Ninety years ago (1934), the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig began writing the book published posthumously in 1942 as Die Welt von Gestern. In 1932, Joseph Roth published Radetzkymarsch. Both authors died in exile essentially by what in German is so prosaically called “Freitod” or suicide. Their principal subject was the end of Austria-Hungary. However for both men these were stories of the end of the world as they knew it.
Since the end of the Napoleonic Wars the multi-ethnic empire of the Habsburg double monarchy had become a silent financial dependency of the British Empire, alternatively a continental resource for British industry …
What Can Mechanism, Organicism, Formism, Contextualism and Process Philosophy Teach Marxists?
by Bruce Lerro / February 6th, 2024
Orientation Who cares about philosophy?
When most people hear about philosophy, they think it is:
Hopelessly abstract
The opposite of concreate reality
The opposite of application
For talking heads who are otherwise inept and clumsy – the wallflowers at a party
It has no impact on daily life unless we consciously apply it
It is a philosophical study about lives of old great men, either talking heads or idle dreamers
As we proceed, I hope you will feel differently about philosophy. In my experience, philosophy is …
If you have a friend or loved one in the Volusia Cty Jail here in the Daytona Beach area of Florida, get ready to play the man’s game of Telephone. Until you have someone close to you incarcerated there you cannot believe how this current penal system works. Bottom line: They forbid any in person visits… period! You want to talk with an inmate then fork over your money to IC Solutions, another in the slew of for profit private companies that our government sold out to. It’s not so much the few dollars you must pay, but the whole …
Governments colluded to shut down and destroy @RussellBrand. This is his first interview since that happened. It’s one of the most brilliant explanations of the modern world you’ll ever hear.
The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) and the U.S. Out of Africa Network (USOAN) opposes in the strongest terms the U.S. plans, in collusion with West Africa’s comprador class, to further violate Africa’s sovereignty and right to self determination in the form of three new military drone bases in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Benin. Further, we condemn the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) for not publicly renouncing this proposal in particular, and the existence of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in general. Their silence around this …
The release of the Vault 7 files in the spring of 2017 in a series of 26 disclosures, detailing the hacking tools of the US Central Intelligence Agency, was one of the more impressive achievements of the WikiLeaks publishing organisation. As WikiLeaks stated at the time, the hacking component of the agency’s operations had become so sizeable it began to dwarf the operations of the National Security Agency. “The CIA had created, in effect, its ‘own NSA’ with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the …
by T.P. WilkinsonA recent X post from Tucker Carlson featured biologist and podcaster Bret Weinstein (DarkHorse) to talk about the US immigration crisis after a visit to the Darién Gap. The gap is a jungle in the Panamanian isthmus where the Pan American Highway is interrupted on its way to South America. There, at the incitement of weblogger and US Special Forces officer Michael Yon, Weinstein went to see the immigration camps and learn how people from all over …
The Palestinian victims of genocide in Gaza are vastly underreported. The figure commonly used will soon top 30,000. But these are only the verified and named victims killed directly by Israeli weaponry. The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is perhaps the only authoritative source that reports more than 35,000, by adding a (conservative) estimate of those missing and presumed dead, most of them under the rubble of the roughly 300,000 destroyed buildings. But even the Euro-Med estimate does not include many of the delayed deaths among the more than 67,000 wounded, or the deaths from starvation, disease and exposure due the …
When the chaos subsided after the Columbine school tragedy in 1999 and investigators were given opportunity to review law enforcement’s conduct in a calm and clear-headed manner, it was determined that police tactics had been inappropriate. Had police rushed in more quickly towards the sound of gunfire, it’s likely that some of the 12 students (and one teacher) killed that day would have been rescued.
In the solemn aftermath of the Parkland school massacre in 2018, charges were brought against school resource officer Scot Peterson, alleging that he had failed to confront the gunman. Had he …
The world is experiencing a micronutrient food and health crisis. Micronutrient deficiency now affects billions of people. Micronutrients are key vitamins and minerals and deficiencies can cause severe health conditions. They are important for various functions, including blood clotting, brain development, the immune system, energy production and bone health, and play a critical role in disease prevention.
The root of the crisis is due to an increased reliance on ultra processed foods (‘junk food’) and the way that modern food crops are grown in terms of the seeds used, the plants produced, the synthetic inputs required (fertilisers, pesticides etc) and the …
It was a struggle to see how a child’s welfare was relevant in the latest, shrill debates about technology taking place on The Hill. The Senate Judiciary Committee and the leaders of social media companies were on show to thrash out matters on technology and their threats on January 31 in a hearing titled “Big Tech and the Online Child Exploitation Crisis.” The companies present: X Corp, represented by Linda Yaccarino; TikTok Inc, fronted by Shou Chew; Snap Inc, by Evan Spiegel; Meta and Mark Zuckerberg; and Jason Citron of Discord Inc.
