Critical reading

May 10, 2017

Historian Gerald Horne and Paul Jay dig deeper into Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey and the forces driving great divisions in the elites, the political class and the state apparatus

Dr. Gerald Horne holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. His research has addressed issues of racism in a variety of relations involving labor, politics, civil rights, international relations and war. Dr. Horne has also written extensively about the film industry. His latest book is The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America. Dr. Horne received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and his B.A. from Princeton University.

TRANSCRIPT

PAUL JAY: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore.

And iPhones aren’t why they lack health care

The real reasons people suffer poverty don't reflect well on the United States.

By Stephen Pimpare March 8 at 4:20 PM

In response to a question about his party’s plan to increase the cost of health insurance, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) suggested that people should “invest in their own health care” instead of “getting that new iPhone.” He doubled-down on the point in a later interview: “People need to make a conscious choice, and I believe in self-reliance.” Of course, Chaffetz is wrong. But he isn’t alone.

Glenn Greenwald
January 28 2017, 7:31 a.m.

IT IS NOT difficult for any decent human being to immediately apprehend why and how Donald Trump’s ban on immigrants from seven Muslim countries is inhumane, bigoted, and shameful. During the campaign, the evil of the policy was recognized even by Mike Pence (“offensive and unconstitutional”) and Paul Ryan (violative of America’s “fundamental values”), who are far too craven and cowardly to object now.

Trump’s own defense secretary, Gen. James Mattis, said when Trump first advocated his Muslim ban back in August that “we have lost faith in reason,” adding: “This kind of thing is causing us great damage right now, and it’s sending shock waves through this international system.”

rs21onOctober 14, 2016/0 comments

The theory of state capitalism has played a critical role in the International Socialist tradition’s critique of regimes claiming to be socialist. In the first of the new Revolutionary Reflections articles, Mike Gonzalez presents an account of the latest developments in Venezuela which draw on that tradition to make sense of changes that are taking place. His article explores changes to the system, and the growth of a new ruling class around President Maduro following the death of Hugo Chavez.

A PDF of this article can be downloaded here

Introduction

Clinton's neoconservative backers understand what her liberal supporters do not.

By Arun Kundnani / AlterNet August 7, 2016

In Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the Democratic Party seems to have found the perfect counter to Donald Trump. Since Trump proposed banning Muslims from the US, his campaign has sought to exploit the fear that Muslims are dangerous and disloyal. But who could think that of the patriotic, constitution-waving Khans, whose son died fighting for the U.S.?

Trump suggested that Ghazala Khan did not speak for Islamic reasons. But this backfired and the episode appears to have hurt him in the polls. Meanwhile Hillary Clinton has been able to establish herself as the candidate of tolerance and liberal progress.

But take a closer look and things are not that straightforward. It is easy to lose sight of why the Khans lost their son in the first place. Humayun Khan died fighting in the illegal war in Iraq, which was launched on the basis of Islamophobic lies, and supported by Hillary Clinton, as senator for New York.

June 6th, 2016

... and an academic weighs in on the topic

WRITING in Saturday’s National (Fry Will Contribute Common Sense and Clear Thinking), Jim Walker writes: “As an economist, I have no clue what a neoliberal is.” In Jim’s view we should therefore stop using the term, because “there is no such thing and you don’t have a clue how to define it.” Actually, there is and I can.

The term neoliberalism can be used in three ways. First, it is an ideology which emerged in Central Europe during the 1930s in opposition to what was mistakenly called “socialism” (ie state planning and ownership) and which later migrated to the economics department at the University of Chicago. The adherents of this conception of neoliberalism actually adopted the term as a self-description; indeed, Milton Friedman wrote a paper in 1951 called Neoliberalism and Its Prospects.

Ben Hillier
11 March 2016

Red Flag editor Ben Hillier speaks with US socialist Joel Geier, associate editor of the International Socialist Review, about the causes of the ongoing economic stagnation in Western economies, and the potential for a new world recession.

­“You want to know what people are like in there? They’re pigs. No matter how much money they make, they want to steal some more. [The impulse] comes out of their class background.”

Joel Geier is explaining to me the finer points of economics and the moral character of those at the centre of US capital-trading markets. “They think that entitlements – social welfare, Medicare, pensions – should be cut, taxes should be cut, the government should be small. It’s just more money in their pockets. And it is presented by good chunks of capitalist economists as a solution to the crisis facing everyone else”, he says.

17 January 2016 | Corey Oakley

For the vast majority of commentators and politicians, who neither anticipated nor wanted the unruly democratic uprising of the masses that was the 2011 Arab revolt, the region’s subsequent descent into sectarian violence has been a welcome relief.

It appears to them a vindication of all the stale orientalist tropes with which they deny the possibility of a Middle East ruled by its people rather than colonialists or vicious local despots.

“See?”, they say. “The Arabs were never cut out for democracy. Their archaic religion is the antithesis of the revolutionary demands of equality and self-rule that animated the protests from Tahrir Square to Damascus in 2011. The Arab world is wracked by ancient prejudices that if not held in check by a strong state will lead to the complete collapse of social order.”

By Donna Murch January 15

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is a historical figure every school child knows, one of the few from American history sculpted into a monument on the Mall. Yet much of his activism is misunderstood, even by some who seek to honor him. In the midst of protests by young African Americans in cities and on campuses across the country, King’s life and legacy remain profoundly relevant. As the holiday bearing his name approaches, here are five myths about the civil rights icon.

1. King believed in a color-blind society.

By JUSTIN GILLIS NOV. 28, 2015

After two decades of talks that failed to slow the relentless pace of global warming, negotiators from almost 200 countries are widely expected to sign a deal in the next two weeks to take concrete steps to cut emissions.

The prospect of progress, any progress, has elicited cheers in many quarters. The pledges that have already been announced “represent a clear and determined down payment on a new era of climate ambition from the global community of nations,” said Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in a statement a month ago.

Yet the negotiators gathering in Paris will not be discussing any plan that comes close to meeting their own stated goal of limiting the increase of global temperatures to a reasonably safe level.

On the 25th anniversary of the groundbreaking history, Hammer and Hoe, author Robin D.G. Kelley discusses the lessons Alabama’s forgotten black communists can offer today’s activists.

By Sarah Jaffe
August 31, 2015

When historian Robin D. G. Kelley began work in the 1980s on what would become his classic work of radical history, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression, he was surrounded by activism. There was an uprising against police violence in Liberty City, Florida; multiracial coalitions propelled Harold Washington to the mayor’s office in Chicago; and the presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson was gathering steam. As a young activist and campus organizer, Kelley was part of the movement that pushed the University of California system to divest from its holdings in South Africa, but he was also discovering a tradition of black radical organizing closer to home—that of the Communist Party in Alabama.

17 July 2015 | Colleen Bolger

The post-referendum political turmoil has reset the political situation in Greece.

On one hand, the betrayal of the 61 percent who voted against the 26 June draft agreement has undone the pre-referendum momentum. The working class again has been demobilised.

On the other, the beleaguered Tsipras now faces a revolt inside Syriza – precisely the situation he called the referendum to avoid. The mutiny began last weekend, when two MPs, Ioanna Gaitani and Elena Psarea from the Red Network in the Left Platform of Syriza, voted against giving the prime minister the authority to broker a capitulation to the country’s creditors. More than half a dozen others abstained, including parliamentary speaker Zoe Konstantopoulou. By doing so, they laid down the gauntlet; from there, opposition hardened among Left Platform MPs.