UO E-clips, Oct. 31

Frohnmayer, Kulongoski dispute ad, say they do endorse Green (Register-Guard): University of Oregon President Dave Frohnmayer and Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski on Thursday said an advertisement in The Register-Guard questioning their endorsements of Lane County Commissioner Bobby Green and his campaign for re-election is incorrect. Frohnmayer said he endorses Green and that, contrary to statements in the ad, Green's campaign has not misused Frohnmayer's name or comments in the commissioner's Nov. 4 race against landscape contractor Rob Handy. Frohnmayer said his endorsement should not be viewed as an endorsement by the university, however. … The ad, which ran Thursday, was paid for and authorized by the Lane County Future political action committee. The ad said Frohnmayer and Kulongoski "did not endorse" Green as Green has implied in campaign material. The ad said Green took comments from Frohnmayer and the governor "out of context" for campaign purposes.

Fair aims to attract interest in Chinese language school (Register-Guard): Organizers of a Chinese language and education fair set for Saturday hope to share with the broader community what they already know: The Chinese language is fun, the culture well worth celebrating. They also have a more specific aim: to drum up interest in a Mandarin Chinese immersion school. ... Meanwhile, Shaver and Helen Liu, another steering committee member, said they haven't sensed a lag in momentum, despite the setback on timing. "Everywhere we go, I hear people say positive things about it," said Liu, who had 40 students enrolled in her University of Oregon-sponsored Chinese language camp last summer. "Most people seem very supportive."

Capitalism and climate change (Monthly Review article by John Bellamy Foster, UO professor of sociology): We need to go down to 350 parts per million [the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere], which means very big social transformations on a scale that would be considered revolutionary by anybody in society today -- transformation of our whole society quite fundamentally. We have to aim at that, and we have to demand that of our society. Forget about capitalism, forget about whether the system can do it. Don't let that be your barometer. Say this is necessary for the planet, for human survival, for justice, for environmental justice, and we just have to do it. We demand that be done, and we work out the operating system of the world economy, we work out our social relations of production, in accordance with necessity, in accordance with what is necessary for the planet, not in accordance with what is necessary for the accumulation of wealth and profits for a very few. I think there is no other choice -- any other choice is absolutely irrational. We're living in an irrational system -- we can't let that level of irrationality dictate our action. So, we need to do that, but climate change isn't the whole environmental problem. There's species extinction, there's deforestation, desertification, there are a water crisis and the attempt of capital to privatize water, there are umpteen numbers of problems. We have to fight on all these fronts.