Things to consider—

Since early 2011, Obama's been waging proxy war on Syria. Imported death squads masquerade as freedom fighters. The scheme's familiar. It repeats. It reflects US imperialism's dark side. In the 1980s, CIA-recruited mujahideen fighters battled Afghanistan's Soviet occupiers. Ronald Reagan called them "the moral equivalent of our founding fathers." He characterized Contra killers the same way. —Stephen LendmanFor over a century now US ambassadors have acted as fifth columns in the nations they are embedded in, their role chiefly to foster corporate and plutocratic power and coordinate machinations against any truly pro-democratic government.•••••"The dead end identity politics of SF Pride, which sells out a peace hero like Bradley Manning to curry favor with the American ruling class, is what I had in mind. The empire loves your tameness, irrelevance and cowardice, SF Pride. You don’t bother the American ruling class — a five foot two, 105 pound soldier does because he has a conscience and because he didn’t make comfort the guiding principle of his life...." —Randy Shields
  • Apple’s tax dodge: The case for public ownership

    Apple’s tax dodge: The case for public ownership

    Guest Editorials— By Andre Damon, wsws.org The US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report Monday showing that electronics giant Apple Inc. uses offshore tax shelters to avoid taxes on the majority of its income and cheated the US government out of $9 billion in 2012 alone. That same day, a tornado leveled the town [...]

  • The major sea change in media discussions of Obama and civil liberties

    The major sea change in media discussions of Obama and civil liberties

    The controversies over the IRS and especially the AP phone records appear to have long-lasting effects By Glenn Greenwald,  guardian.co.uk  Barack Obama Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images Due to the controversies over the IRS and (especially) the DOJ’s attack on AP’s news gathering process, media outlets have suddenly decided that President Obama has a very poor record [...]

  • Argentina’s General Videla and the “war on terror”

    Argentina’s General Videla and the “war on terror”

    By Bill Van Auken, wsws.org Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla died May 17 at the age of 87 as the result of injuries suffered from a fall in a prison shower. He was remembered as the head of a savage military dictatorship that between 1976 and 1983 murdered and “disappeared” some 30,000 Argentine workers, socialist militants, [...]

  • Rise Up or Die

    Rise Up or Die

     By Chris Hedges 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 [...]

  • The Silent Death of the American Left

    The Silent Death of the American Left

    Generation Leftover by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR, Counterpunch Is there a Left in America today? There is, of course, a Left ideology, a Left of the mind, a Left of theory and critique. But is there a Left movement? Does the Left exist as an oppositional political, cultural or economic force? Is anyone intimidated or restrained [...]

  • UK soldier killed in London in reprisal for Afghanistan and Iraq wars

    UK soldier killed in London in reprisal for Afghanistan and Iraq wars

    By Robert Stevens,wsws.org The killing of drummer Lee Rigby, 2nd Battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, near London’s Woolwich army barracks on Wednesday was a horrific act. Rigby was first run down by two men in a car, who then set about him with knives and a cleaver. One of the men who carried out the [...]

  • The Tornado and Other Man-Made Disasters

    The Tornado and Other Man-Made Disasters

    Our Economic System is Driving Climate Change by KEN KLIPPENSTEIN The ancient Greeks attributed weather to the god Zeus; today we can safely attribute it to industrial capitalism and its voracious consumption of fossil fuels. The carnage left by a tornado in Oklahoma yesterday is just the latest in our economic system’s daunting body count. [...]

  • Witness tied to Boston bombing suspect killed by FBI

    Witness tied to Boston bombing suspect killed by FBI

    By Barry Grey and Nick Barrickman, wsws.org Twenty-seven-year-old Ibragim Todashev was shot and killed early Wednesday morning while being interrogated by police and intelligence officials in an Orlando, Florida, apartment. Todashev, a friend of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev and, like Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen, was reportedly being questioned by a Federal Bureau of [...]

More than opium: Marxism and religion

 CLASS STRUGGLE, CONTROVERSY, IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE  Comments Off
Dec 092011
 

International Socialism  [Issue: 119]

From the archives. Originally Posted: 24 June 08

John Molyneux

About 20 years ago I spoke on “Marxism and religion” at the Socialist Workers Party Easter Rally in Skegness. I began, roughly, with the words, “Today, in Britain, religion—fortunately—is not a major political issue.” Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. Today religion, or rather one religion in particular, namely Islam, is at the centre of political debate.

