Something rather curious has been happening recently. Leading politicians, Tory, Lib Dem and Labour, have started talking about capitalism. It has happened before, but not for some time and then, referring to some particularly egregious example of corporate malfeasance, terms such as the “unacceptable face of capitalism” were used. Tory prime minister Edward Heath coined the phrase in 1973 to describe the activities of Lonrho chief executive Tiny Rowlands who had broken sanctions against the white racist Smith government of Rhodesia. Later, in 2004, Jim O’Donnell, managing director of BMW applied it to five directors of Phoenix Venture Holdings, the parent company of GM Rover, who had pocketed more than £16 million, even though the company had lost £89 million. The chairman and vice chairman were accused by Martin O’Neill, chairman of the Commons Trade and Industry Select Committee, of using “financial sleight of hand” to line their own pockets and of failing to exercise good corporate governance.
LEFT: Tory PM Edward Heath’s “unacceptable face of capitalism” has now become the normal face of capitalism. Maybe there never was any other. Read more…
by Stephen Lendman, SENIOR CONTRIBUTING EDITOR “Entrapment is…manufactured to manipulate fear and justify America’s global war on terrorism. Nearly always, Muslims are charged. It’s part of America’s war on Islam.”
Incarcerated Muslims. Minorities continue to constitute the overwhelming majority of prisoners. -
With around 2.4 million incarcerated, America has by far the world’s largest prison system. Two-thirds in it are Black or Latino.
Most held are non-violent. Over half are for drug related charges. Around 75% are Blacks or Latinos. On all charges, many are persecuted political prisoners.
In her book titled, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” Michelle Alexander called today’s Jim Crow a modern-day elitist-designed racial caste system. Believing poor Blacks (and Latinos) are dangerous and economically superfluous, America’s gulag became an instrument of social control. According to Alexander:
“Any movement to end mass incarceration must deal with (it) as a racial caste system, not (a method) of crime control. We need an effective system of crime prevention and control in our communities, but that is not what the current system is. (It’s) better designed to create crime, and a perpetual class of people labeled criminals, rather than to eliminate crime or reduce the number of criminals.” Read more…
First in a series prepared by Eric Schechter “The world is changing quickly, and we need to help steer it according to our shared values — our vision of what might be.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR “Imagine no possessions.” I’m just like John Lennon, except without the talent.
I’m single and heterosexual, or maybe asexual. I might consider taking a partner if I found a woman who is perfect for me, if such a thing is possible. Women who want to know more about that can look at either of
I recently retired from teaching advanced mathematics. At the age of 55 I finally saw what most people know at age 10: that the most important questions in our lives are not mathematical. Even in economics, the math is just window-dressing and quantification; the most basic ideas contain virtually no math. And the most important question of all is, how can we all learn to live in peace together? No math in that at all. Read more…
In a recent essay, I mentioned Matt Taibbi as one of the examples of a phenomenon I call “The Obedient Dissenter,” and said I would be examining that phenomenon in further detail soon. This isn’t that lengthier analysis, but more in the nature of a sneak preview.
-
Taibbi posted this entry yesterday: “Another March to War?” His remarks deal with the major media’s warmongering about Iran and the distortions they rely upon. All true, and all old news to those who’ve been awake however briefly in recent years. Note what he drops into the middle of his discussion:
I’m not defending Achmedinejad, I think he’s nuts and a monstrous dick and I definitely don’t think he should be allowed to have nuclear weapons…Read more…
Is Obama a hypocrite or merely insouciant? Or is he an idiot?
According to news reports Obama’s White House meeting on Valentine’s day with China’s Vice President, Xi Jinping, provided an opportunity for Obama to raise “a sensitive human rights issue with the Chinese leader-in-waiting.” The brave and forthright Obama didn’t let etiquette or decorum get in his way. Afterwards, Obama declared that Washington would “continue to emphasize what we believe is the importance of realizing the aspirations and rights of all people.” Read more…
Ralph Nader ’58 and Bruce Fein ’72 visited Harvard Law School for a talk sponsored by the HLS Forum and the Harvard Law Record. At the event, “America’s Lawless Empire: The Constitutional Crimes of Bush and Obama,” both men discussed what they called lawless, violent practices by the White House and its agencies that have become institutionalized by both political parties.
