History

Economy Must Be ‘At Service Of Life’

May 28, 2023 Tanupriya Singh, People's Dispatch. Create! Africa, Capitalism, Colonialism, Debt crisis, Ghana, History, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Neocolonialism

On May 19, Ghana received the first tranche of a $3 billion, three-year bailout agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Accra had approached the lending agency in 2022 amid a severe cost of living crisis as food prices surged by 122% and the inflation rate breached 50%—the highest in two decades. With its currency cedi having lost over half of its value against the US dollar, and a debt burden that was draining between 70-100% of government revenues, Ghana reached a loan agreement with the IMF in December. This is Ghana’s seventeenth arrangement with the IMF since independence, with each engagement marked by similar policies of austerity which worked to erode the revolutionary vision of the country’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah.

Bidding Farewell To The American Century

May 27, 2023 Chris Hedges, The Real News Network. Resistance Report American Exceptionalism, Empire, History, US Imperialism

Like Cicero in the Roman Republic, there are always a handful of chroniclers who can see and articulate clearly the social, cultural, and political realities of empires in terminal decline. They call out the bankruptcy of an inept and corrupt ruling class, blinded by hubris, as well as a populace that has checked out of civic life and is entranced by bread and circus spectacles. In his trilogy Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, Chambers Johnson does a masterful job of showing how and why we are disintegrating. So does Andrew Bacevich, who, in his newest book of essays, On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century, writes about the debacles that have beset the American empire since the Vietnam War, a conflict he fought in as a young army officer.

Reclaiming African Liberation Day, 60 Years On

May 26, 2023 Tanupriya Singh, People's Dispatch. Educate! Africa, African Liberation Day, Capitalism, History, Imperialism, Neocolonialism, Pan Africanism

60 years ago, on May 25, Ghana’s first prime minister and president, the anti-colonial revolutionary leader Kwame Nkrumah stood before 31 other heads of African states in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa and declared, “[T]he struggle against colonialism does not end with the attainment of national independence.” “Independence is only the prelude to a new and more involved struggle for the right to conduct our own economic and social affairs…unhampered by crushing and humiliating neo-colonialist controls and interference.” “We must unite or perish,” Nkrumah had emphasized, recognizing that while countries across the African continent were “throwing off the yoke of colonialism,” these successes were “equally matched by an intense effort on the part of imperialism to continue the exploitation of our resources by creating divisions among us.”

The Two Decades That Created World’s First Mass Middle Class

May 26, 2023 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. Strategize! Finance and the Economy, History, Middle Class, wealth inequality

Amazing things can happen when societies realize they don’t need an awesomely affluent. What sort of amazing things? Take what happened in the United States between 1940 and 1960, as economists William Collins and Gregory Niemesh do in a just-published research paper on America’s mid-century home ownership boom. Over a mere 20-year span, the United States essentially birthed a “new middle class.” The share of U.S. households owning their own homes, Collins and Niemesh note, jumped an “unprecedented” 20 percentage points. By 1960, most American families resided in housing they owned “for the first time since at least 1870” — for the first time, in effect, since before the Industrial Revolution.

John Durham And The Burying Of American History

May 24, 2023 Patrick Lawrence, Scheer Post. Educate! Censorship, History, Media, Propaganda, RussiaGate

There are certain things I do not quite get since Special Counsel John Durham’s report on the epically corrupt conduct of Donald Trump’s enemies during the 2016 election campaigns went to Congress last week. Many things, actually. For all the ground Durham covers in his 306–page report, I don’t get why he left a lot of things undone and unexamined, a lot of names unnamed and a lot of conclusions unconcluded after a four-year investigation into the very unfunny fiasco known as Russiagate. And then there are a few things I do get. Chief among these is that, with the already-evident burying of the Durham Report, we now witness the obliteration of a highly significant passage in our national history.

US Empire Of Debt Headed For Collapse

May 21, 2023 Pepe Escobar, Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Debt, Economic collapse, Finance and the Economy, History

Prof. Michael Hudson’s new book, The Collapse of Antiquity: Greece and Rome as Civilization’s Oligarchic Turning Point” is a seminal event in this Year of Living Dangerously when, to paraphrase Gramsci, the old geopolitical and geoeconomic order is dying and the new one is being born at breakneck speed. Prof. Hudson’s main thesis is absolutely devastating: he sets out to prove that economic/financial practices in Ancient Greece and Rome – the pillars of Western Civilization – set the stage for what is happening today right in front of our eyes: an empire reduced to a rentier economy, collapsing from within.

How A Small Activist Sailing Ship Challenged The Nuclear Arms Race

May 21, 2023 George Lakey, Waging Nonviolence. Strategize! History, Nuclear Weapons, Peace Movement, The Golden Rule

In today’s polarized context, progressive movements need their best strategic thinking. One source for inspiration should be the Golden Rule, a historic sailing ship that’s currently visiting ports along the Eastern U.S. Organized by Veterans for Peace, this national tour puts the 1958 Golden Rule voyage back in the news. Nearly 65 years ago, the Golden Rule defiantly sailed toward the Pacific Ocean site where U.S. nuclear weapons were being tested, sparking a movement that forced the U.S. government to sign the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. As a young activist, I got to know and learn from some of the original crew members and organizers. So, it was a delight to set foot on the Golden Rule last week for a sail in the Philadelphia harbor.

