As my mind was growing, by reading and opening my eyes, my enemy took different shapes. At first, I thought he was the guy who beat the teenager pride out of me in a train fight over a girl, but that went by, forgotten and forgiven, leaving no scars, but rather a smile.
Then there was my neighbour on the farm land who was moving the border between us towards my land about five centimetres every year. He had the determination of an ant, but with time he couldn’t drive …
How do you snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? By winning on the battlefield and losing at the peace table. That was my critique of the gigantic struggle against apartheid when compared to the economic and political situation that prevails in the Republic of South Africa today.
In the U.S., a young man is on the verge of a huge victory on the legal battlefield and he must not become a loser at the peace table. That young man, a veritable “David,” is about to topple a “Goliath!” I’m writing about Marcus Washington, a young …
Ten days ago some 200 asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea marched to Jerusalem to protest against their mistreatment by the Israeli government. They had left a new ‘open’ detention facility in the Negev desert, where they are obliged to spend the night and attend three role calls during the day. They walked for about six hours to the nearest city, Beer-Sheva, my hometown. After spending the night at the bus station, they marched on to Nachshon, a kibbutz that had agreed to put them up for the night. The following day, they continued to the Knesset by bus.
The Looming Battle for Real Social Security Can Spawn a New Progressive Movement
by Dave Lindorff / December 31st, 2013
I don’t care if you are 75 and retired, 61 and just about to reach the age when you become eligible for Social Security, 50 and looking out 15 or 20 years to the time when you’ll need to retire, or 25 with grandparents collecting retirement benefits and wondering what will be there when you get old. Whatever your age, don’t let anyone tell you Social Security is in trouble, or that it “won’t be around” when you need it.
That’s a hoary lie that has been pushed by Republicans as far back as 1935 when Social Security was being established, …
Since the Harper Conservative’s have come to power one of the areas which have attracted much of their legislative attention is the Citizenship and Immigration file. In an interview, which has attracted almost no national media attention at time of writing, ((December 31, 2013.)) published in the conservative National Post on December 27, 2013 the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Chris Alexander, discussed dramatic changes to Canada’s Citizenship laws and which were being considered by the Conservative Government.
In what has been described as the “first comprehensive reforms to the Citizenship Act in more than a generation” the …
Significant changes in Latin America have mystified writers, journalists, academics, and policy-makers who purport to comment on developments in Latin America. The case of Bolivia and two-term President Evo Morales (2006-2014) is illustrative of the utter confusion in political labelling.
A brief survey of his ideological pronouncements, foreign policy declarations and economic policies highlights a very astute political regime which successfully manipulates radical rhetoric and applies orthodox economic policies with a populist style of politics which insures repeated electoral victories and an unprecedented degree of political stability and continuity.
Kabul, Afghanistan is “home” to hundreds of thousands of children who have no home. Many of them live in squalid refugee camps with families that have been displaced by violence and war. Bereft of any income in a city already burdened by high rates of unemployment, families struggle to survive without adequate shelter, clothing, food or fuel. Winter is especially hard for refugee families. Survival sometimes means sending their children to work on the streets, as vendors, where they often become vulnerable to well organized gangs that lure them into drug and other criminal rings.
The back-to-back bombings in Volgograd come on the heels of Saudi intelligence chief Bandar bin Sultan’s reported threats to Putin earlier this year to sponsor terror attacks around the Sochi Olympics if Russia refused to allow military intervention in Syria. The suicide bombings also follow the pattern of NATO Operation Gladio B, and fall in line with NATO protection of Chechen terrorists. James Corbett joins RT to discuss these developments.
How Do We Finish the Job?
It starts with winning over the hearts and minds of the American people.
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / December 30th, 2013
The current social movement that exploded onto the national scene with the 2011 Occupy Movement is following the path of successful movements so far. The social movement in 2014 is poised to begin an exciting era of broadening and deepening the growing consensus for social and economic justice.
This week, our article for the end of 2013 focuses on where we are, i.e. at what stage of the progression of social movements do we find ourselves; and broadly outlines the next steps. Next week, our article for the new year will look more specifically at the tasks ahead for the movement …
Maybe the empire thought that we would not honor our word when, during days of uncertainty in the past century, we affirmed that even if the USSR were to disappear Cuba would continue struggling. World War II broke out on September 1, 1939 when Nazi-fascist troops invaded Poland and struck like a lightning over the heroic people of the USSR, who contributed 27 million lives to preserve mankind from that brutal massacre that ended the lives of 50 million persons.
