I remember a time when a cabbage could sell itself by being a cabbage. Nowadays it’s no good being a cabbage – unless you have an agent and pay him a commission. Nothing is free anymore to sell itself or give itself away. These days, Countess, every cabbage has its pimp.
― Jean Giraudoux, The Madwoman of Chaillot
This election seems to have traumatized the usually, and increasingly, somnambulant public in the US to the degree that a number of various mental affects are activated, and maybe even some old wounds finally surfacing again, but most of all it has generated a …
Following the EU referendum, a friend told me that he had voted to leave. His reasons were nothing to do with immigration or the democratic deficit in EU institutions. No. He said he just wanted to deliver a slap in the face to the establishment who were lining up to tell him of the dire consequences that would befall the British people if they left the European Union. Isn’t that a bit like cutting off your nose to spite your face, I said. Yes, he replied, but it felt good to puncture the smugness of the high and mighty who …
Ban Ki-Moon’s second term as the Secretary General of the United Nations is ending this December. He was the most ideal man for the job as far as the United States and its allies are concerned.
Of course, there will always be other Ban Ki-Moons. In fact, the man himself was a modified version of his predecessor, Kofi Annan.
The unspoken, but unmistakable rule about UN Secretary Generals is that they must come across as affable enough so as not to be the cause of international controversies, but also flexible enough to accommodate the US disproportionate influence over the United Nations, particularly …
(The Theory of Conceptual-Commodity-Value-Management within Post-Industrial Post-Modern Bourgeois-State-Capitalism)
by Michel Luc Bellemare / September 27th, 2016
Within post-industrial post-modern bourgeois-state-capitalism, value is no longer based on labor and/or on labor theories of value such as Marx’s theory. In fact, all post-industrial post-modern societies to various degrees have shed their modern labor theories of value and surplus-value; i.e., theories where labor-time and cost of production are the basis of price and value determinations. In contrast to labor theories of value, post-industrial post-modern societies are increasingly adopting theories of conceptual-commodity-value-management, where price and value determinations are increasingly based on perception and conceptualization-control through alliances of enterprise, alliances which structure price and value according to their own arbitrary whims …
Much has been made of the basic unfairness in how responsibility is shared between nations for ameliorating the refugee crisis. But the real question is the level of economic sharing that is needed to deal with its root causes, when the international response continues to be woefully inadequate.
Following the first ever United Nations Summit on Refugees and Migrants last week, many civil society organisations and concerned citizens are taking stock of our governments’ collective response to this unprecedented global crisis. The UN Summit was two years in the making, …
During the past three decades, the American people have been kept in the dark about the true status of the Social Security program. Politicians from both political parties give out false and conflicting information on a regular basis, and nobody knows who to believe.
The basic, indisputable fact is that the Social Security Amendments of 1983 included a hefty hike in the payroll tax rate which was designed to generate large surpluses for the next 30 years. Over the period from 1983, when the higher taxes were initiated, until 2010 when the annual surpluses came to an end, a total of …
Essentially she is now being tortured as punishment for an act of desperation.
— Nancy Hollander, lawyer for Chelsea Manning, September 24, 2016
It was not sufficient for US military authorities to sentence whistleblower Chelsea Manning to the onerous, disproportionate sentence of 35 years imprisonment for conniving with WikiLeaks in releasing classified material. (People have gotten less for gruesome, remorseless murders.) Punishment has a myriad of forms, and even within the carceral system, Manning has discovered that additional methods can be devised.
As with any penal system worth its brutal salt, minor infractions incite strong rebuke and hefty retaliation. Manning has previously been …
There is massive opposition to Israeli actions in the United States today, particularly importantly in the Jewish community, where there’s been an enormous shift in that discourse.
So you still have organizations, right-wing organizations like AIPAC that include very wealthy donors, no doubt, but they no longer can even make the claim–which was probably never true, but it certainly is no longer true–that they speak for the majority, let alone all, of the Jewish community.
You now have an organization like J Street in the center. You have Jewish Voice for Peace on the left, which has over 200,000 supporters across the
Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are dying who could be saved, that generations more will die or live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution. Pass on the torch. Join us. Give up your life for the people.
— George Jackson, Blood In My Eye
As the entire world bears witness to two more never-ending snuff-black-people videos, this time by this nation-state’s police forces in Tulsa, and yet another in Charlotte, NC, it is …
Corporate media bias on foreign policy is more pronounced than most critics even imagine. As part of a recent fact check for A Propaganda System: How Canada’s government, corporations, media and academia sell war and exploitation I discovered my own misplaced trust.
