Tag Archives | Politics

On The Legacy Of Hugo Chavez

By on March 7, 2013 in News 8

This past fall, the Independent‘s Owen Jones wrote that Hugo Chavez’s towering feat was “proving it is possible to lead a popular, progressive government that breaks with neo-liberal dogma”:

Even opponents of Chavez told me that he is the first Venezuelan president to care about the poor. Since his landslide victory in 1998, extreme poverty has dropped from nearly a quarter to 8.6 per cent last year; unemployment has halved; and GDP per capita has more than doubled. Rather than ruining the economy – as his critics allege – oil exports have surged from $14.4bn to $60bn in 2011, providing revenue to spend on Chavez’s ambitious social programs, the so-called “missions”.

But when it comes to his relationship with his opposition, Chavez has arguably been pretty lenient. Many of them – including [recent presidential opponent] Capriles – were involved in a US-backed, Pinochet-style military coup in 2002, which failed only after Chavez’s supporters took to the streets.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 8

The Underworld of the Periphery: Countercultures of the Future

By on March 6, 2013 in News 7

From Modern Mythology: 

Those that just don’t fit, the underclass or outcast, those of the periphery, the counter-culture — these are popular topics around here, and for good reason,

“Peripheries are often border zones where peoples or things are thrown into unexpected contact, hybrid spaces yielding new possibilities for social and cultural organization.”

Think of the musical genres, poetic innovations, and linguistic creoles of the Caribbean; or think of the social “margins” or the “queer periphery,” where disenfranchisement and stigmatization give rise to relatively free experimentation in social practices and cultural life. Though centers may seem more advanced or more privileged than peripheries, decisive change and innovation often begin at the fringes. Yet the very tendency toward difference and transformation out on the margins often meets with a violent reimposition of norms from the center: Soviet tanks rolling into Prague, or the Janjaweed and Sudanese military sweeping through Darfur, or the police descending on Stonewall.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 7

The Manufacture of “Surveillance by Consent”

By on March 4, 2013 in News 0

“the CCTV proposals in the Protection of Freedoms Bill are really about manufacturing consent”
No CCTV article ‘The Freedom Committee, CCTV / ANPR and the Manufacture of Consent’ (2nd May 2011) [1]

One nation under CCTV
Image by T.J.Blackwell

It’s not often that you get to witness the birth of a new philosophy but that is what we are told is at the heart of the new Surveillance Camera Code of Practice published by the UK’s Home Office this month [2]. Drum roll please, here it is, the new philosophy – “Surveillance by Consent”.

Now as new philosophies go it’s not the best and it’s not really new, nor is it a philosophy. In fact it’s more of a slogan, or more precisely a propaganda slogan. And what it contains a ready-made judgement to save you the trouble of thinking about the issue at hand, in this case surveillance. Surveillance you are told is by consent.… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 0

The Death Of The Left Right Paradigm

By on March 2, 2013 in News 10

From the about section of Disinfo:

We disagree with any labels such as “progressive” or “conservative,” “left” or “right,” “right” or “wrong”

There are a number of thought viruses embedded within the Disinfo brand that are key to the awakenings triggered within its keenest readers, commentors and contributors. Thanks to these concepts our core community is able to disagree on everything and yet still instantly recognise and respect those who ‘get it’.

The inevitable expansion of the brand means it’s worth re-introducing and re-articulating some of these ideas for newcomers. One of the most important is the often misunderstood aspect of political identity[1]. It’s possible the notion of neither labeling yourself as left wing or right wing will be entirely new. If that’s the case I envy you as someone who listens to a great album for the first time, welcome to a world revealed by The Death Of The Left Right Paradigm.… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 10

Montana Republican Proposes Bill Giving Corporations The Right To Vote

By on March 1, 2013 in News 34

Well, since they are people after all, fair is fair. ThinkProgress reveals:

A bill introduced by Montana state Rep. Steve Lavin would give corporations the right to vote in municipal elections:

Provision for vote by corporate property owner. If a firm, partnership, company, or corporation owns real property within the municipality, the president, vice president, secretary, or other designee of the entity is eligible to vote in a municipal election.

