The greatest show on earth (tags)
"It takes considerable fragmentation in the media portrayal of these crimes and radical recontextualization as a 'struggle for democracy and human rights' for crimes of this magnitude, as well as their historical continuity, to become virtually invisible to the public. Although all of this is extensively documented, these crimes are virtually absent from the public consciousness."
The definitive end of the commons as we know it (tags)
What we are witnessing is the end of the polity as we know it. The ultimate extinction of public spirit. Parallel societies will remain. We will probably have to live with division. And die.
The other side of the truth (tags)
Without U.S. President Obama's breach of international law eight years ago, Putin's illegal military invasion probably would not have happened... It is time to stop settling for half-truths from one side or the other and tell the story of the conflict in a complete and balanced way.
The "Great Reset" and the Deep State (tags)
Taboo truths, about which the authorities remain shamefully silent, can indeed be kept under the carpet very well for decades. The course of history is massively influenced by these informal, unelected structures that operate in the interests of the old elites.
Europe's Conquest by the US (tags)
The US and NATO have troops at the Russian border. Russia has no troops at the US borders with Canada and Mexico. Who staged the 2014 coup in the Ukraine? Who promised Gorbatchev there would be no NATO expansion to the East? Who is the stabilizer and who is the destabilizer?
Trump and the Hospice of Hope (tags)
That the political culture in the US could wash up a television star and notorious racist to the top of the country was not entirely bizarre. Voter turnout in the US was always low. Politico.com lists the names of all 538 electors who vote on Dec 19. If 37 change their minds, Trump could be blocked.
Who is the Radical? Bernie Sanders (tags)
Bernie Sanders is the candidate of young voters and sparks a movement in the social media. Sanders is the man of the people and Clinton is the woman of big money. Clinton compares Putin with Hitler. Sanders urges a diplomatic solution of problems. Who is the radical?
Atomic Bombs or Democracy (tags)
The atomic bomb reveals the totalitarian element latent to human existence. Our species is marked by the ability to impose the universal death penalty on itself.. War thinking devours most resources of the world and is resistant against experiential knowledge.
Gorbachev Fears Nuclear War (tags)
anti-war
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.
Neoliberalism forms a free entrepreneur out of the oppressed worker, an entrepreneur of himself. Everyone is a self-exploited worker of his own enterprise. Everyone is master and servant in one person. The class struggle is also changed into an inner struggle. One problematicizes oneself...
Mainstream Economics: Monocultures at the University (tags)
The "Plural Economics Network" challenges breaking through the monoculture and intellectual one-sidedness in economics...Instead of viewing our varied social problems from different perspectives, all the answers are derived from very similar models.
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?
The exodus from the casino capitalism producing ever faster and ever deeper crises cannot succeed without a broad and powerful democratic base. Parliamentary democracy is urged to finally take up the struggle around the primacy of politics
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.
The strength of the democrats is the folly and mean-spiritedness of republicans. Programs to support the economy were rejected every time with the sole goal of bad economic data. Romney/Ryan rely on the short memory of voters who blame only Obama for the faltering economy Obstructionism should be the issue.
Cloud-sourcing and Cloud-working: Brave New World of Work (tags)
"Nothing is more absurd than to try to enforce capitalist property relations within the expanse of the World Wide Web.. In the ideal case, the competing persons in the asocial networks should become part of a `cloud' of living workers.."
Jose Maria “Joma” Sison, is a jingoist, pseudo-democrat, pseudo-feminist Stalinist demagog (tags)
Like Stalin, Sison's understanding of Marxism is pseudo-scientific and quasi-religious
STOP Imperialist War against Syria (tags)
We, the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS), condermn in the strongest terms the duplicitous scheme of the US and NATO in instigating, funding and arming the so-called Syrian National Council and Free Syrian Army to seek the violent overthrow of the Assad government in Syria and at the same time pushing a “peace plan” and then a “transitional government” under the auspices of the UN in order to politically outmanuever the Assad government and the anti-imperialist and democratic forces.
Economic Policy, the Schwabian Housewife and Francois Hollande (tags)
"What is rational for individuals leads collectively into a cul-de-sac.. The fundamental error is that economic policy believes the crisis can be fought with the logic of a family budget. For that reason, the collapse of the euro zone threatens." France goes a different way than Italy and Spain.
The Autism of Economists (tags)
Analogous to a mechanical system, neoclassicists understood the economy as a perpetual cycle of production and consumption kept in balance by the price mechanism.
Criticism of Economists (tags)
Economists with their models could predict the values of economic variables but did not foresee the greatest worldwide economic crisis in 80 years. Mechanical-deterministic neoclassicism is a self-contained theoretical model offering simple answers.
Why Germany Must End its Deployment in Afghanistan: A War Built on Four Lies (tags)
The war in Afghanistan is based on four lies, including the premise that NATO allies are there to fight international terrorism, writes conservative ex-parliamentarian Jürgen Todenhöfer. It's time to end Germany's military engagement, he argues.
The Afghanistan War and International Law (tags)
From the standpoint of the invaded, this war was and is a brutal violation against the basic principle of international law in Art 2 of the UN Charter which strictly prohibits the threat and use of force in international relations. This war was and is a war of aggression and a crime against peace.
