Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Chicago Libre
Privatization of education in the US is not yet encountering organized resistance like in Mexico, but as Wall Street and the White House continue to impose this anti-democratic initiative and others on American society, the day is approaching when anti-privatization strikes in Chicago may mirror those in Colombia. As poverty and social exclusion intensifies as a result of neoliberal fascism and its privatizing agenda, the streets in America could soon look like Oaxaca Libre.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Dollars and Sense
While most mainstream journalism today consists of reprinted corporate press releases, there are still a few investigative journalists who might benefit from a course on illicit finance, financial secrecy and asset recovery. Since so much of what is going wrong in the world is due to financial fraud, the course at City University London in November might be just the ticket.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Creating a Submissive Citizenry
Austerity is not merely a larcenous agenda by federal governments in cahoots with Wall Street and the European Central Bank; it is equally valuable as a tool of oppression of the populations impoverished by the financial services empire.
The audacity of austerity's exponents also serves a purpose: transforming economic desperation into a sense of fear and hopelessness creates a submissive citizenry inoculated against revolutionary politicization. Deprived of the resources necessary to organize a viable opposition to the empire, these downtrodden citizens thus become a reservoir of resentment from which modern states can mobilize sycophants to intimidate and outmaneuver democratic reformers.
In the absence of resources for resistance to austerity, the oppositionally politicized are tempted and encouraged to mobilize disorganized, but this only ensures their ineffectiveness. Marches, protests and demonstrations are means, not ends; unprepared to challenge the power of empire, they demonstrate at best a false hope, at worst a romantic delusion.
The audacity of austerity's exponents also serves a purpose: transforming economic desperation into a sense of fear and hopelessness creates a submissive citizenry inoculated against revolutionary politicization. Deprived of the resources necessary to organize a viable opposition to the empire, these downtrodden citizens thus become a reservoir of resentment from which modern states can mobilize sycophants to intimidate and outmaneuver democratic reformers.
In the absence of resources for resistance to austerity, the oppositionally politicized are tempted and encouraged to mobilize disorganized, but this only ensures their ineffectiveness. Marches, protests and demonstrations are means, not ends; unprepared to challenge the power of empire, they demonstrate at best a false hope, at worst a romantic delusion.
