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‘Silent Coup’: How Capitalism Defeated Decolonization

September 23, 2023 Chris Hedges, The Real News Network. , , , ,
The 20th Century saw a great global uprising against European imperialism as the former colonial countries shook off their shackles and rose up for independence. More than a half century later, global inequality is sharper than ever before. To understand the current predicament of the vast majority of the world’s people, we must understand the intervening decades. Matt Kennard and Claire Provost‘s book, Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy, looks inside the international architecture of global corporate governance that exists to flout and crush any attempts by the former colonial world to enact development on their own terms. Matt Kennard joins The Chris Hedges Report for a look at this intriguing and essential history.

Auto Workers Strike Spreads To 38 Parts Depots

September 23, 2023 Luis Feliz Leon and Lisa Xu, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
The clock has ticked and tocked for two of the Big 3 automakers. At noon 5,000 more members of the Auto Workers (UAW) at 38 parts distribution centers for Stellantis and General Motors walked off the job. The facilities are spread across 20 states. They join 13,000 workers at assembly plants in Ohio, Michigan, and Missouri who have been out for a week—for a total of 18,000 Big 3 auto workers on picket lines nationwide. (See a map of all struck facilities here.) The escalation adds a new type of facility to the mix. Parts distribution centers (PDCs) supply after-sales spare parts and accessories to dealerships, a very profitable part of the companies’ business.

Collaboration, Not Confrontation

September 23, 2023 Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad, Peoples Democracy. , , , , , , , ,
The United States has articulated a policy that it wishes to continue this war to severely ‘weaken Russia’ – as US defence secretary Lloyd Austin and other high officials have been explicitly stating – and, it is claimed, to place Ukraine in a stronger bargaining position for eventual negotiations (or in a weaker position, if the Russian offensive makes an impact, a strong likelihood that is quietly ignored). The policy of trying to ‘weaken Russia’ through the escalation of the war in Ukraine is the position of the United States and the United Kingdom, and with some variation, their European allies (France, as usual, demurs here and there, but when push comes to shove, lines up with Washington). 

A Guide To Six Greenwashing Terms Big Ag Is Bringing To COP28

September 23, 2023 Rachel Sherrington and Hazel Healy, DeSmog. , , , , ,
As some of the biggest companies – in particular meat and dairy firms – grow more concerned about their climate-villain images, they are turning to greenwashing techniques: well-known tactics deployed by oil and gas industries to shift the debate away from meaningful action. Often valid concepts in and of themselves, the problem lies in how they are touted as enviro-friendly actions while companies fail to cut their contribution to global heating.  The agriculture industry has a lot to be worried about. Meat emits around a third of global emissions of methane, and action to cut this greenhouse gas has been identified by the UN and world leaders as the quickest route to slowing global heating. Farming also relies on synthetic fertilisers that are both fossil-fuel-based and emit greenhouse gases, and drives deforestation. 

Forget Bellingcat — Meet A Real ‘Open Source’ Watchdog

September 23, 2023 Matt Taibbi, Scheer Post. , , ,
On September 11th of this year, on the third floor of the Nauticus museum in Norfolk, Virginia, defense and intelligence representatives gathered for the first and only unclassified meeting of a Naval Special Warfare Command “technology integration exercise,” called Trident Spectre 2024. What is Trident? The three-minute video above was unveiled for attendees. It pitched the program as a matchmaking forum for contractors and “defense leaders” who “tour the experimentation camp during the exercise, leading to technology transition or outright acquisition,” the contract-hungry crowd was told, in tantalizing narration.

Is This The End Of French Neo-Colonialism In Africa?

September 23, 2023 Zoe Alexandra and Vijay Prashad, People's Dispatch. , , , , , , , , , , ,
In Bamako, Mali, on September 16, the governments of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger created the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). On X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, Colonel Assimi Goïta, the head of the transitional government of Mali, wrote that the Liptako-Gourma Charter which created the AES would establish “an architecture of collective defense and mutual assistance for the benefit of our populations.” The hunger for such regional cooperation goes back to the period when France ended its colonial rule. Between 1958 and 1963, Ghana and Guinea were part of the Union of African States, which was to have been the seed for wider pan-African unity. Mali was a member as well between 1961 and 1963.

Latin America’s Progressive Bloc Lines Up Against Washington Sanctions

September 23, 2023 Ociel Alí López, Resumen English. , , ,
The shift to the left that is currently taking place in Latin American governments could be felt in the presidential speeches at the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UN), which is being held this week. These governments were particularly unified in their disagreement with the application of U.S. sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba. There was also a consensus among them to protest the inclusion of Cuba in the “list of countries sponsoring terrorism” maintained by the U.S. Government. Since the inauguration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Colombian President Gustavo Petro, criticism of these policies has become common in this type of forum.

The Baltimore Sun’s Reckoning On Freddie Gray

September 23, 2023 Justine Barron, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , , ,
Five days after Freddie Gray’s death, the Baltimore Sun (4/24/15) published on its website an interactive slideshow on his arrest, which it updated later that month as the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) added information. Audiences could click through a timeline of details of Gray’s long April 12, 2015, ride in a Baltimore police van, during which police reportedly made six stops before officers said they discovered their prisoner was unconscious. (Gray died on April 19, after a week in a coma.) The slideshow was almost entirely sourced from the statements given by BPD leaders during press conferences, without independent corroboration. In a new book, They Killed Freddie Gray: The Anatomy of a Police Brutality Cover-Up, I reveal extensive evidence that undermines most of what the Sun reported in its slideshow timeline. My book is sourced to discovery evidence from the prosecution of six officers that was never presented in court, internal affairs investigation files and more.

