Capucin monkey in his arboreal home, innocent of what fate may have in store for him and his species.

By John Seed

he tropical Andes of Ecuador are at the top of the world list of biodiversity hotspots in terms of vertebrate species, endemic vertebrates, and endemic plants. Ecuador has more orchid and hummingbird species than Brazil, which is 32 times larger, and more diversity than the entire USA.

In the last year, the Ecuadorean government has quietly granted mining concessions to over 1.7 million hectares (4.25 million acres) of forest reserves and indigenous territories. These were awarded to transnational corporations in closed-door deals without public knowledge or consent.

This is in direct violation of Ecuadorean law and international treaties, and will decimate headwater ecosystems and biodiversity hotspots of global significance. However, Ecuadorean groups think there is little chance of stopping the concessions using the law unless there is a groundswell of opposition from Ecuadorean society and strong expressions of international concern.

The Vice President of Ecuador, who acted as Coordinating Director for the office of ‘Strategic Sectors’, which promoted and negotiated these concessions, was jailed for 6 years for corruption. However, this has not stopped the huge giveaway of pristine land to mining companies.

From the cloud forests in the Andes to the indigenous territories in the headwaters of the Amazon, the Ecuadorean government has covertly granted these mining concessions to multinational mining companies from China, Australia, Canada, and Chile, amongst others.

The first country in the world to get the rights of Nature or Pachamama written into its constitution is now ignoring that commitment.

They’ve been here before. In the 80’s and 90’s Chevron-Texaco dumped 18 billion gallons of crude oil there in the biggest rainforest petroleum spill in history. This poisoned the water of tens of thousands of people and has done irreparable damage to ecosystems.

Now 14% of the country has been concessioned to mining interests. This includes a million hectares of indigenous land, half of all the territories of the Shuar in the Amazon and three-quarters of the territory of the Awa in the Andes.

Please sign the petition and contribute to the crowdfund which will help Ecuadorean civil society’s campaign to have these concessions rescinded.

As founder and director of the Rainforest Information Centre (RIC), I’ve had a long history of involvement with Ecuador’s rainforests.

Back in the late ‘80’s our volunteers initiated numerous projects in the country and one of these, the creation of the Los Cedros Biological Reserve was helped with a substantial grant from the Australian Government aid agency, AusAID. Los Cedros lies within the Tropical Andes Hotspot, in the country’s northwest. Los Cedros consists of nearly 7000 hectares of premontane and lower montane wet tropical and cloud forest teeming with rare, endangered and endemic species and is a crucial southern buffer zone for the quarter-million hectare Cotocachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve. Little wonder that scientists from around the world rallied to the defense of Los Cedros.

In 2016 a press release from a Canadian mining company alerted us to the fact that they had somehow acquired a mining concession over Los Cedros! We hired a couple of Ecuadorean researchers and it slowly dawned on us that Los Cedros was only one of 41 “Bosques Protectores” (protected forests) which had been secretly concessioned. For example, nearly all of the 311,500 hectare Bosque Protector “Kutuku-Shaimi”, where 5000 Shuar families live, has been concessioned. In November 2017, RIC published a report by Bitty Roy, Professor of Ecology from Oregon State University and her co-workers,  mapping the full extent of the horror that is being planned.

Although many of these concessions are for exploration, the mining industry anticipates an eightfold growth in investment to $8 billion by 2021 due to a “revised regulatory framework” much to the jubilation of the mining companies. Granting mineral concessions in reserves means that these reserves aren’t actually protected any longer as, if profitable deposits are found, the reserves will be mined and destroyed.

In Ecuador, civil society is mobilising and has asked their recently elected government to prohibit industrial mining “in water sources and water recharge areas, in the national system of protected areas, in special areas for conservation, in protected forests and fragile ecosystems”.

The indigenous peoples have been fighting against mining inside Ecuador for over a decade.  Governments have persecuted more than 200 indigenous activists using the countries anti-terrorism laws to hand out stiff prison sentences to indigenous people who openly speak out against the destruction of their territories.

Fortunately, the new government has signalled an openness to hear indigenous and civil society’s concerns, not expressed by the previous administration.

In December 2017, a large delegation of indigenous people marched on Quito and President Moreno promised no NEW oil and mining concessions, and on 31 January 2018, Ecuador’s Mining Minister resigned a few days after Indigenous and environmental groups demanded he step down during a demonstration. On 31 January, The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, CONAIE, announced their support for the platform shared by the rest of civil society involved in the anti-mining work. Then on 15 February CONAIE called on the government to “declare Ecuador free of industrial metal-mining”, a somewhat more radical demand than that of the rest of civil society.

But we will need a huge international outcry to rescind the existing concessions: many billions of dollars of mining company profits versus some of the most biologically diverse ecosystems on Earth and the hundreds of local communities and indigenous peoples who depend on them.

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION TO SUPPORT THEIR DEMANDS.

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]rom 2006, under the Correa-Glas administration, Ecuador contracted record levels of external debt for highway and hydroelectric dam infrastructure to subsidize mining. Foreign investments were guaranteed by a corporate friendly international arbitration system, facilitated by the World Bank which had earlier set the stage for the current calamity by funding mineralogical surveys of national parks and other protected areas and advising the administration on dismantling of laws and regulations protecting the environment.

After 2008, when Ecuador defaulted on $3.2 billion worth of its national debt, it borrowed $15 billion from China, to be paid back in the form of oil and mineral exports. These deals have been fraught with corruption. Underselling, bribery and the laundering of money via offshore accounts are routine practice in the Ecuadorean business class, and the Chinese companies who now hold concessions over vast tracts of Ecuadorean land are no cleaner. Before leaving office Correa-Glas removed much of the regulation that had been holding the mining industry in check. And the corruption goes much deeper than mere  bribes.

The lure of mining is a deadly mirage. The impacts of large-scale open pit mining within rainforest watersheds include mass deforestation, erosion, the contamination of water sources by toxins such as lead and arsenic,  and desertification. A lush rainforest transforms into an arid wasteland incapable of sustaining either ecosystems or human beings.

