Politics

Durham Report Reveals The Real Threat To ‘Democracy’

May 20, 2023 Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Democrat Party, Donald Trump, FBI, Politics, RussiaGate

Six years and millions of dollars later, the “Durham report” released on May 15th confirmed once again what a few of us had the nerve to argue before all of the reports and stories that subsequently emerged – that “Russiagate” was the most massive fraud ever perpetrated on the U.S. public by a section of the capitalist rulers and represented a maturing of a form of U.S. neofascism unique to this historical moment. The public may have forgotten that during the Trump Administration U.S. Attorney General Bob Barr assigned John H. Durham as special counsel to review the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign. The Durham report, as it is being referred to in the media, corroborated many of the conclusions reached by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report in 2019.

Hydropolitics: An Interview With Erik Swyngedouw

May 8, 2023 Sanaa Alimia, Red Pepper. Strategize! Global South, Ownership, Politics, The Commons, Water

Water is not, and has never been, a standalone issue. Over the past 20 or 30 years, in a context of increasing concern with access to water in terms of quality, particularly in the global south, there has been an extraordinary amount of activism around water: access, struggle, ownership, etc. What has that done to systematically change the configuration of access to water? Almost nothing. Clearly the highly triaged and uneven access and distribution of water is a major issue. It’s the number one cause of premature mortality in the world. Poor access to water is a concern that many activists share. Something has to be done. But the focus on the specificity of the issue is politically stifling.

Beyond Fatalism: Renewing Working-Class Politics

March 26, 2023 Sam Gindin, The Bullet. Strategize! Canada, Labor Movement, Politics, popular power, Working Class

“We need to ask ourselves,” Leo Panitch and Donald Swartz stated in the third edition of From Consent to Coercion, “whether free pertains to those who do business or whether it pertains also to the majority of Canadians who do not do business.” Their book, now a classic, focused on a critical expression of the tension between liberal democratic principles and capitalist realities: the substantive right of workers to strike. Canadian workers were officially granted the basic democratic right to form unions, but the substance of that right – the withdrawal by workers of their labour power – was regularly suspended when workers successfully used it.

Alex Vitale, Who Wrote The Book On Police Reform, Says Issue Is Politics

February 23, 2023 Lee Camp, Mintpress News. Resistance Report Police, Police Abolition, Police abuse, Politics

Alex S. Vitale is a Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College and coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project. His book, “The End of Policing,” has been highly praised, and he has become a well-known figure in debates over policing in America. In this interview with Lee Camp, Vitale shares his insights into the recent events surrounding the murder of Tyree Nichols and the fight against Cop City. According to Vitale, the issue of policing needs to be understood as a political issue. For example, during the Trump administration, Operation Relentless Pursuit was launched to target six American cities controlled by Democrats, including Memphis.

Congressional Chaos – Deals And Trades

January 10, 2023 Sara Flounders, Workers World. Educate! Congress, Kevin McCarthy, Politics, US politicians

The U.S. Congress’ dysfunction was on full display through 15 rounds of votes for the “Speaker of the House” position. The rivalry, trading, dealing, secret and public concessions, within the Republican Party, and even physical scuffles were in clear view. The multiple votes and the open floor fights are a preamble of the coming session. During the theater of numerous votes, the House of Representatives ground to a halt. Without a Speaker elected, no other body in the House can function or even convene meetings, nor can the new members of the House be sworn in. Since the Republicans had a majority (a slim majority, 222 Republicans, 212 Democrats) in the House, they chose the Speaker, who is right behind the vice president in the list for succession to the presidency. But 218 votes were needed to make Kevin McCarthy, a conservative California Republican with eight terms in Congress, Speaker.

Chris Hedges: America’s Theater Of The Absurd

January 9, 2023 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Educate! Chris Hedges, Kevin McCarthy, Politics, Wealthy Elites

Our political class does not govern. It entertains. It plays its assigned role in our fictitious democracy, howling with outrage to constituents and selling them out. The Squad and the Progressive Caucus have no more intention of fighting for universal health care, workers’ rights or defying the war machine than the Freedom Caucus fights for freedom. These political hacks are modern versions of Sinclair Lewis’s slick con artist Elmer Gantry, cynically betraying a gullible public to amass personal power and wealth. This moral vacuity provides the spectacle, as H.G. Wells wrote, of “a great material civilization, halted, paralyzed.” It happened in Ancient Rome. It happened in Weimar Germany. It is happening here.

Three Years Since 2019 Protests In Iraq, Most Demands Remain Unfulfilled

October 31, 2022 People's Dispatch. Resist! Finance and the Economy, Iraq, Mass Action, Politics

This October marks the third anniversary of the 2019 popular protests in Iraq. On Tuesday, October 25, a large number of people gathered in the Tahrir square in capital Baghdad and paid homage to the people who were killed in the protests. They raised slogans in support of what has been termed by the protesters as the Tishreen movement. The countrywide protests in 2019, rooted in the long-term grievances of people against successive governments, went on for months. Before the global COVID-19 outbreak forced them to end, the protests were successful in forcing the then government led by Adil Abdul Mahdi to resign, putting the ruling classes on the defensive and pressing for reforms.

