Publication of Mitchel Cohen's essay, "The Capitalist Infesto (and how to fight it)," in the March 2008 issue of Socialism and Democracy, #46, Vol. 22, No. 1. http://sdonline.org/
Here are the opening three paragraphs:
A specter is haunting this planet the specter of biological devastation and ecological catastrophe and it is ravaging the ecosystems sustaining life. Butterflies, frogs, bees, whole familiar species are in sudden danger of being wiped out. And, mechanisms for propagation even seeds! are coming under the private ownership of a tiny number of very large agro-chemical corporations which are, at this very moment, altering the reproductive capacities of entire species in order to extend their control over land and monopolize the world’s food supply.
All the good things that human beings have achieved, and all the natural beauty of the world around us are being grabbed, privatized and pillaged by corporate, technological and political powers. This colonization is legitimized by new Enclosure Acts similar to those of centuries ago, a legal framework validating the shameless orgy of profiteering and conquest.
In the last 40 years, fully one-half of the world’s forests have been chopped down. Please think about that for a moment, what that means. Forests prevent floods, maintain soil health, defuse hurricanes and detoxify drinking water. They oxygenate the air, and serve as habitats for millions of species. In Argentina and Brazil today, huge swathes of primeval rainforest are being cut down for cattle, for monocropping genetically engineered soybeans for animal feed and for biofuels exported to the United States and elsewhere. In Brazil this confiscation of land for extracting corporate profits is occurring under trade agreements with so-called “socialist” president Ignacio Lula da Silva. In Indonesia millions of acres of forest have been burned for cattle grazing. In Mexico the Lacandona forest the home of the Zapatista rebellion is under siege by international paper companies as much as by federal troops. Under Clinton and Gore more trees were clearcut in the U.S. than under any other administration in recent history. The destruction of the forests, along with emissions from large-scale power plants, automobiles, factory farming of animals (cow-farts, believe it or not, from rendered diets), refrigerators and paper mills are the most important contributors to global warming and the pending ecocide of this planet.
(from "The Capitalist Infesto," by Mitchel Cohen)
Many other excellent articles herein as well, by - Infar Solty, "The Historic Breakthrough of Germany's LEFT Party"; - Sriram Ananthanarayanan, "New Mechanisms of Imeprialism in India" - Ravi Malhotra, "Capabilities, Disability Rights, and Global Inequality" - Thomas Seibert, "The Global Justice Movement afer Heiligendamm" - Peter Seybold, "The Struggle against Corporate Takeover of the University"
and numerous book reviews of books by Anatole Anton, Richard Schmitt, Rosemary Feurer, Sebastian Budgen, Stathis Kouvelakis & Slavoj Zizek, Stan Goff, Gideon Polya, Robert Roth, H. Bruce Franklin, Walter A. Davis, Marc Falkoff, Joel Shatzky, Alexander Saxton, Peter McLaren & Nathalia Jaramillo, Helen Caldicott, Andrew Kliman, Henry Heller, Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair, Paul Zarembka, Steve Ellner & Miguel Tinker Salas, Michael Gonzalez Cruz, Lynn Hunt, Michael Hardt.
To order a copy, please click on http://sdonline.org/ . The journal is a bit pricey, $10 a pop -- but it is loaded with very interesting and sophisticated analysis from the Left.
And, please let them know that you heard about this from me.
Thank you.
Mitchel Cohen