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Melissa Gragg and Jason Miller interview Derrick Jensen

“Top priorities may not be any of those five. It may be continuing to stabilize the financial system. We don't know yet what's going to happen in January. And none of this can be accomplished if we continue to see a potential meltdown in the banking system or the financial system. So that's priority number one, making sure that the plumbing works in our capitalist system.”

—President-Elect Barack Obama

Ironically, it is the plumbing of that capitalist system that we are using as we flush the future of life on Earth down the toilet.

We can “elect” a charismatic, intelligent man from a brutally oppressed minority to be our president to purge our collective guilt, mouth “feel good” platitudes, celebrate the triumph of “democracy,” and delude ourselves into believing we are preparing to warp back to a fictitious golden era when America was a benevolent guardian of humanity and the Earth, but that doesn't change the fact that industrial capitalism is rendering this planet uninhabitable.

To the left

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How to treat a President-Elect

In response to an Email advocating lobbying the new Congress and president-elect for complete withdrawal from Iraq and other goals, I received mostly positive responses, but a sizable minority sent replies like this one:

"Can't you wait a minute? Give the President-Elect a moment to breathe, to catch his breath, to exhale? Stop this uber anti-militant stance to pause for the appreciation of what has been accomplished. Have a little mercy! Time enough for all this sturm and drang. Snap out of it!"

In response to a post on a progressive website supporting some of Obama's possible appointments and opposing others, most of the comments were positive, but some took the position exemplified by this one:

"so tired of the endless drama queens. the only appointments made to date have been Podesta and perhaps Emanuel. And at least as many 'good' appointments as 'bad', have been rumored. That said, Kennedy would be an excellent choice. But, Jeebus, the hysterical crap about Obama- less than 2 days after he won, is such a predictable bore."

Recount fictions in Virginia's Fifth

As of about 9 p.m. ET on Thursday, 316,476 votes had been counted in Virginia's Fifth District congressional race between incumbent bigotted xenophobe Virgil Goode and challenger Tom Perriello, with 158,562 going to Perriello and 157,914 to Goode, for a difference of 648 votes or 0.2 percent of the total.

According to a report on Charlottesville's NBC-29:
    "There is no 'automatic' or 'mandatory' recount. If the results differ by one percent or less, the losing candidate can formally request a recount in court. If the difference is less than half of a percentage point, the same candidate still has to make a request and the state will pay for it."

Obama cabinet good and bad news

Labor Reborn: A Department of Labor Worthy of the Name

According to news reports, president elect Obama is considering for Labor Secretary three people who actually know something about labor and actually support the intended mission of the labor department, which is protecting the rights of laborers. And by laborers, I mean you. If you have not recently received a government bailout, you're one of us. Here's the short list:

•Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of House Education and Labor Committee
•Former Rep. David Bonior, member of Obama's Transition Economic Advisory Board
•Andy Stern, president of Service Employees International Union

Any of these men as Secretary of Labor would be a 180 degree reversal from the past eight years, during which the so-called labor department has done everything it could to damage the labor movement and the rights of working people.

Labor's high hopes

Organized labor is rightly claiming a major role in the Nov. 4 victories of President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats – and is rightly expecting much in return.

The figures are impressive. One-fifth of all voters were union members or in union households, and fully two-thirds of them supported Obama, a ratio even higher in battleground states.

The AFL-CIO calculates that more than a quarter-million volunteers campaigned among their fellow union members and others, discussing the issues that were of particular importance to working people, drumming up support for Obama and other labor-friendly Democrats and, finally, getting labor voters to the polls on election day.

The AFL-CIO’s figures show that the volunteers knocked on some 10 million doors, made 70 million telephone calls, handed out 27 million leaflets and mailed out 57 million more. There was scarcely a union member or union household anywhere that was not reached.

The number of union voters reached a record high of more than 3 million. The labor federation claims they “made the difference in critical states like

Yes we did

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My experience in the 2008 Ohio election: exit polling

I worked as an “exit poller” at Jones Middle School in Upper Arlington. This is an old middle school in the heart of the Columbus suburb. The “hall of fame” in the School’s entrance includes alumni such as Jack Nicklaus (the golfing great) and Sam Devine, a conservative Central Ohio Republican congressman who held the seat for most of his adult life.

A paradigm shift in America's intellectual community

Contrary to popular belief, the big change in America’s society stemming from the recent presidential elections, was not the election of the first black president. The most important event has taken place in the intellectual community, in which a paradigm shift has taken place and few have noticed.

The new era of voting for the lesser of the two evils has penetrated the core of America’s critical intellectual community, and some of the biggest voices for change have endorsed Obama. In effect, what has taken place is the union between those opposed to imperial ideology and those endorsing it. Although this serious event has gone largely unnoticed, American intellectuals will need to reflect on its consequences seriously if they are to contribute to the building of a stable future for humanity as a whole, and in particular to mending the tarnished corrupt fabric of American society.

One American intellectual, James Petras, has been able to identify the direct social consequences of such a paradigm shift and prior to the elections has publicly expressed his views in an article titled; The

Playgrounds for Palestine: one marathon at a time

My right knee is wrapped. My left ankle is iced. I lost the nail on my right big toe, and have about 20 blisters and a similar number of bruises on both of my feet. This doesn’t even begin to convey half of the story of the punishment that my body has been subjected to in recent months. Why, you ask? Because I will join Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian American activist, writer and founder of Playgrounds for Palestine -www.playgroundsforpalestine.org - in running the Philadelphia Marathon on November 23. Our goal is to raise enough money to build a large playground in a Palestinian refugee camp, likely in Lebanon. We are more than half of the way there, but have about 5,000 dollars to go.

I ran a full marathon before (the Vancouver Marathon in Canada in May 2008). I finished at a 4:10:29 and intended to break the four-hour mark in the next run. But since then, I sustained a knee injury. Compounded with an old back injury, training for the Philly Marathon has been much harder than I thought it would be.

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