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The different ways that the U.S. and Chinese governments use their power to regulate capitalism
Russia’s war on Ukraine both reflects and deepens a global split that should remind us of Karl Marx’s famous remark: “No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces, for which there is room in it, have been developed; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society.” The United Kingdom already lost its particular social order—its empire—while the United States is now losing its. Despite differences, both of these social orders shared a mostly private form of capitalist relations of production (the organization of enterprises centered around private employers and employees). That social order has given way to a different, mostly public form of capitalist relations of production where state officials are major employers. The latter form of capitalism is developing most dramatically in China. Continue reading
The illusion of freedom: We’re only as free as the government allows
We’re in a national state of denial. Continue reading
The real reason Congress gets nothing done
Why doesn’t Congress get anything done? Well, one chamber actually does. Hundreds of bills have been passed by the House of Representatives, but have been blocked from even getting a vote in the Senate. Continue reading
Obama wants censorship
Barack Obama and his ruling class bosses are losing legitimacy with more and more people. They have decided that censoring information will resolve their problems.
On April 21, 2022, former President Barack Obama gave a speech at Stanford University on the subject of social media. In typical Obamaesque fashion, he didn’t state his point plainly. He used a lot of time, more than an hour, to advocate for social media censorship. He only used that word once, in order to deny that it was in fact what he meant, but the weasel words and obfuscation couldn’t hide what Obama was talking about. Continue reading
Pentagon’s biological warfare built on war crimes of fascist Japan and Nazi Germany
Fort Detrick’s collusion with fascist Japan and Nazi Germany in the development of biological weapons of mass destruction is not some macabre relic of the distant past.
Russia and China have lobbied the UN Security Council for an independent investigation into dozens of laboratories that were being run by the Pentagon in Ukraine up until Moscow launched its military intervention in February. Continue reading
French election was not “close” and Le Pen did not show new “strength”
The U.S. news media, taking its cues from fake TV reality shows, has reported that French President Emmanuel Macron’s easy defeat of fascist and pro-Russian candidate Marine Le Pen in the second round of the French presidential election is an indication of the French far-right making “gains.” A 59 to 41 percent victory for Emmanuel, while not as strong as his 66 to 33 percent thrashing of Le Pen in the 2017 election, does not show any real “gains” by Le Pen and her National Rally party. Macron’s 2022 campaign strategy of tacking to the right did cost him votes among the French progressive left, but those voters largely decided to abstain from voting in the second round rather than voting for Le Pen. Some 6.8 percent of voters in the second round showed up at polling places to submit “blank” ballots. Continue reading
‘A real threat to democracy’: Musk buys Twitter for $44 billion
"This isn't just some corporate takeover," said one critic. "This is about a set of very specific moves that our oligarchs have been taking that have gradually concentrated economic, political, and discursive power in fewer and fewer hands."
Rights advocates, public health experts, and media critics were among those on Monday who warned that the purchase of Twitter by mega-billionaire Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, creates a direct threat to democracy and the common good by putting the outsized power of the social media platform used by hundreds of millions worldwide into the hands of one man. Continue reading
Assange’s extradition is another building block of the controlled explanation
The corrupt US & British governments, greatly aided and abetted by Western presstitutes, have destroyed the First Amendment protection of journalism. Julian Assange’s extradition to the US to stand trial for espionage signals the termination of a free press as a method of holding government accountable. Henceforth, any journalist who publishes a leaked story unfavorable to the government can be prosecuted as a spy. Continue reading
Billionaires only come to the rescue in movies and comic books
Twitter has done an about-face and sold the company to the richest person in the world for $44 billion. Continue reading
Policing causes violence, not the other way around
What liberal politicians and the media refuse to acknowledge is that crime is linked to the failures of capitalism, not to the lack of police. Indeed, police are part of the problem, not the solution.
