you rock!

i’ve been a fan of yours for years!

This is great, I love what you write and also have a few reactions to a few things:

you write:
“there is a general reluctance to tell the truth: that a lot of production, everything not necessary for survival, simply has to end.”

+++
on what basis is it to be determined what is “necessary for survival”? Is a violin “necessary for survival”? The answer is clearly ‘no’ in a limited sense but do we want to cease
making violins. Probably not.

There is a deeper question a redefinition of “needs” and how these needs can be satisfied in harmony with what the earth gives forth in a material sense?

If a few trees are taken for violin making, or chairs, or digging sticks, that’s OK as long as the forest remains healthy.

I would never try to convince a class-aware auto worker (who has been betrayed by the UAW labor bureaucrats to work at half the wage of his father) to “make do with less” when “less” means starvation, lack of reasonable health care, etc.

“Less” to his boss (or the labor union parasites) means something very different. Fewer vacation trips to the Bahamas vs. nutritous meals for the worker and his family.

Of course this skips over the whole question of massive production of internal combustion motor vehicles for private use and the
destructive nature of their continued production.

We will never reach “the end of labor itself…” And who wants such a “utopian” world anyway? As long as we are in the physical world we will need to labor for things,
that’s part of being human (or a beaver for that matter), part of having a physical body, and potentially very satisfying in a non-coercive non-alienated (aka, post-capitalist) world.

Also two other good links for allies (and more links, reading material, and great stuff!):
http://ecosocialistnetwork.org/
http://www.ecosocialistsunite.com/index.html

Please also consider signing the Belem Ecosocialist Manifesto available at either site. Hopefully we can get some traction on organizing here in the US.

To the naysayers and apologists for Capitalism above, I have a few comments. Marx is remembered for the Communist Manifesto, but more important is “Capital” or “Das Kapital.” This treatise largely proves with math and economic forumulas that capitalism is unsustainable. Too much to go into here, but even without the ecological crisis, it would eventually destroy itself. What’s left over, however, may not be pretty. The current economic crisis fits Marx’s models perfectly. A good person for reading (or youtube watching) on this is Prof. David Harvey, if anyone cares to look him up.
And the Christian comment is just silly. Socialists don’t despise Christians, they (speaking for only some, really) largely think they are hypocrites. Jesus was one of the greatest socialists of all time. He hated wealth and privledge, and was working to build an organization to change the systems of power.
Just as silly, is this nonsense about not being able to change the system, becuase greed is human nature, and that’s just the way it is. Rubbish! No you can’t remove greed from the human psyche, but you don’t have to build an ecominic system around it. Love is also part of human nature; we can build a system around that instead. Surely Jesus would agree.

saed

as you comic of today 3/21 says.. there is no social awareness of environmental problems and really no no ablility to plan and carry out a defense of nature.

Socialists and progressives have failed to sway more than 5% of the population. Everyone is so material minded. more more and now now. but that is the effect of economic pressure. It makes daily living harder, so hard that people have lost their abitlity to fight back.

if they ever had it. and the rich and scheme and plan without limit. and instead of them selling the rope the revolution uses to hang them, the rich pay one section of the workers to beat up the other. as always.

Finally, I find this whole “everyone need to generate their own energy locally” to be anti-solidarity and ultimately another form of hyper-privatization. There is nothing wrong with a continent wide centralized syatem of electric energy if it is publicly owned and democratically administered. Indeed, such a syatem will be the only way renewable energy will ever be practical on the large scale.

And finally, I am troubled by people who are not at all practicing experts in technical things who nonetheless insert ideology into every technical and engineering issue then wnat a say in the technical matter. This is exactly what the AGW denialists do! Part of solidarity is trusting a brother/sister who is an engineer in the technical matter in question that they know what they are talking about – while they trust what others are talking about in their fields of knowlege.

Poor B & Chip, they looked so miserable in yesterday’s strip.

Decentralized solar and wind, efficiency and better, more fulfilling lives are better for democracy, individuals, and the biosphere. This desert thing is just one more cynical, manipulative attack on the real solutions to climate catastrophe and peak oil/peak everything. It’a being funded and spread by people who brought us the equally nonsensical wind”mill”-bird lie. Stop and think if they’ve ever cared about birds and desert ecosystems before–in the millions of development projects, logging, mining projects, golf courses, pesticide use, landscraping of all varieties… Have the anti-solar and -wind people ever once suggested those far more destructive projects kill birds and destroy ecosystems, desert or otherwise?

I’m surprised at how emotionally invested I’ve become in the characters. I really felt defensive for poor B when her friends were flaming her! I also appreciate the comic for showing that her progressive friends can be just as judgemental as the next person…very reality based.

Crazy busy as usual. We made the call for the 2012 Spring Action and are lining up the actions now. Very exciting times. I hope you know I am in DC now. Let me know when you are presenting up here.

Plus, the idea of a principled comrade entering into a sham marriage is just weird, even if it is to advance a higher goal.

In the end, I look at what people do, not what I conjecture is the least likely thing they will do, even if that is exactly what I would want them to do. Is Obama really holding back so that he can unleash his leftist spirit in his second term? Im sure it is possible, I know that is what I want to be happening, but I certainly am not smiling and winking at him- as some of us on the left are doing- thinking that’s what he is actually up to.

Maybe Im wrong, but if one of my close comrades announced they were marrying the son of one of the Koch brothers, I would not rejoice or assume it was a shame marriage for the sake of the movement.

What say ye, Hat?

Great story line!

Fantastic cartoons, these are an awesome way of educating people about what’s going on in a way that brings a laugh.

What about bringing you cartoons to a greater number of people by adding WordPress social media plugins like SexyBookmarks? I use it on my site, a good way to make it easy for people to easily share your work and increase your exposure.

If I’m wrong, that would be great, and I’d support it.