 9, the Court stated that the U.S. encouraged human rights violations by the Contras by the manual entitled Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare. However, this did not make such acts attributable to the U.S.
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120
Media
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Published on May 31, 2012
1989
In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism. Developed by, and named for, the Russian revolutionary Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, 1870–1924), Leninism comprises political and socialist economic theories, developed from Marxism, and Lenin’s interpretations of Marxist theory, for practical application to the socio-political conditions of the agrarian Russian Empire (1721–1917) of the early 20th century. In February 1917, Leninism was the Russian application of Marxist economics and political philosophy, effected and realised by the Bolshevik party, the vanguard party who led the fight for the political independence of the working class. Functionally, the vanguard party provided the political education, and the revolutionary leadership and organisation necessary to depose capitalism in Imperial Russia. After the October Revolution of 1917, Leninism was the dominant version of Marxism in Russia, and then the official ideology of Soviet democracy (by workers’ council) in the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR), before its unitary amalgamation into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), in 1922.
As a political-science term, Leninism entered common usage in 1922, only after infirmity ended Lenin’s participation in governing the Russian Communist Party. Two years later, in July 1924, at the fifth congress of the Communist International (Comintern), Grigory Zinoviev popularized the use of the term Leninism to denote “vanguard-party revolution”. Leninism was composed as and for revolutionary praxis, and originally was neither rigorously proper philosophy nor discrete political theory. After the Russian Revolution (1917), it was organised in History and Class Consciousness (1923), by György Lukács (1885–1971), who developed Lenin’s pragmatic revolutionary practices into the formal philosophy of vanguard-party revolution (Leninism). As a work of political science and political philosophy, History and Class Consciousness illustrated Lenin’s 1915 dictum about the commitment to the cause of the revolutionary man: One cannot be a revolutionary Social–Democrat without participating, according to one’s powers, in developing this theory [Marxism], and adapting it to changed conditions.
The term state capitalism has various meanings, but is usually described as commercial (profit-seeking) economic activity undertaken by the state with management of the productive forces in a capitalist manner, even if the state is nominally socialist. State capitalism is usually characterized by the dominance or existence of a significant number of state-owned business enterprises. Examples of state capitalism include Corporatized government agencies (agencies organized along corporate and business management practices) and states that own controlling shares of publicly-listed corporations, effectively acting as a large capitalist and shareholder itself.
State capitalism has also come to refer to an economic system where the means of production are owned privately but the state has considerable control over the allocation of credit and investment, as in the case of France during the period of dirigisme. Alternatively, state capitalism may be used (sometimes interchangeably with state monopoly capitalism) to describe a system where the state intervenes in the economy to protect and advance the interests of large-scale businesses. This practice is often claimed to be in contrast with the ideals of both socialism and laissez-faire capitalism.
There are various theories and critiques of state capitalism, some of which have existed since the 1917 October Revolution or even before. The common themes among them are to identify that the workers do not meaningfully control the means of production and that commodity relations and production for profit still occur within state capitalism. Other socialists use the term state capitalism to refer to an economic system that is nominally capitalist, such that business and private owners gain the profits from an economy largely subsidized, developed and where decisive research and development is done by the state sector at public cost.
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120
Media
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Published on May 31, 2012
1989
The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that states how propaganda, including systemic biases, function in mass media. The model seeks to explain how populations are manipulated and how consent for economic, social and political policies are “manufactured” in the public mind due to this propaganda.
The theory posits that the way in which news is structured (through advertising, media ownership, government sourcing and others) creates an inherent conflict of interest which acts as propaganda for undemocratic forces.
First presented in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, the “Propaganda model” views the private media as businesses interested in the sale of a product — readers and audiences — to other businesses (advertisers) rather than that of quality news to the public. Describing the media’s “societal purpose”, Chomsky writes, “… the study of institutions and how they function must be scrupulously ignored, apart from fringe elements or a relatively obscure scholarly literature.” The theory postulates five general classes of “filters” that determine the type of news that is presented in news media. These five classes are: Ownership of the medium Medium’s funding sources Sourcing Flak Anti-communist ideology
The first three are generally regarded by the authors as being the most important. In versions after September 11th, Chomsky and Herman updated the fifth prong to instead refer to the War on Terror and antiterrorism, although they say it operates in much the same manner.
Although the model was based mainly on the characterization of United States media, Chomsky and Herman believe the theory is equally applicable to any country that shares the basic economic structure and organizing principles which the model postulates as the cause of media biases.
Following the theoretical exposition of the propaganda model, Manufacturing Consent contains a large section where the authors seek to test their hypotheses. If the propaganda model is right and the filters do influence media content, a particular form of bias would be expected — one that systematically favors corporate interests.
They also looked at what they perceived as naturally-occurring “historical control groups” where two events, similar in their properties but differing in the expected media attitude towards them, are contrasted using objective measures such as coverage of key events (measured in column inches) or editorials favoring a particular issue (measured in number).
