The post Is It Fascism Yet? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
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“Is fascism merely a dictatorial force in the service of capitalism? That may not be all it is, but that certainly is an important part of fascism‘s raison d’etre, the function Hitler himself kept referring to when he talked about saving the industrialists and bankers from Bolshevism.” – Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds. The question […]
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As Israel once again “mows the grass” in Gaza, leaders of Western countries have taken an unprecedented step. During previous atrocities like Operations Cast Lead (2008-09) and Protective Edge (2014), the Prime Minister of the UK, the President of France, the Chancellor of Germany, and so on, typically issued mundane statements: that both sides—the Israeli […]
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Image by Markus Spiske.
Not long ago I was asked to speak about “minority” rights and basic income at a symposium in Barcelona leading up to the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Among the human rights professionals, who were also speaking, the gagged elephant in the room was ginormous because it is, in fact, immeasurable: the crime of ecocide—the result, in particular, of capitalism, imperialism, and neoliberalism—which is also universal because it affects everyone and everything that is alive now and also future generations. Well, it may be universal but it also affects some much more than others. The left criticizes its causes but without sufficiently considering the consequences or alternatives.
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In the ensuing interview Jim Heddle references a “nuclear revival,” a phenomenon which has also recently been occurring in different mediums. Christopher Nolan’s all-star epic Oppenheimer dramatizes the creation of the atomic bomb and the fallout from it. Steve James’ A Compassionate Spy chronicles espionage conducted by the Manhattan Project’s youngest physicist at Los Alamos. Oliver Stone’s documentary Nuclear Now argues in favor of nuclear energy as a supposed solution to the climate emergency. Janice Haaken’s new film Atomic Bamboozle: The False Promise of a Nuclear Renaissance looks at the downside of this supposed nuclear energy revival. Irene Lusztig’s doc Richland, like Joshua Frank’s book Atomic Days, The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, both chronicle the U.S.’s largest plutonium production site, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state.
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Shaken America Syndrome. Image: JSC and AI Art Generator.
In 2002, Robert Roberson raced his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki, to a hospital emergency room in the east Texas town of Palestine. Nikki was limp, her skin blue. Roberson told the emergency room doctors and nurses that the two had been sleeping when he awoke and found Nikki on the floor, having fallen off the bed. The child was unresponsive. Nikki Curtis never regained consciousness and died a few days later.
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Image by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona.
Conditions for working people continue to get worse. The right to strike, or to join a union, is denied by increasing numbers of the world’s governments. The 2023 Global Rights Index report issued by the International Trade Union Confederation makes for grim reading, as has consistently been the case for the decade that the ITUC has issued its yearly reports.
Once again, there is no country on Earth that fully protects workers’ rights, the Global Rights Index report informs us. Nothing new here, as this was the case in the 2022 report, and all the reports before that. Neoliberalism does not have a human face.
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The Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, intended to consume at least 85 acres of forest adjacent to Atlanta’s Black working-class neighborhoods, is more accurately called Cop City. Slated to be one of the largest militarized police training centers in the nation, Cop City is owned by the nonprofit Atlanta Police Foundation, which, by paying $10 […]
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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Susie Day.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Image by Harold Mendoza.
A spate of articles on gerontocracy have emerged over the last few months, spawned by recent events like Trump’s particularly unhinged campaign trail comments, 81-year-old Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell freezing mid-speech multiple times, and the 90-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a key member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, being hospitalized and publicly exhibiting confusion and a “rapidly deteriorating” memory. Feinstein’s extended absence earlier this year delayed numerous judicial confirmations—she missed over fifty votes during her ten-week vacancy. A Pentagon-funded study released in April this year identified dementia among high-level US officials as a national security threat.
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Image: YouTube Screenshots\Wikimedia Commons
On 5 September, the US state of Georgia made public an indictment under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act against 61 activists involved in the Stop Cop City movement. The indictment alleges a “criminal conspiracy” among people who have distributed flyers, coordinated a bail fund, and participated in protests to prevent the construction of a militarized police training facility in the middle of a public forest in Atlanta. The charges explicitly name solidarity, protest, and mutual aid as activities that “intimidate” law enforcement and other citizens.
