The spill out from rescuing banks and leaving homeowners to be foreclosed upon by banks. Detroit as a case study: subsidizing professional sport ownership while the city is in bankruptcy proceedings.
It is commonly assumed that “peace agreements” between pro-US rightwing regimes and leftwing insurgents lead to peace, justice and greater security. A number of peace agreements which were signed and implemented in the 1990’s in Central America, South Africa, Philippines and elsewhere provide us with ample data over two decades to confirm or reject this commonplace assumption.
We will examine the case of El Salvador where a powerful guerilla movement (FMLN) signed off on a peace accord in 1992.
It had to come. Soon after the announcement by the governing Australian Labor Party that Manus Island would re-open as part of a what is tantamount to a gulag solution, the opposition leader Tony Abbott has punched the air with his own option. It as unimaginative as it is brash, a military freak show that will convert boat arrivals into an invasion problem. There was none to begin with, but Abbott and his counterparts are on the hunt for demons to kill.
For Tony Abbott, there is everything in a name. Operation Sovereign Borders suggests that harsh measures are required against …
This article aims to reprise Marx’s 1844 article on Hegel’s philosophy of law which ends with the memorable prediction that the Germans will only become conscious of their revolutionary destiny when they respond to the “the ringing call of the Gallic cock.” Well, the last time the Gallic cock was heard from was in 1968 and it was rather subdued compared to is noisy past (1789, 1830, 1848, 1871).
Fortunately for those who read this pre-Communist Manifesto work of the young Marx (he was 25 when he wrote it) it has many useful ideas packed into its 13 pages that are …
Body Parts, Forearms and Souvenir Stars and Stripes from Predator Drones
by Felicity Arbuthnot / July 25th, 2013
When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.
— Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here, 1935 (1885-1951)
It is impossible not to ponder that the military and military planning disciplines attract some with tendencies to extremes in deviance, psychosis and general psychological aberrancies.
When yet another example comes to light – “trophy” photographs of soldiers with dead and mutilated bodies, soldiers urinating on the dead, soldiers removing body parts as “souvenirs”, unspeakable torture on orders from on high, rapes, body burnings to hide the crimes – it is assumed it can get no worse. Inevitably …
Venezuela is at a critical moment in its Bolivarian revolution, dealing with serious economic issues due to its transitional economy that is under siege by local oligarchs. At the same time, President Nicolás Maduro’s decision to welcome Edward Snowden, if he opts for political asylum in Venezuela, means that the Obama administration is escalating its hostility towards his government.
Venezuela faces a situation analogous to that of the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende from 1970 to 1973 when, as is well documented, the CIA and the local business class conspired to destabilize the economy, overthrow the democratically elected …
Remember that hilarious Amadeus moment when Mozart’s jaw drops, all excitement dashed, when the Emperor belittles his latest tour de force as “a touch elaborate.” Meaning “too long,” since (absurdly) one can only hear “so many notes in . . . the course of an evening:”
Emperor: Your work is ingenious. It’s quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that’s all. Cut a few and it will be perfect.
Mozart: Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?
Emperor: Well. There it is.
Today’s pompously hidebound right wing displays no such royal restraint, full of self-ordained zealots knowing exactly how to …
In the second quarter of 2013, the third-largest U.S. bank by assets, Citigroup, posted a 42% increase in profits which CEO Michael Corbat praised as a “well balanced” result of “cost cutting” programs, including the firing of 11,000 workers.
This big bank has a sordid history of predatory profiteering and criminal activity, not unlike all the other large banks. In the early 20th century, what was then National City Bank was the main bank for the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests. Over ensuing decades and mergers it eventually came to be Citibank, and in the late 1990s, Citigroup. At that time, …
Growing movement decries Philippine President’s failure to address the widespread poverty, corruption, and human rights abuses during his State of the Nation Address.
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / July 24th, 2013
One of the major conflicts of the era that is not often highlighted for public debate is whether we want an economy that privatizes government services and public resources and continues to concentrate wealth; or whether we want to develop an economic democracy that invests in the public interest and creates shared prosperity.
Journalist Ted Koppel summarized the privatization trend:
We are privatizing ourselves into one disaster after another…. We’ve privatized a lot of what our military is doing. We’ve privatized a lot of what our intelligence agencies are doing. We’ve privatized our very prison system in many parts of the …
by Dooler Campbell and Allie Fry / July 24th, 2013
U.S. drone strikes have killed four American citizens to date. The families of three of the victims are bringing a lawsuit against those responsible for the targeted killings, seeking accountability from the U.S. government. On September 30, 2011, a U.S. drone strike killed five people, including U.S. citizens Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan. On October 14, 2011, another strike murdered Al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son Abdulrahman. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the ACLU are representing plaintiffs Nasser Al-Awlaki, Anwar’s father and Abdulrahman’s grandfather, and Sarah Khan, mother of Samir Khan.