A Dark History: Nakba’s Tragedy Continues Unabated After 75 Years

May 19, 2023 Miko Peled, MintPress News. Educate! History, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, The Nakba, Wars and Militarism

Even with all the protests and mentions of Nakba Day on social media, commemorating this horrific, sad event is nowhere near where it ought to be. Arguably one of the darkest and most awful chapters in the long history of Palestine, the Nakba needs to be fully commemorated in every capital in the world. The politicization of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the consequent installment of an apartheid regime to govern it is such that few countries dare even to mention these crimes against humanity. The full scope of the Nakba, a combination of several crimes against humanity, is yet to be understood.

Farewell To The Welfare State? Not Just Yet

May 19, 2023 Patrick Lawrence, Scheer Post. Educate! Cold War, Europe, History, Peace Dividend, Welfare

Maybe you recall all the post–Cold War talk of a “peace dividend” and maybe you don’t: It depends on when you took up residence on this mortal coil. The term arose as the Soviet Union disintegrated and was commonly mentioned during George H.W. Bush’s presidency, 1989–1993. A dramatic reduction in defense spending, and a corresponding increase in expenditures on education, health care, and so on, was put around as one of Bush I’s outstanding achievements. That was the peace dividend. The thing you need to know about all the talk of a peace dividend back then is that it was all talk. And the thing you need to know now, with Cold War II in more or less full swing and the proxy war against Russia raging in Ukraine, is that there is no longer any need to know anything about the peace dividend.

‘We Left Everything Behind’ — The Nakba At 75

May 16, 2023 Yasmin Abusayma, Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Displacement, History, Israel, Nakba, Occupation, Palestine, Right to Return

Between 750,000 and a million Palestinians were forcibly displaced by Zionist militias in 1947-49, never to be allowed back. Hundreds of villages and towns were destroyed, thousands were killed, many of them in massacres that terrorized Palestine’s native population. Seventy-five years later, many of that first generation have died. But some are still alive to tell stories of the Nakba – Arabic for catastrophe. Fatima Abu Dayya, 82, was 7 when her family was forced to flee their village of Yibna, which was seized by Zionists in 1948. Yibna is 15 km southwest of Ramla. “My father took the key of our house along with some clothes and then we traveled on a donkey-drawn cart.

The Censorship-Industrial Complex: Top 50 Organizations To Know

May 15, 2023 Susan Schmidt, Andrew Lowenthal, Tom Wyatt, Techno Fog and others, Racket News. Strategize! Censorship, History, Hybrid War, Propaganda

On January 17, 1960, outgoing President and former Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower gave one of the most consequential speeches in American history. Eisenhower for eight years had been a popular president, whose appeal drew upon a reputation as a person of great personal fortitude, who’d guided the United States to victory in an existential fight for survival in World War II. Nonetheless, as he prepared to vacate the Oval Office for handsome young John F. Kennedy, he warned the country it was now at the mercy of a power eve he could not overcome. Until World War II, America had no permanent arms manufacturing industry.

Chris Hedges: Harriet Tubman And The Battle For America’s Symbols

May 14, 2023 Chris Hedges, The Real News Network. Resistance Report History, Monuments, Reparations, Slavery, White Supremacy

The debate over America’s symbols and monuments has sharpened with the growing mass movement for racial justice in the past decade. The lionization of slave-owners and genocidaires has been pointed out by many as in contradiction to the ideals of democracy and racial justice so often touted as national core values. In the midst of this debate, the decision by the US Treasury to place Harriet Tubman alongside Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill starting in 2030 has incited controversy. Howard University professor of political science Clarence Lusane joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss the Harriet Tubman dollar bill, and the stakes of the debate over national symbols in righting the historical wrongs of slavery and white supremacy.

The Evolving Movement For Agricultural Worker Rights

May 12, 2023 Lucia Athens, Next City. Organize! Farming, Food and Agriculture, History, Worker Rights and Jobs

Labor organizing has experienced a resurgence of late for many service workers, but not so for agricultural workers. Through the collective impact efforts of many individuals, from many walks of life, California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975 was passed, the first of its kind in the US to protect farmworker rights. Adopted at the height of the United Farm Workers movement led by César Chávez, it served as a vehicle to galvanize their Union, empowering tens of thousands of workers who realized the potentiality of organizing for the first time. Unfortunately, the promise of that law was never realized and progress since then has been a mixed bag.

First Boat To Protest Nuclear Weapons Inspires A New Generation

May 3, 2023 Arnie Alpert, Waging Nonviolence. Organize! Golden Rule, History, Nuclear Weapons, Peace

Fredy Champagne has been a peace activist ever since he returned from combat in Vietnam. He’s been kicked out of college, where he was accused of starting a riot. He’s opened health clinics in Vietnam. He’s delivered school buses to Cuba. But in 2010, he received a call that opened his eyes to a story of resistance he had never heard before. The call was from one of Champagne’s fellow members of Veterans for Peace, or VFP, asking him to go check out a boat that had been hauled out of the water in Humboldt Bay, California — only an hour’s drive north from his home in Garberville, where he was serving as the president of the local VFP chapter. The boat — named the Golden Rule — wasn’t much to look at.

The Coming War — Time To Speak Up

May 1, 2023 John Pilger, Consortium News. Educate! History, Liberal class, Media, Wars and Militarism

In 1935, the Congress of American Writers was held in New York City, followed by another two years later. They called on “the hundreds of poets, novelists, dramatists, critics, short story writers and journalists” to discuss the “rapid crumbling of capitalism” and the beckoning of another war. They were electric events which, according to one account, were attended by 3,500 members of the public with more than a thousand turned away. Arthur Miller, Myra Page, Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett warned that fascism was rising, often disguised, and the responsibility lay with writers and journalists to speak out. Telegrams of support from Thomas Mann, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, C Day Lewis, Upton Sinclair and Albert Einstein were read out.

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