Howard Zinn: Anarchism Shouldn't Be a Dirty Word

By Ziga Vodovnik, CounterPunch.

In this interview, Zinn explains why anarchism is often ridiculed as violent and chaotic.

Howard Zinn, 85, is a Professor Emeritus of political science at Boston University. He was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1922 to a poor immigrant family. He realized early in his youth that the promise of the "American Dream", that will come true to all hard-working and diligent people, is just that -- a promise and a dream. During World War II he joined US Air Force and served as a bombardier in the "European Theatre." This proved to be a formative experience that only strengthened his convictions that there is no such thing as a just war. It also revealed, once again, the real face of the socio-economic order, where the suffering and sacrifice of the ordinary people is always used only to higher the profits of the privileged few. Entire article here.

The Great Depression 2008 - It can't happen to us....can it?”

The Market Oracle
By: Andy_Sutton

Webster's defines complacency as “1.satisfaction or contentment 2. smug self-satisfaction” There is probably not a better word to describe the current state of perception with regard to economic and financial malady. I had an interesting conversation the other night about exactly this topic and the individual I was speaking with had an overriding belief that we cannot suffer economically simply because the current generation is not prepared to deal with it. While I certainly agree with the latter assertion, the former continues to baffle me. I am certainly not prepared to deal with a lengthy hospital stay as the result of a horrific car crash, but that alone doesn't cloak me in immunity from having an accident. The reasoning is so broken and flawed, yet it is often all we get in terms of a perception of what is going on. Read entire article here.

Save Our People and Our Planet

The people of planet Earth have never before found themselves in such a precarious position. We face a multitude of challenges and problems unlike anything before. Because of its size and power, the United States stands at an intersection of historic proportions. We as a nation and we as a people have an appointment with one of two vastly different destinies. The choice we make could damage the planet forever; alter, slow down and possibly stop all human social and technological evolution. We could also begin a transition period that will ultimately end with our eventual evolution into a Type 1 Civilization.

Choice #1 could precipitate a Dark Age that could last a thousand years.

The last Dark Age was a period in European history that started around 800 AD and lasted until the beginning of the Renaissance. The era became known as the Dark Ages because of the introduction of Christian theocracy as the only guideline in all fields of endeavor. This created a halt to all progress, a suppression of all scientific knowledge and centuries of stagnation. The progress of Western civilization virtually stopped. The knowledge gained by the scholars of the classical age was lost and for nearly 600 years, life was governed by superstitions and fears which fueled ignorance.

The imposition of Christian theocracy was used as a means to an end by the ruling class. The driving forces behind the motivations for its imposition were rooted in a desire to stop change and all its possible cultural ramifications. Scholars of the classical age and their knowledge were seen as the seeds for the budding curiosity of early scientific minds. The ruling classes’ reaction to this threat of change and a threat to their power was to destroy the temples of knowledge built by the ancients and then salt the earth where their foundations had rested. The success of their reaction to change was complete and their domination of the culture was unchallenged for hundreds of years.

The progression of knowledge and advancements of science today have a “what if” quality to them. What if, we had not lost 600 years to ignorance and superstition? Would we already be part of a Type 1 civilization? Would the petroleum age be a mere footnote in our ancient history? Would threats to our planet’s environment be fanciful tales set in a world long ago? Would all the threats of war, famine and disease be distant problems that no longer posed a threat to mankind?

The warning signs for the coming of a new Dark Age swirl around our daily lives like demons from the past. Religious fundamentalism is rearing its ugly head all around the world. Here in the United States, we have seen a resurgence of religious extremism and corresponding increases in intolerance, xenophobia, and pseudo science belief systems like “Intelligent Design”. We also can see the warning signs of the coming of a new Dark Age in our news media, political parties and our governments. In the United States, an alliance between corporations, government and our news entities has produced a toxic mix of rigid control which is enabled and perpetuated by a powerful propaganda machine. Corporate America has essentially bought and paid for the ability to control the social, political and economic dynamics of our nation.

Our first choice is actually a choice to resist the power structures reaction. We must resist because the threats posed by the coming scientific and cultural revolutions of the 21st Century will most likely be the tipping point for the power structure in the United States. Seeing the loss of their ability to control the hearts, minds, social, political and economic dynamics of our country, they will react. Just like the reaction that started the first Dark Age, this reaction will be powerful and ruthless. A growing array of tracking, control and monitoring tools coupled with the power to project and maintain a sophisticated propaganda machine will give them almost unlimited power over our people. With total control as their motivation, they will use this power to stop and or alter significantly scientific and cultural evolution. They will plunge our country and then the world into the next Dark Age.

