An account of a journey from Croatia to Kosovo, by way of Bosnia-Hercegovina and Serbia, and with a detour into Montenegro. This is part IV of a series. To cover the siege lines that once encircled Sarajevo took most of the afternoon. My driver had been a teenager during the war years, and he well More
Because everything is so Trumpian these days, there’s less air or space for the only other mass entertainment that promotes tribalism and toxic masculinity while keeping violence in vogue: football. In the age of The Donald, it’s hard to remember that football was once the nation’s greatest television reality show. Because real people actually got More
I learned many powerful lessons from my father. He was a dedicated pediatrician and he spent his last years doing medical evaluations for suspected child abuse. He was responsible for forensic analysis and, in some cases, evidence collection. Over lengthy conversations I learned of a number of his frustrations in this area, often due to More
Af Jonas Ørting, Arbejderpartiet kommunisterne, APK Indlægget blev holdt på APK’s November Konference 2019. En konference partiet afholder hvert år omkring årsdagen for Oktoberrevolutionen i Rusland (efter den Julianske kalender d. 7. november). På november konferencerne tages aktuelle spørgsmål angående gennemførelse af en socialistisk revolution i Danmark op til debat. Hvorfor er en socialistisk revolution [...] I would have never thought that I would be using the pages of Counterpunch to defend an article that appeared (of all places) in The New York Times. Yet, the contents of M.G. Piety’s “A Lesson From the Danes on Immigration” required some sort of reply. Piety describes the troubles she saw with Brooke Harrington’s NYT piece “I Almost More
Indsamlingen til KPnet og Enhed og Kamp sprang over målet. Vi siger stort TAK for alle bidrag til den økonomiske indsamling. Resultatet blev 71.640 kr. Vi har fået rigtig mange – både små, mindre og større bidrag – der tilsammen betyder, at vi nåede målet på 70.000 kr. til APK’s netavis og det teoretiske magasin [...] Eksilårene kaster sig over H.C. Andersens Snedronningen, Den lille pige med svovlstikkerne og Grantræet, i et afsnit med eventyr og julestemning.
Indlægget Eksilårene #14 – H.C. Andersen blev først udgivet på
In the first week of December, Sydneysiders inhaled the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes a day of bushfire smoke. Air quality plummeted to levels lower than the most polluted parts of China, and the concentration of cancer-causing PM2.5 particles soared to ten times the normal level. On December 11, anger boiled over as an [...]
It’s been fun to see how the Center for American Progress (CAP) navigates this year’s presidential election. For insider political reasons, they can’t support Biden or Sanders. But for a long time, it was unclear who the alternative candidate they could support would be. When Kamala Harris was rising, CAP’s staff was doing overtime boosting [...]
UDSENDELSEN D. 14. december 2019 I denne uges udsendelse tager vi et kig tilbage på et langt arbejdsliv, der sluttede i denne uge da Bent gik på pension efter mere end 40 år på Danfoss i Viby. Danfoss er i dag en kæmpe multinational koncern med mange og meget forskelligartede produkter, men Viby fabrikken har [...] I grew up near Lockerbie, a small town in Scotland famous internationally for the terror attack of 1988, the year I was born. I had an opportunity to go to university, thanks in large part to the absence of tuition fees (although I still left with around £25,000 of debt in the form of a [...]
I løbet af den sidste uge har jeg flere gange taget min cykel og trodset vind, vejr og aftalepakkede dage, for at tage ned på Øen på Nørrebro. Det gamle lagerrum, som i dag blandt andet bliver brugt af kunstnere til udstillinger, performances og koncerter eller til talks og workshops har i de sidste elleve […]
Indlægget De (u)fortalte [...]
Jabal Al Uhod er navnet på den store bygning, som ofte i medierne og daglig tale er blevet kaldt den tyrkiske restaurant, og som de irakiske demonstranter har besat og kaldt Jabal Al Uhod. Navnet referer tilbage til en vigtig kamp under Profeten Muhammads tid, hvor Muhammad blev kvæstet fordi bjerget (jabal) blev forladt, fordi […]
Indlægget Demonstranterne i [...]
Last week, the Washington Post published the “Afghanistan Papers,” a massive tranche of documents that confirmed the disaster of two decades of US military occupation in Afghanistan. Some $950 billion have been spent, and yet civilian casualties are on the rise. This past year, at least 3,804 Afghan civilians have been killed by the US [...]
Søren Riishøj analyserer det nye russiske statsbudget, der tager temperaturen på landets økonomiske helbred.
Indlægget Den russiske økonomi skranter blev først udgivet på
Throughout polling day, campaigners were beset by torrential rain. Pollsters were still nervous about calling the election results wrong, after several embarrassing failures in the last decade. The unpredictability meant that despite expectations of a Conservative victory, when the exit poll predicted an eighty-seat majority, it still came as a shock to most people. Recriminations [...]
