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.
As is well known, in war the truth is the first casualty, and so it is in the Ukraine war. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, politics and the mainstream in the press, radio and TV have been conducting an unprecedented game of confusion, combined with disinformation and agitation.
Democracies against Autocracies & Decline of Civilization (tags)
The time of decadence, i.e. the creeping decay of civilization, in which we find ourselves again today, is characterized by fear, nihilism, radicalism and depression. The decline is seen as the unalterable end of a nostalgically transfigured past while life loses all meaning.
Rethinking the State and Rent Madness (tags)
The right to housing for everyone must be understood as a public challenge and presupposes the de-commodification of the housing supply, a democratization of urban policy, and breach with the real estate exploitation coalition.
How the West betrayed Mikhail Gorbachev (tags)
Gorbachev wanted to transform the Soviet Union from a closed, repressive system into an open, communicative socialist system that would be part of the European family. This effort was called glasnost (openness) and was advanced through the reform movement called perestroika.
The historic push of East Central Europe into Nato (tags)
What is the end of the war song? It is and was destruction, death, human suffering and traumatized populations. And in our time, in addition, it is the suspension of the necessary global and joint efforts of all nations in the fight against the threat of climate catastrophe.
The modeling of the human and Final victory of materialism (tags)
Birgit Naujeck, clearly opposes 5G, transhumanism, any eugenics, and the disembodiment of our language, which leads to the rewriting of history and gender. The Final victory of materialism coincides with its implosion!
Nuclear deterrence and Negotiate and peace now! (tags)
"I believe the Administration's recommendation to admit new members to NATO at this time is misguided. If adopted by the United States Senate, it could go down in history as the greatest strategic blunder since the end of the Cold War..." Jack F. Matlock Jr, U.S. ambassador
"I feel like I've been transported back 80 years" (tags)
People are desperately fleeing from bombs and rockets. I feel transported back almost 80 years and become pensive. Europe had sworn to itself: Never again fascism! Never again war! The scars remain - at the age of 94, I feel them more strongly than ever.
The instrument of using half-truths is found in Nato propaganda where it cherry-picks Russian law-breaking in the Crimea crisis to portray Russia as a threat, forgetting the Western-blamed law-breaking in the weeks before: the pro-Western Yatsenyuk "interim government."
Liberty restrictions such as lockdowns, contact restrictions, or mandatory masks are authoritarian by their very nature. Authoritarian action, however, does not correspond to a liberal state, but to a state of authority, as it was realized in the GDR (East Germany).
Russia Won The Cold War (tags)
Libertarian 2016 Friday, November 19, 2021 Russia Won The Cold War
RUSSIA WON THE COLD WAR (tags)
"We will take America without a shot, from within." Nikita Kruschev
Psychology as a method of domination (tags)
The current pandemic policy has given the world the ultimate understanding of how democracies (...) transform themselves into totalitarian because inhumane systems. (...) Long live the courage to resist and refute.
The Last Stage of the Middle Class (tags)
The emancipatory overcoming of the modern commodity-producing system and the associated separation requires a social intervention on a high level. The second article "The Collapse of Modernization" was published in Oct 2004. Robert Kurz, editor of the German leftist Krisis journal, died too early at 69.
Freedom of the Press is Dead Worldwide (tags)
CIA Director Pompeo claims Wikileaks is a "hostile secret service" and Julian Assange is not a journalist. Democracy cannot function without watchdogs. Watchdogs and whistle-blowers must be under special protection.
Against Market Radicalism (tags)
Capitalism is not "the end of history" as the American Francis Fukuyama postulated in 1992. The system question is open! The economy should be re-embedded in society. What seems rational in microeconomics collides with the irrationality of maximum profits as en end-in-itself
The Right to the City and the Greed of the Rich (tags)
Thanks to everyone who resisted the GOP tax giveaway! Unlike the security state, the constitutional state should mean compromises, negotiations, concessions, and countermeasures to reverse exploding inequality and precarious work.