Codepink delegates met with Nasser Al-Awlaki in Yemen in …
Cornel West, on HBO’s Real Time, reiterated his criticism that President Obama is a “war criminal” for killing innocent people through drone strikes. He went on to make a simple, but rarely heard observation, that if you “have an empire, you’re going to have war crimes.”
Critical voices like his are an exception in the mainstream. For the most part, establishment liberals have either been silent or have cheered as Obama has expanded the national security state. West chastises these liberals as “morally bankrupt” for giving Obama a pass for the same problematic policies that Bush was roundly criticized for.
NorCal Democrats Get More Than They Bargained For in Campaign Fundraiser
by Christopher Fisher / July 24th, 2013
Belvedere, California — A group of over seventy Sonoma, Marin, and other Bay Area citizens, activists, and community leaders recently took House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) to task for supporting the National Security Agency (NSA) domestic spying programs exposed in early June by whistleblower Edward J. Snowden. The protesters staged a peaceful, boisterous picket outside a Democratic Party fundraiser in the swanky Marin community of Belvedere.
North Bay residents may be forgiven if they had not heard of the event, as the Marin Independent Journal and Pacific Sun (also of Marin) were among the few area news outlets …
The partial shutdown of Long Island College Hospital (LICH), which caregivers and patients have fought to save for months, has already spawned a health crisis that some are comparing to Superstorm Sandy, which struck the city last year.
Ryan Schiavon, who works as a paramedic at LICH, says he’s been forced by administrators to bypass the hospital and bring the patients he picks up to other facilities that are crowded stretcher-to-stretcher as a result.
“It’s utter chaos,” says Schiavon. “It’s stuff we haven’t seen since Hurricane Sandy. It’s getting back to that level.”
LICH is currently fully staffed with some 2,000 doctors, nurses, …
In 1945, the British agreed to renegotiate the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, with the British seeking to protect their large military presence with their base at the Suez Canal. The negotiations had become frustrated with the Egyptians demanding the unconditional removal of all British troops, a prospect that was reviled by both the British and Americans, who were first and foremost interested in maintaining their imperial hegemony over the region. ((Peter L. Hahn, “Containment and Egyptian Nationalism: The Unsuccessful Effort to Establish the Middle East Command, 1950-53,” Diplomatic History (Vol. 11, No. 1, January 1987), pages 25-26.)) One of the …
Netanyahu, Abbas to Resume "Peace Process" that Never Was
by Ramzy Baroud / July 23rd, 2013
The political peddlers, think-tank experts and media professionals are all back in full force. They want us to believe that US Secretary of State John Kerry has done what others have failed to do. On his sixth trip to the Middle East during his post, and following intense shuttle diplomacy likened to that of Henry Kissinger, Kerry managed to create a modest common space between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority (PA), thus securing their agreement to resume the so-called peace process.
The media is focusing a great deal on how the ‘breakthrough’ happened, not on why or whether or …
Rather than expanding the money supply, quantitative easing (QE) has actually caused it to shrink by sucking up the collateral needed by the shadow banking system to create credit. The “failure” of QE has prompted the Bank for International Settlements to urge the Fed to shirk its mandate to pursue full employment, but the sort of QE that could fulfill that mandate has not yet been tried.
Ben Bernanke’s May 29th speech signaling the beginning of the end of QE3 provoked a “taper tantrum” that wiped about $3 trillion from global equity markets – this from the mere suggestion that the …
Shir Hever, an Israeli economist and commentator who researches the economic aspects of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories: Europe Union declares Hezbollah a terrorist organization but does not give similar designation to Israel.
Brazil has witnessed one of the world’s most striking socio-economic reversals in modern history: from a dynamic nationalist industrializing to a primary export economy. Between the mid 1930’s to the mid 1980’s, Brazil averaged nearly 10% growth in its manufacturing sector largely based on state interventionist policies, subsidizing, protecting and regulating the growth of national public and private enterprises. Changes in the ‘balance’ between national and foreign (imperial) capital began to take place following the military coup of 1964 and accelerated after the return of electoral politics in the mid-1980’s. The election of neo-liberal politicians, especially …
Families came with their children, and police showed up with their riot gear. This was in Oakland on July 15th, the third day of protests over the death of teenager Trayvon Martin, whose killer had just been found “Not Guilty.”
