Meditations and Molotovs – 06.13.16

There is simply no way to understand the massacre in Orlando without asking fundamental questions about our society, its various institutions, cultures and ideologies.

Hence, today’s program features a discussion concerning violence, guns, patriarchy, capitalism, civilization, homophobia, religion, militarism, racism, ecological devastation and how all of these things are inherently connected.

In the end, the government isn’t taking anyone’s guns in the U.S. There will be no “buy back” program. There will be no “confiscation efforts.” And there surely won’t be a “ban on assault weapons” in the near future. In the meantime, what are decent Americans to do?

Hannah Osborne – Social collapse in ancient Pueblo civilisation linked to climate change

The early Pueblo civilisation colonised the Four Corners of the US for thousands of years until being abandoned for reasons unknown from the 13th century. Scientists have now discovered four major phases of societal collapse that took place in the last 500 years of the civilisation’s existence. Researchers from Washington State University found all of the collapses coincided with periods of …

Zaid Jilani – Private Prison Company Is Getting Rich Locking Up Kids

An explosive new report from the Daily Beast’s Betsy Woodruff looks [3] at how the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), one of America’s two large private prison corporations, has seen its profits explode, thanks to a little-noticed move by the Obama administration. Woodruff notes that before last summer, there was virtually no “family detention,” referring to the detention of migrant families crossing …

Andrea Germanos – Humankind Has Halved the Number of Trees on the Planet

The good news: there are over 3 trillion trees covering the Earth—that’s far higher than the 4 billion estimated just two years ago, a team of international researchers has found. But here’s the bad news: there were far more trees—46 percent more—before human civilization got hold, with an estimated 15 billion trees being lost own each year, with just 5 …

John Scales Avery – The Need For A New Economic System, Part 4 Neocolonialism And Resource Wars

Hobson’s explanation of colonialism The Industrial Revolution opened up an enormous gap in military strength between the industrialized nations and the rest of the world. Taking advantage of their superior weaponry, Europe, the United States and Japan rapidly carved up the remainder of the world into colonies, which acted as sources of raw materials and food, and as markets for …