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James N. Wallace – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress
The 50th anniversary of the first 9/11 — the military coup that overthrew the democratically elected government headed by Socialist Party leader Salvador Allende — is this month. Chilean working people made enormous advances during the first year of the Allende government, formally a multiparty coalition known as Popular Unity, before Chilean capitalists, U.S. corporate interests firmly backed by the Nixon administration and right-wing elements in both countries were able to regroup and begin a heavy-handed sabotage campaign waged with increasing vehemence. In this excerpt from What Do We Need Bosses For?: Toward Economic Democracy, some of those first-year successes are recounted but the bourgeois forces are already beginning their efforts to obstruct and ultimately reverse all advancement.
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Image by Juice.
One very dangerous new norm that all humans should be worrying about is who most benefits and accumulates most power in this death-dealing system, or who can be held largely responsible for the plight the world’s in. Let’s start with the richest man, Elon Musk. Asked last year if he has more influence than the American government, he complacently replied, “In some ways”. Ronan Farrow describes how “Musk has sought out business opportunities in crucial areas where, after decades of privatization, the state has receded. The government is now reliant on him”. For example, he “seeded so much of the country with … [Tesla’s] proprietary charging stations”, that he pushed the Biden Administration into pushing his electric cars and now, “His stations are eligible for billions of dollars in subsidies”.
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On the first day of August, Ta’Kiya Young turned 21. She’d been struggling since her mother’s premature death, but she’d recently found a new place to live and was eager to explore a career as a social worker. To celebrate her birthday, she took her two sons, 3-year-old Ja’Kenli and 6-year-old Ja’Kobie, to the Ohio […]
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Image by Joe Piette.
Richard Hooker has worked at the United Parcel Service (UPS) for over twenty years and after long, sweltering shifts spent at the warehouse, sweat burning his eyes, his limbs feeling like they’ve been filled with concrete, he would just sit in his car, unable to drive home.
“You’re physically drained, you’re mentally drained from moving packages all day, non-stop,” he explained, “And you need to take a nap cause you’re too scared you’ll fall asleep when driving home.”
Hooker, now a union leader for Teamsters Local 623 which represents over 5,000 workers at both facilities in Philadelphia, is part of a broader Teamsters campaign to address many of the lingering issues impacting workers at the company, from conditions inside the warehouses and trucks to pay for part-time employees and drivers.
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In Palestine – a country whose existence goes unrecognized by most of the West – Palestinians are arrested, humiliated, beaten, killed by Israeli military or settlers every day, if not every hour. What began in 1948 as the Nakba has taken on force, ramped up control, occupied every aspect of Palestinian life. And, given Israel’s […]
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Image courtesy of the US EPA.
Standing on a ridge overlooking the expansive Berkeley Pit, a pungent smell emanates from the murky waters below, leaving a slight burn in my nostrils. This is Butte, nestled in a valley that straddles the Continental Divide, high up in the Rocky Mountains of western Montana. A little over a hundred years ago, Butte was a boomtown, ruled by copper and raging with prosperity. Industrious miners from Ireland to China ventured to this remote place to strike it rich or at least make a decent living. In its heyday, Butte was a bastion of socialist politics. International Workers of the World (IWW) was active in the early 1900s and, along with other labor factions, fought the monopolies of Butte’s three Copper Kings; Marcus Daly, William A. Clark, and F. Augustus Heinze. It was a tough, violent era, and miners were known to let off steam in local gambling dens, brothels, and bars. A historical plaque in town sums Butte’s past well: “She was a bold, unashamed, rootin’, tootin’, hell roarin’ camp in days gone by, and she still drinks her liquor straight.”
