Recent Blogs
“Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade.” – David Harvey Hyper-individualism is the inevitable byproduct of neoliberal ideology. It is Read more…
Fascism is not revealed by shining the light of history on its current motley manifestation. Looking backward only reveals the fears and expectations of today, not the hot furnace of resentment and rage, the enduring resistance to modernism that feeds fascism. What must be seen is invisible, a multitude of tiny formations that have Read more…
Nasir Khan, July 17, 2017 A lot of stories about Donald Trump’s lascivious ventures, adventures and fantasies are still being tossed around. It seems he had little control over his sexual thoughts and inclinations! In my respectful opinion of the man and his great potential as a political game changer, he should even at this Read more…
An awful lot of Americans are skeptical about the value of their nation’s corporate executives. As a 2016 nationwide survey reveals, 74 percent of Americans believe that top corporate executives are overpaid. This public dismay with CEO compensation exists despite the fact that Americans drastically underestimate what top corporate executives are paid every year. In Read more…
Green Time TV Averting Climate Catastrophe by Don Fitz Already altering the physical world, climate change threatens human health, our ability to grow food, and the survival of many species, including us. August 2017 Green Time episodes explore efforts by environmental activists, organizations and local governments to combat climate change. In February, 2017 the US Read more…
http://www.mwcnews.net/focus/politics/66834-fanatics-distort-the-essence-of-religion.html
UPDATE below in bold Venezuela’s long time Attorney General, Luisa Ortega, has recently entered into open conflict with Maduro’s government. Lucas Koerner just wrote up an excellent account of the dispute that (I believe) will end up with her being fired from her post. In fact, Ortega believes this herself according to what she has told her Read more…
The other day ZNet ran an interesting article by one Miss E, who writes from Berlin and offers some insightful reflections on the activist scene there. In “The right way to be ‘left‘,” Miss E seconds the notion put forward by another speaker that we ought to avoid perfectionism in left wing activist culture since it feeds Read more…
I wrote this based in part on my undergraduate thesis, “Power in Interpersonal Relationships: A Synthesis of Popular Approaches,” University of Northern Iowa, Department of Individual Studies, May 1978. This paper was used as chapter 8 of Rural CRA Organizing: A Manual for Using the Community Reinvestment Act in Rural Communities, Iowa Citizens for Community Read more…
Nasir Khan, June 29, 2017 In response to one of my articles, one commentator wrote a short comment. As the matter he touched needed my short response, I’m reproducing his comment followed by my reply: DhanushDhari Misra: Mahatma Gandhi created Pakistan based on religion while he kept on fooling people saying “Pakistan … over my Read more…
Five principles for fighting the toxic President Rolf Auer, Tuesday 20 June 2017 US President Donald J. Trump is toxic because: • He is anti-democratic. He claims massive voter fraud in the election which made him President, while there is no evidence of this. He incited his followers at his rallies with chants of “Lock Read more…
I recently published a new book titled Practical Utopia with PM Press who I thank for accepting it and doing such a nice job of producing it. I just received my advance copies in the mail. Noam Chomsky did the preface and had this to say in it: “It is true that ‘the new cannot Read more…
Green Time TV Responsibility and Food by Don Fitz Showing stewardship of the Earth and providing food are intimately connected. July 2017 Green Time episodes explore humanity’s duty to protect nature and how failure to do so threatens our food supply. How can Christian congregations approach problems such as species extinction, fossil fuels and food Read more…
For as long as they have existed, nations have clung to the illusion that their military strength guarantees their security. The problem with this kind of thinking is that the military power that one nation considers vital to its security fosters other nations’ sense of insecurity. In this climate of suspicion, an arms race ensues, Read more…
One could on and on about the many ways this article by Stephanie Nolan is hideously biased in favor of the Venezuelan opposition, like 99% of everything you’ll see in the corporate media. But sometimes, because of that very bias, journalists are uninhibited enough to let some explosive truths be stated – deep into articles anyway. Read more…
Nasir Khan, June 10, 2017 All credit for the recent electoral gains in the United Kingdom goes to the election campaigners, party activists, left-wing writers and bloggers, ordinary members, including the students and old-age pensioners, and the leaders of the Labour Party for their hard work to achieve such surprising results. The role Jeremy Corby Read more…
Nasir Khan “If I were a dictator, religion and state would be separate. I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to do with it. The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not Read more…
Nasir Khan, June 7, 2017 “Sacrificing the earth for paradise is giving up the substance for the shadow.” — French writer Victor Hugo (1802-1885) Many people are more concerned with the afterlife than this life. Who can blame them? In any case, when we see how the vast majority of human beings exists and suffers Read more…