I arrived at 6:21 p.m. There were about five hundred people gathered in the plaza at 14th and Broadway, and more were arriving. The rally was already in progress. “The whole damn system is guilty,” a speaker was saying. That’s clearly the way people felt. This is a city where young blacks have been murdered by police.
Sergei Morozov talks about the ways in which mass society’s information awareness has changed in recent decades, the global repercussions of that and how that has affected the future prospects of society which often referred as the Information society.
Prosecutors’ Performance Might Be More Questionable Than the Jury’s
by William Boardman / July 23rd, 2013
Listening to the lead prosecutor’s final argument in the Zimmerman case, it’s hard to believe he really wanted a conviction.
Lead prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda lost focus from the moment he opened his mouth and began: “A teenager is dead. He is dead through no fault of his own. He is dead because another man made assumptions….”
Not only is de la Rionda’s voice flat, his tone subdued and resigned, he begins by presenting the victim as an abstraction, characterizing him in a neutral, almost dismissive way as “a teenager,” who also happens to …
I read the notion, on some scientifically correct web site (so many stack this Library of Babel; who can recall? it’s book-marked, some-place, on one browser or other), that a comet emerges from the cold black Greater Than. Expected to punch out Gaea’s lights in June, 2085.
“Why must you kick me down, grasping?” she cried. “You promised peanut butter cookies and chocolate cream cheese. And chill hugs – better than nothing…”
“Oh, please. I’ve never laid a hand – or foot – on you and never would. Ok? Quiet.”
Canada recently took over the leadership of the Arctic Council and will be succeeded by the U.S. in 2015. With back-to-back chairmanships, it gives both countries an opportunity to increase cooperation on initiatives that could enhance the development of a shared North American vision for the Arctic. The U.S. has significant geopolitical and economic interests in the high north and have released a new national strategy which seeks to advance their Arctic ambitions. While the region has thus far been peaceful, stable and free of conflict, there is a danger of the militarization of the Arctic. It has the potential …
The grounds for Zimmerman’s acquittal were that he shot someone, and killed him. Pure and simple.
The grounds for Trayvon Martin’s having been killed is that he decided to defend himself against someone stalking him.
Does it make sense? No. Is it true? Yes.
There’s nothing to understand. That’s just the way it is. But if we do want to understand it, we have to look at the “role model.” Or rather, at The Role Model.
The eye-grabbing cover of Jodi Dean’s The Communist Horizon (Verso, 2012) depicts what could be the dawn of a new day. A red sun, half in view, arcs across the volume’s bottom edge. From this solid red spot, dozens of thin but widening beams fan out; crossing the background, the sunlight splits the sky itself into stripes of red and white.
Though Dean had no direct hand in selecting this cover image, ((In a personal email, Dean indicated to me that while she had no input into the cover, …
“The Indian Uprising” by Donald Barthelme is an iconic short story of the 1960s heralding the defeat of the US empire and the end of white male dominance. Written as the USA was mired in a hopeless war, as Indigenous peoples and African-Americans were rebelling against oppression, and as women were breaking out of the traditional roles they had been confined to, the story predicted the victory of these insurgents over the feeble old order. Its experimental style full of dislocations and dissolutions captured the postmodern zeitgeist.
As with many icons of the 1960s, the story and the unpatriotic tone it …
With the apparent stall in negotiations between the Thai Government and Barisan Revolusi Patani (BRN [the Patani independence movement in Patani, southern Thailand]) over the violence of the Deep South, one must start considering how long before a solution to this lingering insurgency problem can be found.
With roughly 5,300 people being killed since 2004, with 45 killed and 75 injured since the negotiations between the Thai Government and BRN began negotiations with Malaysia mediating, there have been calls by opposition leader Abhisit Vejjajiva to suspend negotiations with the BRN until the level of violence is lowered. The recent …
— Jeff Danziger, Political cartoonist, August 2, 2006
The words of Nasser al-Aulaqi have a measured, dignified determination, shadowed by bewilderment and the betrayal by a country for which he had had respect, happy memories and which had provided aspects of the basis for his considerable achievements.
Nasser al-Aulaqi is the father of Anwar al-Aulaqi and the grandfather of sixteen year old Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi, both killed in American drone strikes in Yemen, within two weeks of each other, in September and October 2011, respectively. Both were American citizens.