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A Scene from Jesse Short Bull & Laura Tomaselli’s LAKOTA NATION VS. UNITED STATES. Courtesy of IFC Films. An IFC Films release.
Whenever I think about the “Manifest Destiny” genocide U.S. rulers wrought against this continent’s original inhabitants – arguably the greatest land theft in human history – the sheer injustice of it all makes me feel like tearing my hair out, gnashing my teeth, slashing my flesh, rending my garments and howling at the moon. At a time when racist reactionaries suppress dissident histories, the new documentary Lakota Nation Vs. United States, co-directed by Oglala Lakota Jesse Short Bull and Laura Tomaselli, bravely and poetically presents a version of America’s story told from the Indigenous point of view. Indeed, Lakota’s parts I and II – “Extermination” and “Assimilation” – could be titled: “How the West was Lost.”
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Stills from ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ | Photo Credit: Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures
In 1945, against the dry, sun-drenched backdrop of the American Southwest, two events took place that would alter the course of history. One was Trinity, the world’s first nuclear detonation, and the moment that would prompt Robert Oppenheimer to cite from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” The other was the founding of Mattel.
The coincidence of the Oppenheimer–Barbie release dates incited a frenzy amongst the movie-going public precisely because they seem so at odds. And yet, beneath their grit and camp, the two share more than meets the camera. They are, at heart, both stories of America at war—a war defined by the success of Oppenheimer and his colleagues, and which would in turn define the best-selling doll. The world into which Barbie was born, and of which she would become both symbol and soldier, did not exist before that first successful detonation in the early hours of July 16.
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Image by Scott Goodwil.
Market fundamentalists would have us believe that if only we left the provisioning of all human needs to the tender mercies of unregulated markets, a cornucopia of fabulous wealth would trickle down to all. A powerful fire hose of propaganda ceaselessly proclaims this, amply funded by those whose interest lie in accumulating unlimited wealth without regard to social or environmental harm.
The post The World’s Food System Brings us Inflation, Hunger and Waste appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
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The six white Mississippi cops called themselves “the Goon Squad.” Give them points for accuracy, if not originality. They prided themselves in going the extra mile. For not playing by the rules. For not feeling any level of force was excessive. For not ratting each other out. They had a good run. But it appears […]
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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jeffrey St. Clair.
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Given the continual resurgence of the populist Far-Right under the all encompassing banner of the AFD (Alternative für Deutschland), the Alternative for Germany party, a shocking coalition agreement has just been reached between the Christian Democrat Party (formerly led by Chancellor Angela Merkel) on a local and regional political basis. It has become imperative for […]
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In the two years following the enactment of NAFTA, the price of beef dropped by as much as 50 percent. If hamburger eaters exulted at the news, they should have also been aware that with this fall in beef prices has come a crisis for the nation’s small ranchers as grave as that which put […]
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A still from Compassionate Spy, courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
Two-time Oscar nominee and three-time Emmy Award winner Steve James’ compelling, confessional A Compassionate Spy is the latest in a current cinematic trend of nuke-related documentary and feature films that includes Oliver Stone’s Nuclear Now, Irene Lusztig’s Richland and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Perhaps this vogue is emerging from the collective psyche now because of historic dates regarding the Manhattan Project and the fact that June 19 was the 70th anniversary of the electrocution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on June 19, 1953. Or because the war in Ukraine plus tensions between the People’s Republic of China and the USA are heightening.
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In his young adult novel, The Oil’s Secret Tale, Walid Daqqah describes a wall – a vast wall that darkens the sky, divides the Earth, separates animals and plants and people from each other – a wall that stops children from visiting their parents in prison. Daqqah’s story is about a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, born […]
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The ultra rightwing parental rights group, Moms for Liberty, held their second annual convention the last week of June in Philadelphia. The Moms for Liberty received nationwide attention before and during their gathering as an example of the new normal: welcoming the Moms for Liberty’s right-wing racism, homophobia and book banning into the Republican mainstream. […]
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As I was born in Hiroshima, I visited the Peace Park there many times. It was a short walk from my grandfather’s house. I didn’t visit Nagasaki until I was an adult, when in 1999, my friend Gordon Greene and I were in Kyushu as visiting medical education faculty. After our visit to Nagasaki’s Peace […]
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Image by omid roshan.