Without a huge outcry both within Ecuador and around the world, the biological gems and pristine rivers and streams will be destroyed.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Civil society needs an open conversation with the state. Ecuador has enormous potential to develop its economy based on renewable energy and its rich biodiversity can support a large ecotourism industry. In 2010 Costa Rica banned open-pit mining, and today has socioeconomic indicators better than Ecuador’s. Costa Rica also provides a ‘Payment for Ecosystem Services’ to landholders, and through this scheme has actually increased its rainforest area (from 20% to just over 50%).

Ecuador’s society and government must explore how an economy based on the sustainable use of pristine water sources, the country’s incomparable forests, and other natural resources is superior to an economy based on short term extraction leaving behind a despoiled and impoverished landscape. For example,  studies by Earth Economics in the Intag region of Ecuador (where some of the new mining concessions are located) show that ecosystem services and sustainable development would offer a better economic solution let alone ecological and social.

The Rainforest Information Centre is launching a CROWDFUND to support Ecuadorean NGO’s to mobilise and to mount a publicity and education campaign and to help advance a dialogue throughout Ecuador and beyond: ‘Extractivism, economic diversification and prospects for sustainable development in Ecuador’.

We have set the crowdfund target at A$15,000 and Paul Gilding, ex-CEO of Greenpeace International is getting the ball rolling with an offer to match all donations $ for $ so that every $ that you donate will be matched by Paul. Donations are tax-deductible in Australia and the US.

When you sign the PETITION you will reach not just to the President of Ecuador and his cabinet. The petition is also addressed to the other actors who have set the stage for this calamity, being:

· The World Bank who funded a project which collected geochemical data from 3.6 million hectares of Western Ecuador including seven national protected areas and dozens of forest reserves thus doing the groundwork for the mining industry.

· The international governments and NGO’s who funded the creation and upkeep of these Bosques Protectores and indigenous reserves and other protected sites and who now need to persuade Ecuador to prevent their good work from being undone.

· The governments of the countries whose mining companies are preparing this devastation.

Australian senator Lee Rhiannon (who was part of helping us create Los Cedros 30 years ago) wrote to the Canadian Environment Minister on our behalf and the Canadian Embassy has expressed concern about the bad name Cornerstone is giving the other Canadian mining projects. They have asked us for a meeting to discuss the reports of bad business practices by the company. Likewise, the Chinese government is beginning to develop some guidance which will come into effect in March 2018. We are lobbying the Australian government to put pressure on BHP, Solgold and other Australian companies preparing to mine protected forests and indigenous reserves in Ecuador.

Visit Ecuador Endangered for more links to the history and causes of Ecuador’s mining crisis. There you will find research, detailed reports and news updates. Contact information can be found for those wanting to be involved in the campaign, which is being run entirely by volunteers. To let the Ecuadorean Government, World Bank and mining companies know you want them to invest in a sustainable future for all, a petition can be found here.

Please join, follow and share this campaign on Social Media.

FOR PRINT MEDIA: A LONGER VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE REPLETE WITH HYPERLINKS MAY BE FOUND AT www.rainforestinfo.org.au/forests/ecuador/article.htm

(This is the final part in a 5-part series which examines the Russian Revolution and relies upon the new book A People’s History of the Russian Revolution.)

Iran has rectified the biggest error of the Russian Revolution by proving that socialism is undoubtedly compatible with religion.

The horrific persecution of religious people, the wholesale Bolshevik slaughter of clergy, the razing of churches, and their abominable intolerance of all religions was - in the least condemnatory terms - an unacceptable violation of both human rights and human nature itself.

Their foolish lumping together of religion along with capitalism and monarchy was a political catastrophe that enormously swelled right-wing reactionary forces, and directly provoked the rise of Mussolini in 1922, and then Hitler. Indeed, the USSR’s unprecedented total war on religion provided the single worst public relations failure in the fight against capitalism and bourgeois (West European) democracy.

What the Iranian Revolution of 1979 has done is to help reverse this enormous failure of 1917 Russia. Maybe one has to be a Muslim to see this clearly and without bias, but Iran has proven more than any other nation in modern history that religion can play a positive role, and even a principal role, in pushing society towards economic and democratic socialism.

"...Islam, as I assume most everyone is aware, differs from its brother Christianity in that it does not believe in rendering to Caesar what belongs to Caesar if Caesar is unjust: throughout the Koran Muslims are specifically, repeatedly and categorically obligated to stand with the oppressed and to oppose tyranny."

Iran has done this more emphatically than in any Latin American country, where religion has also performed a very similar function in recent decades and where it will undoubtedly continue to do so. Indeed, anyone with any familiarity with Latin America would agree that it is absolutely unthinkable that leftism will progress there without the direct support of the Catholic Church and the myriad indigenous religions.

If Western leftists who detest religion could just take a clear-eyed look around, they would see that the leftist world has changed and it is they who are the outdated, reactionary extremists on this subject:

In the cloakroom of the Museum of the Revolution in Havana there is an easily-visible posted note from the Pope discouraging theft - that is not irony, but progress; Vietnam’s constitution has always recognized religion and a 2003 Communist Party resolution strengthened religious protections; China has given up their war on their religious culture and is promoting neo-neo-Confucianism (which has a cosmology and thus is definitely a religion, even if it is not one easily understandable in the usual terms of the Abrahamic faiths).

The jury is in and there is no longer any question: Socialists no longer hate religion, only extremists do. Certainly, only extremists deny other people the right to their chosen faith!

So in 2017 Iranian “fundamentalism” is looking simply “fundamental”…to Iran’s essentially unparalleled human progress since the end of the Iran-Iraq War: from the period 1990-2014 only capitalist/longtime military dictatorship/US-occupied South Korea had a bigger increase in their UN Human Development Index than Iran…and there is no economic blockade on South Korea.

The Western left’s “Iranian blinders” never cease to amaze me: Even true leftists in the West never seem to ask themselves why the same countries, cultures & ideologies who committed near-total cold war against the USSR and socialist countries are…also committing near-total, cold war against Iran!

LOL, it's as if such leftists think this is some sort of unrelated coincidence! But it’s really because their anti-religion (and thus anti-democratic) and ethnocentric tendencies are so domineering that they cannot see Iran’s contribution to mankind’s modern democratic progress clearly.

