Will the wave of global unrest crash on Indonesia next?
by Andrew Gavin Marshall / July 8th, 2013
Indonesia – a Southeast Asian archipelago that is home to the largest Muslim population on Earth – is a key global hot spot for corporate plundering, worker exploitation, land grabs and environmental devastation. Simultaneously, the country is becoming a tinderbox for militant labour unrest, peasant rebellion and indigenous resistance. After 500 years of domination by imperial powers, the population of Indonesia is organizing and resisting the ‘new order’ of global corporate colonization. Much like Brazil and Turkey, Indonesia has been praised by the imperial powers as a “model democracy” and the IMF hails its progress as an “emerging economy.” The …
Sad it is to see a superpower recoil in paranoia at the perceived threats posed by its smaller enemies. The quality of a foe determines the quality of the character who responds. In the mad mash of suppositions and fantasies compiled in Antoine Fuqua’s Olympus Has Fallen, North Korea – or at the very least North Korean turncoats in the South Korean regime riding on the wings of nationalist vengefulness – become their American mirrors. Their technology is supreme; their stamina and means to take control of such a structure as the White House is demonstrated. …
There has been a lot of leadership change in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) of late, from the ousting of Tunisia’s Bin Ali, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Yemen’s Ali Saleh, to the overthrow of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi and the ongoing attempt to unseat Syria’s Bashar Assad. We can now add to that list Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi, ousted in a military junta last week.
These ousted dynastic wannabes were not royalty, however, albeit they acted like pharaohs. Royal dynastic change has been more limited of late – just Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in the past several years.
Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive.
— Sir Walter Scott, 1771-1832
It has been a bit of a foot-in-mouth week for the constitutional lawyer who is President of the United States.
As Egypt’s increasingly autocratic and theocratic Muslim Brotherhood’s President Mohammed Morsi was rejected by the population with an estimated 33 million person demonstration and a 22 million signature petition, the US Nobel Prize Laureate cheerleading for the overthrow of Syria’s sovereign Head of State, declared he is “deeply concerned” over the ousting of President Morsi.
He called for the “ … return (of) full authority back to …
I’ve been thinking over the weekend about the issues of revolution and love of country. This is the one US federal holiday that lends itself organically to such thoughts.
I spent several hours on July 4th walking with the People’s Organization for Progress in the annual Fourth of July parade in Montclair, N.J. For years POP has been doing this and I’ve been taking part. We carry big, very readable signs that address many issues from a progressive standpoint: Bring the Troops Home Now, Health Care for All, A National Jobs Program, Justice for Trayvon Martin, End Racism, Hands Off …
History, its histories of full great good perpetuations, offers countless options to exist.
But History is hard upon its millions, billions, particularly, ones; hence, Hiroshima dropped on Tokyo — or similar threats to blow convention, such as it serves, to particles of soot and ash.
Anyway, The Revolution — in music, it was, I’m certain; maybe film as well, but I’m not sure — changed everything, as it relates to song and dance.
The Republic, while still forbidden to poets, who hypnotize tired old men in coffee shops stooped unsuspecting over news — is there no place for venerable codgers to read clear, …
Lanny Cotler and I lived the 60s. He was involved in the Berkeley Free Speech dust-up and I was Bobby Kennedy’s film crew director to the end in L.A. We were both in Vietnam, he in State and I for CARE, and saw that debacle in all its hideous depth. We were radicalized then, and it only deepened and matured over the decades of Nixon, Reagan, Clinton et al. The insane response to 911 under Bush and the congealing of Congress into an American Reichstag pushed us both into a sense that whatever we could do, however slight, we simply …
It was just a year ago, that red letter day for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In huge red letters, as a matter of fact. (1) Jerry Sandusky, an erstwhile football coach and inspirational leader and advocate of disadvantaged youth, was jailed for life several times over. (If you’d picked up a newspaper, watched television news or attended a water-cooler conversation during the previous six months, you needn’t be told why.) (2) A Philadelphia Archbishop, William Lynn, set a new precedent for a senior Catholic prelate with his conviction for shielding and conspiracy in the cover-up of raping priests. Meanwhile, (3) …
From the invasion of the western hemisphere in 1492 by Spain, to the invasion of Iraq in 1992 by the United States, the tradition of plundering other nations for their resources continues.
It’s unarguable that human nature reveals a continuum of behaviors ranging from the most wretched to the sublime, at times bordering on the saintly. At a minimum, this means acknowledging, in the words of Amin Maalouf that “There is a Mr. Hyde inside each of us. What we have to do is prevent the conditions that will bring the monster forth.”
