En besked som “Du kører indtil du har kørt 2.500 kr. hjem, ellers lægger du bilnøglerne” er dagligdag i et job som taxachauffør. Der er elendige arbejdsforhold og flere grupper af chauffører kører på 0-timers kontrakter helt uden sikkerhed for et job eller løn i morgen APK holdt i går, onsdag, offentligt møde i Oktober [...] The response of socialist Cuba to the global SARS-CoV2 pandemic has been outstanding both domestically and for its international contribution. That a small island nation, subjected to hundreds of years of colonialism and imperialism and, since the Revolution of 1959, six decades of the criminal United States blockade, can play such an exemplary role is due to Cuba’s socialist system. [...]
We can be sure that the public grandiloquence of Barack Obama grated mightily on at least half of the country during his eight years in the Oval Office. Now, we Libtards find every Trump tweet excruciatingly inane – or horrifyingly inflammatory. As ever, it is the style, not the content, of American political leadership that More
On Monday, June 1, the U.S. Second Circuit in New York substantially reversed a district court’s ruling on appeal in the case of the police killing of Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr., in which the lower court had found mainly for the defendants. Amid the turmoil and horror of the George Floyd and Breanna Taylor murders, the More
In our documentary movie “The Doctrine of Discovery: Unmasking the Domination Code,” directed by Sheldon Wolfchild (Dakota Nation), we quote language from the papal document Dum diversas, issued by the Catholic Church in 1452. The dehumanizing language expressed in that papal document provides a means of understanding the heartless killing of an African-American named George More
Over the years, the mining industry has taken advantage of dictatorship, disasters, and a variety of distractions to expand operations in Latin America. In the time of Covid-19, with entire populations under lockdown and economies falling apart, mining companies have also hopped on the pandemic profiteering bandwagon. The potential implications are wide-reaching. In Latin America, More
I was naive until I wasn’t. At just 18, the day after I graduated from high school, I drove from Boston to Atlanta to work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Two weeks later, on June 21, 1964, we got word that three young civil rights workers — James Chaney, Mickey Schwerner, and Andrew More
With the U.S. deciding to walk out of the Open Skies agreement, the U.S. is signaling to the world that it intends to return to days of Pax Americana that existed post-World War II, when it was the sole possessor of nuclear weapons. It has already walked out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in More
The great game in Libya has begun surging with the United States shedding its strategic ambivalence and resorting to a proactive role. At the end of May, the Pentagon marked a dramatic escalation by accusing Moscow of bolstering “Kremlin-linked mercenaries” who are allegedly helping Khalifa Haftar, the eastern warlord in Libya. In an extraordinary statement More
Hvis der er nogen, som tror, at ”Madpakker til revolutionen” er en guide til politiske forbrugere eller en brugsanvisning til den klimavenlige madpakke – så tager de fejl.
Eskil Halbergs [...]
Across the US, cities, especially fancy malls and outlets of major retail chains, are being busted into and ransacked, as police squad cars get flipped over and torched, in scenes not seen in the US since the mid to late 1960s. Many of the perpetrators of these actions are black residents of these cities, but More
When you tell people they won’t be held accountable for their actions, it almost always ends badly. That’s what’s happened with our police and our social media, two institutional pillars of personal and political society in America today. Removing those dual immunities could dramatically change—for the better—the lives of millions of Americans. For police, the More
The Forest Service is proposing to remove the prohibition against logging trees larger than 21 inches that grow in national forests on the eastside of the Cascades in Oregon. The probation was put into place when ecological studies demonstrated the critical importance of large-diameter old-growth trees to overall forest ecosystem function. The Forest Service argues More
The country is filled with so much anger and so much action – but, as far as I can see, so little leadership! Would it not be wonderful if the present protests were supported by a statement and a call for emergency united action by a broad list of known progressives, including, if possible, such as More
These days, teaching graduating college seniors has me, as the Brits would say in the London Underground, “minding the gap.” In my case, however, it’s not the gap between the platform and the train I’m thinking of, but a couple of others: those between U.S. citizens and our government, as well as between different generations More
Beijing. Beijing is looking at the world today through a prism where the United States can be accounted for. The US is too weak, it believes, except in purely military terms, to counter China’s interests. The image has been seen the world over. A black man dies after a US policeman kneels on his neck. Civil More
A vast protest of unprecedented scope and intensity has spread over the United States since the police assassination of George Floyd on May 25. The American people are aware of this and it requires no elaboration. Some voices in the media and elsewhere ask insistently of the protesters: What do you want? What are your More
It would be too simple to regard the latest space venture, funded by Elon Musk, as entirely a matter of vast ego and deeply-pocked adventurism. But it would be close. The successful delivery of astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken of NASA as part of the joint mission with SpaceX to the International Space Station More
The economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis on Latin America could be potentially devastating, according to a new Special Report by the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). The report, based on the available data in mid-April, has estimated a -5.3 percent drop for the region’s GDP growth in 2020 — More
Fredag den 5. juni har det nystiftede “Initiativet Imod Politisk Vold” planlagt demonstrationen “Antifa er en terrororganisation”. Bag initiativet står Claes Theilgaard, der efter en stribe fejlslagne demonstrationer sidste år, nu vejrer morgenluft igen. Af Rebus Søndag tweetede den amerikanske præsident han ønsker “Antifa” stemplet som en terrororganisation. Det skete som en reaktion på urolighederne i […]
Indlægget Claes Theilgaard [...]