But the Western left’s hatred of religion is outdated even within their own societies: with a few exceptions (Italy, Spain, Poland, etc.) I doubt many people in Europe believe that their churches play any real role in their national politics anymore? This makes their anti-religion attitude even more unnecessary, and twists it into the obsessive vigilance of a fanatic.

The ideological similarities between 1917 Russia and 1979 Iran are obvious to anyone: Anti-monarchism, anti-bourgeois (West European) democracy, anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, support for liberation movements, anti-centralization, pro-economic equality, gender equality (an undoubtable success in Iran which is both statistically and culturally verifiable, but like all cultural issues parts of this must be viewed within the Iranian context and not a foreign, externally-imposed, “Amsterdam” version), explicit rights for minorities, respect for minority cultures, and on and on and on.

That’s almost 10 pretty darn fundamental socialist concepts which Iranians openly pursue and advocate…and that’s off the top of my head.

But we couldn’t have done it without the Russian Revolution first lighting the way - even if they got lost in the end.

The religious basis of opposing capitalism and imperialism

“The Bolshevik policy was simple: with the exploited against the exploiter, with the oppressed against the oppressor; above all, opposition to the dominant great Russian chauvinism of the Tsarist State.”

That quote is from A People’s History of the Russian Revolution, a new book on which this 5-part series is based. I think it’s going to be an important book because it shows how the leaders & political parties of the Russian Revolution were not as vital to the revolution’s success as much as the actions and efforts of the 99%. This glorification of the common man is always a necessary idea, especially on this centenary of the Russian Revolution.

But this article - the final in the series - is intended to show the links between 1917 Russia and 1979 Iran: to many people, and not just Iranians or Muslims, they are two inseparable links in the chain of human progress and political modernity.

Young men proclaiming their allegiance to Imam Khomeini in 1978.

What should be notable in the former part of this quotation is its resemblance to the injunctions of jihad (war against sin) and Islamic teachings.

Islam, as I assume most everyone is aware, differs from its brother Christianity in that it does not believe in rendering to Caesar what belongs to Caesar if Caesar is unjust: throughout the Koran Muslims are specifically, repeatedly and categorically obligated to stand with the oppressed and to oppose tyranny. (It’s true that there is a widespread consensus that devotion to this idea is stronger in Shiite theology and culture, but that does not mean it is still not a key part of Sunni culture as well, especially when compared with Christianity.)

This is why any Muslim who learns about the moral injunctions and goals of socialism cannot help but be struck by many of their similarities with Islamic mores. LOL, this similarity is such a self-evident truth to Muslims – and often such a shocking revelation to Westerners – that I cannot help but be amused at the disparity between our cultural divides on this subject.

This is also why supporters of Iranian Islamic Socialism can honestly say that they are advocating both Islam and Marxism at the same time, whereas Westerner after Westerner has dogmatically insisted to me that I cannot be Marxist because I am also religious! After all these many years, all can say is: LOL! And then I point to Iran as proof that it IS indeed possible….

The inconsistencies, idiocies and inherited, illogical intolerances on this subject – this cultural chasm, this enormous divide in the perceptions of modern reality– is both so enormous and yet so insignificant that I am justified in ending this with a wave of my hand.

The near-religious urgency of socialism - the religious urgency of Iranian Islamic Socialism

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hat 1917, the eight decades of modern history which followed, and the failure of the pan-European project have all demonstrated is that the People only rule in an ideologically-correct, socialist-inspired system.

I can assume that the many proponents of West European (bourgeois) democracy are bristling at the phrase “ideologically-correct”. “What does he mean by that?! Where is his tolerance and doesn’t he realize that no ideology should be considered ‘correct’?!”

No, I don’t agree, and this is why Leftism is losing in the West: it tolerates that which wants to kill it.

Their bristling is their problem because they believe, falsely, in the complete relativism of all political issues. Many of them go even further, I believe, to the complete relativism of all moral issues.

This refusal to decide - this refusal to admit responsibility for anyone other than themselves and, perhaps (and only “perhaps”) their most immediate family - is a cultural dilemma which Western European societies have been unable to solve and which has produced their terrible model of governance that nobody wants to emulate anymore.

Indeed, as socialism’s model continues to succeed and impress (China and Iran being the two stars, currently), the Western model will continue to fall into disrepute…although it can be easily disputed that the Third World would have accepted only a small measure of the Western model if it hadn’t been forcibly imposed by colonialism. Regardless, this West European (bourgeois) model will be swept aside by their own People’s revolution, although they will probably be the last region to modernize.

The key to remember here is that Iran has already had theirs: Iran has declared illegal the privileges unique to the Greek island despot. (Indeed, this privilege was always, and thankfully, unknown to the plains farmer used to living harmoniously in a compact with the land and his neighbour in Russia, China, India and in many other places…but we cannot blame the Greeks for living in isolated, atypical, idyllic Greece. Western Europe must, however, finally modernize their political value system from that antiquated model.)

The book’s author understands this, and the necessity not of having choices - which the West hugely overvalues and falsely assumes that they actually possess - but of making definite choices:

“Politics has no real center-point, least of all in time of revolution. Every great question demanded a yes or no answer. Would the war be ended? Would the eight hour day be realized? Would the peasants get the land? Would the nationalities be granted autonomy? To each of these questions, the Provisional Government gave one answer and the masses another.”

The genius of the Iranian revolution was that it injected the urgency and faith-based stability provided by religious morality into these modern questions.

Indeed: God watches from all vantage points and at all times – one should not be permitted (or encouraged, as it often appears in the West) to choose immorally or anti-socially, and that definitely must go at the repository of all social power, collective unity, and socialist decision making: the ballot box. This combination of religion and democracy has been, few would object, most fully and most effectively realized in today’s Iran…and the results have been great for Iranians (and Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, etc.)

The Russian Revolution believed - in an egotistical Nietzschean fashion that was the trend at the time - that intellectual will is all that was needed to make moral choices. “Who needs a higher power? I am the highest power!”

Well, as Dostoyevsky and others proved: an over-estimation on the moral correctness of solely following one’s own will and will-to-power is quite dangerous for both the individual and society; the idea that humans will near-unfailingly choose the moral decision over the selfish decision without some sort of religious instruction or mandate is, it must be admitted, a historical aberration in human history. And the jury is in: the results have not been increased equality, peace, land and bread.

