Recent Blogs
On August 12, 1945, six days after the U.S. government obliterated the city of Hiroshima with a single atomic bomb, Robert Hutchins, the president of the University of Chicago, delivered a remarkable public address. Speaking on his weekly radio program, the Chicago Roundtable, Hutchins observed that Leon Bloy, a French philosopher, had referred to “the Read more…
Ireland’s leader Leo Varadkar, has just announced snap election for February 8th?? that’s about 3 weeks, how does a legitimate public debate and campaign by opposition party’s have a proper chance to lodge an alternative to this self proclaimed ‘Government of Ireland’ who instead of getting any real progress on the fundamental outstanding problems people Read more…
Back in 1941, the year of my birth, fascism stood on the brink of conquering the world. During the preceding decades, movements of the Radical Right―mobilized by demagogues into a cult of virulent nationalism, racial and religious hatred, and militarism―had made great strides in nations around the globe. By the end of 1941, fascist Germany, Read more…
Although today’s public protests against nuclear weapons can’t compare to the major antinuclear upheavals of past decades, there are clear indications that most Americans reject the Trump administration’s nuclear weapons policies. Since entering office in 2017, the Trump administration has withdrawn the United States from the nuclear agreement with Iran, scrapped the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Read more…
In August, I took detailed notes a news broadcast on one of Venezuela’s largest TV networks. I summarized these notes in an interview I did with the Real News Network making the point that Venezuela’s private media (which reaches 60-90% of households) is remarkably free – most especially when you consider the US is openly Read more…
Venezuelan economist Francisco Rodriguez, formerly of Torino Economics, answered a few questions of mine about his country. He was the economic adviser to Henri Falcon, the second place finisher in the May 2018 presidential election. His updated estimate for 2019 is that Venezuela’s real GDP will contract by 25% . That’s horrific, but less severe Read more…
Bolivia´s foreign minister says Mexico appeal to International Court ‘a mistake’ Bolivia’s YPFB strikes transition deal with Petrobras to extend natural gas exports Bolivia is not a Mexican colony, acting foreign minister Longaric tells El Pais Mexico says Spanish diplomats’ cars blocked by Bolivia at La Paz embassy Mexico appeals to international court as diplomatic Read more…
The UK Daily Mail: without the support of this newspaper – which has run a rabid propaganda campaign against Jeremy Corbyn since he became leader of the UK Labour party – it’s said to be very hard to win a British election. Noam Chomsky said recently that the rise of Trump isn’t the same as Read more…
Patriotism, everyone’s heard of that. Proud to be Irish, French, American? Comedian George Carlin: “Being Irish isn’t a skill. It’s a fuckin’ genetic accident.” Dammit, try another one: let’s say, anti-patriotism. Who’s heard of that one? Not so popular I think, but a guy called Gustav Hervé wrote a pamphlet in Paris with that title Read more…
A nonprofit employer is not necessarily a better boss than a profit-making one. That sad truth is reinforced by the experience of some 2,200 nurses at Albany Medical Center, who have been fighting for a contract since April 2018, when they voted for union representation. Even that union recognition struggle proved exceptionally difficult. The management Read more…
In an interview in the UK ‘Times’ today the UK Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has accused Jeremy Corbyn’s dog of antisemitism, making the comments two weeks before Britons vote in the general election. Mirvis made it clear that he had no desire to influence the outcome of the election. The Chief Rabbi denied ever having Read more…
Front page of the Guardian Review I’m trying to get it: a US president who waged war against 7 Muslim countries; droned, murdered and terrorized thousands of civilians in some of the poorest countries on earth; just by the way got rid of habeas corpus; spent a trillion dollars on “modernizing” the US military and Read more…
I just finished reading Angela Davis’ autobiography, published in 1978, shortly after the conclusion of her trial, when she was 28 years old. The Spanish edition is extended very briefly by another political prisoner, the Basque Arnaldo Otegi. I found attractive the simplicity and the clarity Davis uses to expose the institutional racism and police Read more…
To: The people of the world From: The Joint Public Relations Department of the Great Powers The world owes an enormous debt of gratitude to Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi, Boris Johnson, and other heroic rulers of our glorious nations. Not only are they hard at work making their respective countries great Read more…
Hi Shami, John McDonnell was recently interviewed by Alastair Campbell.for GQ Magazine He invited Campbell back into Labour, said Blair was not a war criminal, and even added that he hoped Blair would not go down in history over Iraq – an unprovoked war of aggression that took the lives of 500k – 1 million Iraqis. Read more…
Despite the upbeat words from America’s billionaire president about the “economic miracle” he has produced, economic inequality in the United States is on the rise. In August 2019, the Economic Policy Institute reported that, in 2018, the average pay of CEOs at America’s 350 top firms hit $17.2 million―an increase, when adjusted for inflation, of Read more…
Lefties have been warning anyone who cares to listen for two decades now, to smirks and eyerolling, about the UK’s stealthy march to a surveillance state, which it now is. And to fascism of the creeping kind. The treatment of Julian Assange accompanied by jeers, gloating and personal attacks from the “liberal” media like the Read more…
The meaning of democratic socialism―a mixture of political and economic democracy―should be no mystery to Americans. After all, socialist programs have been adopted in most other democratic nations. And, in fact, Americans appear happy enough with a wide range of democratic socialist institutions in the United States, including public schools, public parks, minimum wage laws, Read more…
