Politics Archives - Page 124 of 243

3Jun

By SHOAHNo Comments

Education, Politics

The Impossibility of Growth Demands a New Economic System

NOVANEWS Why collapse and salvation are hard to distinguish from each other. by George Monbiot Let us imagine that in 3030BC the total possessions of the people of Egypt filled one cubic metre. Let us propose that these possessions grew by 4.5% a year. How big would that stash have been by the Battle of Actium in 30BC? This is the calculation performed by the investment banker Jeremy Grantham(1) . The trajectory of compound growth shows that the scouring of the planet has only just begun. We simply can't go on this way. Go on, take a guess. Ten times the size of the pyramids? All the sand in the Sahara? The Atlantic ocean? The volume of the planet? A little more? It’s 2.5 billion billion solar systems(2). It does not take you long, pondering this outcome, to reach the paradoxical p...

2Jun

By SHOAHNo Comments

Politics, USA, World

An Interview with Henry Giroux on Democracy in Crisis

NOVANEWS The Specter of Authoritarianism and the Future of the Left by C.J. POLYCHRONIOU 1. It is widely believed that the advanced liberal societies are suffering a crisis of democracy, a view you share wholeheartedly, although the empirical research, with its positivists bias, tends to be more cautious. In what ways is there less democracy today in places like the United States than there was, say, 20 or 30 years ago? What we have seen in the United States and a number of other countries since the 1970s is the emergence of a savage form of free market fundamentalism, often called neoliberalism, in which there is not only a deep distrust of public values, public goods and public institutions but the embrace of a market ideology that accelerates the power of the financial elite and big b...

31May

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Politics, World

The Revival of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries

NOVANEWS By Samir Amin Global Research If the repeated discourse of the Western media is to be believed, the idea of the revival of Non-Alignment is unrealistic. According to that discourse, all that happened in the world between 1945 and 1990 can be explained merely by the ‘cold war’ and nothing else. The Soviet Union disappeared and the page of the Cold War has been turned, and any posture analogous to what we have known has no meaning. Let us examine the ineptitude of this discourse and its incredibly dismissive prejudice – nay, even racism. What is its basis? The real story of Bandung and Non-Alignment that arose from it showed that the peoples of Asia and Africa actually seized at the time an initiative by themselves and for themselves. The reader will find in what I have wri...

25May

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Education, Politics

Expose the anti-communist Communist Party of Britain: Lesson 1, Violent Revolution

NOVANEWS LALKARONLINE A swingeing critique of the revisionism of the Communist Party of Britain posted on the internet by a thinking comrade who had been endeavouring to work with that organisation (comradejoe.hubpages.com) The question of revolution is a basic one of Marxism. It is fundamental to the entire theory. I will not complicate the issue, because it is not a complex issue, but is very straightforward. Firstly, let us look at the classics. "On the other hand, the "Kautskyite" distortion of Marxism is far more subtle. "Theoretically", it is not denied that the state is an organ of class rule, or that class antagonisms are irreconcilable. But what is overlooked or glossed over is this: if the state is the product of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms, if it is a pow...

25May

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Education, Politics

A Class Analysis of British Society at the start of the 21st Century

NOVANEWS LALKARONLINE In the March-April issue of Lalkar we started this article with the section on the proletariat, and we now continue with the remaining sections on the petty-bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie respectively. Please note the erratum in the first column of the previous issue where the industrial proletariat in China was inadvertently referred to as the industrial bourgeoisie. PART 2-THE PETTY-BOURGEOISIE The petty bourgeoisie includes small shopkeepers, small farmers, taxi drivers, various tradesmen, window cleaners, jobbing gardeners and other such small businesses. It also includes the minority of professionals such as doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc., who are owners or joint owners of private practices. The table below [Table 3, source David Smith et al] gives some indica...

23May

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Politics, World

The role of the intellectual

NOVANEWS By Lawrence Davidson World Wars I and II created watershed moments in the lives of Western intellectuals, defined here as those who are guided by their intellect and critical thinking, and understand various aspects of the world mainly through ideas and theories which they express through writing, teaching and other forms of public address. Just how were they to respond to the call of patriotic duty that seduced the vast majority of citizens to support acts of mass slaughter? What constituted a proper response is often debated. How most of them did respond is a matter of historical record. Watershed moments During the world wars most intellectuals on all sides of the conflicts uncritically lent their talents to their government’s war efforts. Some did so as propagandists and oth...

22May

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Campaigns, Education, Politics

Cracking The “Conspiracy Theories’” Psycholinguistic Code: The Witch Hunt against Independent Research and Analysis

NOVANEWS By James F. Tracy Global Research A new crusade appears to be underway to target independent research and analysis available via alternative news media. This March saw the release of “cognitive infiltration” advocate Cass Sunstein’s new book, Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas. In April, the confirmed federal intelligence-gathering arm, Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), released a new report, “Agenda 21: The UN, Sustainability, and Right Wing Conspiracy Theory.” Most recently, Newsweek magazine carried a cover story, titled, “The Plots to Destroy America: Conspiracy Theories Are a Clear and Present Danger.” As its discourse suggests, this propaganda campaign is using the now familiar “conspiracy theory” label, as outlined in Central Intelligence Agency Document 1035...

19May

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Politics

A Descent Into Big Oil’s Inferno

NOVANEWS Ken Silverstein's "The Secret World of Oil" by LOUIS PROYECT Reading Ken Silverstein’s “The Secret World of Oil” is like picking up a rock in the middle of the night and shining a flashlight at the creepy, crawly things found beneath. The emphasis is on the word secret since many of the men he scrutinizes prefer it that way. Even when their activities remain within the law, their assault on ethics and decency would provoke a Sodom and Gomorrah punishment from a just god if one existed. Is moral turpitude, criminality and a bestial level of greed intrinsically connected to making a living as a middleman in the petroleum industry? That is the conclusion a reader would draw after reading the fast-paced and entirely entertaining tour led by Ken Silverstein, our Virgilian guide to a...

19May

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Politics

SPY MACHINE, LIE MACHINE: How We Let Ourselves Be Brainwashed Into The War On Terror

NOVANEWS What we know, or have the means to know, is already in excess of any security threat that can be reasonably estimated from random groups of militant Islamicists. Not only that, the concentration of such huge information and spy networks in relatively few hands and the lack of oversight pose a domestic and global danger far greater than the sporadic actions of disenfranchised groups in the Middle East How this came to be is the subject of this essay. Let me begin with a personal reflection. My first book, The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and The American Media (December, 2005) was sent out to reviewers (including The Nation, Democracy Now, The Washington Post, and others). The Post asked for it after I’d sent them an op-ed on renditions that they liked, but didn’t publish. They ...

10May

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Politics, World

A Reaction Against Globalization

NOVANEWS Reset of Imperialist Borders by GILBERT MERCIER People all over the world, including the Scots, Catalans, Tuaregs, Crimeans, Kurds, Pashtuns, Basques and Palestinians are fighting for the right to have their own states. They want to control their lands and destinies and reclaim their national identities. Nations are usually defined by the common grounds of culture, language, and ethnicity within certain natural boundaries such as rivers, seas and large mountains. Because certain groups of people want to expand their territories through wars and conquests, other ethnic groups have been oppressed or even exterminated. History is almost always written by the winners, and world maps are mostly drawn with the blood of the losers. Five hundred years ago, the conquest of the Americas ...