by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / November 5th, 2017
The work to transform society involves two parallel paths: resisting harmful systems and institutions and creating new systems and institutions to replace them. Our focus in this article is on positive work that people are doing to change current systems in ways that reduce the wealth divide, meet basic needs, ensure sustainability, create economic and racial justice and provide people with greater control over their lives.
When we and others organized the Occupation of Washington, DC in 2011, we subtitled the encampment ‘Stop the Machine, Create a New World’, to highlight both aspects of movement …
The new fascism isn’t so new but is now brightly packaged as Facebook, Amazon, Gates
by Paul Haeder / November 5th, 2017
This is going to be an exercise in redefining fascism after meeting with socialists on the hundredth anniversary of the great revolution. In the early 1900s, the Italians who invented the term Fascism also described it as estato corporativo, meaning: the corporate state.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
— Benito Mussolini
Then you have that great liberal, giver over of social goods from the rich, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who once described fascism as
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point …
A Chinese Proverb says, “May you live in Interesting Times.” Today in the “Age of Donald Trump” and a rise of right-wing political parties across the Globe we are seeing a resurgence of right wing views, anti-Immigrant sentiments and veiled discrimination against “The Other” and the trampling on the rights of various minorities. These minorities include the Rohinga Muslims in Myanmar, Palestinians in the Holy Land, refugees in Europe, Muslims in many countries, Arabs, even Christians in the Middle East, conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims, attacks against Blacks and vilification of Mexicans and other Hispanics in the United States, …
President Putin arrived in Tehran on 1 November for talks with the Ayatollah Khamenei. First, to cement the Nuclear Agreement of 2015 (Vienna), as far as Russia is concerned, thereby sidelining Trump’s attempt at reneging on the agreement. Second, to sign billions worth of tripartite hydrocarbon deals between Russia, Iran and Azerbeijan. And this in ruble. NOT in US dollars, thus, effectively detaching Iran from the dollar hegemony. In other words – helping Iran in de-dollarizing her economy – and effectively and drastically contributing to diminishing the dollar’s stance as a world reserve currency. That’s “Resistance Economy” at its best. De-dollarization …
(Photo Credit: Andre Vltchek)
What just used to be rumors, suddenly, became official facts. The Government of the United States of America, which for years and decades has been sick and tired of the ‘rebellious UN agency’, decided to leave it, slamming the door behind its back. In its official Press Statement, the U.S. Department of State declared:
On October 12, 2017, the Department of State notified UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova of the U.S. decision to withdraw from the organization and to seek to establish a permanent observer mission …
It could not have been scripted better for the demagogues and security hysterics. With the country still grieving in confusion in the aftermath of the Las Vegas slayings, inflicted by an individual who resisted the classification of terrorist at the hands of the Nevada authorities, in came Sayfullo Saipov. Saipov, who fit the fanatic’s bill, the ideologue’s cut, and popular lack of imagination.
He was a profiler’s cartoon inspired dream: menacing beard, smouldering eyes, determined and pious. He came from Uzbekistan, a place many Americans would struggle finding on a map (which “stan” might that be?), but that hardly mattered. He …
Recently foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland dismissed concerns that Canada was seeking “regime change” in Venezuela’s by saying “Canada has never been an imperialist power. It’s even almost funny to say that phrase: we’ve been the colony.”
As I detailed in an initial response, Ottawa has passively or actively supported numerous US-backed military coups against progressive elected governments. But, the conclusion to Freeland’s statement above is equally absurd, even if it is a common refrain among liberals and leftists.
Despite its popularity, the idea that Canada was or is a “colony” obscures Canada’s place near the top …
“Racism – Shame of America” – Soviet poster about the civil rights struggle in the United States Are you a western journalist or analyst with an issue you cannot explain? Do your symptoms include an unwillingness to learn anything from history and an unconditional embrace of western exceptionalism? Then we have just the thing for you: RussiaDidIt! Taken in the appropriate dosage, RussiaDidIt can be used for just any issue, small and large, old and new, near and far. Call your local US embassy or EU office and …
I have no children; and given that I’m a happily childless pensioner now, that’s not likely to change. My childlessness was not especially through conscious choice (initially at least), illness, tragedy or anything else. It just worked out like that. Many people – especially women – instantly show some sort of sadness when they learn this fact, as though just discovering I have some horrible disability. But I don’t feel in the least unfortunate. Indeed, I not only consider myself lucky to have accidently achieved this outcome, I feel, with every passing day, a slowly growing sense of victory: I …
US journalists and commentators, politicians and Sinologists spend considerable time and space speculating on the personality of China’s President Xi Jinping and his appointments to the leading bodies of the Chinese government, as if these were the most important aspects of the entire 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (October 18-24, 2017). ((The 19th National Congress was attended by 2,280 delegates representing 89 million members.)), ((Lumpen Capitalism refers to an economic system in which the financial and military sector exploits the state treasury and productive economy for the 1% of the population.))