Our Beautiful New Clothes (tags)
Neoliberalism seems to create "clothes no one can see" when it mystifies the market and competition and uses the austerity-model, the location-model and the adjustment-imperative or extortion to turn economics into nature.
Ujnemployment is (not) a Full-time Job (tags)
There are many scandals and injustices, for example that wealth concentration in Austria and the EU is increasing. However, the debate is again about the "unemployed unwilling to work" instead of about the widening gap.
Social Inequality in the Descent Society (tags)
The elevator effect is not true any more. This changed from the 1990s. People no longer move up together. A society of descent, precariousness and polarization has come ou9t of the society of social ascent. Ascents and descents have a collective and an individual dimension.
Back to Trotskyism! Revolutionary regroupment with the League for the Fourth International (tags)
On April 16, the Better-Late-Than-Never (BLTN) Faction of the International Communist League (ICL) put forward its Declaration of Faction calling to “Return to the Road of Genuine Spartacism” and to “Regroup with the IG/LFI on the Basis of Their Revolutionary Continuity!” The very next day they received a response from the Spartacist League’s Los Angeles local, falsely claiming that the declaration was written in collaboration with the IG and cynically saying it considered the declaration a statement of resignation. The BLTN responded that claims they couldn’t have written the document were not only untrue but an insult to the intelligence of the ICL membership. The Faction notably exposed how the party that had uniquely waged a principled struggle to defend the DDR (East Germany) and USSR responded to defeat by dumping Trotsky’s analysis of the dual nature of the Stalinist bureaucracy and whitewashing the role of the bourgeoisie and its social-democratic agents in the capitalist counterrevolution. It also independently investigated key political differences between the ICL and the LFI on Brazil and Mexico, as well as challenging the SL on key issues concerning the class line and black oppression in the U.S. The Better-Late-Than-Never Faction Declaration is a challenge to those in the SL/ICL who truly want to make a revolution. The report on the latest conference of the Spartacist League/U.S. makes clear, the SL is a dying party. It is crucial to understand that the decline of the SL/ICL is a direct result of its political/programmatic degeneration. An agreement between the BLTN and the IG/LFI calls for carrying out common work aiming at an early fusion.
For 40 years, the Bremen study group has published memorandums. The council of experts promoted the profits of businesses, not aggregate economic demand. Mass unemployment surpassed the 5 million mark because of neoliberal structural reforms.
America: Cesspool of Terror (tags)
America
Water in California - info proliferated now is dubious (tags)
Constant fear productions proliferate our minds and our lives, without many questioning. Water shortage is the latest catastrophe being hawked to TheAmericanLittlePeople who use a teensy bit for clean 3rd worldish lives in So.California. The attempts to cause more insecurity, uncertainty and Blame the Ordinary Residents, i.e. of Los Angeles, vs. the agriculture businesses in No.CA and the commercial businesses everywhere is the usual - YOU must be to blame and we will punish you for using 'too' much precious water. The break-up community aspect is for neighbors to anonymously report about another's water usage with the righteous pride of having caught a 'bad guy' slyly is like East Germany's Stasi's games - spies living amongst each other so everyone distrusts and worries and can thus be Controlled. Oh no, here too ? Water is scarcer than before but still available and drinkable and for cleaning, in individual lives, not just in money-gathering-places of business, anywhere, even in LA. Wonder about what we hear and read and then ask, how did we 'suddenly' arrive at this desert from which we dare not escape or move ? Question those who like to hawk their fear-wares and fame flames of scarcity, that then elicits herd-obedience in that fear place. Can this be yet another 'conspiracy' that is not theoretical but created for political or financial purposes ? Could it be ?
Prevent the Comeback of the Cold Warriors! (tags)
What lessons were learned from Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Iraq and Afghanistan? Can countries become incapable of learning? Is preemptive war, confusion of offense and defense, a Hitlerian perversion? Does cooking intelligence create cynicism instead of public spirit?