Frankly, it also remains to be seen if a modern education system - which necessarily promotes revolutionary democratic socialism and ardently dissuades from reactionary capitalism - can fully create this revolutionary fervour which demands correct behavior, immediately and permanently, without the moral imperative of religion? A society without any religious instruction is certainly another historical aberration.

Cuba, for example, has had the “advantage” of stimulating revolutionary fervor due to the decades of injustice which is atypically caused by living in an island under international blockade…but seemingly every household has either a Santeria shrine or a Catholic one, so it’s not as if religious instruction is absent – it is just not done at their schools.

Indeed, re-examining the utility of religion in the advance of socialism is something which the West and their leftists never even discuss informally, or even in formal educational settings!

What is clear is that religious righteousness was and is sufficient in Iran in order to produce the revolutionary fervor and stability which has produced a socialist, humane and modern society. It worked, and is still working thanks to this catalyst as you are reading this.

Disregard this section all you like, but on this issue there is no doubt: the repression of religion was the Achilles' heel of the Russian Revolution, while the promotion of religion in Iran (and elsewhere) has produced undeniably progressive results, proven by their sustained attacks on capitalist, monarchist, autocratic, neo-imperialist and reactionary forces.

The Russian clergy deserved to be faulted: why weren't they on the streets with the People?

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]irstly, Marxism doesn’t promote war on religion, but Russian Marxism did. LOL, the Russian Marxists made zero effort to win over the clergy to their side, such was their intolerance.

Why was this intolerance so absolute? The answer from the Russian Marxist seems clear: the clergy colluded with the 1% in order to preserve their special status.

That is not of interest in this article. What is of interest is this: You absolutely cannot make this claim against Iran's clergy in the creation of the Iranian Revolution.

This is such widespread knowledge that I don’t even need to support it with proofs. Iranian clergy were on the side of the Iranian People, taking the same risks and demanding the same political and economic modernity. They were not in their ivory tower, eating well and performing ceremonies while the People suffered, starved and took all the risks.

However, you can absolutely make this claim against the French clergy today.

In 8 years of covering hundreds and hundreds of public protests I have never, ever, never, ever seen a priest at a (even remotely) anti-capitalist (like anti-austerity) or anti-imperialist demonstration. The answer I get is: France has a strict (purely informal cultural) law which keeps religion out of politics and street demonstrations.

Absolutely not true: Then why do France’s clergy take part in anti-gay marriage demonstrations? This is obvious hypocrisy, and one thing we should definitely take from this is: France’s clergy participate when they feel like it. And they only feel like it when they want to serve the essence of a fake-leftist function: to give the appearance of moral virtue and modernity but actually propping up the establishment. Also, choosing to primarily get involved in order to participate in the trap of divisive identity politics inherent in modern bourgeois (West European) democracies.

But again, and like some in Latin America, Iran's clergy is fundamentally and repeatedly on the side of the People and true social righteousness.

It is incumbent on the Westerners to explain this reality for themselves: I do not have to try to explain the obviously superior political intelligence of the Iranian clergy. I certainly do not mean to sound superior here, but it is an objective fact that Iran’s revolutionary clerical leaders cannot be called fake-leftists.

The separation of church and state is a bourgeois-era concept (tap, tap - is this thing on?)

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]o many Western leftists do not seem to realize that their cherished separation of church and state is completely part of the dictates of bourgeois (West European) democracy! France’s influential law on secularity dates to 1905 – long before the Russian Revolution. The French Revolution’s, as important a step as it was, was a fundamentally bourgeois revolution, and not only because of its anti-Roman Catholic stance.

Indeed, if Western anti-religion leftists can sincerely take just one thing from this article – if they cannot possibly countenance the idea of Iran as a socialist or even remotely leftist culture – please realize that your adherence to secularism means you are adhering to a concept dating from the resolutely bourgeois era of European history: it is not modern.

The Russian Revolution made this same error.

Iranians, for cultural reasons I cannot take the time to explain here, are absolutely unable to follow this anti-religion path. Anyway, our rejection in 1979 of bourgeois (West European) democracy also forces us to reject this pat in desire for democratic modernity.

Therefore, the only question for Western leftists becomes: No matter what your bias is against religion, or Islam, or our ayatollahs - are you opposed to us having our own form of democracy?

Because mixing religion and politics in Iran is the result of an undoubtedly democratic consensus.

A recent and seemingly solid American university poll showed that 76% of Iranians answered “a lot” (47%) or “somewhat” (29%) to the following question, with only 6% answering “not at all”: “In your opinion, to what degree should our country's policymakers take religious teachings into account when they make decisions?”

76% is a landslide. But it’s actually more than a landslide, because we can also fairly add in the 16% who responded “not much”: when compared with a pro-secularity Westerner, “not much” translates into quite in favor of religion in government.

The reality is that 1917 Russia was probably the same way – it was just a supremely tiny minority who completely opposed religion in government.

Tragically, they thought they could change this near-universal fact of human nature simply by banning religion. They were totally wrong, because religion is no mere, short-term, fundamentally-empty “opium” in the slightest.

Western leftists compound this tragedy by refusing to learn the obvious lesson despite all the bloodbaths, sinning and political failure: people will pursue religion in their lives.

This may be your chance to leap ahead morally from 1917 Bolsheviks, just as they leapt ahead from the 1861 “emancipation of serfs is good enough” types: Now you may not pursue religion in your life, but if you fail to accept that others do…then you insist on being totally undemocratic on this issue.

What’s certain is that by making this your “identity issue”, you will continue - and you deserve to continue - to lose in your fight for leftism in your Western country.

Iran - decades after the Russian Revolution, far away, a different culture and society - did not make the same error: they chose democracy.

It is fair to say that Marxism is a religion; it is fair to say that all politics is religious

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he ungenius of bourgeois (West European) democracy is encapsulated by the saying “politics is the art of compromise”.

For the religiously faithful: there can be no compromise with capitalism, colonialism, inequality, racism, Zionism, militarism, etc. To compromise on these issues is to put your soul, and other souls, at permanent risk.

