neoliberalism

Refusal is the highest honor. “I prefer not to.” Any sort of Bartleby. These times call for Herman Melville, Twain, Memory of Fire, Emma Goldman, Malcolm X, Virginia Bolten, Mujeres Libres, Wilde, Shaw!

Were civilization itself to be estimated by some of its results, it would seem perhaps better for what we call the barbarous part of the world to remain unchanged.
― The Writings of Herman Melville, vol. 1, eds. Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle (1968)

Yemen is being destroyed. A US-backed “Saudi Coalition” has been bombing and shelling Yemen for 16 months. The UN puts the civilian death toll at 3700, but (aside from the question of why combatants’ lives apparently only count if they are Western soldiers) this probably vastly under-represents the death toll by both direct violence and by the indirect effects of the war.

Donald Trump, in a speech given in Charlotte on Thursday, August 18, cast himself as the truth teller for forgotten Americans and a champion of those who feel that the best is behind them. He was clearly presenting himself as a guy who fundamentally calls it as he sees it…in contrast to Clinton’s politically correct doublespeak. “I am running to be the vote for every forgotten part of this country that has been waiting and hoping for a better future” he said.  “The insiders fighting for the insiders…I am fighting for you” was his pitch.

I can’t believe it, but then I can believe it, or I must believe it. These are compliant times, where people in the US workforce are kowtowed and then for years these multiple generations in the workforce have thrown in the towel and been so bullied by the Politically Crap Corrective Collective Group-Think that they are not even human — they can’t even rage against the injustice befalling them. I have both taught and worked alongside people who just believe deep down there’s no sense in fighting the powers that be, and that’s it, too bad, sure, but what can we do about it?

Every day, more than a few news items, journal articles, books, and blogs expose a range of scandals, crimes, fraud, and corruption associated with charter schools—schools that barely make up seven percent of the nation’s schools.

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.

It is time to assess the legacy that President Obama bequeaths us. Two timely books contribute to this; namely, The End of the Republic and the Delusion of Empire by James Petras, (Clarity, 2016) and Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Jeremy Hammond, (Worldview, 2016) with Hammond focusing on the “special relationship”, Petras, more broadly on US imperialism.

The annual gathering of the World Social Forum (WSF) – the left’s response to the elitist annual Davos World Economic Forum  – runs in Montreal from August 9 to 14 with several thousand people from dozens of countries attending.
More than 1,000 self-managed sessions have activists discussing and creating progressive alternatives to traditional political, economic and social policies that they will take back to their own countries.

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.