Alexander Mercouris has perhaps the best track-record of all prognosticators on the important international news-stories, and this very much includes on the important news stories regarding the Ukraine crisis, not only since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started on 24 February 2022, but going all the way back to 2016 when he first reported. And, more generally, for example, compare his 10 October 2016 “U.S. Intelligence meddles in U.S. Presidential election: backs Hillary Clinton, tries to stop Donald Trump” to what the rest of the press were saying …
When is the acquisitive nature of open frontier capitalism too much? When Elon Musk is told that US$56 billion as a pay package is unfair. This, at least, was the finding by Delaware Court of Chancery by Judge Kathaleen McCormick regarding the spellbinding 2018 compensation package for the planet’s wealthiest human being.
McCormick and Musk already have inked some judicial history. The same judge presided over the Twitter suit against Musk that eventually resulted in him parting with US$44 billion to acquire the company that is now sliding into merry decay as the platform X.
The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Christopher Wray, made sensational remarks on Wednesday in Congress, elevating the “China threat theory” to a new level. He claimed that hackers associated with the Chinese government are “positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities.” Targets include water treatment plants, electrical infrastructure and oil and natural gas pipelines, he said. In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin explicitly stated that China firmly opposes and cracks down …
On 26 January, the judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that it is ‘plausible’ that Israel is committing a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The ICJ called upon Israel to ‘take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts’ that violate the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948). Although the ICJ did not call explicitly for a ceasefire (as it did in 2022 when …
After tabling a citizen-drafted resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza, Toledo City Council agreed to have a second hearing on the measure, January 30.
At that hearing, Toledoans testified about grandparents who had lost homes and property during the 1948 Nakba; others told of having been displaced multiple times; several people passionately described members of their families who have been killed in Gaza since October 7; and some held back tears as they talked of family they just haven’t heard from. Following is my statement to the Council.
It’s been 50 years since I was a Navy corpsman at a stateside hospital, …
The BBC’s characteristically mild-mannered note said it all: What is Tower 22? More to the point, what are US forces doing in Jordan? (To be more precise, a dusty scratching on the Syria-Jordan border.) These questions were posed in the aftermath of yet another drone attack against a US outpost in the Middle East, its location of dubious strategic relevance to Washington, yet seen as indispensable to its global footprint. On this occasion, the attack proved successful, killing three troops and wounding dozens.
The Times of Israel offered a workmanlike description of the site’s role: “Tower 22 is located close …
An all-encompassing expression of goodwill in the form of a New Good Neighbor Policy will meet resistance from vested economic and military interests, as well as those persuaded by racist arguments.
by Medea Benjamin and Steve Ellner / February 1st, 2024
The Trump administration dusted off the 19th century Monroe Doctrine that subjugates the nations of the region to U.S. interests. The Biden administration, instead of reversing course, followed suite, with disastrous results for the region and a migration crisis that threatens Biden’s re-election.
It has left most of Trump’s sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba intact and has tightened those against Nicaragua.
U.S. policy towards Venezuela has been a fiasco. Try as it might, both Trump and Biden were unable to depose President Maduro and found themselves stuck with a self-proclaimed president, Juan Guaidó. U.S. support for Guaidó backfired as he was held …
When I was a child my grandfather, whom I knew as a man who had driven cars for the rich and conversed with the famous in his youth, once told me “making money is easy — if that is all you want to do”. As an eight-year-old that sounded very profound although at the time it made little sense to me. Personally I must confess, money has really meant very little to me. I worked as a youth to earn pocket money so I could go to restaurants or buy books. However I never had that sense of thrift that …
Sometimes you don’t get a warning before all hell breaks loose.
Imagine it, if you will: It’s the middle of the night. Your neighborhood is in darkness. Your household is asleep. Suddenly, you’re awakened by a loud noise.
Barely ten seconds later, someone or an army of someones has crashed through your front door.
The intruders are in your home.
Your heart begins racing. Your stomach is tied in knots. The adrenaline is pumping through you.
Hybrid Bt cotton, the only commercialised GM crop in India, has failed conclusively. Based on this failure and the evidence on GM crops to date, the Union of India’s proposal to commercialise herbicide-tolerant (HT) mustard will destroy not just Indian mustard agriculture but citizens’ health.
There have been five days of intense hearings on this matter in the Supreme Court (SC) — the GMO Public Interest Writ filed almost 20 years ago in 2005 by the author, which ended on 18 January 2024.
In these last 20 years, piecemeal hearings have dealt with submissions relating to individual crops like hybrid Bt cotton, …
The daily grind of atrocities committed on the Palestinian people continues with one trajectory ─ extinction as a people and realignment into disbursed communities. Civil protests against the destruction, heroic actions by confrontation with the oppressor, dedication to the concepts of justice and freedom, and physical and monetary sacrifices by millions of people in the world have not deterred the killing machine from its proscribed purpose. Much is said of what is being done to the Palestinians; less is said of what needs to be done for the Palestinians and prevent their genocide. Are the Palestinians doomed?
Palace coups have become a seasonal tradition in Australian politics. Between 2007 and 2018, Australia had six prime ministers, four of whom were overthrown by their own parties, the first five never being allowed to complete their first term in office. In contrast, between 1983 and 2007, the country could count on the dry, solid stability of three leaders. The change of heart led to the irresistible description of Australia being “the coup capital of the democratic world”.
In the Westminster system of government, where the executive is drawn from the representative chamber, prime ministers are at the mercy of party …