In this world, what this bourgeois compromise translates into is: a compromise made among those within the 1%. It is rule by the gentry/aristocrat/technocrat. For them, the compromise between peasant and king is called “president”; for them the compromise between the emperor and the debt-slave is rule by “wealthy technocratic ministers”.

This is all immoral in 2017. It was not immoral to the brute caveman, or the feudal lord, or the Nietzschean Superman, but it is definitely immoral in 2017. For many in the West, it took the Great Recession to remind them of socialism, class warfare and the necessity of toeing the political hard-line.

Russia in 1917 needed no such reminding, but it does today. Iran, however, needs no such reminding, thankfully.

What Iran has done on behalf of the entire world is to demand that all religions no longer play a parasitic role – it cannot sit on the sidelines of human activity.

This was perhaps a vitally important and necessary step: Perhaps in the 19th/20th century Christian world their clergy truly was a hindrance to progress? Maybe, for reasons perhaps inherent in Christianity or perhaps not at all, Christianity had been an oppressive force even though true faith is indeed liberating?

In short, Iran’s continued success should force the West to fundamentally re-examine its very limited conception of the role religion can play in politics.

Iran has proved that clergy can be a politically – and not just morally – revitalizing force which protects the People and encourages the People’s progress, and not just the 1%.  That’s a concept which the older generation in the West may not even want to consider, but the continued success of Iran means that younger generations will not be so close-minded: they will have to account for Iran’s stature as the only nation in the Muslim world which is not still a plaything of Western imperialism.

Again, in my visits to the 3rd World I hear respectful words for Iran again and again and again, while I hear only the contrary in the West (at least from White people). I hope the West comes around to Iran’s socialist success because they are really missing out, and shooting themselves in the foot by not learning from Iran’s success, and also by not supporting Iran.

The role of the People in 1917, 1979 and 2017 is the subject of the most honest histories

What followed 1917 in Russia is not the subject of this series.

Rest assured that if you are familiar with modern Iranian history, it was the same for the nascent Soviet state: international blockade, military intervention, the counter-revolutionary movement guided from abroad by traitors and chauvinistic foreigners, etc. Capitalist tactics do not change, nor can they if they aim to suppress socialism, democracy and modernity, wherever it may sprout.

A major reason that Iranian Islamic Socialism succeeded is that Iran benefited from the first steps and obvious mistakes of the Russian Revolution. Socialism was a new concept, and many changes needed to be made: indeed, the art of socialism is to be constantly changing, adapting, polling, voting, implementing, etc.

Iran was also a much, much richer country than 1917 war-torn Russia, and it was also richer than a Soviet economy which had been immediately devastated by Gorbachev’s perestroika – his unforgivable abrupt end to central planning of the economy (the “fatal error” of December 1987: to immediately cut to 50% from 100% all the products of industry), as well as the cultural upheaval caused by an unwanted unchaining of capitalist media, his declared end of the class war, his brutal abandonment of price subsidies and other measures which…keep a nation’s people from economic and spiritual (revolutionary) poverty.

What happened in Iran – the combination of religion and socialism - was indeed unprecedented, and violently opposed by foreigners, but it was not at Europe’s doorstep, like Russia.

And I don’t wonder why non-Muslim countries aren’t embracing Iranian Islamic Socialism for their own country – they aren’t Islamic. The war on Iran is far more motivated by the dictates of capitalism than the war for or against religion; all the West knows about Islam, and Iranian Islam, is that “it is not Christian”.

So Iran’s revolution isn’t exportable to Europe like in 1917 Russia…but it actually is, and in a far more benign way: ending the bourgeois, capitalist concept of strict secularity.

The term “Islamic Socialism” is quite a lot for some small Western minds to handle, both the “Islamic” and the “Socialism” part, LOL. Human progress assures me that Westerners will have to get used to it – thankfully, Iranians are well acquainted with it.

And I am certain that if the Arab world’s neo-colonial puppets are ever toppled, what their people will democratically install is their own national version of Islamic Socialism which is being modeled in a significant way (but not total) on the Iranian model.

It is no wonder why Iranians rejected bourgeois (West European) democracy - it is outdated and not even democracy. Everybody outside of the West sees that their legacy of centuries of blood and violence and that their so-called “postwar democracies” are simply selfish and corrupt capitalist aristocracies.

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]nly a few nations can claim to have actually picked up the torch of the 1917 Russian Revolution. China, Cuba, and Vietnam already had their revolutions; Burkina Faso was toppled in 1987 by France & the US; Venezuela has never had a revolution because they still keep playing by the rules and structures of bourgeois (West European) democracy; 2011 Egypt did the same as Venezuela and it turned out much worse, much faster; can you keep a straight face if you openly suggest that the post-Cold War pan-European project picked up the People’s torch?

Since the year 1979 almost nobody but Iran has dared to use the same methods - mass appropriation, mass redistribution, massive resistance on multiple fronts - which were employed by Russian socialists post-1917.

For those who want to learn more about Iran’s socialist methods post 1979, I encourage you to read this article I wrote: “Iran: Socialism’s ignored success story”. In short, I prove that Iran checks all the boxes of a socialist nation: An avant-garde party, central planning of the economy, control over the media, support for foreign liberation movements, empowering people via economic redistribution and democratization.

“But Iran is religious so it can’t be socialist yadda yadda yadda….” Yes, thanks for sharing that with me, but I have to wrap this series up.

This article was to make abundantly clear the obvious link between 1917 and 1979. The link is not perfect, because we are talking about two totally different cultures, but the bond which we can call “socialism” is a wonderful, justifiable fit.

Leftism, anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, equality, democracy: Let’s now simply agree that all of these beautiful, necessary, peaceful ideas were present in both the 1917 Russian Revolution (excepting state-forced atheism) and the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

But Iran could never have done it without 1917!

And Iran has tried to, and will continue to try to, pay it forward: The capitalist war against Iranian Islamic Socialism has clearly failed to topple the revolution, and no amount of Trumpian rhetoric will ever make me believe that Iran can be toppled militarily – that was tried already, and it failed.

