The military will not solve a single problem (tags)
Solidarity could also be understood and implemented differently: as a concept that reduces violence and aims at protecting human lives in concrete terms. This includes not only refugee aid, humanitarian aid & all conceivable diplomacy. It is also important to examine whether social resistance measures planned for the short term make sense in this highly escalated situation.
Car Plants Are Making Medical Equipment - And Things Should Stay That Way (tags)
The time has come for progressive nationalization and socialization. This includes the financial sector, because only if we gain control over the financing of socially necessary areas of production will it be possible to ensure that we as a society can plan our future.
No nuclear war in Europe! and Glorification of violence (tags)
The well-read do not believe in Russia's sole guilt anyway. They remember the promise made to Gorbachev not to expand NATO eastward. They know that the U.S. organized and financed a coup on the Maidan in 2014 to install a puppet government.
Stumbling into world war and Ukraine War (tags)
We are on a slippery slope that could end in a world war and a nuclear apocalypse. And it is also clear that for going to war, the West would have to sacrifice those "values" that have so far been used to justify war, first and foremost freedom of speech and democracy.
The coup from above and The Decline of Civilization (tags)
Ignazio Silone (14), an important theorist of Italian fascism is reported to have said: When fascism returns, it will not say: 'I am fascism' No, it will say: 'I am anti-fascism'." And I say: we are on the threshold of an internationalized super-fascism.
How critical journalists are muzzled in Europe (tags)
Besides the case of Julian Assange, the case of the Basque Pablo González has stood out for almost a year now. Poland wants to keep him in solitary confinement for at least a year without presenting any evidence for the accusations of alleged espionage for Russia.
Question sanctions and The cry of the poor (tags)
In Germany, we tend to moralize and romanticize in politics. This prevents us from taking a sober view of world events. We fail to recognize that the U.S. is ruthlessly asserting its own interests, against enemy and friend. The interests of the EU and the U.S. have long since ceased to coincide.
Guidance to the system change, Parts 1 and 2 (tags)
World War II led to U.S. domination of the political West, which was able to make its mark on the part of the world it more or less controlled. Led and dominated by the military-industrial complex, any efforts of autonomous state developments that contradicted its interests were suppressed.
Beyond market and state (tags)
The dominant, financial market-oriented factions of capital are using the crisis to further enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else by attempting to appropriate even the wealth of society that is yet to be generated in the medium term by indebting the state.
The discussion about Corona (tags)
Corona can only become a kairos if we gain the theoretical capacity of recovery and create the conditions for a transformation. Taking the healthcare system away from the markets and obliging large companies to be oriented in the common good would be steps to infrastructure socialism.
Tax haven USA wants to dry up other tax havens (tags)
Two US states lure with particularly lax laws for companies. Constructions such as mailbox companies, which help to conceal the true owners of companies, are flourishing. The American government can certainly be accused of double standards in this matter:
Democracy - a Plea toStrengthen It and Fight for It (tags)
We as democrats must take care of democracy as a learning system. If we do not do so, democracy will wither away.
It is time to champion a basic right to housing and ensure its reality. "An authentic faith that is never comfortable and individualistic always includes the deep desire to change the world," wrote Pope Francis.
The Criminality of the Elites (tags)
The offenses of the upper classes are hardly publicized. People wait in vain for strong interventions in the economic realm. Financial criminality harms the state, the community and economic growth (e.g. high-frequency trading, shadow banking, financial products)
Affordable Rents? A State of Emergency Intensifies (tags)
Rents explode in cities after massive sales of public housing to brutal investors. In 1987, there were 5.5 million social apartments in Germany. Today, there are 1.5 million. Land speculation was prevented in Vienna. The Vienna Housing Fund buys up possible development land.
Against the Rent Madness and For a Nonprofit Orientation! (tags)
The Alternative Housing Summit on Sept 21 in Berlin discussed alternatives to the market-based housing policy. Exploding rents and lack of affordable housing are the most burning social questions. More market is not the solution! Housing for People, not for Profits!
Promote Public Housing! (tags)
A basic principle of the market economy is that the market only reacts to solvent demand, not to needs. If a need is not reflected in a solvent demand, the market simply does not react. The supply side expansion of affordable housing is key, not subject promotion.
The Driving Force of Global Inequality (tags)
Behind closed doors, a powerful industry has developed worldwide since the 1980s: tax avoidance. Taxes that are avoided must be compensated by higher taxation of households with lower incomes.
Democracy and the Uncanny Power of Money (tags)
Growing inequality is the greatest political problem of our time. Governments are often only actors or puppets of an anonymous regime for the benefit of the privileged where the interests of simple people do not count.
