Herman and Julia Schwendinger have published a new book, BIG BROTHER IS LOOKING AT YOU, KID! IS HOMELAND FASCISM POSSIBLE which thay are making available free of charge.

The book is a political treatise but it may be interesting academically
because of its analytic constructs. It employs their "Janus model" of
governance and a category entitled "customary repression," referring to the
normalized century-old repression of left-wing ideas and policies. It
chronicles the qualitative changes in customary repression from the 1970s
and employs "parallels" (with the rise of fascism in Germany, Italy, Chile,
etc.) to realistically evaluate neofascist developments in the USA. It
points out that "bullshit" is the modus operandi of archconservatives
reviving McCarthyism in American universities. It describes, among other
things, the astonishing expansion of surveillance technology, the "Miami
model" of police brutality, the rise of Occupy Wall Street, and Obama's

In September of 2011, Lisa Jackson, head of the US EPA, released a statement on enhancing the ozone pollution requirements in the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (http://www.epa.gov/glo/actions.html) to better protect public health. In that statement, she noted that the under the Obama Administration, the EPA has worked to enhance environmental protection. And while Lisa Jackson may be working hard to protect the public's health, President Obama hasn’t been cooperating. In a meeting with Jackson on November 16th, Obama told Jackson that the Administration could not afford to support a stricter ozone pollution standard at this time because of its potential effect on the President in the upcoming election. Obama said that the rule, set for reconsideration in 2013, would be on the table if he were re-elected. For more details see http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/science/earth/policy-and-politics-coll...

In this post I examine the recent data on carbon dioxide pollution, the meaning of that data, and discuss the issue of global warming and environmental pollution from a critical criminological perspective.....

"In early November, 2011, the United State Deportment of Energy . . .released its most recent data and survey updates on world carbon dioxide emissions . . . .The news contained in that report isn’t good: carbon dioxide pollution emissions jumped 6% in 2010 compared to 2009. About 50% of those emission increases can be linked to emissions in the US and China. The graphs at the end of this article depict the trend in carbon emissions since the 1950s, and show a current map (2010) of carbon emission levels by nation."

Michael J. Lynch
Professor, Department of Criminology
Associated Faculty, School of Global Sustainability
University of South Florida

The Hosue has passed HR 2018 in an effort to limit the powers of the EPA, and that's not good for the health of Americans, nor is that consistent with their effort to undermine the specific intent of the Clean Water Act. Read why.

For those interested in the area of green criminology, the International Green Criminology Work Group has been formed. The groups meets at ASC and other major venues. At this point the group members' primary form of communication and the main thrust of the group is a listserve. If you are interested in joining, email Paul Stretesky
at: paul.stretesky@ucdenver.edu
with the subject heading: Joining Green Crim Work Group

New Incinerator Rule Implementation Postponed By EPA: Obama’s New Conservative Environmental Approach.

Michael J. Lynch
Department of Criminolgoy and
School of Global Sustainability
University of South Florida

The G.W. Bush Administration is widely regarded as having established the worst environmental record of any Administration since the founding of the EPA during Nixon’s presidency. The election of Obama brought great hopes for a redirection in environmental policies in the US. In some ways, the Obama Administration has delivered on those hopes revising, for example, the outdated and fairly stagnant fuel economy standards.

Historically, babies born in Kettleman City, CA have been healthy. But in the past three years, eleven babies have been born with birth defects, and three have had serious enough defects to lead to their deaths. Many of the residents live below poverty, and a number are migrant workers regularly exposed to pestides and pesticide pollution. Kettleman's water sources are also contaminated. There is also a nearby landfill, the largest landfill in the US west of Alabama. These two large landfills in Kettleman and Alabama are both operated by Waste Management Incorporated. Waste Management has proposed extending the size of the Kettleman landfill by 50%. Residents have attempted to block Waste Management's request, and this endeavor is an excellent example of environmental justice in action.

For further details see:
http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/07/kettleman-city-toxic-birth-de...

Bjorn Lomborg, a noted critic of global warming research and author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist," has altered his position, recently noting that global warming is "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today" and "a challenge humanity must confront". In his newest book, to be released new month, Lomborg details the need to invest in policies that address global warming, which he argues could solve the problem by the end of this century. Lomborg argued that as much as half of the needed funds can be generated by taxes on carbon emissions.

For further details see http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/30/bjorn-lomborg-climate-...

Ashgate Publishing will produce a new book series, Green Criminology, to promote original scholarlship
contributing to the expanded study of environmental harm, crime, law and justice from a criminological
perspective. Michael J. Lynch and Paul B. Stretesky will serve as series editors. The series is expected to
publish between three to twelve books per year. See attached annoucement for further details.