This means, if history is a guide, the world can look forward to decades and multiple generations of support for leftist ideas from Iran, just as the people of the USSR once provided the world.

Who’s ready for the upcoming Islamic Socialist century?! It will certainly happen in the Islamic part of the world, Inshallah. If the Islamic Socialist century is just a happy subset of the often-discussed Chinese Red Century”…why keep fighting the feelin’?

But, clearly, no hoped-for socialist century would have arrived anywhere without the sacrifices and successes of 1917 Russians. And so I wish a happy 100th birthday to the Russian Revolution, and extend my heartfelt thanks, as everyone should, and as history always will.

******************************************************
This is the final part in a 5-part series on the 1917 Russian Revolution which aims to put the role of the People first.

Here is the list of articles which were published, and I hope you will find them useful in your leftist struggle!

A People’s History of the Russian Revolution pits new scholarship vs. Mainstream Media

Who was not responsible for the Russian Revolution, and who was?

The fascinating People’s account of how the Russian Revolution was won at street level

Why anti-socialist talk about Lenin even more than socialists

Iran’s 1979 Revolution picked up the People’s torch first lit in 1917 Russia 

All these articles can be found on this site, just do a search for "Ramin Mazaheri".

by Robert Jensen

This is Chapter 3 of my 2004 book, Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity, published by City Lights Books.

https://www.amazon.com/Citizens-Empire-Struggle-Claim-Humanity/dp/0872864324

Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July took to the big screen Ron Kovic's brave account  of his awakening —at great personal cost—from the siren call of patriotism. The movie, starring Tom Cruise in the lead role, remains a haunting antiwar film. (1990)

For many, that was the patriotic equation: United States = Freedom = Flag. The conventional image was of a sleeping giant wakened, ready to assert itself in the world, its people brimming with a revitalized sense of patriotism. Such declarations came from virtually every politician and pundit.

And also, to the surprise of some, it came from many in the antiwar movement, who declared, “Peace is patriotic.” In the struggle to avoid marginalization -- in an attempt to find some rhetorical device that could get traction in mainstream America -- many who opposed the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq did not argue against patriotism, but instead struggled over the way patriotism should be defined. When faced with the claim that patriotism meant supporting the nation as it went to war, antiwar organizers responded that dissent and critique of an immoral, illegal, and counterproductive war also were expressions of patriotism. These activists tried to distinguish between a reflexive nationalism (my country, right or wrong) and a reflective patriotism (my country, as we try to make it better), framing the former as inappropriate for a democracy and the latter as the best expression of democracy.

A similar debate went on within journalism. There were differences of opinion about whether journalists should publicly proclaim their patriotism and about how aggressive the questioning of officials should be in certain situations. CBS News anchor Dan Rather took flak for various hyperpatriotic comments he made after 9/11, most notably his Sept. 17, 2001, remark on the David Letterman show: “George Bush is the president. He makes the decisions, and, you know, it’s just one American, wherever he wants me to line up, just tell me where, and he’ll make the call.”  But Rather was no doubt accurate when he told a newspaper convention in March 2002, “[W]e all want to be patriotic.” 

  An editor at one of the top U.S. journalism reviews also implicitly endorsed patriotism in arguing that journalists serve their country best when asking “tough, even unpopular questions when our government wages war.” He distinguished “patriotism, love of one’s country” from “nationalism -- the exalting of one’s nation and its culture and interests above all others. If patriotism is  a kind of affection, nationalism is its dark side.”

I am against nationalism, and I am against patriotism. They are both the dark side. It is time not simply to redefine a kinder-and-gentler patriotism, but to sweep away the notion and acknowledge it as morally, politically, and intellectually bankrupt. It is time to scrap patriotism.

More specifically, it is crucial to scrap patriotism in today’s empire, the United States, where patriotism is not only a bad idea but literally a threat to the survival of the planet. We should abandon patriotism and strive to become more fully developed human beings not with shallow allegiances to a nation but rich and deep ties to humanity. At first glance, in a country where patriotism is almost universally taken to be an unquestioned virtue, this may seem outrageous. But there is a simple path to what I consider to be this simple conclusion.

What do you love?

Crowd holding American flags

If we use the common definition of patriotism -- love of, and loyalty to, one’s country -- the first question that arises is, what is meant by country? Nation-states, after all, are not naturally occurring objects. What is the object of our affection and loyalty? In discussions with various community groups and classes since 9/11, I have asked people to explain which aspects of a nation-state -- specifically in the context of patriotism in the United States -- they believe should spark patriotic feelings. Toward whom or what should one feel love and loyalty? The answers offered include the land, the people of a nation, its culture, the leadership, national policies, the nation’s institutions, and the democratic ideals of the nation. To varying degrees, all seem like plausible answers, yet all fail to provide a coherent answer to that basic question.

But what has that to do with love or loyalty to a nation-state? Does affection for a certain landscape map onto political boundaries? If I love the desert, should I have a greater affection for the desert on the U.S. side of the border, and a lesser affection when I cross into Mexico? Should I love the prairie in my home state of North Dakota -- land where I was born and raised, and where I feel most comfortable, most at home -- but abandon that affection when I hit the Canadian border? In discussing connections to the land we can talk sensibly about watersheds and local ecosystems, but not national boundaries. And ties to a specific piece of land (i.e., the farm one grew up on) have nothing to do with a nation-state.

People: It’s also common to talk about patriotism in terms of love and affection for one’s countrywomen and men. This can proceed on two levels, either as an assertion of differential value of people’s lives or as an expression of affection for people. The former -- claiming that the lives of people within one’s nation-state are more valuable than lives of people outside it -- is unacceptable by the standards of virtually all major moral philosophies and religions, which typically are based on the belief that all human life is intrinsically equally valuable. It may be true that, especially in times of war, people act as if they believe the lives of fellow citizens are more valuable, but that cannot be a principle on which patriotism can rest.

