US Election as a Turn of an Era (tags)
Karl Marx modified a Hegel quotation that world-historical events always occurred twice, the first time as tragedy and the next time as farce. Since November 9, 2016, we know they can occur as tragedy and farce at once.
Propaganda: Making Alternatives Disappear (tags)
The main responsibility of a government in a "democracy" is protecting the minority of the ownership class against the majority of the non-owners...The neoliberal indoctrination systems serve in the manufacture of ignorance.
Capitalism as a Religion (tags)
"Capital is the only god that the whole world knows, sees, touches, smells, tastes and excites all our senses. It is the only god that doesn't encounter any atheists" (Paul Lafargue's little known genial satire "Religion of Capital" from 1887.
TTIP: Trifling Economic Advantages at the Cost of Democracy and the Public Interest (tags)
TTIP represents a crisis for democracy and the constitutional state. Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO describes the TTIP as “secret tribunals” where only “foreign investors” can sue. Frank Bsirske of the German Verdi service union said the TTIP is a “black box” transferring sovereignty.
The US government faces a revenue crisis after giving billions to banks and big corporations. Billions are saved through automation, labor-saving technology and workers working at home. The neoliberal model promotes profits and speculation, not investments and job creation.
The Coming Alternatives and The Function of the Enemy (tags)
Future criticism of capitalism is not a taboo any more. Why is there so little resistance against capitalism. Capitalism is a secular religion... Thanks to ISIS, "we" can forget all the other problems. If an enemy disappears, the possibility of shifting our conflict to it also fades.
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?
This economy kills!: Pope Francis (tags)
The Cold War in internal church policy may be coming to an end. A religion without mysticism is merely a philosophy. Mysticism is a specifically modern form of faith. God's presence is no longer self-evident or plausible to the entire world. Francis' church is a hospital under the open air.
Normal Catastrophes and The Industrialization of Thinking (tags)
Instead of offering enlightenment about social reality, the media function as an amusement enterprise and immobilizing machine. Information mutates into infotainment... Advanced civilization is marginalized in many social areas into a sanctuary of the elites.
The Elite Look Down on Democracy (tags)
The thought-models of the economy have conquered all other social sciences. The person in these models is a homo oeconomicus, a rational agent whose only drive is maximizing his benefits. Only an action with the driving force of egoism is rational.
Capitalism Can Be Cured (tags)
"The Occupy movement protests worldwide against the power of banks. The Indignados in Spain demonstrate against the system that gives them this crisis and high unemployment. No saying has been criticized more vigorously than Margaret Thatcher's `there is no alternative'."
The Crisis, Trust and Homeowners (tags)
Capitalism cannot function any more without credit-financed debt on account of its increasing productivity. The recession will come because the indebtedness-dynamic can hardly be maintained with which the capitalist zombie-economy is kept alive in its pseudo-life.
Beyond Possessive Individualism (tags)
Shrinking the financial sector and abandoning neoliberal myths are vital to prevent the next crisis. The authors, German Young Socialists in their 30s, decry the myths that incomes are just, self-interest leads to public interest and economics and politics are separate.
We Pay for Their Crisis (tags)
Making a game sound appealing whose frauds are obvious is increasingly hard for the governments. The neoliberal vision was always a society of the asocial. The categorical imperative of neoliberalism was always an open and cynical attack on the working class.
The World is Out of Joint (tags)
The financial crisis has become a state debt crisis. "The rise of democracy was not possible without the social and legal civilizing of capitalism. The deregulation euphoria of democratic governments made possible the incredible ascent of the financial oligarchy."
The Game with Ignorance and the Growth Panacea (tags)
A world wide economic and financial order decays to a pure end-in-itself and no longer serves people. A system build on an ideology in which everything-even the person-becomes a product is legitimated by apologists who trivialize derailments of social life as "normal."
Economics is not a Science (tags)
"Observations are central in a subject like economics where experiments are not possible.. Mathematics is misused to transport a certain ideology, the neoclassical theory of the market.. Capitalist crisis phenomena have made a fool of the harmony theory of the market.."