Hvilken ro kan man forvente af millioner af borgere, der betragtes som andenrangs, der udsættes for den mest grusomme og nådesløse udnyttelse af den mest uhyggelige kapital, underlagt jernhånden fra en stat, der taler og taler om demokrati og menneskerettigheder, men ikke tøver med at ty til den mest brutale vold? Af Spaniens Kommunistiske Parti [...] Four Aphorisms One can never think one’s way out of a crisis. From about the age of six, in our globalised, massified, work-ethic society, all humans are set on a trajectory bound toward a state bereft of the misery of their consciousness. I do not want the unity of the One – the same – More
Israel forbereder yderligere tyveri af palæstinensisk land med annektering af Jordandalen på Vestbredden samt illegale bosættelser på Vestbredden. Det sker i overensstemmelse med Trumps ‘Deal of the Century’, der er en plan for et zionistisk Storisrael hvor palæstinensere højest kan tilkendes bantustans enklaver som i Sydafrika under apartheid tiden. USA´s tidligere accept af Israels annektering [...] Like white-collar professionals across the nation, I have had to fumble through my fair share of mind-numbing Zoom meetings over the past two and a half months. But last week, a friend and colleague put together what proved to be a particularly enjoyable and constructive meeting for black faculty. The meeting began, as they often [...]
I 7 år har lærerne arbejdet uden en aftale for deres arbejdstid. Det har bl.a. betydet gratis merarbejde til en værdi på et sted mellem 2,2-4,4 mia. kr. årligt. Lærerne har brug for en central aftale der sikrer dem arbejdsforhold de kan holde til i et helt arbejdsliv og på den anden side af arbejdslivet. [...] On Sunday, May 24, the resource giant Rio Tinto detonated explosive charges in the Juukan Gorge in Western Australia to extend one of its mines, casually destroying two indigenous sites linked to more than 46,000 years of human habitation. As the Guardian reports, the sacred cave in Juukan Gorge in the Hammersley Range showed 46,000 [...]
The decision of Bernie Sanders to suspend his presidential campaign on April 8 dealt a painful blow to the hopes and dreams of leftists all around the world. Sanders was the first primary candidate in history, from either party, to win the most votes in each of the first three state contests. But as the [...] Sometimes among all the high-blown rhetoric, symposia, and communiqués, the curtain is pulled back to reveal the simple levers that operate the diplomatic world. In a remarkable interview published in the Mexican newsmagazine Proceso earlier this month, former US ambassador to Mexico Roberta Jacobson blithely revealed that during the presidency of Felipe Calderón (2006–12), the [...]
In April 2017 the corporate overlords at PepsiCo rolled out a nearly three-minute video clip projecting a vague idea of solidarity toward nothing in particular. Featuring a diverse cast of telegenic young people and starring none other than superstar Kendall Jenner, the segment foregrounds a gathering vaguely encoded as a protest march thanks to a [...]
President Donald Trump said on Monday that he’s considering using the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy the military against those protesting the brutal murder of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police on May 25. Trump said in the Rose Garden, “If a city or a state refuses to [...]
Unions and other workers’ organisations are standing in solidarity with protesters in Minneapolis, as the uprising against the murder of black American George Floyd spans a second week. Floyd’s story is familiar to most of us now: on 25 May, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin detained Floyd after the 46-year-old was accused of trying to [...] Last Monday, a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Protests that began early last week in Minneapolis spread to city after city, and by the weekend they had snowballed into nationwide mass civil unrest, which continues into this week. Jacobin’s Meagan Day spoke to Alex Vitale, [...]