This does not ignore the fact that we grieve differently, more intensely, when people close to us die. We feel something different over the death of someone we knew compared with the death of a stranger. But typically when we grieve more deeply for those we knew, it is because we knew them, not because we shared the same citizenship. We all have special affection for specific people in our lives, and it’s likely that -- by virtue of proximity -- for most of us the majority of people for whom we have that affection are citizens of the same nation. But does that mean our sense of connection to them stems from living in the same nation-state and should be understood that way? Given the individual variation in humans, why assume that someone living in our nation-state should automatically spark a feeling of connection greater than someone elsewhere? I was born in the United States near the Canadian border, and I have more in common with Canadians from the prairie provinces than  I do with, for example, the people of Texas, where I now live. Am I supposed to, by virtue of my U.S. citizenship, naturally feel something stronger for Texans than Manitobans? If so, why?

Culture: The same argument about land and people applies to cultures. Culture -- that complex mix of language, customs, art, stories, faith, traditions -- does not map exactly onto the mostly artificial boundaries of nation-states. Indeed, in many nation-states internal differences among cultures can be a source of conflict, not unity. In a society such as the United States, in which battles over these issues are routinely referred to as “the culture wars,” it’s difficult to imagine how patriotism could be defined as love of, or loyalty to, any particular culture or set of cultural practices.

So, if one were to proclaim that patriotism was about attachment to culture, the obvious question in a nation-state with diverse cultural groups would be, “What culture?” Up until fairly recently in U.S. history, society’s answer to that, implicitly, was, “the dominant white, Anglo-American culture.” We were a melting pot, but it just always seemed to turn out that the final product of the melting process didn’t change much. In an era in which it is widely agreed that people have a right to maintain their particular cultural traditions, few people are going to argue that to be patriotic one must accept that long-dominant culture and abandon other traditions. And to claim that patriotism is about respect for different cultural traditions is nonsensical; respecting different cultures may be a fine principle, but it has nothing to do with love of, or loyalty to, a nation-state.

Policies: The same argument about leaders applies to specific policies adopted by leaders. In a democracy, one may agree to follow legally binding rules, but that does not mean one supports them. Of course, no one claims that it is unpatriotic to object to existing policy about taxes or roads or education. War tends to be the only issue about which people make demands that everyone support -- or at least mute dissent about -- a national policy. But why should war be different? When so much human life is at stake, is it not even more important for all opinions to be fully aired?

Governmental structures: If patriotism is not about loyalty to a particular leader or policies, many contend, at least it can mean loyalty to our governmental structures. But that is no less an abandonment of democracy, for inherent in a real democracy is the idea that no single set of institutions can be assumed to be, for all times and places, the ultimate vehicle for democracy. In a nation founded on the principle that the people are sovereign and retain the right to reject institutions that do not serve their interests, patriotism defined as loyalty to the existing structures is hard to defend.

Democratic ideals: When challenged on these other questionable definitions of the object of love or loyalty, most people eventually land on the seemingly safe assertion that patriotism in the United States is an expression of commitment to a set of basic democratic ideals, which typically include liberty, justice, and (sometimes) equality. But problems arise here as well.

First, what makes these values distinctly American? Are not various people around the world committed to these values and to working to make them real in a variety of ways? Given that these values were not invented in the United States and are not distinct to the United States today, how can one claim them as the basis for patriotism? If these values predate the formation of the United States and are present around the world, are they not human ideals rather than American?

An analogy to gender stereotypes is helpful. After 9/11, a number of commentators argued that criticisms of masculinity should be rethought. Though the hegemonic conception of masculinity is typically defined by competition, domination, and violence, they said, cannot we now see -- realizing that male firefighters raced into burning buildings and risked their lives to save others -- that masculinity can encompass a kind of strength that is rooted in caring and sacrifice? Of course men often exhibit such strength, just as do women. So, the obvious question arises: What makes these distinctly masculine characteristics? Are they not simply human characteristics?

Ron Kovic, in his wheelchair (front, right), demonstrating against wars and human rights abuses. He and his brothers remain the exception. The imperial military catches many people when young and ignorant, and many, despite their horrendous wounds, never learn the truth. The patriotic fog issuing from the media and the politicians makes sure of that.

We identify masculine tendencies toward competition, domination, and violence because we see patterns of differential behavior; men are more prone to such behavior in our culture. We can go on to observe and analyze the ways in which men are socialized to behave in those ways, toward the goal of changing those destructive behaviors. That analysis is different than saying that admirable human qualities present in both men and women are somehow primarily the domain of one gender. To assign them to a gender is misguided, and demeaning to the gender that is then assumed not to possess them to the same degree. Once we start saying “strength and courage are masculine traits,” it leads to the conclusion that woman are not as strong or courageous. To say “strength and courage are masculine traits,” then, is to be sexist.

The same holds true for patriotism. If we abandon the crude version of patriotism but try to hold onto an allegedly more sophisticated version, we bump up against this obvious question: Why are human characteristics being labeled American if there is nothing distinctly American about them?

The above is a memorable scene ("Luke's speech"), from the antiwar film Coming Home (1978), directed by Hal Ashby, with Jane Fonda, Jon Voight (Luke), and Bruce Dern in the leads. Voight went on to win an Oscar for his performance. Decades later, doing a 180, the actor became a Republican warmonger, and something of a joke, a supporter of Rudy Giuliani, among other execrable figures. Voight even ludicrously apologised to unrepentant Vietnam vets for his words in this highly ethical film. He has certainly become the poster boy for the old notion that actors are unthinking idiots. 

The next move in the attempt to redeem patriotism is to claim that while these values are not the sole property of Americans, it is in the United States that they have been realized to their fullest extent. This is merely the hubris of the powerful. As discussed earlier, on some criteria -- such as legal protection for freedom of speech -- the United States ranks at or near the top. But the commercial media system, which dominates in the United States, also systematically shuts out radical views and narrows the political spectrum, impoverishing real democratic dialogue. It is folly to think any nation could claim to be the primary repository of any single democratic value, let alone the ideals of democracy.

Claims that the United States is the ultimate fulfillment of the values of justice also must come to terms with history and the American record of brutality, both at home and abroad. One might want to ask people of indigenous and African descent about the commitment to freedom and justice for all, in the past and today. We also would have some explaining to do to the people from nations that have been the victims of U.S. aggression, direct and indirect. Why is it that our political culture, the highest expression of the ideals of freedom and democracy, has routinely gone around the world overthrowing democratically elected governments, supporting brutal dictators, funding and training proxy terrorist armies, and unleashing brutal attacks on civilians when we go to war? If we want to make the claim that we are the fulfillment of history and the ultimate expression of the principles of freedom and justice, our first stop might be Hiroshima. Then Nagasaki.