Choice #2 could lead our people to the doorstep of a Type 1 Civilization.

We as a species stand on the threshold of a new beginning. Our technology and science are poised to completely reshape our world in ways that we cannot begin to imagine. Recent advances and real world applications in genetics, bioengineering and nanotechnology are already beginning to reshape our world.

The ability to disseminate information and news instantaneously to anyone anywhere is creating a world wide collective consciousness. We are seeing the beginnings of this collective consciousness in all the industrialized countries which have connected populations.

Shared experience, information and knowledge are the foundations for this growing collective consciousness. With personal computers and the internet as the delivery mechanisms, we are collectively being exposed to information and opinion about everything everywhere, at the same time in the same way.

The decentralization of news and information gathering systems has empowered millions of people to understand that they now have a voice. They can know the same facts, they can act on the same problems, they can address the same issues and most importantly, they can do all these things, together. Computers and wireless mobile telecommunication systems have enabled millions of people to be continuously connected to family, friends and larger user defined networks.

Our second choice must be purchased by the desire of ordinary citizens using their own sophistication and intelligence to break free, at long last from the chains that have shackled the human race for thousands of years. For the first time, our technology offers us the ability to stand united. For the first time, ordinary people can stand united against the forces that would propagate fear and ignorance to control us. For the first time in the history of mankind, people throughout the world can decide their own destiny and the destiny of the planet.

Divided, we allow the forces of control to triumph once again.

United, we will bring a new world to the people and to the planet!

McCain - Clinton plan to run on the same ticket in November!

Rumor has it that Fox news will break a story later this week about secret negotiations between John McCain and Hillary Clinton about their plans to run as a team in the November election. There is talk ranging from Hillary as VP to a co-presidency arrangement of some sort. It appears that Roger Ailes has taken a liking to Hillary Clinton and wants to put her on the team. Just when you think this election can't produce anymore surprises - a DemoRepublican ticket is born. What are the chances?

The Olympic Games, China and the Loss of our Manufacturing Jobs

This week marked the beginning of the corporate media’s celebration of Communist China’s entry into the world of legitimate, respected and honored countries. China’s hosting of the Olympic Games provides them with undeserved recognition and legitimacy. The corporate ruling class has foisted this gift of China’s Olympic hosting upon our people like a common charlatan selling death in a bottle and calling it the elixir of life. Millions of our jobs now exist in a place without freedom, without labor laws and without environmental protections. So we are now asked to accept and embrace this monster called China. They ask us to celebrate its coming of age. Perhaps we should ask the people of Martinsville, Virginia if they feel like celebrating this powerful new economy called China.

Globalization, trade and recession take a toll on Martinsville, Virginia
By Tony Pugh | McClatchy Newspapers

MARTINSVILLE, VA. — For nearly 100 years, the furniture industry powered the economy in this struggling town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Now it's dying.
Martinsville's decline from a secure working-class town to a fading industrial shell of16,000 people is a familiar story in scores of other American cities as the downside of globalization and trade policies takes a toll on the nation's manufacturing base. Foreign competition, mainly from China, has trimmed more than 120,000 furniture industry jobs nationwide since 2000. That's about a third of the industry's U.S. workforce, said industry analyst Jerry Epperson. Read entire article here.

The Creation of a Permanent Underclass in the United States

One does not have to look very far to see the changes that are taking place in our economy. Globalization and the resulting outsourcing of large segments of our manufacturing base are changing the economic landscape of the United States. If you combine outsourcing with the current exponential rate of technological change, you have a recipe for worker dislocation or underemployment, on a scale never before imagined. We are quickly moving to a point where millions of America workers will not have the formal education, and or technical skills to work in a 21st Century information economy. With the absence of massive intervention, that is aimed at education and retraining, the United States is poised to become economically polarized on an almost medieval scale. As documented in the following article; less education and marketable skill sets is translating into low wage jobs and the creation of a permanent underclass.

