by Rick Wolff / January 5th, 2009 ()
At the capitalist system’s core lies its central conflict. On one side, corporate boards of directors pursue ever more surplus extracted from productive workers. On the other side, workers seek ever more wages and benefits and better working conditions that reduce the surplus available to employers. Perpetual class conflict results between capitalists and workers over the size of that surplus. The conflict’s form varies from hidden to open and from mild to violent.
Boards of directors continually find ways to reduce wages. Yet they complain when consumers whose wages fall cannot then buy all the commodities that capitalists need to …
by Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan / January 5th, 2009 ()
This is the first in a series of short articles we plan to write on the current economic crisis. Our aim in this series is threefold: to outline some of the important contours of the crisis; to situate these patterns in historical context; and to reflect on their possible causes and implications.
Since the crisis is still ongoing, such analysis can only be cursory and suggestive. But it is nonetheless useful to put our preliminary research and thoughts in writing. By spelling out what we do know (or think we know) about the crisis, we can better identify what we don’t …
by Justin Podur / January 5th, 2009 ()
The current crisis in Gaza began with Israel’s breaking the ceasefire with Hamas on November 4, 2008. The five-month ceasefire was unsustainable for two reasons. First and most importantly, because it condemned the Palestinians of Gaza to a slow and wasting death: part of the ceasefire was the continuation of Israel’s blockade of Gaza. As part of this blockade, Palestinians could not leave the territory. This included, in high-profile cases, students who had obtained admission and visas to study abroad, but also people who later died because they could not receive treatment for cancers and other medical problems. Remember that …
We’re All War Criminals Now
by Joe Mowrey / January 5th, 2009 ()
In response to the current brutal assault on Gaza by Israel a well-known long distance service provider has sponsored a petition for their customers to sign urging a cease fire. On the face of it, this seems like a noble endeavor. The company in question caters to the progressive community and donates a portion of its fees to a wide array of progressive organizations. One could take issue with the fact that this company aligns itself with a notorious international banking cartel to provide credit card services to its customers. But what is interesting to note is how the language …
by Maryam Sakeenah / January 5th, 2009 ()
Xinjiang will always keep up the intensity of its crackdown on ethnic separatist forces and deal them devastating blows without showing any mercy.
— Wang Lequan, Chinese Communist Party Xinjiang Secretary, quoted by China News Agency, January 14, 2003
China is guilty of fierce repression of religious expression, and intolerance of any expression of discontent.
– Rebiya Kadeer, Uighur rights activist, writing for the Washington Post.
The 2008 Olympics held in Beijing helped bring into the limelight the plight of ethnic minorities in China, subject to ‘gross human rights violations’, according to Amnesty International. This said, however, there was a clear …
by Titus North / January 5th, 2009 ()
Those of us in the United States and certain other parts of the world are at a major disadvantage as we struggle to halt the Israeli assault on Gaza: namely, that there is a massive body of misperceptions and double standards that make it possible for Israeli officials to get away with bald-faced lies while providing obstacles to those of us who are pushing for a reality-based solution to the crisis. Pursuing a rational line of argument without feeding into the misperceptions can be like tiptoeing through a minefield. In particular, we need to be careful …
by Gary Leupp / January 5th, 2009 ()
“Eighteen months ago, Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in a coup…” droned President Bush in his weekend radio address. “Hamas has held the people of Gaza hostage ever since their illegal coup against the forces of (Palestinian Authority) President Mahmoud Abbas,” Condoleezza Rice told reporters outside the White House January 2.
The idea is that those who’ve been governing in Gaza (to the extent that anyone can govern a concentration camp to which entry and exit by land air and sea is controlled by hostile forces, and to which almost all commerce is …
by Stuart Littlewood / January 5th, 2009 ()
Gentlemen,
There’s an ugly plan afoot in the EU to reward Israel for its abominable and criminal conduct by enhancing the already handsome benefits enjoyed by the neighbourhood bully under the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
Most EU citizens have little idea how the EU works or how to hold it to account for blunders like dereliction of duty. That’s no surprise because it is cloaked in incomprehensible complexity and there is no way to hold it accountable. Those in control shamelessly do as they please, it seems.
Take this wretched EU-Israel Association Agreement. Its purpose is to promote (1) peace and security, (2) shared …
by Gilad Atzmon / January 4th, 2009 ()
Communicating with Israelis may leave one bewildered. Even now when the Israeli Air Force is practicing murder in broad daylight of hundreds of civilians, elderly persons, women and children, the Israeli people manage to convince themselves that they are the real victims in this violent saga.
Those who are familiar intimately with Israeli people realise that they are completely uninformed about the roots of the conflict that dominates their lives. Rather often Israelis manage to come up with some bizarre arguments that may make a lot of sense within the Israeli discourse, yet make no sense whatsoever outside of the …
Anti-Empire Report
by William Blum / January 3rd, 2009 ()
America’s other glorious war
The Pentagon pushes hard for a large increase in troops for Afghanistan. Barack Obama has been calling for the same since well before the November election. Listen to the drumbeats telling us that the security of the United States and the Free World necessitates increased action in this place called Afghanistan. As urgent as Iraq 2003, it is. Why? What is there about this backward, reactionary, woman-hating, failed state that warrants hundreds of deaths of American and NATO soldiers? That justifies tens of thousands of Afghan deaths since the first US …
by Evelyn Pringle / January 3rd, 2009 ()
Throughout the 1990’s, most doctors who attended conferences, medical seminars and other events were not aware that the so-called “key opinion leaders” encouraging them to prescribe the new generation of antidepressants for everything under the sun, including to children as young as infants, were nothing more than highly paid drug pushers for Big Pharma.
