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The economic realities we face at the end of 2022
Economies around the world were shocked and damaged over the course of 2022. Global capitalism had been brewing conflicts among the major powers (the United States, China, and the EU) for some time as their relative strengths and vulnerabilities shifted. U.S. capitalism and its empire are widely perceived as waning. Europe’s role as a U.S. ally and indeed its economic future became correspondingly riskier as a result. China’s economic growth encountered problems but continued to be remarkably positive and often crucially supportive of world economic conditions in ways that were once more closely associated with the role of the United States. China’s deepening alliance with Russia as well as its burgeoning global economic reach frightened many in the United States. Years of increasingly aggressive competition, tariff and trade wars, and bans and subsidies, mostly initiated by the United States, culminated this past year in global economic warfare. Continue reading
You’d better watch out: The surveillance state is making a list, and you’re on it
You’d better watch out—you’d better not pout—you’d better not cry—‘cos I’m telling you why: this Christmas, it’s the Surveillance State that’s making a list and checking it twice, and it won’t matter whether you’ve been bad or good. Continue reading
What climate debt does the North owe the South?
Richer countries haven't met their $100 billion promise to help poorer countries move beyond fossil fuels. Where's the money going to come from?
To keep the planet from overheating, there’s just so much more carbon that humans can pump into the atmosphere. From the onset of the Industrial Revolution until today, humanity has used up approximately 83 percent of its “carbon budget”—the amount of carbon the atmosphere can absorb and not exceed the Paris climate agreement’s aspirational goal of a 1.5C degree increase in global temperatures since the pre-industrial era. At the current rate of emissions, the budget will be used up within the next decade. Continue reading
Censorship by proxy: How big tech and billionaires dodge First Amendment laws and engage in censorship on the platforms where most of us get our news
Adapted from Project Censored’s “State of the Free Press 2023”
Despite the promise of boundless access to information, Silicon Valley mirrors legacy media in its consolidated ownership and privileging of elite narratives. This new class of billionaire oligarchs owns or controls the most popular media platforms, including the companies often referred to as the FAANGs—Facebook (Meta), Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google (Alphabet). Their CEOs are routinely lionized in popular culture and the press as intrepid entrepreneurs, inventors of today’s must-have tools for work and play, and stewards of the public square. They include, but are not limited to Bill Gates (Microsoft, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta, Facebook, Instagram), and Jeff Bezos (Amazon, the Washington Post)—all of whom are deeply involved and invested in computer software, social media platforms, and the worldwide web itself (e.g., Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube). Continue reading
Electoral denialism cuts across party lines: Despite What the corporate media would have us believe, both parties engage in the ‘big lie,’ and the rest of lose because of it
Speaking to the January 6th Committee on September 29, 2022, Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, stood by her contention that the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election was stolen. Thomas and others who doubt the legitimacy of the election results have been convinced to believe “the big lie.” The big lie refers to an incomprehensible distortion or misrepresentation of the truth as a form of propaganda. It is often attributed to the Nazis’ big lie about the Jews after World War I, which served to justify the holocaust for sympathizers. Germany’s Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels explained, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Continue reading
Top labor leader Sara Nelson links abortion rights to fight against fascism
Association of Flight Attendants-CWA President Sara Nelson says abortion rights are critical in a necessary fight against fascism and a key economic issue that is facing voters on November 8. Continue reading
Fascism: The F word for capitalism
Even if corporatism didn’t mean quite the same thing back when Benito popularized the now over-used label of fascism it still, then and now, referred to capitalism. Currently being used by neo-liberals the way neo-conservatives use socialism, to ignorantly describe what they don’t like or understand, the stupidity and animosity being provoked is exactly what we don’t need in a time that calls for Americans to come together and actually create a democratic nation but just as much for the dominated world to do the same before not only America but the world itself suffers damage beyond what is survivable. Continue reading
Brazil’s Lula remerges—in a very different political world
If Lula wins reelection, he must not only rebuild the social investments that Bolsonaro destroyed, but also restore trust in a nation damaged by fascism’s sophisticated propaganda machine.