The killing of George Floyd has catalysed a wave of protest across the United States, with police violence central to the message of the powerful #BlackLivesMatter movement. Aaron Bastani interviews author of ‘The End of Policing’, Alex Vitale, to ask just how bad law enforcement is in the United States, and what can be done [...] The murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police served as yet another wakeup call for a nation that has historically struggled with recognizing structural violence against people of color. The ensuing protests and riots represent a renewed effort to sensitize Americans to the reality of pervasive racism in their country. Recent events More
In the early morning hours of August 28th, 1955, two white men burst into the Mississippi home of Moses Wright where 14-year-old Emmett Till slept. Till had come down from Chicago to visit his cousins and was accused of having flirted with a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, while at a local country store with some More
As I write (the weekend of 30-31 May), the UK’s death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic has reached 38,489. Even the rightwing Financial Times regards this figure as an under-estimate, and says the actual toll is 60,300. The Murdoch-owned Sky News reports that the UK’s population-adjusted COVID19 death toll has now overtaken Italy’s: UK: 543 More
There is no need to wonder why George Floyd (age 46) was murdered in broad daylight in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2020. The script of his death is written deep in the ugly drama of U.S. history. More
The post The Murder of George Floyd is Normal for an Abnormal Society appeared first on
It was just a couple of weeks ago that President Trump was both inciting and praising anti-lockdown protesters around the country. These included armed white militia men who stormed state capitol buildings demanding an end to public health measures to curb the spread of the deadly Covid-19 virus. Many of them were filmed harassing nurses More
The Australian High Court has ruled that correspondence between the Queen and the Governor-General of Australia, her viceroy in the former British colony, is no longer “personal” and the property of Buckingham Palace. Why does this matter? Secret letters written in 1975 by the Queen and her man in Canberra, Sir John Kerr, can now More
I joined a decent-sized civil and human rights march in Iowa City two nights ago. It started with mostly young and white people milling around, quietly chalking and talking at City Hall. When the numbers got big enough and two young Black sparkplug activists showed up, we took to (and took over) the downtown streets and had a rally at [...]
Since protests of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis began on May 26, authorities at every level have blamed “outsiders” for provoking violence. On May 30, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter claimed that the large majority of protesters who had been arrested the previous night were from outside More
The Washington Post has come up with a doozy of a pairing for its online interview series. On Thursday, June 4th, the paper is featuring its senior diplomatic columnist David Ignatius and former deputy director of the CIA John McLaughlin in a talk titled “Fact or Fiction: Deepfakes & Disinformation.” This is an ironic pairing in view More
As the coronavirus death toll was about to reach 100,000, in a quick press announcement, President Trump declared, “Today I’m identifying houses of worship, churches, synagogues and mosques as essential places that provide essential services.” He moralized: “Some governors have deemed liquor stores and abortion clinics as essential, but have left out churches and other More
It is quite clear from the last week that the majority of the public are furious. Indeed MPs from across the country, including Conservative MPs, have said that the anger they are receiving from their constituents over the rule breaking of the Prime Minister’s chief advisor, Dominic Cummings, is overwhelming. This has also been reflected More
My thoughts about the historical moment: June 1, 2020 was one of the most significant days in the history of the United States. In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, with over 104,000 dead and counting; 40 million people unemployed; an economy that is collapsing, and an unprecedented nation-wide (multi-racial, ethnic and class) uprising against More
I used to teach Business Ethics. It was one of my favorite classes because I think it’s so important. Businesses impact every aspect of our lives. They not only provide goods and services, on which we crucially depend, and livelihoods for a huge portion of society. Whether they are run ethically and responsibly makes a More
Minneapolis could not have happened at a worse time for the US elites. While violence perpetrated against African Americans by White police officers has happened a number of times before, its occurrence right in the midst of a huge health emergency that has already claimed more than a 100,000 lives and a related massive economic More
Protests quickly broke out nationwide following the May 25 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, which was caught on video and quickly went viral. Yes, Chauvin has been arrested and charged with murder. Yes, the usual “voices of reason” are issuing a new round of calls for “police reform,” just as More
In a brutal and devastating way, the Covid-19 pandemic is revealing the many stark and deep inequalities at the heart of our corporate capitalist political economic system. In the United States, for instance, every passing day brings new evidence of how structural and institutional racism has left people of color disproportionately vulnerable both to the More
In the wake of the police murder of George Floyd, another unarmed Black man crying out “I can’t breathe!” as he was strangled in public, the ethical question of re-posting the videos and pictures of the murder have arisen in social media. This also occurred in April during the initial revelations surrounding the vigilante murder More
Mobs are unruly, headless things. The message is the action. The platform is often violence. But what is happening across the United States cannot simply be labelled as a looting-leads-to-shooting episode. It ranks as another chapter of enraged despair and untidy opportunism. It all began with a savage act in South Minneapolis, a killing grotesque More
Udtalelse fra Arbejderpartiet Kommunisterne, APK Den myrdede George Floyds sidste ord ”Jeg kan ikke trække vejret” blev gnisten der tændte en ny steppebrand af protester over hele USA. Ekstrem undertrykkelse og udbytning af arbejderklassens vokser hurtigt i USA. Budskabet til den herskende klasse er klart: ”Vi kan ikke trække vejret under jeres rådne system”. Økonomisk, [...] The corporate media and corporate politicians are paralyzed with indecision. Which fake myth do we adhere to? “Black people burning down their own neighborhoods” or “outside agitators”? What if it’s both, and more…? Media coverage of the past few days and nights of the multiracial uprising that is currently taking place in various forms in More
God wills that [the Civil War] continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword. – Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, March 4, 1865 (He was More
Last Friday, on the PBS News Hour’s weekly review with Mark Shields and David Brooks, Judy Woodruff posed a question about Joe Biden’s response to what was happening in Minneapolis. David Brooks, the New York Times’ conservative columnist, visibly shaken by the events of the week declared: “I want to see more outrage. I want More
Throughout Donald Trump’s presidency, puzzled observers have often wondered: How is it that the Democratic Party, which regularly accuses Trump of being a dangerous authoritarian plotting a dictatorial takeover, nevertheless works again and again to extend and enhance his spying powers? The past week of protests and riots sparked by the seemingly never-ending contagion of [...]
