03-10-2014 17:55
| Analysis
| Social Struggles
| Workers' Movements
| World
Large historical prototypes are rare, to speak of fitting ones. The more likely scenario is that, while everything is being done to exclude any direct repetition, the material limitations of that effort are the new environment in which the old conflict of ideas will reproduce. In its own historical reference to the cultural monstrosities of imperialist and colonialist Europe, dialectic materialism is used to talk of the tragedy and the farce. But occasionally such prototypes do occur as conscious moves. E. g. when when the Antifascist coalition of WWII broke up into the containment vessel of the Unitednations Security Council, the fault line running through the Nazi state in a surprise move on the model of 1938 (see Mar 15, 2014) was turned into a reenaction of the “limes” (though only for one generation rather than six or seven). But while the Roman wall was an offensive installation run by foreign mercenaries at a significant distance to any densely populated territories, what is to be drawn up as a historical prototype in this instance is an unequivocally defensive measure. Molotov served Ribbentrop the famous cocktail of one portion appeasement plus a double shot of red-coloured imperialism to change the “great game,” and maybe without that Leningrad might have fallen. Ulbricht drew Gehlen a line into the sand and preempted thermonuclear war in Europe before there was any “hotline.” And when the Soviet Union found the beginning of its end in Afghanistan, Khomeini showed a red line to Carter and prevented yet another military coup in Persia, laying the foundation for the current system of the Islamic Republic in which any ballot sheets are filtered by a structure of councils and meta-councils that freezes the country´s unresolved external fraud cases and is intended to shield elections from becoming a gateway to their extension.
Read more
>>
30-09-2014 11:40
| Analysis
| Indymedia
| Social Struggles
| London
| World
This is about NeoCons deregulating of everything. Main items first: the courts system has been scrapped. The system that did exist up to a few years ago is no longer. Under that system, which was near-accessible, at least up to certain stages which the nearly-citizenry could use. There was, at least some notional scope to put the claimant’s assertions before the court. That has been abolished,,,
Read more
>>
26-09-2014 15:27
| Analysis
| Anti-militarism
| Social Struggles
| World
While the mean spirits of the terror gang calling itself “the West” are being drawn into the abyss of their own ridiculous glorification, desecrating the graves of the few exceptional characters among the fathers who cautioned them against just that, something significant is happening at the border between India and China. This time it is not state tents being put up like “Occupy” stickers or cyber soldiers trying to clean the brushes of technological propaganda. Nor is it Tibetans blessing foreign evildoers or Uyghurs desperately struggling for the attention of a betrayed audience. It is the raising realisation that with the decapitation of Hindu fascism of the “Karma” type to the headless corpse of “Modi” nationalism (see [2013], [2014]), a portion of India turns out to be more Chinese than China. Yet while nationalist China is a sluggish conglomerate only very gradually realising the aberration of industrialism and growth, the foreign Maoists are unfolding a small but decisive influence on its surroundings. How that is functioning is best to be explained with the Diamond Peddler Paradox: If a couple purchases a diamond to celebrate each other, it is impossible to predict how long their marriage will last and whether the stored amount of carbon has any influence on that. Yet for the diamond peddler who knows the society they live in, it is precisely possible to specify the average time after which a diamond of that size will be back on his desk. That is so because for the true lover there is only one adored partner, but for the commercial peddler any exchange is like the other without distinction. Likewise, industrialist China maintains the hallucination of being able to purchase an uncounted number of corporate identities, while the convinced Marxist-Leninist-Maoist sees only one way to a lasting future.
Read more
>>
21-09-2014 00:34
| Analysis
| Anti-Nuclear
| Culture
| London
| World
This is a detailed 3,000 word account of the results of the Scottish referendum on Independence with the party held by the Yes campaign in Scotland's largest city used as a backdrop. There are 20 photos included.
Read more
>>
20-09-2014 14:09
| Analysis
| Culture
| Public sector cuts
| London
| World
The 2014 referendum on Scottish Independence was the focus of worldwide media attention. How much was the result affected by outsiders? Dr Henry Kissinger advised Scots to vote `No` - here is what he may have said.