At the righteous end of the spectrum is our propensity for empathy, a trait deeply rooted in our primate heritage. Empathy — putting oneself in another’s emotional and cognitive shoes and then acting appropriately — is now an incandescently hot …
Baghdad, ancient exotic marvel in the cradle of human civilization, Mesopotamia, ‘the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers,’ where the first cities on Earth were created. Did Independence Day bring uneasy feelings about America eventually being brought to justice for so much firing on the poor overseas and denying other nations independence from subservience to America’s Wall Street? Majority Mankind will seek justice.
The revelation that Paula Deen used the N word has cooked the celebrity chef. She has been dropped more times than an ATT&T phone call, as the joke goes. Target, the Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Sears, Kmart, JC Penney, Walgreens, Caesars Palace, Smithfield Foods, the Food Network, the shopping outlet QVC and her publisher Random House have all dropped her like a just-out-of-the-oven sweet potato. “Justice” was swiftly meted out by the corporate America that had empowered Deen and 99 percent of the nation rejoiced.
Yet corporate America ignores much more extreme racism from the NRA whose board member Ted Nugent …
A trend to shift responsibility for bank losses onto blameless depositors lets banks gamble away your money.
When Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem told reporters on March 13, 2013, that the Cyprus deposit confiscation scheme would be the template for future European bank bailouts, the statement caused so much furor that he had to retract it. But the “bail in” of depositor funds is now being made official EU policy. On June 26, 2013, the New York Times reported that EU finance ministers have agreed on a plan that shifts the responsibility for bank losses …
Do you remember the promise of the New Economy that was going to replace the lost “dirty fingernail” manufacturing jobs with innovative highly paid New Economy jobs? Well, the promise was just another deception from the elites who have stolen Americans’ future.
For the umpteenth consecutive month and year, the June BLS payroll jobs report (released on July 5) shows that the US economy has created no such jobs. The same old tired categories account for the same old lowly paid new domestic service jobs.
Of the 195,000 new private sector jobs alleged to have been created, 75,000 or 38% are accounted …
Bill Black, author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One, teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri Kansas City: Tapes reveal Anglo Irish Bank executives laughed as they manipulated Irish Government into 16 billion dollar bailout the knew they would never repay.
Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak stated in 2009: “… I also have no doubt in my heart that the IDF is the most moral army in the world.” How do Israeli military actions adduce Barak’s claim? According to Shir Hever, Israeli forces are proven to be using Palestinian children as human shields despite attempts to cover it up to protect image.
Not counting all the other bad things that have happened (e.g., Wisconsin public workers being denied collective bargaining, Michigan becoming a right-to-work state, Obama’s NLRB appointees hanging in limbo, the Democrats’ betrayal of EFCA legislation, etc.), two fairly recent AFL-CIO endeavors have failed spectacularly: (1) Organizing Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., and (2) gaining a significant foothold in the Deep South.
As for attempting to penetrate Wal-Mart, the House of Labor deserves credit. Even though they failed to organize even one of the company’s nearly 4,000 U.S. stores (with 1.3 million employees), they should be applauded for having taken on what they knew …
New York City Mayor Bloomberg, speaking before last Sunday’s gay rights parade, tried to defend his position supporting the NYPD’s massive stop and frisk program directed against minority (mostly Black and Hispanic) youth. His remarks were so out of line that the New York Times wrote an editorial (7-2-13) criticizing his “loopy logic” and U.S. Representative Hakeem Jeffries (Dem. N.Y.) was moved to say his comments “were sad, disrespectful, hurtful, and quite unfortunate.”
The mayor dismissed the concerns of the minority community that they were being disproportionately stopped by the police and were, in fact, being harassed by the department. The …
When Hamas and Fatah representatives met in Gaza on June 04, there was little media fanfare. In fact, neither party expected much attention to their ‘unity talks’ aside from the occasional references to ‘national reconciliation’, ‘building bridges’ and the ‘obstacles’ along the way.
And since then, there was yet more proof that the Gaza talks were another futile exercise to breathe unity between political factions that were never united to begin with, nor possess the minimal requirement of a shared political platform, let alone vision.
