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.
Farewell to the unipolar world and Disaster capitalism (tags)
The sanctions have already proved to be a dangerous boomerang because they hit Europe harder than Russia... It is a suicidal illusion to try to win a war against the raw materials giant Russia - which possesses more than a third of all fossil energies and raw materials on earth...
Putin escalates: How should we react now? (tags)
The U.S. government wants to make the country independent of China. In no other area are the efforts to "decouple" (decoupling) as clear and unambiguous as in high technologies, especially in the (alleged) future fields of battery technology and high-performance chips. Matthias Becker
The UN vote against the Ukraine war (tags)
For many abstaining states in the UN vote, Russia's belligerent incursion into Ukraine should be rejected, but the U.S. should be denied its prosecutorial status as a champion of a just and peaceful international order, and Russia should be accorded legitimate security interests.
The Ukraine-Russia conflict (tags)
"The West must negotiate with Russia" NATO should also agree to talk about a new European security architecture if Russia is also willing to agree to de-escalating and confidence-building measures in the relationship with Ukraine."
The Swedish Eugenic Societies (tags)
Even Sweden was total neutral you should know about the intimate ties with that part of the German eugenics movement that would shape Nazi biopolitics...
We are all social democrats now. Almost all of us (tags)
A few weeks ago, IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva said rich households should pay higher taxes. Inequality in income and wealth had reached proportions that threatened social peace. The head of the IMF, Alfred Kammer, called on the German government, as in previous years, to increase its investments.
"We have delegated our moral judgment to the markets" (tags)
"Yes, we can" was a call to solidarity and common goals. The legend that everyone in America can rise as high as their talents can carry them goes back to Ronald Reagan. Access to education should not be a substitute for policies that directly address the roots of inequality and the dignity of work.
State pays Corona aid to tax tricksters (tags)
Thousands of companies want help from the state during the Corona crisis. The state of their tax morale is not under scrutiny. In the US, billionaires gained an additional $308 billion from 1990 to 2020 while their tax obligations decreased 79%.
Public Good or Private Wealth (tags)
The deep and growing chasm between the rich and the poor is not an accident. This gulf is the result of political decisions. Many rich countries have lowered or abolished property taxes. Governments reduce spending on education and health care.
Markets as a Fetish, Globalization, and Dissent Management (tags)
Economic inequality must be reduced and democratic participation regained. Resisting tax avoidance, financial market regulations, climate policy, and globally combating poverty should be priorities.
PHILIPPINES: 8,000 killings proof of policy to kill (tags)
Akbayan Partylist condemns President Rodrigo Duterte’s denial of his policy to kill under the War on Drugs.
On the Global Conjuncture, February 2014 (tags)
The key feature of the global landscape is the continuing stagnation of the centers of the global economy, the United States and the European Union. The promise of sustained recovery from the financial implosion has eluded the United States for over three years now while most of Europe remains mired in very deep recession, with the notable exception of Germany.
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?
class war
The Shortwave Report 05/03/13 Listen Globally! (tags)
A weekly 30 minute review of international news and opinion, recorded from a shortwave radio and the internet. With times, frequencies, and websites for listening at home. 3 files- Highest quality broadcast, regular broadcast, and slow-modem streaming. Radio Deutsche-Welle, Radio Havana Cuba, the Voice of Russia, and NHK World Radio Japan.
Ryan, Akin: Two More Reasons to Vote for Obama (tags)
On the eve of the Republican National Convention, two stories — Mitt Romney's choice of arch-conservative Ayn Rand devotee Paul Ryan as his running mate and Missouri Congressmember and Senate candidate Todd Akin's comment that women almost never get pregnant from "legitimate rape" — highlighted the vast differences between the two major parties. No progressive can possibly still believe that it makes no difference whether the Republicans or the Democrats win this year's election in the face of the overwhelming evidence that the Republicans plan (and, if they win, will enact) a sweeping change in U.S. government that will eliminate ALL business regulation, environmental protection and civil rights for women, people of color and Queers.
Eroding Social Justice in Spain (tags)
class war
The Shortwave Report 05/18 Listen Globally! (tags)
A weekly 30 minute review of international news and opinion, recorded from a shortwave radio and the internet. With times, frequencies, and websites for listening at home. 3 files- Highest quality broadcast, regular broadcast, and slow-modem streaming. Spanish National Radio, NHK Japan, Radio Havana Cuba, and the Voice of Russia.