Apple, the State and Social Rights (tags)
Apple only gained its profits with the iPhone through state promotion and investments in the Internet and language recognition software. The state suffers a revenue crisis in part because Apple, Google and dominant corporations transfer profits to tax havens or dummy Irish corporations.
class war
America and Germany: Longstanding Espionage Partners (tags)
police state
Stasi's New Incarnation (tags)
police state
Erich Fromm on Karl Marx (tags)
The capitalist production method makes a few persons absurdly rich while the others hardly have enough to survive. Capitalism also makes people unfree and unhappy because their access to their true needs is blocked.
Ideology and Morality: What the Financial Crisis teaches about functioning of democracy (tags)
Moralizing is a form of argumentation found in many ideologies and academic systems of thought.. State interventions, we were taught, are bad because they run counter to the objective laws of the market.. The market is a social institution that we interpret in different ways..
The Social State: A Wondrous Promise (tags)
The social state is an instrument of social pacification. It was a reaction to the extreme social and political dislocations. While Europe sank into chaos and fascism, Roosevelt developed the social state in the US that was exported after the war to Western Europe.
Israel's Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Weapons (tags)
WMDs
Capitalism Doesn't Need Democracy (tags)
The minority of a minority have seriously damaged the public interest for personal enrichment. The community itself is culpable for not resisting its plundering.and choosing representatives that defend its interests.
Ron Paul’s Non-Interventionist Foreign Policy is Most Probable Path to Peaceful Relations (tags)
The proposal by the Sen. Ron Paul for President 2012 campaign is for U.S. foreign policy to change from primarily military interventions and long term occupations to a strictly non-interventionist foreign policy without engaging in any further military occupations or maintaining overseas military bases. The Ron Paul 2012 non-interventionist foreign policy plan is for the U.S. military to be utilized for defensive operations only. Our nation’s security does not require any overseas operations in order to be properly defended in the U.S. domestically. Proper defense allows for and encourages domestic U.S. military bases to be maintained, though does not support overseas bases to be maintained.
Critical thinking and cultural shock have the power to turn the world upside down (like Jesus' parables and zen koans). Trivializing structural/systemic economic problems as motivational, psychological, bumps in the road or industrial accidents is a perversion.
Despite Shooting Incident Pope Celebrates Mass (tags)
The Vatican was undeterred by an incident earlier in the day in the eastern city of Erfurt on the edge of the security zone in which a man fired an air gun at a security guard about an hour before a papal Mass.
Tepco is the End of the Market Economy (tags)
Tepco operated antiquated nuclear reactors and glossed over the hard of a meltdown. The Japanese government will probably nationalize the firm since it cannot pay a fraction of its liabilities. What lessons do we learn? Should the public sector be expanded? We are all Wisconsin
Contrary to popular belief, Gestapo’s or Secret Police are not phenomena of the past. Activists who dare to hold law enforcement accountable to democracy, freedom and basic human rights are being repressed and imprisoned here in the United States simply for refusing to accept violation and abuse from their own country men.
"Campaign against the Weak" (tags)
Social justice, solidarity and sharing opens doors. We have to do some rethinking. The social state does not create the problems that efficient workers are lacking and jobs for many are lacking. Mass unemployment is a social declaration: "We don't need you."
Czech president signs Lisbon Treaty/EU Dirty Deal regarding human rights (tags)
With the EU guarantee to the Czech president, that the Czech State should not be exposed to property claims of expelled Germans after World War II, the EU not only implicitly consents with ethnical cleansings, it is also highly hypocritical, since the EU regularly points a finger to human rights violating countries like Sudan, Myanmar and Iran It is high time the EU should look in its own mirror, among else with regard to police abuse, racism and violation of the rights of migrants and real or alleged terrorsuspects
Planned Economy Instead of Chaos Economy (tags)
For years US imports have doubled US exports. For 10 years China has contributed $2 billion a day to finance US consumerism. Trade policy in the WTO, GATT and NAFTA have led to mass unemployment. Part time work for all and/or unconditional basic income could humanize society and assure dignified life.