How To Build The Future In Place: Taking The First Steps

September 23, 2023 Patrick Mazza, Resilience. , , ,
Building the future in place envisions bringing together an ecosystem of community-based institutions and public policies that meets human needs and balances our relations within the natural world. It involves weaving together community initiatives and advocacy campaigns that now often operate in separate compartments to create a coherent politics, built around deep-rooted, place-based movements informed by comprehensive visions for transformative change at local and bioregional scales. It starts where markets and the system are failing, prioritizing communities and people who are being failed the most. In the process, it fills the greatest need now existing in our society, for community. In a fractured world where increasing disruptions can be expected, we need to somehow find our way back to human social solidarity, to being good neighbors. It’s not just climate. We face a profound crisis of global ecosystems.

New Research: Amazon’s Monopoly Tollbooth In 2023

September 23, 2023 Stacy Mitchell, Institute for Local Self-Reliance. , , ,
Amazon’s dominance of online retail means that businesses that make or sell products have little choice but to rely on its site to reach customers. Amazon exploits its power as a gatekeeper to pocket a growing cut of the revenue earned by these businesses. It does this by imposing ever-larger fees on them. In effect, Amazon controls a monopoly tollbooth that sits between businesses and the online market. Over the last few years, it has sharply raised the price of passing through it. In the first half of 2023, using a variety of fees, Amazon took 45 percent of sellers’ revenue in the U.S. That’s up from 35 percent in 2020, and 19 percent in 2014. These exorbitant fees make it nearly impossible for small businesses and other sellers to sustain a viable business online. Most fail.

Musician Cooperativism At Groupmuse

September 23, 2023 Mosa Tsay, Grassroots Economic Organizing. , ,
I am a cellist and worker-owner of a cooperative. As an ICDE fellow, I hop out of my usual action-oriented work to reflect on why cooperativism is an alternative to the status quo for freelancing musicians. As a professional cellist, I witnessed the infrastructural fractures that musicians in the United States have to navigate. In 2020, I returned to the U.S. from a year of studying in France, after contemplating during quarantine about the economics of working as an artist. One important question I wanted to solve: Rather than competing with my colleagues for limited paid gigs, how can I generate new opportunities and resources with them?

NATO Destroyed Libya In 2011; Storm Daniel Came To Sweep Up The Remains

September 22, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , , ,
Three days before the Abu Mansur and Al Bilad dams collapsed in Wadi Derna, Libya, on the night of September 10, the poet Mustafa al-Trabelsi participated in a discussion at the Derna House of Culture about the neglect of basic infrastructure in his city. At the meeting, al-Trabelsi warned about the poor condition of the dams. As he wrote on Facebook that same day, over the past decade his beloved city has been ‘exposed to whipping and bombing, and then it was enclosed by a wall that had no door, leaving it shrouded in fear and depression’. Then, Storm Daniel picked up off the Mediterranean coast, dragged itself into Libya, and broke the dams. CCTV camera footage in the city’s Maghar neighbourhood showed the rapid advance of the floodwaters, powerful enough to destroy buildings and crush lives. A reported 70% of infrastructure and 95% of educational institutions have been damaged in the flood-affected areas. As of Wednesday 20 September, an estimated 4,000 to 11,000 people have died in the flood – among them the poet Mustafa al-Trabelsi, whose warnings over the years went unheeded – and another 10,000 are missing.

White Supremacy Is At The Center Of The ‘Class Over Race’ Debate

September 22, 2023 Jon Jeter, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
With its swath of shuttered shops, empty cafes, dwindling crowds and shimmering seaside vistas, San Francisco’s Embarcadero resembles an abandoned amusement park in the post-pandemic era, but a century ago this tourist attraction was known as the “slave market,” where dozens of longshoremen would gather each weekday hoping to land a job loading and unloading the freighters docked in the bay. Seldom were there enough jobs to go around, however, and the hiring boss who was assigned by the shipping companies to choose the daily work crews would often go about the task with the same contemptuous air that an overseer might display while inspecting chattel slaves at auction, sneering as he rejected some longshoremen while doling out preferential treatment to others, many of whom had agreed to kick back a portion of their wages to him.

At UN General Assembly Session, Global South Leaders Call For Urgent Reforms

September 22, 2023 People's Dispatch. , , ,
On the first day of the 78th session of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, September 19, countries from the Global South raised the demand for urgent reforms in multilateral institutions, both political and economic, for a just and democratic world order. The session was addressed by UN General Assembly chair Dennis Francis, UN Secretary General António Guterres, and leaders of various countries including Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, among others. Each of these leaders highlighted the growing geopolitical tensions in the world and the failure of multilateral institutions to resolve them.

Civil Society Reactions To United Nations Climate Ambition Summit

September 22, 2023 Climate Action Network international. , , , ,
Several leaders made compelling statements at the UN Climate Ambition Summit today in New York. Leaders from Chile, Colombia and the Governor of California called out fossil fuels as the main cause of the climate crisis but some of the worst polluters- and among the richest countries – were conspicuous by their absence. They did not make the cut to speak at the Summit which was set by the Secretary General last year reserving the mic for those who had ambitious new commitments and were on track with their climate targets. The USA, the UK, Australia, Norway and Japan were absent as were many other G20 countries.
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