Archive | November, 2019

The nation’s oldest structural racial entitlement program is one of its most consequential: the Electoral College.

Western corporate media outlets have often cried foul when foreign elections don’t go the way the U.S. empire wants them to, and find roundabout ways to label the violent attempts by vocal right-wing minorities to use military forces to overthrow leftist governments as “protests” rather than coups (FAIR.org, 5/16/18, 5/1/19).

“From lofty heights, Obama has now become a dampener of hope, a barrier to change, and a threat to progress.”

U.S. President Donald Trump sacked his Navy secretary on Twitter because he did not follow Trump’s advice and retain Navy Special Warfare Operator Edward Gallagher, despite Gallagher being accused of stabbing to death a wounded fighter, of murdering a schoolgirl and an elderly man, and then of obstructing justice.

Elon Musk’s new Cybertruck would appear to be the perfect design for America’s contemporary dystopia.

Legalienate editors Frank Scott and Michael Smith, who declared themselves co-president of the United States in February, today hailed the self-proclaimed presidency of Jeanine Añez in Bolivia as a harbinger of democratic self-determination throughout the world.

The chain of infernos stretches from Rockhampton in northern Queensland to the bush south of Wollongong. For the first time in history, Sydney’s fire danger forecast was made “catastrophic” for 12 November. All before summer has started.

The nuclear weapons world is full of subtle and not-so-subtle misogyny, and I’ve had my share of experiences: Fighting my way onto an otherwise all-male panel, only to have my speaking time cut short. Meeting a male colleague at a conference for the first time, where he immediately told me that he liked the red […]

With racist speech and sentiments coming more to the fore in current Irish politics, campaigner John Molyneux takes a look at how racist ideas and language work today.

Even before summer has begun, bushfires and toxic smoke have threatened the lives, health and homes of millions of people in nearly every Australian state and territory this week. The fire emergencies that first erupted two weeks ago in two states have spread across the country, worsened by dust storms, asthma alerts and electricity blackouts.

Environmental destruction isn’t driven by human nature or mistaken ideas. It is an inevitable consequence of a system built on capital accumulation.

“It’s really interesting, isn’t it, how certain people would want to go to such lengths to smash Marx. Do they really think they’re going to destroy the ideas by destroying the grave? …people feel so afraid of Marx. Is there any other intellectual throughout history that is like that?”

A coup on November 10 removed the socialist government of Bolivian President Evo Morales. The trail of evidence—from money flows to U.S. influence within the Bolivian military, and U.S. control of the Organization of American States (OAS)—leaves little doubt that the U.S. government made preparations and orchestrated the final stages of the coup.

The AOC-Sanders initiative seeks to flip the racist script by revaluing public housing and its remaining occupants.

While some may be surprised by its response to the Bolivia crisis, Human Rights Watch’s support for a U.S.-backed right-wing coup is no aberration.

It’s bad enough to imagine blame and scenarios of dread, as if from science fiction, but add in the presently feeble response to dire threats and we’re in a funk. If tools were available, we’d get a lift. Marc Brodine’s book Green Strategy, reviewed here, is about tools.

On 13 November 2019, as part of its deadly attack on the people of Gaza, Israeli armed forces bombed a building in the Deir al-Balah neighbourhood of Gaza City.

Join all of us. It is time to move this forward towards justice and freedom and bring Mumia home.

What is needed is a program directed toward an intermediate goal which both rejects the existing social order and at the same time is attainable without overthrowing it. —Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy

Last month, CNBC (10/7/19) reassured us that fears of a potential recession are “overblown,” because the “hard data” shows that the “U.S. economy remains strong.”