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Ambrose Bierce, whose cynicism supplies a hygienic cold wash, suggested that politics was always a matter of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.  It involved conducting public affairs for private advantage.  How right he was.  One way of justifying such an effort is through using such words as the “national interest” or “public interest” in justifying government policies, from the erroneous to the criminal.  They become weasel-like terms, soiling and spoiling language.

In various large-scale industries, companies can find themselves in the pink with governments keen to underwrite their losses during times of crisis while taking a soft approach to …

There were several military coups in West Africa lately. Mostly in former French colonies, and in many ways “neo-colonies” of France, that do arguably more harm to the Sahel countries than the more than 300 years of French “on-the-ground” colonies, or enslavement. Though, this latter crime is not to be discarded at all. It has been an across-Africa genocide of unimaginable proportions, that, so far went unpunished.

But the new crime, the financial and military strategic econo-political colonization, needs to be brought to the fore now.

Among the coup countries are Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, but also Nigeria – a former British …

Many an artist have understandably taken stabs, with varying degrees of skill and success, at indicting capitalism and all its execrable effects. Rebecca Harding Davis’ short story, or novella, if you like, Life in the Iron Mills (1861), is one of the first, certainly one of the best and, given its mastery, one of the most overlooked.

A cloudy day: do you know what that is in a town of iron-works?

Thus we’re addressed by the narrator of Life … It’s the story’s opening line, and it serves to prepare the reader for exposure to an alien environment. Namely, the type inhabited …

Twitter conversations with public intellectuals are rarely worthy of note, but a recent exchange I had with Nikole Hannah-Jones, famed mastermind of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, was symptomatic of widespread tendencies in left-liberal culture and brought up important issues.

Hannah-Jones is a spokeswoman for wokeness, the cultural phenomenon that, as I’ve written elsewhere, is brilliantly undermining the left and providing grist for the mill of the right-wing outrage machine. Historically, a crucial method of undermining the left is to divide the working class according to race and ethnicity, fostering resentments and enmity between groups of people who …

U.S. banks are again in the crosshairs. Standard and Poor’s has downgraded five new middle-tier banks and put three others on negative outlook. This follows sweeping downgrades earlier in August by Moody’s, which cut credit ratings on 10 banks and placed four of the 15 largest U.S. banks on review for possible downgrade. As with the banks going into receivership earlier this year, concerns include interest rate risk due to unrealized losses from long-term securities.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government itself has been downgraded by Fitch Ratings, which questions the government’s ability to finance its nearly $33 trillion federal debt. Just the interest on …

Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar (Egypt), The Popular Chorus or Food or Comrades on the Theatre of Life, 1948 (post-dated 1951).
On the last day of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, the five founding states (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) welcomed six new members: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The BRICS partnership now encompasses 47.3 percent of the world’s population, with a combined global Gross Domestic Product (by purchasing power parity, or PPP,) of 36.4 percent. In …

Orientation

Beliefs about the paranormal in Yankeedom

Believers in the paranormal, according to Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn in their book How to Think About Weird Things include the following statistics in a Gallup poll:

55% believe in psychic healing

41% believe in ESP

32% believe that ghosts can come back to certain places and situations

31% believe in telepathy (mind-to-mind communication)

26% believe in clairvoyance (knowing the future)

24% believe that extraterrestrial beings have visited earth at some time in the past

21% believe they can communicate with someone who died

If discovered to be correct, what parapsychology might result in

If …

The Vietnam War tormented and tore the societies who saw fit to participate in it.  It defined a generation culturally and politically in terms creative and fractious.  And it showed up the rulers to be ignorant rather than bright; blundering fools rather than sages secure in their preaching.  Five decades on, the political classes in the United States and Australia are still seeking to find reasons for intervening in a country they scant understood, with a fanatic’s persuasion, and ideologue’s conviction, a moralist’s certainty.  Old errors die hard.

Leaders are left the legacy of having to re-scent the candle, hoping that …

Born into a Muslim family, I regularly encounter people who come to my house to invite me to religious gatherings. In these times of neoliberal fascism, it is interesting to note the ideological experience that piety seeks to provide. The most recent person whom I interacted with attempted to root the everyday relevance of religion in the material contexts of social life. For him, Islam is essentially compatible with the reality of capitalism: the motivation and dedication required for the attainment of your desired profession is mirrored by the strong purposefulness of religiosity. What’s more, pro-careerist enthusiasm falters unless it …

We know what the regime is like.  Starving a country, bombing its hospitals and strafing its schools has been minor fare for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  The population of Yemen has found this out to their colossal cost.  Add to this the killing of dissident journalists, the enthusiastic employment of capital punishment, and an assortment of other merry brutalities, the House of Saud comes across as a fine specimen of barbaric endeavour. At least, as many of their supporters will say, they like international sporting events, and are willing to throw money at, if not completely purchase, full events.

The …

Teri Mattson is producer and host of the weekly podcast “WTF is Going on in Latin America & the Caribbean?” broadcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, CODEPINK, as well as https://popularresistance.org/wtf-is-going-on-in-latin-america-the-caribbean/

Rick Sterling: How did you wind up living in Mexico City?

Teri Mattson: I went to Mexico City in September of 2020 in response to how the Covid pandemic was being managed in Washington DC, where I was living at the time. I was walking every day outside to get moderate  exercise, fresh air and sunshine to stay healthy during covid. And …

Times of crisis can be glorious for some.  The Great Depression bred its share of wealthy profiteers.  The First and Second World Wars fostered many a multimillionaire.  Over the bodies of millions, the returns for armaments companies were unparalleled.  And during the current “cost of living crisis,” as it is so often dubbed, there are companies beaming at their profit margins even as they affect false modesty.

In the United Kingdom, for instance, earnings for household energy suppliers are booming, despite crushing bills.  British Gas reported a staggering nine-fold increase in profits, from £98 million in 2022 to £969 million …

Profit over people?

Leslie Amine (Benin), Swamp, 2022
In 1958, the poet and trade union leader Abdoulaye Mamani of Zinder (Niger) won an election in his home region against Hamani Diori, one of the founders of the Nigerien Progressive Party. This election result posed a problem for French colonial authorities, who wanted Diori to lead the new Niger. Mamani stood as a candidate for Niger’s left-wing Sawaba party, which was one of the leading forces in the independence movement against France. Sawaba was the party of the talakawa, the ‘commoners’, or the petit …