Egypt amidst bloody military repression, Islamist reaction and workers’ struggles (tags)
After the killings at the soccer match on February 1 at Port Said (74 deaths, mainly among supporters of the Al-Ahly club of Cairo), the “ultras”, supporters of the teams from the capital whom, throughout the events of last year had fought many times the forces of repression, have accused the SCAF of premeditated killing
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: Alternative Movie Review (tags)
Predictable lamestream media reviewers had little to say about how The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is rife with current political, sociological, technological and religious implications. The movie is about a 24-year-old, gothic-punk-looking, cyberspace hacker, with an issue with men who have histories or sexual or violent predation. She is on a mission to right the world of a few rapists and killers. This is not a standard movie review. Plenty reviews already exist on the Internet for you to get the gist of the story and its characters. This critique is strictly in regards to the movie and is more about interesting political and social commentary in relation to the movie and some of its reviews.
Whatever we think of the Democratic Party, like it or not, in the current political emergency, we are going to HAVE to align with them and vote for every Democrat on the ballot over every Republican — not because the Democrats are that progressive but because the Republicans plan a sweeping Right-wing revolution comparable to the changes Germany went through when Hitler took power in 1933, and the Democratic Party is one essential vehicle we will need to use to stop them.
Hard Right Extremism in America and Europe (tags)
fascism
Japan's Leaking Water Radiation 100,000 Times Above Normal (tags)
nuclear disaster
My first CASTOR – "Everything I hate about this country and this system" (tags)
November 2 Election: Any Democrat Over Any Republican! (tags)
This is not the year for American Leftists, progressives and liberals not to vote — or to cast protest votes for alternative parties. The extremely Right-wing Tea Party has virtually taken over the Republican Party and, if not stopped, has a good chance of winning control of the country in 2012 and instituting policies that will result in a full-blown depression, a corporate dictatorship and, ultimately, the end of the human race through unchecked global warming. We MUST vote to elect EVERY Democrat on the ballot in 2010 and 2012 — AND we must mount a massive direct-action movement to put pressure on the Democrats to govern progressively.
Democrats or Alternative Parties? SUF Debates the Question (tags)
Work within the Democratic Party or start alternative parties of our own? It’s a debate American progressives have been having since the 1890’s (though until the 1930’s there was the option of working within the Republican Party as well) and the progressive disappointment with the Obama administration was pervasive when San Diego’s Socialist Unity Forum (SUF) met to discuss the question Sept. 19. But so was fear of the “Tea Party” movement — ostensibly independent but supporting and invigorating the Right wing of the Republican Party — and concern that abandoning the Democrats now is unnecessarily divisive and harmful.
The US Healthcare Sham and the Scandinavian Model (tags)
The reforms that Barack Obama is proposing will not change the US' abysmal healthcare system because those who profit from it have been able to buy protection from the lawmakers.. The Golden Age of the welfare state began after the Second World War.
Direct solidarity with the oppressed and exploited in Oaxaca (tags)
When we read the communiqués sent out by APPO [Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca / Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca] and by all the organizations, collectives and individuals that are today a part of it, including some anarchist companions that innocently follow these shitpile bourgeoisie and authoritarians, we honestly ask ourselves if we are talking about the same thing, or worse yet, if we even co-exist in the same country or if they are narrating to us what occurs in a distant galaxy.
The International Socialist Organization and the 2006 election (tags)
The International Socialist Organization is holding a conference this weekend in New York City under the slogan “Socialism 2006—Build the Left, Fight the Right.” An examination of the perspective upon which this gathering has been organized, however, makes clear that it is aimed at promoting a “left” variety of bourgeois politics, in the form of the Green Party, which can serve only to divert a mass movement that arises against the right-wing policies of the two major parties and lead it into a political dead end.
Czech Greens enter right-wing government (tags)
Following the Czech parliamentary elections of June 2 and 3, the Green Party is now preparing to join the right-wing government of the arch-conservative Citizens Party (ODS). The Greens have now entered an Eastern European parliament for the first time, with Strana Zelenych (SZ) receiving 6.3 percent of the vote. Clearly, the Green Party in Prague is beginning its political odyssey at the point it left off in Germany—as a governing party; but this time no longer in alliance with the Social Democrats, but instead with politically conservative and right-wing parties.