The New York City subway shooting in Brooklyn on April 12 miraculously resulted in no deaths, although about 30 people suffered injuries, including 10 from gunshot wounds. Within hours, a massive manhunt for the shooter was underway, but in the end it was the suspect who tipped police off and turned himself in. Still, that has not stopped politicians and corporate media outlets like the Washington Post and others from using the shooting to shore up police talking points and implicitly make the case for more police funding. Continue reading
Palestine needs immediate attention to stave off major food crisis
A friend, a young journalist in Gaza, Mohammed Rafik Mhawesh, told me that food prices in the besieged Strip have skyrocketed in recent weeks and that many already impoverished families are struggling to put food on the table. Continue reading
Jackboots policing: No-knock raids rip a hole in the Fourth Amendment
It’s the middle of the night. Continue reading
Western-led globalization might end, but the new globalization might have an eastern face
An article written by authors John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge for Bloomberg on March 24 sounded the alarm to announce the end of “the second great age of globalization.” The Western trade war and sanctions against China that predated the pandemic have now been joined by the stiff Western sanctions imposed against Russia after it invaded Ukraine. These sanctions are like an iron curtain being built by the United States and its allies around Eurasia. But according to Micklethwait and Wooldridge, this iron curtain will not only descend around China and Russia but will also have far-reaching consequences across the world. Continue reading
CIA torture queen now a beauty and life coach
The newsman tells me the CIA’s “Queen of Torture” now runs a life and beauty coaching business which helps midlife women “look good, feel good, and do good.” Continue reading
‘Journalism is not a crime’: Outrage as judge approves Assange extradition to US
"Extraditing Julian Assange to face allegations of espionage for publishing classified information would set a dangerous precedent and leave journalists everywhere looking over their shoulders."
A British judge on Wednesday officially approved the U.S. government’s request to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who faces espionage charges for publishing classified material that exposed war crimes by American forces. Continue reading
Can Israel exist without America: Numbers speaks of a changing reality
When Russian and Ukrainian delegations meeting in Turkey on March 29 reached an initial understanding regarding a list of countries that could serve as security guarantors for Kyiv should an agreement be struck, Israel appeared on the list. The other countries included the US, the UK, China, Russia, France, Turkey, Germany, Canada, Italy and Poland. Continue reading
Societies can prevent wars from starting—and the future of humanity requires peace
Experts in peace and conflict studies explain the scientific evidence that societies can choose peace, and that warfare is also a choice, not a necessity.
Humanity’s future existence hinges on cooperation on a global scale. The greatest existential threats we face are worldwide problems that stem from the man-made climate disaster—and the massive decline in biodiversity, pollution, worsening storms, fires and sea level rise that come with it. Even the COVID-19 pandemic potentially resulted from deforestation and dwindling biodiversity on the planet, and the lack of action to slow down such destruction will only increase the likelihood of pandemics in the future. Continue reading
Europe is sleepwalking into another world war
The hundred years before 1914 offered Europe relative peace. What wars took place were of a short-lived nature. The reason for this was the Congress of Vienna (1814-15), which brought together the victors and the vanquished from the Napoleonic wars to create a lasting peace. The chair of the conference was Klemens von Metternich, who made sure that the defeated power (France) paid for its actions with territorial losses but that it signed the treaty along with Austria, England, Prussia, and Russia to secure peace with dignity. Continue reading
Anti-abortionists played the long game, and they are winning
The U.S. is sliding toward a grim future where abortion is criminalized with little support for families. This “new normal” is disproportionately impacting low-income people of color.
Republican state legislatures are creating abortion refugees across America. Continue reading
Ukraine and the global economic war: Is this barbarism or civilization?
The West’s actions against Russia since the war in Ukraine could signal an emerging new order that shuns the U.S. for weaponizing the dollar and Western control over the global financial system.
Do the Ukraine war and the action of the United States, the EU and the UK spell the end of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency? Even with the peace talks recently held in Turkey or the proposed 15-point peace plan, as the Financial Times had reported earlier, the fallout for the dollar still remains. For the first time, Russia, a major nuclear power and economy, was treated as a vassal state, with the United States, the EU and the UK seizing its $300 billion foreign exchange reserves. Where does this leave other countries, who also hold their foreign exchange reserves largely in dollars or euros? Continue reading
Consumer protection progress and regress—from the sixties to now
I’m often asked whether consumers are better or worse off since the modern consumer movement took hold in the nineteen sixties. Continue reading
‘We’re suing,’ says ACLU as Kentucky GOP enacts draconian abortion ban
"Make no mistake: the Kentucky Legislature's sole goal with this law is to shut down health centers and completely eliminate abortion access in the state," argued one abortion rights group.