I searched Canadian Newsstand to confirm no media outlet commented on or investigated a 2011 Canadian Press report demonstrating Ottawa militarized its response to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti to control the population. According to an internal file CP uncovered through an access to information request, Canadian officials worried that “political fragility has increased the risks of a popular …
The recent article by professor Denis Rancourt, The Climate Religion, argues that belief in climate change is a religion. Although he is right that religion is a powerful belief system common to human societies, which leaders take advantage of to control people, he is dead wrong about acceptance of the science of anthropogenic global warming being a religion. This is a one-time rebuttal (no spitting match, thank you) of his contention.
Professor Rancourt is a climate change denier. Climate denial itself has become a religion, impervious to evidence. There have been many prominent climate deniers, such as …
One Earth is a core group of players ranging in age from 12-85. “NATO Blues” is our first release with 5-6 additional tracks to be released throughout the remainder of 2016. We are a musical and creative revolt against a straight-jacketed artistic, social, economic and political world.
Mainstream media would have most of us believe that the current struggle at Standing Rock, North Dakota is all about clean water – that its only focus is stopping the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) from running through Indigenous reservation land. And, yes, it is about these things. But while such a narrative may create “hot headlines,” it fails to capture the full truth and essence of what‘s really going on there.
On September 9 through September 12, our Workers World Party delegation gathered with 8,000 others to support the national call to mobilize for support.
Falsehood is a recognized and extremely useful weapon in warfare, and every country uses it quite deliberately to deceive its own people, to attract neutrals, and to mislead the enemy.
Who do you suppose wrote that? Noam Chomsky? Perhaps Gore Vidal in one of his grandiloquent moments? Or William Blum, as a preamble to his chronicling US military and CIA interventions in Killing Hope? No, it was none of our contemporary antiwar critics. It was Arthur Ponsonby, British Lord and pacifistic MP, in his 1928 tome, Falsehood in War-Time.
The war-time which inspired Ponsonby’s In-war-truth-is-the-first-casualty observation was the First World War; the …
Usually September 11th, or 1st of Meskerem on the Ethiopian calendar, is a day of celebration. It is the Ethiopian new-year. However, this year there was a distinct shortage of happy gatherings or collective jubilation to mark the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, either inside the country or amongst the diaspora.
The country is in crisis and the majority of Ethiopians believe there is little to celebrate; instead many people spent the day in quiet reflection, dressed in black. Prayers were said at church services in Ethiopia and abroad for those who have been killed protesting (a constitutional …
Media coverage of world affairs mostly focuses on Ottawa/Washington’s perspective. While the dominant media is blatant in its subservience to Canadian/Western power, even independent media is often afraid to challenge the foreign policy status quo.
A recent Canadaland podcast simultaneously highlighted anti-Palestinian media bias and the fear liberal journalists’ face in discussing one of the foremost social justice issues of our time. The media watchdog’s discussion of the Green Party’s recent resolutions supporting Palestinian rights started strong with Canadaland publisher Jesse Brown laying out three “facts”:
In an editorial titled “[Elizabeth] May must renounce anti-Israel resolutions” …
Manipulation of public perception has risen to a new level with the emergence of powerful social media. Facebook, Twitter and Google are multibillion dollar corporate giants hugely influencing public understanding. Social media campaigns include paid ‘boosting’ of Facebook posts, paid promotion of Tweets, and biased results from search engines. Marketing and advertising companies use social media to promote their clients. U.S. foreign policy managers hire these companies to influence public perception to support U.S. foreign policy goals. For example, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made sure that Twitter was primed for street protests in Iran following the 2009 election. She …
There’s the potential at this juncture for bold black athletes to blend many identity issues and address concerns about Mother Earth simultaneously.
— Organizer for the 2016 Facing Race national conference, which will take place November 10-12 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Let’s think about fighting the good fight really well ringing the public bell from an entirely new angle.
In the 60s, when I was writing for Nat Fleischer, the Ring Magazine publisher and eventual inductee into the Boxing Hall of Fame, the old man told me about how Heavyweight Champion of the world Jack Johnson managed to secure a shot at the …
Recently the back bumper on my car sustained a few cracks as a result of a minor accident. I took the car to the dealer’s garage. I was told that the bumper needed to be replaced at an extortionate cost. Not only that but also the car had to be taken to another city for that to be done. I said I would think about it.
Returning home, I contacted a relative who owns a small garage locally. He said the bumper did not need to be replaced, it could be welded easily, costing about a fifth of the price quoted …
The current point in the US presidential race offers a short-lived window of opportunity for some real positive change that rarely comes around. For it not to be wasted requires direct and forceful action by a majority of stakeholders – specifically, the large swath of American electorate that was moved and inspired by the recent Sanders campaign.
The main premise is simple: just how in china stores “if you break it, you own it”, or if you stir up a hornets’ nest, you are forced to deal with it. So here sen. Sanders has the supreme moral obligation to steer towards sensible …
