What is literature for? (tags)
Since 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, humankind has made a tremendous leap backward. We are witnessing the systematic dismantling of the welfare state, the atomization of the working class, the collapse of union membership, the abandonment of any attachment to republican principles. Mainstream discourse encourages us to resign.
How foreign policy elites are losing contact with their citizens (tags)
In addition to the destruction of two countries, trillions of squandered dollars, a massive refugee crisis, a new generation of U.S. war veterans in need of lifelong assistance, and countless dead as well as wounded, these "elites" are largely responsible for the distrust.
Finnish Prime Minister Marin Calls for a 4-Day-Week and 6-Hour-Day for Her Country (tags)
“A four-day work week, a six-hour workday. Why couldn’t it be the next step? Is eight hours really the ultimate truth? I believe people deserve to spend more time with their families, loved ones, hobbies and other aspects of life, such as culture. This could be the next step for us in working life.”
Make Social Democracy Great Again (tags)
Erik Olin Wright spoke of smashing, taming, escaping and eroding capitalism as alternatives of the transformational left. We must resist the "selective perception" of the elite that ignores market distortions, market failures, state failures, and the attack on the poor, seniors and students
The System Question as a Survival Question (tags)
A fundamental social alternative to the permanent capitalist chaos is sought. A rational social discourse on system alternatives would be an antidote to populism and to the irrational identity-mania that spreads. The public discusses headscarves while late capitalism sinks in crisis
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.
Casino Capitalism and Profit Maximization (tags)
In the 1960s the average holding time for stocks was 10 years. Now the holding time is not 9 months but 22 seconds. Like shareholder value, profit maximization leads to exploding inequality and the waste of resources. States are weakened by tax cuts.
G-7 Leaders Stay Tough on Russia (tags)
G-7
Casino Capitalism and Profit Maximization (tags)
“The state is consciously weakened to speed up the redistribution from bottom to top because that corresponds to the dogmas of the neoliberal ideology.” Our state was systematically weakened in the last 15 years by extensive tax cuts. I remember the lowering of the top income tax rate.
Germany
class war
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.
What’s Going On In Europe? (tags)
"The attack on education is an international phenomenon. In the UK on Wednesday, tens of thousands of students walked out of classes over tripled tuition fees. Thousands participated in a demonstration in London, where more than 1,000 were penned in and contained by police for hours. Police used batons to beat back students attempting to reach parliament. The demonstrations in Britain came two weeks after more than 55,000 took to the streets throughout the UK. A crackdown by the government has included the arrest of dozens of students. In the US, there have been mass protests and, in some cases, occupations in the state of California against tuition fee increases of more than 30 per cent. The education cuts in Italy and the UK are part of a wave of austerity measures throughout Europe aimed at forcing workers and young people to pay for an ongoing economic crisis."
GERMANY: Notes on Neoliberalism (tags)
"The neoliberal revolution was the product of an historical development, a reaction to changed circumstances. In its course, many western states in the 1970s and 1980s reordered the relation of state and private power.."
“Green” capitalism: German Greens adopt new economic programme (tags)
Germany’s Green Party recently agreed to a new economic programme, published under the title “The Green free-market economy.” The programme paper was developed by prominent party figures under the auspices of the party’s parliamentary faction leader Fritz Kuhn, heralding the free market as the guardian angel of the environment—and their own wallets. Every line of this document reflects the class outlook of the upper middle class—those owning medium-sized businesses and the better-off self-employed—by glorifying the market and private property, while simultaneously expressing the authors’ fear of mounting social inequalities. The entire document is characterised by a continuous “on the one hand...and on the other hand” type of argument.
Philippines: AKBAYAN holds successful 3rd Congress (tags)
Amidst escalating repression and political crisis, the Akbayan Citizens Action Party recently held its Third Regular Congress last October 14 and 15, 2006, at the Riverbend Hotel in Marikina City. With the theme "Ipaglaban ang Dangal ng Pilipino, Ipaglaban ang Kinabukasan Ngayon" (Claim the Future Now), Akbayan marked its more than eight years existence as an alternative national political party in the Philippines.
PHILIPPINES: The Killings Must Stop (tags)
This is a Statement by European Church and Civil Society Organisations regarding the recent upsurge of political killings in the Philippines.
Germany joins US, British, Israeli axis of aggression (tags)
Last Sunday, German government spokesman Ulrich William spoke on behalf of the chancellor, Angela Merkel (Christian Democratic Union—CDU), and expressed Merkel’s “great regret and deep sadness over the consequences of the Israeli air raid on Qana.” Two days later, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Social Democratic Party—SPD) began an interview in the Süddeutsche Zeitung with the words: “What took place on Sunday in Qana was appalling. The large number of civilian victims of the Israeli air raid is terrible and unacceptable.”
Nazis and Neo-Cons: compare and contrast (tags)
It’s not uncommon to hear a left-leaning person denounce the Bush administration with a barrage of Nazi-related epithets. The slurs are typically blurted out in anger with little thought to evidence or validity. In fact, whenever analogies are made linking a person or current event to either the Nazis or Holocaust, accusatory responses of “exaggeration” and “slander” are usually justified; it is indeed immature to randomly compare anything to the machine of Nazism that took the innocent lives of so many. While taking this into full consideration, the following is nevertheless an attempt to make some unpleasant connections.
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.
HOLD THEIR FEET TO THE FIRE! (tags)
The election cycle of 2006-2008 has started, a time for all militants to run for cover. It will not be pretty and certainly is not for the faint-hearted. The Democrats smell blood in the water. The Greens smell that the Democrats smell blood. Various parliamentary leftists and some ostensibly socialists smell that the Greens smell blood. You get the drift. Before we go to ground let me make a point.
German Greens, Conservatives draw closer together (tags)
Last week, the conservative Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and the free-market liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) started official talks aimed at forming a new coalition government in the state of Baden-Württemberg, after elections were held there at the end of March. Both parties aim to agree on a coalition pact by May 6. The state’s premier, Günther Oettinger (CDU), made this announcement two days before the CDU’s parliamentary faction was due to meet. The CDU had previously held two meetings each with the FDP and the Green Party to assess the possibilities of forming a coalition government. The discussions with the Greens signified yet a further convergence between the two parties and will undoubtedly be viewed in the not-too-distant future as a preparation for the first CDU-Green state government.
"Counterpoints to the Standardized World": Book Review (tags)
"The world plague globalizationis a practiced philosophy in the interest of business and exploitation without responsibility toward our living space and without humanliness.."
Nobody will ever find out the real criminals behind the scenes.