Europe’s ‘Green’ militarists (tags)
The days when the German Green Party opposed international military operations by Germany’s armed forces, or at least criticized them, have long since passed. After seven years in government, the party has returned to the opposition benches, but it has by no means returned to its former pacifist positions. The Greens are among the most avid proponents of a German military mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one that could easily become the most extensive and dangerous foreign operation conducted by German soldiers since World War II.
US-Arroyo regime, Filipino Social Democrats and the AFP death squads, (tags)
If Marx called Christian Socialism the holy water in which the reactionaries dip their fingers in to become holy, we in the First Quarter Storm Network (FQSN) call the Social Democrats led by Fr. Romeo Intengan and Norberto Gonzales as the vinegar that these reactionary brutes dip the wounds of the victims of their deadly terrorist killing campaigns. The latest pronouncement of Norberto Gonzales that the NPA hit squads are in Manila and are out to assassinate Gloria and some members of her cabinet (including him of course) is a dirty psy-war to set the stage for their death squads to kill leading progressive leaders like the Batasan 5 and other progressive leaders in Metro Manila. No doubt it is a cheap attempt to divert attention from the widespread public outcry nationally as well as internationally against the Arroyo regime’s bloody campaign which has already claimed the lives of hundreds of progressive mass activists.
Meso-Americanos: It's way overdue (tags)
Spain Betrayed (by the anarchists) (tags)
For the first time in history Anarchists had the possibility of applying their theories on a grand scale. They enjoyed an unparalleled authority in Catalonia, the decisive and most industrialised region in Spain, and had the unconditional support of the overwhelming majority of the proletariat. The truth of a theory, like the efficacy of a remedy, is verified according to experience. What remains of the theories of Bakunin, Kropotkin and Malatesta [131] after the Spanish experience? For decades we Marxists have demonstrated the limited and petit-bourgeois character of Anarchist concepts.
Zionism as Jewish National Socialism (tags)
There is a law in Israel, passed in 1985, which forbids political parties to openly oppose the principle of a Jewish state. Neither are they allowed to work for a change of this principle through democratic means. A party so doing will be banned from elections to the Knesset. Democracy is thus denied to those citizens - even Jews - who wish to work within the parliamentary system towards replacing the Jewish state with a secular state which represents all its citizens' equal rights regardless of religion or ethnic origin.
CHILLING DEJA VU: The Original, Eerily Premonitive Bush:Hitler Comparison from July 2001 (tags)
When this essay comparing Hitler's rise to power with Bush, and the tactics of the present GOP with the 1930s Nazis and Stalin's communist regime was first published in July, 2001, I was the recipient of a flood of hate mail and even a couple of death threats from militant rightwingers. But the comparison hit home: the article has been been circulating all over the world, reprinted in at least five languages. Unlike the lame, even bizarre comparisons rightwingers try to make between Clinton, Dean, et al. and Hitler, the similarity between Bush's regime and the rise of the Nazis is REAL and has evoked a shock of recognition in readers - or, as the title says, a "Chilling Déja Vu."
Germany shifts military towards global peacekeeping (tags)
Leaked versions of the 22-page defence paper place resolution of international crises under UN leadership at the top of the task list, and add a new and unfamiliar role: helping the police fight September-11-style terrorist attacks.
A short history of the rise of Italian and German fascism and the reasons for the occurrence. Excerpted from Michael Parenti's book Blackshirts and Reds.
INS Detention of Arabs (FLASHPOINTS Interview of Attorney) (tags)
12 minute report, MP3 format and streaming realaudio
Beware! The Maussians Are Coming! This article by David Graeber discusses the concept of the gift economy, an idea first explored by Marcel Mauss in his descriptions of the Kwakiutl of British Columbia. He describes how the historical reality of such economies refutes many of the assumptions made by neo-liberal economists about the historical development of economic systems. Also discussed are contemporary groups (such as the MAUSS group in France) who take their inspiration from such findings to attack and dismantle the philosophic basis of capitalist economic theory.
Germany: nuclear protest as shipment leaves France (tags)
Protesters have massed in northern Germany to try to block a controversial shipment of nuclear waste on its way from a reprocessing plant in France.