It’s become a trite but true saying the definition of insanity is doing the same acts over and over yet expecting different results. This is definitely the case with timber industry lobbyists stridently arguing for increased logging and firefighting on public lands. Many people oppose the corporate looting of public lands, and that is why More
The Birds of Brooklyn In other news, the Prospect Park Zoo’s Emus broke loose — and a cop, Attempting to catch one, got gutted Disemboweled. Oh, how he yowled. The birds, however, evaded capture A feather was found, in Crown Heights, On Classon. Another was found In the Brooklyn Museum But nobody’s seen either bird More
Der skal noget helt andet til! Corona-krisen afslørede med al tydelighed at vi ikke har et sundhedsvæsen der er parat til at tackle behovene. Men hvad gør regeringen med erfaringerne fra corona’en, nu hvor kommunernes budgetter fastlægges? Bliver sundhed og normeringer oprustet? Nej, de kører videre i samme gamle nedskærings-skure. Der blev udstedt løfter for [...] Among the many buildings torched this past week, one stands out as an odd target: the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, DC. While some have speculated that protesters set the lobby ablaze Sunday night because of the labor federation’s failure to pursue racial justice with sufficient gusto, the more likely explanation is that protesters saw it [...]
Af J. Palameda 31. maj. 2020 Fra avisen Red Phoenix, USA I går aftes (30.maj red.) så man USA’s store fortælling om USA’s ytringsfrihed, kompromispolitik og demokrati bryde sammen og gå op i ild, røg, peberspray, udgangsforbud og politimishandling. Det fremgik hævet over enhver tvivl, at det eneste der holder den amerikanske regering på plads [...] At a June 1 press conference, President Trump declared war against the Black-led uprisings taking place across the country by calling on the deployment of U.S. troops to American cities. “War”—a term typically reserved as metaphor or figure of speech—in this context increasingly appears to be a literal act taken by the President of the United States.
Trump said he would [...]
Ali Araci, der er medlem af musikgruppen Grup Yorum, sidder fængslet i Tyrkiet og skal for retten d. 9. juni. Alle opfordres til at poste en video eller et skilt med krav om løsladelse. To af gruppens medlemmer er tidligere på året døde i sultestrejke i fængslet i kampen for at frihed i Tyrkiet, mod [...] For nearly two decades, the United States government has been waging what it calls a “war on terrorism.” Over the last several days, the United States has been engulfed by a wave of terror. But the perpetrators are not al-Qaeda, ISIS, or any other foreign adversary — the terror comes from the domestic forces of [...]
Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary, originally scheduled for April 28, will instead take place today, June 2. This year, Pennsylvania never had the chance to become the pitched battleground that it was four years ago. In 2016, the insurgent Sanders campaign swept a number of counties in rural and de-industrialized parts of the state before ultimately losing [...]
The next few years are likely to see the biggest crisis of capitalism, and the biggest assault on our rights and living standards, in any of our lifetimes. The Bank of England has warned the UK economy could shrink by as much as 14% this year, and unemployment more than double by next spring. After [...] In 2014, a political revolution happened in New York City. Bill de Blasio stormed into City Hall on a promise of reforming the New York Police Department (NYPD) after twelve years of technocratic and intermittently reactionary rule from mayor Michael Bloomberg. A majority of the City Council was term-limited, replaced by a younger, more progressive [...]
The anti-Jewish violence that spread during the Russian Civil War was unprecedented in scale — even conservative estimates put the number of dead at over 50,000. Most of this violence was perpetrated by the nationalist armies which emerged amidst the breakdown of the old tsarist regime, who also painted the postrevolutionary Bolshevik government as “cosmopolitan” [...]
As part of their violent clampdown on protests against racism and police brutality, US police forces have been routinely firing rubber bullets at unarmed demonstrators, from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, Phoenix to Nashville. These so-called nonlethal or less lethal weapons have become a standard tool of US policing, along with tear gas and pepper spray, [...]
In two recent New Left Review articles Aaron Benanav has laid out what he sees as the road from necessity to freedom — a revolutionary journey once described by Marx and embraced by most of us who call ourselves socialists. In this, Benanav rejects the currently dominant “automation discourse” of techno- futurists such as Martin [...]
