neoliberalism

Two officers sought me from within a crowd at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. They seemed to know who I was. They asked me to follow them, and I obliged. Being of Arab background, often renders one’s citizenship almost irrelevant.
In a back room, where other foreigners, mainly Muslims, were holed for ‘added security’, I was asked numerous questions about my politics, ideas, writing, children, friends and my late Palestinian parents.

On July 4, 2017 the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers’ union, issued a policy statement on charter schools.
The lengthy statement begins with the oft-repeated erroneous claim that charter schools “were initially promoted by educators who sought to innovate within the local public school system to better meet the needs of their students.” On the real origin of charter schools, see:

Rally in Athens in support of OXI (“NO”) in the run-up to the 2015 referendum

It’s always fascinating to observe ruling classes seemingly willfully destroying the conditions for their own future rule. History is black with the ashes of self-immolated wealthy classes, grim reminders of the autosarcophagous nature of infinite greed. In eighteenth-century France there was the parasitic aristocracy that shunted all responsibility for the kingdom’s finances onto the lower classes, thus setting the stage for the French Revolution.

In cities and towns from New Delhi to New York the socio-political policies that led to the Grenfell Tower disaster in west London are being repeated: redevelopment and gentrification, the influx of corporate money and the expelling of the poor, including families that have lived in an area for generations. To this, add austerity, the privatization of public services and the annihilation of social housing and a cocktail of interconnected causes takes shape.

These are some of the news headlines that appeared when searching for “charter schools” in GoogleNews in June 2017:

And I love all people, rich or poor. But in those particular positions, I just don’t want a poor person. Does that make sense? Does that make sense?

While supporters of our two-party system wring their hands over the sensationalist nonsense reported by the mainstream media, we thought it might be worth touching on the most dangerous lie of all-time: capitalism. It’s an all-encompassing delusion, including: the myth of continual technological progress, the mendacious assumptions of endless economic growth, the lie that constant bombardments of media and consumer goods make us happy, and the omissions of our involvement in the exploitation of the planet and the resources of distant, poorer nations, among other things.

Charred, lifeless and brutal, the hollowed out remains of Grenfell Tower in west London screams of the human agony inflicted when, on 14th June, the building became an inferno.