Keeping it Radical: Exploring Income, Income Inequality and Poverty Data for the US.
 
Michael J. Lynch (Department of Criminology, University of South Florida)
 

Whether or not we are willing to admit it, the world is hurling to its demise much more rapidly than we would like to admit. This is due, in large part, to our modern state of ignorance about the state of the environment and the fact that, as Bill McKibben wrote in The End of Nature, that we have spoiled nature. And while we were spoiling nature with what appeared to each of us tiny little acts, we never saw the big picture, never connected all the “little” incidents of pollution together, never imaged the mass of what we were doing. As McKibben noted, “We never thought we had wrecked nature.

Those involved in founding the marxist/radical/critical criminology of the late 1960s and early 1970s, were also often members of groups that engaged in various acts of protest designed to stimulate social change. These criminologists spent much of their time being activists. Their activism was shared with and by the college students they taught, and they spent at least part of their time engaged in activities that brought their social change theories to life.

Today, college students are not very active politically, and are very unlikely to be engaged in acts of resistance. In order to stimulate activism, I often design my courses to include an option to engage in a community activist project in lieu of a term paper. The assignments vary depending on the course. In environmental law and crime, the students are encouraged to map out hazardous waste sites and dangers within a local, economically deprived community, and set up a meeting to share that information with community members. Students have also become involved in the community by attending City Council meetings and becoming members of committees on community problems related to crime, justice or the environment. Students in one of my graduate classes, for example, became experts on water distribution rules and rights, and helped guide decisions made by Hillsborough County about expanded water rights requested filed by water bottling companies that sought to increase the amount of water they were allowed to bottle. The student committee, using information it gathered on the past behavior of the companies who had applied for expanded water rights in other communities, helped conviced the Hillsborough County executives not to expand water pumping rights. To spread the idea of activism, I have also served as the student advisor to a group that protested animal experimentation on campus.

The US Census Bureau released new figures on the economic health and well being of Americans on August 29th in its annual report. Below I summarize some of the important aspects of this report. To view this report: www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/p60-231.pdf

1. Real median household income rose 1.1% in 2005 to $46,326. Real median income is an inflation adjusted measure which indicates the income amount that divides US families at their midpoint, with one half of families earning less than $46,326, and one half of families earning greater than that amount.

2. Although real median household income rose last year, the rise was not sufficient to overcome the impact of the recession that ushered in the 21st century in the US. Real median family incomes in the US in 2005 remained 0.5% lower than real median family incomes in 2001.

The attached file contains a brief discussion of income inequality, and includes links to several important web based articles and sites dealing with income inequality.

World Distribution of Gini Index http://www2.physics.umd.edu/~yakovenk/econophysics.html

Radicals are often confronted with criticisms of their approach that directs attention to the fall of former communist nations. This line of critique assumes that the forms of communism/socialism (C/S) and governance/economics practiced in these nations mirrors the more ideal system radicals prefer. The critique also suggests that C/S arraignments have failed because they are less preferable to democracy and capitalism. The graph above, taken from Adrian A. Dragulescu and Victor M. Yankovenko’s 2002 study, "Statistical Mechanics of Money, Income and Wealth: A Short Survey” (AIP Conference Proceedings 661), helps address this criticism. The critique these data offer of the failure of former communist nations approach are “objective” to the extent that they deal with differences in income inequality over time, and do not rely on subjective arguments concerning the value placed on governance forms (e.g., the preference for democracy).

The public has been convinced that the biggest threat to their health and well being is terrorism. This has legitimized a massive military build up designed to intervene in Middle Eastern nations. The war on terrorism and terrorist (WOTT) has helped drown out increasing bad news about the health of the world's environment (from global warming to pollution and species extinction), and the shrinking supply of oil. At the same time, the WOTT has provided a means to satisfy the oil supply crises looming in the US.

These are issues students need to confront and which critical criminologists have largely ignored. To be sure, these topics have been the subject of critical research that takes globalization as a central concern, especially in relation to state crimes (e.g., the work of Kramer, Michalowski, Kauzlarich). However, the majority of critical criminology has become bogged down in issues of local identity and communicative expressions, which are symptoms of the extreme forms of alienation engendered by modern societies. The tendency to take these forms of alienation as an expression of real and meaningful developments in human consciousness has allowed much contemporary critical criminology to dissolve into fractured, discontinuous, isolated postmodern critiques that facilitate individualism rather than the unification of people with similar interests. These interests, for example, include the fight against environmental contamination (and for environmental justice), global warming, and the end of oil.

Important Links

See below for links you and your students can employ to investigate a variety of issues related to the environmental health of the world, looming crises, and the general decline in the health of the world eco-system.