March 26, 2016

Besides the Bird, trending on Twitter: #DemocracyIn5Words

#DemocracyIn5Words:

A Future to Believe In

#BirdieSanders #StillSanders #Caucus4Sanders #NotMeUS

And my personal favorite from the Communist Party of Canada: Seize the Means of Production


Have a great day y'all, and go Bernie!

March 24, 2016

Argentina and Austerity

The question of who has benefitted the most from these government policies is crystal clear. As the New York Times recently noted, Macri’s policies favor influential landowners and members of the urban middle- and upper class who have access to US dollars. His policies also mean a drastic pay cut for the working class.

Argentina’s New Order

Newly elected Argentine president Mauricio Macri has inaugurated harsh austerity measures and quashed dissent.
by Adam Fabry ~ 3/24/16

It’s been four months since multi-millionaire businessman Mauricio Macri took office as president of Argentina, narrowly defeating Daniel Scioli — the uninspiring candidate of the Peronist ruling party Frente para la Victoria — in last November’s elections.

The win was a coup for the unapologetically pro-market, but ideologically neoconservative Cambiemos coalition, ending a twelve-year stretch of Peronist leadership. Since he was sworn in last December, Macri has wasted little time rolling back the populist policies of the Kirchner era.

In his inaugural speech Macri offered a potpourri of promises: ending the confrontational politics of his populist predecessor, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner; creating an independent judiciary; fighting corruption and drug trafficking; maintaining welfare programs; and eliminating poverty.

However, since then, Macri has moved swiftly to reconfigure the Argentinean economy along explicitly neoliberal lines — to the joy of domestic capitalists and international corporations alike. To do so he has relied on an unprecedented number of “emergency decrees” (similar to executive orders in the US) to bypass Congress — where the Frente para la Victoria has a majority in both houses ...

Much more here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/03/argentina-macri-kirchner-cambiemos/

March 23, 2016

For Fellow Misfits

Source: http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/how-to-be-an-anticapitalist-today/#.VvJquG8JwQ8.twitter

March 23, 2016

Documenting Deliberate Sabotage (Voting in AZ)

(TBF Note: Free and Fair voting in the United States of America? If you have been paying attention to the primary process you know that is not the case in this country in 2016.)

Something Is Going Seriously Wrong at Arizona Polls Today
Nathan Wellman | March 22, 2016

Arizona’s primaries aren’t even done yet, and there’s already legal action being taken as a result of incompetence or possibly even intentional sabotage.

Leaders from the Arizona branch of the Democratic Party have confirmed that its lawyers are officially making an inquiry after multiple Democratic voters showed up to the polls only to find that they were listed as independents, Republicans, or had no party affiliation at all.

Many voters wound up having to wait in line under the hot Arizona sun only to find that they were ineligible to vote for the candidates of their choice. To add insult to injury, the polling locations have been so poorly planned that many voters had to wait in line up to four hours before finding out that their information had been improperly filed.

Bernie's campaign trying to track the votes (as AZ deliberately sabotages the process): https://votetracker.berniesanders.com/report/AZ/

Many photos and also videos at the link documenting the sabotage:





http://usuncut.com/news/arizona-polling-disaster/

March 22, 2016

Voter suppression in AZ -

From a democratic socialist site on Facebook:

Massive voter suppression appears to be underway in ‪#?Arizona‬ - if you switched from Independent to Democrat to vote in the ‪#?AZPrimary‬ you might be turned away as the state has not updated the affiliation changes.

This is disturbing on many levels, but please do not accept a provisional ballot without first fighting for your rights.

https://voter.azsos.gov/VoterView/RegistrantSearchMobile.do
to check your status!

☎
Voter Protection Fraud line: 602-542-2228

https://t.co/sdH1W36Lek

March 22, 2016

Violence in Palestine

What they communicate is that life for a whole generation born under Oslo is increasingly suffocating and generating a new type of anger. These acts communicate to Israel that Palestinians haven’t disappeared and can still pose a threat to its bureaucratic and military control of Palestinians.

Explaining the New Violence in Palestine

Recent events have shown how untenable Israel’s dream of “occupation with security” is.
by Bashir Abu-Manneh
3-17-2016

United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon made some illuminating remarks about Israel-Palestine last month. After a ritual condemnation of Palestinian violence, he added a comment that enraged Israel’s government and politicians.

As oppressed peoples have demonstrated throughout the ages, it is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism.

Such crude descent into causality was troubling for Israel. For the head of such an important institution to attribute blame to the country for the current wave of attacks can only be met with claims that the secretary general is a terrorist sympathizer.

