The question was asked at the Barbastro Peak Oil Conference. If we are justified in poisoning people in order to produce combustible liquids and gas, why don’t we jump to the ultimate consequence and turn human corpses into oil? Swift’s Modest Proposal returns, with increased poignancy.

As I watch the corporate/financial/political elite in the US rediscover more and more of the advantages and habits of aristocracy — from Enclosure to divine right — and build their tacky monuments to ego and accumulation (what a pity none of said monuments are as pretty as Neuschwannstein say, or the Taj Mahal), I keep [...]

I’ll be lazy and just grab three feature articles from a mainstream “left” site for now. I figure most readers know the outline of the story, but wanted to acknowledge it publicly anyway. The consensus is true enough: the death toll in Haiti’s recent severe earthquake was far higher than it would have been in [...]

(excerpted from Sex & War, 2005 which is slightly cheating, but we haven’t had a FFR for a while) On September 24, 2004, CNN reported charges brought against three US Navy SEALS in the death of an Iraqi detainee, part of a much larger damage control investigation in the wake of the Abu Ghraib photo [...]

Over at IA Stan has posted link to a video about abuses in the US meat industry. Here’s a thread to discuss it…

It’s common knowledge that the Israeli occupation, and Israel in general, are Third Rails in US public discourse — touch them and die (politically, anyway). Through a peculiar combination of (1) commemoration (some would say exploitation) of the Nazi epoch, (2) down-n-dirty realpolitik in DC, and (3) the strong Biblical literalist strain in American culture [...]

What do you think of when you hear the words “Viet Nam AntiWar Movement” or “AntiWar Movement of the Sixties”? The odds are that you think of a peaceful, colourful, noisy demonstration of hippies and college kids confronting the uniformed forces of State power — peace signs and tie-dye, protesters placing flowers into the barrels [...]

When I was discharged from the army, one of the many things I was relieved about was that I would never again, as the lone female in my unit, have to share transportation with the rest of the guys when we were on travel. I would never again have to listen to Howard Stern on [...]

I have been working as a stone mason’s apprentice for a few months now… necessity, more than anything else. Believe me, as the highs go daily into the nineties and my aching, approaching-56-year hands wake me every night with aching, this is not some weird attempt to recapture my lost youth. Just haven’t found a [...]

Dedicated to three American combat veterans: John Brown, Harriet Tubman and Crazy Horse. They disobeyed. When I was approached about doing this commentary, it was because I am a veteran. In fact, I made a career of the military. That career took me from the cynical and genocidal invasion of Vietnam to the equally cynical [...]