The Russian European dreamers have included Pushkin, Lenin, Gorbachev and, until relatively recently, President Vladimir Putin. They have all seen their country’s future as part of the “European house”.
But history and events have not been kind to Russia. Napoleon’s invasion, revolution, two world wars, Stalin’s communism and, most recently, the expansion of NATO, have shattered the dream again and again.
At the end of the Cold War and with agreement on the NATO-Russia Founding Act it seemed that big steps towards that goal were being taken. First, Russia would have a seat at NATO’s table. Later it would join …
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, …
The situation of Iraqi refugees, both those who have fled to other countries and those internally displaced, is disastrous. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, said that there are 15 million refugees in Iraq and Syria living in unimaginable conditions. Refugees lack the most basic necessities such as food, water, and shelter. They are constantly subjected to humiliating treatment by security forces, including bribes and beatings. The situation is the worst for the most vulnerable: children, the elderly, and people with special needs.
A Human Rights Watch report in mid-May stated that 3.7 million Iraqis have been internally …
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 …
Lia Tarachansky’s heart-wrenching documentary, On the Side of the Road, reveals the Big Lie at the heart of the myth of the creation of Israel.
Tarachansky had to break through a lot of personal and social barriers to produce this often infuriating film about the Nakba, the “catastrophe” of 1948, when approximately 750,000 Palestinians (a number that has grown to 1.5 million refugees living in camps over the ensuing 67 years) were expelled from their homes and forced into squalid camps, where they are denied basic human rights.
Tarachansky’s toughest challenge was overcoming her own deeply ingrained assumptions. Born in …
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.”
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / June 5th, 2015
We are in the final battle of the year to stop Congress from handing power over to the White House to fundamentally alter global governance in a way that further empowers multinational corporations and strips us of our democratic rights.
Washington, DC – The movement to stop Fast Track, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other rigged trade agreements is huge and very diverse. It has delayed previous attempts over the past few years by Congress to pass Fast Track legislation that would allow the President to sign international agreements like the TPP, Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade …
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 …
Once during the Q&A session of a lecture, Noam Chomsky was asked when it was okay to trust one’s own government. Without a moment’s hesitation, he replied that you could and should never trust one’s government. Never. At the time, I thought perhaps the great dissident had for once overstated the case. But the more one learns about the intrigues of Washington, the more apt his radical precept seems.
When the official history of the realm is one day written, it may contain several chapters that establish President Barack Obama as a great flag-bearer of liberty, free trade, and economic recovery. …
The vast majority of India’s 1.3 billion people live in its 630,000 villages. They have seen little or no benefit from the country’s economic growth; over 80% do not have ‘approved sanitation’ according to UNICEF, and are forced to defecate in public; village health care, where it exists at all, is poor and inaccessible; education is basic, with large class sizes and schools lacking desks and chairs, let alone books.
The caste system dominates all areas of life, and, despite the fact that the Constitution of India prohibits discrimination based on caste, violent exploitation and prejudice are the norm. …
I have been amazed by the rosy images so many Chinese youth hold of the West. Chinese Communist Party (CPC) officials are faced with an unenviable task. The CPC needs to provide jobs and a decent standard of living for the Chinese people, and these goals can come in conflict. The CPC has delivered in terms of improving the economy and pulling hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty. However, the environment has suffered as a consequence. The CPC does not hide this fact (it is after all pretty hard to hide air pollution and water pollution) and publishes …
Frontline is an influential television program which examines important foreign and domestic issues. The shows tend to be technically well done – combining concise writing with compelling video. Many North Americans watch and have their beliefs shaped by Frontline documentaries.
Last week Public Broadcasting System channels across North America broadcast the Frontline special titled “Obama at War”. The 52 minute video portrays the following:
* Origins of the Syrian conflict
* Response of the Obama administration
* Evolution of the conflict
* The run-up and response to alleged chemical attacks in 2013
* Emergence of ISIS, Nusra and other extremist groups
Is there a chargeable offense in Western jurisprudence, some level of murder, depraved indifference, or, perhaps, reckless disregard of human life (See NY law) that can be ascribed to so-called public servants who inflict undue harm, even death, due to their decision making? Much power and control is in their hands, much potential for abuse, and too much self-serving behavior.