Brazil’s first round of elections, held on October 2, yielded a major victory for the man who held the presidency from 2003 to 2010, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Winning 48 percent of the vote in a multicandidate race, Lula now heads to a runoff against incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro, who won 43 percent. It’s the first chapter of a dramatic comeback for a leader who was once hailed as the epitome of Latin America’s resurgent left, who was then imprisoned on corruption charges by a politicized judiciary, eventually was released, and has now emerged onto the political scene in a very different nation than the one he once led. Continue reading
Entering the resistance phase of the surveillance education cycle: Finding ways to protect privacy in schools
In August 2022, two important acts of resistance hinted at a sea change in attitudes toward invasive surveillance technologies. First, New York University’s Brennan Center sued the Department of Homeland Security for violating a Freedom of Information request regarding how the agency utilizes social media to monitor U.S. citizens. Days later, it was announced that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is suing data brokerage company Kochava for the sale of geolocation information that may violate the privacy of women seeking reproductive health care. Continue reading
The Biden administration and two looming crises: an economic and financial crisis and a hegemonic war
Besides the lingering COVID-19 pandemic and the on-going climate crisis, which will be accompanied by an energy crisis, not to mention the coming migration crisis, the world could be facing two man-made major crises in the years to come, i.e. an economic and financial crisis and a hegemonic war crisis. Continue reading
Can a deeply unequal nation totally reverse course?
The alarm bells are—sort of—ringing, Bloomberg reports, in Colombia’s most “fashionable neighborhoods of Bogotá and Medellin.” Continue reading
Sleeping at the wheel: The Uber Files, the media, and the coup against labor rights
The recent reporting on the Uber Files—a series of 124,000 communications, dated from 2013 until 2017, that Mark McGann, one of Uber’s top lobbyists, leaked to The Guardian—has shed light on the company’s strategies to gain global prominence during its nascent years. McGann and the many reporters working on the project through the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists are commendable for their efforts to bring this history to public attention. Still, the reporting elides a much larger story about the rise of a new model of labor relations being implemented throughout the globe, and workers’ efforts to stop it. Continue reading
A new third party just launched—it’s the same Washington rot with a different name
We finally have a real third party in the United States that the mainstream media is willing to talk about. I bet they’ll give them ballot access and everything. And this new party has nothing to do with the Democrats or the Republicans, right? Continue reading
Elite lapdogs always welcome in the corporate media
Chris Cuomo’s return is a reminder that corporate media personalities are not accountable to the public, they are accountable to the elites they serve
The return of Chris Cuomo to television is the latest reminder that there is little accountability to speak of in corporate news media. Chris was ousted at CNN in late 2021 amidst an ethics investigation that claimed he utilized his position at the cable news juggernaut to consult his brother, then governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo. At the time, the governor was facing a series of sexual misconduct allegations. Chris was using his professional connections to identify what reporters knew about the allegations, and then using that information to consult Andrew on how to respond, all while hosting Andrew on his daily CNN program. In July 2022, Cuomo returned to television to promote his podcast The Chris Cuomo Project. Cuomo appeared on Dan Abrams show on NewsNation (where Cuomo recently secured a position and I have served as an expert guest) and Real Time with Bill Maher. Continue reading
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled
Anger is erupting around the world, and people have much to be angry about. Covid, famine, energy shortages, inflation.
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” This quote is attributed to the French author, philosopher and poet Charles Baudelaire from an article published in La Figro in 1864. It was a time of upheaval and discontent in France, social unrest, inequality, and a return to an Aristocratic status quo after the failure of the French Revolution. It was a confused and divisive time. Baudelaire’s article was seen as a metaphor for the evil dark forces that ruled the beleaguered French people at the time. Baudelaire’s Devil didn’t hide, he was open and was there for those with the eyes to see. Nor did he apologise or explain his evil. This Devil, the very personification of all things evil, was protected by the inherent goodness of the majority. The masses who could not comprehend the level of malevolence that dominated and controlled their lives, regardless of how obvious these forces were. The Devil had indeed convinced the people that he didn’t exist. And so the Devil remained in situ. Continue reading
The West is experiencing a contraction of its power, not necessarily its decline
What Westerners call the West or Western civilization is a geopolitical space that emerged in the 16th century and expanded continuously until the 20th century. On the eve of World War I, about 90 percent of the globe was Western or Western-dominated: Europe, Russia, the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and much of Asia (with the partial exceptions of Japan and China). From then on, the West began to contract: first with the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the emergence of the Soviet bloc, and then, from mid-century onward, with the decolonization movements. Terrestrial space, and soon after, extraterrestrial space, became fields of intense disputes. Continue reading
Can community schools rescue a ‘troubled’ district?
