Brezhnev with Fidel
SOURCE: Pravda.ru
Among all leaders of the Soviet Union and the pre-Putin Russia, Russians are most positive about Leonid Brezhnev. As many as 56 percent of respondents praised his work while 29 percent said that they shared a negative attitude to his persona. Continue reading »
By Paul Craig Roberts
Have you ever wondered how the government’s misinformation gains traction?What I have noticed is that whenever a stunning episode occurs, such as 9/11 or the Boston Marathon bombing, most everyone whether on the right or left goes along with the government’s explanation, because they can hook their agenda to the government’s account. Continue reading »
The ruling circles hit pay dirt with Barack Obama. He has rendered the already weak American left practically invisible.
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 by the Left? Is there a counterforce to the grinding machinery [of] neoliberal capitalism and its political managers?
We can and do at CounterPunch and in similar publications, such as Monthly Review and the New Left Review, publish analyses of capitalism and its inherent vulnerabilities, catalogue its predations and wars of military conquest and imperial exploitation. But where is our capacity to confront the daily horrors of drone strikes, kill lists, mass layoffs, pension raids and the looming nightmare of climate change? Continue reading »
By Robert Stevens,wsws.org
Michael Adebolajo, one of the killers of British soldier Lee Rigby, explaining in broad daylight how the act was in keeping with lex talionis, “an eye for an eye”, blowback for British complicity in global imperialism’s crimes.
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 killing was identified as Michael Adebolajo, a 28-year-old British citizen of Nigerian descent. The other has only been identified as a naturalized Nigerian. Both were shot by police and are in hospital, one in a critical condition. Continue reading »
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 of Moore, Oklahoma, killing 24 people, including seven children, who died huddled in hallways and bathrooms of their elementary school because officials lacked funds to build a storm shelter.
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. Other recent examples include the mass suicides of farmers in India, who because of drought are losing their crops and therefore their livelihoods (a foreshadowing of climate change’s impact on global agriculture); the deadly garment factory collapse in Bangladesh, about which fellow CounterPuncher Vijay Prashad wrote a fine piece; and the explosion of a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, due to lax regulatory agencies. Zeus’ lightning bolts seem quaint by comparison. Continue reading »