NAFTA 4 EVER! The Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO might as well put this on a T-shirt after their jubilant unveiling of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) this week. House Ways and Means Committee chair Richard E. Neal hailed the trade deal as “a triumph for workers everywhere.” AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka tweeted: “Working people have [...]
On election night last month, Seattle’s socialist city council member Kshama Sawant trailed her opponent. The results seemed conclusive: Sawant had lost. The Stranger ran a piece under the headline, “Maybe Amazon Bought the Election — or Maybe Voters Were Sick of Sawant.” Days later, Sawant had miraculously rebounded. She officially declared victory standing before [...]
Af Boykot Israel Store Kongensgade Vinhandel, Store Kongensgade 89, 1264 København K, reklamerer med vin fra Golan Højderne i butiksvinduet og på facebook. Butikken sælger vin fra det israelske vinfirma Golan Heights Winery beliggende på de israelsk besatte Golan Højder i Syrien. Vinproduktionen er folkeretsstridig da en besættelsesmagt (Israel) ifølge Genevekonventionen ikke må drive erhverv […]
Indlægget Store Kongensgade [...]
"En alternativ historiefortælling på bedste vis". Esben Bøgh Sørensen anmelder René Karpantschofs nye bog, De stridbare danskere.
Indlægget Det kunne været gået anderledes blev først udgivet på
The term “emotional labor” is a confusing one. It’s more than three decades old, but in the past few years, an upsurge in its usage has led to a mutation in its meaning. These days, the term is often used to refer to women managing other people’s emotions, especially those of a boyfriend or husband, [...]
Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a billionaire who’s read science fiction your whole life. Your mind, deluded by your immense wealth, thinks that the only way to “deploy this much financial resource” is to invest in space instead of paying taxes so we can collectively solve the problems on Earth. When a fictional television [...]
While campaigning in nearly fifty seats up and down the country over the course of this campaign, one thing has become very obvious to me: an almost unbridgeable gulf has emerged between the different parts of the United Kingdom. Today, we are the most regionally unequal of all the advanced economies, bar Ireland and Slovakia. London [...]
Solidaritet har interviewet en række personer, hvis møde med det danske dagpenge- og kontanthjælpssystem har været et mareridt.
Indlægget “Jeg slap for at tigge.” Jobcentrets Ofre III blev først udgivet på
MADRID—With climate-related disasters happening “at the rate of one a week,” according to the United Nations, more than 150 civil society organizations around the world are using the UN climate negotiations this week to stand with the Global South. They are pushing for demands set out in an open letter to negotiators in November, including a new global climate fund to [...]
A video of my three-year-old “singing” a song he wrote about Bernie went a bit viral recently. His message got a lot of internet love: “Bernie Sanders wants us to make the world better . . . right away!!” He got it. The world needs fixing, it’s urgent, and Bernie wants to help us do it. A [...]
Udtalelse fra Arbejderpartiet Kommunisterne, APK Den britiske arbejderklasse og befolkning fastholdt nej’et til EU, trods formidabelt pres og stemte for at komme ud af monopolernes EU stat. De gjorde valget til en folkeafstemning nr. 2, som de vandt. Valget er en stor sejr for den britiske arbejderklasse – at tale magten sådan imod, at tale [...] MADRID—At a press conference at the UN climate negotiations in Spain this week, 25-year-old Angela Valenzuela, a climate activist from Chile, publicly denounced her country’s government for using this annual meeting of world leaders to “clean” its reputation and deflect attention from street protests that have left at least 18 people dead and fueled allegations of excessive force, torture [...]
This is our defeat, and we have to own it. As if we have a choice. And we know what this means. The body count from austerity and the hostile environment will multiply. An already fairly awful society is going to get brutally worse. And it is difficult to see how this won’t feed into [...] Over the past few months, many of my British comrades, now in mourning, have wasted untold hours of their lives being infuriated by the anti-Corbyn Labourites — those congenitally outraged nostalgics for the status quo — just as we Yanks have been doing with their US equivalents over here. My advice to my UK friends [...]
Efter flere års forhandlinger er EU-parlamentet, EU-landenes regeringer og EU-kommissionen nået til enighed om den såkaldte vejpakke i EU. Simon[...]
Indlægget Vejpakke styrker kampen mod løndumping på landevejene blev først udgivet på
Everyone agrees that labor law is broken. Under the auspices of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) — which was passed in 1935 at the height of the New Deal and laid the foundation for our current regime of collective bargaining — union membership rates have declined to existentially low levels. Though the weaknesses in [...]