Nasir Khan, June 4, 2017 Whatever reasons and political grievances any followers of Islamist ideology may have, their latest attack on innocent people on London Bridge was an act of indiscriminate killing of innocent people. If the facts are as reported in the media, and no false flags are involved, then I condemn this barbarous Read more…
Most of us can agree that ISIS is an evil outfit. But does that mean that the fight against ISIS is always a good one? Not when it involves brutality and torture at the same level as the Islamic State. Thanks to an Iraqi journalist named Ali Arkady, we have a glimpse into acts of Read more…
The British Conservative leader has set their snap elections for 8th June 2017. No further information from them is forthcoming. Oh wait, the Home Secretary Amber Rudd is struggling with a solution to the problem of old people living longer. Just in time she remembered her human audience and quickly added ‘& Thats great news’ Read more…
The State University of New York (SUNY)―the largest university in the United States, with nearly 600,000 students located in 64 publicly-funded higher education institutions―has served an important educational function for the people of New York and of the United States. But its recent “partnerships” with private businesses have been far less productive. In the Read more…
Reuters quoted me on press freedom in Venezuela in the eigth paragraph of a story that ran with the headline “Under state pressure, Venezuela TV limits live coverage of protests”. It is much to Reuters’ credit that they allowed some dissent from the claim that Venezuela’s private media is muzzled. The article, in the seven paragraph, Read more…
Civilization and the River -Reversing Social Austerity and Validating a Popular Progressive Society Why? Why the Collapse? Social Austerity and our loss of democratic control to debtors has crippled society, rightly enraged us and out of necessity is politically awakening the global constitution of ‘We the People’ of our world. This great strain on societies Read more…
Green Time TV Protecting People, Land and the Future by Don Fitz Human rights are inseparable from protecting land and preparing for the future. June 2017 Green Time episodes explore how we can defend ourselves when human/environmental rights are threatened. Why should we be worried about fossil fuels and pipelines? In the first June Green Read more…
Nasir Khan, May 23, 2017 All those who are interested in understanding the quagmire of war, violence, the victimisation of Palestinians by Israel, rampant abuse of human rights, etc., in which the whole region of the Middle East is enmeshed will readily appreciate the soundness of the views of President Rouhani. What he says is Read more…
– ‘In literary matters, Ezra Pound advised against accepting the opinion of those “who haven’t themselves produced notable work,” and it is advice I have been privileged to follow’ – Seamus Heaney in his 1995 acceptance speech for the Nobel prize – Ezra Pound’s open support of Mussolini’s fascism mirrors Heidegger’s love-affair with Nazism – Read more…
A Miami Herald report entitled “In secret recording, Venezuelan general pushes for snipers to control demonstrators” only vaguely alludes to the fact that opposition protesters have been killing people. In the seventeenth paragraph of the story the Herald states “While it is not known where the gunfire originated that killed the four demonstrators on Monday Read more…
The Moon Is A Harsh Grow-op Rolf Auer, Friday 17 March 2017 Is the recorder on? It is? And the auto-transcript? Good. This a Diary Record of Moon Project Grow-op made 20 June 2075. My name is Sam Thundercloud. Joe? My name is Joe Deerchild. I help Sam run this Moon Grow-op. Sam here. Due Read more…
speak! as the soul wins over the tranformative mixups, the brazen fouls, the unanticipations; speak! when the round etches wilt each hymn around the bell of winter, when the curbs & bevels mix unintended; speak! — “Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak. We can sit Read more…
The Venezuelan heath ministry released data on infant deaths that the international media reported as showing that infant mortality had increased 30% in 2016. Reuters, the BBC, NBC news among others put out headlines announcing infant mortality “soaring” or some equivalent description. I am not inclined to give the media a pass often but the Read more…
Human Rights Watch seems especially pleased with corporate media editorials about Venezuela from around the world and lists them on their website. I guess they are worried that people may have missed them, or maybe HRW feels that showing how all these corporate outlets take the same view is supposed to be convincing, and not evidence of groupthink and deep subservience to Read more…
Any analysis of Venezuela’s violent protests which doesn’t highlight the April 2002 coup which briefly installed a dictator, Pedro Carmona, who abolished its democratic institutions entirely, facilitates a repeat of that coup. Human Rights Watch failed to denounce the 2002 coup. Washington was obviously pleased with the coup and funded groups involved in it before Read more…
Nasir Khan Some much-needed words of wisdom, especially for Pakistani Muslims: “Not all Muslims become involved in acts of violence. Yet all might be held culpable. This is because that section of Muslim–in fact, the majority–who are not personally involved, neither disown those members of their community who are engaged in violence, nor even condemn Read more…
What became of Mr. Jinnah’s vision of a truly democratic state of Pakistan where religion had nothing to do with the affairs of the state? — Nasir Khan, April 25, 2017 Many Pakistanis, especially those indoctrinated by Islamists and clerics, have their own views on the origin of Pakistan and the role of Islam in Read more…