A contentious contract negotiation between teachers and a district in the Washington D.C. suburbs could foretell whether a transformative strategy for school improvement can dislodge entrenched leadership practices.
“Why are we still fighting for basic needs?” asked Karen Guzman, a parent and community organizer for the local teachers’ union in Prince George’s County, Maryland, a suburban sprawl of communities that lie just to the east of Washington D.C., Guzman’s union, the Prince George’s County Educators Association (PGCEA), is currently embroiled in contract negotiations with the district administration, and the negotiations are not going particularly well, according to her assessment. “Almost everything we’re asking for is being rejected,” she said. Continue reading
The problem with Juneteenth
Juneteenth was a people's holiday with deep meaning for the descendants of enslaved people. But the declaration of an official federal holiday has turned it into an opportunity for corporate exploiters and cynical politicians to show pretend concern for Black people. At best Juneteenth provides a history lesson and an opportunity for much needed political education.
“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.” General Order Number 3, June 19, 1865 Continue reading
Russia’s attempt at reshaping the world economy
Starting on May 31, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov embarked on a tour to Gulf Cooperation Council countries, where he visited Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, among others. Lavrov’s main objective of these visits is to strengthen ties between Russia and GCC nations amid a global race for geopolitical dominance. Continue reading
The different ways that the U.S. and Chinese governments use their power to regulate capitalism
Russia’s war on Ukraine both reflects and deepens a global split that should remind us of Karl Marx’s famous remark: “No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces, for which there is room in it, have been developed; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society.” The United Kingdom already lost its particular social order—its empire—while the United States is now losing its. Despite differences, both of these social orders shared a mostly private form of capitalist relations of production (the organization of enterprises centered around private employers and employees). That social order has given way to a different, mostly public form of capitalist relations of production where state officials are major employers. The latter form of capitalism is developing most dramatically in China. Continue reading
Policing causes violence, not the other way around
What liberal politicians and the media refuse to acknowledge is that crime is linked to the failures of capitalism, not to the lack of police. Indeed, police are part of the problem, not the solution.
The New York City subway shooting in Brooklyn on April 12 miraculously resulted in no deaths, although about 30 people suffered injuries, including 10 from gunshot wounds. Within hours, a massive manhunt for the shooter was underway, but in the end it was the suspect who tipped police off and turned himself in. Still, that has not stopped politicians and corporate media outlets like the Washington Post and others from using the shooting to shore up police talking points and implicitly make the case for more police funding. Continue reading
Western-led globalization might end, but the new globalization might have an eastern face
An article written by authors John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge for Bloomberg on March 24 sounded the alarm to announce the end of “the second great age of globalization.” The Western trade war and sanctions against China that predated the pandemic have now been joined by the stiff Western sanctions imposed against Russia after it invaded Ukraine. These sanctions are like an iron curtain being built by the United States and its allies around Eurasia. But according to Micklethwait and Wooldridge, this iron curtain will not only descend around China and Russia but will also have far-reaching consequences across the world. Continue reading
Why the U.S. culture of colonial extraction is making people sick and destroying the planet
Rupa Marya, a physician and musician, studies how social structures impact health. She says colonial capitalism fractures the critical relationships that keep us healthy.