Selv Enhedslisten har haft travlt med at udråbe finansloven til sejr. Esben Maaløe deler ikke den begejstring over "at vinde et håndgemæng i en verdenskrig"
Indlægget Selvdødens triumf blev først udgivet på
Karen Helveg tegner et portræt af Michael Roberts, der som marxistisk økonom og blogger har opnået kultstatus, og giver et indgående kendskab til finansverdenen
Indlægget Michael Roberts og den faldende profitrate blev først udgivet på
In a recent op-ed for the New York Times, David Brooks offers a characteristic dismissal of socialist politics entitled “I Was Once a Socialist. Then I Saw How It Worked.” As its title suggests, the piece (an adapted version of remarks Brooks gave at the Munk Debates in Toronto last week) is framed as a [...]
The Department of Justice’s Inspector General report of the FBI’s Russian investigation has fully exposed one more dangerous aspect of the steady abuses of national-security surveillance against U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 of the national security abuses of the National Security Agency exposed the massive surveillance of U.S. citizens in the expanded campaign against terrorism. [...]
Russiagate, Ukrainegate and impeachment aren’t conspicuously economic issues. But they are, to a large extent, class issues. They are inside-the-beltway dramas about foreign policy arcana that are important to people who see their lots tied in one way or another to the established order. This includes, by degree, those of us who would like to make room for outside-the-beltway concerns [...]
For four years, Jeremy Corbyn was smeared in a relentless and savage campaign of vilification and outrageous slander by the British press, much of it orchestrated by liberal outlets like The Guardian and the New York Times, using a kind of rabid Zionism as truncheon. And so, the dreadful result was predictable: the worst showing of Labour since 1935. But [...]
At one of his permanent fascist-style campaign rallies on December 10, 2019, the day the U.S. House of Representatives rolled out Articles of Impeachment, United States President Donald J. Trump told an adoring Pennsylvania crowd that U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren “has a fresh mouth.” The meaning of this insult was understood by his audience. It More
While the Pentagon’s preeminent mission is to increase lethality of the forces, DARPA notes that its cyborg technology is also used to “augment the loss of functionality from injury or disease,” such as implants controlling the use of prosthetics. Nevertheless, it sees a great need for social research to dispel resistance to cyborgs or robots (synthetic autonomous agents) on ethical [...]
Major questions have been raised about presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s work for global consulting firm McKinsey, with even the New York Times editorial board demanding that he release the information. After Buttigieg issued a sparse and vague overview on December 7, questions remain unanswered about his work for McKinsey from 2007 to 2010. My recent More
“A federal appeals court on Wednesday evening stayed a lower-court ruling that former Trump White House counsel Donald McGahn must comply with a House subpoena after the administration appealed, arguing the battle poses great consequences for the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches”. – Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2019 There are three obvious reasons More
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), released on December 9, signals that the US will continue to render assistance to the coalition led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates which has killed 100,000 Yemenis, including 12,000 civilians. The bill gives the Pentagon $738 billion. The best reaction came from The More
‘Tis the season! Season of giving. I’ve been receiving numerous emails daily this past month from organizations that sponsored one or more of the hundred or so petitions I signed this past year. “Will you donate to save the wolves?” “Help us to save the arctic!” “Donate now to ensure our water is clean!” “Donate More
Nancy Pelosi should thank Donald Trump for helping her get over a bad case of IAS, Impeachment Aversion Syndrome. We all should. Had she not come down with that malady years ago, after the 2006 midterm election made her Speaker of the House the first time, she could now be looking forward, when the time More
Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral slogan was “Make America Great Again” and it was supposed to foreshadow his promise — if elected – to recapture the promise that the post-WW-II recovery inspired. Well, after being elected and three years in office, Trump is ending the promise that long was the “American Dream.” And this end is coming in More
Mongolian dignitaries made an Eastertime pilgrimage to see the Trumps at Mar-a-Lago. And whoosh…. By September, Donald Trump Jr. had a Mongolian permit to kill one of the world’s few remaining argali sheep. ProPublica uncovered the trip. Reporters Jake Pearson and Anand Tumurtogoo described Mongolia’s trophy hunt permit system as “an insider’s game” and reported that Trump Jr. More
In 1966, during the early years of the America’s war against Vietnam, Congress passed and President Johnson signed into law a Freedom of Information Act. It wasn’t all that great at the time, though. Indeed, it took the courageous act of two men, Daniel Ellsberg and his co-conspirator, Anthony Russo, to steal and then copy More
It has recently been announced that “a confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.” Fascinating, of course, but the underlying message More
I occupied Nancy Pelosi’s office and went on hunger strike for 13 days. Still she wouldn’t meet us. Instead she flew off to attend the UN Climate Conference in Spain. That’s not enough. I went 13 days without food. I lost 22.8 pounds, 10.6% of my weight. I had to stand up slowly because otherwise More