The ACLU and Planned Parenthood announced late Wednesday that they are suing Kentucky after the state’s GOP-dominated Legislature voted to override the Democratic governor’s veto of a sweeping 15-week abortion ban, an extreme measure inspired by the Mississippi law that is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. Continue reading
When the Left is Right…Far Right
How is it possible that so many left voters in France are willing to choose a far-right candidate in the second round of the presidential elections?
In the twentieth century, the left defined itself as anti-fascist. It was against Franco in Spain, Hitler in Germany, and Mussolini in Italy. During the Cold War, progressives opposed far-right dictators like Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. It mobilized against neo-Nazis in Germany, right-wing militias in the United States, and fascist formations elsewhere in the world. Continue reading
Is Europe really more civilized? Ukraine conflict a platform for racism and rewriting history
When a gruesome six-minute video of Ukrainian soldiers shooting and torturing handcuffed and tied up Russian soldiers circulated online, outraged people on social media and elsewhere compared this barbaric behavior to that of Daesh. Continue reading
We are being murdered by the millions
In a British film called Never Let Me Go, our world exists in a parallel universe in which second class children are raised to become organ donors. They will donate organs for the needs of the ruling class until they die, and willingly, since they are taught by doing so that they are thereby making a better world. Continue reading
Liberal Russophobia and war propaganda
U.S. liberals are the worst perpetrators of Russophobic behavior. They are most likely to follow the dictates of corporate media and the Democratic Party and proudly take part in discriminatory acts. But foolish bans of anything Russian are just the most visible indication that war propaganda is at the root of the hysteria.
The city of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts prohibit discrimination based upon race, color, gender, disability, religion, and national origin. Such discrimination is prohibited by most cities, states, and the federal government as well. But one wouldn’t know that due to a plethora of discriminatory acts carried out against Russian nationals. The latest perpetrator is the Boston Athletic Association (BAA) , which announced that citizens of Russia and Belarus who reside in those countries will be barred from participating in the Boston marathon taking place on April 18, 2022. The war in Ukraine, years of Russiagate hysteria, and corporate media demonization of Vladimir Putin and all Russians have led to this moment of dubious distinction. Continue reading
The Tom Paine tax plan
Over two centuries ago, Tom Paine urged our new republic to tax extreme wealth. This tax season, President Biden is picking up the call.
The great pamphleteer of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine, had much more on his mind than independence from the British. Continue reading
Why the U.S. culture of colonial extraction is making people sick and destroying the planet
Rupa Marya, a physician and musician, studies how social structures impact health. She says colonial capitalism fractures the critical relationships that keep us healthy.
A widespread culture of isolation and disconnection from our bodies, each other and the planet is negatively impacting the mental and physical health of people in America and beyond—and this was true long before the pandemic. Our relatively new human social structure that is work-obsessed and separated from nature and each other leaves us scant time to connect and relate to each other, and is not aligned with our natural rhythms. This way of living has grave impacts on people’s overall health, as well as the health of the planet. Continue reading
Corporate media ignores Senate hearing on corporate greed and inflation
It is exceedingly rare for a major congressional committee to hold hearings on “corporate greed” leading to corporate profiteering and surging prices on consumer goods. On April 5, 2022, Senate Budget Chairman Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) chartered uncensored territory on corporate avarice with a lead witness, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Continue reading
From Korea to Libya: On the future of Ukraine and NATO’s neverending wars
Much has been said and written about media bias and double standards in the West’s response to the Russia-Ukraine war, when compared with other wars and military conflicts across the world, especially in the Middle East and the Global South. Less obvious is how such hypocrisy is a reflection of a much larger phenomenon which governs the West’s relationship to war and conflict zones. Continue reading
Humilitainment: How to control the citizenry through reality TV distractions
Once again, the programming has changed. Continue reading
Against the Trumpian GOP onslaught, the Dems are like deer in the headlights
Posted on May 2, 2022 by Ralph Nader
There is something about entrenched bureaucracies that transcend nations and cultures. When bureaucracies are confronted with unanticipated or new challenges, they freeze—like a deer facing headlights. Continue reading →