After working through this argument in class, one student, in exasperation, told me I was missing the point by trying to reduce patriotism to an easily articulated idea or ideas. “It’s about all these things together,” she said. But it’s not clear how individual explanations that fall short can collectively make a reasonable argument. If each attempt to articulate a basis for patriotism fails on empirical, logical, or moral grounds, how do they add up to a coherent position?

Any attempt to articulate an appropriate object of patriotic love and loyalty falls apart quickly. When I make this argument, I am often told that I simply don’t understand, that patriotism is as much about feeling as it is about logic or evidence. Certainly love is a feeling that often defies exact description; when we say we love someone, we aren’t expected to produce a treatise on the reasons. My point is not to suggest the emotion of love should be rendered bloodless but to point out that patriotism is incoherent because there is no object for the love that can be defended, morally or politically. We can love people, places, and ideas, but it makes no sense to declare one’s love or loyalty to a nation-state that claims to be democratic.

Beyond patriotism

So, there is no way to rescue patriotism or distinguish it from nationalism, which most everyone rejects as crude and jingoistic. Any use of the concept of patriotism is bound to be chauvinistic at some level. At its worst, patriotism can lead easily to support for barbaric policies, especially in war. At its best, it is self-indulgent and arrogant in its assumptions about the uniqueness of U.S. culture and willfully ignorant about the history and contemporary policy of this country. Emma Goldman was correct when she identified the essentials of patriotism as “conceit, arrogance, and egotism” and went on to assert that:

“Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.”

American culture crawls with "patriotic pimps" like WWP, scams that trade upon and cheapen heroism, while glorifyin the most sordid and criminal imperialist adventures behind the sanctimonious veil of "supporting our troops."

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]e can retain all our affections for land, people, culture, and a sense of place without labeling it as patriotism and artificially attaching it to national boundaries. We can take into account the human need to feel solidarity and connection with others (what Randolph Bourne described as the ability “to enjoy the companionship of others, to be able to cooperate with them, and to feel a slight malaise at solitude” ) without attaching those feelings to a nation-state. We can realize that communication and transportation technologies have made possible a new level of mobility around the world, which leaves us with a clear choice: Either the world can continue to be based on domination by powerful nation-states (in complex relationship with multinational corporations) and the elites who dictate policy in them, or we can seek a new interdependence and connection with people around the world through popular movements based on shared values and a common humanity that can cross national boundaries. To achieve the latter, people’s moral reasoning must be able to constrain the destructive capacity of elite power. As Goldman suggested, patriotism retards our moral development. These are not abstract arguments about rhetoric; the stakes are painfully real and the people in subordinated nation-states have, and will continue, to pay the price of patriotism in the dominant states with their bodies.

The question of patriotism is particularly important in the United States. The greater the destructive power of a nation, the greater the potential danger of patriotism. Despite many Americans’ belief that we are the first benevolent empire, this applies to the United States as clearly as to any country. On this count we would do well to ponder the observations of one of the top Nazis, Hermann Goering. In G.M. Gilbert’s book on his experiences as the Nuremberg prison psychologist, he recounts this conversation with Goering:

“Why of course the people don’t want war,” Goering shrugged. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”

“There is one difference,” I pointed out. “In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare war.”

“Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

If not patriotism?

An argument against patriotism raises the question of whether nation-states are a sensible way to organize our political lives. But if not the nation-state, then what? The simple answer is both the local and the global; politics must, over time, devolve down to levels where ordinary people can have a meaningful role in governing their own lives, while at the same time maintaining a sense of connection to the entire human family and understanding that the scope of high-technology and the legacy of imperialism leave us bound to each other across the globe in new ways. This is a call for an internationalism that understands we live mostly at the local level but can do that ethically only when we take into account how local actions affect others outside our immediate view.

My goal here is not a detailed sketch of how such a system would work. The first step is to envision something beyond what exists, a point from which people could go forward with experiments in new forms of social, political, and economic organization. Successes and failures in those experiments will guide subsequent steps, and any attempt to provide a comprehensive plan at this stage shouldn’t be taken seriously. It also is important is to realize that the work of articulating alternative political visions and engaging in political action to advance them has been going on for centuries. There is no reason today to think that national identification is the only force that could hold together societies; for example, political radicals of the 19th and early 20th centuries argued for recognizing other common interests. As Goldman put it:

“Thinking men and women the world over are beginning to realize that patriotism is too narrow and limited a conception to meet the necessities of our time. The centralization of power has brought into being an international feeling of solidarity among the oppressed nations of the world; a solidarity which represents a greater harmony of interests between the workingman of America and his brothers abroad than between the American miner and his exploiting compatriot; a solidarity which fears not foreign invasion, because it is bringing all the workers to the point when they will say to their masters, ‘Go and do your own killing. We have done it long enough for you.’ This solidarity is awakening the consciousness of even the soldiers, they, too, being flesh of the flesh of the great human family.”

We can, of course, go even further back in human history to find articulations of alternatives. As Leo Tolstoy reminded us in his critique of patriotism published in 1900, a rejection of loyalty to governments is part of the animating spirit of Christianity; “some 2,000 years ago … the person of the highest wisdom, began to recognize the higher idea of a brotherhood of man.” Tolstoy argued that this “higher idea, the brotherly union of the peoples, which has long since come to life, and from all sides is calling you to itself” could lead people to “understand that they are not the sons of some fatherland or other, nor of Governments, but are sons of God.”

In more secular form, this sentiment is summed up often-quoted statement of the great American labor leader and Socialist Eugene Debs, who said in 1915: “I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world.”

About the Author

 Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men, https://www.amazon.com/End-Patriarchy-Radical-Feminism-Men/dp/1742199925/  and Plain Radical: Living, Loving, and Learning to Leave the Planet Gracefully.

https://www.amazon.com/Plain-Radical-Living-Learning-Gracefully/dp/1593766181

He can be reached at rjensen@austin.utexas.edu or through his website, http://robertwjensen.org/.

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