Whenever we have heard a whisper of concern in recent years over rising inequality, the right has leapt to remind us that inequality has been flat since the late 1980s and remains low by international standards. This story is indeed borne out by most standard measures of inequality – the income share of the top [...] 
The killing of George Floyd has catalysed a wave of protest across the United States, with police violence central to the message of the powerful #BlackLivesMatter movement. Aaron Bastani interviews author of ‘The End of Policing’, Alex Vitale, to ask just how bad law enforcement is in the United States, and what can be done [...] 
Alle er velkomne på APKs sommerlejr – torsdag d. 16. juli til søndag d. 19. juli APKs sommerlejr er en mulighed for at forstå virkeligheden og hverdagen bag overskrifterne, en mulighed for at være med til at udvikle kampene og sætte retningen for fremtiden. Kampen mod kapitalismen, kampen for socialisme, er ikke bare floskler der [...] It is quite possible that if and when we collectively emerge from the torments being inflicted by COVID-19, we will find ourselves in a political landscape where the reform of capitalism is very much upon the agenda. Even before the virus struck, there were minor hints of such a transition. Major business leaders who were [...]
Although the National Guard has often been used against civil rebellion, deploying federal military forces within the U.S. is a drastic and historically rare move. I’ve studied the history and geography of U.S. military interventions from the “Indian Wars” to the Middle East, and have documented only a handful of times that Army, Marines, or federalized National Guard forces have [...]
In October 2001 I was standing on a hilltop 40 miles north of Kabul watching US aircraft bomb the Taliban front line. The night sky was lit up with the flash of explosions and the sparkle of ineffectual anti-aircraft fire. It was fairly obvious who was going to come out the winner. A few weeks More
This week – like most weeks – James Baldwin has been on my mind. The man Malcolm X called “the poet” of the civil rights revolution died over three decades ago, but his ideas are as relevant as ever. As I sat today thinking about the recent lynching of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, the state-sponsored terrorism that killed Breonna Taylor [...]
Thermodynamically, we have greenhouse gas-bombed out of existence the pristine biosphere and its habitable climate that first cradled and nurtured the infancy of our species 2000 centuries ago, and then fed and protected the development and growth of that fragile chimera we call “civilization,” which our potentates have been proudly boasting about for at least 8,000 years. And we’re still [...]
In his infinite ignorance, Donald Trump has invited world leaders to the White House for a face-to-face meeting at the end of June. Unlike the other countries in the G7, the United States has yet to get the coronavirus pandemic under control. One of the hotspots that the White House itself has identified is none More
Inscribed on a wall across from the United Nations in New York City are ancient words of incalculable yearning: “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” – Isaiah 2:4 I’ve stood with activists in More
What follows is an updated essay on the “perennial nature of U.S. urban riots” which I wrote a little over five years ago. The original version appeared on my blog on 9 May 2015 following racial rioting in the city of Baltimore. The murder of George Floyd, an African American, by police in Minneapolis on 25 May 2020, More
Americans have at various times in our past battled horrific bouts with infectious disease. And Americans have lived through times of sheer economic desperation. But we’ve never — until this corona spring — experienced both at once. The stats out this week have made this grim landmark “official.” Over 100,000 Americans now dead from Covid-19. More
Since Donald Trump and his sycophantic henchman Bill Barr decided to label the movement known as Antifa a terrorist organization, people across the political spectrum are resurrecting their antipathy towards the phenomenon. This cacophony of charges and misconceptions has once again put this amorphous manifestation in the spotlight. The last time most people had even More
The tricks of Mother Nature There are two types of twins – identical (monozygotic) and fraternal (dizygotic). One fertilized egg (ovum) splits and develops two babies with exactly the same genetic information to form identical twins. They differ from fraternal twins, where two eggs (ova) are fertilized by two sperm and produce two genetically unique More
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is now taking comments on a massive vegetation project for the Great Basin and adjacent areas of the Colorado Plateau. The PEIS for Fuels Reduction and Rangeland Restoration in the Great Basin (the Fuels Reduction and Rangeland Restoration PEIS) analyzes several options for carrying out fuel reduction and rangeland More
Of all the evils released by Pandora from her jar, the evil that was left behind, HOPE, is obviously the worst of all. I can remember clearly going to a play by Fernando Arrabal in a little theatre off Melrose, both because I was interested in theatre of the absurd and because some actor friends More
Sawing off the branch you sit on can hardly be the best of policies. But that all depends on the nature of the branch. US President Donald Trump has huffed himself into another small historical moment, going on the offensive against social media companies using the very language his faux progressive opponents use against them. More
“Without trampling through all the historical details, we can designate the entire history of [Americans]—the glorious past so eulogized by our fathers—as the history of shame, for in that history there is more betrayal, apostasy, perfidious intrigue, ignominious defeat, well-deserved failure, base vengeance, merciless retaliation and brutality that no hypocrisy can mask…So let’s forget about More
Days of nationwide rioting finally has made absolutely clear in the starkest terms that Donald Trump is more a champion of violence than a peacemaker. There’s a madman in the White House, and he’s the president. At a time when more than 100,000 Americans have died of a virus-borne disease, 40 million others are out More
On May 28, US president Donald Trump signed an executive order on “Preventing Online Censorship.” From the title and the document respectively we can draw to two lessons. First: Never, ever, ever believe the title of a government document. The internal texts of congressional bills and resolutions, as well as executive branch orders, “findings,” intelligence More
The March 2, 2016 assassination of venerated Honduran social movement leader Berta Cáceres sent shockwaves around the world. In her new book Who Killed Berta Cáceres? Dams, Death Squads, and an Indigenous Defender’s Battle for the Planet, journalist Nina Lakhani describes the fraught process that led, two years later, to the conviction of seven men [...]
