With the dreadful, odious Wasserman Schultz falling from power and fighting for her political life, some of the criminal elements she has protected are losing their battles against the public. Predatory loan sharks, one of the foundations of her rise to power (payday lenders have given her $68,100 in direct pay-for-play bribes since she was elected to Congress), are battling for survival without her now.
As the economic and humanitarian crisis has worsened in Puerto Rico in recent months, playwright and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda, has given voice in interviews and Op-Eds to the severity of the crisis among ordinary Puerto Ricans.
Illegally I stepped upon the Royal Family’s castle grass in central Copenhagen during the flag day ceremony (September 5, 2013) honoring Danish voluntary soldiers’ return from their war in Afghanistan. My sign read and my voice shouted: “Stop the War! War Criminal Mercenaries!”
What is the purpose of the European Union? This question has been on the minds of everyone following the UK vote in favor of Brexit. Yet in the mad scramble to make sense of the United Kingdom’s rejection of the EU, little lucid commentary has been made. European leaders, the fawning media, and UK citizens alike portrayed the vote as either a refusal of EU austerity, or unhappiness with immigrants and open borders.
“Do I live in a rogue state?” Mette Fugl’s column was headlined in Politiken, June 4, 2016.
Mette Fugl is a major name in Danish Establishment journalism. She worked for the largest broadcast media, Denmark’s Radio (DR), for nearly 40 years, mainly as foreign correspondent. Many view her as a prima donna in mainstream journalism. So it has special meaning that she implies that her traditionally harmless, cozy country has become unprincipled, a swindler state.
Fugl outlines recent political and legal developments that warrant the “rogue” characterization:
Now that Bernie Sanders is out of a presidential candidate job, some Danes want him to migrate to Denmark. The “Politiken” daily newspaper published a chronicle by Peter Ahrenfeldt Schroeder and Jakob Esmann, on April 28, 2016, heralding a new association, “Sanders for Prime Minister”.
Olof Palme had just won his fourth term as Prime Minister when we spoke in Stockholm in the fall of 1985. Like Denmark’s Anker Joergensen, this stalwart social democrat opposed the “cold, egoistic new liberalism”. Unregulated capitalism threatens the Swedish model of social welfare, he said at his September 15 election victory.
Brexit could trigger a $500 trillion derivatives meltdown, by forcing the EU to allow insolvent member governments and banks to write down debt. Italy is in financial crisis and is already petitioning for that concession. How to avoid collapse of the massive derivatives house of cards? Alternatives are considered.
As if by osmosis, Mexican-Spanish is creeping into my daily language. My city of temporary residence is San Miguel de Allende, proudly proclaimed by locals to be “Mexico’s Corazon”. This is Mexico’s heart for at least two reasons. It is as near the geographical center as you can possibly estimate in an odd-shaped country like this, and it was the beating heart of The Mexican War of Independence, finally ending the occupation by the Spanish Empire nearly two centuries ago.
A recent IMF study (June 2016) exposes flaws in neoliberal policy that have afflicted progressive issues for over 40 years. The title of the study itself “Neoliberalism: Oversold?” hints at the underlying thesis that something must be wrong. Why else pose the question?
“Instead of delivering growth, some neoliberal policies have increased inequality, in turn jeopardizing durable expansion.”1 Senator Bernie Sanders wholeheartedly agrees.