The Unending Story of the Achievers (tags)
All personal and corporate success depended on state investments in roads, schools, hospitals, community centers, airwaves, food safety and water quality. The achievers' myth ignores this, Austrian researcher Bruno Rossmann explains.
How Much State Does the Social Market Economy Need? (tags)
The use of property is only legitimate within the limits of the public interest. Whoever takes a risk must bear it and be liable for the losses. The state has the political task of laying down effective rules for risk assessment, liability and providing transparency. Distributive battles intensify.
60 Years of Resistance to the German Army (tags)
Today more and more people say Without Us! The German army is filled with so much contradiction that we can be very hopeful we will become a country without an army. We should debate this today. Always saying yes accomplishes nothing.
Cochabamba: Water as a Human Right (tags)
The economy should be part of life, not a steamroller crushing self-determination and creativity. The TTIP, TPP and TISA trade agreements create a parallel private arbitration system that gives corporations special rights to sue states. Labor and environmental arein danger.
Proposed European Army: Good Idea or Bad? (tags)
anti-war
The European Commission suspended the secret TTIP negotiations for four months to get citizen consultation on the Investor-State-Dispute SettlementThis proposed parallel system with 3-person courts of arbitration allows corporations to sue for lost profits. Decisions are irrevocable.
TTIP Undermines the Constitutional State (tags)
TTIP, Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, is a deregulation agreement, a great redistribution project benefiting mammoth corporations at the expense of women and the 99%. Loud protest caused the EU commission to suspend negotiation on the investor right to sue.
Free Trade Agreement: Special Rights for Corporations (tags)
The TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) gives corporations the right to sue sovereign states for lost profits and endangers public sector jobs and social and environmental protections
Prevent the Comeback of the Cold Warriors! (tags)
What lessons were learned from Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Iraq and Afghanistan? Can countries become incapable of learning? Is preemptive war, confusion of offense and defense, a Hitlerian perversion? Does cooking intelligence create cynicism instead of public spirit?
TTIP: A Tranatlantic Constitution of Corporations? (tags)
TTIP, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, endangers the economy, health and food policies of countries outside the EU and the US. The Investor-State Settlement mechanism gives corporations the same status as nation states. A flood of lawsuits can be expected.
TTIP: International Mega-corporations prevent social and ecological globalization (tags)
In the reality of international monopolist competition, narrow economic profit interests dominate to the disadvantage of broad prosperity gains. Protection of foreign mega-investors before indirect expropriation leads to a dispossession of nation state democracy.
The Left Must Be Ecological (tags)
Nature is our partner and the basis of future survival, not an external, free good or sink. Building a pipeline means abandoning a decent infrastructure. Are people really happy or have they become a little fatalistic?
Seven Good Reasons for a More Just Tax Policy (tags)
In the US, the top tax rate was over 70% from 1938 to 1982. Reagan cut the top rate to 35% and changed taxation from corporate to individual leading to exploding inequality and generalized insecurity. Taxation, investment, labor market, trade and distribution policies must change.
"This is a Cold Putsch Against the Constitution" (tags)
Sahra Wagenknecht, co-vice president of DIE LINKE (The Left Party) in Germany, is the author of many books and articles on economic justice, the financial transactions tax and creative socialism.
Growth Euphoria and Distribution Reality (tags)
The chasm between poor and rich opens even more. The uncoupling of growth and quality of life on one side and productivity and work volumes on the other side make clear that "business-as-usual" leads to growing problems. German GDP grew 300% with 20% fewer workers.
The state became indebted to bailout the banks. Now the state pays them ever higher interests. The state should guarantee the deposits of small savers, not the debts of banks to other banks or hedge funds. The financial sector must be shriveled, the sector that uncoupled.
Democracy in Crisis: The Terror of the Economy is a Danger to Democracy (tags)
There is a powerful crisis dynamic that is stronger than the will of the sovereign and its democratic institutions. When capital relations fall into crisis, everything can be instrumentalized: the basic law, democracy, human rights and human life. Economic pressure creates extremism of middle.
Capitalism Can Be Cured (tags)
"The Occupy movement protests worldwide against the power of banks. The Indignados in Spain demonstrate against the system that gives them this crisis and high unemployment. No saying has been criticized more vigorously than Margaret Thatcher's `there is no alternative'."
Debt Tribunal and Green Socialism (tags)
Qualitative growth, breaking out of the box of quantitative growth, is the key to solving mass unemployment, environmental destruction and trade imbalance. A job in education costs 1/10 what a job in a chemical dye plant costs. The media is part of a system that refuses change.
