Greens, anti-corporatist and anti-corruption politics

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There is a surprising amount of commentary on libertarian, Aynian (irony intended), greed-based, anti-democracy oriented politics on WP, which I find very puzzling, given the the rep of Aspies for being independent, thoughtful and having a highly developed sense of social justice.

With election season coming up, I'd like to inject a different and actually potentially productive political perspective into these threads, which makes a tremendous amount of sense from my point of view--and I'd imagine that of a lot of other people on the spectrum.

http://vimeo.com/35605987

I can talk about this forever and give a lot of justification why it is strategically very productive, pragmatic and smart to go this route right now. I don't want to monopolize the thread, and would love to hear other people talking about Green politics, the Stein candidacy and anti-corporitsist, anti-corruption and pro-democratic politics--not just in the Arab world and Iceland, but RIGHT HERE in the U.S., the rest of Europe, etc.

Green what? Stein who?

Must be one of those minor political thingies.

A few thoughts:
1) There's a link.
2) There's Google.
3) Why comment on something if you don't understand what it is you're commenting on? I don't understand this impulse.

Yep, not gonna happen...

Mind your property lines for now and learn to macguyver some sh* for later and you'll be aight...

Um... yikes. Let me clarify briefly why I set up this thread. It wasn't intended as a place for trolls not interested in this subject to spout trite one-liners. It was rather set up for people *interested* in this to contribute in a way that is respectful, productive, and positive. Thanks!

Actually, there are existing libertarian, pro-system, etc threads--or anyone is free to set them up as pleases them. I'd like to get a conversation going form thoughtful, progressive people who are specifically *NOT* of such mindsets, and I'd like to see a productive, positive exchange of ideas here.

Last edited by haidouk on 01 Sep 2012, 11:36 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Yeah, I'm also voting for Jill Stein.

Why not explain, in your own words, what it's all about?

Just askin'.

I agree with Green policy on most things. Ironically their environmental policies are so bad that voting for them is impossible. The Green Party in the UK is against nuclear power and genetic engineering, for example.

There's also the rep for being unempathetic, unsocial sorts, given to black and white thinking. I'm pleasantly surprised by the number of leftists on here.

In terms of Parliamentary politics, I'm lucky enough to live in a safe Plaid Cymru seat with a decent MP.

The video wouldn't play, but I had a read through the transcript, and much seemed perfectly sensible.

I wont be as blunt as Fnord about it, but I kind of agree with him.... You did say you could talk about the subject forever, but then you really kinda didn't say much about it, except make references that only people that are already familiar with it are going to get.....

My Suggestion, and you don't have to take it of course, would be to summarize whatever it is you posted there up in a few short paragraphs or sentences. Instead of making people sit through 44 minutes of something they may or may not really decide to be interested in. Or worse, read through the transcript....

And yea, I must admit that, until Coal can be replaced with something sensical, nuclear power makes the most sense to me (Just not built by Tokyo Denryoku Kabushiki-gaisha, or the Tokyo Electric Power Company please). After that, Im for Genetic Research as well.....

But w/e. Im open to reading information on the green party, as long as I can scan through the salient points quickly. They haven't done much to really enamor me of their cause. OSW has more capability to accomplish something IMHO, though Im not sure I really like the idea of seeing another fully polarized party arrive on the political scene....

Aldran

I take it you're implying that nuclear power is "green" (environmentally sound)? Might want to tell the resdents of Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Bhopal, etc. It is ridiculous to state that something is "clean" when all this means is that it is "clean" for a few years and then if something goes wrong, it produces and environmental apocalypse that will remain and mutate life in that region and cause malignancies and deformations for thousands of years. Sorry, this is not "clean" and it is the least "green" thing imaginable. It is poison. It is entirely dependent on that poison being perpetually kept hermetically sealed in a tight bottle. The problem? We don't have such bottles. Things known as "accidents" happen. There is something known as "the unforeseen". People fall asleep on the job. Governments decide they don't want to pay quite so much for upkeep. There is an earthquake (it happens). There is a tsunami. The point? Nukes are the filthiest form of energy we have. There is no contradiction in Greens not supporting them.

