by TOM GILL
One of the great disappointments with – and indeed key weakness of – the indignados movement in Spain, which this May 15 celebrates its second birthday, has been its failure to pursue a strategy that turns power in the streets into the real power needed to change the world. Continue reading »
by Stephen Lendman
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. Continue reading »
FOR RATHER inexplicable reasons the Chinese have built enormous residential complexes and cities that remain uninhabited and sometimes incomplete.
The above material was produced by VICE, an HBO documentary series founded by Shane Smith, a Canadian.
The show’s politics are difficult to pigeonhole. In some aspects Smith and his team reflect the confusing left-liberal politics of Bill Maher, who serves as Executive Producer. Many segments are however far superior to standard US television fare in terms of a reportorial approach which is not afraid of including people of radical and revolutionary persuasion. These are permitted to tell their side of the story without malicious “contextualizing”. That’s refreshing, to say the least. Continue reading »
Exposing the faux left in Europe
By Johannes Stern, wsws.org
The “Marx Is Muss” [“Marx is a must”] congress taking place this weekend in Berlin is a shabby operation organised by the Marx 21 group aimed at promoting right-wing and imperialist policy under a pseudo-left garb. Marx 21 is a faction inside the German Left Party, with links to the International Socialist Tendency. Continue reading »
SPECIAL REPORT: A look at how military spending also contributes to the social crisis throughout Europe.
By Frank Slijper
April 2013
Executive Summary
Five years into the financial and economic crisis in Europe, and there is still an elephant in Brussels that few are talking about. The elephant is the role of military spending in causing and perpetuating the economic crisis. As social infrastruc- ture is being slashed, spending on weapon systems is hardly being reduced. While pensions and wages have been cut, the arms industry continues to profit from new orders as well as outstanding debts. The shocking fact at a time of austerity is that EU military expenditure totalled €194 billion in 2010, equivalent to the annual deficits of Greece, Italy and Spain combined. Continue reading »
By Steve Rendall, FAIR
Bolivia’s president Evo Morales shown with clenched fist in a typically “provocative” pose (to Americans).
“USAID Develops a Bad Reputation Among Some Foreign Leaders,” read a May 7 Los Angeles Timesheadline, followed by the subhead:
The U.S. Agency for International Development doesn’t just offer aid to the poor, it also promotes democracy, which is seen as meddlesome or even subversive.
Fighting poverty and spreading democracy–what’s not to like? Continue reading »