For less-educated workers, good jobs will be harder to find
By Tony Pugh | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The steady loss of "good jobs" by less-educated workers has left them more vulnerable to recession than at any time in nearly 30 years, and signs are mounting that a recession is either already here or coming soon.
High-school dropouts and even high-school graduates who lack specialized job training have seen their already limited employment prospects steadily decline during America's decades-long shift from a manufacturing-based economy to a service economy. Read entire article here.

John McCain’s Geriatric Express

John McCain’s Geriatric Express is about to set sail on a none stop, hell bent for leather, abortion in the making, run for the highest office in the land. The maverick, the reluctant ass kisser, the want-a-be religious conservative, the born-again NeoCon has somehow floated to the top of the Republican cesspool of unelectable candidates.

In spite of his best efforts, to fit in with the crazy Nazis and religious lunatics who control the Republican Party, he is still remembered and punished for his former, “up yours attitude.” The power base of the Republican Party will never accept him and many in the lunatic wing of the party will forever see him as a threat to their principles. He dared once to refuse to goose step to their parade of lies and deceit. And for that, he will always be the swine of the party, a mere water carrier, but never part of the elite.

Now this poor old deluded man is going to fling himself headlong into the meat grinder of doom. If he happens to make it through the next grueling months, without dying or becoming seriously ill, his presidential bid will most likely end in an embarrassing defeat of historic proportions. For John McCain, the path from tool of the party, to joke of the nation will be mercifully short. Unfortunately, history will forever attach, (deluded pathetic loser) to any reference that contains his name.

The Republican Party is Dead!

The party of former President Ronald Reagan is in its death throes. The coalition of crazies and fascists that was once able to fool large blocks of Democratic voters is splitting into pieces. Karl Rove’s dream of a permanent Republican majority, (A Thousand Year Reich) are fading into the wet dream annals of history. How ironic it is that in pursuit of their dreams of an unbridled majority, Mr. Rove and his Republican co-conspirators have precipitated the very destruction of their party. The following article accurately documents the progress of the Republican Party’s death spasms.

Campaign exposes deep rifts in GOP coalition
By Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — The house that Ronald Reagan built is in danger of collapsing.
The coalition of fiscal conservatives, national security conservatives, anti-tax activists and social conservatives that rallied behind Reagan in 1980 and has defined the Republican Party ever since is coming apart at the seams heading into the 2008 election. Read more here.

Mike Huckabee: Clueless Moron

Mike Huck-a-bee’s recent unbelievable comments that used the volatile situation in Pakistan Friday, to make an argument for building a fence on the American border with Mexico, revealed the true quality of his presidential credentials. He told reporters in Orlando, Fla.: “We ought to have an immediate, very clear monitoring of our borders and particularly to make sure if there’s any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into the country.”

Comments like this clearly indicate that once again, the most ignorant turd is rising to the top of the Republican presidential cesspool. Perhaps Republican presidential candidates should be at least required to point to “important” countries on a large map. This exercise could be easily integrated into the next scripted Republican, “debate”.

What is truly amazing about this entire process is the fact, that after almost 8 years of suffering with an idiot in the White House, the Republicans seem to want to nominate yet another clueless moron. They evidently need 4 more years of failed leadership to help them understand what most of us already know: Religion, ignorance, and ideology can never replace knowledge, intelligence, and leadership.

Just Say No to Mike Huckabee

So, how do you spell desperate if you are a Republican? Apparently their most recent mutation of the English language involves substituting Mike Huck-a-bee, when the word desperate would normally be used. Now usually, I would not object to a minor alteration of a word or words in the context of their normal linguistic evolution. But this time the Republicans have just pushed the envelope far beyond the limits of good taste. The logical and nightmarish extension of this linguistic abomination would be to then use Mike Huck-a-bee as a substitute for the time tested words, the President of the United States. A nightmare of all nightmares might then be possible with combining of both these time tested words with the new Republican mutation, to produce the words, President Huck-a-bee.

We can not under any circumstances allow the Republicans to run roughshod over our language. Accepting Mike Huck-a-bee as a substitute for the word desperate would be linguistically misguided and illogical. Contact your elected Republican representatives today. Say yes to maintaining the integrity of the word desperate and no to Mike Huck-a-bee!

Iraq and Climate Change

Michael T. Klare | December 7, 2007
Foreign Policy In Focus

When our grandchildren and more distant descendants assemble in such classrooms as may be available and ask their teachers, “Why did our ancestors not take effective action to prevent the catastrophic effects of climate change?” one of the answers will surely be, “The war in Iraq.”