“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you—pull your beard, flick your face—to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you.” —John Lennon Brace yourselves. There is something being concocted in the dens of power, More
Anne har været arbejdsløs i 13 måneder, men nu har hun endelig igen fået arbejde. Vi sidder på den lille terrasse ved Annes kolonihavehus i vidunderligt solskinsvejr og ser ud over den hyggelige og velplejede have. Der er kaffe på kanden og alt ånder fred og idyl. Det står i skarp modsætning til de 13 [...] 
The killing of George Floyd last week has generated a wave of protest across the United States. Given his final moments were captured on video, and the particularly sadistic nature of the officer who arrested him, media attention was bound to follow. But in an era of the Trump presidency and policing methods which resemble [...] As it is with any season of protest, nothing brings out the murderous authoritarianism in the ruling class quite like the sight of disobedience by ordinary black people. It comes if you rally by the thousands to deem their authority illegitimate. If you call for an end to a hailstorm of brutality. Or bring chaos upon property in the shadow [...]
In more than 140 American cities this past weekend, protesters blocked traffic and marched, demanding an end to racist police violence and justice for George Floyd, who was killed by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin last week. The police greeted the protesters with brutality. Police shot rubber bullets and tear gas. They used extreme force [...]
One of the crown jewels of the Constitution is the Fourteenth Amendment — which promises that there will be “equal protection” for all people under our laws. And yet we all know this is a farce. In America, we routinely offer legal immunity to the rich and powerful, while giving the iron fist to everyone [...]
In the weeks preceding the furore over Dominic Cummings breach of lockdown rules, a row took place over the vagueness of the government’s new ‘stay alert’ guidance – a revision of the simpler ‘stay at home’ message. Nicola Sturgeon said “I don’t know what ‘stay alert’ means,” and Wales and Scotland refused to change their [...] 
Last week, the think tank Autonomy released new research into the economic impact of Covid-19. By breaking down the post-lockdown increase in unemployment claims by age, gender and region the report has, amongst other things, provided the clearest evidence yet that the young are disproportionately bearing the economic costs of the pandemic. Around 40% of [...] Amazon works with police departments across the country, offering them facial recognition services in the form of Ring, a video-doorbell app. The company has contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and seeks them with the US military. In recent months, Amazon has fired several black warehouse workers in what appears to be retaliation for [...]
American liberalism has a distinctly contradictory relationship with black protest. On the one hand, liberals imagine themselves the best friends (in contemporary parlance, “allies”) of the cause of black equality. On the other, since at least the 1930s, liberals have recoiled from black militancy, convinced it served little purpose but to strengthen the hand of [...]
A few years ago, I attended a panel discussion at a gathering of Canada’s conservative movement. A number of well-known Conservative MPs gave speeches, and during the Q&A that followed, the moderator asked each to offer some insight into how they thought conservatives might make their party and its program more appealing to young people. [...]
“I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.” This desperate refrain has once again become the dying words of yet another black man in the United States. Memories of the New York City Police Department officer administering a lethal headlock on Eric Garner have barely faded since his death in 2014. In the years [...] When the President of the United States says that he’ll be designating Antifa as a terrorist organization, a part of me thinks: well go on then, let’s see you try. Because this awful, foreign-sounding word “antifa” is only an abbreviation of “anti-fascist.” Organizations can be banned, but it isn’t so easy to do the same [...]
The people who became known as the looters were a fraction of those who stayed behind after the earlier protests dispersed. They are now deemed “thugs” and “thieves” by those who find it easy to write off their palpable frustration, which spread to Santa Monica and across Long Beach by Sunday evening. Writing it off, however, not only ignores America’s [...]
The utter failure of private capitalism to prepare for the coronavirus should have surprised no one. Private capitalism, as business school graduates repeat, focuses on profit. The “profit incentive,” they learn, makes private capitalism the superior, “most efficient” economic system available. That is its “bottom line” and “chief goal.” The problem is that to produce adequate numbers of testing components, [...]