For years, the research that showed SSRI antidepressants (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) were dangerous and practically useless was kept hidden, while the studies published and presented to potential prescribers painted a glowing picture of success. These days, a person would be hard pressed to find someone …
by William A. Cook / January 3rd, 2009 ()
How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be.
– Oedipus Rex, Scene I
As the Israeli military launched an “all out war” with Hamas in the Gaza strip, as casualties mounted to 400 dead and another 1450 wounded, as tanks and troops massed in the area just outside the wall that imprisons the people of Gaza, as preparations for a ground assault into the “closed military zone” around the Gaza strip moved forward, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Saturday the 27th “… instructed the Foreign Ministry to take emergency measures to adapt Israel’s international public relations to the ongoing escalation in the …
by Jeremy R. Hammond / January 3rd, 2009 ()
Lie #1) Israel is only targeting legitimate military sites and is seeking to protect innocent lives. Israel never targets civilians.
The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated pieces of property in the world. The presence of militants within a civilian population does not, under international law, deprive that population of their protected status, and hence any assault upon that population under the guise of targeting militants is, in fact, a war crime.
Moreover, the people Israel claims are legitimate targets are members of Hamas, which Israel says is a terrorist organization. Hamas has been responsible for firing …
by Hans Bennett / January 3rd, 2009 ()
Longtime activist and author Edward S. Herman was interviewed in Philadelphia on December 26, 2008. In this interview, Herman discusses the history of US influence in Latin America, and contextualizes this with what he says is an anti-democratic US policy throughout the Global South, designed to create a favorable investment climate for US corporations. He is asked how things are changing today with the popular election of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and many other recently-elected leftist presidents in Latin America. Is the US losing power and influence? What will this mean for the future?…
by Kristoffer Larsson / January 3rd, 2009 ()
It appears most of Europe’s leading politicians are merely quoting one another when asked to comment on the Gaza massacres: killing (thus far) over 420 people and wounding more than 2,000 is a “disproportionate” act. And they all agree Hamas bear responsibility for it.
Apparently, Israel has a license to freely kill every single member of Hamas it wants. Sure, Hamas are responsible for civilian casualties. But first of all, the number of Israelis murdered by Hamas …
by Mikel Weisser / January 3rd, 2009 ()
Dear Santa,
Once again I have been stiffed out of my Xmas wish list. What gives?
Did you not get my list? Should I show you anew?
I know last year, I said I wished for a Democratic president and I didn’t care who it was so long as they could beat the legacy of Bush. OK, technically you’ve come through. Thanks again for the Obama puppet. No matter how much I complain, don’t think I don’t appreciate the horror show the McCain-Palin puppets would have been. You can indeed milk that particular piece of gratitude all the way till the …
by Thomas Riggins / January 2nd, 2009 ()
This is the season to remind all our Christian friends of the relationship between Christianity and Marxism-Leninism and the working class movement. Engels (”On the History of Early Christianity”) tells us that there are “notable points of resemblance” between the early working class movement and Christianity.
First, both movements were made up of oppressed poor people from the lower ranks of society. Christianity was a religion of slaves and people without rights subjugated by the state and very similar to the types of poor oppressed working people that founded the earliest socialist and worker’s organizations in modern times.
Second, …
by James Petras / January 2nd, 2009 ()
Because of the unconditional support of the entire political class in the US, from the White House to Congress, including both Parties, incoming and outgoing elected officials and all the principal print and electronic mass media, the Israeli Government feels no compunction in publicly proclaiming a detailed and graphic account of its policy of mass extermination of the population of Gaza.
Israel’s sustained and comprehensive bombing campaign of every aspect of governance, civic institutions and society is directed toward destroying civilized life in Gaza. Israel’s totalitarian vision is driven by the practice of a …
by Tom Burghardt / January 2nd, 2009 ()
When Afghan drug kingpin Haji Bashir Noorzai was arrested in New York in 2005, it set off a chain of events that continue to echo today.
A federal jury in Manhattan convicted Noorzai September 22, for his involvement in an international narcotics trafficking conspiracy that sold tens of millions of dollars of heroin on world markets. The drug lord now faces life in prison and will be sentenced on January 7.
But things aren’t always what they seem.
Noorzai, described by federal investigators and journalists as “the richest man in Afghanistan,” enjoyed close and cosy relations with the Taliban’s top leader Mullah Omar, …
by Ron Ridenour / January 2nd, 2009 ()
Modesty was the tone of Cuba´s celebration of its first half-century of official revolution.
Prior to the devastating hurricanes last fall, the government had planned a major celebration with visiting foreign presidents and military parades. Because of this natural setback and other economic setbacks—the global economic crisis which has reduced the price of export resources such as nickel and sugar and the number of tourists—the government toned down its plans limiting its celebration to meet austere realities. No foreign leaders were present.
The national act was held in Cespedes Park, in Santiago de Cuba, where Fidel spoke on January 1, …