Fallen Stars: On the Greed of Bankers and a New Morality (tags)
The economic ethicist Ulrich Thielemann explains how greed, false theories and the herd instinct caused the massive financial crisis. They had the theory when we make profits that is ultimately good for everyone.
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/what_is_marxism.html
Venezuela: Why Unlimited Re-election is Bad for the Revolution (tags)
A supporter of Hugo Chavez' anti-imperialist efforts explains why he is nevertheless opposed to Venezuela's recent constitutional amendment abolishing term limits.
Between Russophobia and Russophilia (tags)
The neoconservative revolutionaries wanted to make the export of democracy into the absolute military hit and harvested bloody noses. Western values and western democracy cannot be simply exported for forced on foreign countries.
From Real Estate Speculation to Collapse of Global Deficit Economy (tags)
Joy to the world, the world of fallen idols and bubble transfer. The truth will set us free but the truth is a process, not a cudgel or stimulus. After the dot-com bubble, trillions were "invested" in real estate speculation. The crisis of the work society is the background for low interests.
Memorandum 2008 Summary-Crisis Underrated (tags)
Without increasing internal demand, the upswing based on replacement investments and exports cannot continue. Without reduced working hours, adequate jobs will not be created in a world of reduced work volumes, rationalization and information technology.
Cold Peace-The US Missile Shield and its Consequences (tags)
The planned missile shield undermines the so-called second-strike capacity. It shifts the nuclear balance in favor of the US. The West gave the government in Moscow assurances after Russian troops withdrew from East Germany.
The Nature of the Christian Faith and the New Atheism (tags)
New atheism fights against fundamentalism, human religion, sees all violence as the product of faith, doesn't recognize the positive good in the church and theology and conflates all faith with fundamentalist literalism and reductionism. That Jesus is the way means no mone is alone.
Mission and Evangelization (tags)
God calls us to resistance and solidarity. The world exists in the light of grace. The eyes of the world must be opened to its possibilities. As the moon has no light in itself, the church does not exist for itself. God is not necessary but more than necessary.
Love a Snitch for Progress (tags)
Snitches get stitches. Is there a better way?
Egoism versus Pluralism: The Crucifix Decision (tags)
The truth of faith can only prevail without worldly authority through the word of proclamation. The Christian chruch must affirm pluralism relativizing its own existence. The state has the task of limiting egoism.
Berlin Commune Fights the Property Developers (tags)
The Köpi in Berlin is famous as one of the last remaining remnants of the city's squat culture from the early 1990s. The building, which is in a desirable location, has now been sold to a property developer -- but the residents aren't giving up without a fight.
Another Economy is Possible (tags)
The world economy increasingly has the character of a plutonomy, a wealth economy where the rich appropriate an ever larger share of the social wealth. Imagine an economy that serves justice, peace and creation, where competition and cooperation coexist and the future is safeguarded
Reforms and the System Question (tags)
According to Marxist perspectives, capitalism develops with crises and ruptures. Possibilities of revolutionary social upheavals open up in these crises. The old wisdom of the Fordist age that cars cannot buy cars has lost all value to the elites.
Full Employment as a Grand Delusion (tags)
The third labor market isnot a panacea. However it is the only possibility for bringing a large number of persons into meaningful employment..Whoever wants to stop right-wing extremists must take the bottom out of their arguments and expand the labor market
More Employment through a Different Distribution (tags)
More employment comes through reduced working hours and public investments more than tax subsidies. The state has destroyed jobs. The global attack of neoliberalism has gravely damaged the democratic welfare state.