The bill does contain some limits on these new corporate voting rights. Corporations would not be entitled to vote in “school elections,” and the bill only applies to municipal elections. So state and federal elections would remain beyond the reach of the new corporate voters. In fairness to Lavin’s fellow lawmakers, this bill was tabled shortly after it came before a legislative committee, so it is unlikely to become law.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 34

How Capitalism Creates the Welfare State

By on February 25, 2013 in News 45

Andrew Sullivan writes:

The two concepts are usually seen in complete opposition in our political discourse. The more capitalism and wealth, the familiar argument goes, the better able we are to do without a safety net for the poor, elderly, sick and young. And that’s true so far as it goes. What it doesn’t get at is that the forces that free market capitalism unleashes are precisely the forces that undermine traditional forms of community and family that once served as a traditional safety net, free from government control. In the West, it happened slowly – with the welfare state emerging in 19th century Germany and spreading elsewhere, as individuals uprooted themselves from their home towns and forged new careers, lives and families in the big cities, with all the broken homes, deserted villages, and bewildered families they left behind. But in South Korea, the shift has been so sudden and so incomplete that you see just how powerfully anti-family capitalism can be:

[The] nation’s runaway economic success … has worn away at the Confucian social contract that formed the bedrock of Korean culture for centuries.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 45

World’s 100 Richest Could End Global Poverty Four Times Over

By on February 23, 2013 in News 33

World’s 100 richest could end global poverty 4 times over

“The richest 1 percent has increased its income by 60 percent in the last 20 years with the financial crisis accelerating rather than slowing the process,” while the income of the top 0.01 percent has seen even greater growth, a new Oxfam report said.

What sense does wealth have in the long run, if we think of ourselves as a species in an enormous cosmos, rather than Americans and Saudi Arabians, or rich and poor?
Crazy talk, for sure. ”Us” and “them.” If we don’t recognize ourselves as brothers and sisters, we’re going to be done for. Nature is far more brutal and unstable on the long run than this little calm blip in history would make us think.

“There are not yet obvious signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, and this makes us wonder whether civilizations like ours rush inevitably into self-destruction.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 33

Hitler and Frankenstein Running for Office in India

By on February 18, 2013 in News 2

Subir Bhaumik writes at Al Jazeerra:

In a small, hilly state tucked away in India’s remote northeast, Hitler is out to try his luck at politics. So is Frankenstein.

Meghalaya, a predominantly Christian state, will vote for its 60-member state assembly on February 23. Three hundred and forty-five candidates representing several national and regional groupings are in the fray.

One of them is Adolf lu Hitler R Marak, contesting the Bajengdoba constituency in the Garo Hills area.

He has been active in Meghalaya politics for a while, even serving as a minister for a brief spell, before he lost the elections in 2003 to Zenith Sangma.

Five years later, Hitler defeated Zenith to return to the state assembly. And Hitler has had some strangely named company in the state assembly.

Candidates with names like Churchill, Roosevelt and Chamberlain won elections and became members of the Meghalaya state assembly in past years.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 2

The future of Africa looks bleak, here is why

By on February 15, 2013 in News 26

via chycho

Contrary to what some have been hoping for, the future of Africa looks to be bloodier than its past. The reasons for this are as vast and varied as the continent itself, such as resources (oil, water, land, minerals), economic interests of external powers (growth, trade, monetary policy), and ideological differences (structure of governments, corruption, tradition, ethnicity).

One of the main reasons that this scramble for Africa has intensified in the last few years and will most likely continue to escalate for the next few decades is because western nations are losing major battles on multiple other fronts. Just to name a few: the coalition of the willing has lost Iraq as well as Afghanistan; Syria is a stalemate; Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Algeria, Congo, and Mali are a disaster; Bahrain is in lockdown; Latin America is freeing itself from U.S.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 26

May I Recommend a Documentary: ‘The Wobblies’

By on February 12, 2013 in News 11

via chycho

If you want to hear some of the coolest stories that you’ve ever heard from some of the funniest elders that you’ve ever seen then “The Wobblies” is for you. There is so much goodness in this documentary that it’ll put a smile on your face.

The subject matter is the IWW, the Industrial Workers of the World, formed in 1905, it’s considered to be one of the most important labor movements in the history of the United States…

Continue Reading · 11