politics for the 99%

• Prof Franz Hörmann: about monney, 14.32 min, uploaded by g4m3p01, Feb 26, 2014;
• Graham Hancock: the War on Consciousness, 18.44 min, uploaded by Imagine Hypnotics, Sept 30, 2013; http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/04/11/ted-bans-graham-hancocks-talk-on-consciousness/
• Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: about his banned TED talk, 29.44 min, uploaded by revolutionloveevolve, April 3, 2013: about his banned TED talk on Skeptiko with Alex Tsakiris;
• Graham Hancock: about the Lifeboat Hour with Mike Ruppert, 57.51 min, uploaded by revolutionloveevolve, March 19, 2013 … about ‘The War on Consciousness’, psychedelics and the global awakening on the Lifeboat Hour with Michael C Ruppert;
• Nick Hanauer: Rich people don’t create jobs, 5.49 min, uploaded by Progression of History, May 17, 2012;

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Published on ZNet (first on ROARMAG), by  Antonis Broumas and Theodoros Karyotis, Oct 4, 2014.

… Left-Wing Bureaucracy and the State:

In theory, the communist left relates with the state in instrumental terms. The conquest of the bourgeois state is presented as a necessary evil on the road to workers’ power. This approach, however, is immersed — even on a purely theoretical level — in a series of contradictions. Even in its most sophisticated versions it fails to address the issue of the dialectic relation between the vanguard party bureaucracy and the autonomy of the world of labor, or the possibility of achieving a transition towards an egalitarian society, when there is such disparity between the means employed and the goals proposed.   Continue Reading…

Published on The Bullet, Socialist Project’s E-Bulletin no. 1043, by Richard Fidler, Oct 3, 2014.

Superficially, the 55-45 victory of the No forces in Scotland’s referendum September 18 was a clear rejection of independence. The Yes forces won a majority only in the four poorest and most deprived of the nation’s 32 local divisions, although a class breakdown of the vote would show a majority of the working-class voted for independence.   Continue Reading…

Published on The Economist, Oct 4, 2014: The model of development through industrialisation is on its way out.

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS ago Shenzhen was a tiny fishing village just over the river from British Hong Kong. Its inhabitants, like most Chinese, lived in poverty. In 1978 the average income in America was about 21 times that in China. But in 1979 China’s leader, Deng Xiaoping, chose Shenzhen as the country’s first special economic zone, free to experiment with market activity and trade with the outside world. Shenzhen quickly found itself at the leading edge of Chinese economic development, using the same model as Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong itself had done at earlier stages.   Continue Reading…

Published on naked capitalism, by Yves Smith, Oct 2, 2014.

… Yves here. The word “collapse” may seem overwrought when applied to Europe, but cold-blooded, clear eyed colleagues who have good connections and have spent a bit of time there recently say things that are broadly similar to Ilargi’s take. Despite the conventional wisdom that the cost of a Eurozone breakup is catastrophically and thus will never take place, that confidence may prove to be the currency union’s undoing. Ideological rigidity about austerity is leading to policies that are crushing large swathes of the population. And Europe, unlike the US, had enough of a tradition of popular revolt that that uprisings, either on the street or in the ballot box, are real possibilities, as the sudden rise of the anti-EU right shows.   Continue Reading…

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Published on naked capitalism, by Yves Smith, Sept 29, 2014;

… Now you might say, isn’t this media firestorm a great thing? It’s roused Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown to demand hearing. The Fed has been toadying up to Wall Street for years. Shouldn’t we be pleased that the problem is finally being taken seriously?   Continue Reading…