The Financial and Economic Crisis as a Normative Orientation Crisis (tags)
Prof. Ulrich presents three core theses: (1) Economics is not an end-in-itself but the means to the good life and human coexistence. (2) There is no "free" enterprise system free of ethical and political prerequisites. (3) The need for emancipatory economic citizenship rights.
"We are in the Greatrest Financial Bubble of all Time" (tags)
"An old world perishes as a new world arises-pictorially comparable to a caterpillar that dies because the butterfly comes to life. What is called financial crisis is only a superficial symptom.. One of the main causes of the debacle is the Americanized corporate governance." (F.Malik)
GERMANY: What Lessons Do We Learn from the Financial Crisis? (tags)
Rating agencies were paid by the firms to be rated. Ultimately rational individual conduct led to an irrational collective result. The lesson is clear. On the way of regulation or taxation, banks must be given a massive incentive to remain small.
The Crisis of Capitalism: Credit-Doping (tags)
"The social market economy blows the wealth of this society in speculation rather than in higher wages, higher pensions or unemployment benefits.. All capital transactions with tax havens should be prohibited.. Instead of democratization, we growing centralization in a few hands.."
From Iraq War to Middle East War (tags)
Bush ignores everything that experts, the opposition majority and the US public want.. Bush's course recalls Nixon's 1970 invasion of Cambodia, expanding the battle while swearing withdrawal.
How the Rich Become Richer and the Poor Poorer (tags)
The rich become richer by taking more from the poorer and the poor.. How long will humanity fall to capitalism and the asocial drives of a small clique of beneficiaries?.. We can't afford the rich.
Worldwide Wars and Anti-Military Options (tags)
The author suggersts three reasons for the nerve-wracking calm in Germany: 1) objective and very cruel mass unemployment, 2) self-stigmatization and 3) people don't think there is anything to share. At the end he urgers: Be IMI-Instinctively Mainstream Ignoring.
More Sensitivity and Less Prejudice (tags)
Since journalists influence the political and social climate in the subject of migration, they should show greater sensitivity toward racist exclusion..Integration is not a one-way street but can only succeed when we create the prerequisites and grant equal rights.
Uncontrolled capitalism proved to be a completely wrong track toward the end of the 19th century. The governing church of work does everything so people only have time and strength for two things in life: work and job-hunting. The 30-hour work week could be a life-giving goal.
"Nine-Eleven" Retrospective (tags)
After declaring war on terrorists, an endless war, the balance sheet is rather depressing three years later-and after two wars. Many terrorism experts see America's reaction to Sept 11 as catastrophic. A gift was given to the terrorists with the iraq war.
China's Rise to a Political and Economic Superpower (tags)
The US is increasingly losing its economic sovereignty..For the Chinese the third Iraq war was the harshest defeat in the short history of reintegration in the world economy. The more the US becomes entrenched in unilateralism the easier China finds allies.
A Moralist on the Social State (tags)
A hundred years ago eight farmers worked to feed one non-farmer. Today one farmer feeds 88 persons..Income from assets and business activities have been consistently relieved of taxes in the last 25 years. Profits soar while investments fall.
Hope and Disappointment (tags)
We are saved but in hope. The hopoe that one sees is not hope since one cannot hope for what one sees.. Hope is as vital as the air we breathe.. Hope even if is only as weak as a straw keeps alive our longing for freedom.
When the social contract, the social compromise between labor and capital, is scorned, people become wolves to one another.. The dance around the golden calf is already a disaster..
Global Power Elites and the New Wars (tags)
"A representative republic was transformed into a plutocracy. Privatizing public property was a continuous tendency during the whole modern age." The average net worth of the 400 richest Americans rose tenfold by 1999..The Bush administration has martial plans, not a Marshall plan." From the German
Democratic Socialism: A Transformational Project (tags)
Democratic socialism as a transformational process could remedy the social coldness and ecological blindness of neoliberalism and its total absolute market. This article is translated from the German in: Utopie kreativ 2000.
Does empire encourage untruthfulness, the rewriting of history and the crisis of language and community? Can the unipolar moment annul the multipolar reality? Does denial of interdependence plunge a cnation into paralysis? Translated from the German