Scarcely a day passes without a news item raising the alarm about alleged “hate preaching” imams, or a mosque being taken over by “fundamentalists”, or an opinion piece about the deeply flawed nature of Islam, or a radio discussion about whether “moderate” Muslims are doing enough to combat “the extremists” and prevent Muslim youth from being “radicalised”, or a TV programme on the plight of Muslim women, or a scare story about some stupidity committed in the name of Islam somewhere in the world. As I start to write this article I see the following report in the Independent on Sunday:

Islamic extremism in Britain is creating communities which are “no-go areas” for non-Muslims, the Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, warned yesterday. Bishop Nazir-Ali says non-Muslims face a hostile reception in places dominated by the ideology of Islamic radicals. Continue reading »

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Gowans: Reflections on the American empire and its poisonous implications

 AFRICA, ANNOTATED NEWS  Comments Off
Dec 092011
 

US Ambassador Echoes Cecil Rhodes

By Stephen Gowans, What’s Left
From our archives 
When in 1916 Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin expounded what historian V.G. Kiernan would later call virtually the only serious theory of imperialism, despite its shortcomings (1), Lenin cited Cecil Rhodes as among the “leading British bourgeois politicians (who) fully appreciated the connection between what might be called the purely economic and the political-social roots of modern imperialism.” (2)

Rhodes, founder of the diamond company De Beers and of the eponymous Rhodesia, had made the following remarks, which Lenin quoted at length in his Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.

LEFT: Rhodes made no bones that the business at hand was imperialism. Modern politicians are certainly not so careless with the truth.  Continue reading »

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US officials threaten Russia amid post-election protests

 ANNOTATED NEWS  Comments Off
Dec 092011
 

By Alex Lantier , WSWS.ORG

Amid deep popular disaffection and opposition protests against the regime of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin following Russia’s December 4 parliamentary elections, US officials are mounting a campaign to destabilize Russia.

The elections, which were marked by numerous instances of vote fraud, saw Putin’s United Russia party officially receive only 49.5 percent of the vote, down 15 percent from 2007. This reflects broad and deeply-felt anger with the disastrous social conditions of post-Soviet Russia. In response, Washington has ratcheted up military and political tensions with the Kremlin, including by backing ongoing protests politically dominated by Russia’s official right-wing “opposition” parties. 

LEFT: Putin remains a fascinating figure to bourgeois media observers and political chiselers, but his bad press reflects the fears in Washington and other Western capitals that Russia under him may emerge as a counterweight to their imperial designs.
Continue reading »

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Diane Gee interviews Bill Ayers

 ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ANNOTATED NEWS, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS  Comments Off
Dec 092011
 

Listen to Bill Ayers live on WWL Radio Friday, December 9th at 6pm ET!

The call in number is 646-929-1264 to join the conversation! 

Listen live by clicking the link icon below:

Listen to The Wild Wild Left on internet talk radio

When the controversy broke about then Senator Obama having known Bill Ayers, my first thought was “cool, maybe his isone of us.  Since then, it is Obama that has disappointed, not Professor Ayers.

My discussion with him will strive to contemplate, contrast and compare the social movement of the 60′s and 70′s with what is happening now. I think he can, as someone who has been fully immersed in the former shed light on the latter.

Great effort has been taken to marginalize, even demonize and true socialist with any chance of influencing the dialogue in this country. While active in the advancement of progressive education, that that alone is considered too “radical” for the “educational industry” speaks volumes about how far right we have been pushed as a Nation.

Today, this nation is under a far more militant resistance against OWS activists than the anti-war activists of the SDS and WU were… I wonder, how will it survive?

I am thrilled an honored to be able to have a conversation with Bill! I am sure we shall all learn much from him. Continue reading »

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Heal the Earth: Repeal the crooked Mining Act of 1872 !

 ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, CLASS STRUGGLE, ENVIRONMENTAL STRUGGLES  Comments Off
Dec 092011
 

“Sweet Deals” crony capitalism at its best—

The General Mining Act of 1872 has left a legacy of riches and ruin

By ROBERT MCCLURE AND ANDREW SCHNEIDER, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS
Gold, silver, platinum and other precious metals for free. Land for $5 an acre or less.

That’s the deal mining companies get from the U.S. government when miners turn their explosives and earthmovers toward public land in the West.  It’s pretty much the same deal miners have had for 129 years, ever since Congress approved the General Mining Law in 1872.

Modern mining methods have left the West pockmarked by huge craters, some so large that they are visible from space. Whole mountainsides are ground to dust and doused with cyanide, teasing out enough gold for a single wedding ring from several tons of rock and soil. Continue reading »

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Understanding the Conservative Mind

 CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, CLASS STRUGGLE, IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE  1 Response »
Dec 092011
 

Understanding the Conservative Mind: Why Reactionaries from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin Have Fought Real Liberty

By Corey Robin, Oxford University Press

The following excerpt is reprinted from The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin with permission from Oxford University Press, Inc.  Copyright © 2011 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Click here to buy a copy. 

Since the modern era began, men and women in subordinate positions have marched against their superiors in the state, church, workplace, and other hierarchical institutions. They have gathered under different banners–the labor movement, feminism, abolition, socialism–and shouted different slogans: freedom, equality, rights, democracy, revolution. In virtually every instance, their  superiors have resisted them, violently and nonviolently, legally and illegally, overtly and covertly. That march and demarche of democracy is the story of modern politics or at least one of its stories. Continue reading »

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