For the police, it’s “protect and serve,” applying to the people they are pledged to serve, not to do unwarranted harm. For most of the rest at various levels of government, it is to abide by laws, ultimately, the Constitution, …
In their bid to brand Canada a “warrior nation”, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives seek to glorify Canadian military history, regardless of its horrors.
On Saturday Canada’s Minister of Veteran Affairs released a statement to mark “113 years since the end of the South African war.” Erin O’Toole said, “Canada commemorates all those who served in South Africa, contributing to our proud military history.”
But the Boer War was a brutal conflict to strengthen British colonial authority in Africa, which ultimately led to racial apartheid. In the late 1800s the Boers, descendants of Dutch settlers, increasingly found themselves at odds …
No matter what Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas does, his popularity is declining. In some ways, Abbas’ threshold for popularity was really never impressive to begin with, a trend that is unlikely to change in the near future.
But now that a power struggle in his Fatah party is looming, and his two-decade investment in the ‘peace process’ scheme has proven to be fruitless, Abbas is doing what he should have done a long time ago: internationalize the Palestinian struggle, and break away from the confines of American influence and double-standard ‘diplomacy’.
Considering Abbas’ grim legacy among Palestinians, his leading …
As the economy in Europe festers the New York Timesreports that the ranks of the Eurozone’s unemployed are finding solace in a curious parallel economy populated by thousands of counterfeit businesses known as “practice firms.” This alternate universe doesn’t actually produce tangible goods or services, rather it offers people with unpaid positions that foster a sense of routine, structure, and personal connection. And while participating in this bogus job market may offer some relief on a superficial level the tendrils of social control are visible to those who know where to look.
Washington’s attack on world soccer is following the script of Washington’s attack on the Russian-hosted Sochi Olympics. The difference is that Washington couldn’t stop the Olympics from being held in Sochi, and was limited to scaring off westerners with lies and propaganda. In the current scandal orchestrated by Washington, Washington intends to use its takeover of FIFA to renege on FIFA’s decision that Russia host the next World Cup.
This is part of Washington’s agenda of isolating Russia from the World.
This Washington-orchestrated scandal stinks to high heaven. It seems obvious that the FIFA officials have been arrested for political reasons and …
I have always believed, perhaps naively, that in a democracy, if a system is shown to be manifestly unjust and unfair, then those who have the power to address the problem will respond positively. Action will then follow to address the grievance. Alas, this often is not the case.
Take the case of reforming the “first-past-the-post” electoral system in Britain. The change to some form of proportional representation has been argued about for decades. I remember the Jenkins’ commission, chaired by Roy Jenkins, one of four senior Labour politicians dubbed the “gang of four”, who left the party in …
Paul Krugman Of The New York Times and Gary Younge of the Guardian
by Media Lens / June 3rd, 2015
Paul Krugman and Gary Younge are two of the most honest commentators currently writing in two of the best American and British newspapers. The extent of their truth-telling tells us much about the current state of free speech.
Paul Krugman is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University and a columnist for the New York Times. He is regularly cited as a courageous, honest commentator challenging power. In 2008, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. Gary Younge is an award-winning progressive journalist, one of the Guardian‘s highly-respected counterparts to Krugman.
Senator Bernie Sanders’ candidacy for the presidency of the United States is in full blossom, on tour with rousing speeches to standing room only extraordinarily motivated crowds. Senator Sanders, the tough-minded Independent with socialist tendencies, is labeled a long shot to win the Democratic nomination, especially in the face of the odds-on-favorite Hillary Clinton, whose political machinery is so well oiled that it is dripping.
But, maybe the former secretary of state is in for the surprise of her life as the senator’s message rings loud and clear with people standing on tip toes in lines reaching far outside of auditoriums. …
Today WikiLeaks has launched a campaign to crowd-source a $100,000 reward for America’s Most Wanted Secret: the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP).
Over the last two years WikiLeaks has published three chapters of this super-secret global deal, despite unprecedented efforts by negotiating governments to keep it under wraps. US Senator Elizabeth Warren has said
[They] can’t make this deal public because if the American people saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it.