A `Dumb War': Taking Stock of the Iraq Invasion (tags)
With its invasion of Iraq, the United States rid the Iraqi people of a tyrant. But it also broke the law and destroyed tens of thousands of lives. With the release of close to 400,000 Iraq logs by WikiLeaks and the coming publication of George W. Bush's memoir, it is time to take stock of a war that was catastrophic for Iraq and America's standing in the world.
US continues to detain, torture prisoners at secret Afghan base (tags)
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has confirmed to the British Broadcasting Corporation that the US military is operating a second “black jail” at its Bagram airbase near Kabul in Afghanistan, contrary to the Pentagon’s public denials. Did you vote for this in 2008? The government of the US did not declare war on the government of Afghanistan or Iraq, and all of this is in violation of international law.
Obama is Absolutely Right to Re-evaluate Afghanistan Strategy (tags)
Gordon Goldstein's book on the lessons of the Vietnam War is required reading in the Obama White House. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, Goldstein talks about why Obama should think long and hard about sending more troops to Afghanistan.
Beyond Market and State (tags)
In a "post-democracy," the interests of global corporations prevail with the continuing facade of democratic institutions and procedures. Interest in politics in the population is very low. Criticism of neoliberalism brings together many movements and groups.
War, Occupation and Collision Course with Russia (tags)
Through civil-military cooperation, civil-actors are degraded to integral components of western military deployments and thus enemies for large parts of the local population.. "Global NATO," a competitive organization to the UN, is being created to counter Russia's and China's veto.
"A new system of independence and self-economization replaces the old. The system of the click-economy breaks into the journalistic world." The world has changed politically and technologically. The print media is only a caricature of journalism.
"The Financial Crisis has made Heroes out of Rogues" (tags)
The state should make the economy more social and democratic. The conversions of Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel and Peter Steinbruick from market fetishism to state optimism were cabaret-style conversions. Democracy should dominate the economy.
"Capitalism has degenerated into a casino" (tags)
Greed has destroyed the world's financial system. Sp[iegel Online spoke with Nobel laureate Yumus about the profit motive, social consciousness and what should be done to end the financial crisis. Profit should not be the only reason that businesses exist.
The Broken Pact with the People (tags)
Trust capitalism and shun government interferences we were told. But irresponsible bankers saw the chance to get rich quick and went for it. Their future has become ours-and the promise of a common good has evaporated along with faith in democratic capitalism.
"We are in an epoch shift" (tags)
Free markets became wild markets. The post-socialist blessing became the turbo-capitalist curse. The state allowed the monitoring of banks to be de facto privatized. Politics allowed the markets to run wild. In turbo-capitalism, contracting debts was trendy and saving was Philistine.
The Shrinking Influence of the US Federal Reserve (tags)
Humiliation for Mr. Dollar: Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank, faces a general investigation by the International Monetary Fund. Just one more example of the Fed losing its power.
The global food problem is not being caused by a falling trend in world production. It is the result of accelerating demand. Amartya Sen teaches economics and philosophy at Harvard and received the Nobel Prize in economics in 1998.
Exponential Growth: A Dogma to be Overcome (tags)
Energy will become more expensive and unaffordable for a large part of humanity. If the american way of life is non-negotiable, the Iraq war will be the prelude and not the end of resource wars. The name of the sickness is exponential growth.
What's Really Driving the Price of Oil? (tags)
The looming recession ought to drive the price down. So why is oil getting more expensive? It's all speculation. A cure for a wrong diagnosis is useless (Chalmers Johnson)
What some called good flowed into chaos.. You wil know them by their fruits. Not even the Pentagon doubts that the fruits of Americans in Baghdad stink.
The Iraq Study Group didn't just advise Bush to change strategy in Iraq. It also urged the president to stop lying to the American people.
Fidel más que un amigo, es un hermano (tags)
Fidel Castro ríe, hace anécdotas, recibe regalos, siente la felicidad de la amistad y comparte con su hermano de ideas más de tres horas
The US still needs Iran as a stabilizer in the Shiite sector of Iraq.. The most important war objective in this first phase is maximization of the acceptance of war.. Be skeptical toward all war reports. Go the distance. Keep away from all war hysteria.
German Greens, Conservatives draw closer together (tags)
Last week, the conservative Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and the free-market liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) started official talks aimed at forming a new coalition government in the state of Baden-Württemberg, after elections were held there at the end of March. Both parties aim to agree on a coalition pact by May 6. The state’s premier, Günther Oettinger (CDU), made this announcement two days before the CDU’s parliamentary faction was due to meet. The CDU had previously held two meetings each with the FDP and the Green Party to assess the possibilities of forming a coalition government. The discussions with the Greens signified yet a further convergence between the two parties and will undoubtedly be viewed in the not-too-distant future as a preparation for the first CDU-Green state government.
The greatest problem I have with America is not Bush in himself. Rather it is that people no longer seem to care what their political leader tells them or how many lies are spread.. Bush completely ignores Europe and Nato..
Bush and the Wild West Myth (tags)
"Texas is as little Bush-Country as Bush born in refined Connecticut and educated at the elite Yale University is a cowboy.. Whoever arrives in deepest Texas quickly notices that this image (the Texan political-cowboy) is a myth that only exists in films and politics.."
Digging a hole in our treasury (tags)
You thought 12 years of Raygun/Bushit were bad? Hell, they were just warming this trainwreck up. Despirate people are more likely to follow the leader into fascism.
Is Al Jazeera under a DOS attack?