Millionaire's Tax is the Best Debt Brake (tags)
Sahra Wagenknecht is a leader of the Left party, Die Linke, in the German Bundestag and author of "Freedom instead of Capitalism." Learning from other cultures is a strength, not a weakness. The University of British Columbia had a tuition freeze for 6 or 7 years and kept tuition at $2300.
Occupy World - The Protest Against the Financial System Intensifies (tags)
Since the beginning of the financial crisis, governments from Berlin to Washington solemnly vowed to regulate the financial system more strongly, close the casino on the financial markets and call to account financially the speculators.for their inflicted damage. Deeds did not follow.
The Game with Ignorance and the Growth Panacea (tags)
A world wide economic and financial order decays to a pure end-in-itself and no longer serves people. A system build on an ideology in which everything-even the person-becomes a product is legitimated by apologists who trivialize derailments of social life as "normal."
Urgent Appeal: Crackdown on Malaysian Socialists (tags)
Manila -- Around 70 members of Partido Lakas ng Masa (Party of the Laboring Masses - PLM) held a brief picket in front of the Malaysian Embassy this morning to protest the arrests and detention of 30 activists belonging to the Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM).
The neoliberal growth strategy ofr reducing the price of labor led to a system change from Keynesianism to neoliberal capitalism. Neoliberals never sought full employment. Rather their policy aimed at the permanent division of society.
"War never serves peace" (tags)
War never serves peace just as lies never serve truth and cats are not dogs. We wage war against the nature that we exploit and against the starving whom we drive into misery. As soon as one says war, we fall back thousands of years to the Stone Age and lose the option for the future.
Globalization and the New Political Movements (tags)
Attac, a global justice network in many European countries, demands closing off-shore tax havens and debt cancellation for the third world. The word globalization has a function as a threat. Be flexible because capital is flexible and the state can do nothing!
Beyond Market and State (tags)
In a "post-democracy," the interests of global corporations prevail with the continuing facade of democratic institutions and procedures. Interest in politics in the population is very low. Criticism of neoliberalism brings together many movements and groups.
The Crisis of Capitalism: Credit-Doping (tags)
"The social market economy blows the wealth of this society in speculation rather than in higher wages, higher pensions or unemployment benefits.. All capital transactions with tax havens should be prohibited.. Instead of democratization, we growing centralization in a few hands.."
"We are moving into a world-historical situation where all the points of social, economic and political life will be reset..A revolutionary process is only possible when a radical reform gets going.. A radical redistribution from top to bottom must be fought for.."
Bailout Jobs, Not Banks! (tags)
The real state of German public finance is kept secret from the public although the public should pay the bill. Union leaders parrot the fairy-tale of the evil bankers who alone caused the whole debacle. Automakers produce for the storage yard
GERMANY: Oscar Lafontaine on the Financial Markets (tags)
"The present crisis cannot be overcome without a regulation of the financial markets.. When banks are given billions through the so-called bank bailout and these billions disappear somewhere, that is a misappropriation or embezzlement of tax funds.."
he revolution delayed: 10 years of Hugo Chávez’s rule (tags)
* A translation of a March 2008 interview conducted by the French anarchist Charles Reeve with two members of the El Libertario group www.nodo50.org/ellibertario in Caracas, the nation’s capital, which offers some stark insights into the reality of the situation.
The Great Chance: Basic Guaranteed Income (tags)
How else should the economy and society become more sustainable without a partial turning away from the growth society of more and more? The de-acceleration of work and life is necessary. A basic income could initiate both.
An Umbrella for Workers (tags)
The economic crisis is a structural crisis where productivity has soured and wages have stagnated. The fraud in public regional banks must end. Unemployment benefits must increase. Michael Schlecht is a union spokesperson for the German Left party (Die Linke).
The Future as Possibility: Elmar Altvater (tags)
The state should not be a trough for the super-wealthy. Representatives representing money and not the people are marionettes of a corrupt campaign financing system. The system must be changed if it is to survive. Call Congress 1-800-270-0309.
Reforms and the System Question (tags)
According to Marxist perspectives, capitalism develops with crises and ruptures. Possibilities of revolutionary social upheavals open up in these crises. The old wisdom of the Fordist age that cars cannot buy cars has lost all value to the elites.
Break the Neoliberal Hegemony! (tags)
This call to a new LEFT party in Germany could give hope to all who yearn for social justice and structural/systemic corrections. While corporate profits and assets incomes set new records, wages, unemployment benefits and pensions are cut.