Capitalism’s Self-Revealing Practices by NORMAN POLLACK

Don’t cry for me Argentina (although you might be next), because Greece is at the head of the line. Its mortal sin? Not only the billions owed international creditors, though that infuriates others in the European Union, the European Commission, and the IMF, all shock troops for global capitalism, behind which in each particular as well as the general framework …

Should Aid Money be Used as a Tool for Expanding Free Markets? – Nick Dearden

Ask a particularly extreme proponent of the free market how they see the future, and they might conjure up schools run by Coca-Cola and education programmes administered by Price Waterhouse Coopers. Or they might see hospitals operated as companies by nurse-entrepreneurs who compete for private equity funds. To the rest of us, this sounds like a nightmare. But it is …

Fight of the Century: Localization in a Globalized World – Richard Heinberg

As the world economy crashes against debt and resource limits, many countries are responding by attempting to salvage what are actually their most expendable features—corrupt, insolvent banks and bloated militaries—while leaving the majority of their people to languish in “austerity.” This has resulted in a series of uprisings, taking a variety of forms in different nations. Such conditions and responses …

Tens of Thousands Flood Dublin Demanding Abolition of Austerity TaxOn Water

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of the Irish capital on Saturday to demand the abolition of a controversial water tax—an austerity measure that protesters say violates the human right to this vital good. The campaign Right2Water announced in a press statement on Saturday that over 80,000 people from across Ireland took part in the demonstration. The group, whose …

THE ORWELLIAN RE-BRANDING OF “MASS SURVEILLANCE” AS MERELY “BULK COLLECTION”

Just as the Bush administration and the U.S. media re-labelled “torture” with the Orwellian euphemism “enhanced interrogation techniques” to make it more palatable, the governments and media of the Five Eyes surveillance alliance are now attempting to re-brand “mass surveillance” as “bulk collection” in order to make it less menacing (and less illegal). In the past several weeks, this is the clearly …