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Kara Walker’s sculpture, “A Subtlety,” is a launch point. It is an image that has provided the impetus for an exploration of our subconscious mind’s primary motif – an artistic requiem of glory lost.

This article will begin to scratch the surface regarding the significance of the image of the Black Woman. It is a reflection upon the restoration of the Black-woman archetype and her/its importance to humanity.

Kara WalkerOne look upon Kara Walker’s work opens up the vastness of …

An article on page 6 of The Times on 6th June 2015 appeared under the following title: “Cameron to rally G7 leaders in global fight against corruption“.

The article opens with a reference to a recent scandal about corruption in how world football is managed, and then continues:

Mr Cameron flies to Germany for the two-day annual meeting [of the G7] determined to use the Fifa scandal to highlight the fight against corruption.

In particular, he will press other leaders to link aid to the poorest countries to cleaning up corruption, with a pledge to start with a review of Britain’s own development …

(Full article …)

About 75% of US employees work 40 hours or longer, the second longest among all OECD countries, exceeded only by Poland and tied with South Korea. In contrast, only 10% of Danish workers, 15% of Norwegian, 30% of French, 43% of UK and 50% of German workers work 40 or more hours. With the longest work day, US workers score lower on the ‘living well’ scale than most western European workers. Moreover, despite those long workdays US employees receive the shortest paid holidays or vacation time (one to two weeks compared to …

The explosion in ever-widening collaborative transactions hardly lacks for catchy names. Are these radical, co-operative platforms captured as the “Sharing Economy,” “Collaborative Consumption,” even collaborative capitalism? Or, recalling perennial venture-capital roots, perhaps “Network Orchestration”? Whatever the imprint, dramatic breakthroughs in peer-to-peer exchanges are booming, posing large-scale challenges to top-down, over-determined corporatism. Not so much to private property, as every shareable “asset” has an owner, with rare exceptions when users co-own (now that’s bottom-up).  Overall, we’re talking new livelihoods and looming horizons, especially with compelling pathways towards sharing general productivity across a far more equitable commons.

Barely out of the starting gate, …

Violation of the UN Charter and the Nuremberg Principles

In recent years, participation in NATO has made European countries accomplices in US efforts to achieve global hegemony by means of military force, in violation of international law, and especially in violation of the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Principles.

Former UN Assistant Secretary General Hans Christof von Sponeck used the following words to express his opinion that NATO now violates the UN Charter and international law: “In the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, the Charter of the United Nations was declared to be NATO’s legally binding framework. However, the United-Nations monopoly of the use …

Is it worth going to college to secure viable employment? Once, the future looked bright, for students earning a university degree and selecting from various offers from employers. Today the mere notion that such a question can and should be asked illustrates that the American economy has greatly transitioned into a very insecure and tenuous career opportunity society. When the lack of employment realities drives job seekers to leave the search for rewarding positions that offer a chance for a path to attaining middle class aspirations, the entire labor equation needs to be rethought.

Putting forth the optimistic viewpoint that …

In the farthest regions of the north, the Russians have already drilled, but the Americans are coming. Shell makes preparation to drill.  So it is, the most distant Northern Hemisphere will never be the same.

Not only that, but astonishingly, Russia is doubling down on its risky energy play with grandiose plans to power Arctic drill rigs with floating nuclear reactors. Indeed, the oil thirsty Russians plan to mass-produce floating nuclear reactors once their original model proves itself. Imagine that, an Arctic Sea filled with floating nuclear reactors used to power oil exploration drill rigs. Well now, what to say, other …

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world… Shall we say the odds are too great? … the struggle is too hard? … and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message — of longing, of hope, of solidarity… The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

— Dr. Martin Luther King, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence“, Riverside Church, New York City, April 4, 1967

Kabul — I’ve spent a …

I believe we should act. That’s what makes America different. That’s what makes us exceptional.

— Barak Obama, speech, 10 September 2013

It seems to be possible for nations, and the majority of their citizens, to commit the worst imaginable atrocities, including torture, murder and genocide, while feeling that what they are doing is both noble and good.. Some understanding of how this is possible can be gained by watching the 3-part BBC documentary, “The History of Racism”. ((Part 1, part 2, part 3.))

The series was broadcast by BBC Four in …

A month into resuming his premiership, Benjamin Netanyahu has been accused of an increasingly autocratic rule, as critics warn that his new government is preparing to take a draconian line against Israeli institutions opposing its policies.

Israel’s new right wing coalition has already indicated it will make a priority of tackling three fronts – human rights organisations, the media and the Supreme Court. All repeatedly clashed with Netanyahu during his previous terms in office.

The leader of the parliamentary opposition, Isaac Herzog, sounded the alarm last month, cautioning Netanyahu not to “raise a hand” against the judiciary, media or the country’s minorities, …

Our nation has a penchant for creating unnecessary complexity and obstacles for its people in areas such as the tax, health insurance and student debt miasmas. The prison industry adds to this with what it euphemistically calls “collateral consequences.” In simple language, this means a series of state-based statutory punishments – rooted in the medieval English practice of “civil death” – that greet ex-felons who have served their time and paid their debt to society.

Our country’s overall policy is that once punished, ex-felons are released from prison to be free to re-integrate themselves into society as normal productive human-beings, yet …

The Nexus of Economic Crisis and Austerity

1.1 Austerity as a cost saving capitalist strategy

After the outbreak of the 2008 global economic crisis, extreme austerity policies prevailed in many parts of the developed capitalist world, especially in the European Union (EU) and the Euro-area (EA). Austerity has been criticized as an irrational policy, which further deteriorates the economic crisis by creating a vicious cycle of falling effective demand, recession and over-indebtedness. However, these criticisms can hardly explain why this ‘irrational’ or ‘wrong’ policy persists, despite its ‘failures’. ((For a critique of these approaches see: D. P. Sotiropoulos, J. Milios, S. Lapatsioras, …

During a presentation to the Peter J. Peterson Foundation’s, Fiscal, 2015, Summit last month, former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, was asked about the status of the Social Security Trust Fund. Here is his response, “The notion that we have a trust fund is nonsense—that trust fund has no meaning whatsoever. The trust fund is a meaningless instrument that has no function. Greenspan’s comments were first reported by Nicholas Brady in the May 30, 2015 issue of PJ Media.

Greenspan’s words come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the history of Social …

If you’ve ridden the New York City subway recently, you’ve likely been confronted with a host of new, paternalistically worded signage.  An embodiment of the broken windows theory of policing that criminalizes small-scale misdemeanors with the ostensible goal of restoring order to a “city out of control“, these signs scold subway goers for infamous dance routines, primping, and, perhaps most notably, ‘manspreading.’  Most recently the banning of ‘manspreading’ has made news due to the arrest of two Latino men, “presumably because they were taking up more than one seat and therefore inconveniencing other riders.”

The MTA’s outlawing …

With flagrant disregard for democracy, the Harper Conservatives recently signed a deal with a transition regime to circumscribe future governments’ capacity to regulate Canadian miners. But, those victimized are impoverished Africans so the move elicited little reaction.

In April Harper’s Conservatives signed a Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA) with the interim government of Burkina Faso. According to the official release, the West African nation was represented at the signing ceremony in Ottawa by Prime Minister Yacouba Isaac Zida, who was deputy commander of the presidential guard when Blaise Compaore was ousted by popular protest last October. A U.S. and …