It’s now been twelve years since Hurricane Katrina smashed through the levees of New Orleans, completely inundating the Lower Ninth Ward and validating scientists’ dire warnings of climate change’s destructive effects on weather patterns. In the long years of government inaction that have followed, early warning signs have given way to a sinking realization that climate change is no longer a nightmare future scenario humanity needs to avoid – it’s a present-day reality that we need to adapt to. From record-setting wildfires and famine-inducing droughts, to mass flooding and a punishing string of unprecedented mega-storms, 2017 has been a watershed …
Urgent warnings of a radiation leak have been issued after the collapse of a tunnel under North Korea’s 7,200 foot high Mount Mantap, under which the country tests their weapons systems.
The accident, believed to have happened on 10th October – though it only came to light on 31st October – is a disaster which is reported to have killed two hundred people. Were it anywhere else on earth it would surely be a headline tragedy, with Heads of State sending their condolences and offering assistance.
Apparently, however, the parents, sons, daughters which are the workforce of The Democratic People’s Republic of …
Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post
Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward identified and emphasized an important factor in understanding the larger political and economic forces that create the conditions in which people defy the rules of the established order and take part in popular protest. ((Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward. 1979 [1977]. Poor People’s Movement. New York, NY: Vintage Books.)) These moments of popular protect was during the Great Depression in the 1930s, when unemployment was at about one-third for …
The oldest physical footprint left by the 100-year-old Balfour Declaration in what is today Israel is visible from my home in Nazareth. From my vantage point on a ridge above the Jezreel Valley, Balfouriya appears like a dark smudge below in the middle of the vast agricultural plain.
The small, exclusively Jewish farming community was established in 1922, five years after Britain’s foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, signed a letter pledging help to create “a national home for the Jewish people” in what was then Palestine.
Oh “democracy”, an iron fist of tomahawk missiles ripping through flesh and bone. Oh “freedom”, 1/2 million ascending souls of Iraqi children delivering wealth to the powerful few. Oh “justice”, a magic wand of fear and death reigning over the wasting hierarchy of money and violence.
Within the framework of imperialism, all of us, regardless of religion, race, gender or ethnicity, are given the divine right to worship power and money. Anyone who frowns upon such an imperial right can be labeled as “racist”, “misogynist”, or “fascist”. Speaking against the drone war normalized by President Obama might earn you a label …
I’m writing this letter as the proud son of the working class. My father, who never attended college and was our family’s breadwinner, worked as a Greyhound Bus ticket seller, part-time mail carrier and grocery store stock boy. When he died of a sudden heart attack at age 47, he was working the night shift as a hospital orderly. I was 12 years old and my younger brother was seven.
Because my dad was a World War Two vet, we had a very modest house purchased under the G.I. Bill’s Home Loan Guaranty Program. Under provisions of the Social Security Act’s …
Recently, Democratic Party elites have purged progressives from positions of power within the Party; have been exposed in creating and promulgating, and swallowing whole the dodgy Russian Dossier subterfuge; and have gone round-heeled for war criminal and torturer-in-chief George Bush the Lesser — yet Democratic partisans and lesser-of-two-evils, fainting-couch jockeys still retail in the fiction that the Democrats present a viable alternative to their more crass Republican doppelgängers.
It must take hours of dedicated practice to become such virtuosos of self-deception.
Desperate liberals have convinced themselves that the risible, Russiagate fool’s mythos will provide a deus ex machina miracle to rid the …
Israeli footprints are becoming more apparent in the US security apparatus. Such a fact does not bode well for ordinary Americans.
US Senate Bill S.720 should have been a wake-up call. The Bill, drafted by the Israel lobby group, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), as part of its “2017 Lobbying Agenda” is set to punish any individual or company that boycotts Israel for its violation of Palestinian human rights.
Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President? … We’ve come to a point where every four years this national fever rises up — this hunger for the Saviour, the White Knight, the Man on Horseback — and whoever wins becomes so immensely powerful … that when you vote for President today you’re talking about giving a man dictatorial power for four years… The whole framework of the presidency is getting out of hand. It’s come to the point where you almost can’t run unless you can cause people to …
On September 27th, media reports outlined the tax plan hammered out in secret by the GOP’s so-called Big Six. The morning of the 28th, the writer Stephen King tweeted his scorn: “Same old same old. The fat man’s busy dancing while the poor man pays the band.”
The poor man doesn’t really pay the band, but there’s plenty of reason to second King’s emotion.