The sheer brutality of George Floyd's death at the hands of a viciously violent cop symbolizes the unadulterated racism of a culture that looks away in the face of police violence against Black people but also a society in which a form of racialized domestic terrorism has become normalized. More
Other than the fact I was born in Minneapolis, I have little connection to the place. My adult life never encouraged much interaction with my relatives who live in the area, so except for the rare visit, I don’t know much about it. However, I do understand police brutality and the nature of a police state. The current rebellion in [...]
Shortly after protests erupted in Ferguson following the killing of Michael Brown in August, 2014, officials in Missouri began to refer to “outside agitators” as the main instigators of the civil unrest in the city. Today, in St. Paul and Minneapolis, the governor, Tim Walz, and the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, have once again referred to “outside agitators” as [...]
Last Friday, the leader of the entity that expects my pledge of allegiance threatened to shoot—specifically—looters. Before we go into what happened last night and Saturday morning and is on track to continue through the week, let me remember some historic milestones in looting. * In the seventies, African-American homeowners were dealing with a disturbing More
America’s cities are burning again. In Minneapolis, after an unarmed and unresisting George Floyd, 46 and black, was killed by a white cop after being arrested for the non-violent alleged crime of trying to pass a fake $20 bill, protests immediately erupted. Minneapolis cops, with a reputation for violence, responded to the initial protest with More
Prepared remarks by Jake Johnston to Congresswoman Frederica S. Wilson’s forum on COVID-19 and ICE’s deportation of detainees to Haiti First, I want to thank Congresswoman Wilson for convening this forum and for her leadership on this issue. The introduction of legislation mandating a halt to these deportations is a concrete and necessary step. I’d More
On March 9, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that New York State prisoners would be producing hand sanitizer, just as incarcerated people and outside activists alike began pressuring for the widespread release of prisoners due to COVID-19. The irony wasn’t subtle: prisoners risking their lives to produce hand sanitizer for people in the free world put [...]
“Even when I’m weak and I’m breaking I stand weeping at the train station ‘Cause I can see your faces I love people’s faces” —Kate Tempest, People’s Faces The question ‘what is capitalism’ is a sincere one. Critiques of our present situation very often say the problem is capitalism. This is usually done without defining More
One nurse told Clay. . . “I’ve given him the highest dosage I can. It’s enough to kill a horse. Most hospice patients die from morphine, but I can only OD him within an acceptable margin of error.” –From Christopher Bollen, A Beautiful Crime In this age of coronavirus, it has become abundantly clear that More
On May 6th, President Trump vetoed a war powers bill specifying that he must ask Congress for authorization to use military force against Iran. Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign of deadly sanctions and threats of war against Iran has seen no let-up, even as the U.S., Iran and the whole world desperately need to set aside More
70% or less of the sunlight shining onto the Earth reaches the surface and is absorbed by the biosphere. From this absorbed energy, in combination with the presence of water and organic material, all life springs. The oceans, which cover 70.2% of the Earth’s surface and comprise 99.4% of the biosphere’s mass, form the great More
Since Ronald Reagan fired air traffic controllers (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) en masse at the beginning of his presidency “(“Reagan fires 11,000 striking air traffic controllers, August 5, 1981,” Politico, August 5, 2017), unions, which had already seen a decline because of the expansion of the global economy, saw membership numbers begin a precipitous decline (“The PATCO Strike, More
Double Ditch Indian Village overlooks the Missouri River in North Dakota, about an hour’s drive north from where the Dakota Access Pipeline Water Protectors formed their prayer camps in 2016 on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. It’s a historic site of a village where, from 1490 to 1785, members of the Mandan Tribe lived in More
Economic inequality in the US has ballooned since the early 1980s. Wage and salary growth at the top of the earnings distribution has significantly outpaced that at the bottom and middle, resulting in decades of unabated upward redistribution of income. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated this divide. In addition to the immediate problems More
The COVID-19 pandemic response has shown that the very foundations of our economy are shaky, fragile, and — for some of us — downright dangerous. We’re once again watching working people, especially working people of color, bear the brunt of the fallout. Meanwhile, big companies traded on the stock market took two-thirds of the money More
An entire generation of Yemeni children has suffered the traumas of war, many of them orphaned, maimed, malnourished, or displaced. The United Nations reports a death toll of 100,000 people in that nation’s ongoing war, with an additional 131,000 people dying from hunger, disease, and a lack of medical care. A report from Save the Children, issued in November 2018, estimated More
Dear Mr. Vice President Joe Biden, You showed up in public on Memorial Day weekend for the first time in weeks and I breathed a sigh of relief. YoDear Mr. Vice President Joe Biden, You showed up in public on Memorial Day weekend for the first time in weeks and I breathed a sigh of More