Peru Is Engaged In A Political War

February 20, 2022 Gustavo A. Maranges, Resumen English. Educate! Neoliberalism, Pedro Castillo, Peru, Politics

The political landscape in Peru is pretty complicated these days. The country has been living a political crisis for years due to the desire of a small minority to control the country both economically and politically. From 2016 until today, five people have occupied the presidential chair. All of them have faced tremendous resistance from Congress, which impeached two of them and threatened to do it with the other two, including the current President Pedro Castillo. The last remarkable event of these tireless attempts by Congress to impeach Castillo was unveiled by the weekly “Hildebrandt en sus Trece”. According to the outlet, two politicians, together with some Congress members from the opposition, including the Congress President Maria del Carmen Alba, gathered in the hotel “Casa Andina de Miraflores” to discuss the best way to get President Castillo out of the way.

‘Politics As Usual’ Will Never Be A Solution To The Current Climate Threat

February 13, 2022 C.J. Polychroniou, Truthout. Create! climate crisis, Democracy, Environment, Politics

There is an ever-growing consensus that the climate crisis represents humanity’s greatest problem. Indeed, global warming is more than an environmental crisis — there are social, political, ethical and economic dimensions to it. Even the role of science should be exposed to critical inquiry when discussing the dimensions of the climate crisis, considering that technology bears such responsibility for bringing us to the brink of global disaster. This is the theme of my interview with renowned scholar Richard Falk. For decades, Richard Falk has made immense contributions in the areas of international affairs and international law from what may be loosely defined as the humanist perspective, which makes a break with political realism and its emphasis on the nation-state and military power.

Loyalty

September 10, 2021 Dakotah Lilly, Popular Resistance. Educate! Left Politics, Politics, Socialism

Whenever I wear one of my many shirts, necklaces, or buttons adorned with the faces of great leaders such as Hugo Chavez, Nestor and Cristina Kirchner, Che, or Evita, I will commonly get a comment in real life or on social media about how I am “worshipping” or engaging in a “cult of personality”. It’s not true, what I am exhibiting is loyalty, which is expressly different because of a simple fact; this political loyalty is a two way street. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, two time president of Argentina and current Vice President put it succinctly on the day of her inauguration as VP in 2019. She says that “Loyalty, that value that some do not understand and think that loyalty is only following a political leader. No! Loyalty between a politician and the people must be two points. The People are not stupid.

What Mike Gravel Meant

June 28, 2021 Joe Lauria, Consortium News. Educate! Democracy, Media, Mike Gravel, Politics

I first met Sen. Mike Gravel in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York in early 2006 after a mutual friend told me Gravel was contemplating running for president. Our Waldorf breakfast lasted four hours. I was surprised that such an American politician existed. He seemed to lack the expected self-importance. More incredibly, I agreed with him on every point of public policy–foreign and domestic. Having been a reporter for decades–I was a correspondent for The Boston Globe at the time–I’d surpassed the average citizen’s cynicism about people in government. But here was a former United States senator questioning the most fundamental and seemingly unshakeable myths that underpin a brutal status-quo.

Scheer Intelligence: The Political Cartoon Is Dead

March 26, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Art, Cartoons, Creative Resistance, Politics

Political cartoons have helped us make sense of the world in which we live since they first appeared in the 18th century–though some, like the iconic cartoonist Mr. Fish, argue the art predates even newspapers. Although it’s an art form that is in many ways dying out, there are a precious few political cartoonists out there that still understand the importance of speaking truth to power through insightful humor and visual commentary. On this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” the inimitable Dwayne Booth (AKA Mr. Fish) joins host Robert Scheer to talk about his life, his passion, his art, and...

Building Black Working Class Power In Maryland

February 22, 2021 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Black Working Class, Elections, Maryland, Politics

The state of Maryland and Baltimore City in particular have been dominated by Democratic Party politics for decades, yet many residents struggle under a repressive police force, a lack of affordable housing, gentrification, inadequate investment in schools and in majority black communities, environmental pollution, and more. Black workers in the state have spent the past ten years building their own political structure, the Ujima People's Progress Party, to challenge the Democrats and now having established a base of support, they are working to achieve ballot access. Clearing the FOG speaks with the state organizer, Nnamdi Lumumba, about building black worker power in the state by engaging with communities around the struggles they are facing, building self-sufficiency and providing political education. He explains why this is necessary at this moment in time and how it fits into the broader picture of building political power on the Left.

Assassination Strengthens Iranian Hardliners

November 30, 2020 Medea Benjamin and Ariel Gold, Consortium News. Educate! Assassination, Iran, Iran Nuclear Deal, Politics

Israel used all four years of Trump’s presidency to entrench its systems of occupation and apartheid. Now that Joe Biden has won the U.S. election, the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, likely by Israel with the go-ahead from the U.S. administration, is a desperate attempt to use Trump’s last days in office to sabotage Biden’s chances of successful diplomacy with Iran. Biden, Congress and the world community can’t let that happen. On Friday Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated in the Iranian city of Absard outside of Tehran.

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