The remaining 26 chapters of the deal are closely held by negotiators and the big corporations that have been given privileged access. Today, WikiLeaks is taking steps to …
Here set out in black and white in the Israeli media is a moral conundrum that western politicians, diplomats and international human rights organisations are resolutely failing to address – and one I have been highlighting since 2006.
It was then that Israel implemented for the first time its Dahiya doctrine – turning Lebanon back to the Stone Age. It launched a horrific assault that wrecked Lebanon’s infrastructure, killed 1,300 Lebanese – most of them, as ever in Israel’s wars, civilians – and made refugees of more than a million inhabitants of the country’s south. The exercise has been repeated in Gaza on a regular basis ever since.
USA and Global Adjuncts Screwed and Tattooed by Neoliberalism -- story already covered 2011!
by Paul Haeder / June 2nd, 2015
Oh, ya. Riffing off my piece on the false flag attacks on the youth of our world, calling them the distracted generation, Generation Me, the Dumbest Generations Ever, Google, Inc. What have you. Read it here, “Distracted, Facebooking, Entitled?” I am forever on these list serves from faculty, climate change workers, ecologists, political radicals, and more, and, well, the amount of repetition in the entire mess is stupefying, really.
We have so many fissures in the entire USA project on faux democracy and freedom: cops that kill with each nervous tic; CEOs who should be sent to Devil’s Island; media who …
The corporate controlled media have hyped the threat from IS (ISIL, ISIS), the self-proclaimed Islamic State. IS has committed horribly brutal acts in part of the Middle East. Despite all the media attention, it is relevant to note the US media didn’t mention that IS has come nowhere close to the level of killing and destruction that the US did in Iraq. Regardless, there is an urgent need for a true diplomatic effort to stop further IS crimes.
Despite being a small regional group with a relatively limited goal — the intent to restore an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East …
The charge that Anthropocene scholars blame all of humanity for the actions of a small minority simply doesn’t hold water. Ecosocialists need to be positive contributors to Anthropocene discussions, not critics sniping from the sidelines.
According to Earth System scientists, the Earth has entered a new geological epoch that will be less stable and less hospitable to human life. Because the change is driven by human activity, the proposed name for the new epoch is Anthropocene – from the Greek anthropos, human being.
Recently, some critics have charged that the “Anthropocene narrative” blames humanity …
The candidate I’m voting for acknowledges that forgiving and forgetting U.S. war crimes has not worked. They continue to haunt and hamper us. Former administration officials who lied us into war in Afghanistan and Iraq must be brought to justice. We need to know who falsified the intelligence and why. Remember their catchy slogan: “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud”?
Hundreds of thousands have died and many innocents continue to suffer for this cynical deception.
Those officials must include Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Libby, Feith, Wolfowitz, Powell and their many minions. We need open sessions, nothing in …
Or should that be the language of ‘assumed’ power? The United Kingdom has been swamped by examples of sneering, belittling statements issuing from the Westminster bubble over the last few months, many of the insults being directed at Scotland during the Independence Referendum and the General Election, making the Scots justifiably angry and an increasing number of the English equally embarrassed. That these comments came from all the main parties was an illustration of how low our political system has sunk.
One assumption made by Prime Minister David Cameron and his cronies is that they speak for the English, which they …
The Transatlantic and Transpacific Trade and Investment Partnerships have nothing to do with free trade. “Free trade” is used as a disguise to hide the power these agreements give to corporations to use law suits to overturn sovereign laws of nations that regulate pollution, food safety, GMOs, and minimum wages.
The first thing to understand is that these so-called “partnerships” are not laws written by Congress. The US Constitution gives Congress the authority to legislate, but these laws are being written without the participation of Congress. The laws are being written by corporations solely in the interest of their power and …
This week we break Bill C-51, down Kanada’s sinister new law, that would give the Canucks increased spying powers over its population.
On the break, long standing hip-hop act Onyx, returns with “Fuck The Law.” We wrap things up with an interview with Antoine, a computer security ninja, about how we can protect ourselves from surveillance.