I have often wondered if Pakistan would have been a better country and South Asia a more peaceful region if the crisis that led to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 had been handled differently. As we know that did not happen when Pakistani forces went to war to prevent the secession of East Pakistan. More
Here in the United States, the socio-political climate has never been pristine. Normally, it amounts to maintaining an environment wherein the rich stay rich and all others stay hopeful—except for the segregated and downtrodden. Therefore, it is notable that between the 1960s and early 2000s, the social environment did improve: it got more equalitarian—the social More
“To be a red in the summer of 1919 was worse than being a Hun in the summer of 1917,” reckoned Dos Passos, in Nineteen Nineteen, his novel of the war years. The nation was war weary as the year began, still reeling from the deadly influenza– the “Spanish Flu.” It yearned, and deserved, politicians More
In just over 6,500 words, Time Magazine makes the case for Greta Thunberg being 2019’s Person of the Year. For much of the left, this confirms that she is a corporate tool. Founded in 1923 by Henry Luce, Time was the flagship of the Luce empire. Print newsmagazines have gone into a steep decline with More
It was the head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre who finally admitted before an Australian Parliament committee that she had unilaterally directed and pressured CyberCon to drop myself and an academic research professor (an Australian citizen) from the University of Melbourne as speakers. I viewed the extraordinary pressure exerted by the Australian Cyber Security Centre More
Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world, boasting revenues of more than $230 billion last year. But last month the company sued the US Department of Defense over a paltry potential $10 billion spread over ten years. Amazon lost out to Microsoft in bidding for the Pentagon’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (yes, More
Donald Trump is famed for his head-snapping reversals. One day he’s taking troops out of the Middle East; the next he’s sending more in. One day he’s on the verge of an agreement with China on trade; the next he’s tweeting about holding off until after the election. On one thing, however, Trump and his More
The scientific revolution of the seventeenth century (c. 1500-1700) in Europe—beginning with Copernicus (1493-1543) and ending with Isaac Newton (1642-1727)—precipitated a momentous transformative learning moment for humankind. What a revolution that was! Sixteenth century intellectuals in the grip of Aristotle still imagined that nature consisted of four qualities (earth, water, fire and air) and the More
When I lived in the Bronx in 1973 and early 1974, I used to go to a bar up Fordham Road. I was attending Fordham University at the time and it was the custodian who cleaned our dorm hallways and bathrooms who first took me there. He was IRA through and through. So was the More
Here’s the good news: The debate is over. 75% of US citizens believe climate change is human-caused; more than half say we have to do something and fast. Here’s even better news: A new report shows that more than 200 cities and counties, and 12 states have committed to or already achieved 100 percent clean electricity. This means that More
Political rottenness may be bottomless. Consider the following description of a political aspirant for the White House, this person being from the Democratic Party. His “liabilities as a political candidate are so glaringly obvious that it’s easy to dismiss his presidential bid as a vanity project.” The author goes on to describe what can only More
Christmas can be a clarifying time. It clarified that yes, the fervent Mariah Carey, not The Beatles is the best Western music act of all time. On a less serious note, we learn a great deal about the woke postmodern subject this time of year. The postmodern subject may see Karl Marx as just another More
As President Trump’s impeachment unspools, news coverage is buzzing about conspiracy theories and geopolitical rivalries. But at the root of Trump’s effort to extort Ukraine was a simple motive: Trump hoped to influence our elections to preserve his power and that of his associates. That has a lot in common with something closer to home: More
It was a scandal of the highest caliber. On November 23, the Senate of the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa was practically bullied to reverse an earlier decision that called for the academic boycott of Israel. While the story may seem relevant in South Africa’s political and academic contexts, in reality, it More
In an increasingly globalized world, relations between nations can lead to a more general climate of antagonism or to one of cooperation that extends beyond the countries in conflict. Relations between Cuba and the United States are such a case, since the continuous US embargo on Cuba has soured the relations between the US and More
John Bolton might be the one to save us. This, it seems, is where the strange spirit of the Trump impeachment has led. Although we receive regular assurances — from members of Congress and respected journalists — that we are witnessing a sober and sacred process, there’s something troubling, on some level, about the parade More
A lawsuit is taking on the University of California system’s use of the SAT and ACT standardized tests in admissions. The suit claims the tests are “deeply biased and provide no meaningful information about a student’s ability to succeed.” As a sociologist who’s looked at the research, I agree the tests are biased. For instance, More
From three different vectors, the oligarchy is on the march to capture the Democratic presidential nomination. Pete Buttigieg has made big gains. A timeworn ally of corporate power, Joe Biden, is on a campaign for his last hurrah. And Michael Bloomberg is swooping down from plutocratic heights. Those three men are a team of rivals More