Read more
>>
19-09-2014 10:06
| Analysis
| Iraq
| Terror War
| World
I pretend to put myself behind you in order to make me appear bigger than I really am. (Pretend, because since the Obama-Morales affair airspace servitude is recognized as the unequivocal hallmark of vassal states, and in this instance it is not the case.) With this clownish gesture the Damascus regime has exposed the phoney coalition of hate mongers that the military-industrial complex came up with to out-compete the Islamic State on terms of human rights. Actually not, as the aggressors have literally voiced themselves their ambition is not to improve but to degrade. Apparently the imperialist does not understand the abolitionist rigorousity of the anti-occupation campaign as a consequence of the abuses of Abu Ghraib but is still filling the trough for its uniformed rapists. This immature response proves that by establishing its own foreign policy entirely independent of the nationalist state, the Islamic state has hit a nerve of the military-industrial complex. These empty suits get mad at the mirrors which are being held to them, until the doctor comes to remind everyone that the knife they imagine to see on the screen is merely a metaphor of the artist referring to an eavesdropping warrant in their own hands. In another interpretation, the followers of Mohammed have heated the axe of war in the glowing fire of Abolition, and since they passed it to Obama and Cameron the two are crying out in pain as they both burned their hands.
Read more
>>
13-09-2014 20:01
| Analysis
| Education
| Globalisation
| London
| World
A brief youtube video which indicates the connection between the charity Ark (Absolute Return for Kids) and the Dutroux Scandal and legal threats from Schillings to remove this story from the internet.
Read more
>>
13-09-2014 19:42
| Analysis
| Indymedia
| Other Press
| London
| World
1940GMT 13 Sept 2014 The London Guardian's Alan Rusbridger (who has erased the Manchester bit almost without trace) has announced a raft of measures that take him much nearer to Murdoch than would have been previously thought. In justifying the move, Rusbridger has resorted to complacently quoting Mr Scott, the very overly triumphed longest serving Editor of a Century ago. But Mr Rusbridger is, typically, being over the top in his boasts.
Read more
| 1 comment
>>
11-09-2014 16:50
| Analysis
| Climate Chaos
| Iraq
| World
When rainforest covers tropical land, it accumulates all that it needs in a layer of organic soil that over the centuries slowly spreads across infertile rocks and sand. This thin blanket keeps nutrients and water in small scale systems where they circulate through all stages of plant and animal life. Desertification is being defined as the loss of this treasure, and in contrast to its accumulation can kick in in relatively limited time-spans. Once a forest is entirely removed, wind and weather erode the Earth and leave the ground in a condition unsuitable for human life. This is the kind of landscape that forms the background of the Islamic State messages, and unlike in other places in this one it has been there for longer than any of humanity´s written historical records can explain. It is only known that humans lived in the area before it became a desert for a time compared to which even the horizon of documented history appears quite short. Though the background of the messages might appear coincidental, the occurrence of other such details signifies that it is not, even if the originators of the videos just took what they could find in the area for their filming. In the middle of that dead landscape, the orange colour of the missing rainforest soil reappears as the last cloth of the executed. When all the vegetation is gone, it is all that is left and once it is openly visible very soon it will be gone as well, and so do the lives of these filmed in it. It was Al-Baghdadi who declared that the purpose of the conflict was for everyone to find a green garden at the cool river, as opposed to the desert of the present, and the climate meltdowns expected of its future. What can be seen now is still far away from this vision, but from beyond the bias of the cultures whose core narratives relate to that history of regional loss, it is precisely pinching the root cause of the problem: The existence of empires so large that the small caste that rules them is still larger than the uncontacted people they conquer is in the ultimate consequence a lethal threat to the planet because these empires scorch the Earth.
Read more
| 1 comment
>>
05-09-2014 02:43
| Analysis
| Ecology
| Social Struggles
| Sheffield
| World
Why is paying people to cut down trees like paying them not to cut down trees? Well, do these two apparent opposites actually result in opposite outcomes...? Or do they both, by equating trees with money, turn them into resources, and so effectively put them under the control of rich foreigners, with predictable consequences. In our first hour, Jeff Conant explores "REDD", the World Bank's forest protection racket for the global south. In our second hour, Max Haiven looks at the extreme and ongoing financialization of the "developed" world, resulting in a damage to society and personal identities that while difficult to quantify is nevertheless all too real. He recommends we "rededicate ourselves to moving beyond individualism and this idea that we are all competitive agents by actively building grassroots concrete effort to reclaim the commons by actively building grassroots efforts in the here and now.