Noam Chomsky was recently recorded in an interview saying that the Bernie Sanders campaign was “an extraordinary success” that “completely shifted the arena of debate and discussion” in the United States. While I agree with Chomsky when he says in the same Democracy Now interview that “If Trump is reelected, it’s an indescribable disaster. It More
All Night Jazz All The Time black and blue another black and white fireworks display day or night mighty whitey in the jazz at the first beboptist cathedral how can a poor martyr sleep listening to gargoyles we never let in cept to favor us with their play drop some coinage in the cap step More
Nr. 11 – 2020 NYHEDER HVOR DER KÆMPES Uge 21-22, 2020 14-dages blad på nettet – Få overblik med KPDigital. Bl.a. med vigtige artikler fra KPnet og KPnetBlogs Protest happening: Nej til privatisering af Fjernvarme Fyn! I ly af Corona-krisen er der betænkeligt stille omkring Odense Byråds privatiseringsplaner og mulige salg af Fjernvarme Fyn, [...] Efter blot få dages planlægning formåede Black Lives Matter Danmark at mobilisere omkring 2000 mennesker til en demonstration imod politivold og til minde om George Floyd, som blev dræbt af en hvid panser i USA den 25. maj. Floyd er blot den seneste i en række af mord begået af politiet. Af Sepi0l Flere steder […]
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On Thursday evening Boris Johnson confirmed that parents and teachers should prepare for the phased reopening of schools in England from 1 June. Despite resistance from teaching unions since this plan was first announced in early May, Johnson said bringing back Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 pupils from Monday was necessary as “closing schools [...] The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis has set off a wave of protests and uprisings across the country. The rash of police violence, coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic and the unemployment crisis, has clearly pushed many to the breaking point. Because the vast majority of people protesting are workers, it makes sense that their [...]
Har du, læser, overvejet at give en økonomisk opbakning til KPnetavisen? Så kan du stadig nå slutspurten i vores økonomiske indsamling – ethvert beløb modtages med glæde og vil gøre nytte. Og tak for alle de flotte bidrag, vi indtil nu har modtaget! Brug KPnet i det daglige – skriv, send læserindlæg og info fra [...] Over the last few days, we’ve seen a national uprising against racism and police brutality. In response, the first instinct of the defenders of the status quo was to unite behind an old talking point: the uprising was carried out by “outside agitators” from beyond the communities where the protests took place. It’s a trope [...]
Jason Furman, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during Barack Obama’s administration, has been making the case to the Biden campaign that Democrats should be fearful of the third quarter of 2020 where he predicts we will “see the best economic data we’ve seen in the history of this country.” What Furman is [...]
A rash of racist violence against African Americans has hit the United States. Across the land, African Americans and left organizations attempt to organize, or even fight back. Meanwhile, a pandemic ravages the country and the world. International crises further threaten to tear the nation apart. This was the state of things in the summer [...]
Udsendelsen 30. maj 2020 I denne uges podcast fra Oktober Radio taler vi i første del om EU-kommissionens forslag om at kunne optage fælles lån på hele Unionens vegne. Det har længe været en ambition for EU at kunne optage lån direkte, og på den måde booste budgettet, som en hver anden stat. Den økonomiske [...] In the eighteenth century, Edward Jenner, the inventor of the first vaccine, confronted a crisis similar to what we face today — a world undone by disease. It wasn’t coronavirus that he was studying, but smallpox, an illness with a mortality rate ranging between 20 and 60 percent in the Old World, and higher yet [...]
Vold mod sorte borgere i USA er ikke noget nyt, i hvad der uden kontrovers kan beskrives som et dybt racistisk og klasseopdelt samfund. Ligeså er episoder hvor vreden koger over, heller ikke usædvanlige. For kun få år siden hvor den ligeledes sorte Michael Brown Jr. blev kvalt af en hvid betjent, så verden til […]
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Since February 14, when Africa’s first case of COVID-19 was recorded in Egypt, the number of confirmed cases across the continent has risen to roughly 130,000 and caused 3,800 deaths. Though tragic, these numbers pale in comparison to the pandemic’s devastation in Western Europe and the United States. New York City alone has suffered well [...]
Based on all we know, China has been comparatively successful in containing the spread of COVID-19 domestically beyond Hubei Province. Many observers attribute this to its authoritarianism: one even goes as far as to proclaim that, due to China, “a spectre is haunting the West – the spectre of authoritarian capitalism.” Unconstrained by democratic principles [...]
Since Joe Biden started running for president, it’s been easy to dismiss his frequent calls to “restore the soul of the nation” as mostly cosmetic moral gesturing meant to get him off the hook for a lack of vision or bold policy commitments. And now it’s even easier. Asked point-blank recently what would happen to [...]
Kulturanbefaling af KE, Kulhuse. Gurabi-banden (Den lyserøde bande) Indisk dokumentar fra 2013 En gruppe af militante kvinder har, helt bogstavligt, taget kampen op mod kønsbestemt vold, kasteundertrykkelse og den udbredte korruption i landet. Med lederen Sampat Pal Devi i spidsen, drager de pink-klædte kvinder rundt i landet og forsøger via håndfast argumentation at få de [...] 