Recent Blogs
The view of the US government and the pro-Guaidó faction of the opposition was summed up by a New York Times headline and subhead that on January 5 that said Venezuela’s Maduro Claims Control of National Assembly, Tightening Grip on Power It was the last political institution in opposition hands. Now President Nicolás Maduro’s has Read more…
Frequent Z writer Justin Podur is in the midst of writing what appears to be a young adult-aimed book of fiction (sci-fi perhaps) that seeks to relate what a “leftist,” revolutionary point of view is. Entitled “The Path of the Unarmed,” the story describes the political education of a youth named Unarmed Warrior who receives Read more…
On November 10 of 2019, Bolivian President Evo Morales was overthrown and barely escaped the country alive. The military publicly ”suggested” that he resign. The military and police also made it clear that they would not protect him from vigilantes who wanted to lynch him. His house was ransacked by opposition supporters the night he Read more…
This is Part II Part I is here: https://zcomm.org/zblogs/smashing-the-illusion-farmer-clout-a-white-paper-by-brad-wilson/ (Continuing from Part I.) Specific Farm State Data I’ve also started crunching the commodity crop numbers for various “farm states,” such as states where House and Senate Agriculture Committee members are based. For example, Iowa (Tom Harkin, Charles Grassley & Steve King, Leonard Boswell) and Kansas Read more…
In late May of this year, President Donald Trump’s special envoy for arms control bragged before a Washington think tank that the U.S. government was prepared to outspend Russia and China to win a new nuclear arms race. “The president has made clear that we have a tried and true practice here,” he remarked. “We Read more…
The starting point for Venezuela’s current depression has been the subject of some debate. It can get a bit technical, so I’ll weigh in on it here. Looking at Real GDP Inflation adjusted (i.e. real) Gross Domestic Product (GDP ) is essentially a country’s aggregate income. I say “essentially” because there is an adjustment that Read more…
Today Code Pink is making a push for that. It would be a lock in a civilized world. Click below to here to read Farmer’s letter. In it, he glowingly sums up his decades of working closely with Cuban doctors in Haiti.
According to UNICEF’s latest figures which can be downloaded here. I should add that UN agencies like UNICEF are not biased in favor of states like Cuba that the US has been trying to destroy for decades.
The Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) The IACHR claimed in 2009 report on Venezuela that its reaction to the “the attempted coup d’état [of 2002] was immediate and decisive” and that it “warned that these acts constituted an interruption of the constitutional order as defined in the Democratic Charter.” The evidence it offered Read more…
Given the overwhelming support opposition voices have been given in western media since Hugo Chavez was first elected in 1998, it is unsurprising that some would have had the audacity to attempt at least a partial whitewash of what the opposition and its foreign allies did in April of 2002. I’ll address some of those Read more…
What began as a casual lunchtime conversation in the office, turned out to be a very interesting question with surprising answers: do you make more money per month than a slave in ancient Rome? Although at first glance it sounds like an oxymoron, the question is indeed valid, since a slave has a cost, not Read more…
Although most Americans currently face hard times, with unemployment surging to the levels of the Great Depression and enormous numbers of people sick or dying from the coronavirus pandemic, the nation’s super-rich remain a notable exception. Financially, they are doing remarkably well. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, between March 18 and April 28, Read more…
Henri Falcon was a viable candidate – attacked by his own side Venezuela’s opposition had a viable candidate in Henri Falcon, a two-time governor of the state of Lara. He was first elected governor of the state of Lara in 2008 as a pro-Chavez candidate.[1] He broke with Chavez in 2010 and was then re-elected Read more…
On March 19, 2020, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, spurred to action by the coronavirus pandemic, issued a memorandum that identified the nation’s 2.5 million farmworkers as “essential” workers. Soon thereafter, agribusinesses began distributing formal letters to their farm laborers, also declaring that that they were “essential.” Of course, it shouldn’t have required a Read more…
Decades ago, when I began teaching international history, I used to ask students if they thought it was possible for nations to end their fighting of wars against one another. Their responses varied. But the more pessimistic conclusions were sometimes tempered by the contention that, if the world’s nations faced a common foe, such as Read more…
We live with a profound paradox. Our lives are powerfully affected by worldwide economic, communications, transportation, food supply, and entertainment systems. Yet we continue an outdated faith in the nation-state, with all the divisiveness, competition, and helplessness that faith produces when dealing with planetary problems. As we have seen in recent weeks, the coronavirus, like Read more…
In Spain around 80.000 people are infected, or sick, and around 7000 have been cured. Deads are approximately 8000. There is a big gap between the number of ill people (80,000) and the rest. I don’t understand why these 80.000 (infected/sick/ill) ) citizens have barely presence in the media. In my opinion, there should be Read more…
Don’t quite understand the attitude nor the point of view of Dylan’s last song. Elitism, anti-capitalism? I can’t see Kennedy’s murder as such a turning point, either. “Play darkness and death will come when it comes.” Would throwing in the towel, knowing it is what it is, be “Murder Most Foul”? Of course, his encyclopedic Read more…
Diana Johnstone, Circle in the Darkness: Memoir of a World Watcher. Clarity Press, Inc. 2020. Diana Johnstone’s book opens up in an excellent way how the world’s current intellectual atmosphere has corrupted much of the media world. A few decades ago there was still some openness in the way journalists were reporting world affairs. Recently, Read more…
Long before the advent of the coronavirus pandemic left people around the world desperate for survival, a popular assumption emerged that national governments are also supposed to promote the happiness and well-being of their citizens. This idea was expressed in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed that governments are instituted to secure humanity’s “unalienable Read more…
In Spain the situation generated by the Coronavirus is disturbing. The government, backed by the Constitution, has declared a “state of alarm”: bars and restaurants have closed, you can only go out for working, getting food or meds at the pharmacy, or walking your dog, and always alone. Police cars patrol the streets to ensure Read more…
It is often said that government budgets are “an expression of values.” Those values are clear in the Trump administration’s $4.8 trillion budget proposal for fiscal 2021, unveiled early this February. The budget calls for deep cuts in major U.S. government programs, especially those protecting public health. The Department of Health and Human Services would Read more…
I respect UK journalist Andrew Buncombe. As I noted for FAIR last year, he was one of the few corporate journalists who reported on a study linking Trump’s financial sanctions on Venezuela to thousands of deaths by the end of 2018. Since 2018, Trump has repeatedly intensified the sanctions and threatened Venezuela with military action, Read more…
Conventional wisdom is that a presidential candidate should pick an opposite or contrasting vice presidential running mate, to create a perception of a balanced ticket. But this is not a conventional time or race, Bernie is offering a clear and practical progressive choice to fix the USA. So his running mate needs to be a Read more…
Campaigning for the presidency in 2016, Donald Trump promised that, if he was elected, “American worker[s] will finally have a president who will protect them and fight for them.” Has he kept this promise? When it comes to protecting workers’ health and safety, his administration has been a disaster. Once in office, Trump packed the Read more…
While I essentially agree with Patrick Cockburn’s article in the Independent “Sinn Fein’s Election Victory is Ireland’s Brexit Moment”. I would like to make a distinction against its use of Brexit as a new verb for political upset and rebellion. Rebellion is a perfectly clear and uncontaminated verb! As Patrick points out, Ireland’s surprise surge Read more…
On the 14th of January last month Ireland’s Taoiseach (Leader) announced a snap election for 8th February 2020. On that day I wrote this Z.Net blog on how I thought about that. Now this new blog hopes you may have first read that, instead of me repeating it to much in this one. (I’m not Read more…
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…