Ample analysis has been offered by way of anchoring the Hamas-Fatah split to a specific …
On this 4th of July, while many Americans were celebrating the country’s Independence Day, rallies were held nationwide to counter the massive violation of privacy and the Fourth Amendment by the NSA. The campaign ‘Restore the Fourth’, spearheaded by a grassroots, non-partisan group of Internet activists emerged about a month ago in light of the mass surveillance revelation by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. It launched protests in over 100 cities across America. Reddit, Mozilla and others staged the largest online protest since SOPA.
Citing the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, the campaign demands the United States …
During the past few months, dozens of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB) members have been murdered and their offices sacked and burned. The police openly refuse to protect them. Rather than ordering the opposition to drop their demand that Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, resign, and negotiate reasonably with his government, the army gave him a Hobson’s Choice: resign or be ousted. As General Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi announced the army’s coup Wednesday, President Mohammed Morsi released a video on the president’s website denouncing the ouster. “I am the elected president of Egypt. The revolution is being stolen from us.” Minutes …
In the American justice system, even when a prisoner is not sentenced to be executed, the bureaucrats of the U.S. Justice Department’s Federal Bureau of Prisons still have extra-judicial ways of making sure a politically-targeted prisoner will die in jail.
This is a recent example, when Kathleen Kenney, general counsel for the Bureau of Prisons, informed the husband of a 73-year old woman who is dying of cancer that her request for “compassionate release” was denied because her “health is improving… she does not present circumstances considered extraordinary and compelling… at this time.”
That is what Washington attorney Kenney wrote, without apparent …
Progress and Poverty is an economic classic which has been suppressed in the US owing to its subject matter: the elimination of poverty and economic inequality by restoring The Commons. Internationally George’s economic theories are regarded as comparable to those of Marx, Keynes and Galbraith. Despite being the third most famous American in 1879 (after Edison and Mark Twain), George’s work remains largely unknown outside of Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Up until a month ago, I would have called myself a Marxist. Since reading Progress and Poverty, I have converted to Georgism.
The abortion debate in Texas—and throughout the country—has dead-ended: pro-life v. pro-choice, saving the unborn child v. protecting the rights of the mother, responsibility v. freedom. Every encounter leaves each side more dug in.
As the Texas Legislature takes up abortion bills in its second special session, we can deepen that debate simply by recognizing the complexity of the issue, which usually is plowed under in the short-term goal of passing or defeating a particular bill. That’s politics, but beneath are deeper questions.
I am a firm supporter of abortion rights for women. So, let’s take that side first. By framing the …
America’s Independence Day Viewed Through A Lens From 1986
by William Boardman / July 4th, 2013
What would the Fourth of July be without nostalgia?
In the nostalgic spirit of the Fourth of July, here are some of the things that seemed important 27 years ago, at least to the editor of the Progressive:
— President Reagan was promoting the Strategic Defense Initiative, a theoretical missile defense system referred to as “Star Wars” that continues to cost billions of dollars a year (well past $100 billion total, no one really knows how much) without useful accomplishment for the nation. Reagan promised that the program would make nuclear missiles “impotent and obsolete.”
— Military spending continued to remain larger and …
Why don’t I quit my job at Harvard and come and intern in your office and answer the phones or do whatever you want?
— Samantha Power to Senator Barack Obama, 2005
Before Samantha Power is buried in shrill hysteria by the fantasy-obsessed GOP, it might be a good idea to recognize that she is a poor choice to be U.N. Ambassador not because she will aid Washington’s enemies with her preoccupation with “human rights,” but because she will continue anti-human rights policies that earn us enemies we needn’t ever have had in the first place. Ho hum. What else is …
During WW2 everyone who went to the movies saw newsreels of Il Duce, der Fuhrer, Panzer Divisions, and, of course, the courageous men (and some women) in our armed forces fighting for freedom and democracy. It was a controlled media production, often put out by the Office of War Information or any studio with correspondents overseas. All had been pro-war efforts and even when things were going badly, the news was sanitized the best it could be.
Vietnam changed things as the embedded journalists started to see real opposition to the war coming from the front itself. People complained in the …
Adam Engel: (in media res) …nobody gives a damn what authors do or do not do, outside “our crowd” of hopelessly romantic lefties…
Gary Corseri: Don’t agree with that! I don’t think we’re “hopelessly romantic lefties” and more and more Americanos are disenchanted with life here, dream of abroad-dom. Authors settling and writing about life abroad and seeing US from aerie of expatriation–could be important to spur others. It’s a venture I am considering myself within the next couple of years.
AE: Speaking of disenchantment with the odd and sundry farcical, though ultimately tragic, excesses of Empire… I just read this biography …