Comparing Howard Zinn and Yogi Berra in the same sentence probably leaves most on the left with their mouths wide open. But not so with baby boomers still on the left, and others who cling to sanity near the ninth circle of hell. Historian and Professor Howard Zinn and the great Yankees catcher Yogi Berra More
In what is currently a four-way race for the Democratic nomination – featuring Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg – the recent war of words between Warren and Buttigieg has done little for them. But it has highlighted contrasts with Bernie Sanders. As Sen. Warren and “Mayor Pete” heatedly question each other’s More
The war in Afghanistan, America’s longest, has cost about 2,300 US lives, over 20,000 wounded, and about $1 trillion. Now, thanks to the persistence of the Washington Post, we have an abundance of interviews which, like the Pentagon Papers, reveal the enormous wastefulness, ignorance, and deceit that make Afghanistan, like Vietnam, a chapter in the More
I find surprising the detailed manner in which history repeats itself. The result of the landslide described here seems to have been replicated in the USA of our times in ways that all of us witness each day. The Germany of say 1939 seems like the blueprint for the US role in the world of More
The lurch to the right by the entire US political establishment over the last twenty years has been both significant and alarming. I was recently reminded of how bad things have gotten by the 20th anniversary of the Battle of Seattle, an event that sparked a brief period of radical resistance in the US, and More
After a much contested election process, the largest union of journalists in North America has chosen a 32-year old reporter at the Los Angeles Times to be its new leader, in the U.S. and Canada. Jon Schleuss helped win union recognition and a historic first contract at The Times (a non-union paper for 136 years) before ousting NewsGuild President More
For many years, Giovanna De La Rosa enjoyed working at Toys ‘R’ Us — especially during the holiday shopping season. “I loved bringing joy to families and to children,” she shared at a recent congressional hearing. “I watched so many of the local kids grow up over the years while shopping in our store.” De More
You may have heard about the Trump administration’s latest attack on very poor Americans: a punitive new restriction that will cut SNAP benefits for 688,000 people. SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, is our country’s most popular and effective nutrition assistance program. Growing up, my family got food stamps — and oh, I hated it. More
Roger Hallam is of course right in his short book, Common Sense for the 21st Century: Only Nonviolent Rebellion Can Now Stop Climate Breakdown and Social Collapse. While some portion of humanity heaps scorn on the victims of the fossil fuel propaganda who deny climate science, only a much smaller portion points out the equally delusional More
The ongoing impeachment of one Donald J. Trump is bullshit. There, I said it and I’ll say it again just to make sure you heard me right. This impeachment is fucking bullshit, and I’m tired of pretending otherwise. I don’t care if this makes me a bad leftist or a bad libertarian or whatever, its More
“If it works, why do you need to do it 183 times?” – Senator Dianne Feinstein In 1953, they deposed Iran’s democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadiq, with the help of the British. In the 60s, they were there at the Gulf of Tonkin, false flagging the North Vietnamese; and there pushing exiles onto the More
Seasons Beatings! ‘Tis the Krampusnacht time again, when Krampus, the hornèd, horny Xmas devil of rich medieval Alpine folklore and cheap Hollywood horror movies, roams the earth, wreaking hornèd, horny havoc upon the “naughty.” Bad Santa Krampus is the dark side of jolly old Saint Nick. He also looks a lot like Pan, the ancient More
Julen er over os. Nogle har trippet i forventning siden sidste gang gaderne blev oplyst af hjerter og stjerner, hvorimod andre har frygtet højtidens hæsblæsende traditionsræs. Heldigvis giver Nørrebro Teaters opsætning af Charles Dickens klassiske fortælling fra 1843 noget til begge parter. Julen er tilstede, men mest som en kontekst til at fortælle om hvordan […]
Indlægget Et fantastisk [...]
Ved torsdagens valg i Storbritannien vandt Boris Johnsons Konservative absolut flertal i kampen om de 650 pladser i parlamentet. Spørgsmålet om Brexit blev det altoverskyggende valgtema, og der var ingen tvivl om ønsket om at komme ud af EU og få Brexit gennemført er en dagsorden der har kæmpe opbakning og har sat andre politiske spørgsmål [...] In shadowed yards he lingers where his children used to play – Vachel Lindsay The perpetually red, glaring figure of Coach Bobby Knight was a kind of weed in the Clinton era that combined a Popeye Doyle ‘70s with contemporary Wall Street Nasty. Strutting the college basketball court, hurling chairs, and ‘getting results’ while ratcheting More
At the beginning of August I drove from the Oregon Coast to the middle of New York State mostly on U. S. Highways and state and county roads. I spent the second night of the trip in Idaho Falls at a cheap motel with a view of the Mormon Temple just across the roaring Snake More
Dollar Store There’s a dollar store on Broadway Near the Marcy stop They sell mylar balloons — All sorts of cartoon characters Emblazon these: The sentient cheese The mice of the moon The helium tank Its nozzle like a rocket Stands at attention, in the corner, Waiting to release At times the guy in charge More
Tonight’s results around the country, but especially in the heartlands, are really bad for our movement. After a spirited campaign by thousands of activists over many weeks, this will be a tough pill to swallow. But the most important ramifications fall to those outside the party. Another five years of the Conservatives will mean more [...]