Since I took the time to transcribe this recent “chat” Reuters’ Girish Gupta had with the BBC, I thought I may as well post it here with some comments. You’ll notice there is no mention in this Gupta-BBC discussion of the 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez in which numerous opposition leaders who are very prominent today Read more…
Nasir Khan The Pakistani state, its educational and judicial institutions that are deeply influenced by a flimsy religiosity and phoney piety present some ghoulish contradictions for any modern democratic state. How can we combine theocracy with democracy and call it the Islamic Republic of Pakistan? This spectacle continues to defy any clear understanding of the Read more…
Girish Gupta of Reuters, to his credit, publicly called bullshit on claims made by some in the Venezuelan opposition, including one politician, that the government had used chemical weapons on protesters. Given the way the opposition has been coddled by the international press for the last 15 years (basically since US relations with Venezuela’s government went sour) it isn’t surprising that Read more…
In recent weeks, the people of the world have been treated to yet another display of the kind of nuclear insanity that has broken out periodically ever since 1945 and the dawn of the nuclear era. On April 11, Donald Trump, irked by North Korea’s continued tests of nuclear weapons and missiles, tweeted that “North Read more…
Political parties on the far right are today enjoying a surge of support and access to government power that they have not experienced since their heyday in the 1930s. This phenomenon is particularly striking in Europe, where massive migration, sluggish economic growth, and terrorism have stirred up zealous nationalism and Islamophobia. In France, the Read more…
Green Time TV Human Rights Are Environmental Rights by Don Fitz Is it often said that one of the endangered species most in need of protection is humanity. May 2017 Green Time episodes explore how human/environmental rights are threatened by fossil fuel pipelines, imprisonment, and marijuana criminalization and how very young humans can be protected Read more…
Most Translations by Lucas Koerner Nicaragua Vice-President Rosario Murrillo: “The only path for Syria and other countries encumbered by war – in order to avoid more suffering and continuing humanitarian catastrophe – is dialogue and the seeking of agreements. We demand the peaceful solution of conflicts, respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states.” Ecuador Read more…
Jacobin published an awkward translation of an interview Decio Machado gave in Spanish about Ecuador’s recent presidential election. The right wing candidate, Guillermo Lasso, was rashly proclaimed the winner by a few of Ecuador’s private TV networks based on an exit poll by one private pollster. They ignored another exit poll that showed the opposite Read more…
On November 26, 2012, I published an un-redacted version of my original article from July 2011 “Summers of Fear in America’s Number One city” documenting my own experiences and other data that suggested a racist and heavy handed behavior towards certain city residents by City officials of Eden Prairie, MN (See: https://zcomm.org/zblogs/unredacted-version-summers-of-fear-in-americas-number-one-city-by-karthik-ramanathan/ ). I had Read more…
As Ecuadoreans go to the polls to elect a new president, the UK Guardian spells out the stakes as follows: For Ecuador’s 15 million inhabitants, Sunday’s presidential election runoff will pose a fundamental question: whether to continue with a leftwing government that has reduced poverty but also brought environmental destruction and authoritarian censorship, or to Read more…
A “humanitarian crisis” has no exact definition. Greece remains better off than the vast majority of countries in the world despite going through a Great Depression level of collapse for several years which many enraged Greeks call a humanitarian crisis. I would not tell Greeks that it’s wrong to describe what they’re going through that Read more…
In August of 2004, a presidential recall referendum was held in Venezuela which former President Hugo Chavez won by almost 20 percentage points. The process to get that referendum approved took over 8 months as Reuters noted in this article in which it discretely refuted a lie told by opposition leader Henrique Capriles: “The government Read more…
H.G. Wells, one of the most prolific and prominent novelists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, consistently warned his contemporaries that social institutions were not evolving fast enough to cope with rapid changes in science and technology. Since Wells’s death in 1946, the scientific and technological advances have certainly been enormous. Thanks to Read more…
– Nasir Khan, 22 March, 2017 – Dag Østerberg – Since 1960 Dag Østerberg had the distinction of being a leading social theoretician and a versatile intellectual in Norway, who made lasting contributions especially in sociology and social philosophy. His death on 22 February 2017 removed a uniquely talented scholar from the social and academic Read more…
Confessions of a Terrorist Author: Richard Jackson Publisher: Zed Books London Year of publication: 2014 In a claustrophobic concrete cell, two men face each other across a bare table. One is a wanted terrorist, the other a British intelligence officer. But this is no ordinary interrogation, and as they talk deep into the night and Read more…