fernando_santamaria: A song of Andres Calamaro about trust and oppression

This song by Andres Calamaro is titled “Alta suciedad.” There’s a pun between Spanish word for “dirtiness” (“suciedad”) and the Spanish word for “society” (“sociedad”). It claims you can only trust in dirty people, the lowest layers of society. “High dirt! (high dirt garbage)   You can not trust anyone else …” Repeats the chorus. Read more…

Lawrence Wittner: What Democratic Socialism Is and Is Not

In recent weeks, Donald Trump and other Republicans have begun to tar their Democratic opponents with the “socialist” brush, contending that the adoption of socialist policies will transform the United States into a land of dictatorship and poverty.  “Democrat lawmakers are now embracing socialism,” Trump warned the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in early March.  Read more…

fernando_santamaria: On politically correct thinking, gender violence, prostititution and (may be) the #me too movement

Institutional propaganda that becomes motto and emblem of the initiatives of public administrations in Galicia, and  in most of the”civilized world”,  I guess, most of the time  borders on the absurd. In Galicia, which comes from a matriarchy and is traditionally little exposed to violence against women, public advertising campaigns against gender violence have acquired Read more…

Antonio Carty: Waking up to War Against Venezuela

We the people should stop trusting the same ‘journalists’ that cajoled us into the invasion of Iraq, Libya, ect. Large numbers of us protested then, perhaps we now sulk that if our protests didn’t stop it then, why should we try again? But we have got to wake up, instead of waiting for another huge Read more…

Antonio Carty: Conscience Over Profit

Palestine needs Europe and the world’s solidarity in effective ways, so its good to hear a union in my own abuela Beazcochea’s Basque country has voted against its company’s attempted collaboration with the internationally condemned Israeli occupation. The workers council of Spanish train manufacturer CAF voted last month against participation in the Jerusalem light rail tramway Read more…

Zoran Andelkovic: Support Serbia’s “One In Five Million” movement, but for the right reasons

Coming from Serbia, but living in Germany for more than 10 years, it is easy to lose perspective. Every time I visit my home town of Belgrade I wonder if it is only my view which is getting distorted, or the country is indeed continuously deteriorating. However, it seems I am not the only one Read more…

Lawrence Wittner: Should the U.S. Government Abide by the International Law It Has Created and Claims to Uphold?

The Trump administration’s campaign to topple the government of Venezuela raises the issue of whether the U.S. government is willing to adhere to the same rules of behavior it expects other nations to follow. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, U.S. foreign policy was characterized by repeated acts of U.S. military intervention in Latin Read more…

Joe Emersberger: Amnesty International modifies its position on US sanctions and threats against Venezuela

Last year, I asked Amnesty International for its position on US economic sanctions against Venezuela. I also asked Amnesty’s position on the threats US officials have made against Venezuela’s government, including open encouragement of Venezuela’s military to perpetrate a coup. Last year, Amnesty replied that it took “no position” on US economic sanctions. Regarding US Read more…

Lawrence Wittner: Don’t Expect Rulers of Nuclear-Armed Nations to Accept Nuclear Disarmament―Unless They’re Pushed to Do So

At the beginning of February 2019, the two leading nuclear powers took an official step toward resumption of the nuclear arms race.  On February 1, the U.S. government, charging Russian violations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, announced that it would pull out of the agreement and develop new intermediate-range missiles banned by it.  Read more…

Antonio Carty: ‘Populism’ is a deliberately meaningless term

Use of the term ‘Populism’ is a deliberately vague misdiagnosis of our world’s problems. It lumps all change that might threaten the status quo as the same chaos, the danger of populism. Every politician must be elected by popular vote, so to diagnose some as populist is meaningless. It is to spook the very idea Read more…

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