The proposals reaffirm the Republican obsession with shoving more money into the pockets of people whose pockets are already bulging. The haves, and only the haves, would reap billions by repealing the alternative minimum tax and …
A huge surprise to the people of Libya, Haiti, Honduras, Chile, Democratic Rep. Congo, Ghana, Uganda, Guatemala, and ...
by Yves Engler / October 31st, 2017
It may walk and quack like a regime-change-promoting duck, but Ottawa’s unilateral sanctions and support for Venezuela’s opposition is actually just a cuddly Canadian beaver, says Chrystia Freeland.
“Canada has never been an imperialist power. It’s even almost funny to say that phrase: we’ve been the colony,” said the journalist turned politician after a Toronto meeting of foreign ministers opposed to the Venezuelan government.
The above declaration was part of the Canadian foreign minister’s response to a question about Chavismo’s continued popularity, which was prefaced by a mention of protesters denouncing Ottawa’s interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs. Freeland …
Any person who is half clued-in knows well that corporate and state media (particularly in the West) must be regarded with deserved skepticism. This holds particularly for geo-political events since the domineering elitist corporate-governmental line will be adhered to.
Given this deplorable media state-of-affairs, it goes to reason that coverage of North Korea must be regarded with an Olympus Mons of salt. So the question is: how best to obtain a more credible insight into what the reality is in North Korea?
How about actually being there and seeing with your own eyes? This would provide a first-hand perspective as opposed to …
Masoumah invites Afghan mothers to speak about difficulties they face (Photo: Afghan Peace Volunteers)
On a recent Friday at the Afghan Peace Volunteers‘ (APV) Borderfree Center, here in Kabul, thirty mothers sat cross-legged along the walls of a large meeting room. Masoumah, who co-coordinates the Center’s “Street Kids School” project, had invited the mothers to a parents’
meeting. Burka-clad women who wore the veil over their faces looked identical to me, but Masoumah called each mother by name, inviting the mothers, one by one, to speak about difficulties …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / October 31st, 2017
This week, the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which promoted giving Palestine to the Jewish people, will be celebrated in London. Around the world, there will be protests against it calling for Britain to apologize for the damage it inflicted. Students from the West Bank and Gaza will send letters to the British government describing the negative impacts that the Balfour Declaration, and the Nakba in 1948, continue to have on their lives today.
As Dan Freeman-Maloy describes, the Balfour Declaration is also relevant today because of the propaganda co-existing …
Crushing regulations are driving small banks to sell out to the megabanks, a consolidation process that appears to be intentional. Publicly-owned banks can help avoid that trend and keep credit flowing in local economies.
*****
At his confirmation hearing in January 2017, Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin said: “regulation is killing community banks.” If the process is not reversed, he warned, we could “end up in a world where we have four big banks in this country.” That would be bad for both jobs and the economy. “I think that we all appreciate the engine of growth is with …
Each and every year an avalanche of toxic chemicals, amounting to 250 billion tonnes, drips over Earth, which, over time, will sanitize all life, turning the planet into a massive gooey glob that glistens dazzlingly orange, not vividly blue. Already, scientists categorize Earth as a “toxic planet.” ((“Scientists Categorize Earth as a ‘Toxic Planet,” Phys.Org, February 7, 2017.))
“Earth, and all life on it, are being saturated with man-made chemicals in an event unlike anything in the planet’s entire history,” says Julian Cribb, author of Surviving the 21st Century (Springer International 2017).
Nothing is spared. Mercury is found in Arctic polar bears. …
There are standoffs, threats and continuing tensions over the imminent closure of the Manus Island Detention Centre. (The politically palatable term here is “processing centre”.) This closure, instigated by legal ruling by the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court in April 2016, has led to a degree of window dressing, prevarication and stalling by all parties connected with the institutionalised barbarism that has been inflicted on refugees and asylum seekers.
A vital stumbling block in this involves the removal of 718 men from the Lombrum Naval Base to alternative, purpose-built accommodation in the town of Lorengau. Even CNN decided the crisis …
There is more than a little irony in Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to attend a “celebration” dinner this week in London with his British counterpart, Theresa May, marking the centenary of the Balfour Declaration.
Palestinian objections to the 1917 document are well-known. Britain’s Lord Balfour had no right to promise a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, on the land of another people.
But Israelis have been taught a different history in which they, not the Palestinians, were betrayed.
In 1939, Britain appeared to revoke its pledge, stating “unequivocally” that it would not establish a Jewish state in Palestine. …
And they fell like ninepins. Weeks of predictions, optimistic readings, and hopeful signs were dashed as the members of the highest court of Australia laid waste to members of Parliament. Citing a section in the Australian constitution that has become something of a heavy footnote in popular consciousness, the judges ruled five out of seven applicants ineligible to sit in Parliament.
The applicants have come to assume a title more commonly associated with criminal gangs or wrongly accused terrorists: the Citizenship Seven. But of the seven, only Senators Matt Canavan and Nick Xenophon survived. Barnaby Joyce, the Deputy …