If the exit polls are right, the British general election result is simply terrible. In England, Labour has lost as many as eighty seats directly to the Tories. North of the border, both have shed seats to the Scottish Nationalists, set to win almost every constituency. But it won’t be anywhere near enough to stop [...]
This article first appeared on Electronic Intifada.
Just days after U.S. President Donald Trump spewed vicious anti-Semitic rhetoric, Israel lobby groups are celebrating his executive order taking aim at supporters of Palestinian rights.
Israel and its most extreme defenders are not bothered by the president’s anti-Jewish rhetoric as long as it comes wrapped in unquestioning support for Israel.
Trump’s order, [...]
In 2016 Bernie Sanders became the first Jewish American to win a major party presidential primary election (New Hampshire). If he wins the Democratic presidential nomination next year, he will be the first Jew in US history to do so. If he wins the general election — well, you get the idea. Sanders prefers to [...]
Few people would trust Donald Trump to protect Jews from a rise in antisemitism. In the United States alone, there were more than a hundred cases of physical attacks, arson, vandalism, and threats in 2018, including last October’s assault in Pittsburgh that left eleven Jews dead at the Tree of Life synagogue. Tuesday’s shooting at a [...]
»Tove-feberen« har ramt de britiske øer, og anmelderne falder i svime over afdøde Tove Ditlevsens forfatterskab.
Indlægget Tove Ditlevsen topper i Storbritannien blev først udgivet på
“I think I’d make a good candidate.” It had been a little over a week since Bernie Sanders decided to run for mayor of Burlington. Now, with these seven words, he was trying to ward off a rival challenger. The man he was trying to persuade was Greg Guma, fellow left-wing activist and journalist whose [...]
A few weeks ago, I made my way through Soldiers to Citizens, a 2005 book by the political scientist Suzanne Mettler. Ostensibly a history of the GI Bill, the work is part of a burgeoning scholarly field studying “policy feedback” — a somnolent name for a groundbreaking set of ideas. The school’s key insight is [...]
Kom til offentligt møde arrangeret af Enhedslistens politisk-økonomiske udvalg, og hør om politiske initiativer, der bidrager til klimamålet om 70 pct. reduktion af drivhusgasserne i 2030.
Indlægget 11/1: En demokratisk, rød-grøn omstillingspolitik blev først udgivet på
In a monumental turn of events, the 2017 general election saw Canterbury elect Labour’s Rosie Duffield as its MP with a majority of 187, ending almost two centuries of Conservative and Conservative-allied rule. The campaign to hold the seat in 2019 has been built on the appeal of Duffield’s pro-Remain stance to a constituency that [...] This British general election campaign has been something of a trudge. If in 2017 the final days were marked by optimism for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, this time around, Brexit and a wider political fatigue have rather dulled the mood. Yet there are still issues that could weigh in the Left’s favor — most notably controversies [...]
APK lancerer en fond, der skal sikre at der også i fremtiden vil være penge til at gennemføre de politisk vigtige 1. maj arrangementer i København, Odense og Århus – “Rød 1. maj” og “1. maj på Den Røde Plads”. Vores 1. maj er vigtig som talerør for den revolutionære bevægelse, for kommunisme og kampen [...] It is hardly surprising to see Middle Eastern countries at the bottom of the World Press Freedom Index, as the worst violators of freedom of the press. But equally alarming is the complete polarization of public opinion as a result of self-serving media and, bankrolled by rich Arab countries, whose only goal is to serve More
Pharma is one of the public’s most detested industries. But despite its low approval ratings and a plethora of government lawsuits, Pharma continues to thrive. Here are some of the tricks up its sleeve that enable its continued profiteering. 1. Astroturf Patients Pharma promotes fake patient advocacy groups to lobby for its interests. These front More
When anti-Zionists discuss the Middle East, the topic of Israel’s existence rarely arises. It’s almost exclusively a pro-Israel talking point. We’re focused on national liberation, on surviving repression, on strategies of resistance, on recovering subjugated histories, on the complex (and sometimes touchy) relationships among an Indigenous population disaggregated by decades of aggression. That a colonial state—or any state, really—possesses no [...]