Read more
>>
28-08-2014 20:39
| Analysis
| History
| Social Struggles
| Sheffield
| World
A stark contrast of material for you this week. We begin with an uplifting reading of Toni "El Suizo" Rüttimann giving the flavour of his latest expedition to Myanmar, in which he built half a dozen bridges of up to 100m in length in a 12 day period. Most of the show is a detailed exposition of old world malfeasance - Kevin Ryan on who he suspects committed the terrorism of Sep 11th - Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and a bunch of lesser known names, some of whom have been quite successful in evading the limelight, but all of whom appear to be covert operatives for the Deep State.
Read more
>>
14-08-2014 11:52
| Analysis
| Public sector cuts
| Social Struggles
| World
MANILA, Philippines–One of the most vocal critics of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) in the House of Representatives was allocated the economic stimulus fund that the Supreme Court recently declared unconstitutional.
Read more
>>
11-08-2014 14:46
| Analysis
| Iraq
| Social Struggles
| World
Before arguing: Nothing of this must happen. And of course all it would take to avoid it is nuclear disarmament. If not of the entire world tomorrow, then at least of that geographical region next week. The Islamic State, or Islamic state, to make clear that it is not as much of a name than of an item, after all is merely a response to the shadow of massive destruction which the region has been suffering since the Islamic empire – actually a Christian empire gone Islamic – is over. It is this perpetuated apocalyptic threat which has made the nation states projected and the national borders drawn by the European and American empires obsolete. There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but they could enter the airspace any time. The Islamic state however produces the second most sustainable and fastest growing challenge against imperialism that is available in this day and age because it does, in the Marxist sense, have nothing to lose except being a target of weapons of massive destruction (see June 26, 2014). As the morbidity of the dying empire has exceeded the threshold of medical attention, the latter once again did fail a significant test: Faced with the essential health facts bare of any accusation, it resorted to suicidal aggression without explicable perspective. All but surprising and in fact earlier predicted as imminent (see Aug 30, 2013) this reaction and the propaganda burst coming with it provide a striking image of the North American psyche: The genocidal apparatchiks are humiliating the status quo artists into smashing the abandoned idealism of the megalomaniac hawks. The Islamic state may be incalculable, but the capitalist empire of suicide suffers more such death than combat killings every day, and its suicide army scares the population into still higher rates.
Read more
>>
08-08-2014 17:30
| Analysis
| Health
| Technology
| World
Seemingly unrelated to each other, two current developments make the world appear like a patient from whose bed it seems difficult to walk away. A hygiene catastrophe is likely to become more deadly than war, and unlike in the Fukushima case in this instance out in the open. Second, a tsunami of rumours about internet privacy breaches has stirred up many who otherwise share little else with each other. Each of this shall be discussed and analysed here with the due precision and brevity to provide the essential knowledge to extinguish these catastrophes with their roots. But first it is necessary to understand how the two relate to each other. It is no mere coincidence that such profound threats against the bodily and mental health of huge populations are occurring in concert. The two layers of symptoms are resulting from the same health catastrophe which has affected the world and expresses itself both in neglect and in repression. What now is visible to the bare eye are the side-effects of a disease befalling species like this and its amplification of the conditions of its own existence at the price of the survival of these species. The full image of that disease, how it can be recognised and how it can be prevented, including its name, will be provided in this report.
Read more
>>
05-08-2014 14:41
| Analysis
| Anti-militarism
| Palestine
| World
How many Israelis does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: One. Actually three, one to demolish the house, another one to bomb the power station, and a third one to burn down the school. But with the latest advanced technology the three jobs can be merged into one. Yet even that is not the whole truth, since besides these getting their hands on it there are millions of them wallowing in fear of understanding the concept of (in-)appropriateness, and without this collective immaturity the aggression could not take that much room. Even though Hamas is as little a light bulb as Israel is a ball-bearing, there is a grain of truth in the image. When the big picture of the conflict that became a massacre is being scaled down to human proportions it becomes clear what needs to be changed: In a mixed community, an immigrant restaurant owner massacred his neighbours after some of them began talking to his customers, after he had for quite a while brushed aside their cautious but regular complaints about a low-intensity but stressful whistling noise from the facilities. After the rampage it turns out that the neighbours were right all along and all that was necessary was the replacement of a ball-bearing in the cooling system. Inside the military apparatus of Israel, there has been an element over the point of urgent exchange for quite a while. But now after it has responded to the analysis of its motivations (see Jul 28, 2014) with increased aggression a more drastic cut is to be made.
Read more
>>