The Next System Project: Life in the United States After Capitalism
We speak with Joe Guinan and Dana Brown of the Next System Project about their ambitious work to draw from
Capitalism
Resistance Report: From Ashes Of Capitalism The Next System Rises
By Dennis Trainor, Jr. for Acronym TV - There is a growing consensus that the crisis facing us across multiple fronts: environmental justice, racial justice, wealth inequality and more are both interconnected and systemic, meaning that Capitalism not only has no answers for these crisis, but these myriad crisis themselves are built into the system. Dana Brown, the National Teach-Ins Coordinator for the Next System project, joins Dennis for an interview about the end of capitalism and navigates the “reform or revolution” framework during the height of primary season.
Chomsky The Desire for Transformation Is Bubbling Below the Surface
By Noam Chomsky for the Next System Project. Philosopher, linguist, and social critic Noam Chomsky recently spoke about his experiences in campus activism and his vision of a just society to help inaugurate the Next System Project’s ambitious new teach-ins initiative taking place across the country. An initial signatory to the Next System statement, Chomsky explores the connections between culture, mass movements, and economic experiments—which in “mutually reinforcing” interaction, may build toward a next system more quickly than you may think. Chomsky: "The political system was never really responsive to the mass of the population, but it’s now changed to the point where it’s a virtual plutocracy. . . Capitalism responded to the system-changing ambitions of the 19th century labor movement with state and paramilitary violence."
Confessions Of A Panama Papers Hit Man
By John Perkins for Common Dreams - The Panama Papers should be no surprise. I was there in the 1970s, when the system they’ve exposed was set in motion. As an Economic Hit Man (an EHM), I helped forge this global economy that is based on legalized crimes. It’s a system in which 62 individuals have as much wealth as half the world’s population, and a handful of the super-rich control governments around the globe. Big corporations benefit from infrastructure and social services without having to foot the bill.
Changing Everything
By Steve Gorelick for Local Futures. It seems that a transition to renewable energy might not be as transformative as some people hope. Or to put it more bluntly, renewable energy changes nothing about corporate capitalism.
Which brings me to the new film, This Changes Everything, based on Naomi Klein’s best-selling book and directed by her husband, Avi Lewis. I saw the film recently at a screening hosted by local climate activists and renewable energy developers, and was at first hopeful that the film would go even further than the book in, as Klein puts it, “connecting the dots between the carbon in the air and the economic system that put it there.”
But by film’s end one is left with the impression that a transition from fossil fuels to renewables is pretty much all that’s needed – not only to address climate change but to transform the economy and solve all the other problems we face.
US Scolds Others About Offshores, Ignores It At Home
By Staff of McClatchyDC - The Cowboy State isn’t as notorious as the Cayman Islands for cloaking millions. But, like Nevada and Delaware, this unlikely haven offers the same anonymity the federal government has been trying to end abroad. America and Americans are part of the offshore problem. A massive leak of documents from the global law firm Mossack Fonseca & Co., which has offices in Wyoming and Nevada, exposes how two Western U.S. states are tied to foreign scandals, and how middlemen in far-flung places are taking advantage of the anonymity they provide.
This Is Much Worse Than The Panama Papers
By David Dayen for Salon - Often when I’m sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on one of L.A.’s many freeways, my mind drifts to wondering if there’s some special autobahn above the horizon line reserved only for elite celebrities, so they don’t have to bother with the day-to-day inconveniences of the masses. That feeling returned when I read about the Panama Papers, a blockbuster release of 11 million documents from 40 years of work by one of the world’s leading specialists in tax avoidance.
Dance To The Panama Papers ‘Limited Hangout’ Leak
By Staff of Tele Sur - This sets the scene for the Panama Papers leak – a massive hoard of 11.5 million documents allegedly leaked from someone inside offshore heavies Mossack Fonseca to the center-left, NATO-friendly Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in Munich and then shared by the ICIJ with selected mainstream media partners. Even without a smoking gun, a case can be made this alleged most massive leak ever was obtained by – what else – U.S. intel. This is the kind of stuff the NSA excels at. The NSA is able to break into virtually any database and/or archives anywhere; they steal “secrets;” and then selectively destroy/blackmail/protect assets and “enemies,” according to USG interests.