In recent years, internationalism―cooperation among nations for promotion of the common good―has acquired a bad reputation. Of course, internationalism has long been anathema to the political Right, where a primitive tribalism and its successor, nationalism, have flourished for many years. Focusing on their nation’s supposed superiority to others, a long line of rightwing demagogues, including Read more…
Z Net recently ran a valuable review of Burt Neuborne’s recent book, When at Times the Mob is Swayed. In it Steven Rosenfeld summarizes a lot of the book’s key points and arguments, especially as regards Trump’s Hitlerian parallels. While they are of passing interest, much of his arguments are quite flawed. For instance, Neuborne Read more…
This is to announce the Cable Television Program and Podcast entitled Prescription for Justice. Prescription for Justice Television: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJt34I9c5vT2RpZtkg6Im2A/videos Podcast on KBOO radio: https://www.kboo.fm/program/prescription-justice Overview: Debuted October, 2017. Currently airing in about sixty times per month in the Portland, OR metropolitan area and in markets in 13 other states (plus D.C.). Open to new markets; Read more…
On June 19, 2019, President Donald Trump bragged at his re-election kickoff rally in Orlando that, thanks to his leadership, the wages of American workers “are rising at the fastest rate in many decades.” The reality, however, is that they are not. Indeed, wages rose at a faster rate only a few years before, under Read more…
Notes on Venezuelan Newscast on Venevision – August 20 2019 Headline Summary (0-1:30) -Electrical problems bring subway in Caracas to a halt -Trump says his officials have been talking to Maduro’s officials -Russia says it will examine the situation in Venezuela after the latest US-imposed sanctions -Juan Guaido says his allies are holding meetings with Read more…
Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal rebutted In Part 1 we saw how Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal’s article examining the speakers’ roster of the Socialism 2019 conference in Chicago elicited an unhelpful reply from the editors of New Politics, which had been one of the sponsors of that event. Turning to the Norton-Blumenthal (N-B) article Read more…
Earlier this month, maverick left journalists Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal blasted the various conveners of this summer’s Socialism 2019 conference in Chicago. The editors of the journal New Politics, one of the sponsors of said conference, responded with “In Defense of Socialist Internationalism.” Neither side of this exchange–not the editors of New Politics nor Read more…
You mass media folks lead busy lives, I’m sure. But you must have heard something about nuclear weapons―those supremely destructive devices that, along with climate change, threaten the continued existence of the human race. Yes, thanks to popular protest and carefully-crafted arms control and disarmament agreements, there has been some progress in limiting the number Read more…
Is the United States becoming a plutocracy? With the manifestly unqualified but immensely rich Donald Trump serving as the nation’s first billionaire president, it’s not hard to draw that conclusion. And there are numerous other signs, as well, that great wealth has become a central factor in American politics. Although big money has always played Read more…
I conclude, by means of interacting with pilgrims here, in Santiago de Compostela, that all guys between sixty and eighty five are seriously scared about dementia. They were all born between 1958 and 1933. As a matter of fact, I’ve been recently thinking they could constitute some kind of “demented” movement, or “demented army”: Dementia Read more…
New York TImes, Meridith Kohut and Isayen Herrera, December 17, 2017 “As Venezuela Collapses, Children Are Dying of Hunger” https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/17/world/americas/venezuela-children-starving.html?module=inline Washington Post, Anthony Faiola, February 12, 2018 “Venezuela’s economy is so bad, parents are leaving their children at orphanages” https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/venezuelas-economy-is-so-bad-parents-are-leaving-their-children-at-orphanages/2018/02/12/8021d180-0545-11e8-aa61-f3391373867e_story.html?utm_term=.d10ac9514d41 New York Times, Kirk Semple, March 20, 2018 “‘We’re Losing the Fight’: Tuberculosis Read more…
As U.S. college students―and their families―know all too well, the cost of a higher education in the United States has skyrocketed in recent decades. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, between 2008 and 2017 the average cost of attending a four-year public college, adjusted for inflation, increased in every state in the Read more…
I think it’s isn’t a time for reading or writing. I think it’s a time for barricades. Real fire, real struggle. Personally, I’m tired and I do not trust any more on words.
There’s a problem in Spain with Venezuelan pensioners. Guys that have payed for twenty years or so haven’t got any rights under Maduro’s government. The thing affects about eight thousand (8000) people in Spain and 650 persons in Galiza. Here there’s been a sentence by the High Court of Galiza, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Court_of_Galicia(one for 650 cases) stating the Spanish Read more…
If Cancer’s patients are allowed to reject Chemotherapy …, Why Mental Health Patients are life-time enforced (by gubernamental laws, by their families and “caregivers,” by the Cops, by judges), to be their whole life “on Meds”?https://beyondmeds.com/2019/05/03/embracing-our-madness/ This is one of my many posts to Galician Deputy in the Spanish Congress (she’s leaded the United Left Read more…
In late April, the highly-respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported that, in 2018, world military expenditures rose to a record $1.82 trillion. The biggest military spender by far was the United States, which increased its military budget by nearly 5 percent to $649 billion (36 percent of the global total). But most other nations Read more…
Article VII (Article 7 – Ratification) The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same. The US CONSTITUTION WAS APPROVED BY JUST THE 11 or 13 STATES EXISTING BY 1788. When Did Each State Join the United States? I ‘D Read more…
My knowledge of (1789) English is not enough to understand Section ii) of the Sixth Article: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Read more…
Article V (Article 5 – Mode of Amendment) The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendmentsto this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Read more…