Examples of bias given by the authors include the failure of the media to question the legality of the Vietnam War while greatly emphasizing the Soviet war in Afghanistan as an act of aggression.
Other biases include a propensity to emphasize violent acts “genocide” more in enemy or unfriendly countries such as Kosovo while ignoring greater genocide in allied countries such as the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. This bias also said to exist in foreign elections, giving favorable media coverage to fraudulent elections in allied countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala, while unfavorable coverage is given to legitimate elections in enemy countries such as Nicaragua.
Chomsky also asserts that the media accurately covered events such as the Battle of Fallujah but because of an ideological bias, it acted as pro-government propaganda. In describing coverage of raid on Fallujah General Hospital he stated that The New York Times, “accurately recorded the battle of Fallujah but it was celebrated… it was celebration of ongoing war crimes.” The article in question was “Early Target of Offensive Is a Hospital.”
The authors point to biases that are based on only reporting scandals which benefit a section of power, while ignoring scandals that hurt the powerless. The biggest example of this was how the US media greatly covered the Watergate Scandal but ignored the COINTELPRO exposures. While Watergate helped Democrats and only harmed people politically, COINTELPRO harmed average citizens and went as far as political assassination. Other examples include coverage of the Iran-Contra Scandal by only focusing on people in power such as Oliver North but omitting coverage of the civilians killed in Nicaragua as the result of aid to the contras.
In a 2010 interview, Chomsky compared media coverage of the Afghan War Diaries released by Wikileaks and lack of media coverage to a study of severe health problems in Fallujah. While there was ample coverage of Wikileaks there was no American coverage of the Fallujah study, in which the health situation in Fallujah was described by the British media as “worse than Hiroshima.”
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120
Media
Posted in Uncategorized
Published on Mar 26, 2013
According to a new study by the Pew Research Center, MSNBC’s programming is nearly 85 percent opinion – and they might not be alone when it comes to this trend. According to author Chris Hedges, the mainstream media ignores “what the corporate state wants ignored” and “they do not challenge or acknowledge the structures of corporate power.” He joins us to explain how the corporate media sets the tone in the US and how the end result means items like the NDAA, warrantless wiretapping and the war on whistleblowers goes unreported..
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120
Media
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http://www.bu.edu/today/2013/the-climate-crisis-why-the-earth-is-warming/
Bruce Anderson didn’t set out to prove that the rise in global temperatures since the start of the Industrial Revolution is caused by human activity. And the five-year study that he and four colleagues then published in the October 2012 Journal of Climate doesn’t draw that conclusion, but it does suggest that man-made pollutants are to blame.
The study, which tested three hypotheses about causes of the warming trend, debunks alternative theories that have been floated in recent years. At the same time, says Anderson, a College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of earth and environment, the research strengthens the theory that humans are responsible for the phenomenon, in which carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and the other gases we emit accumulate in the atmosphere, trapping the heat that radiates from the Earth.
“This was one of the most basic scientific experiments you could perform,” he says. “You have multiple hypotheses to explain a phenomenon—the increasing global temperatures over the last half-century—and instead of trying to prove any one of them, our main goal was to disprove those hypotheses that we could, such that we’re left with one remaining hypothesis that then becomes the reigning theory.” ….(read more).
http://www.bu.edu/buniverse/view/?v=1mxdPb1Du
Global Climate Change http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre130
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120
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http://www.bu.edu/today/2013/the-climate-crisis-tracking-change-predicting-trouble/
Winter is getting warmer, spring is coming earlier, and plants are enjoying an extended growing season in northern areas. But that is not good news.
In this weeklong series, BU researchers explore the science behind earth’s environmental changes, and what they mean for our future.
“It’s the initial gold rush,” says Ranga Myneni, a College of Arts & Science professor of earth and environment, but what will follow will not be pleasant. As vegetation flourishes, it could draw down the water supply, bringing on drought, insect infestations, and forest fires. What was once green, lush land could become brown and barren.
In an article published in Nature Climate Change on March 10, Myneni and 21 collaborators describe how seasonal temperatures and vegetation north of the U.S.-Canada border have shifted over the past 30 years to what is typically experienced four to seven degrees latitude to the south. Should global warming continue at its current pace, Bruce Anderson, a CAS associate professor of earth and environment, who worked with Myneni on the paper, predicts a further latitudinal shift of as much as 20 degrees south by the end of the century. That means arctic and boreal regions of Canada would look and feel much more like the southern United States. ….(read more).
Global Climate Change http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre130
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120
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Published on Mar 25, 2013
Community turn out for the PUC March 13
Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120
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Climate change is real and a significant challenge facing humanity. In this event in the Lowy Institute’s Distinguished Speaker Series, Bjørn Lomborg, a renowned and…
Global Climate Change http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre130
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120
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Published on Mar 25, 2013
A group of women in south-western Colombia has built a sustainable community from waste.
The successful scheme in Nachira could become a model for sustainable living around the world.
Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo reports from Nachira in Colombia.
Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120
Posted in Uncategorized
Transition Studies 