Genetic engineering---by this you are probably referring to genetically modified food products. You should check into Monsanto, its practices and abuses around the planet. The fact of the matter is, humans evolved eating particular foods with a particular genetic makeup. We know what they are, how to process them. Our bodies are finely tuned machines. When we start--in complete isolation to any other factor whatsoever and with zero holistic view of the consequences on any level--to screw with properties of organic life that form staples of our diets 1) we create ecological problems and tamper blindly with the naturally existing stasis of entire ecosystems with zero thought to the implications, which tends to harm genetic diversity and the rich variety of life here (some of which, to be completely selfish, might serve as valuable, unique resources to us in the future). 2) We feed people things that we have NO IDEA what biological consequences might show up down the road for any of the particular tweaks. 3) Through "intellectual properties" abuses, coupled with a lack of control of corporate monopoly and power, companies (particularly Monsanto) are at this point abusively making modifications PURELY FOR PROPRIETARY PURPOSES--i.e. in order to gain commercial control of (and hence link their profits to) the food supply globally. This is rampant abuse and exploitation and simply HAS to be checked. 4) Local organic food is BETTER, for people, better for local economies and local farmers, better for sustainability and independence, and simply better for a higher quality of life and a better food-culture in that area. These things are not throw-aways, but are, and have always been, highly significant. 5) People around the planet overwhelmingly DO NOT WANT GMOs in their food supply. So how is it ethical, legal, or tenable for ostensibly democratic governments and these huge corporate entities collude to force them onto populations that specifically want to avoid them? That is anti-democratic abuse. 6) There is an entire array of tremendous moral implications on a number of levels to proprietary ownership of biological life. This is also limited to flora.

So your critique of Greens on these points doesn't make a lot of sense. It all fits together into a bigger picture of sustainability, high quality of life, freedom of people from exploitation and egalitarian democracy.

More people died in Senator Kennedy's car at Chappiquidic than at Three Mile Island after the nuclear accident.

ruveyn

In terms of black and white thinking, fine. But why does that mean Aspies would be siding with black ("the dark side") I find the black and white thinking is advantageous because it makes Aspies intolerant of things like corruption, and systemic dysfunction leading to the abuse of people. This is what I am PROUD of about us, and something I see as our asset. We don't compromise easily, we uphold principle and idealism. There are times when this quality is in extremely high demand. And now is one of those times.

Just checked the video and it plays, but glad you checked out the transcript. The video isn't essential but I just though it would give people a good, basic overview of who the Greens are and what their priorities are, without the drudgery of having to read pages of of text. I could talk about each of these things endlessly, and I'm noticing others (not you) trying to goad me into doing this in this thread. But I wanted to try a different approach. I don't want to lecture people, set up debates about minutia, which is what these political topics tend to devolve into. Interestingly, this seems to be entirely why a large segment of the people looking at this thread came here to begin with. I'm not interested in that. I wanted to lay down a clean framework for people into Green politics to talk about things they found to be significant, about strategy, about ways of making things happen, about engaging people, about cutting through the system, about smartly positioning ourselves and using the existing corruption and corporatism in the system against it and to our advantage; and so on.

Have you heard of the sea steading institute? Their idea is to make floating islands at sea and allow people to implement their own government. There's a lot to go over on the site, but they make a serious attempt to come up with a plan.

Ive recently switched to public transportation (as opposed to driving everywhere). When it comes to using greener alternatives, cost and ease of use are huge factors to contend with. A lot of green technology is expensive and requires expertise ( gray water plumbing for instance). I don't think the average person is going to pick up on any type of green tech unless their friends start doing it.

Sea steadying link

Here's the link.

Last edited by MDD123 on 02 Sep 2012, 8:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Excellent post.

To call nuclear power "clean energy" isn't just a lie, it's insane. Cleaner than what? Waste material that remains dangerous for hundreds of years is not my idea of clean. Accidents that are far worse. This is not clean energy. And if the loss of plant and food diversity with the advent of large scale monoculture wasn't bad enough here's genetic engineering to f**k with our food sources and the natural balance even more.

I'm of the mind that if the Green party and the Peace and Freedom movement merged, grew, and made population their main focus, we might actually save the planet for life as we know it. But unfortunately in our stupidity as a species, we consider any talk of overpopulation a threat - or an excuse to hate one group or another of people - because it's always someone else causing the problem. I'm about at the point of giving up on politics. But another part of me realizes it's corporate mainstream media that prevents the third party candidates from getting anywhere - ever since they publicized Ross Perot and he very nearly upset the two-party dominance back in the 90s.

Sounds like an interesting experiment, but it's not as though the evidence is not in on what is smart policy and what is not. Also, its kind of odd to expect anyone to be driven out of their own country to establish a new one from scratch. That is why democracy exists--precisely so that people can shape their own society and have responsive government. What I'm standing for is already MY country. And what I'm standing for is not something foreign, dubious, or unprecedented but it's fundamental legacy as a product the Enlightenment. Maybe Aynian libertarians would like to move to their own floating island? They are free to go. I'd be interested in seeing their results 50 years down the road. This is my country however, and my society. My rights to be here and to be represented by my government are sacrosanct. I will not be bailing out, or abandoning the entire rest of the population to the shenanigans of those out to exploit them.

Nothing against the idea of the experiment. Just against the idea that instead of trying to make their country better, people should consider retreating to some kind of bunker and disappear into irrelevance. The ideas of doing these particular things you mention seem great though.