Learning to use communications technology, while valuable, should not be overemphasized at the expense of learning the principles of organizing. While computer-based research and education has expanded our access to information, learning to evaluate information for its applicability requires greater focus. Analysis of communications in conflict, otherwise known as psychological warfare, thus serves as a prerequisite to effective engagement in netwar.
Comprehending how activism functions in this context, helps to distinguish between consciousness-raising and capacity-building. While not mutually exclusive, they are also not synonymous.
As more young people become involved in politics, they will, like us, live and learn from their mistakes. What they need to know in the digital age, is that connecting with millions through mass communication means little if...
Americans might be able to secure socialist concessions from the two capitalist political parties, but it isn't very likely. Social Security was only garnered under the threat of mass insurrection against the capitalists that caused the Great Depression. Securing universal health care, housing vouchers, and free college education is not going to happen until we elect enough socialists to Congress.
In the meantime, withdrawing support from the capitalist parties and giving our support to socialist parties and candidates will give them the voice they need to push our two-party capitalist state toward a multi-party socialist republic.
When Michel Chossudovsky wrote his seminal book The Globalisation of Poverty, the dismembering of Yugoslavia was still underway. As a project of globalization, the orchestrated monetary attack on the socialist republic, that culminated in civil war, served to illustrate the fact that globalization is not just an economic model, but a plan of war. That war, which is by definition global, is quite simply the exercise of power by the financial sector in undermining the powers of the state to the benefit of the free market.
As states cede their social obligations in favor of transfers of public wealth to private accounts, all public needs suffer, and perhaps more importantly, become dependent on private rules, no matter how criminal, stingy or punitive. This, is...
A while back, I wrote about the fabric of identity, and if insufficiently authentic, how it can unravel. In our consumer society, identity is closely associated with possession, and as millions become dispossessed, their identity crumbles. Losing one's possessions in a culture of imbeciles (a term used here to indicate political illiteracy) can make one vulnerable to recruitment by all sorts of ideologues, and this can lead to pathological behavior. And in a state where access to quality counseling often depends on a measure of possessions, the dispossessed are adrift.
We may indeed witness a return of active domestic terrorism in the form of Christian Patriot militias, but unlike the farm crisis of the 1980s and the millenarian mania of the 1990s, this...
As the Obama Administration navigates us into the new Dark Ages, it is inevitable that random adaptations will emerge. Necessity being the mother of invention, new means of survival and creativity are indeed already springing up. As of last week, a dozen states were exploring the establishment of state banks in order to protect state employee pensions and benefits from Wall Street, and several states were considering single payer health plans to guard against federal betrayal in that regard.
Admittedly, we are in for some soul-searching disruptions as millions more are laid off, foreclosed, or terminated from private health care. Yet, we aren't the first generations to encounter wide-scale government corruption and economic failure. Yes, it is systematic and global, but it isn't entirely...
From 1980-2000, the government of Peru fought a civil war against indigenous guerrilla fighters in the Andes mountains. Last year, the Peruvian government fought to a standstill with the indigenous communities over the right of indigenous peoples to determine their own future under international law. The Peruvian state now plans to expedite dam and mining projects on indigenous lands using forced relocation of indigenous communities. The civil war could resume.
Murder and theft are big business on Wall Street, and if one looks at almost any sector of financial investment, murder and theft aren't hard to find. Sometimes it's as obvious as the war and energy industries, other times it's as obscure as banking and health. The invisibility of murder and theft on a global scale is aided by media that portrays this official US policy as defense and development. Nevertheless, if one examines the situations where this policy is deployed by US troops, advisors and mercenaries, murder and theft is the only conclusion an honest person can reach.
As the Obama Administration perpetuates this policy of murder and theft on behalf of the industries it represents, the lives of indigenous peoples worldwide...
Paintings, drawings and old manuscripts
are protected from the criminals and vandals
in the museums with security cameras,
laser beams and guards.
But who will protect and defend the Artist
from the crazy politicians,
KGB or Gestapo,
criminals and stalkers,
extremists and zombies?
This is the Art Security Alarm.
Hands off the artists and writers!
Hands off our freedom!
In the wake of the colossal betrayal of Americans by the Obama Administration, Cyrano's examines the move toward state-owned banks as a means of fighting the financial cartel on Wall Street.