Never short of linguistic acrobatics, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu lead the charge by saying that Ban Ki-moon was “stoking terror.” He continued that:

The Palestinian terrorists don’t want to build a state; they want to destroy a state, and they say that proudly. They want to murder Jews everywhere and they state that proudly. They don’t murder for peace and they don’t murder for human rights.
For Netanyahu, there are two reasons that can explain the current wave of stabbings and car rammings against Israeli soldiers and civilians. First and foremost, there is the cultural reason: they murder us because they are antisemitic. And they are so because of their religion and culture.

For Netanyahu, there are two reasons that can explain the current wave of stabbings and car rammings against Israeli soldiers and civilians. First and foremost, there is the cultural reason: they murder us because they are antisemitic. And they are so because of their religion and culture ...

More here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/03/israel-palestine-netanyahu-stabbings-fatah-hamas/

March 20, 2016

Two birds, one stone (toon for the weekend)

March 18, 2016

The Commune Lives

“Under the name ‘Commune of Paris’ a new idea was born, to become the starting point for future revolutions.”

Issue #1
Author: ROAR Collective

On March 18, 1871 the people of Paris rose up against their repressive and treacherous government, established a revolutionary commune and defiantly hoisted the red flag over the Hôtel de Ville. The event sent shockwaves throughout the continent: with armed citizens erecting barricades in working-class neighborhoods and government officials on the retreat to Versailles, the City of Light had suddenly fallen into the hands of its people.

Over the next two months, all signs of state power evaporated from the French capital as the proletarians of Paris took charge of their own destiny, forming neighborhood councils and producer associations, electing moderately paid delegates subject to immediate recall, and instituting basic reforms like free access to public education, the granting of citizenship to immigrants, and the reopening of workplaces under worker control.

The Commune was eventually defeated at the hands of the Versailles government, setting the stage for the bloody massacre of up to 30,000 Communards and unarmed citizens. But for all the force and vengeance the Versaillais could muster, the Commune did not die—the idea survived its “own working existence” and lived on, subterraneously, in the sacrifices of its martyrs, the aspirations of its survivors and the writings of its leading theoreticians ...

More here: https://roarmag.org/magazine/editorial-the-commune-lives/

March 17, 2016

Fascism. Can it Happen Here?

(TBF Note - Some of us would argue that it has been ongoing. Neoliberalism=inverted totalitarianism. Trump is only putting a face on it and bringing it into the open.)

“In the election of 1924, [Hitler] did very poorly, for a marginal party. Then you have the Depression in 1929 and 1930. ... There’s this huge economic crisis with tens of millions unemployed, and there’s also a governmental deadlock. You cannot get any legislation passed.” Paxton continued, “The German Weimar Republic really ceased to function as a republic in 1930, because nothing could be passed. ... So, between 1930 and 1933, President von Hindenburg ruled by decree. And the political elites are desperate to get out of that situation. And here’s Hitler, who has more votes by this time than anybody else. He’s up to 37 percent. He never gets a majority, but he’s up to 37 percent. And they want to bring that into their tent and get a solid mass backing. And so ... they bring him in.”

Fascism: Can It Happen Here?
Posted on Mar 16, 2016
By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan

“When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross,” goes a saying that is widely attributed to the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Sinclair Lewis. In 1935, Lewis wrote a novel called “It Can’t Happen Here,” positing fascism’s rise in the United States. We were taught that fascism was defeated in 1945, with the surrender of Germany and Japan in World War II. Yet the long shadows of that dark era are falling on the presidential campaign trail this year, with eruptions of violence, oaths of loyalty complete with Nazi salutes and, presiding over it all, Republican front-runner Donald Trump.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” the 20th-century philosopher George Santayana wrote. He lived in Europe through both world wars, and witnessed Italian fascism firsthand. Fascism was the violent political movement founded by Benito Mussolini, who took control of Italy in 1922. Mussolini had his political opponents beaten, jailed, tortured and killed, and ruled with an iron fist until he was deposed as Italy surrendered to the Allies in 1943. He was known as “Il Duce,” or “The Leader,” and provided early support to the nascent Nazi movement in Germany as Adolf Hitler rose to power in the 1930s.

Why is this relevant today? It was Donald Trump who recently retweeted one of Mussolini’s quotes: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” When NBC confronted Trump for retweeting the fascist’s words, he replied, “Sure, it’s OK to know it’s Mussolini. Look, Mussolini was Mussolini. ... It’s a very good quote, it’s a very interesting quote.”

If only the fascist comparisons were limited to his tweets ...

More here: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/fascism_can_it_happen_here_20160316z

March 10, 2016

Inevitable (toon) - Steve Sack Rocks

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