Archive | May, 2015

When it comes to Kashmir, official mendacity in India seems to cross all bounds.  So even a prominent member of the Indian Establishment felt that the Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar’s recent (May 22) open advocacy of “kaante-se-kaanta-nikaalte-hein” (a-thorn-to-remove-a-thorn) counterinsurgency tactics was “terrible” and that he should withdraw his out-of-line statement forthwith.  “You have to neutralise […]

For Richard Levins’s 85th birthday and his career as a scientist for the people. Richard Levins conveys the essence of dialectical thinking through the many examples he offers of its application, in every imaginable domain. Someone earlier than Dick — perhaps it was Hegel — remarked that, in contrast to formal logic, which is static, […]

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” — Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass What can lobbyists do when science contradicts their political messages?  Some simply deny the science, as many conservatives do with climate […]

“90% of production at SF Leather is for Mulberry brand.  Mulberry is producing luxury bags at SF Leather.  But wages of workers at SF are minimum wage.  Working time is very long.” — Makum Alagöz Appeal for support from workers in Izmir, Turkey – 13 May Sisters and brothers, We are the dismissed workers from […]

Neo-Liberalism is often seen only as an economic policy.  This per se might not matter, since a specific set of economic measures do, no doubt, fall under the rubric of neo-liberalism.  But by reducing neo-liberalism only to a set of economic measures, a misleading impression is often conveyed that this set of measures are a […]

Michael A. Lebowitz.  The Contradictions of “Real Socialism”: The Conductor and the Conducted.  New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012.  222 p. In current discussions of twenty-first century socialism, the work of Michael Lebowitz has a unique merit: it is rooted in the experience of Cuba and Venezuela, where efforts in recent decades to move toward […]

The 70th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War will be commemorated the day after tomorrow, May 9.  Given the time difference, while I write these lines, the soldiers and officials of the Army of the Russian Federation, full of pride, will be parading through Moscow’s Red Square with their characteristic quick, military steps. Lenin was […]

The May 7th UK general election, which saw the Conservatives win a slim majority, witnessed a democratic revolution of unprecedented scale in Scotland.  England backed continued austerity, neo-liberal economics and £12 billion welfare spending cuts; the Scots overwhelmingly rejected that approach. In the UK parliament Scotland is represented by 59 MPs, of whom, before May, […]

The 70th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War will be commemorated the day after tomorrow, May 9. Given the time difference, while I write these lines, the soldiers and officials of the Army of the Russian Federation, full of pride, will be parading through Moscow’s Red Square with their characteristic quick, military steps.… Lenin was a brilliant revolutionary strategist who did not hesitate in assuming the ideas of Marx and implementing them in an immense and only partly industrialized country, whose proletariat party became the most radical and courageous on the planet in the wake of the greatest slaughter that capitalism had caused in the world, where for the first time tanks, automatic weapons, aviation and poison gases made an appearance in wars, and even a legendary cannon capable of launching a heavy projectile more than 100 kilometers made its presence felt in the bloody conflict.

  Gomtipur (Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India) was once called the Manchester of Gujarat.  Did the decline of the mills contribute to the rise of the rightwing? Gujarat/ Malegaon films’ update: April 14. 2015 (rakeshs.distribution@gmail.com) #Crowdfunding #FinalSolutionRevisited… Posted by Rakesh Sharma on Tuesday, April 14, 2015 Rakesh Sharma is an internationally-acclaimed Indian documentary filmmaker.  Follow Sharma on […]

  May 5, 2015 BALTIMORE — The Baltimore police department has much to answer for: the events of the last few weeks have drawn our attention to this, from the callous murder of Freddie Gray to the hundreds of people arrested protesting his murder who were then held for an unconstitutional length of time (47 […]

  400 ppm In January 2015, scientists recorded atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide above 400 parts per million on a regular basis — the first time such a level had been detected so early in the calendar year.  It is well established that levels of CO2 above 350 (already well above the preindustrial norm of […]

Arms Sales A government jobs program (the lone acceptable government jobs program) working to deliver all the latest in U.S. defense industry hardware to all the international “good guys.” Associate A low-wage worker. Bubble (Financial) The artificial inflation of asset prices, which, although appearing to many of the “smartest people in the room” as if […]