Long after this war is over, its legacy will live on in terms of this nation’s abject failure to address the climate change challenge during the early years of the twenty-first century, when it was still possible to avert global warming’s most horrendous effects. When these effects became more widely apparent, in the decades ahead, humanity will no doubt take vigorous action to deal with the problem – but by then it will be too late to prevent some of its most damaging consequences, such as dramatic sea-level rise, widespread drought and desertification, increased severe storm activity, and the collapse of vulnerable societies. Read entire article here

Non-job Unions of the 21st Century

There is a tsunami headed for the shores of the United States. Instead of a massive wave of water, it is an ever growing wave of technological change.

Ray Kurzweil - an inventor, an entrepreneur, an author, and a futurist explains the realities driving the oncoming technological tsunami: The whole 20th century, because we’ve been speeding up to this point, is equivalent to 20 years of progress at today’s rate of progress, and we’ll make another 20 years of progress at today’s rate of progress equal to the whole 20th century in the next 14 years, and then we’ll do it again in seven years. And because of the explosive power of exponential growth, the 21st century will be equivalent to 20,000 years of progress at today’s rate of progress, which is a thousand times greater than the 20th century, which was no slouch to change.

This very rate of change itself dictates and then necessitates major changes in both our workforce and the way it will potentially be organized. Increasingly, workers of the 21st century will be required to become adaptable skilled full time learners who are comfortable working simultaneously in both the real and the virtual world.

Needless to say, the workers who have 20th century skill sets and an aversion to change and/or education will be unable to compete in this new world. This unfortunate and potentially disastrous byproduct of this exponential growth rate will leave millions of low and middle skilled workers in untenable economic situations.

Traditional models for 20th century labor unions were organized by either trade or by industry. The protection of workers necessitated the formation and then the execution of principals or policies that deliberately slowed the rate of trade/industry changes.

The unions in the 21st century will evolve into decentralized web based affiliations that will organize the power and voice of like educated, like skilled workers. As opposed to their 20th century counterparts, these affiliations will feed off the change and evolution of technology. Instead of being organized in trades or industries, they will be focused around education, skill sets, and work experience.

Finally, traditional labor unions are for all intensive purposes, dead! And in their place, web based brotherhoods will nurture the workers of the future and help them to ride the coming wave of technological change.

Show Feinstein-Democrats the Door

It should be quite obvious by now to everyone, that we have a serious problem in the legislative branch of our government. Disappointment, disgust, and anger have destroyed all of the expectations we initially had for our recently elected democrats ability to actually bring about change. It is painfully obvious, that our legislative branch is the home of one bird with two very similar wings. This is not to say that there are not a few genuine progressives in the House and the Senate. There are of course a few, but there are only just a few. The rest are corporate democrats, whose true allegiance is to their corporate masters.

Corporate democrats use a progressive agenda as a smoke screen to distract from their missions of service to big business. Any crumbs that happen to fall from the table to benefit the people of the United States are purchased with massive legislative or tax gifts to Corporate America.

So when we clean our legislative house next year, we need to clean the entire house. It is not just the Republicans who need to be shown the door in the next election. There are also quite a few Democrats who need to join the ranks of the unemployed. We need to examine all the candidates, what their records are, what they stand for. We need to let the Republican like Feinstein-Democrats know that their days are numbered. And most of all, we need to make sure that all our representatives know that if we elect or reelect them, that they will be held accountable for their actions. Demand a government that can govern and representatives who will truly represent the will of the people. We have only our chains to lose and the world to win!

Our 21st Century Tomas deTorquemada

Rising from it's centuries long slumber, The Water Cure is resurrected by our religious madman, George Bush. Five hundred years later, we debate the obvious, we debate what was already decided during the Spanish Inquisition: Waterboarding is torture. Insanity and Christian religious extremism are alive and well in the 21st Century.

The Water Cure

The accused woman lay naked on an escalera, a ladder tipped so that her head was lower than her feet. The torturer had stretched her out to her full length and bound her tightly. Iron prongs held her jaws open. Her nostrils were stopped, allowing breathing only through her mouth. She struggled, but her bounds permitted little movement, and days of relentless questioning had left her exhausted. The torturer draped a piece of linen loosely over her open mouth. Jugs of water lined a nearby wall. Read entire article here.

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