How Much Poverty Can a Society Endure? (tags)
Pretending that justice is possible with growing inequality is pure ideology. Distribu-tive justice is the key for a peaceful future.. Spending for the welfare state has not grown in Germany.
Break the Neoliberal Hegemony! (tags)
This call to a new LEFT party in Germany could give hope to all who yearn for social justice and structural/systemic corrections. While corporate profits and assets incomes set new records, wages, unemployment benefits and pensions are cut.
Bush's Immigration Trap (tags)
Labor: Organize the Unorganized!
Are All Unemployed Persons Idlers? (tags)
According to the neoliberal myth, higher profits lead to increased investments and more jobs. In reality corporations repress the worsening domestic economy through take-overs. Are the unemployed, seniors, students and the disabld made invisible?
Dr. Michelle Bachelet Victor in Chilean Election.. (tags)
A look at Sundays Chilean Presidential election, its outcome and implication. The winner's personal history and the implications of Latin America's ongoing move to the Left.
What are Social Human Rights? (tags)
Who prosecutes those responsible that more than a billion people must live from a dollar a day while wealth constantly grows?
The Real Story: Germans Reject Thatcherism and Being US Puppets (tags)
American media reports speak of a loss for Germany’s socialists and of a more pro-business Germany, but the voters of Europe’s biggest state actually stood solidly for a progressive, caring socio-political system and for a foreign policy that doesn’t follow in lockstep behind Washington.
From Keynesianism to Thatcherism (tags)
The analysis of whether aggregate economic problems are more on the supply- or demand side and whether they are short-term or long-term precedes all state economic policy.
"Unfortunately some market fundamentalists are at work in the EU who denounce every-thing the state does to protect public goods as distortion of competition.. The globalized market shatters balance of public & private.."
Working Three Hours a Day is Enough (tags)
"Keynes predicted 60 years ago that three hours work per day would be enough. Instead more than seven million (in Germany) are in a desperate situation.. The system logic is obviously exhausted.."
Two Families’ Dreams Were Not Demolished (tags)
When the Israeli government forced out the Nasrallahs from their home in Rafah, at Gaza’s southern edge, the Nasrallahs didn’t get a shekel. Their house was among more than 3,000 that stood in the way of a security cordon that Israel established along the border between Gaza and Egypt. The border district stood above tunnels that were, according to the Israeli government, used to transport weapons and bomb-making materials.
French and Dutch Patriots Rout the New World Order
Freedom according to the Stock Market (Gunter Grass) (tags)
"Our freely elected delegates are not free int heir decisions..Profit maximization is passed off as a basic value instead of the social obligation of property..Democracy perishes, not the state.."
Against Rightwing Demagogues (tags)
Migrants did not only serve Nazis as scape-goats. As the fascists declared the Jews scapegoats, their grandchildren today blame foreigners for unemployment and social cuts. We need a literacy campaign against the social demagogues of the right wing.
Iran, the draft, and another "New Pearl Harbor"? (tags)
Are the Bush Neo-cons setting the stage for *another* "New Pearl Harbor" attack on US interests--one that may dwarf September 11? The author of the following article thinks so. He thinks the attack is being planned to mobilize the US for ever more war and to ensure support for a military draft. And the article's footnote suggests the attack on US interests may hit a US city...and it may be nuclear.
Paid Work and Basic Income (tags)
The goal of basic income advocates is to neutralize capitalism in one of its central premises: the generalziation of paid labor as the only or at least dominant path of securing existence. The future would be brighter if this were on the agenda.
The Social State is a Civilization Achievement (tags)
"The social state is a civilization achievement Since free enterprise mechanisms alone cannot guarantee social security, the state has the task of guaranteeing social security for all and pursuing a policy of social equali-zation. Democracy needs a social foundation
America a Police State? No, Not Yet (tags)
There are certainly serious assaults on First Amendment freedoms underway, but the problem with prematurely characterizing America as a police state is that it plays right into the Bush/Rove/Ashcroft strategy of instilling fear in the public.