Last month, The Washington Post reported on the results of a poll it conducted with the Kaiser Family Foundation earlier this year. The poll had remarkable finding: nearly half — 46 percent — of American adults believe the U.S. needs to “drastically reduce” fossil fuel use in the near future to address the climate crisis, while another 41 More
The hammer of impeachment is finally falling on Donald Trump’s occupancy of the White House. For many, it’s taken far too long to get to the point where an obviously corrupt individual with a very long record of shady dealings, illicit financial transactions and bankruptcies now faces a process in which he has no control. More
“In ten years or so, we’ll leak the truth,” the Dead Kennedys sang. “But by then it’s only so much paper.” But it might just score you a Pulitzer Prize. Award bait and bragging rights are no doubt the principal goals of The Washington Post’s self-congratulatory data dump, “The Afghanistan Papers.” As the headline implies, More
A nonprofit employer is not necessarily a better boss than a profit-making one. That sad truth is reinforced by the experience of some 2,200 nurses at Albany Medical Center, who have been fighting for a contract since April 2018, when they voted for union representation. Even that union recognition struggle proved exceptionally difficult. The management More
The Mohawk Valley Formula, the propaganda model of “scientific strikebreaking” originated in 1937. Since that time, forms of non-violent worker control have been updated into much more sophisticated measures of strike-breaking. At this stage in American history, strike breaking is a major profession and by destroying unions and atomizing people, the business-run class war continues More
On Friday, December 1, two protest marches met in central London in what felt like a magical moment. A few thousand striking university lecturers had just reached the British Parliament at Westminster after marching from the Bloomsbury neighbourhood, when close to a thousand Extinction Rebellion teenagers came pouring down a parallel street and the two protests united. The More
How to live a more sustainable life? This question generates a lot of debate that is focused on what individuals can do in order to address problems like climate change. For example, people are encouraged to shop locally, to buy organic food, to install home insulation, or to cycle more often. But how effective is individual More
Back in 2003, in a top-secret international phone call, President George W. Bush urged French President Jacques Chirac to join America in invading Iraq on grounds that Christian nations must thwart the Satanic forces of Gog and Magog. Chirac was baffled by such crackpottery. A few French newspapers wrote derisive sneers about the born-again U.S. More
I’ve always wanted to find out where the guns came from. Who were the ‘willing accomplices’ to the wars I witnessed? In 1996, I traced to its Boeing makers in the deep south of the US a missile fired by the Israelis at a Lebanese ambulance. It killed two women and four children. I even More
Peace, Good Will and Joy on Earth at Christmas! But what does that mean for Palestine and Palestinians? Every year, on the 11th day of the 11th hour of the 11th month, the human spirit pauses to pay tribute to world peace, good will and joy towards all and commemorate that dark moment in modern More
The recent commentary by Mark Nelson in the San Francisco Chronicle, who works for the Ag industry, suggesting that grazing by goats and other livestock can help reduce wildfire losses in California deserves qualification. As a landscape response to large fires, grazing is no solution. In many ecosystems, particularly in the parts of the state More
Spørgsmålet om pension er brandvarmt. Er det kun de velhavende der skal have ret til et otium, og skal pensionsalderen være tårnhøj for alle andre, og folkepensionen lav? Det mener regeringen og EU. Diskussionen om regeringens elendige udspil til differentieret pension, hvor ganske få udvalgte får mulighed for at gå på pension 3 år før [...] 
This election campaign has seen an astonishing display of the power of the resurgent British left. Thousands of activists have gone out on the doorstep, mobilised by Momentum and joined by parliamentarians, outriders and even some celebrities in an immensely impressive ground game. If the campaign was just a few weeks longer, we would end [...] 
In a world of competing narratives serving competing interests, there’s always a temptation to gravitate to the political centre ground, the would-be midpoint between two apparent extremes, with its aura of moderation, reasonableness and realism. After all, isn’t the truth supposed to be ‘somewhere in the middle’, a composite of competing claims? The simple answer [...] Det svenske Nazi-blackmetal band, Marduk, spiller i Pumpehuset i aften. Marduk har forbindelse til organiserede nazister og deres fans dukker op med nazisymboler og anti-antifa budskaber på deres tøj. Blackmetal-genren har været plaget af flere bands og fangrupperinger med nazitendenser. Pumpehuset ved godt at dette er tilfældet, og burde have været opmærksom på, at bandet […]
Indlægget Naziband i [...]
A Conservative party candidate is facing questions over whether she sought to profit from Britain’s hunger crisis with an app that charged food banks hundreds of pounds to promote lists of items they need from donors. Miriam Cates, who is standing in the marginal Penistone and Stocksbridge constituency in South Yorkshire, launched the Foodbank app [...] In the wake of the November 10 coup in Bolivia that removed President Evo Morales and installed a right-wing government led by Jeanine Áñez, the first thing many mainstream commentators debated was whether what had just happened was actually a coup. According to the putsch-supporting New York Times editorial board, Morales’s impressive economic record had [...]
Elizabeth Warren and the magical thinking of the political class.
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Last Saturday, hundreds of people seeking asylum hit the streets to fight for their rights in rallies in Sydney and Melbourne. They are part of a movement that emerged in the middle of this year and has taken almost everyone by surprise. In Australia, the campaign against the internationally renowned cruelty of our border regime [...]
