class
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Things fall apart By William Bowles
It’s fashionable to call them the ‘underclass’ that the state has buried away, out of sight–out of mind on ‘sink estates’ or trapped in the poorest neighborhoods of our cities. Demonized and/or sentimentalized by the state/corporate media (‘Shameless’ and ‘East Enders’ for example), just as with our Victorian counterparts, an entire section of the working… Continue reading
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July Days Again in Britain — This Time in August By S. Artesian
The sun never sets on the poverty of British capitalism. In its wretchedness Britain represents the pinnacle of bourgeois society. In its decline Britain is a monument to the market, to private property, to progress. Continue reading
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Monday, Monday By S. Artesian
Anyway, now that Standard and Poor’s has pointed out that the standard for credit-worthiness is making almost everybody poorer, Monday should be a very interesting day. Continue reading
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Hackney Burned and Smashed Sean Gittins*
Thuggery this may be, but watching people hurtle rocks at windows and cops with scant regard for their future and the consequences lays bare a complete hatred of the system these rioters have come to know. Cameron’s warning to ‘these people’ that they are ‘potentially wrecking their own life too’ will have been as comical… Continue reading
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The battle of north London By John Millington
Getting to the truth of events like Saturday are a minefield. There is so much raw emotion, often exploited by corporate media outlets seeking to paint a certain picture either to undermine working-class communities or misdirect focus away from the root causes of events. Continue reading
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Tariq Ali on British riots: Why here and now?
Why is it that the same areas always erupt first, whatever the cause? Pure accident? Might it have something to do with race and class and institutionalised poverty and the sheer grimness of everyday life? Continue reading
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When the only option is to switch sides
This excellent book is about a young man growing up on a council estate in south London in the 1980s. Disruptive at school, bored with life and alienated with a changing society around him, Collins was an angry young man drawn towards the race hate politics of the British far-right. They spoke his language, described… Continue reading
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When the revolution comes By Gaither Stewart
In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina where I started out my life, I ran into the story of the Asheville-based self-professed Communist writer, Olive Tilford Dargan, of whom I had never heard before. Visiting then her gravesite in the little known Green Hills Cemetery in West Asheville and researching her and her… Continue reading
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Murdoch the ‘Dirty Digger’ Newslinks 15-16 July 2011
16 July 2011 — williambowles.info 16 July 2011 Murdoch apology in press adverts BBC News Today at 05:13 Rupert Murdoch takes out national press adverts to apologise for the phone hacking by the News of the World, as two of his most senior aides resign. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Avalanche! Media Hyperbole On News Corp, The ‘Free’ Press And A ‘Berlin Wall Moment’
There’s no doubt that a body blow has been delivered to Rupert Murdoch’s mighty News Corporation empire. Leading politicians, who until very recently had been both obsequious and fearful, now want to put themselves at least a bargepole’s length away from the media mogul. Continue reading
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Fukushima: Growing resistance challenges pro-nuclear policies By Pierre Rousset
Every day brings new revelations on the gravity of the nuclear accident at Fukushima Daichi and on the mendacious policies which covered the activity of the nucleocrat lobby, on the breadth of the risks imposed on the population by the choice of the atom, on the denial of democracy. Continue reading
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Moeletsi Mbeki: On Wealth creation in South Africa
I CAN predict when SA’s ‘Tunisia Day’ will arrive. Tunisia Day is when the masses rise against the powers that be, as happened recently in Tunisia. The year will be 2020, give or take a couple of years. The year 2020 is when China estimates that its current minerals-intensive industrialisation phase will be concluded. Continue reading
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The Anti-Empire Report by William Blum – Libya: Unending American hostility
If I could publicly ask our beloved president one question, it would be this: “Mr. President, in your short time in office you’ve waged war against six countries — Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya. This makes me wonder something. With all due respect: What is wrong with you?” Continue reading
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Greece: The beginning of the end, or a new beginning? By Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
It is by now patently obvious that there are two languages being spoken in Athens: that among the political class desperate to keep the Euro-wagon on the road and that of the Greek people, who at this moment represent the hearts and minds of the Europeans, which spells out the message that we do not… Continue reading
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‘Public Opinion’: The Phantom Menace By John Brissenden
Any 11 year old who saw Avatar or The Matrix has a basic understanding of constructed reality; teenagers carefully construct and reconstruct their online identity; politicians and pundits alike talk without shame or irony about presentation, optics and symbolism rather than policy. It is no different on the left. Resistance to the cult of austerity… Continue reading
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European Spring: The Gradual demise of Capitalism By Gaither Stewart
Rome: It’s an accumulative kind of thing, the demise of capitalism worldwide: at first the waning and the dwindling, now the rapid corkscrew-like downwards spiraling, of greedy, vicious, cannibalistic capitalism busily devouring itself. Today, one can only conclude the imminence of its just demise. Continue reading