War, on the other hand, is the only venture that the human race throughout history has failed to avoid, leading …
Fawaz Gerges is a Professor and Director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics. Nominally a Christian commentator on the Arab world, more importantly he is widely sought and respected for his balanced view and assessment of the American Middle Eastern dominant presence and the view thereof of hundreds of millions of people from Morocco to Tehran. Professor Gerges several months ago released a book, Obama and the Middle East, of which the sub-title, The End of America’s Moment? is posed as a question, but in fact makes the statement: the sunset is …
Julie Wark has written a manifesto for justice. Simply titled The Human Rights Manifesto, her book examines the UN Declaration of Human Rights and compares it to the current situation. In doing so, it is clear that we as a species have failed. While there is certainly plenty of blame to go around, from those activists who have resigned from the battle to those who have convinced themselves that the current political and economic systems are capable of remedying the daily violations of human rights, the bulk of the blame remains with the greatest violators of those …
Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese revolution and long-time Chairman of the Communist Party who died in 1976, would have been 120 years old this past December 26.
Despite the fact that his successors in the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made what Mao would have viewed as the spectacular error of “taking the capitalist road,” the masses of people in China still venerate their old leader.
The influential Chinese newspaper Global Timespublished a new opinion poll on the late leader’s birthday that revealed that more than 85% of respondents see the merits of Mao Zedong …
In “The Mandela Barbie,” BBC journalist and investigative reporter Greg Palast’s eulogy of Nelson Mandela provides a rare breath of sanity in the media stampede to remake a legendary Marxist revolutionary into an icon of free market capitalism. According to Palast, “The ruling class creates commemorative dolls and statues of revolutionary leaders as a way to tell us their cause is won, so go home.”
Al Jazeera America also offers a fairly balanced assessment of Mandela’s accomplishments. In “Mandela Sought Balance Between Socialism and Capitalism,” Martin O’Neill and Thad Williamson acknowledge that Mandela and the African National Congress totally …
Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and apartheid, it is man-made and can be removed by the actions of human beings.
— Nelson Mandela
The outpouring of emotion and dignified appreciation that has met the passing of Nelson Mandela on December 5, 2013, flowed like a raging river from every nation and people on the planet. It was a grief tempered by a jubilation and wonderment at the life of this great and humble human being.
While it is certainly true that Mandela’s death resonated most powerfully with the South African people, and particularly with oppressed and exploited working people …
Israel is set to become a major exporter of gas and some oil, if all goes to plan. The giant Leviathan natural gas field, in the eastern Mediterranean, discovered in December 2010, is widely described as “off the coast of Israel.”
At the time the gas field was: “… the most prominent field ever found in the sub-explored area of the Levantine Basin, which covers about 83,000 square kilometres of the eastern Mediterranean region.”
Coupled with Tamar field, in the same location, discovered in 2009, the prospects are for an energy bonanza for Israel, for Houston, Texas based …
Men who are eager to terrorize others will inevitably become frightened of the very people they are intimidating.
–Cicero, “On Duties”
…we but teach bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor…
—Macbeth
Now our story begins in a strange, faraway place where there lived 100 Elephants. And it’s a funny story, too, but also a very serious story. Now these Elephants spent most of their time roaming about and protecting their gigantic, red-and-blue Fortress. These were proud Elephants, all 100 of them, and they would always brag about how powerful they were and how they could crush anything …
The transformation of Christmas from a story about a migrant working-class family fleeing state persecution, in the search for a safe haven and receiving support and solidarity to the biggest capitalist commercial bonanza of the year – has far-reaching political consequences.
Taking Christ out of Christmas
The fundamental ‘change’, engineered by the capitalist class in pursuit of profits, was to take the ‘Christ Story’ out of Christmas and to convert the weeks before and after into a consumer orgy. Aided and abetted by “secularist allies”, the capitalist class succeeded …
London’s Christmas was made gloomier this year — and rightly so — by the appearance in the courtyard of St James’s Church, Piccadilly, of a replica of the hated Israeli annexation Wall that threads its thieving way around the Palestinian West Bank.
It’s a life-size representation of the actual 8-metre high Wall surrounding Bethlehem and imprisoning its inhabitants. The project, called ‘Bethlehem Unwrapped’ is a response to a call from the united churches of the Holy Land pleading with churches and communities around the world to “help us get our freedom back”.
The Israelis claim that the monstrous Wall, also …
In his novel The Trial, Franz Kafka conjured up the nightmarish, surreal yet strangely familiar world of an ordinary person trapped in a web of bewildering governmental repressions. Inexplicably, the eponymous protagonist “Joseph K” suddenly finds himself under relentless investigation—and is then abruptly arrested. Throughout his ordeal, the charges will remain undisclosed. (“Is it political?” gasps Jeanne Moreau, in Orson Welles’ film version; or, as Orwell’s Winston Smith would say, “is it a thought-crime?”) “Free” from incarceration while he awaits trial, Joseph travels through a labyrinth of impersonal offices, baffling court procedures, and inscrutable explanations–only …
JVP is moving from strength to strength. Though it didn’t liberate Palestine yet, it certainly managed to convince a few Jews that Jewishness is actually a good thing.