Panama Papers Western 1% Protected; Need A Leak Of The Leak
By Craig Murray for Craig Murray - Whoever leaked the Mossack Fonseca papers appears motivated by a genuine desire to expose the system that enables the ultra wealthy to hide their massive stashes, often corruptly obtained and all involved in tax avoidance. These Panamanian lawyers hide the wealth of a significant proportion of the 1%, and the massive leak of their documents ought to be a wonderful thing. Unfortunately the leaker has made the dreadful mistake of turning to the western corporate media to publicise the results.
Panama Papers Could Lead To Capitalism’s Great Crisis
By Rana Foroohar for Time - It’s hard to know where to start in tallying up the explosive revelations in the Panama Papers, an analysis of leaked documents from global law firm Mossack Fonseca revealed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Yes, we’ve known for a while now that the shadow financial system was growing. But it’s another thing to take in 11.5 million documents showing the way in which Mossack Fonseca was working with big name financial groups like UBS, HSBC, Société Générale, and many others to help elites from the Communist Party leadership of China, to soccer star Lionel Messi, to global financiers hide cash in offshore havens around the world.
Eggs Fly In Iceland As Panama Papers Spark Populist Anger In Streets
By Lauren McCauley for Common Dreams - Foretelling the kind of public backlash other ultra-rich tax dodgers can expect following the weekend release of the so-called Panama Papers, tens of thousands of Icelanders rallied in Reykjavik on Monday demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson. Gunnlaugsson is just one of the officials facing reprisal after a massive leak of 11.5 million documents from the global law firm Mossack Fonseca revealed a rigged system of elites who use shell companies in offshore tax havens to stash untold fortunes.
Stephen Hawking: Be Scared Of Capitalism, Not Robots
By Alexander C. Kaufman for The Huffington Post - Machines won't bring about the economic robot apocalypse -- but greedy humans will, according to physicist Stephen Hawking. In a Reddit Ask Me Anything session on Thursday, the scientist predicted that economic inequality will skyrocket as more jobs become automated and the rich owners of machines refuse to share their fast-proliferating wealth...If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution.
Newsletter: Climate Justice Is Essential
By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese for Popular Resistance. Environmental injustice makes social justice impossible. To achieve environmental justice, we have to recognize the role that capitalism plays in exploiting communities for profit and driving wealth inequality, particularly in communities of color. The struggle of our time is people power versus corporate power. All over the world people are taking action for economic, racial, environmental and climate justice. We can, and we must, prevail by stopping harmful policies and practices and putting in place new systems that are rooted in solidarity, cooperation and sustainability.
Newsletter: End The Security State
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. The conflict between democracy and state repression, often claimed as necessary to protect our safety and security, has moved the United States consistently toward a greater national security state that has become inconsistent with people’s privacy and freedom; as well as their ability to exercise First Amendment protected political activities. The depth of surveillance – including infiltration of political movements, cameras to enforce traffic laws and monitor activities almost everywhere in populated areas, aerial surveillance of neighborhoods and protests by helicopters, drones and airplanes and digital spying, have created a pervasive surveillance apparatus that undermines privacy, political activity and communication. We cannot have a real democracy with this level of surveillance.
Privatized Water 58% More Than Government Water
By Ben Norton for Salon - The most affordable water systems in the U.S. are publicly owned and operated by the government, an exhaustive study reveals. At the same time, for-profit private water companies charge 58 percent more than publicly owned ones. Food & Water Watch, a non-governmental consumer rights organization based in D.C., comprehensively surveyed the 500 largest community water systems in the U.S., in what it says is “the largest U.S. water rate survey of its kind.”