Sweden: Poorer Than You Think (tags)
"The first lesson is that war produces war. War against terrorism produces terrorist war. The second lesson is that domestic war corresponds to foreign war. The military question and the social question are closely connected.."
Abolish the welfare state (tags)
The book he doesn’t want you to see: When Kerry ran for election to the U.S. House of Representative in 1972, “he found it necessary to suppress reproduction of the cover picture appearing on his own book, The New Soldier. His political opponent pointed out that it depicted several unkempt youths crudely handling an American flag to mock the famous photo of the U.S. Marines at Iwo Jima,” according to Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry. “Suddenly, copies of the book became unavailable and even disappeared from libraries. But the Lowell (Mass.) Sun said of the type of person shown on its cover: ‘These people spit on the flag, they burn the flag, they carry the flag upside down, [and] they all but wipe their noses with it in their efforts to show their contempt for everything it still stands for,’” the New American reported. Even today it is hard to find this infamous photo and book.
We're glad Saddam is captured but.... (tags)
However, there is no but.
The Absurdities Of Water Fluoridation (tags)
It would be totally cost-prohibitive to use pharmaceutical grade sodium fluoride (the substance which has been tested) as a fluoridating agent for the public water supply. Water fluoridation is artificially cheap because, unknown to most people, the fluoridating agent is an unpurified hazardous waste product from the phosphate fertilizer industry.
"We are the Greatest Backwoods of the World": Interview with Norman Birnbaum (tags)
"I am astonished or shocked at this total submissiveness toward my country. Intelligent people fade out the shady sides of our country, the broad trails of blood of our military interventions and the cynical contempt of the govt for its own citizens.. "
The Time for Nonviolence Has Come (tags)
As Robert Muller has said, there is not one superpower in the world today, but two: the militarized United States on the one hand, and the millions of ordinary people, including many Americans, who yearn to devote their energies to a humane future. Which will win?
Read and learn...
Answering Moral Blackmail (tags)
Are millions of Canadian, American and In the midst of worldwide protest against an impending war with Iraq, the Bush Administration and its allies have trotted out their trump card...
Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft and Lott; are Anti Christ? Ver.3 (tags)
Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft and Lott; are Anti Christ? Ver.3
Social conflicts are always conflicts around terms and definitional power..Whoever has definitional power over what is reality and what is realpolitik dominates ideological semantics. Translated from the German
basic stats for US imperialism (tags)
a reference guide for activists.
The Wilderness Lives: The End of Prehistory as a Beginning (tags)
"The status quo is limited and not lasting from eternity to eternity as the quasi-religious worship of capital asserts. This worship of capital handed over to its own destructive dynamic is still dominant but not unchallenged." H. Thielen lives in Brazil.
Forbidden Truth:Mainstream Media Sellout (tags)
That Washington's media elite appears to be anesthetized to Bush's current drive to turning the United States into some mirror image of East Germany, China, or Pinochet's Chile cannot be overstated.
BUSH REGIME TO USE 4% OF US POPULATION TO SPY ON THE OTHER 96% (tags)
The Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS, means the US will have a higher percentage of citizen informants than the former East Germany through the infamous Stasi secret police. The program would use a minimum of 4 per cent of Americans to report "suspicious activity".
Strategic Resistance Organizing Conference- a look back (tags)
At the begining of August, the Strategic Resistance Congerence was held in Venice CA. With an invitation only guest-list of 200 activists from around the Americas, the conference focused on goals, sexism and white supremacy within the movement today. Larry George writes the inside scoop.
Alto a Guárdian (Stop Operation Gatekeeper) I (tags)
Alto a Guárdian (Stop Operation Gatekeeper) I
Alto a Guárdian (Stop Operation Gatekeeper) IV (tags)
Alto a Guárdian (Stop Operation Gatekeeper) IV