Fein has held positions in the Department of Justice and has served as research director for Republicans on the Joint Congressional Committee on Covert Arms Sales to Iran and on the American Bar Association’s Committee on Presidential Signing Statements. He provided examples of what he called constitutional crimes that have been perpetrated under both the Obama and Bush administrations, such as detaining enemy combatants indefinitely, diverting funds authorized for fighting terrorism to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and using predator drones against persons never formally charged with a crime.
BY PAUL SWEEZY & HARRY MAGDOFF THE EDITORS OF MONTHLY REVIEW
As we write in early May (this piece, written by the editors, appeared in Monthly Review in June 1972—Eds), the long-expected crisis stemming from the collapse of Nixon’s Vietnamization policy has burst upon the world.How it will be resolved is still unknown, and anything that might be written on the question would certainly be overwhelmed by events long before it could be published. But it does seem an appropriate time to try to improve our understanding of the forces at work, especially one of the most elusive of these forces which has taken on enormous significance at this stage of history, i.e., the thought processes of those responsible for making U.S. policy. What are their preconceptions and prejudices? What are their aims, ambitions, hopes? How do they think they can get what they want? What is, or is likely to be, their reaction to failure? These are some of the questions that immediately come to mind. And while there are obviously no simple or uniformly valid answers, there is a great deal of relevant evidence at hand which ought to be carefully examined and weighed. In what follows we shall focus mainly though not exclusively on one piece of such evidence, the recently published autobiographical memoir by General Maxwell Taylor, who for many years was at the very center of the events which led up to the present crisis. Read more…
Editor’s Note: Although we deeply appreciate Chris Hedges value as a dissenter and supporter of OWS, on several occasions we have taken issue with his positions, practically all stemming from his reading of history and its possibilities through a left-liberal bourgeois lens, which we regard as self-limiting. We have noted his tendency, for example, to damn fascism and communism in the same breath, as if they were one and the same, while hurling the customary bricks at Stalin and the Soviet Union (in this he’s regretfully far from alone, as even the great Chomsky indulges in the sport from time to time, don’t ask me why, maybe to retain credibility with the establishment—a silly pursuit— and the still vast majority that remain entrapped in Cold War propaganda tropes). As well, we disagree with his rather absolutistic belief, widely held among liberals, that all oppressive systems—including the most cynically evil— can be changed or toppled via peaceful resistance. Hedges apparently is not unduly concerned that this proposition has been amply refuted by history from the American Civil War to the war against Nazism, among others. If anything, these struggles have shown that it is often necessary to deploy massive amounts of organized violence to resolve favorably any such contest against entrenched oppression and injustice. The war against Nazi Germany took the combined industrial and military might of the allied powers, tens of millions of men mobilized and gigantic quantities of war materiel to destroy that regime. Could anyone believe that just peaceful protests could have dislodged Hitler from power? (Ironically the liberals’ belief in nonviolence has been buttressed by the relative mild response of those supposedly bloodthirsty communists—the people they excoriated— to those who rose to overthrow them). Read more…
Revolutionary Violence vs Institutionalized Violence
"There were two 'Reigns of Terror,' if we could but remember and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passions, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon a thousand persons, the other upon a hundred million; but our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror that we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror - that unspeakable bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves..." —Mark Twain, writing about the French Revolution.
Make creeps like Kissinger
and Palin miserable.
Read The Greanville Postby RSS Syndication (updates delivered every 4 days to your emailbox) and fortify your ability to fight back! IT'S FREE! Just click anywhere on Lady Liberty below and enter your email address.
By Michael Faulkner, TPJ MAGAZINE