Today we learned that the legendary activist and scholar Noam Chomsky appealed to the general public to donate to the Jews only Group.
In the letter Chomsky admitted that “these days, there are really only a handful of Jewish organizations that honor the traditions of universal equality that inspired me to be an activist so many years ago.”
Chomsky is no doubt a clever boy, he surely knows why there are only a …
In ancient Rome, especially during the late Republic, oligarchs resorted to mob violence to block, intimidate, assassinate or drive from power the dominant faction in the Senate. While neither the ruling or opposing factions represented the interests of the plebeians, wage workers, small farmers or slaves, the use of the ‘mob’ against the elected Senate, the principle of representative government and the republican form of government laid the groundwork for the rise of authoritarian “Caesars” (military rulers) and the transformation of the Roman republic into an imperial state.
First settled by Europeans in 1640, Marcus Hook was once called Chammassungh, Finland then Marrites Hoeck, from which the present name derives. The Hook, however, does serendipitously evoke its pirate past, when Blackbeard plied the Delaware, and one of his mistresses, Margaret, lived here, in a plank house still preserved.
This town’s peak posterity came much later, however, in the legitimate business of oil refining, plus there was a steel mill just down the road. Though its population never surpassed 5,000, Marcus Hook had 36 taverns at one point, including three openly gay bars. This, in a heavily Catholic region …
Jim McNerney, CEO
The Boeing Company
100 North Riverside
Chicago, IL 60606
Dear Mr. McNerney:
The squeeze that you and Boeing are putting on your machinist workers’ pensions, pay scales and your stance on other labor issues regarding the assembling of the new 777X airliners is unseemly for several reasons.
First, consider your pay this year of $21.1 million, a 15 percent increase from the previous year, and much higher than your predecessors. That sum does not demonstrate a moral authority to require sacrifices from your workers at a time of rising Boeing sales and profits, dividend increases, cash hoard, and another notorious $10 billion stock …
On Christmas Eve, while Christians knelt in churches to honour the birth of the eternal light of the Child of Bethlehem — the Child of peace, Israeli Herods struck Gaza and the life-light of little Hala haemorrhaged into eternal death.
Hala Ahmed Abu Sbaikha, all of 3 years old, was, like all toddlers, both vivacious and shy, playful, affectionate with bright curious eyes and with a so soft cheek to rest a bedtime kiss.
Why did the Herods of Israel attack Gaza?
There are three possible answers — one false, one truly appalling, one heinous.
Ostensibly, reports in western pro-Israel media, …
It would be easy to make a list of 10 bad things—wars, government shut-down, drone attacks, lack of progress on immigrant rights, lousy health-care reform. But it’s also been a year of extraordinary activism: whistleblowers, DREAMers, Walmart workers, peacemakers, gay rights advocates, garment workers. As the year ends, let’s pay tribute to the good things their efforts have wrought.
1. A spontaneous uprising by the American people kept President Obama from invading Syria. This Fall’s “peaceful insurrection” was by far my favorite moment of 2013. It was one of those all-too-rare occasions when folks came together across ideological …
A brief summary of what’s been happening in Seattle between the Boeing Corporation and its union workforce, the IAM (International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers). Aware they have the upper hand, and that thousands of relatively well-paying jobs hang in the balance, Boeing has resorted to an unsubtle form of carrot-and-stick extortion.
The carrot: If the IAM agrees to re-open the existing contract and give the company several gut-wrenching concessions involving pensions, health care and future wages, Boeing will stay put, the jobs will remain in Seattle, Boeing, as planned, will allow the IAM to build its new 777X jet …
A clear diagnosis of the Oil Sands fever variant of Dutch Disease may be just what the doctor ordered to rally Canadian workers in the fight against global warming.
A rapid increase in natural resource investment and revenue usually drives up a nation’s currency. This generally makes other industries less competitive and can greatly weaken a country’s manufacturing base.
Widely known as “Dutch Disease” (named after a period of rapid expansion of the natural gas industry in the Netherlands), this well established economic paradox has become a taboo subject in this country. Canada’s highly class-conscious elite is worried that manufacturing workers might …
Bill Keller, editorialist for the NY Times and former executive editor of the paper, has recently penned a strong attack on Vladimir Putin arguing that Putin’s leadership “deliberately distances Russia from the socially and culturally liberal West”, describing the Kremlin’s policies as “laws giving official sanction to the terrorizing of gays and lesbians, the jailing of members of a punk protest group for offenses against the Russian Orthodox Church, the demonizing of Western-backed pro-democracy organizations as ‘foreign agents’, expansive new laws on treason, limits on foreign adoptions.”
Keller, who during his tenure as executive editor of the NY Times argued …