In November 2020, leftwing president Evo Morales returned to Bolivia after being expelled by right-wing opponents with the aid of the United States. The Organization of American States (OAS), which has served as an appendage of U.S. imperial aspirations in South America for decades, conducted an audit of the vote tallies and deemed Bolivia’s election of Morales in 2019 illegitimate, forcing him to flee the country. The OAS’s assessment of the election aligned with the U.S. government’s unofficial position that Morales threatened its regional geopolitical interests. There were problems, however. The statistical analysis used in OAS’s 2019 report was “flawed,” according to The New York Times. Even so, U.S. criticisms emboldened Morales’s opposition and led to “a chain of events that changed the South American nation’s history.”
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July 16, 2023
Image by Anthony Choren.
The police racist killing of children is a regular occurance for decades in France, often triggering burgeoning spontaneous working class insurgencies. The moments after French police killed 17yr old ‘Nahel M’ in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre wasn’t any different. 45,000 riot police, including the infamously brutal BRI special forces, contributed to the quelling of another uprising in France conducted mostly by young working classes of African heritage in the ‘banlieues’ or contained council estates often many miles out of the urban centres. Over two nights of the uprising at least 2,000 insurgents have been arrested by French authorities, the average age of arrestees is 17yrs old, pointing to another generation that will see considerable sections of their neighbours experiencing the French criminal justice system and prisons that will only boost their sense of alienation and confrontation with the French colonial state. Black working class communities across colonial centres in the ‘West’ are seeing multiple generations of the same family in prisons at the same time.The average age of the arestees also indicates how young our children are brutalised by the police and schools. The youth who led the uprising are of African heritage, both northern (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) and also other regions like from West Africa and other former colonies of the French state. The uprising saw the insurrectionists use fire bombs, grenades and firearms against the state, indicating a further intensification by means of tactics as compared to previous similar uprisings. There is much to explore as to the significance of the uprising by means of class-struggle against capitalist-colonialism and for socialism in the colonial centre in a context of global victories of white supremacist racism and the far-right.
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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sukant Chandan.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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As if the Southeast Asian haze, otherwise known as a “recurrent transboundary air pollution issue”, wasn’t enough, there are many other reminders of how harmful the palm oil industry is to this planet. It’s well known that massiveland-clearing operations of the palm oil agribusiness burn down rainforests and cause the sky-blackening haze but the damage […]
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Image by Khara Woods.
Fintan O’Toole’s latest book, We Don’t Know Ourselves, starts in 1958 when Ireland “was just about beginning to change,” and moves, one year at a time, into the transformation of Ireland from a developing country to a Celtic Tiger that wowed the European Union with its dramatic growth in GDP.
The one-year-per-chapter pace thankfully breaks down. Chapter 7 covers 1962-1999. Then back to one-year-per-chapter until 1975-1983, then 1971-1983, then two-years-per-chapter. The trouble with this form of organisation is it doesn’t hold up. The Troubles never end. The conflict between Protestant Northern Ireland and Catholic Ireland just keeps surfacing, a story that gets told over and over again, bodies of innocents blown to bits and men starving themselves to gain symbolic concessions.
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Co-directors Jan Haaken and Samantha Praus’ documentary Necessity chronicles the frontline struggles by Indigenous and other climate activists, including Stop Line 3 Resistance, Extinction Rebellion, the Sunrise Movement, Fire Drill Fridays, etc., against pipelines and fracking. In almost two hours, this sprawling two-part nonfiction film also zooms in on an evolving, new, novel legal defense that courtroom gladiators are developing to defend eco-warriors in the judicial arena in order to defeat the fossil fuel industry in the courts, and from which this production derives its title.
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