Last time I wrote about Mayor Pete Buttigieg here, I analyzed him as a phenomenon (as well as a phenom), a symptom of an upper-middle-class preoccupation with achievement and narrowly defined “smarts.” I went easy on his brief “career” and on his politics. Now that he’s a more of a significant player, it’s time to [...]
For the past several years, Scotland has been stuck in a constitutional quagmire over the question of independence. 2014’s referendum pitted an optimistic ‘yes’ campaign in favour of independence against a ‘no’ campaign dubbed “Project Fear”. It is little wonder that young people by-and-large got behind the “yes” campaign, galvanised by new opportunities to reshape [...] It was 1979 and Bernie Sanders was, as he so often would be for the next forty years, in the middle of a fight. But the target of his ire was, uncharacteristically, not a major corporation or one of its political allies — it was the state’s public broadcaster. The thirty-eight-year-old Sanders had seemed to [...]
“Are you here for the quilting group or the election?” asks an elderly lady on the gate of a church in a West Sussex seaside town. So begins my bizarre night at the only political event being held in the constituency of Bognor Regis and Littlehampton. I’m here to see each of the six parliamentary [...] Boris Johnson is a pathological liar. This has been known for decades. He was elected Conservative Party leader and appointed prime minister in spite of this fact. He has been sacked numerous times for lying: by the Conservative Party for lying about an adulterous affair to then–party leader Michael Howard, and by the Times for [...]
Store, muskuløse Jonas ligner en hård fyr ved første øjekast. Men han lider i invaliderende grad af angst og er[...]
Indlægget Bag masken: Mød Jonas Schmidt blev først udgivet på
For godt 100 år siden udspillede Påskekrisen sig. Læs om et stykke danmarkshistorie, hvor gadeparlamentet blev mundlamt på 5 dage.
Indlægget Da radikalismen forsvandt fra gaden blev først udgivet på
Når EU-kommissionen i dag præsenterer sin ‘European Green Deal’, vil ambitionerne desværre være for lave til, at EU kan komme[...]
Indlægget EU-Parlamentets venstrefløj fremlægger ambitiøs og socialt retfærdig plan for grøn omstilling blev først udgivet på
De første forhandlinger på det private arbejdsmarked om overenskomsten 2020 er så småt ved at komme i gang, og der er masser at kæmpe for. Direktørerne har haft gyldne år, mens arbejdspresset og uligheden er vokset. Kravene fra arbejdspladserne er mere i løn, både til ufaglærte og faglærte brancher og der skal gøres op med [...] A tweet by someone calling themselves “gnocchi mane” recently went viral, going like this: Me when Bernie is president: Sorry can’t come into work too busy gaming. My boss: That’s okay you may take a gaming sabbatical as the law allows. Me: Fuck you. My boss: I’m sorry sir. Those of us who’ve had our [...]
Noam Chomsky recently celebrated his 91st birthday. As an homage to Noam, I spent the day with one of his lesser-known books—The Backroom Boys (1973). The book is made up of two spectacular essays, the first a close reading of the Pentagon Papers. To read this book alongside the trove of documents released by the U.S. government as part of [...]
Der bliver lovet en masse i den grønne omstilling. De konkrete stemmer i EU-parlamentet lever dog ikke op til de flotte ord, mener MEP Nikolaj Villumsen.
Indlægget Nikolaj Villumsen: Danske EU-parlamentarikere løber fra deres grønne løfter blev først udgivet på
I am in Sydney, having just spent 6 days in Brisbane to the north. The area around, and to the south of, Sydney has been engulfed by extensive wildfires which have been burning since August. This includes 20% of the Blue Mountains world heritage area. According to The New York Times, in the middle of More
It’s not news that Jeremy Corbyn isn’t a popular figure. It’s also not news that Jeremy Corbyn’s policies are hugely popular with the British public. Why should the first of these appear to matter more than the second? The answer, of course lies in something that we’ve known for a long time. The British press More
“It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government.” – Thomas Paine While Congress subjects the nation to its impeachment-flavored brand of bread-and-circus politics, our civil liberties continue to die a slow, painful death by a thousand cuts. Case in point: while Americans have been fixated on the carefully orchestrated More
In some ways, it is a very British thing: fair play is expected; the reasonable person with all faculties intact, going about the business of living and voting. Little thought is given to the fact that these assumptions are as much constructions, façades of rhetorical merit rather than reality. Voters need not be reasonable, and More
Sure, impeach Trump for legitimate reasons explicitly stated in the Constitution. But let’s be honest that an 18th century document did not include slaveholding among high crimes against humanity, and certainly has no specific clauses covering modern war crimes and state terrorism. The New York Times has a recent article (“Republican Tactic: Using Impeachment Hearings More
