7 November 2013 — Andrew Gavin Marshall
Early on Thursday, 7 November 2013, Greek riot police stormed the offices of Greece’s main public broadcaster, which had been under a five-month occupation by workers who opposed the government’s decision to shut down the broadcaster, firing thousands and destroying a major cultural institution. The broadcast seems to have come to an end.
7 October 2013 — International Socialism
There has been a significant revival of interest among the radical left in “big picture” questions of socialist strategy that, as Mark L. Thomas has pointed out, represents a return to “important debates of the left largely absent over the last three decades”.1
29 October 2013 — Red Pepper
14 October 2013 — Liberty
At Liberty we’ve long argued that Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 is ripe for misuse and discrimination.
The power allows for people to be detained for nine hours, fingerprinted, strip searched and asked questions without a right of access to a lawyer. It can be exercised without the need for any grounds to suspect the person is involved in terrorism, or any other criminal activity. This means it can be used against anyone a police, immigration or customs officer chooses and has been used disproportionately against those of Asian origin.
12 August 2013 — RT
Saudi Arabia policies are enormously hypocritical. They discriminate against 10 percent of their own population, the Shiites, while saying they are intervening in Syria for more democracy, journalist Pepe Escobar told RT.
9 August 2013 — Open Democracy
30 July 2013 — BBC
The Trust’s editorial standards committee said that while there was no evidence that Humphrys advocated the coalition government’s reforms, viewers were likely to have formed the impression that there was a “healthy supply of jobs overall” in the UK economy because no information was given on the ratio of jobs to applicants.
17 June 2013 — WSWS
In a document released at the end of May, the American banking and investment giant JP Morgan Chase calls for the overturning of the bourgeois democratic constitutions established in a series of European countries after the Second World War and the installation of authoritarian regimes.
19 May 2013 — Truthdig
Joe Sacco and I spent two years reporting from the poorest pockets of the United States for our book “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.” We went into our nation’s impoverished “sacrifice zones”—the first areas forced to kneel before the dictates of the marketplace—to show what happens when unfettered corporate capitalism and ceaseless economic expansion no longer have external impediments. We wanted to illustrate what unrestrained corporate exploitation does to families, communities and the natural world. Continue reading
17 April 2013 — NACLA Border Wars
On April 16, the U.S. Senate’s so-called “Gang of 8” released their 844-page plan for comprehensive immigration reform entitled the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013. The border policing aspect of the bill (among many other things) envisions $3 billion for more surveillance systems, including unmanned aerial drones, $1.5 billion for more barriers on the boundary, and the addition of 3,500 more Customs and Border Protection agents (CBP includes the U.S. Border Patrol). This would be on top of the $18 billion (figure from 2012) that the U.S. government already spends on border and immigration enforcement per year, an expense that is more than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined.
17 February 2013 — YouTube
Interesting insights into the current situation in South Africa in this, the first edition of this ongoing programme. This from the SABC site:
The recent farmworkers’ strike in the Western Cape has highlighted low pay and unbearable working conditions as the main causes of the workers’ grievances. However, some farmworkers have also revealed that land reform and redistribution are at the centre of their concerns.
Former Farmworker in De Doorns, in the Western Cape Petrus Brink says the people are fed up with government’s slow progress in returning the land to them. 2013, marks the 100th anniversary of the 1913 Land Act, which was passed due to pressure from the white population to keep black people from invading white areas.
1 April 2013 — Return of the Public
On March 25th the House of Commons’ Political and Constitutional Reform Committee published Do We Need A Constitutional Convention for the UK? Though the report acknowledged widespread opposition to the idea – from the government, from the Scottish National Party and from the Conservative party in Wales, as well as from some members of the committee itself – it concluded that a convention was necessary, in order to address the growing strains on the UK‘s constitution caused by ‘a huge amount of incremental constitutional change over the past two decades’ (p.17).
19 February 2013 — FAIR Blog
Left-wing Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa was poised to win re-election on Sunday. Give that fact, the New York Times went with a peculiar headline for their February 16 piece
15 February 2013 — The Real News Network
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Worker Owned Businesses Point to New Forms of Ownership Can co-ops come out of the margins of the economy and be part of a larger political project to transform how things are owned? Go to story | Go to homepage |
15 January 2013 — Global Research
Wall Street Journal headlined “An Internet Activist Commits Suicide.”
New York’s medical examiner announced death by “hang(ing) himself in his Brooklyn apartment.”
Lingering suspicions remain. Why would someone with so much to give end it all this way? He was one of the Internet generation’s best and brightest.
28 December 2012 — Michael Hudson
How today’s fiscal austerity is reminiscent of World War I’s economic misunderstandings
When World War I broke out in August 1914, economists on both sides forecast that hostilities could not last more than about six months. Wars had grown so expensive that governments quickly would run out of money. It seemed that if Germany could not defeat France by springtime, the Allied and Central Powers would run out of savings and reach what today is called a fiscal cliff and be forced to negotiate a peace agreement.
But the Great War dragged on for four destructive years. European governments did what the United States had done after the Civil War broke out in 1861 when the Treasury printed greenbacks. They paid for more fighting simply by printing their own money. Their economies did not buckle and there was no major inflation. That would happen only after the war ended, as a result of Germany trying to pay reparations in foreign currency. This is what caused its exchange rate to plunge, raising import prices and hence domestic prices. The culprit was not government spending on the war itself (much less on social programs).
2 December 2012 — The New Economics
Used by wealthy individuals and companies to shift huge sums of money around the world in secret, tax havens cost governments and ordinary taxpayers billions of pounds. International efforts to tackle tax havens to date have been feeble, but there’s no reason why action can’t be taken. How can we put a end to such widespread tax evasion?
This is the first in a series of four videos investigating different areas of the international finance system. Each is a short introduction to a major challenge we face if we want to reform global finance and make it work for people and the planet. Continue reading
3 October 2012 — Return of the Public
Where Are We Exactly?
The banks have ripped us off, screwed the economy, and taken tens of billions in the taxpayers’ name. They are not lending to the productive sector of the economy, they are still paying themselves huge bonuses, and there is barely a flicker of political protest. None of the three major parties are even thinking of doing anything serious to restrain or reform them. It’s not that the banks are too big to fail, to quote the title of one of the books about the events of 2007/8; they have already failed. Rather, they are perceived in this country to be too big to tackle. Continue reading
27 Aug 2012 – Aljazeera
Hind’s piece is followed by a response from Lenin’s tomb
Could political radicals learn a few lessons from how Syriza created a diverse coalition in Greece? By Dan Hind
27 August 2012 — Global Research – opendemocracy.net
Whatever genuine grievances and demands for political reform the Syrian people might have had a year and half ago were trodden underfoot by this stampeding sectarian drive that the Syrian opposition itself worked so hard to foster among its own supporters.
The New Dark Age 