A widespread culture of isolation and disconnection from our bodies, each other and the planet is negatively impacting the mental and physical health of people in America and beyond—and this was true long before the pandemic. Our relatively new human social structure that is work-obsessed and separated from nature and each other leaves us scant time to connect and relate to each other, and is not aligned with our natural rhythms. This way of living has grave impacts on people’s overall health, as well as the health of the planet. Continue reading
Amazon workers’ astounding win, and how corporate America is trying to take back power
On Friday, April 1, Amazon—America’s wealthiest, most powerful, and fiercest anti-union corporation, with the second-largest workforce in the nation (union-busting Walmart being the largest), lost out to a group of warehouse workers in New York who voted to form a union. Continue reading
How corporate media has put the American public in a state of Ukraine-Russia psychosis
There is a growing psychosis sweeping the U.S. around the Russian bombardment of Ukraine, and it is being triggered by the legacy news media. The steady stream of biased, often erroneous or incomplete information spewing from the establishment press is leading people to quickly choose sides in a complicated international conflict, waving flags in support of “their side,” fawning over global leaders, and even holding peaceful car parades in efforts to do what they think they can to prevent World War III. In the process, the context and details of the conflict, as well as its historic roots, are being pushed aside in favor of a kind of binary knee-jerk activism that is far too common in American political culture. Speaking out against Russian attacks on Ukraine and in support of the people there should not be difficult to understand or do. However, demanding that the U.S. take aggressive action, such as swiftly implementing a no-fly zone, displays a waning level of sophistication regarding international relations. Continue reading
War crimes, mental molestation and language rape
The incredible market for human slaughter called war existed thousands of years ago but it was a corner grocery store compared to the multi-trillion dollar moral sewer that represents modern mass murder. Continue reading
If high gas prices are so painful, shouldn’t we move away from fossil fuels?
Not only is it possible to switch to renewables, but it’s also cheaper and would make economies less vulnerable. Yet, bizarrely, politicians and the fossil fuel industry, who are using the war on Ukraine to justify high gas prices, are now calling for more oil to be produced.
Long used to cheap gas at the pump, Americans are experiencing serious sticker shock these days as gas prices rise to $6 or even $7 a gallon. News headlines are linking this sharp increase to Russia’s war on Ukraine. Guilt-inducing memes are cropping up on social media shaming people for complaining about the high gas prices in the face of Ukrainian suffering. Continue reading
In praise of “whataboutism”
Anyone who speaks out against imperialism, capitalism, or racism with concrete examples of the terrible harm they do, can expect to be charged with the dreaded term “whataboutism.” Like clockwork, the act of revealing American crimes will result in an accusation that is used to silence dissent. Continue reading
There’s no sugarcoating Hershey’s abuse of workers and union-busting tactics
Hershey factory workers in Virginia are sick of company abuses and are voting to join a union. But their union-busting employer has other plans.
There is a bittersweet battle taking place in Stuarts Draft, Virginia. Workers at the Hershey Company’s second-largest factory, located in the small town of about 12,000, are seeking to unionize. In response, the nation’s largest candy manufacturer is throwing the full force of the standard corporate union-busting playbook at them. The Virginia Hershey manufacturing plant employs about 1,300 people, none of whom are sharing in the bounty of the company’s record profits reaped during a pandemic where Americans ate their weight in candy through numerous lockdowns. Continue reading
The Washington Post: The voice of the CIA
The Washington Post has always been a CIA asset. The CIA used the Washington Post to orchestrate the Watergate narrative used to drive President Nixon out of office. Continue reading
So Biden, Sullivan, Stoltenberg, UK PM & defense officials, presstitutes, where is the “Russian invasion”?
So Biden, where is the “imminent Russian Invasion of Ukraine?” Where, Jake Sullivan, is the “major military action that could begin any day now?” Where UK government, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, NY Times, Bloomberg, Washington Post, BBC, and the rest of the presstitutes are the Russian hordes that are supposed to be overrunning Ukraine?” Continue reading
Does Elon musk have a right to destroy Twitter?
Posted on December 5, 2022 by Robert Reich
You break it, you own it. That’s what I was told as a child. But for today’s billionaires, it seems like the opposite is true. Continue reading →